[Autumn]

As of the last update it seems that another dagger was added with additional Strength scaling, and while some daggers are okay to have Strength scaling I feel, I feel as though too many daggers scale STR, when they're supposed to be a traditionally dexterous and precision based weapon.

Its no secret that making a weapon rely solely on critical damage over SWA will end up failing, a sword with 140 SWA is going to basic attack for more damage than a dagger with 90 SWA generally, even if the dagger has on average 20-45% more critical damage depending on if you're rocking VA or not, the base damages just matter more in the multiplication, and the only daggers that genuinely fulfill their purposes are the ones with good scalings or stupid good effects, this being:

-Seiyruu Tessens (On-hit spam)
-Vorpal Fang (Vorpal Tank busting)
-Dancing Shiv (SHred tank busting)
-Atlua's Abaineko (Accuracy)

These are the genuinely considered daggers more often than not, however I will give credit to the following Strength Scaling Daggers:

-Hikage/Tsukikage (Overloaded set/crit effects)
-Eternal Solitude (Pure, raw SWA, high Power)

These are the only STR scaling daggers I have ever considered using, the rest of them are genuinely not that great, there's even a boss 10* dagger that is completely limited by the fact it has STR scaling.

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The problem residing here is that daggers genuinely do not have a cohesive roundabout scaling similar to how Swords/Axes/Spears/Fists might, where as they focus on majority/half STR + a mix of stats, Daggers end up focusing on a very huge toss-up of stats, where one dagger might scale STR, another will scale purely more useful stats to a VA such as SKI or GUI or LUC.

I believe that if a dagger must scale STR (Such as Hikage/Tsukikage) then it should be the minor scaling, flipping Hikage/Tsukikage's scaling to 75% GUI and 40% STR would make people consider using them more.

Similarly some other STR scaling daggers should just have this removed in favor of GUI or SKI where applicable, daggers cannot subsist purely on critical damage alone, and they do deserve some SWA, especially because they cannot obtain SWA roids such as 2-Hand bonuses.

1 example I might put down is this:



For example, going down the wiki list, Fangfare immediately sticks out, its an ice flavored dagger that has a really cool thematic theme to it, but is avoided mostly due to the STR scaling upon it, I've seen it in practice and it can genuinely be a good weapon, but it will never out-perform the aforementioned 4 non-STR scaling daggers above, there's no way it ever will.

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All in all, I'd like dagger choice to be more of a thing here, daggers should compete with other weapons and not be delegated to a weird mix of scalings, one last thing I will add is the Shuriken Weapon Line, these need some re-tunings as well, Ninshi Shuriken has 40% total scaling, for a worse Volcanic effect.

[Snake]

A lot of the justifications for the scaling to be as they are is "but their on-hit/on-crit/on-holding effects are strong", which should never be the case. The power of an effect is situational 9/10 of the time. There are more reliable effects than others, effects that influence everyone equally, or only work properly in specific situations.

That, should be what tells if an effect is strong or not, and warrants the weapon being chopped in the liver. As for daggers themselves? Hah... Please skip my rant, it won't contribute for anything for to give you all a chuckle.

==WARNING, RANT ALERT! WEE WOO! HIGH SODIUM CONCENTRATION DETECTED!==

Yeah? Strong enough to justify losing to a basic craft Seiryuu Tessen because even if your cool effects are so swole why aren't they earning you victories like that sweet 100% elemental attack on-hit?

That argument is flawed and should not be considered one bit when talking about game balance. If a weapon's scaling is supposed to be weak, or nonsensical for the weapon's archetype, then the effects should be swole in exchange and I'll have to say, dropping the REDACTED Dagger from the swamp after a lot of grinding made my heart sink when I saw its horrible scaling that felt like all my time invested into the hype and trying to relive the days when 10* items were first introduced to be game-changing and new-things-enabler, only to feel like I got spat in the face and laughed at behind my back for being stupid and hoping for something I'd find useful.

If I knew the 'daggers' that were going to be dropped from the new place were just dwarf swords that can't use sword skills, I'd have preferred to be spoiled about them rather than dying several times while fighting against Ooze Armor's stupid cooldown effect and the instant stuns on top of my favorite status infliction of the game, Poison. All that were extremely infuriating to fight against after the first 10 fights of the same ol' bull of being put on red HP in one round.

