[sadbot]

Before I start, I want to make a point that everything I'm referring to here is focused on pvp. Anything can get enough hit to function in pve content.

As it stands right now, daggers only see 'regular' use in 2 different scenarios:

1) As a sub weapon for divine eyes
2) As a mage based void assassin weapon, usually alongside a tome.

When it comes to their most generic intended use of crit basic attacks using their high base crit mod, they are completely and utterly shut down by any well built evade builds. Most daggers, even the few that have 90-100 base hit rather than 80, can't make it far enough past 300 hit to get passable hit chance without making incredibly inefficient sacrifices that kill the build regardless. Anyone well versed in pvp knows that this is the absolute bare minimum for basic attack focused builds to not just lose to anyone and everyone that stacks evade, and they can barely reach it at a stretch with mid 60's in skill and luck as well as every easily available passive bonus. On top of that, they have very little access to extra hit compared to other weapon types, whether that be straight up passive bonuses or attacks that gain a bonus to hit. For a weapon type that thematically seems like it should be the next most able to hit the mark right behind bows and guns, this seems far off from where it should be. I feel like this has been an issue for a long time now, something that slipped through the cracks when they lost their 2 most useful sub class options to get better hit in pre-rework ghost (fitting form) and pre-rework kensei (touki).

Daggers are arguably the most basic attack focused weapon type in the game, in part due to their low number of situational autohits and low swa potential with which to use them. Despite this, they lack the hit to even get passable hit chance against evade stackers. Obviously they shouldn't be able to get pefect or near perfect hit or it leaves those that stack evade in a bad spot against high damage dagger crits. Unfortunately, daggers are often left with 30% hit or less with one or two small buffs/debuffs. Unlike other weapons however, they don't really have the option to mix it up with some autohits the same way that other weapon types do, their lower swa leaving their autohits in a position of sacrificing damage for utility and leaving them forever losing the damage race if they rely entirely on them. I think that daggers need a substantial hit buff across the board, as well as some form of passive hit bonus on either rogue or void assassin. This is the base and promoted class that is most geared towards this big dagger crit playstyle after all, and hitting the mark at all seems a bit more important than hitting it hard. Personally I think that in terms of gameplay as well as thematically, dagger hit should fall somewhere greater than martial weapons but lower than bows and guns at least, due to their greater damage potential than the latter with their large base crit mod. I'm no balance professional though despite ranting here, so I suppose I'll leave that up to discussion and dev.

[Perdition]

Agreed, daggers live and die by being able to hit the opponent. With how easy it can be for some builds to evade stack, you can very well end up in situations where you're just useless because you can't get enough hit compared to other weapons that have hit steroids. As was also mentioned in the OP, dagger autohits are... lackluster to say the least, so you can't really fall back on that if you run into a situation where you can't land your hits. Not to mention, even if they had decent autohits, most daggers are not going to have very high SWA anyway. Perhaps a talent exclusively for daggers to get increased hit, or as was mentioned before a hit passive in one of the rogue trees.

I think even buffing their base accuracy wouldn't be enough because even weapons like Vorpal Fang with 90 base accuracy struggle. Granted, I do think they should get a base accuracy increase across the board along with other changes--it only makes sense. Why would a dagger/knife be hard to aim with? It's a traditionally precise weapon.

[MakeshiftWalrus]

Daggers themselves don't need to be changed in any regard. Daggers are some of the only weapons in the game that have the blessing of being released from a mandatory strength scaling, and giving them more stats on top of this could upset the balance.

What daggers lack at the moment is the same roid abilities that most martial weapons get. Void Assassin in particular is pretty archaic when compared to newer classes recently released, and it doesn't have many dagger-specific attacks in the first place, and certainly none that boost your accuracy. Dagger accuracy is actually pretty good otherwise, and there are plenty weapons that never break 300 hit in the first place.

So, rather than give daggers higher numbers, I think it would be more healthy, and fun to look towards the present array of dagger skills, and a potential rework of them to deal with the issues they have more appropriately.

[sadbot]

Most of them may not be tied to strength scaling, but giving them extra hit wouldn't be giving them more stats than would be fair for their builds. As I mentioned, daggers that want to have any chance of hitting evasive opponents NEED mid 60s skill and luck in order to have even a chance of pulling it off. Additional hit would just help that to actually happen with that much investment, I'm certainly not suggesting a buff to the level that they can get away with only 40s in those stats for example. That would require a pretty asinine amount of hit buffing across the board anyway.

I can agree that void assassin is in a strange place particularly in this situation, being the best class for builds like these but also having surprisingly little actual support for them compared to more mage/generic voidveil abilites. I don't think changing dagger skills is the way forward though. Dagger skills aren't necessarily bad, although I certainly wouldn't call them great either. They sacrifice damage for utility due to the poor scaling of daggers (and sometimes the skills themselves), which is thematically fitting for daggers. Problem is, the only way to improve them to make them a viable option for when daggers inevitably can't hit more evasive opponents is to buff their scaling/damage. This leads to two problems.

1) It leaves daggers feeling arguably less fun and very much similar to martial weapons.
2) It opens up potentially abusive mutation situations as dagger skills would have to have much higher scaling than your average autohits in order to fit the bill of 'backup plan when I can't hit my opponent' due to dagger's lower swa. Otherwise they just inevitably lose the damage race like they currently do when they have to fully rely on autohits.

[Autumn]

They have roughly the same hit as swords currently, swords just have a multitude of ways to deal with Miragewalk and Disengage. I will agree that the hit rate of daggers leaves much to be desired as a whole but the main issue is huge evade sources like Disengage/Miragewalk.

Usually the only ways to run daggers are depending largely on hit steroids, this was not a problem when Kensei could apply its debuffs passively instead of actively, Kensei and old Ghost were just the go-to classes for VA in terms of actually succeeding, but its heavily moved on from then, mostly you find VAs rocking Demon Hunter for the extra defensive and offensive maneuvers or you see Bonder just for sheer stat bloating with FAO and Synchro Summon.

I would not like to see Ghost/VA be insanely strong if I can help it, the existence of claret call and how lightweight daggers are makes it incredibly easy to stack a massive amount of damage very quickly, but I do agree daggers have a lot less to be desired, I would call for more dagger skills that aren't just autohits and instead are basic attacks.

Some dagger tools poorly needed are:
-A way to reach an opponent's back in 1 range, this could be as simple as a 2 range sidecut to being as cool as slipping behind your opponent before an attack is made, something like moving through the shadows towards an opponent's back, this could be a risky maneuver if you miss.

-A basic attack with a hit steroid on it, similar to hanging or couloir/pierce linker/flip shot, there's no reason for daggers to not have some sort of hit steroid attack, you can combine this into the previous skill I mentioned as well. If its exactly like Pierce Linker is by giving it a +25 Hit bonus, now you have your dagger's way to fight against miragewalk being a CONSTANT presence.

[Snake]

Sounds like Miragewalk's slowly becoming an issue if classes are now mandatory to have a skill that grants 25 bonus Hit.

[Autumn]

Sounds like Miragewalk's slowly becoming an issue if classes are now mandatory to have a skill that grants 25 bonus Hit.

Not exactly that, but it is a large contributing factor as to decide on a weapon for basic attacking with, where as a sword, fist or spear has multiple ways to reach their opponent without the restriction of literally moving up behind them and likely missing, daggers do not have that luxury, as their gap closer skill is an autohit.