+40% axe better than HoD?

That's true. Doing that would lower its power level to only that of the HoD sword -- which is only marginally overpowered.

The real problem, as has been said over and over, is the whopping 40% longer enchantments that's possible on it. It's like an opportunity cost-free Blessed Aura that works on all spells with a free, unremovable Peace and Harmony tacked onto it. That's just nuts.

The whole point of Vampiric mods is to primarily to deal armor-ignoring damage, not to life steal. Generally, the life-steal only serves to cover for the life degen, netting you +0 life. Since the axe does so little damage, there's no point in putting Vamp mods on it unless you're trying to farm things with Cyclone Axe and 0 Axe Mastery.

Overwriting works by "First In, Last Out", provided the mods are different.
Not sure if this has been answered yet, but if you want a 60HP axe, follow these steps:
1) Add a cheap mod: --- eg: Grip of Shelter -- +25HP Fortitude Mod gets overwritten
2) Add +30HP Mod -- Charrslaying mod gets overwritten
3) Add +30HP Mod -- Shelter mod gets overwritten

Voila, +60HP Axe.

LoooL and people are buying the grips , axe for more than 100K now ..

go to L.A and see the noise

This axe just needs to go - and I hope it does, primarily so I can read all the moaning on here ^^. But these things could destroy PVP, unlimited spellbreakers could pretty much cancel the whole "spell" skill line ad people will be playing nothing but warriors and rangers.... and order necros.... actually, on second thoughts, won't be too much different .

These axes need to disappear, not just be cancelled

Damn, fixing this is going to take some creativity. I have no doubt that A.Net can find out who has this item, as it probably has a unique identifier, but that's not the issue.

The real issue is rebalancing things without totally screwing people over. Some amount of screwage is inevitable, because these axe grips are going to plummet in price once this is fixed. However, it'd be more than draconian to just delete these items from people's inventories.

My guess is that, if you have one of these axes, you'll soon see a "missing" mod on the axe and one of the grips magically appear in your inventory. Overall, you'll be out some cash, but you'll still have all your items...unless your inventory is full.

And then you'll hear a collective "Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"

5 cents they get deleted by the end of Monday.

200 cents on the collective "noOooOOooOOooooOOOOooo"

I sold one 2 days ago for 1k
I think i got the short straw.

i wonder how long this has been going on before coming to massive public attention...

most people can't keep their mouths shut (or their fingers still, heh), so i doubt they've been around for long, except in limited numbers.

Well, if you see any drastic Ladder changes once this gets fixed, you just might have your answer.

I'll admit that's very unlikely, though. Those top guilds are there because they deserve to be.

off topic

I can't wait to see how anet is going to fix this issue. The axes cannot stay because of pvp. So, I wonder if they have the capability of fixing them while in your inventory( fixing i mean removing one grip ). This is a real problem for poor anet i feel bad for them

PS Does anet even know?

tell you one thing - i am going to closely inspect every single quest item i get from now on...

who knows how many items out there are bugged like is?

Of course they know, they know everything.

Like others have said, it will be very interesting to see how ANet handle this.

They're too late now, and you know it.

Yes they know everything. They definetly don't know how to test. If these vanish I expect to see an additional 300k in my storage. Thx Anet.

Anet knows (not a fact, an educated guess). i mean they must know

i am starting to think that anet will not nerf these.
So what if there is a one-handed weapon gives u enchants that last 40% longer. it might really affect pvp, the chinese farming bots will have an easier time farming those griffons (more money being sold on e-bay), ecto prices r gonna change AGAIN.

If they do nerf it, people like "Love Guild Wars" will have lost the 2000k (i know that for a fact) they invested in these bad boys and there will b a huge shortage of enchant +20% axe mods (they r going to go for abt 70-80k for a month or so i would say)

Well what can i say: lose - lose situation for Anet.
this will b interesting!

The only thing I can imagine is reseting the quest for everyone that has this item, changing the quest reward, placing the mods in the axe already back into your inventory and deleting the axe from everyone's inventory.

Or they could just make all the durations of enchantmants 20% longer Haha.

Let's see, the staff would give you +10 EN, so with the offhand, you would have +2 more energy. Overpowered? Hardly. Also, what Axe mods would benefit casters in PvP? With the exception of the Heavy and cruel mod (necros using Enfeeble and mesmers using Phantom Pain), none has any significant benefit.
Also adding the fact that the staff can be 20/20, while thr offhand is usually inferior to that. Most of the time, it's 20% chance of +1 <attribute>/ 20% recharge, so little benefit. IMO, it's even inferior to the staff in that case.

well yeah i guess u can look at it both ways.

my monk would prefer an axe with 40 percent enchant over a max dmg wand with max bonuses (energy +5, skill recharge 10)

As far as I know, they have never done an update that affects items already in your inventory. Their only action thus far (HoD sword and 20/20 Rockmolder) is to change or eliminate the item in game, thereby preventing new ones entering the game. I've suspected that's because there's probably no easy way to change items already in inventory, or they just don't want to open the privacy can of worms that entails.

However, while I don't think this thing is as massively overpowered as some here are fretting it is, I do think it is probably the most unbalanced item I've seen yet. My prediction: they'll make it so it only accepts one grip, and keeps that 15% charr permanently or something.

15k Tormentor's? Although that was just a texture reskin...

You even forgot the Firespitter Shame on you!