[Poruku]

Daggers feel incredibly strong currently, especially shurikens.

Compared to other options, daggers essentially do the most damage when built for critting. This is made more of an issue when we consider the high amount of utility daggers and shuriken can have. The most obvious offenders would be things like poison and knockdown on crit. The existance of throwing daggers also makes daggers overall extremely versatile. You'll rarely run out of ranged attacks in a normal battle. They also bypass parry skills.

I feel like what really tipped the scales is that improvements to their scaling have turned many utility weapons into high damage weapons with great utility on top. A side note to that would be that guile is probably overall stronger than strength as a damage stat because not only is it more damage with crits, you also get enough skill pool size to fit anything you could want.

I don't have a dagger build right now but I'd be interested to hear other people's opinions. I've just noticed that daggers and shuriken are slowly starting to take over the 1v1 arena meta. I know that's not a perfect metric, but I've just noticed those being quite dominant, especially the more optimized ones

[Autumn]

Its correct that ranged daggers have the upper hand at the current moment, though I feel as though reducing their scaling puts them in the same viability range as before where their SWA starts to feel pretty miserable, I'd honestly rather reduce their critical damage to be on par with guns to begin with, as they both fill similar niches, also because introducing specific tags that nerf a weapon other than 'tool' is a very poor way to go about balancing weapons in the future.

On another note, you can also reduce the effects of the elemental shurikens now that they're more effective:

-Paragi's infliction check is changed from Knocked Down to Clumsy
-Tamaki Shuriken's poison LV reduced to lv15 instead of lv20

-Paragi/Tamaki/Touyaa/Ninshi Shuriken's critical damage reduced to 110% (from 130%)

Leave Regular shuriken at 130% since there's nothing special about it.

[Lolzytripd]

This is a guile problem not a dagger problem, guile is the premier base stat for weapon scaling. It gives crit damage which is directly felt by any basic attacker build. Strength gives bw and hp, willpower gives elemental attack, but this is only felt on skills, not as directly as guiles 1:1 crit damage.


The only permanent solution is axing crit damage from guile, returning to pre gr1 static crit damage, and giving guile a less impactful role.

[Autumn]

This is a guile problem not a dagger problem, guile is the premier base stat for weapon scaling. It gives crit damage which is directly felt by any basic attacker build. Strength gives bw and hp, willpower gives elemental attack, but this is only felt on skills, not as directly as guiles 1:1  crit damage.


The only permanent solution is axing crit damage from guile, returning to pre gr1 static crit damage, and giving guile a less impactful role.

No I disagree with this, STR is an equal stat in weapon scaling for a pretty fair number of reasons, those being:

-STR's HP per point can contribute upwards to 150-200+ HP in a build which is fairly significant, setting aside those builds as generally more bulky.

-GUI does not have access to the same resources that allow it to be stacked so high in the first place, you can justify that the 8 base GUI races generally get pretty high enough numbers, but that's really it.

-GUI's Critical Damage falls off later and later, yielding less total damage than say stacking on SWA would (Such as with 2handed swords), but end up benefitting heavily from flat damage modifications.

Daggers are not a huge issues, it is the range of shurikens that is presented, the utility they provide and the amount of damage they can sport alongside those things.

[K Peculier]

Its correct that ranged daggers have the upper hand at the current moment, though I feel as though reducing their scaling puts them in the same viability range as before where their SWA starts to feel pretty miserable, I'd honestly rather reduce their critical damage to be on par with guns to begin with, as they both fill similar niches, also because introducing specific tags that nerf a weapon other than 'tool' is a very poor way to go about balancing weapons in the future.

On another note, you can also reduce the effects of the elemental shurikens now that they're more effective:

-Paragi's infliction check is changed from Knocked Down to Clumsy
-Tamaki Shuriken's poison LV reduced to lv15 instead of lv20

-Paragi/Tamaki/Touyaa/Ninshi Shuriken's critical damage reduced to 110% (from 130%)

Leave Regular shuriken at 130% since there's nothing special about it.

I agree that if they want to keep their SWA still that their effects for the more popular shurikens could definitely be toned down.

Shurikens also get the added benefit of using the Ninjutsu talent tree which other weapons don't really have as many cool effects for in their own respective talents.

