[Perdition]

To alleviate some of the problems from lack of reliable hit steroids for daggers and their relatively low average 80% accuracy, rogue could get a passive that makes it so if you're behind your opponent then the flanking bonus from Guile provides half the value regardless of if you have another person flanking or not.

[FatherCrixius]

Dodging is the literal counter to daggers and axes. I don't understand this sentiment.

[Perdition]

It’s not that hard to understand. Dodging is a counter to basic attacks, obviously, but weapons such as spears, swords, and fists enjoy hit buffs that make it easier to offset how easy it is to stack evade vs hit. Daggers have long suffered from not being able to reach suitable levels of hit for a weapon type that can basically only rely on basic attacking. This is the biggest barrier when it comes to people using dagger builds. Other weapon types don’t suffer from this nearly as much while also having the flexibility of decent auto hits, which daggers do not have.

[Autumn]

A while back flanking bonus was changed to be half of what it is now in exchange for the ally mechanic, I'd say increase the range of flanking to not have to be entirely melee in order to help out dagger builds a bit better, we don't want them to be the 1v1 kings and queens again necessarily since they're already some of the most consistent damage in the game under the right conditions.

I also say this because the current dagger builds are usually delegated to being a Kaelensian or Redtail, bonus to Corbies as well.

[FatherCrixius]

No, that daggers and axes have objectively lower hit than other weapons due to their strengths lying elsewhere. Despite this, they benefit from sword's reliability and guiles flanking hit bonuses, and have more base accuracy than any axe barring anchor edge. You complaining that dodge builds dodge knives too easily, IE the thing that's meant to counter that specific weapon type means you do not understand the trade off for more damage and crit costs HIT. Go sub black knight or pick a race that has natural hit bonuses if you want to hit dodge builds with them, and stop spamming me with minus rep because you don't understand these core fucking principals.

[Perdition]

Yes, the great game design in "be a specific race if you want to use this strategy", splendid principals. Your logic is like saying that silences didn't need to be switched to infliction chances instead of being guaranteed because they're meant to counter magic. Just because something is meant to 'counter' another thing doesn't mean it needs to be 100% oppressive to that thing. If someone is eclipsing your hit with any other weapon, you have decent autohits to fall back on. If they do that as a dagger use you're actually just fucked. There's a reason no one uses daggers. As far as anchor edge goes, there's a reason it's more or less the only axe used outside of niche cases. The same goes for vorpal fangs outside of Hayabusa for fun pve memes. Vorpal Fang is your best bit for a consistent dagger build and even that just isn't enough.

Opposing evade builds have many ways of buffing their evade in order to pick up momentum against basic attack focused builds, this kind of buff just gives dagger users more of a fighting chance to actually play the game against them, like every other weapon has that's used for basic attacking. If you can't understand any of that then you're frankly not worth addressing any further.

[Autumn]

Yes, the great game design in "be a specific race if you want to use this strategy", splendid principals. Your logic is like saying that silences didn't need to be switched to infliction chances instead of being guaranteed because they're meant to counter magic. Just because something is meant to 'counter' another thing doesn't mean it needs to be 100% oppressive to that thing. If someone is eclipsing your hit with any other weapon, you have decent autohits to fall back on. If they do that as a dagger use you're actually just fucked. There's a reason no one uses daggers. As far as anchor edge goes, there's a reason it's more or less the only axe used outside of niche cases. The same goes for vorpal fangs outside of Hayabusa for fun pve memes. Vorpal Fang is your best bit for a consistent dagger build and even that just isn't enough.

Opposing evade builds have many ways of buffing their evade in order to pick up momentum against basic attack focused builds, this kind of buff just gives dagger users more of a fighting chance to actually play the game against them, like every other weapon has that's used for basic attacking. If you can't understand any of that then you're frankly not worth addressing any further.

At the very same time you should give merit to those races specifically, there should be a reason to run redtail/corbie/kaelensian, daggers can get up there with current flanking bonuses and dismissing Crixius' opinion here is not the correct thing to do, their logic is very unlike the silence argument because there are still silences in the game not tied to status checks either. 

In the current state of the game, dodge mostly beats hit, large evade buffs are plentiful and provide meaningful engagement into basic attack builds, those basic attack builds are usually able to combat them with abilities to burn away the statuses while being able to attack in the same turn, such as with hanging/sidecut/geldoren etc.

