Why are battleaxes so rarely used among players?

I can speak for the members side of things, and battleaxes are still rarely used. I think the reason is mainly due to the speed of them. Yes they are stronger than certain weapons, but let's analyze an example situation here:

Let's examine how many times you would perform an attack across 36 game ticks using a battleaxe (roughly 22 seconds).

36 game ticks / 6 ticks per attack = 6 total attacks

Now let's do the same with a scimitar:

36 game ticks / 4 ticks = 9 total attacks

Thus within the same amount of game ticks, you would be able to perform three additional attacks using a scimitar compared to a battleaxe.

Another problem with battleaxes is by the time you are ready to use the stronger variants (such as rune and dragon), you will end up paying more for them than you would for their scimitar counterparts.

For example: The dragon battleaxe is currently around 120,000 gold, where the dragon scimitar is about 60,000. Attack bonuses for both of these weapons are nearly the same, with the battleaxe only having a +3 advantage (in regard to using the slash style). This also doesn't consider the fact that you need to do certain quests to use both of these weapons. The Dragon Battleaxe requires a significant amount of prerequisites while the Dragon Scimitar doesn't require as many.

The max hit with a dragon battleaxe at 99 strength with no other items is a 26 (see this calculator). The max hit with a dragon scimitar at 99 strength with no other items is 22. Consider the situation above again, except this time we will use the total number of attacks to calculate the total damage that can be dealt in this time span:

• Dragon Battleaxe: 6 * 26 = 156 total damage
• Dragon Scimitar: 9 * 22 = 198 total damage

Divide those numbers by the time in seconds (~22 seconds):

• Dragon Battleaxe: 156 / 22 = 7.09 DPS
• Dragon Scimitar: 198 / 22 = 9 DPS

If you managed to max every hit, the dragon scimitar would be able to deal more damage over the battleaxe in the same amount of time since it has a higher DPS.

The battleaxe has lower DPS (damage-per-second, the rate at which damage is inflicted) than the other two by a significant amount. For certain monsters, it's worth switching between the longsword and scimitar, but the battleaxe DPS is low enough overall that it's never really worth using. The scimitar is generally considered to be the best overall due to having the highest DPS.

While it be might seem like the best because it is in the middle of strength and speed, most people use a scimitar simply because of its speed. Being able to hit faster and more often in a fight usually is more advantageous than hitting slower.

Especially in PvP, the more you can hit your opponent the more time they have to spend healing which can cause the unprofessional ones to lose their cool and mess up the fight.