[Perdition]

Agreed with what Walrus said. This post wasn’t made on the stance that daggers are weak, just that they have glaring issues compared to other weapons that want to basic attack which can ultimately do the same thing but better. Like, yeah, daggers aren’t outright unplayable or weak, and you can melt the average amount tank with them but that isn’t the point.

Not being able to play the game isn’t fun, and when it comes to other weapons that want to basic attack you have outs to getting evade walled available to you. Presently if you’re using daggers you’re more or less just shit out of luck, unless of course you play specific races that can buff your hit with crazy numbers.

But it shouldn’t have to come to that. Not when it doesn’t need to be like that for other weapons. Whether their out is being more heavily rewarded for getting behind the enemy or not, like Walrus said there needs to be more actual support for daggers in regards to utility. Namely from the de facto dagger based class.

[JamOfBoy]

Agreed, daggers need utility skills. Also, hard agree that they shouldn't get an accuracy buff. The notion of balance I see a lot of people imply is that everything should be able to do everything, but this isn't really how you balance a game. Builds should counter one another, as should classes. Daggers are small. Swords are long, spears are longer, axes are heavy. This is reflected in the accuracy values of these weapons, and the skills they get.

They do not need more autohits.

They do not need skills that perform basic attacks with a buff to hit.

They do not need skills that perform basic attacks from range.

Twin dance is an effective substitute for fleur, granting the same momentum bonus with extra damage at the cost of having to roll the dice for it.

Give us more mystic daggers and goose bites, except not tied to a class based around stealing magic. Basic attacks for reduced damage or crit modifier that provide some niche debuffs or gimmicks. If you really want an example, an attack that does reduced damage but lowers the target's [Insert stat/value here] by a relatively small amount. Emphasis on REDUCED DAMAGE - dagger numbers are fine, and arguably the best basic hitters out there - as a weapon category - simply because they don't need STR for SWA and their crit modifier is so high. You can hit 105 swa with a 200% crit modifier easy. That's 210 effective SWA on crits - and if you're rogue this partially ignores armor. For reference, 140% SWA scaling with a 150 SWA weapon hits the same number. Wow! Daggers are pretty powerful, huh? If you can hit. That's their gimmick. Work around it, or don't work it at all.


Sincerely,
one of the supposed non-existent dagger users.

[Perdition]

"Work around it, or don't work it at all."

The problem is there is no real way to 'work around it' when you get evade walled as opposed to every other basic attacking weapon that has something else to fall back on. It's not about something being good at everything. It's about giving it tools to fight back in situations that would be -too- oppressive. Look at winter's bite. One could argue that it shouldn't exist because 'well, ice resist is supposed to counter ice damage, ice absorb/immunity are supposed to counter ice damage, sucks to suck' but at the end of the day no one likes being entirely unable to play the game.

Imagine if as a Verglas you go against the average summoner and they install Haku and you just instantly lose. That's how it feels like if you're using daggers against any of the setups with a myriad of evade steroids. I will reiterate--the purpose of building dodge is to try and avoid basic attacks, yes, but daggers specifically have more or less no way to counterplay being evade walled. Swords and axes have autohits, spears have incredible hit potential, especially with things like dive down and coulair, and fists rarely ever worry about missing, and even then, they also have autohits.

And as for your argument about weapon sizes... all of that goes out the window when you look at weapons like Tarnada and Anchor Edge. Both of these weapons have 95 base accuracy. Yeah, they're 10 stars, but that's besides the point given other 10 stars of those same weapon types don't get the same treatment. The fact of the matter is if a weapon is encouraged to be used for basic attacking it'll likely have the stats reflected for that. Fellgrant Drinker in particular has 100 base accuracy, while the average spear has 85. Even the mirror spear only has 90 accuracy. Even Vorpal fangs have 90 base accuracy themselves.

More skills that are modified basic attacks don't help when the largest issue you run in to is someone you simply cannot hit. Your comparison with 140% SWA and 150 SWA weapons also doesn't really help your case given that whatever skill in question will literally always hit. It might proc evasion, but the damage is there no matter what. No one has ever doubted dagger damage or thought it was bad. Everyone knows you can get crazy crits/damage potential with vorpal fangs, that was never the problem and no one brought that up.

I'll end on this note. Counters should exist. Hard counters should not.

[sadbot]

I think the problem with dagger hit goes beyond just flanking to be honest. It's hardly the first time I've ranted about it.

Daggers are some of the most basic attack focused weapons in the game. They're built to crit, and they have few autohit options with lackluster swa with which to utilize them. They have utility sure, but they can't rely on autohits for damage. Yet they have some of the lowest base hit in the game across the board, as well as almost no hit steroids to speak of. Most of what little they have are things that apply to any weapon, are fairly lackluster as a result and often come from classes that have little to no synergy with daggers and their respective classes. Even from a thematic standpoint, daggers are meant to be light and dexterous weapons and in my opinion should fall just behind bows and guns in terms of ability to land basic attacks. I think daggers need a good hit steroid or two added to their respective classes, base rogue especially, and perhaps even a hit buff across the board. When you compare dagger base hit numbers on average compared to other weapon types, it just makes no sense at all in my opinion.

I also heavily agree with Perdition's last sentiment there. It absolutely destroys the fun of playing daggers when you get evade walled, which is quite easy to do against daggers. Unlike the likes of martial weapons and others, that's an immediate auto lose in almost 100% of cases, because you CANNOT rely on autohits as a weaker but still usable backup plan like most other weapon types can. Dagger swa is just too low to do that unless they get some autohits with crazy scaling, and that just seems like the wrong way to go entirely for daggers. Daggers can pull off some crazy numbers with crits as is, so they don't need swa changes either. THEY JUST NEED MORE HIT. This way evade is still their biggest counter due to being heavily basic attack focused, but they at least have only a solid chance of losing an entire action missing an attack, rather than having negative hit consistently. As it stands now, they just auto lose against evade walling, because they have no weaker 'backup plan' type option in autohits. They just need enough hit, that when heavily built for hit, they at least have some CHANCE of hitting evade walls, because right now they can expect negative hit almost 100% of the time.