Dagger redesign (Vampire themed)

[DEATHsCLAW.1978]

in competitive pvp, Necro suffers a lot from not having a useful melee weapon. Dagger doesn’t offer any defenses, while GS on Reaper is way to slow to be useful in pvp. the next patch won't change that, despite anet focusing on dagger. in my opinion, a redesign of dagger main hand is beyond necessary. to open up a skill slot, Dark Pact could moved to offhand Dagger, replacing Enfeebling Blood (which will not be missed after it loses it’s corrupt in the next patch).

My idea is to give both Daggers a vampiric theme
-main hand: mobile, evasive, mostly close range
-offhand: self-strengthening with Dark Pact

 

Autoattack:
add bleeding (4s) to the 3^rd strike and poison (4s) to the 4^th strike.

Dagger 2: Life Siphon
add chill (3s) on the first hit, remove bonus while self-bleeding

Dagger 3: reworked, leap-animation with bats
leap-attack (450 range) while evading, Inflics Weakness (4s) and grants lifeforce (8%)
cast time: ¾s
cooldown: 10s
grants access to a flipskill for 6s, which lets you return to the position where you started the leap

Dagger 4: Deathly Swarm, unchanged

 Dagger 5: replaced by a stronger Dark Pact (old Dagger 3)
add might (5stacks, 5s) and swiftness (10s) when bleeding yourself
increase range to 900
increase cooldown to 20s

 

some thoughts behind the skills:
-bleed on autoattack to enable damage-boost on Life Siphon
-poison on autoattack bc it fits to Necrotic Bite
-leap attack with weakness gives the possibility to engage in melee range without getting deleted in a second (strong, but necessary on necro)
-port back creates distance to use Life Siphon
-evasive leap & port back give the capabilities to defend vs. focus of enemy team (big weakness on necro currently)
-chill on Life Siphon for Reaper
-900-range on Dark Pact to match Deathly Swarm, cooldown increase to compensate
-Might & Swiftness on Dark Pact to show strengthening effect of the blood sacrifice

Thoughts on this idea?

[SummonMinion.7306]

I disagree with replacing enfeebling blood with a better version of dark pact. Even if enfeebling blood loses its boon corrupt, I wouldn’t want to lose an aoe weakness application as a defensive option.

As far as dagger not having defensive options, I’d say the pulsing heal and cc from immobilize on MH and the bouncing blind/condi transfer plus aoe weakness application on OH are decent.

My main gripe with dagger is that its auto chain is useless in competitive modes and is only useful as a lf generator in pve. Either make the auto chain ranged to match the other light classes w/ access to dagger (ele and virtuoso), insert a short lunge in the chain so we can actually stick to targets and make use of the chain, or make the auto chain rewarding. By rewarding, I mean within the range of doing something as simple as increasing damage and lf gain to something more interesting like adding an additional life steal affect (like dagger 2’s current functionality and not like what they did to locust swarm) or boon steal effect.

[KrHome.1920]

Regarding the competitive modes:

Dagger4 and 5 are useless in these modes in their current form since they are too hard to land. Both need either a significant cast time reduction to 1/4s or even instant or a rework (side note: both skills have a delayed impact, so even without a cast time they are still quite unreliable).

Bleed on autoattack: That's against ANet's design intention. They want us to "sacrifice" blood for blood, which means a bleed is only applied in combination with a self bleed, like dagger3 does (side note: besides the dagger3 application, in blood magic bleeds are applied via dodge rolls, so there isn't really a need for another source - if a dagger necro could apply bleeds left and right, then the synergy with dagger2 would be pointless and ANet could basically make the bonus damage baseline)

Condis in general on autoattack: This has been asked for many times by the community. It would change dagger to a melee hybrid weapon which core necro lacks currently and which would solve a lot of problems for the whole necro class. ANet does not seem to like this idea since they ignored the community regarding this for years now.

"Useless GS": I strongly disagree. GS is great in the competitive modes. Unlike dagger every single GS skill can be precast while moving/kiting and is a hard hitter when it lands - this is great in the competitive modes if used competently. The dagger autoattack is bad in the competitive modes because it forces the necro to stick with the target which is unviable and dagger2 and 3 currently lack the punch to be viable on their own. This is something ANet now finally realized and reworked dagger2.

