Eviscerate vs Cleave

Cleave
if this attack hits, you strike for 10-22 more damage. 4 adren

If Eviscerate hits, you strike for 1-24 more damage and inflict a deep wound, lowering your target's maximum health by 20% for 5-17 seconds. 7 adren

If you ignore the adren issue it's pretty obvious that cleave is severely outclassed. However, when you take into account the adren issue, you see that you can dish out 1.75 cleaves for every 1 eviscerate which would make cleave better, assuming you can use another skill slot for dismember (deep wounds are one of the best conditions to spread).

However, there is a cooldown time with any adren skill even though it's not listed (gain a bunch of adren, use an adren skill, you can still use other adren skills but not the one you just used right away). I have no idea what this time is but it's the biggest obstacle for cleave being the clear choice here.

So what I am asking, is there a clear cut one is better than the other for an axe dps build? Or is it dependant on how much open room you can afford (2 slots vs 1)? Any info on that adren skill cooldown would be appreciated too.

I would say that the biggest decision deals with how many slots you have to spare. I know when running my axe warrior I love using frenzy/cleave because you can throw out a lot of damage. On the other hand, I recently acquired Eviscerate and have warmred up to it. I dropped dismember and another attack spell because eviscerate not only provides good damage but causes a deep wound as well. That being said, I'd say go eviscerate if you need slots but I think too many people neglect cleave. Throw in frenzy with cleave and you're putting out a ton of damage.

Eviscerate's max dmg is 34 not 24. It's basically Executioner's Strike + Dismember. I like that skill alot. And I also think cleave is the cheapest elite in the game.

Eviscerate only gives you one deep wound.... they dont stack. So for a one hit wonder eviscerate is better. For more susatined damage cleave is superior.

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I don't like Eviscerate because 7 adrenaline is quite a bit and if I hit a guy that many times already, then he should be less than 80% hp meaning that Deep Would would not speed up his death at all (just prevent some healing if it's possible for him to heal up to max health). Cleave seems more well rounded and will work well in any situation.

However, Eviscerate does shine in some situations, if you happen to skill someone and then have adrenaline so you don't have to charge up you can do some severe damage on th initial hit as you instantly take off 20% through deep wounds alone, then following that up with something like Executioners... Very powerful.

Deep wounds don't stack but the fact is unless you're running a condition heavy build and they don't have martyr, it is going to be removed asap because it's so good. It's very good therefore to have it be applied often.

The reason I ask is that I was screwing around in arena with some friends as a buffed up axe war with OOP/OOV/JI/Soh and judicious use of frenzy. I was not able to spam cleave very much (though with frenzy was gaining tons of adren) and had to rotate between cleave/pen/exec rather than just doing cleave over and over as I thought it would work before hand due to the recharge.

You lose one "strike' of adrenaline every time you use an adrenal skill.
For the purposes of this discussion, it matters because cleave will recharge slower with every adrenal skill on your bar.

It works the same way with Eviscerate but the effect isn't as pronounced becaue you aren't spamming as many adrenal skills in short order.

I'm sure I've explained exactly how adrenaline works on the boards before, I'll see if I can dig it up.

Is there a neither option? Or a non-warrior elite option?

I feel dirty everytime I use a warrior elite.

If you find the least common multiple the two have (in terms of strikes of adrenaline, in this case 28), cleave will do 154 damage, while eviscerate will do 236 damage (assuming you're dealing with a target with normal health). Keeping that in mind, eviscerate is more efficient on paper, but cleave still remains better for dps purposes.