While a redtail or corbie is simply able to just have enough hit to usually get past even a disengage miragewalk combo mostly.

Daggers however are not capable of this strategy currently, as vanishing strike is an autohit, so they end up relying on other classes such as black knight or DH in order to supplement this lack of efficient basic attack usage.

Daggers currently sport the same hit rates as swords do, but have guile's flanking bonus to back them up, usually causing them to have even more hit than swords/axes but less than spears do, fists trump pretty much everything in terms of hit rates when paired with martial artist.

This makes me believe that daggers are in a pretty decent spot regarding hit but just simply lack skill efficiency that other weapons do have, like sidecut/hanging/autohits so the only thing you do end up relying on is just your hit because their SWA is pretty bad, and even their autohits don't scale amazingly.

[Perdition]

The point I was trying to make with the silence comparison is that, yes, there are still guaranteed silences in the game but they were made very rare. The point is that something existing to be a counter to something else doesn't mean it should be that oppressive against the thing it's supposed to counter. If you're a dodge based build then you should be able to dodge basic attacks, that's the biggest thing dodge has over tanking, you can completely negate basic attack damage if your evade surpasses their hit.

There should be merit to running the aforementioned races, but HAVING to play a race just to make a certain strategy decently playable feels really bad. Of course some races are disadvantaged when it comes to trying things. You probably won't be dodging shit as a Dullahan for example. But there are a fair amount of races you can play a basic attacking spear/axe/fist/sword build. It's not like daggers where you NEED to play a handful of races for it to actually be efficient.

Part of this is because of something you touched on in that dagger autohits don't scale particularly well while daggers also not really being able to hit high SWA outside of Eternal Solitude. I don't think the answer is giving daggers autohits though, or pumping their scaling up to absurd numbers to compensate for low SWA and I doubt you think that either. The issue with flanking, even as it currently exists, is that, as you also pointed out, while using daggers you don't have many options to both position yourself to actually get behind the opponent and attack at the same time.

Vanishing strike exists, but it has a 2 turn cooldown, isn't very efficient in regards to dealing damage even at max rank, has a void energy cost which means it's not even always an option, and personally when I'm playing VA I only have enough points to put 1 point in this anyway so that's even less damage as opposed to a sword user just using sidecut, a spear user using stillcut, a black knight using hanging or even crescent rook to gapclose, etc.

Speaking of Black Knight, I don't think it's fair to say 'just play BK if you suffer with hit 4Head' either because VA and BK don't even play nicely together to begin with. The other thing is there are things you would much rather have if using daggers like DH or something instead of BK for cobra stance things and even the reaver autohits can help. Cobra's autohit dodge is also a nice thing to have for any dodge build, and by going VA BK you're very squishy in exchange for just being able to have a decent chance at hitting things.

The reason for my original suggestion is because I think dagger identity is tied to striking from the back, and I don't think that should change. I think that daggers should have the largest advantage when the user is behind their target, and the onus should be on their opponent to try and avoid letting the dagger user get that supreme advantage. That's why I think having better flank advantages is a step in the right direction. Ultimately, they probably do need more in the way of something like sidecut, but I still believe they should have greater advantages while behind the target such as what I mentioned in the first post.

However, there are a couple of things that set daggers apart from the other weapons. You mentioned this, but the lack of autohits is a glaring issue.

[Balor]

Daggers niche is potent enough in their niche. They don't need a rework or buff to be effective within it. With all the buffs that Rogues get in terms of boosting hit, crit, evade, etc. They have a great deal of support that while not in the S-Tier of SL2's meta. Aren't anywhere near unusable or non viable.

[MakeshiftWalrus]

My own stance on daggers at present is the lack of basic attack support. Every other class that supports basics has plenty of different skills that often grant crazy bonuses for different weapon types, but daggers never got anything. While it could be argued that some of the skills could be used for a dagger build all the same, there remains one rather ironic truth.

VA, the class specifically meant to use daggers, and the class with the most skills in the game, has the least dagger utility in the entire game in comparison to other classes, and their archetype weapons. As people have said, daggers aren't weak by any means. They're limited, which isn't quite the same thing. It's still something I think should be addressed though.