Edited June 15, 2023 by KrHome.1920

[Nimon.7840]

21 hours ago, KrHome.1920 said:

Regarding the competitive modes:

Dagger4 and 5 are useless in these modes in their current form since they are too hard to land. Both need either a significant cast time reduction to 1/4s or even instant or a rework (side note: both skills have a delayed impact, so even without a cast time they are still quite unreliable).

Bleed on autoattack: That's against ANet's design intention. They want us to "sacrifice" blood for blood, which means a bleed is only applied in combination with a self bleed, like dagger3 does (side note: besides the dagger3 application, in blood magic bleeds are applied via dodge rolls, so there isn't really a need for another source - if a dagger necro could apply bleeds left and right, then the synergy with dagger2 would be pointless and ANet could basically make the bonus damage baseline)

Condis in general on autoattack: This has been asked for many times by the community. It would change dagger to a melee hybrid weapon which core necro lacks currently and which would solve a lot of problems for the whole necro class. ANet does not seem to like this idea since they ignored the community regarding this for years now.

"Useless GS": I strongly disagree. GS is great in the competitive modes. Unlike dagger every single GS skill can be precast while moving/kiting and is a hard hitter when it lands - this is great in the competitive modes if used competently. The dagger autoattack is bad in the competitive modes because it forces the necro to stick with the target which is unviable and dagger2 and 3 currently lack the punch to be viable on their own. This is something ANet now finally realized and reworked dagger2.

Yeah, GS is more a utility weapon in competitive modes. And works really well against certain classes. 

Staff tho has a more general use and is imo mandatory to beat good thieves. 

On dagger.

Offhand: with the loss of the boon remove one d5 I think this is going to end up as a dead weapon for competitive modes. Warhorn and focus give you much more than dagger offhand.

Main-Hand: I don't understand why Anet is still trying to make dagger work by constantly reworking d2 or d3. If noone plays it, maybe not only those skills are a problem but also the Auto-Attack or the whole Necro kit.

The problem is: in PvE the dmg numbers aren't high enough to see play on dps builds. On a support build the weapon gives you absolutely nothing, yes theoretically it has very high life force regeneration, but to be honest: just trait staff marks and you get a similar lf generation but also do regeneration at the same time.

In competitive the change to d2 might see some play on some kind of tanky core Necro.

But I don't have high hopes for that. 

Edited June 16, 2023 by Nimon.7840

[Pooh.6897]

the only thing i want to change when it comes to MH dagger is making the AA ranged. Other than that I really don't think it needs to be heavily modified.

[DEATHsCLAW.1978]

49 minutes ago, Darth Pooh.5638 said:

the only thing i want to change when it comes to MH dagger is making the AA ranged. Other than that I really don't think it needs to be heavily modified.

we already have a singletarged ranged power weapon (axe), no need for a second one..

[Pooh.6897]

4 hours ago, DEATHsCLAW.1978 said:

we already have a singletarged ranged power weapon (axe), no need for a second one..

then I dont see a need for a dagger redesign

[Roadkizzle.2157]

I've had a Necro for a while that I built as a Scourge but never really played much with it. I liked my Chrono to much and was busy creating Alts.

With the upcoming patch I decided to try to flesh out the character as a Reaper. But I haven't yet replaced most of my condi damage gear due to a lack of Runes.

 

I was playing with Dagger and Focus as well as the Greatsword going through The Desolation to get the hero points to finish out the Reaper Traitline.

 

I was really happy with the Dagger and I'm looking forward to the patch changes for it.

I understand the GS has more powerful attacks. But I found the Daggers life force generation and healing ability much more useful. I was constantly going into Shroud to do tons of damage and killing but the Dagger just felt better coming out to top off health and life force.

I'm thinking of trying to go for Dagger/Warhorn as my main weapon out of shroud to swap to Axe/Focus when I need to stay at range or need additional health that the Dagger/WH can't provide.

I'm thinking the only thing I'll miss from the GS is the Whirl finishers.