Suggestion to improve dagger and Bloodmagic

Dagger is still somewhat in an identity crisis, the change to dagger 2 was a good step forward but i dont think the weapon is in a good spot yet.

Dagger 1 The chain is boring, high risk, little to no reward. The only "bonus" effect this AA has is generating lifeforce - this should not be a real defining feature for any weapon skill, really. Lifeforce should come naturally by playing aggressive and landing your skills.

My Suggestion change the AA like this : reduce the aftercast to make it feel better and increase the potential hits it can do during a given timeframe. Change the chain to: First 2 hits: Damage and steal lifeforce, second hit does the same but also steals a chunk of life, third hit, does the same but also steals one boon.

Dagger 2 is fine for the moment

Dagger 3 reduce the cooldown to 10 seconds and the cast time to 3/4 seconds and increase its damage. Reasoning is, the skill is really weak damagewise, nowadays every skill on a power weapon has to do a lot of damage, even evade or movement skills. Furthermore dagger mainhand has no conditions to cover the immob reliably and overall a single condition applied to a single target on such a cooldown is really just outdated in terms of powercreep.

Dagger 4: Increase the damage, let it bounce to allies / yourself also and recover some health or give them an effect that the next attack leeches some health.

Dagger 5 Reduce the cooldown to 20 seconds and increase the condition stacks.

As for Bloodmagic, this traitlines has very little synergy with the other skills / traits and stat scaling of the necromancer in general.

Quickening Thirst: Reduces dagger cooldowns by 20%. Removing, Corrupting or Stealing a boon also steals life (350) and grants 1 second of quickness. (3s icd) The lifestealing effect has a 1 second ICD for AOE skills (shared across all targets hit) and no cooldown for single target skills.

With boon corrupt being now almost available on every weapon a necromancer has access to a trait like this makes sense in a largely isolated traitline + it would give the dagger a solid spot. The boon corrupt on the AA was most likely removed because there is not enough risk involved for a 900 range, non projectile weapon skill, as for dagger, the risk is much higher, it would be a solid reward for completing the chain.

If Dagger 3 applied 2 stacks of Stability for 6s then the Dagger auto would be fine. It's a great auto but you just can't pull it off on anything other than a support spec that can't respond. Making Dagger 2 a gapcloser like Polaric Leap or Savage Leap would work wonders.

Your dagger auto changes sound nice.

Dager2 is fine.

Dagger 3: 600 range, 3s immobilize, 2 corrupted boons, 3k crit damage, 10s cooldown, 0.75s cast time - are you insane? That's clearly overpowered. The skill is strong and very useful now. There are only two classes you don't totally wreck when landing it, followed by a shroudburst. These are thief and warrior. This skill is a game changer on a 15s cooldown. The 1s cast time is the one and important thing that holds the skill in line. And since you can start casting while not facing the target, landing the skill is definitely possible.

Dagger 4 is fine.

Dagger 5 is useless because of the long cast time and impact delay. These two things need to be adressed. Even the instant cast shroud version often does not hit the target because of that delay.

@KrHome.1920 said:Your dagger auto changes sound nice.

Dager2 is fine.

Dagger 3: 3s immobilize, 2 corrupted boons, 3k crit damage, 10s cooldown, 0.75s cast time - are you insane? That's clearly overpowered. The skill is strong and very useful now. There are only two classes you don't totally wreck when landing it, followed by a shroudburst. These are thief and warrior. This skill is a game changer on a 15s cooldown. The 1s cast time is the one and important thing that holds the skill in line. And since you can start casting while not facing the target, landing the skill is definitely possible.

Dagger 4 is fine.

Dagger 5 is useless because of the long cast time and impact delay. These two things need to be adressed. Even the instant cast shroud version often does not land because of that delay.

Agreed on Dark Pact. It is often a death sentence for your target when you land it. And landing it isn't as hard as people think. Definitely my favourite skill in game.

