So at the moment, I have little to no idea how to play as an Axelord. Despite my previous knowledge back as the Paladins I seem to be a novice again in the use of the axe.

Other than knockdowns and stacking up wounds on the mid to perform execute, is there another strategy I could do?

Also, will being a dwarven axelord be worth the trouble? Or I should remain human?

As for the race bit, I'd stay human. Human knights have good stats, and the xp bonus helps.

As for the spec, it took a hit when people were abusing the "double tap" to basically build wounds really easily. Since knockdown was changed to balance loss instead of a stun, and people can cure through it, it's lost popularity as a spec. Its not going to help you build wounds, but its definitely useful in groups, especially as a light wound.

AL wounding has a fair amount of salve cures, so senso is your friend, but the difficulty will be building up wounds, which will involve getting around parry and stance the old fashioned way. On the plus side, AL has some of the nastiest critical afflictions available to knights- severspine, slit throat (at heavy), behead, amputates. Execute is really really hard to get unless you're dramatically outstripping wound curing, so I wouldn't spread my offense out trying to get that.

AL doesn't have a "yay win" strategy (not anymore at least). The only knight spec that really does is BM, because pinleg is a sacred cow.

PB isn't shabby right now though! Better diversity than AL overall.

so what's the best way to out wound my opponent?

To switch specs. With the latest change along with that you can't KD while target is prone was the final nail in the coffin for AL

No good wounds beyond critical, minus slit, is why it fails so bad.

Axelord and Bonecrusher are suffering due to the lack of the double tap. Which had to go, in my opinion. However, they could probably use some buffs now.

BM if you want to fight 1 vs 1.
PB is more for group utility, I've found. It's okay for 1 vs 1. Blademaster is far superior, however.

I found PB to be a lot easier than Blademaster, in groups and one versus one, ability to instantly assault tendon(On most of the player base) as well as slitthroat is good, hardlocks are easy to come and building wounds is a charm!

Until the BM impale bug is fixed it's not really that clear cut. PB can be very solid 1v1.

Heh. I've been seeing unartied warriors landing one-shot pinlegs on cloth. I'd definitely say that BM is a little bit more solid than PB.

fought with Ixion, doubt i did anything at all when I made a few strikes against him.

Best you can do is stare long and hard at Axelord, then send something to your envoy.

EDIT: In retrospect, I don't like these ideas. HEY, XENTHOS, LOOK! IT'S MARKED EDIT!

Axelord's got tons of nice afflictions and nasty stuff if you can get them to the critical range, though.

Difficult with warriors (almost impossible without some ways to slow them down), same with Acrobats.

With others, if they stick around and you use your swings effectively you should be able to do some pretty good damage. At the same time, they can leave while you're building up, or go pure defensive.

Axelord does have the best array of critical afflictions though, IMO. 4x amputate and severspine, along with the behead-clone all the specs have-- this means an Axelord can focus on a much greater variety of areas to split a person's parry / stance with (eventually) some pretty nasty afflictions. More areas to play with theoretically means less time wasted. I do feel like a good chunk of the "OMG it sucks!" is due to the loss of the double-tap easy mode, and a mass abandonment in favour of pinleg / decapitate. Along with trying to use it to good effect against warriors / acrobats (if you have trouble getting to critical, I agree, it's not very effective).

BC is hurting the most at this point, really, I feel.

Edit: Pfft, if you're going to edit that late after you posted, Xavius, you should mark it as an edit.

Those two together make a non-trivial issue. If you can't use things from medium wounds or below to build up momentum (and BC can, even if not well, and could use some love there too), then you can't fight certain classes effectively. That's not interesting balance.

Well, there is a reason I made that point (more than once) in the post: It is an issue, I'm not saying it isn't.

At the same time, Axelord vs. other classes should be able to be extremely nasty if handled well. ... and the person sticks around. And / or group fights.

What were the buffs that changed Pureblade from pretty bad as a Warrior spec to pretty solid? Were there actual buffs or is it just people using it in different ways/the recent group fight phase of pits, divinefire and instakills?

Heavy tendon is very nice. So is decapitate for group combat (and decapitate/pits).

It's more that BC and AL got fixed and lost their double-tap, so it's easier for PB to shine. Building up wounds for PB compared to AL was very difficult.

BC/AL got meganerfed. BM impales are bugged reducing effectiveness. PB hasn't changed- as you say combat has shifted.

Any newbie can get demi now, which means damage and other kill methods are not optimal in most situations. Hence, instakills almost exclusively eclipse combat. We have witnessed the crap that is pit/judge, pit/choke/xyz, pit/decap, p5th/anything and the like.

Maybe one day we'll be able to remove pits/choke/shieldstun/p5th/etc that just make combat lame and boring. Doubt it though.

Edit: Good Lord, how could I leave out p5th. Added.

Guess people are lucky folk can't choke pitted victims.

Someone missed the entire point, and you obviously ignored how choke/pits work in synergy.

You know combat needs fixing when some warriors opt to use a shield/weapon just to spam shieldstun for instas. I don't blame them, tragic though it is.

Choke/pit was a bad entry on the list, but choke fills a lot of the same functions as a pit does in a group, especially choke/pfifth. Just hold people down and insta them.

There are changes that improved PB. Tempering helped all. Allheale no longer cures tendon. REPORT LIST PUREBLADE will show you some of them. Amongst them, the most notable probably assault got a buff to do more wounds. Then some smaller stuff.