Dagger suggestions and discussions:

[Muchacho.2390]

I think the necromancer daggers need some love. Especially our offhand dagger is under performing atleast in my opinion.

Our offhand dagger is supposed to be a defensive condition offhand. Condi transfer, bleed and weakness support this idea. Hence i would suggest the following. Add some lifeforce regen (maybe 1-3% per hit foe) to deathly swarm (dagger 4) and rework enfeebling blood (dagger 5) in to a two stage skill:

First skill: Dark Armor: gain protection and dark aura for 4-5 seconds. (Cookdown: 25-35 sec)Second skill: Enfeebling Blood: can only by used while the dark aura is active from dark armor and it destroys the dark aura to bleed and weaken enemies around you. (Essentially the old enfeebling blood without range, but maybe also nerfed if needed).

My reasons for those changes are: Offhand dagger is the only necro offhand without any lifeforce regen and its 5th skill is kinda lacking and needs some changes, so adding protection (a boon core necro can have more off) and the dark aura is a nice buff to its defensive ability and it would give the necro a weapon skill for the dark aura, like eles get weapon skills for their auras (fire, frost, shock and magnet) and mesmers with their staff 4 for chaos aura. That way all scholar professions would get an aura on thier weapon skills (currently necro is the only expection and dark aura wasnt always in the game). Also having a proper defnesive skill on a core necro weapon is needed (one that doesnt rely on hitting an enemy).

For mainhand dagger, i think it is in a somewhat decent place but has bad synergy. With that i mean all skills are technically decent on their own, but i think dagger 1 doesnt work well with dagger 2 and 3. Hence i would suggest a rework it to a 400-600 range skill in some form (maybe something like the ele dagger 1 skill in water but instead of vuln you get life steal).

[Kiroshima.8497]

Main Hand Dagger needs either life force on the first hit of the chain, or life force added to the 2nd or 3rd skills.

I have more life force problems in wvw despite dagger being the life force weapon because I'm always kited out of dagger's auto chain, and it only grants life force on the 2nd and 3rd hits, not the first. This means it's basically worse at life force generation because it takes longer (gotta do full chain) and you have to be in melee the whole time, constantly swinging (just asking to get interrupted on a no stab class). In fact I think in the 2 or so seconds it takes to do the auto chain, both scepter and axe have already completed their cast times.

So yeah. Fixing dagger means adding life force somewhere to it. Or maybe a Blood Magic trait that gives life force to any skill that siphons by default.

OH dagger needs life force because for some reason it doesn't have it, agreed.

A defensive skill would be great, although I don't know about dark aura specifically, something like that is definitely a good choice.

[Obtena.7952]

@Kiroshima.8497 said:Main Hand Dagger needs either life force on the first hit of the chain, or life force added to the 2nd or 3rd skills.

I have more life force problems in wvw despite dagger being the life force weapon because I'm always kited out of dagger's auto chain, and it only grants life force on the 2nd and 3rd hits, not the first. This means it's basically worse at life force generation because it takes longer (gotta do full chain) and you have to be in melee the whole time, constantly swinging (just asking to get interrupted on a no stab class). In fact I think in the 2 or so seconds it takes to do the auto chain, both scepter and axe have already completed their cast times.

So yeah. Fixing dagger means adding life force somewhere to it. Or maybe a Blood Magic trait that gives life force to any skill that siphons by default.

OH dagger needs life force because for some reason it doesn't have it, agreed.

A defensive skill would be great, although I don't know about dark aura specifically, something like that is definitely a good choice.

Um ... adding LF gain doesn't fix the problem you are talking about.

[Kiroshima.8497]

Adding it to the first hit means you always have, in function, on demand melee life force that comes out in 1/4 seconds or less. This is much more anti kite/interrupt friendly since you can just use the first hit in the chain and then do w/e other options and you'll still have gotten some life force, compared to current dagger which is spend 2 swings not doing anything, then get 2%.

If anything I'd just make it 3/3/3 instead of 0/2/6.

Alternatively, adding it to Dagger 2 makes it similar to Axe 2, with a comparable cast time, lower range, longer cooldown, but it siphons.Adding it to Dagger 3 makes it comparable to Scepter 3, except slower cast time, lower range, and 50% longer cooldown.

Or we could just do all 3, dagger skills are longer cooldown than the other weapons despite performing a similar role (channeled damage and life force on 2, boon corrupt on 3), and it would help dagger be the life force tool it should be.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

Only real change I would make to the dagger auto attack is to reduce the aftercast of the 2nd skill in the chain, letting that final hit happen faster. Also would consider adding a single short stack of Bleeding to let the weapon self-combo fully.

[Thornwolf.9721]

Make main-hand dagger a mid-ranged dps weapon, with more occult options to it.

Make it feel like the blood-magic weapon, it neither bleeds nor uses blood magic so what the heck is it supposed to do?

Completely remake the skills to be more interested, and competitive with other weapons (Scepter/axe)

Off-hand needs love I feel like deathly swarm needs to do more, and skill 5 just feels worthless a lot of the time.

[KrHome.1920]

MH-dagger's problem is that everybody deals more damage to you than you could ever deal to him with that dagger. So even squishy thieves will outdamage you when you try to "dagger them". They don't even need to use a mobility skill. Dagger necros are a non-threat for every class!

The weapon needs a lot (!) more damage on the auto attack instead of even more bloated gimmicky functionality. And we all know why it doesn't get it: Because it would outperform GS in pve then resulting in dagger auto - shroud auto - dagger auto - shroud auto - ... spamming for max dps.

The alternative to damage would be mobility to stick to your target. And also here everyone knows that more mobility would break the whole necro class for pvp - esp. reaper that could easily jumpt to target - shroud burst - jump to target - shroudburst - ...

The game is at a point where its skill design issues have become so apparent in so many ways that anet has not the ressources to fix them.

/written by someone who uninstalled the game a month ago after 7 years of disappointed trust and is pretty happy with that decision

[ZDragon.3046]

@Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:Only real change I would make to the dagger auto attack is to reduce the aftercast of the 2nd skill in the chain, letting that final hit happen faster. Also would consider adding a single short stack of Bleeding to let the weapon self-combo fully.

i kinda of agree with this to be honest a bit of bleeding on the autos would go along way and of course the aftercast is a long requested QoL change we have all been waiting for.

One could question increasing the damage on dagger 2 just a bit to take it from being just heavy utility weapon to a power melee weapon with sub utility. Dagger 2 can hit pretty hard under the right conditions but axe still just hits slightly harder. Then again if the aftercast thing was fixed the autos form dagger might out perform axe autos so maybe it wouldnt be needed ;)