[Snake]

Maybe dagger-type weaponry and shurikens in general should receive a special gimmick. Similar to how Bows have conditionals, the GUI-based variants should scale like this:

When attacking with a Dagger, its damage will increase or decrease based on your positional.
- Front (-50% damage)
- Sides (-10% damage)
- Back (+5% damage)

When attacking with a Shuriken, its damage will vary based on the distance. You'll need to perfectly position yourself to deal a maximum damage output.
- 1 tile distance (-50% damage)
- 2 tile distance (-25% damage)
- 3 tile distance (+5% damage)
- 4 tile distance (+10% damage)
- 5 tile distance (-25% damage)
- 6+ tile distance (-50% damage)

[Lolzytripd]

Maybe dagger-type weaponry and shurikens in general should receive a special gimmick. Similar to how Bows have conditionals, the GUI-based variants should scale like this:

When attacking with a Dagger, its damage will increase or decrease based on your positional.
- Front (-50% damage)
- Sides (-10% damage)
- Back (+5% damage)

When attacking with a Shuriken, its damage will vary based on the distance. You'll need to perfectly position yourself to deal a maximum damage output.
- 1 tile distance (-50% damage)
- 2 tile distance (-25% damage)
- 3 tile distance (+5% damage)
- 4 tile distance (+10% damage)
- 5 tile distance (-25% damage)
- 6+ tile distance (-50% damage)

those numbers are a bit ridiculous and bows don't have anything like that for damage.

[InsainArcaneBirdbrain]

To kind of summarize some of the discussion that was had on Discord on the matter, daggers are pretty fine in general. The two main offenders above all else are two shuriken, namely Tamaki and Paragi. In their current state, they are the best at pretty much everything they do, with Tamaki having a strong poison, range, and damage type to it with full scaling (and mutates into a bow that outpaces most other bows currently). Paragi has a strong kd effect and potential skill tied to it, making it annoying to deal with when it deals as much damage as it does. 

A two of the solutions discussed were:

• Keep current scaling, but reduce effects and base crit damage mod on these two shuriken.
  
• Keep current effects, but add the tool tag to them. 
  

Personally, I lean towards the tool tag option as it keeps the core identity of the two shuriken as "utility weapons" instead of just another damage focused dagger. To counterpoint, the tool tag is seen by a couple to be an unfair reduction to the weapon, so while not exactly tamaki/paragi related, perhaps the addition of a tool tag to these two weps could be combined with an adjustment of the tag reduction from -30% to -20%. 

Also to clarify, when people mention shuriken are overpowered, they DO NOT mean all shuriken, just Tamaki/Paragi. (Don't unfairly nerf the others which are considered decently balanced for the most part).

[Lolzytripd]

To kind of summarize some of the discussion that was had on Discord on the matter, daggers are pretty fine in general. The two main offenders above all else are two shuriken, namely Tamaki and Paragi. In their current state, they are the best at pretty much everything they do, with Tamaki having a strong poison, range, and damage type to it with full scaling (and mutates into a bow that outpaces most other bows currently). Paragi has a strong kd effect and potential skill tied to it, making it annoying to deal with when it deals as much damage as it does. 

A two of the solutions discussed were:

• Keep current scaling, but reduce effects and base crit damage mod on these two shuriken.
  
• Keep current effects, but add the tool tag to them. 
  

Personally, I lean towards the tool tag option as it keeps the core identity of the two shuriken as "utility weapons" instead of just another damage focused dagger. To counterpoint, the tool tag is seen by a couple to be an unfair reduction to the weapon, so while not exactly tamaki/paragi related, perhaps the addition of a tool tag to these two weps could be combined with an adjustment of the tag reduction from -30% to -20%. 

Also to clarify, when people mention shuriken are overpowered, they DO NOT mean all shuriken, just Tamaki/Paragi. (Don't unfairly nerf the others which are considered decently balanced for the most part).

the tool tag is a cancer on society, paragi deserves it, tamaki does not

I don't see you folks wanting to tool tag bow of the green forest, abberation spear, or deadly smile.

[JamOfBoy]

I don't see you folks wanting to tool tag bow of the green forest, abberation spear, or deadly smile.

Because they can't hit you from 12 range away AND refund two points of your momentum, in the case of the last two. BotGW has alternate arguments against it that I won't get into.

SWA. Simple. Easy. That's the issue.

Shurikens had low scaling prior to the update and I don't see why that needed to be changed. They weren't broken back then, far from it - their low SWA was made up for by their inflicts, Twin Dance compatible range, unique talents, and potentials. Getting SWA through Titan Gale or Ignite Power with these things made you feel like you had it all. Because you did.

Slap tool tag on all specialised (read: every shuriken except the basic shuriken) shurikens.

Solving the issue, that being too much scaling, because they have too much SWA, and thus do too much damage,
isn't bad.

Because shurikens weren't bad when they had low SWA. Same way Staff Of Eyes isn't. Same way Ryeser isn't. 

We don't need an overthought alternate solution.

It goes without saying that non-shuriken daggers are fine with their current scaling, too.