[Autumn]

The class itself is kind of a mess, apart from being split up into essentially 2 classes that only share the similarity of using the same resource there are many problems with it as a whole, I will be going over quite a few of its issues like I did with Black Knight some time ago in hopes that some or all of these may be fixed:


Perceived Strengths:
-High physical damage when successfully landing hit and critical checks
-Superb multi-class synergy with dagger dance.
-Massive critical steroids make this class the monarch of crit rate.
-Vanishing Strike and Cutthroat+Breakdown alone are enough to carry the class.

-Decent supporting options in the form of regen healing, eastern wind, blotch, refraction
-Base Rogue combined with voidgates provides high mobility
-Fairly high and satisfying magic DR with baked in RES in class stats to give a magic sponge feeling.

-Situationally high magic damage vs a lack of dark resistance
-Impure Element provides an insane damage roid, and ends up being the core gimmick of many builds.

Weaknesses
-Lack of hit steroids cause this class to rely on other classes to supplement its needs when basic attacking.
-Lack of basic attack gap closer causes this class to suffer to high 1 time evade buffs such as disengage and miragewalk, perhaps incentivizing it to specialize into options that might help against that such as dagger dance.

-Class resource requires taking magic damage to replenish

-Lack of usable projectiles within its own class for refractions
-Dark Resistance diminishes the class' magic damage capability severely.


Issues:
-No synergy amongst itself for building both magic and physical, it is impossible to build a dagger VA with WIL RES GUI and still be a proficient character.
-Severe lack of AoE in PvE cause this class to be a little slow at mob clearing when utilizing daggers.
-Black Bolt/Detogate are almost entirely useless to a physical variant VA, perhaps enabling them to be cast with daggers could be good.
-Most of its dagger skills are autohits, which scale from a stat daggers lack severely.

-INSANELY high SP costs, probably the absolute highest total SP amount in the game currently.
-Lacks a way to replenish class resource without taking magic damage.
-Requires to be topped up on class resource before starting any fight to be the most effective.

-Its magic requires setup to be effective, and is diminished heavily by a common resistance type, a basic void projectile with no VE cost could synergize VERY well with the rest of the magic variant of this class I feel, and wouldn't create refraction hell we had with fray.

Its my hope that the issues are fixed rather than the weaknesses, to keep the class currently in line with many others, thanks for reading I may make more of these in the future.

[JamOfBoy]

-Lacks a way to replenish class resource without taking magic damage.

The projectiles from frayed voidgates restore Void Energy without dealing damage, if you're in their path. Radiation also produces 3 Void Energy per round.

-Lack of hit steroids cause this class to rely on other classes to supplement its needs when basic attacking.

-Lack of basic attack gap closer

Part of the gimmick of daggers. I don't think these are weaknesses, but more or less what you subscribe to by using that weapon category, if that makes sense.

-Severe lack of AoE in PvE cause this class to be a little slow at mob clearing when utilizing daggers.

I don't see how this is an issue - VA, Rogue, and daggers as a whole are focused on single target damage and larger scale harassment. I personally don't think that vision needs to change.

Otherwise, I agree with the sentiment.

[sadbot]

I'm gonna have to disagree on all fronts other than aoe on the above comment. You are entirely correct that they are a heavy single target damage class and them not having aoe options is basically part of the VA class identity. They can potentially still find some options in sub class after all.

The projectiles from frayed voidgates restore Void Energy without dealing damage, if you're in their path. Radiation also produces 3 Void Energy per round.

When it comes to void energy, they don't have the right tools at all most of the time. Although frayed gate projectiles are a decent source, basic attacking VA's don't use that whatsoever, while more mage like VA's only sometimes go down the heavy voidgate/void refraction route. This ties back to what was said about the class essentially being split into two entirely different, almost completely non-synergized classes. Radiation is a nice form of passive gain, but it alone is not nearly enough when you're not taking magic damage.

-Lack of hit steroids cause this class to rely on other classes to supplement its needs when basic attacking.

-Lack of basic attack gap closer

Part of the gimmick of daggers. I don't think these are weaknesses, but more or less what you subscribe to by using that weapon category, if that makes sense.

