Talk:Swords/@comment-213.205.224.120-20120322152756/@comment-142.165.85.185-20120419070209

The particular problem is that axes can't have enchantments, where as swords can. A good enchant on a sword can light your enemy on fire and make you do more damage on average than an axe. The critical chance for axes have been nerfed to about 0.5% chance now per lvl. Meaning you can have a 50% chance of a mcmmo critical with an axe at lvl 1000. Considering it ups damage to 150% and that it happens 50% of time your damage average would be about 125% of 10 damage.

This all translates to axes doing about 12.5 damage, which is 6 and quarter of a heart of damage on average. Considering sharpness V can add at least 5 damage to the sword, and that a diamond sword does a nature 9 damage, I would say the average damage of a sword is much higher. I can't be certain, but the average with a sharpness V enchanted diamond is 19 damage. 9 and half hearts. That is if the enchanting wiki of minecraft is right about the sharpness enchant adding 1 damage as minium and 3 damage as a max for each lvl of the enchant.

So If we add that up with the fact that a diamond sword can also get fire aspect II and knockback II we see axes as being nothing more than a paper weight when compared to enchanted swords. The fact that the axe skill is anti armour barely helps it from being a completely useless skill. Most battles usually end sooner than 20 melee blows. The only real case where the axe skill proves superior is against diamond enchanted protection IV armour. In which the armour will actually give out before the player will. Or if one disables enchantments from a server. Other than that, axes could use an revamp to be useful again, or be able to be enchanted just to compare to swords again.