[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.