I can somewhat agree that VA not having a basic attack gap closer is okay, because most gap closers aren't intended to do full damage compared to most regular attacks. Vanishing strike is still a very flexible gap closer, even if it's never gonna do a lot of damage due to being an autohit. However, if any class would get a basic attack gap closer you'd think it would be the class intended for the most basic attack focused weapons in the game, daggers. It seems especially out of place when you consider that one of the most slow and immobile classes in the game in black knight have always had one.


When it comes to dagger hit though, oh boy you're gonna send me ranting again. You are entirely correct that you basically sign up for lack of hit steroids, as well as hit problems in general, when it comes to daggers. It has been this way for as long as I can remember, but it absolutely shouldn't be the case. As I said previously, daggers are the most basic attack focused weapons in the game. They're built for crits, and they have very few autohit options and lackluster swa with which to utilize them. In fact, just by the light and dexterous nature of daggers from a thematic viewpoint, they should be one of the higher hit weapon types in the game behind bows and guns. Despite all of this. Daggers have some of the lowest base hit in the game across the board, while also having basically no hit steroids of their own whatsoever. All they have is a few lackluster options that can be used on any weapon, almost always requiring a sub class that otherwise has little to no synergy with VA. Point is, you're correct that you sign up for hit problems and lack of hit steroids with VA and daggers in general, but this absolutely shouldn't be the case.

[Autumn]

Please note that most of the weaknesses are not meant to be addressed and fixed, as per the original post if read properly you might be able to infer that. So discussing those particular topics unless its to bring them up as an issue instead of weakness is not my intention, so lets stay on topic regarding the issues thank you.

The lack of hit steroids is something I would classify as a weakness and not a core issue for daggers, thats a stat they will have to work on padding for themselves I feel given everything else they have (Crit/damage/utility)

Vanishing Strike is an amazing gap closer and should stay as an autohit for certain, and I don't think they should actually gain a basic attack gap closer, however utility skill wise I could see a half-sidecut range strike with the intention of getting behind your opponent in super close range for example.

As for a basic AoE I don't think its a bad idea, even a skill in Rogue that deals 75% normal basic attack damage in a sweeper AoE, but applies dagger dance would be fine, that said if Detogate is given the option of using daggers as a casting tool as well, that also gives AoE to a void assassin. But I disagree entirely on the mindset of limiting the class because of a pre-conceived class fantasy, thats not progressive at all and further hinders how it feels in PvE content.

[Perdition]

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.

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.

As far as the magical and physical split of VA, I actually think that's fine. The two don't need to have synergy. They do, however, have to be fleshed out so they feel like two complete, different playstyles rather than two incomplete different playstyles. If you want to play a void mage you get detogate and black bolt and that's more or less it. You grab utility skills and maybe impure element if you want to go down that route. Ironically, if you go dagger, you don't actually have that much dagger specific support from VA. On top of that as was mentioned in the OP the SP cost is insane so there are times where you can't even get everything you'd like for either strategy.

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.

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.

Which comes back to my main point. Why is it these other weapons not nearly as focused on basic attacking have all these different tools and the weapon type that can more or less -only- basic attack does not have them? It honestly makes no sense. If the answer is their basic attacks have more damage potential than the other weapons, that seems like a shit answer to me because that damage becomes 0 if you have negative hit against your opponent.

[sadbot]

Basically what perd said in regards to hit and hit steroids. It would just be a weakness that daggers have if they COULD just put more effort into padding their hit, but my point is that even while taking every reasonable source of hit you can manage without getting into incredibly inefficient territory (like sacrificing 25 crit or something for 5 extra hit) you will consistently have anywhere from 10% to negative hit. As a counter to basic attack focused dagger builds, evade walling should counter them and make it difficult for them to win, it shouldn't make it 100% impossible for them to win. Point is, whether it's a general hit buff or an added hit steroid to void assassin or rogue, dagger hit is so low right now that evade walling just shuts them down completely 100% of the time, leaving them with 0 chance of winning rather than a reduced chance.

[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.

[MakeshiftWalrus]

Rather than buffing hit rates, I would rather that VA saw the introduction of more trickster-like abilities. It has previously been suggested that Steal, for example, have a basic attack attached to it. A way that I would personally like to see it fight evade is through skills circumventing raw dodge, rather than just adding more numbers.

