Help me with some dagger tech

[TheBlueFox]

I wanna do a little better with my daggers, but I'm trying to experiment AWAY from bleed.

So help me out with some things that I could add to my dagger repertoire here. I would like to ideally use some consumables like Greases to target enemy weaknesses but does anything improve Greases?

I've tried using poison, but Hitting an enemy with poison, then using poison moth flight to POP it, just seems like a really bad version of Bleed, even with the Ring that makes you deal more damage when poison occurrs.

I haven't yet tried Fire+ice, I know that Ice causes enemies to take 20% more damage, so that might be fun to try out, but how would you do that, A natural fire dagger with an Ice BUFF dagger? Surely you don't want to have to use buffs for both...

[Burning Ignition]

well... there is a rot dagger, you tried that one yet? maybe could be paired nicely with the new ash of war the poison flower blooms twice

[TheBlueFox]

I've tried the rot dagger, but the problem with it is that it procs so... slowly. Most enemies are MOST resistant to rot, And in the time I could have rotted someone, I would have probably done any other status 2-3 times.

I haven't found that new ash of war though, I might try it when I do

[NikemanBOOM]

Originally posted by TheBlueFox:

I've tried the rot dagger, but the problem with it is that it procs so... slowly. Most enemies are MOST resistant to rot, And in the time I could have rotted someone, I would have probably done any other status 2-3 times.

I haven't found that new ash of war though, I might try it when I do

The location in question, if you get tired of looking:
It's dropped by a Teardrop Scarab. From the Ravine North Site of Grace in Rauh Base, head south and find it near a small pool of rot near some ruins.

[TheBlueFox]

Thanks for putting it in spoilers, I'll peek at it if I can't find it after exploring some areas I'm curious about

[Burning Ignition]

Originally posted by TheBlueFox:

I've tried the rot dagger, but the problem with it is that it procs so... slowly. Most enemies are MOST resistant to rot, And in the time I could have rotted someone, I would have probably done any other status 2-3 times.

I haven't found that new ash of war though, I might try it when I do

I would activate the rot with it and then switch to dane's footwork with that ash of war to proc it and throw some good kicks in while I do that. Pairs well with the golden eagle warrior greaves that increase kick and stomping dmg and one of the armors that increases jump attack dmg, at least thats how I tried it. Also using rot pots on the side.

[Old Captain Yon]

I once tried a dagger run, it was fun... Kinda... Ah no, it was horrid. Still.

Status dual wield is gimped and dmg buff on daggers too, even when using one. Daggers are short and deal no poise dmg. To be able to play without pain you basically have 2 ways:

Say screw it and try to do status along with aow spam. 2 Reduvia builds etc. It is lame but it gets job done... Until you meet a boss with immunities. Black flame blade is fun too but a bit annoying since it needs mana and you cannot dual-wield, new Mana dew talisman would certainly make it good back then so try it out.

OR you can do a crit build. Misericorde. You gonna need to spam aow's to break stance, like Rogier's phalanx, and it is still not very "pure-dagger" in bossfights, but when exploring it is fun to sneak and backstab mobs. Parry if you can, I could never.

Honorable mention to double erdsteel daggers with Sacred blade on dex/fth build.

Oh, and do not use Frost and Poison as glorified bleed. It is not worth it. In fact, since most daggers deal slash dmg which is widely resistant, and Frost reduces all resistances, you are better off hitting frosted targets. If you want quick %dps use either bleed or Black flame blade.

(daggers that are basicaly aow sticks like Black knife and Kris are very op, but spamming aow's kinda kills the idea)

[Silyon]

I don't tend to use daggers because I hate the tiny range, but I've heard that the Erdsteel daggers are solid on Dex/Fth builds. I've seen Int builds do silly things with the Glintstone Kris off of Sellen's questline as well.

There are no ice daggers (Crystal knife has the look though), and the only fire-focused dagger is a mob drop from the DLC. In both cases you're sticking an infusion on it, Cold demands Int scaling but fire you could get away with either Str or Fth. Tough build to balance unless you're up for a Fundementalist run.