2/10, at least they're worth 150 Murai to Zeo. Yeah, I sold them. Mostly because I feel like they could've been better. I'll eagerly grind for another one if/when they're the bare minimum for what a normal dagger is like. After the adventure I'm certainly not a happy camper.

;_;7

==Rant over, safe from here onwards!==

I don't even know the reason why so many things are washed down while others stay at the top tier while being more simple and boring yet effective. If I wanted to feel the rush of missing enemies but have high damage for a reward on hitting them, I'd just use axes.

When I pick daggers and run a low HP, high SKI/LUC/GUI build, I wanna run behind someone and shank that mothertrucker so hard into their backs they'll feel that for the rest of their lives if they survive. That's what daggers always are in the hands of skilled and smart people. DnD Barbarians don't use daggers, for example. In fact, they laugh at whenever someone holds up a dagger their way! It's a tiny baby weapon for tiny baby people. Just by that alone it sets a theme for why GUI and SKI should be considered over STR for any 'finesse' weapons, like guns and bows (Even bows suffer from STR requirements).

That's why Mages are so broken. WIL is very beneficial for them due to FP, Skill Slots, even Luminary too on top of it. But they don't have only WIL, Tomes scale from every single stat in the game but APT. Of course people will want the freedom to build their chars the way they want, and still work because mages babysit every type of build.

Making all melee weapons standardize to Strength regardless of their theme is the main offender of why the game's itemization diversity is so poor right now. Trust me on that.

TL;DR? High time for Daggers to get a soft rework on how they're supposed to be. If the idea that they 'do' need more than a massive readjustment on their scaling is more entertained, here's my short pitch:

- Mainly scale from SKI/GUI.
- Low base power.
- Maximum scaling should be 90% total, to reach 100% or more, only weapons with an extra scaling.
- Weak on-hit effects, or perhaps "no" on-hit effects.
- Strong on-crit effects.
- Attacking an enemy from the front gives it a penalty to damage, like Bows have from attacking in melee range.
- Attacking the enemy from behind ignores either all or half of their armor, and ignore the enemy's Evade bonuses.

Void Assassin will also need a few nerfs, mostly in Backstab and Deadly Arms.

Doing this? Boom. Daggers can now be used by every class properly, as long as you're built specifically to use them. It doesn't dump all of its potential in a single class's gimmick, and allows you to use them with other classes that don't support it well that much, such as Spellthief or Black Knight.

Or even become a backup weapon for SKI-oriented characters. You see a lot in anime, Archers or Gunslingers pairing their weapons with a knife for when they're accidentally in melee range.

[sadbot]

I've been saying that daggers need a change for the better for a looooong time now, they almost feel like they've been purposefully made worse than all other weapon types in exchange for being usable without class/talent requirements, which certainly isn't much of a trade off when they're not even worth using. Personally I think that hit is their biggest issue and that they either need a base hit rate boost across the board or some hit support added to rogue and its promotions, but I can very much agree that their scaling is just whacky as it is now.

I'm also 200% on board with shurikens getting some love. Thematically they're my favorite weapon type in the game by far, but their powerful on hits and potentials (in some cases anyway) do not even come close to making up for their absolutely abysmal scaling.

[Autumn]

I've been saying that daggers need a change for the better for a looooong time now, they almost feel like they've been purposefully made worse than all other weapon types in exchange for being usable without class/talent requirements, which certainly isn't much of a trade off when they're not even worth using. Personally I think that hit is their biggest issue and that they either need a base hit rate boost across the board or some hit support added to rogue and its promotions, but I can very much agree that their scaling is just whacky as it is now.

I'm also 200% on board with shurikens getting some love. Thematically they're my favorite weapon type in the game by far, but their powerful on hits and potentials (in some cases anyway) do not even come close to making up for their absolutely abysmal scaling.

Honestly even, their hit rates are exactly on par with swords more often than not, except with the added bonus of +20-30 hit from the back dependant on your guile.

Dodge has scaled too high for both of these weapon classes, and additional class-specific hit buffs are needed for them more than general hit buffs I feel. (Though to a sword's merit, they have much more synergy with BK than Daggers do)

[Lonestar]

I've always had the idea that STR scaling on weapons that heavily depend on specific stats like GUI to be a massive mistake. Not only you have to spread your stats thin to even meet a decent scaling but most of those times that stat won't help you that much outside of the very small HP increase you're getting.

