Guild Wars 2

Dagger. I find it to be effective, albeit somewhat dull. Rather than address the design behind the weapon I feel like in the last BWE they simply overbuffed the damage to compensate as a stop-gap. Personally, I would like to see…

1) Lower MH dagger damage. Axe seems clearly designed to be more of the direct damage weapon with dagger being maybe more of a tank/control option. Further differentiate the two as they’re quite similar at this point. I’m certainly not against dagger doing decent damage as there is an inherently higher risk due to being in such close range, but axe should IMO do more damage from a weapon role perspective.

2) Life Siphon and Dark Pact combined into one skill due to the inherent synergy with the skills anyway. Dark Pact in particular is very, very generic. Long cooldown with an effective if boring usage. Lower the range, drop the immobilize duration if necessary and just combine these skills.

3) Add something else to round the weapon out. Maybe a short range frontal cleave lifesteal that regens allies? Would round the weapon out well with some added lifesteal, some area damage, and a little group support with regen.

Overall I am liking dagger so don’t get me wrong. I just feel it’s role would do well to be revisited slightly.

I think the dagger’s damage is justified – compared to the axe at least – because having to get in melee range is a pretty big deal. Unless they gave the dagger a lot more utility, there would be very little reason to use a dagger over an axe if an axe did more damage and did so from range.

Conceptually I also love the MH dagger but the thing that bothers me about it is you’re rarely doing anything other than autoattacking. Life siphon does less damage over its duration that just autoattacking would (and without bloodthirst it’s healing barely covers two autos’ worth of damage), and dark pact is a generic immobilize. Both of these skills have cooldown times that seem awfully long compared to other mainhand weapons, and they’re situational to begin with. It just creates a stale experience.

Personally, I think life siphon needs reverted back to its 9 second cooldown (or something similar) and dark pact should have its cooldown and immobilize duration both lowered, and perhaps given some other utility.

I’d like to see the heal on life siphon increased. The damage on D1 really isn’t that strong for a melee range, single target ability; I think it’s fine as is.

The axe, on the other hand, should have something extra. Make A2 splash (like Warrior GS) or give A1 a faster attack speed.

I agree with the Life Sipon on the dagger, I use dagger/focus most of the time and I rarely ever use D2. The damage is weak and slow compared to D1 spam and the healing is laughable. I would like to see it steal boons instead or using it grants increased endurance regen while applying weakness to the enemy.

As for D3 it has it’s uses but I think it would be better if the cast time were removed/shortened and it also blinded the target.

I like Dagger’s 3 button. 600 range root, very powerful in PvP. Doesn’t need changing in my opinion, it’s not much different to any other of the root skills.

The rest of main hand dagger is lacking. I’m not sure why you want dagger damage lowered when overall an axe already does more. Both are direct damage options. Daggers 1 does a touch more damage than Axe’s 1, but Dagger’s 2 does less damage than Axe’s 2. The heal on Dagger’s 2 is terrible too, hardly worth it. The reason you bother with 2 is because you can use it at up to 600 range instead of 130. Still, the siphoned health could be boosted or have it apply some sort of debuff/buff. Same to Dagger’s 1, it’s a bit plain and as Necromancer is at the moment, I feel Dagger does need love.

Combining the life drain and the immob would make the power far too strong I think. A better solution would be to, say, make every tick cripple for 1s. Still useful for kiting, but not as powerful.

As for what ability would fit the dagger? Either some AoE, but mostly what I’d want is a leap/gap closer of some sort.

Spectral Grasp works well for a gap closer and for snagging running enemies.

vonBoomslang.8296:

Combining the life drain and the immob would make the power far too strong I think. A better solution would be to, say, make every tick cripple for 1s. Still useful for kiting, but not as powerful.

As for what ability would fit the dagger? Either some AoE, but mostly what I’d want is a leap/gap closer of some sort.

Oh, I absolutely agree. I’m certainly not commenting on the dagger’s effectiveness (it works fine for now), but rather am looking at the design of the weapon and how it flows in combat. There’s a certain blandness to the skills. It’s important first to look at how you want something to function and then iron out the duration/damage/cooldown numbers after.

This isn’t just the case with Dagger or even with Necro. Lots of skills need work across all professions and that’s not knocking the developers as this has been an amazingly successful game launch, but I’m sure they’ll be tweaking skills heavily going forward at least a few months until they can get everything exactly where they want it from both a functionality and balance perspective.

daggers immobilize is currently the only way to garuntee somewhat decent up time on well damage in Pvp. I can net 8-12k damage depending on armor values and crit frequency when both wells go off. Chill and cripple are in no way a guarantee in landing the same amount of damage because immobilize stops dodge rolling for 4 out of the 5 seconds wells need to pump out damage.

if anything I would appreciate life sihpon acting like a brand of sorts on opponents where it leeches and does it set amount of damage so that I am not stuck channeling. The channel cuts into the higher dps of the harder hitting auto attack chain and screams interrupt me. The heal is also to lack luster to warrant spending 3 seconds channeling while you could have sustained 3x the damage being dealt to you. Something more hands free that leeches and damages consistently could make the healing not so much of a drag and add more dps to daggers in general.

Axe is also in a fairly good place I believe it went from being the power go to weapon to a damage amp weapon. axe/focus can reliably net 20 stacks of vuln in a very short time frame. this setup allows dagger around a 9 second unload time of 20% increased damage if timed right . if anything the vuln stacks could last a tad longer so it’s possible to net a 25 vuln stack in between weapon switching but i don’t know if it’s needed.