IDK WHY all of you are seeing the dagger 2 change is fine i dont think its good yea it makes it do faster DPS but what did we sacrifice is the ability to kite while healing and if u tell that it doesnt heal enough well u didnt trait it with blood magic "last rite" i mean now dagger 2 it feels like another axe 2.for the other changes i like the QT change and dak pact is good as it is just make it 900 range well be fine the dagger auto neeeds to be waaaay faster "like the thief dagger chain for exampleoverall good suggestion but C'mon dagger 2 is NOW AT identity crisis not the whole dagger set

@"Elwaer.7508" said:IDK WHY all of you are seeing the dagger 2 change is fine i dont think its good yea it makes it do faster DPS but what did we sacrifice is the ability to kite while healing and if u tell that it doesnt heal enough well u didnt trait it with blood magic "last rite" i mean now dagger 2 it feels like another axe 2.for the other changes i like the QT change and dak pact is good as it is just make it 900 range well be fine the dagger auto neeeds to be waaaay faster "like the thief dagger chain for exampleoverall good suggestion but C'mon dagger 2 is NOW AT identity crisis not the whole dagger setYes it feels a bit weird now that Dagger2 has become somewhat like Axe2, but after all these years of underperforming I don't care...

The important thing is: now it is a very good and reliable to use second 4k heal + a solid ranged damage skill on dagger. The old heal was so slow that we did eat twice the damage while casting it. The skill was not rewarding. It actually punished us for using it.

And yes I had to get used to the new functionality. The first few attempts after the patch I accidently canceld the skill very often because I used it in different situations than it should be used now. I changed my playstyle a bit and now it is definitely a better skill than before. There are a lot of moments where you can quickly throw in that 4k heal now. It's really a very noticable sustain increase.

I think your dagger auto is not very fitting for the dagger set as a whole.Right now no other skill on dagger steal boons. It makes no sense to place that on the final hit of the dagger auto. More importantly scepter just got its boon convert removed from its auto why do you think they would repeat the same mistake but on another weapon.

If anything dagger 3 could possibly steal boons.All dagger autos should simply leech life on hit with the amount increasing for each part of the auto chain in addition to its current life force gain effects.

Dagger is in blood magic which heals by life stealingDagger 2 directly steals lifeThus it makes more sense of the dagger auto to also do this making this a great sustain weapon when used properly.

Dagger offhand is a bit tricky because it has properties more in line with curses than blood magic.I think dagger 4 is fine as is no need to bounce to allies. We dont need to just throw random support options in where they wont do much good.Dagger 5 is very weak and could use some improvements.

@"Elwaer.7508" said:IDK WHY all of you are seeing the dagger 2 change is fine i dont think its good yea it makes it do faster DPS but what did we sacrifice is the ability to kite while healing and if u tell that it doesnt heal enough well u didn't trait it with blood magic "last rite" i mean now dagger 2 it feels like another axe 2.

First off its fast enough now that you dont need to kite for the full heal amount like you did before. Thats the whole reason people like it. Kiting was not a rule of play style with the weapon. Kiting was a strategy to compensate for the fact that the skill had one of longest channel times in the game on a weapon skill.Thats the whole reason you had to kite in the first place was because the skill took far too long to complete.

Now is often fully executed on your target before they can realize what you are doing you can kite after or continue to aggress after casting. It takes some getting use to but its honestly 100% a better change.

Dagger auto is very good.

First off it has amazing speed for a necro weapon. Too easily necro gets shut down by blinds because of his huge windup, slow attacks. Dagger is not that easy to shake off. Then there's the life force gain and life steal from blood magic passives that greatly benefit from it's speed.

Considering how strong of sustain this weapon offers for both base health and life force, the damage is also very solid. It's 2nd place behind GS and ahead of axe. I did some testing on that.

I would say dagger's identity and performance are both solid. It is the main damage and sustain power weapon for non-reapers, while more of a 1v1 duelist option for HoT spec.If someone feels dagger needs a different role or identity...that's up for discussion, but let's not go calling sky black by saying current dagger is underperforming or has no identity.

@ZeftheWicked.3076 said:Dagger auto is very good.

First off it has amazing speed for a necro weapon. Too easily necro gets shut down by blinds because of his huge windup, slow attacks. Dagger is not that easy to shake off. Then there's the life force gain and life steal from blood magic passives that greatly benefit from it's speed.

Considering how strong of sustain this weapon offers for both base health and life force, the damage is also very solid. It's 2nd place behind GS and ahead of axe. I did some testing on that.

I would say dagger's identity and performance are both solid. It is the main damage and sustain power weapon for non-reapers, while more of a 1v1 duelist option for HoT spec.If someone feels dagger needs a different role or identity...that's up for discussion, but let's not go calling sky black by saying current dagger is underperforming or has no identity.

The 2nd part of the chain needs speeding up and possibly a slight damage increase. Or something similar to what thief dagger had back during HoT, to reduce to the aftercast and attack point to make the chain feel more fluid.

