Axe BM?

With the current mindset of the player base, you will have an extremely hard time finding squads for PVE activities if you are pure axe build. That changes somewhat if you get R9, but many will still prefer APS BMs. That being said, if you don't mind being rejected by some squads, or if you find helpful friends/ a helpful faction, you can have fun without ever touching a weapon other than an axe.
In PvP however, APS is pretty useless overall. The reason is that other players won't let you hit them continuously. Even if you stun them, they might either remove the stun via genie skill, or use some kind of immunity such as AD. Add to that the fact that BMs are not pure DDs (they are front line supporters, if you so want), they usually cannot kill a target within the 10 seconds of a charm tick. What you need is 'spike damage', which axes excel at (dual axes are the weapon type with the highest possible spike damage out of all melee weapons). The axe path also has the most useful AoEs.
Unless you have all your end-game gear weaiting for you already, it might still be a good idea to go for the 3 strength, 2 dex / level build. Its only weakness compared to possible 'pure axe builds' (combinations of minimum dex with either full str or high str and some vit) is lower HP or damage per hit. It has a number of advantages though: 1) allows you to wield weapons for all of the four paths, 2) more crit, 3) more accuracy.

Morridune - Raging Tide wrote: »

there are a number of ways to build an axe toon but rly by lvl 100 my recommendation is you want to at least b able to wear this gear http://pwcalc.com/783f35df81fdb624 . For AoE grinding/pvp get a m.deff neck, the mag ring u get for free doing a daily quest. Those stats gives enough str for the lvl90 gold zerk axe and later after u have farmed 1 a g15 nirvy - reason i show that link tho is it shows cheapest gear ( w/o been super lucky with packs or crafting oht) you need to get 4aps with demon spark.
why 4aps when u wanna b pure axe? once you hit lvl100 you'll want min 4aps or will struggle when looking to get into regular TT3-x squads or nirvana squads, which is were the coin is to be made so you can afford to make ur EG set, skill wise priority would b lvl10 mastery's, HF, aura and skills you would use with ur axe also get lvl5 magic marrow it wont kill ur pdeff so longa as you'r buffed and will ease a lil any magic dam in pve from mobs or bosses

once you have got you'r EG set then look to re stat for more str or vit if you still want half decent fists to help chi up the basic non recast r8's only need 160 or the lvl85 gold FC need 168 freeing up some stat points plus thats only a lvl3 tome which is fairly easy to come by and pretty easy to improve with ppl selling CS item for lvl5's

http://i.imgur.com/8Y57d.gif

For PvE I'd personally recommend trying out a multi-weapon path first and then switching to pure axe later if you really find fists don't work for you. At least by going multi weapon first you get to see how much you like each aspect of the BM class.

I did go pure axe myself when I first started the game, and I thought I loved it. I had plenty of room for extra vit and str and had high HP and good aoe damage. However, by the time I reached 100 I couldn't wait to switch to an axe/fist build. While axes might seem nice, your single target DPS is really awful. Extra HP is a waste, you'll never hold agro to tank bosses and if you take too many mobs in an aoe, it'll only buy you an extra second or two. You also have no way to build fast chi. It also cuts you off from instances like nirvana, TT and sometimes FCC since an axe BM would just slow the squad. A multi path with an axe can do anything you could, and more.