Daggers?

[frdnwsm]

Just curious when, if ever, these are useful in combat. I have a Nightblade who is dual wielding melee weapons; the best ones he has found so far are a couple of mace type weapons. Any daggers I have seen invariably have far lower DPS ratings, despite the supposedly fast combat speeds.

Now, I have seen rpgs where rogue/thief type characters can hide and ambush specific body areas on their opponents; in these cases daggers are far more maneuerable and hence more accurate in hitting a specific target. (A dagger through the eye will take down most critters). That doesn't seem to be the situation in GD, however.

So, the utiliy of daggers is ... what, exactly? Does the fast speed mean you can strike and kite faster? Maybe some daggers have really OP abilities attached?

[Matthew]

Daggers are meant to be primarily caster weapons with higher %damage and often various other caster perks. Same with scepters.

You could technically use them for melee. After all, with enough flat damage and attack speed, the base weapon type isn't all that important. But considering they are also heavy on caster affixes and light on melee affixes, it is rather pointless most of the time.

[Funky T]

They likely deal less damage for you, becasue daggers don't deal physical damage like most other weapons. Daggers and Sceptres are caster weapons and deal one of the magical damage types (cold, poison, vitality etc.). To make effective combat use of them, you would need to find one with your main damage type as weapon damage. So if your nightblade may be focused around pierce / bleed damage or something, daggers would likely deal less damage.

Don't even know if daggers have armor penetration. Would be kinda wierd, since there would be no physical damage to convert to pierce.

[DeadlyDanDaMan]

Daggers are the fastest attacking weapons in the game.

[frdnwsm]

Originally posted by DeadlyDanDaMan:

Daggers are the fastest attacking weapons in the game.

I nderstand that they are fast; but their listed DPS is consistently far below other one handed melee weapons, despite their speed.

[KG]

When daggers are melee weapons (some are hard to rationalized for anything but a caster) they are for "magic damage" melee builds. Spellbreakers, Witch Hunters, Saboteurs, and Tricksters, for the most part (though GD is flexible and you can find/make others). Not physical/pierce/bleed builds.

Their DPS will end up looking low if you're not built to take advantage of the particular dagger's advantages.

[Azunai]

daggers suck if you specialize in physical or pierce damage because they have a magical damage type.

i haven't found much use for daggers als melee weapons on most builds, but my acid/posion witchhunter (NB/occultist) used acid daggers most of the time. simply because there are some really nice MI daggers (rift scourge claw/slicer) and also some legendary daggers (venomlash, basilisk claw) that suit that build far better than any sword, axe or mace.

[Smokey]

There *are* melee builds that focus on the magic damage types, so daggers aren't totally useless for melee.

It also saves on having to wear Physical damage conversion equipment.