Dagger’s biggest problem is that the rotation is boring as hell.

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The biggest fix that could make dagger interesting is actually fix focus so that 4 & 5 would be part of the rotation. This means getting rid of the unworkable bouncing mechanic on 4, and the prerequisites for #5 to do damage. After many years, guardian focus 4 got fixed. Would love something like that.

@KrHome.1920 said:Your dagger auto changes sound nice.

Dager2 is fine.

Dagger 3: 600 range, 3s immobilize, 2 corrupted boons, 3k crit damage, 10s cooldown, 0.75s cast time - are you insane? That's clearly overpowered. The skill is strong and very useful now. There are only two classes you don't totally wreck when landing it, followed by a shroudburst. These are thief and warrior. This skill is a game changer on a 15s cooldown. The 1s cast time is the one and important thing that holds the skill in line. And since you can start casting while not facing the target, landing the skill is definitely possible.

I never tried to say that the skill is that hard to land, its just not that amazing. Imob really isnt that strong with the ever so steadily rising amount of condi clears and resistance around. Simple put the skill is not bad, but its not really amazing either in my book. Comparing it to other skills on power weapons the direct power damage IS low. Take warrior or engie for example, their meele weapons all scale better on the power side of things, even if these skills are meant to be a gapcloser or dodge (Take Warrior GS 3 for example or one of the many Engie meele weapon skills that have a huge defensive component to it) They all deal better damage. And after all, one thing that core necromancers DESPERATLY need is a strong melee weapon.

Dagger 4 is fine.

Dagger 5 is useless because of the long cast time and impact delay. These two things need to be adressed. Even the instant cast shroud version often does not hit the target because of that delay.

Thats one way to fix it i suppose, id rather have the tradeoff for a skill being harder to land for a bigger impact - but in its current state its hard to land and the reward is too low, i guess we can agree on that.

@"nekretaal.6485" said:Dagger’s biggest problem is that the rotation is boring as hell.

111111111111111

The biggest fix that could make dagger interesting is actually fix focus so that 4 & 5 would be part of the rotation. This means getting rid of the unworkable bouncing mechanic on 4, and the prerequisites for #5 to do damage. After many years, guardian focus 4 got fixed. Would love something like that.

It wouldnt change that much, really. Given the CDs of dagger skills are rather long, and the CDs on Focus or Dagger OH are also rather long means you dont have a "spamable" skill, which means, yes, you may be using more skills if they buff / change / tweak focus, but after these are on cooldown you resume with 1111111. For some weapons this is okay, see Rev hammer for example, but the AA needs to be either potent or interesting.

I imagine with the changes i suggested you get rewarded for finishing the chain and you want to weave in your other skills in between the chain if the situation asks for it.

@"ZeftheWicked.3076" said:Dagger auto is very good.

First off it has amazing speed for a necro weapon. Too easily necro gets shut down by blinds because of his huge windup, slow attacks. Dagger is not that easy to shake off. Then there's the life force gain and life steal from blood magic passives that greatly benefit from it's speed.

Considering how strong of sustain this weapon offers for both base health and life force, the damage is also very solid. It's 2nd place behind GS and ahead of axe. I did some testing on that.

I would say dagger's identity and performance are both solid. It is the main damage and sustain power weapon for non-reapers, while more of a 1v1 duelist option for HoT spec.If someone feels dagger needs a different role or identity...that's up for discussion, but let's not go calling sky black by saying current dagger is underperforming or has no identity.

I cant agree with this. Basicly because the way necro is set up currently: You have shroud as the wonder "solution" for defense. This means if you are forced onto the defensive side you cant use dagger well at all, especially if you are focused. Vs. classes that want to meele you (like thief or warrior for example) dagger is heavily outperformed. Vs. multiple targets focusing you the skills wont help you at all (a single root and a interruptable lifedrain wont help you) Vs. classes that want to keep their distance you lack the gapcloser, and also a viable long range weapon to properly adapt.

It has an amazing speed for a necro weapon - but necro weapons are bad compared to other classes, long cooldowns, little power damage, very limited condition application, etc. Also, yes, the weapon on paper looks good, but with the rest of the trait lines and possibilities a necromancer has you cant afford being meele for long enough that this weapon matters. Power builds need a threathening meele weapon, Tanky/Sustain builds need the tools to keep the sustain going - necromancer currently lacks a big chunk in both.