Guild Wars 2

I am really big on aesthetics in MMO’s, and I love the look of dual daggers. I see on the forums a lot of people making builds that center around D/D. I just can’t see how it works better than a focus in the offhand. Dagger 4 & 5 skills are centered around conditions which seems to have better synergy w/ the Scepter mainhand. The focus has a chill which helps you keep enemies in melee range and a regen which is never bad. I really want to use dual daggers, but just can’t see how it would outweigh dagger/focus. I’m interested to hear everyone’s thoughts.

DD is the only way to quickly deal damage. Its 4 blinds and transfers conditions (which is bugged ATM) and bounces between a few enemies, and 5 is an AOE that causes weakness and bleeding (?) I think. Also, the animation on a small Asura is really funny.

Dagger4 can be invaluable when some condition damage enemy is hitting you with stacks of bleeds, burns, and so on. You just send those conditions right back at them and watch them melt.
The tooltip is a bit misleading regarding this. It says “Transfer three conditions to your target on a successful attack.” Actually, the skill transfers one of your conditions to every target it hits, so it takes off a total of four conditions.
The blind is applied on every bounce, which means with the Chilling Darkness trait from curses, you can apply chill to every target it bounces to. If it bounces back to a previous target, the blind and chill are reapplied.
It is nice to have condition removal without using up a utility slot on Plague Signet or Well of Power.

When you are fighting a single enemy with no pets or other targets, then Deathly Swarm would only transfer one condition as it has nowhere to bounce to. In this situation, focus4 might be better because you can bounce it off of yourself.

Both dagger and focus have great skills and I think it is really up to your playstyle which you prefer.

i think it depends more on what build your following. i for one tried both d/d and d/f. in all honesty i prefer d/f because i can have 2 types of heals which is very usefull as a necro mm build. i stack on vit/heals/toughness and i use sigil of life on weaps. although it isn’t alot on the burst heal it all adds up when u have countless heals. with wells of blood d/f works really awsome. on the other hand i can see how d/d can benefit condition necros in fights. but tbh i don’t like being a glass cannon lol. but thats just me

Agreed, but if you were going for that condition-style route wouldn’t you be better served foregoing dagger in your mainhand for scepter? It seems like it has better synergy.

it depends because dagger/dagger regardless has way stronger dps then scepter/dagger does. and from what i see most condition necros usually fight pretty close combat with a little bit of kiting and dodging. there for they want the most dps then can burst down compared to scepter. also dagger/dagger drains while you auto attack scepter doesn’t

dagger off hand isnt so good on 1v1 especially because you only go transfer 1 condition (hope this is a bug and they correct so we tranfer 3 conditions on hit) that if you hit the target because the animation is easy to see and is slow.

dagger/focus IMO is much better, if you have staff as second weapon (probably you have) you dont need dagger off hand, focus no doubt much better option, remove boon at slow CD plus chilled is much more valuable than transfer 1 condition and weakness someone (you have other ways to inflict weakness on enemy beside dagger off hand)

As a main hand dagger necro I don’t see how anyone can pass up the multi target blind, it is just too good in dungeons with many adds, or DE or regular PVE.

I dps mobs then pop the blind to give me a free second to pop well of suffering then I pop well of darkness and you have about a 10 second period in that you are not getting hit at all while you drop multiple mobs, then when well of darkness is over the dagger blind is usually off cool down.

This combined with the weakness from dagger 5 which causes enemies attacks to glance gives you a lot of durability which allows you to focus more on damage with the same durability rather than sacrificing as much.

In PVE mobs are not running from you, so a chill is pretty useless IMO unless you are kiting a champ but then Cripple works too.

In pvp the blind and condition removal is phenomenal