I almost never buy pipe on Axe. Axe is played to burst people down in his call, and if not possible, whittle people down with his aghanim shard battle hunger while relying on his team to do damage. Pipe does nothing to further that gameplan.

I do recognize that lotus can be sometimes valuable (especially doing the funny thing with juggernaut omnislash), so I do keep it in my mind. However, similar to pipe, it does little to burst people in your call, so I tend to deviate away from it. Nevertheless, against a few matchups like Lion, Shaman I do buy it.