Guild Wars 2

Hey,

I was playing with Dagger recently and got couple ideas for it. This is by no means necessary, as it’s fine weapon, but I thought it could be pushed more into using Life Siphon instead of just auto-attacking for damage.

I haven’t really bothered to tweak the numbers , but I will quickly explain the main idea:

Autoattack – Slightly lowered damage, last hit recharges Life Siphon’s cooldown by small amount.

Life Siphon – 1 more tick, reduced cast time. Should be visible DPS increase. If all pulses hit, access to Blood Renewal is granted, similary to how Fist Flurry works. The healing per tick could be lowered a bit to keep it at bay.

Blood Renewal – Long Bleeding for targeted foe, making traits like Blood Bond more accessible for Power Necromancer. Heals allies around Necromancer. Necromancer gets short Quickness mainly used to speed up the auto-attack chain and recharge Life Siphon quicker. I’m not sure if “heal allies” part is needed, but since we don’t have any support weapon, why not.

Dark Pact – As usual + Enemy hit by this attack is temporarily “marked” for your next Life Siphon. If he remains within 600 radius, next use of your Life Siphon will also strike him for 50% of effect. You can use Life Siphon on other enemy or the marked one for 150% effect essentialy.

As for dagger traits, I would modify Quickening Thirst a bit.

Quickening Thirst
Increases movement speed for while wielding a dagger. Bleeding your foe removes Cripple and applies Regeneration(5s) to allies (10s ICD).

Just my small set of ideas how to make Dagger less on an auto-attack spam and give it better theme. Feel free to criticize.

I always thought it’d be nice if the MH dagger (auto-attack), or even greatsword, had a means to be a pseudo ranged weapon (300-750 range) through a trait or something. Regardless of that thought, I certainly wouldn’t mind if the dagger became more focused around leeching health, especially through Life Siphon, and gained access to bleed (more for triggering traits as you mentioned) as that would certainly be more interesting than auto-attacking from dusk ’til dawn.

dagger is a difficult one. on the one hand it would be great if dagger would be usable for more than auto attack in pve. on the other hand i’d prefer life siphon to stay a heal, mainly, instead of a dps increase.

i’d rather have a strong healing life siphon and then a way to turn that excess health into damage, if it’s not needed in pve. but no idea how to fit all that into 3 skills.

a pseudo ranged weapon (300-750 range)

thats what axe was supposed to be, i think and i prefer axe to be turned into that again instead of the dagger.

I prefer dagger 2 stay a heal also. What really needs work is Dagger offhand. Maybe make dagger 5 cast a well type attack that pulses for physical damage and weakness.

It would still heal for the same or even greater amount. Shorter cast time means more HP/S and further reducing cooldown even improves it’s healing by quite a lot I assume. It’s just that each tick could probably heal 40-50 less to balance out rapid access if played correctly.

I love the idea of marking an enemy with Dark Pact. Fits thematically and would be a nice buff to a skill that’s a bit “eh” right now.

The rest of the changes don’t really seem necessary to me.

Would it help if Enf Blood produced a dark field and Deathly Swarm a blast finisher?

Anchoku.8142:

Would it help if […] Deathly Swarm a blast finisher?

maybe. but how the hell would that make any sense? it’s more of a projectile.

just reduce the chanel ( cast time of shippon) and is all good

Brokensunday.4098:

just reduce the chanel ( cast time of shippon) and is all good

Indeed.

As I said, it’s not necessary, I would just want to see more theme and “feeling” added to the weapons instead of autoattacking and introducing some fun synergies between skills. I generally enjoy such things on weapons (if you have ever seen any similar threads for me it occurs in every single one), “soft rotations” kinda.

Intersting ideas, so here my thoughts on it.

I think the changes to life siphon are good especially the addition of blood renewal. The auto attack is fine it doesnt really need any change but i would be fine with your proposed changes. For dark pact would that be an extra debuff like impaled for warriors offhand sword? If so yeah why not. The changes for quickering thirst are also good but it should be impairing effects in general not only cripple.

ANet said the Dagger is supposed to be the single target melee weapon, and Greatsword fits the melee AoE role. I always enjoyed the Dagger, but after unlocking Reaper I noticed the Greatsword is usually better even against single targets, because most skills contribute to dps (while Dagger only has the auto-attack).

I agree Dagger needs some tweaks, and my vote goes to enhancing skills #2 and #3 to actually add something nice to boost dps. Marking a target.. adding quickness.. anything that actually makes me want to click those buttons more often.

leasm.1279:

ANet said the Dagger is supposed to be the single target

Single target is such a pain in a game with obnoxious teleporting and stealth. GW2 would honestly be better off making most skills into limited AoEs/cleaves and then pruning the damage. This is also why you say that GS feels nicer than dagger when it comes to single-targets even though the dagger is supposed to be designed for that “role.”

I personally wish we had a lot more Fireball projectiles. They’re pretty well cued and can be manually aimed by the user without requiring target lock-on.

Honestly, Life Siphon would be neat as a Coalescence of Ruin attack. If all three hits struck a target (doesn’t have to be the same one), we could see a flip into Blood Renewal. However, it’d probably be best to keep it a heal. Maybe lowering the cooldown would be nice just so it’s not such a braindead dive into autoattack spam for 10-12 seconds (like basically every weapon set). I’d like to see Dark Pact as a fireball projectile with an AoE splash that still retains its current effects. The mark to enhance Life Siphon would be a nice finishing touch, though.