[Autumn]

It's hard to pad your hit when you can do all the padding options that you're capable of and still not be able to reach the hit values other weapons can get. Like... daggers are more or less solely basic attack weapons, yes? Why is it the onus is on that type of weapon specifically to minmax hit when other weapons get so many tools to do so. Spears get multiple basic attack skills that add on 20, almost 30 hit to their values as well as have higher accuracy values and they aren't even a de facto basic attacking weapon like daggers are.

There are a few classes such as Black Knight, Bonder, Kensei and Spellthief which all give options to boost hit with, and even 1 class like hexer which ignores the rules entirely, on top of Guile's flanking bonus giving a ton of hit innately when attacking from behind, making use of a guardian spirit/summon or any unit on the field, clever use of vanishing strike may also reward you some hit, in terms of hit daggers are:

+Better than Axes innately
+Even with swords completely
-Worse than spears.

But with spears specifically they have been structured as the hit weapon of the 3 2handed weapon types. They get weapon parts and abilities that are tailored towards them actually landing hit checks, firebird is merely structured to be more useful to autohitting tanks though which is a shame and quite frankly something I think is unintended.

Fists get a bunch of passive hit bonuses from their own class, while also not being nearly as reliant on basic attacking as daggers are. Bows and guns also get a wealth of hit steroids, and daggers are still more basic attack dependent than either of those weapons (guns come pretty close I guess). So why is it when it comes to daggers that overcoming hit issues requires entirely external choices that every other weapon has access to on top of their own unique bonuses while also not having basic attack be literally their own damage source. This is definitely an issue rather than a weakness.

Fists are highly tailored towards crit in exchange for mediocre power and the lowest critical damage there is, passive hit bonuses come from their class and its a fairly large boon of its own. Bows and Guns are ranged weapons tailored towards hit in exchange for lower damage so its understandable they get to hit. Ultimately I am of the opinion here that daggers have fairly sizable hit when done right and they get no more or less than swords already do, but no one really complains about swords given their relative ease of being rid of powerful evade buffs, also they still have autohit variety to back up on.

To assist my argument I threw my corbie vs my Verglas fast to check hit values, and I did not find myself to be walled so easily, without airborne bonuses I'm sitting on a comfortable 20 hit bonus from SAN, but I do not have any classes such as Black Knight or Bonder equipped to help boost my hit, nor do I use Armor of Eyes, instead I use Sarasha Gi, here is my results against a martial artist with 220 character screen evade:

From the front with 317 hit (Bonus +15 from chivalry, +20 from Golden Eyes), martial artist in question has Miragewalk currently active.


From the back with 325 hit (Bonus +20 from Golden Eyes, +23 from 45 GUI)


From the back with Verglas' hare stance stacked to full (30 extra evade)



The dagger in question:


Blessed is providing a bonus of 15 hit with only 11 faith.

Being forced to play Redtail or Corbie also feels really shit because if I don't want to play those races but want to play a dagger strategy and be competent in pvp then I'm shit out of luck. As for AoE, I'm of the opinion that it's not really something VA needs on the dagger front. Limiting design because of class fantasy isn't always the right way to go, but in this case I think daggers should be hyper specialized on single target damage. Maybe some kind of cleaving basic attack would be fine but other than that, it seems unnecessary. Even if you let void skills be castable by daggers that doesn't change much because dagger SWA is laughable on top of it being highly unlikely you'll have enough res for your dark atk to matter. I guess it's QoL though.

All of these are fair points, a cleaving dagger attack is exactly what I'm suggesting, which is what Sweeper's AoE encompasses.

Lastly on the top of a basic attacking gap closer... I count this as an issue as well, honestly. Again, with the point I made about other weapons having tools to buff their hit while not being nearly as reliant on basic attacking, the same applies here. Swords get sidecut, spears get stillcut and coulair to a certain extent (not a gap closer but it's something you can do to get your basics in from a distance). You teleport with Geldoren from monk, even if it's a small distance. Black Knight gets hanging, which technically works with daggers but daggers and BK really don't mix that well outside of a small selection of skills. Even Bonder has a spear basic attack gap closer. I think axe is the only other without its own exclusive gap closer, I could be wrong but that's just a guess of the top of my head. But again... axe also isn't as reliant on basic attacking.

Dagger needs much more basic attack variety than it currently has, fray/eliminate being retooled as well as Rogue receiving some actual dagger skills are more than ideal in my eyes, Fray could be as simple as an attack with added accuracy that shreds apart defenses, just to help chip away at disengage and/or miragewalk, which I have something else to show:

This is a fist weapon with 300% stat screen hit, super high LUC and SKI character attacking from the front with chivalry bonuses against a duelist with mirage walk active:


This is the exact same scenario except disengage has been applied:


This could be increased way further if Disengage is spirited, making it hopeless to attack while the status is up, which begs the question on whether hit is too weak or if certain evade buffs are too strong.