[Edible Eyebrows]

Faith daggers are pretty great, since some of the uniques have great Ashes of War.

it lets you swap your offhand to incants that can help too, like buffs for your main dagger.

Honestly; just pure dex daggers are fine. Theyre not A-tier but if you want a themed build theyre great fun.

I had a blast using Scarlet rot dagger + poison dagger. a bonus to daggers being super light is you can spare having extra daggers to swap to; so when the poison triggers you can swap off to a plain damage dagger until the poison wears off.

Playing like that lets you have quite a lot of ashes of war ready to fire off at any time too, making you pretty versatile.

[TheBlueFox]

Yeah I'm currently using the Black knife as a projectile for damage, Misery with quickstep for crits, I've got a Bleed bandit knife offhand for bleed stacking, and a dagger with "Assassin's gambit" because holy crap that thing is good for just traveling around murdering things with backstabs.

The Glintstone Kriss, even with no int investment, DESTROYS stuff, but I'm really looking for a good ash of war to build up stance breaks...

Bleed and Consecutive hit rings really push damage pretty good for daggers, but I was hoping to find something to pull away from bleed, because bleed is... I mean, it's so overused, but that's because it's so damn effective...

[Nifty]

Originally posted by Burning Ignition:

Originally posted by TheBlueFox:

I've tried the rot dagger, but the problem with it is that it procs so... slowly. Most enemies are MOST resistant to rot, And in the time I could have rotted someone, I would have probably done any other status 2-3 times.

I haven't found that new ash of war though, I might try it when I do

I would activate the rot with it and then switch to dane's footwork with that ash of war to proc it and throw some good kicks in while I do that. Pairs well with the golden eagle warrior greaves that increase kick and stomping dmg and one of the armors that increases jump attack dmg, at least thats how I tried it. Also using rot pots on the side.

Most poison builds function with rot and poison pops.

So poison flower blooms twice, and poison moths flight.

They take the dmg you would be doing over time and essentially "cash it out"

So re-apply rinse and repeat.

[AtomSajt]

The wakizashi and the bloodstained dagger has an amazing stab with two-handed R2, it is super quick (6 frames on 30 fps if i remember correctly), and it is not fast, the reach is horrible, but it is usable, and i did a run with it, for me it was fun (and now with some DLC talismans it can be stronger as well).

Another option is on faith builds the erdsteel dagger or the fire knight shortsword has amazing tap R2-s (it is faster than the normal dagger R1-s, i wouldn't charge it), and you can create a successive attack build with it because heavy attacks are calculated differently. If you want a bit more damage i would go erdsteel, if a bit more reach then fire knight shortsword (i did a run with the fire knight shortsword as well, that bit of extra reach is significant, i whiffed a lot less with those than other daggers)

[Silyon]

Originally posted by TheBlueFox:

Yeah I'm currently using the Black knife as a projectile for damage, Misery with quickstep for crits, I've got a Bleed bandit knife offhand for bleed stacking, and a dagger with "Assassin's gambit" because holy crap that thing is good for just traveling around murdering things with backstabs.

The Glintstone Kriss, even with no int investment, DESTROYS stuff, but I'm really looking for a good ash of war to build up stance breaks...

Bleed and Consecutive hit rings really push damage pretty good for daggers, but I was hoping to find something to pull away from bleed, because bleed is... I mean, it's so overused, but that's because it's so damn effective...

I mean if you want Stance breaking you want the Parrying dagger. Successful parry is an automatic stance broken until the DLC, at which point you apparently start to need consecutive parries. It's tougher to time than with small-shields, but no less effective once you have the timing.

Worth noting that the Wakizashi and Main-gauche can both accept parry as an ash and be used as a paired weapon for Katana and Thrusting swords respectively.

[toughnails]

Fire Knight's Shortsword (which is in fact a dagger, but the longest in the whole game) is very OP in PvP right now. Run a faith build and infuse with flame art for max damage. Very powerful and stylish.

Daggers are meh in PvE though, for obvious reasons. Powerstanced Reduvias are okay on an ARC build.