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Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
[ROGUE] melee weapons
Tamalou
Member, Alpha Two
As a rogue player, I don't understand the added value of daggers compared to 2H weapons. Can more experienced players help me out? Because right now, 2H seems way more OP to me.
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Comments
That said, we’re still in Alpha Two, a lot of things are being tested, balanced, and changed constantly. What feels OP now might not stay that way, and dagger builds could evolve a lot as augments, passives, and rogue synergies get refined.
When we get closer to release, things will (hopefully) feel more in line and better tuned across weapon types. So I’d say: keep testing, give feedback, and let’s see where the devs take it!
Additionally, two-handed weapons benefit from attack speed bonuses at the end of their talent tree, further boosting their ability to trigger finishers quickly. Daggers, on the other hand, only offer a modest crit bonus , which only comes into play once a finisher has been activated. So they don’t really provide any upfront burst potential at the start of a fight.
Right now, daggers feel noticeably underwhelming.
Now, I know we’re still in alpha , but falling back on that argument all the time doesn’t really help. In my opinion, it actually hinders discussion and makes it harder to highlight areas that could genuinely benefit from improvement. This is precisely the moment to raise these issues so the devs can get clear and actionable feedback.
I realize my tone may come off a bit harsh here , that wasn’t my intention at all, so apologies if it reads that way
I think most MMO players expect/agree that Daggers are the 'on-Hit' weapon. They either apply debuffs on most hits or trigger effects that are on the enemy which 'pop' when you hit them.
In games where the daggers are themselves a form of 'limitation' on Rogues, this might be lessened, but in AoC where everyone can use everything, they have the opportunity to go in the other direction, and let the Daggers shine as the main on-Hit build weapon of choice.
For this purpose, it wouldn't really require the Finisher to be different, the issue would be 'the lack of the on-Hit function'.
I've seen this play out this way in many games as a dagger user myself quite often. Tuning and balancing on-Hit stuff is hard so it gets done later, and for Ashes, which needs to consider this across all 8 Archetypes, I'm sure it would be even more.
I think this is one of those cases where 'it's an alpha' is actually a fair answer (though I'm not disagreeing at all with telling them that they're not really doing much right now, they did ask, after all)
My contribution is the same as always, Intrepid. Darkblighter is great. Minzerok's Daggers are great. Venom hit stacking... you know the deal. If Daggers are doing little to none of that, they're just going to feel like you added them for the sake of it, which is fine at this stage as long as you're clear that it's underwhelming, as Tamalou says.
If your intent is for Rogues to use Spears or Greatswords or Warhammers too, I'm not against it, but obviously the dagger-dance people need something.
It is likely, depending on the secondary class the Rogue is paired with will effect what weapons the Rogue can use with their abilities.