Are Daggers Pointless? (Pun intended)

[talkingmute]

Really, what's the point of daggers now? They're a terrible weapon for finishers, don't deal that much damage, and even the 16 starting charge combo with Covert Lethality (corrupt charge gives 30 and can be used on any melee) it serves no purpose.

"+100% finisher damage" still does less damage than finishers with other weapons, it's machetes all over again (class of weapons that were terrible and were outclassed in every way by ANY non-machete weapon).

First the finisher changes and now the dagger nerf. With limitless energy being exploited every game (but yet perfectly fine) it's like we're being pushed into just using afk "press-4-to-win" frames.

[benalam]

This is 3 weeks after the OP but whatever

Daggers, or at least critical zaw daggers, are actually great melee weapons in the current state of Melee 3.0.

I'm using PPP, Primed Reach, Sacrificial Steel, Amalgam Organ Shatter, Killing Blow, Covert Lethality, Corrupt Charge, and Primed Fury on a Vargeet Ruhang and Laka dagger. The zaw is not optimized in stats (I would use Vargeet II Jai and Plague Akwin now) but it still performs admirably.

With this build I can two-shot level 150+ heavy grineer units while keeping good attack speed and range. Keep in mind that daggers have 90% follow through, which is very high, enabling them to be efficient at killing hordes. In my personal experience, my dagger zaw outperforms all of my other melee weapons in higher-level (70+) missions with armored targets. With lower-leveled enemies, it is noticeably slower than combo-based long-range weapons, like the Orthos Prime, but it is always faster at eliminating heavy units.

Additionally, using exodia brave gives zaw daggers the ability to provide energy. One could argue that any heavy-attack zaw can do that, such as nikanas or scythes, but the dagger one-two slice is leagues better at clearing multiple enemies than nikana or scythe heavy attacks.

Although daggers have lost their viability in finishers, they definitely are not pointless. My plague keewar staff on the other hand... ;(

edit: Might be useful to know that dagger heavy attacks have forced slash procs. ALSO machetes are viable heavy-attack weapons with their forced slash procs, but they aren't as good as daggers.