the quick axes are really really good now, but the slower axes like rosus or the battle axe could really use a bit more poise damage to give them something over straightswords.

I don't get what the complaints are about. Idk about pvp, but in pve, axes are probably the best light weapons with the highest dps. Especially the warped axe. Better than straight swords or katanas.

I wonder why there's no faith based axes

Contending with colossal weapons for worst category overall. Colossals at least have reach and one-hit potential with jumping attacks... Hammers and flails are generally, if slightly, better but especially in PvE where strike damage is universally awesome and they do more posture damage. Axes are truly the worst of both worlds: stubby reach, middling stagger/posture damage, awful powerstance moveset, barely any better single moveset, slow enough to not combo without storm stomp, no thrust attacks, no chase down ability. In terms of having nothing going for them, they have it all!

It's weird that powerstancing hatchets uses the same moveset as other heavier axes even they are lighter and attack faster in single wielding.

Dual wielded axes uses the animations like it's heavier than a greataxe. I'd even argue it's perhaps even slower than that because of the lack of range and distance you have to go through to pull off an attack with a damage worse than any other weapon on an enemy.
Also dual axe attack slides forward on the first dual attack because they realised too late it was such a bad animation it had to have more range or they just thought they could get away with another soul-series with bad axe animations.

To make it even worse the dual greataxe moveset is faster, more range, more damage, more poise damage and the only downside being weight if you even care about that. Greataxes also doesn't have a stupid animation where you hit with your left weapon first with a missed attack on the ground and then uses the right weapon afterwards with no range to boot to the ground. It's a bigger chance you hit yourself on the foot than an actual player with axes.

They also dumped the first hype on seeing Stormhawk Axe for the first time when seeing the npc Nepheli using it against Godrick. It should have been the only axe in the game with both axes count as one armament instead of giving us two axes to upgrade. Favoring over Straight Swords once again due to Ornamental Swords existing.

Which... Why are Straight Sword allowed to dual wield and hit both swords at the same time while retaining excellent range and axes are not? Katanas are more balanced in that way they actually hit like the axe does with one swing and then the next afterwards, but Straight Swords, spears, curved swords and so many others don't follow this rule. This makes two-handing obsolete in these class except for the axe-class where it's better two-handed than dual wielded because no one saw a Berserker in movies and thought they were dumb as rocks and only slammed axes to to the feet of their foes.

Also the biggest laziness of this dual wielding axes is it is EXACLY the same animation as dual wielded maces and flails. So no love was given to either maces, flails or axes in this game. So if you thought you could dual wield the other alternatives such as maces or flails sorry to disappoint you. They have the same issue except they can at least do a bit of damage.

On top of that Occult Forked Hatchet does less damage than Occult Scavenger despite using same amount of attributes and one having less range, worse speed and design. That is at 99 arcane and 25 dexteriy in case you're wondering. Occult Forked Hatchet should deal more damage.

Anyways axes, maces, flails are the most neglected class and I wrote this on axes because I have the biggest issue with them of them all. They've neglected axes in every single god damn soul-series type of game and it's annoying. Lastly axes have 0 unique ash of wars in both Greataxes or Axes while Swords have Stormblade.

Screw this neglection to 3 classes and give me that sweet Fromsoft love you give Katanas, Curved swords and Straight swords. (-_-)

Something that annoys me about axes is the way your character holds them. Imo it should be over the shoulder 1 handed and the DS2 sideways at the hip stance for 2 handed. Right now it just looks goofy sprinting around holding one of these the same way you hold a damn dagger

**** it, just give axes poise on like every r1 or r2. have that be the axe thing. you don't need to stack poise to have poise with axes, so you can actually utilize the cool charged attacks and be a proper berserker build

Axes now reliably hit rats and dogs. They still can whiff, point blank, against erdtree avatars, but it's nowhere near as bad as pre-1.08.