Difference betwixt Axe/Broadsword/Mace ?

I can confirm that Guarded Spin and Defensive Sweep both stack.

Here is the blunt difference:
Broadsword is boring, and has all it's abilities eclipsed entirely by other sets. In return for this, the devs gave it more costume options then you can shake a stick at. If you consider BS, you shouldnt- take katana instead, or if you want a sheilds character just make a mace. "Sad but true!!"

Mace is the only of the 3 that got a looksie pass from the devs. hence, it is generally superior in damage and the powers feel more fluid in an attack chain, and the target caps etc make sense. Mace is a solid performing set, and IMO if you want to look at the animations these 3 sets offer you should just use this one.

Ax has the potential to be a lot of fun as it shares a lot of dynamics with mace, but for some reson the devs cant be bothered to tweak some numbers in a table for 5 minutes to fix the target caps on pendulum. In general, ax is inferior to mace for no good reason. It does KU on swoop, but swoop is unfortunatly about .4 seconds too long an animation to feel fluid and fun for the dmg it does. The rest of the KD can be moderatly useful for survivability at best, and totally unreliable and pointless at worst. Ax is not a bad set really, it just gets outdone in pretty much every aspect by mace.



Of these 3 sets, the only one I find myself considering when creating a new character is mace. Broadsword used to be a lot of fun, in issue 3. ED smacked it down and totally destroyed it's playstyle, and the devs have never revisited the set to give it an injection of fun like they did with mace. Ax. i dunno if you want to try it i would make a scrapper. If you get the random KD to fire the same time a critical goes off, it could feel pretty powerful and look the same.