Daggers and Bows suffer the most from this, since the former requires GUI to even do damage since it's a weapon heavily dependant on crits with lower basic power and bows require it to shoot targets from afar. For Daggers is a bit worse to do this stat spread because, as already mentioned, they already suffer from low accuracy overall. (Which I'm completly fine with it, the weapon needs a counter that isn't Crit Evade only)

Daggers in general need a scaling rework in most of the daggers that use STR in it, in the same way Axes got or complete reworking it.

[sadbot]

I've been saying that daggers need a change for the better for a looooong time now, they almost feel like they've been purposefully made worse than all other weapon types in exchange for being usable without class/talent requirements, which certainly isn't much of a trade off when they're not even worth using. Personally I think that hit is their biggest issue and that they either need a base hit rate boost across the board or some hit support added to rogue and its promotions, but I can very much agree that their scaling is just whacky as it is now.

I'm also 200% on board with shurikens getting some love. Thematically they're my favorite weapon type in the game by far, but their powerful on hits and potentials (in some cases anyway) do not even come close to making up for their absolutely abysmal scaling.

Honestly even, their hit rates are exactly on par with swords more often than not, except with the added bonus of +20-30 hit from the back dependant on your guile.

Dodge has scaled too high for both of these weapon classes, and additional class-specific hit buffs are needed for them more than general hit buffs I feel. (Though to a sword's merit, they have much more synergy with BK than Daggers do)

It is true that their base hit rate is the same but a number of factors give swords a large advantage in practice when it comes to hit. More options with higher base hit, additional hit via components due to having a guard, and mostly just easier access to hit buffs whether it be sword specific things or just better synergy with classes that offer hit steroids that you can't really get away with using daggers with. The bases are the same, but in practice swords come out noticeably better off than daggers.

I can agree though that part of the problem is that evade stacking is just overkill at this point, enough that anyone leaning hard into evasion just cannot be touched by a dagger user. And while other basic attackers can run autohits as a backup even though they're likely to be few in number and with limited fp to use them with, dagger autohits are pretty poor and generally made for utility over damage anyway. They certainly can't be relied on as a backup plan like any other weapon type can, leaving dagger users to just auto lose against anyone with sufficient evade. And again, that bar is lower for daggers than  any other basic attacking weapon type.

[Lolzytripd]

I've been saying that daggers need a change for the better for a looooong time now, they almost feel like they've been purposefully made worse than all other weapon types in exchange for being usable without class/talent requirements, which certainly isn't much of a trade off when they're not even worth using. Personally I think that hit is their biggest issue and that they either need a base hit rate boost across the board or some hit support added to rogue and its promotions, but I can very much agree that their scaling is just whacky as it is now.

I'm also 200% on board with shurikens getting some love. Thematically they're my favorite weapon type in the game by far, but their powerful on hits and potentials (in some cases anyway) do not even come close to making up for their absolutely abysmal scaling.

Honestly even, their hit rates are exactly on par with swords more often than not, except with the added bonus of +20-30 hit from the back dependant on your guile.

Dodge has scaled too high for both of these weapon classes, and additional class-specific hit buffs are needed for them more than general hit buffs I feel. (Though to a sword's merit, they have much more synergy with BK than Daggers do)

It is true that their base hit rate is the same but a number of factors give swords a large advantage in practice when it comes to hit. More options with higher base hit, additional hit via components due to having a guard, and mostly just easier access to hit buffs whether it be sword specific things or just better synergy with classes that offer hit steroids that you can't really get away with using daggers with. The bases are the same, but in practice swords come out noticeably better off than daggers.

I can agree though that part of the problem is that evade stacking is just overkill at this point, enough that anyone leaning hard into evasion just cannot be touched by a dagger user. And while other basic attackers can run autohits as a backup even though they're likely to be few in number and with limited fp to use them with, dagger autohits are pretty poor and generally made for utility over damage anyway. They certainly can't be relied on as a backup plan like any other weapon type can, leaving dagger users to just auto lose against anyone with sufficient evade. And again, that bar is lower for daggers than  any other basic attacking weapon type.

Makes me wonder if its time for a great reckoning for  defenisive stats vs basic attackers.

[Snake]

Not really, just to change STR to GUI on all daggers, lol.