For example: A basic attack that cannot crit, but also cannot miss, to mess with stuff like on-action evade steroids, and one-time evades. A basic attack that, if you do manage to land, applies a sizable dodge penalty. A basic attack that cannot miss from behind, if the target is blinded. A passive that applies a weak, but stacking poison on basic-hits. A basic attack that gains hit based on level of poison the target has.

These are skills I just thought of off the top of my head, and I'm sure other people would be plenty capable of finding more balanced solutions, but these are the things I'm personally more invested in than 'Dagger Hanging'.

[sadbot]

I think Spoops' example only proves the point that dagger hit vs evade walls is a problem right now. 

In that example it's just miragewalk, or just hare stacks, and you're looking at anywhere from 50-80% hit depending on circumstances while playing a san corbie, the literal best option for hit race wise. This returns to the 'requiring the best race for it just to function' point, but just to give the benefit of the doubt lets keep the golden eyes buff because it's pretty widely available with kaelensians in general. I can hardly even justify it regardless considering that most dagger builds being able to invest san is a pipe dream with their effectively mandatory 65+ skill and luck requirement along with other mandatory stats for hp and weapon scaling.

Next there's blessed. I can't really fault it because, as is the way with daggers, it's practically mandatory to try and hit evaders even if you have no faith investment. I've used it myself many times on those builds, but trading vorpal off for it is often a sacrifice dagger builds can't afford, especially if they want a chance against very tanky builds. Obviously I'm not saying daggers should be able to win them all, but trading a fractionally better chance against one counter for a second counter in doomwalls and the like isn't much of a trade off.

Chivalry is another that I take myself in desperation for hit, but is the literal antithesis of the dagger playstyle. It's still usable regardless, I can't say too much against it really besides it's somewhat situational use especially with daggers.

Then on to the opposing buffs and debuffs. This for me is the most unreasonable in this example. Just miragewalk? Just hare stacks? When we're talking about evade walls here, that's hardly realistic. Add on a locking guard, kenki, yomidori, disengage, fear, fortune wind, distortion, fight as one, you name it, but that's where the difference is made. That's where that 50-80% turns into more like 30-60% with 2 buffs/debuffs, or more like 10-40% with 3 (20% loss each time here just as an average based on the range of hit loss/evade gain these skills can provide), which can easily be set up on turn 1 in most cases depending on your options here. Suddenly, if you're missing even 1 of golden eyes, blessed or perhaps chivalry you can kiss your positive hit goodbye, you just lost automatically because they applied 2 buffs/debuffs. Just as an example of my own the last time I was in one of these matchups myself, with only 4 less hit with all the same buffs minus golden eyes, my hit fluctuated throughout that fight from anywhere between -12% and 18%. 

We've already been over the rest, there's no way you're keeping up with them with autohits assuming you even somehow have the fp to spam them and you have no alternative options or hit steroids enough to make a difference, even if you're playing a sub class with 0 synergy in sheer desperation to claw back that 20% or less hit chance with the likes of invisible weapon, hanging, etc. You just pretty much 100% lost on turn 1 because they spent their turn applying a couple of buffs or debuffs. Reminder that this is negative hit you're looking at here, after you've heavily invested in hit trying to have any kind of chance against evade stacking.

I do think walrus' ideas could also be good, I'm not necessarily saying that a dagger hit buff or a bunch of new hit steroids for dagger based classes are the only way here. The point I'm trying to make is that one way or another, the heavy evade/vs dagger build matchup right now, although meant to be in evade's favor as a counter, is way too heavily evade favored right now to the point that daggers just do not stand even the slightest chance against them 9 times out of 10, period.

[Perdition]

A healthy counter match up would be something like evade builds being able to reduce the basic attackers' hit chance to 30-50% or so. Your damage source becomes inconsistent but it's not negated entirely. Being able to reduce it to -negatives- is extremely unhealthy. Like sadbot said it makes it so you just instantly loss. You may as well just surrender or flee the battle from round 1. For a game that's so focused around numbers, and when it comes to pvp, a lot of minmaxing, that may be hard to manage, but I think there are definitely things that can be done to rectify the problem given a number of other weapon types don't have it nearly as badly.