---UPDATE--- So korean new patch just went live with daggers rework. Basically we didn't get reworked at all. Unlike all the other classes that got their main features improved or modified to be more effective, daggers didn't get anything at all. -New skill: Flying dagger: Losing Bleed and the 2nd range-skill of ur class (throw dagger, throw dagger in wrist, throw blood dagger) you will learn this new skill lv 80 and 85 which hit the target with 3000+ power, for 20 seconds lower atk spd, casting spd and speed by 20% and inflict bleed that tic 290 HP per second. -Bluff, critical wound and shadow step will now learn new levels. -All daggers will learn all Focus, meaning that Adventurers will learn Focus Death. And this is it, literally. They gave us no stun on shadow step, they didn't fix trick and switch that are not working at all, they didn't buff mirage (having a skill named Mirage cause it used to cancel target and now is kinda a useless buff) or counterattack (20% reflect dmg is totally underpowered, like mirage, when you compare that to WR's dodge that is like immortality for 60 seconds). So once again korean Devs show us that they have no clue at all how to balance classes and just lost the opportunity to fix daggers. I'm sorry guys, look like our only hope to play a decent class is buy spending 50k euros on L2Store and 3rd sites to buy epics --- END OF UPDATE--- Thank you, thank you. But srsly now: i got quite some pms asking me tips, setups or a guide about daggers. So since there's nothing to do IG but to afk-farm, why not? Ok, first things first: You remember daggers from old servers? You remember how Adventurer were annoing you with cancel targets, Ghost hunters used to oneshot anything on their level and Wind Riders used to be a pain to hit for melees?! Nice, throw all of that away, cause this is not happening on essence. Unless you go DEEP P2W, then maybe with a GH. But let's go step by step, let's talk about Essence's dagger. Buffs and Nerfs. Buffs (Compared to other versions of L2/Old patches): Ghost hunter: 35% crt dmg from his passive "Critical Damage", also a little boost on critical damage power of the passives. Wind riders: Dodge skill evades with 70% chance both magical and phisical hit/skills. For 60 seconds. So basically GL hitting a WR. Adventurer: Seriously, why are adventurer still a class on this version of L2? Can't they just delete this trash class? For real, adventurer has no buff at all. Bleed: Ranged skill that slow and bleed the enemy. Really usefull to stop dagger's hide or to slow a target for the kite. Clear movement: If you didn't play on Classic, this skill will be new, allows the player to reset hide and shadow step delay, allowing the dagger to do 2 shadow steps in no time or to hide twice in a short delay. Mortal strike: Skill that increases blow land rate is now moved into passives. Sting & Freezing strike (all Dark elfs only): Both skills are now active buffs that triggers. For all DE fighting classes (Archer, tank, dagger, BD), you can only have 1 active at time, Sting bleed enemy and Freezing strike slow the target, when triggered, for 3 seconds. Skills also land an extra dmg when triggered. Dash: This one is a buff for all rogues and a nerf for Adventurers. The skill that allowed them to run faster for 15 seconds is now a buff shared among all rogues (archers and daggers) that increases speed by 30 (level 2) for 20 mins. Nerfs: Ok so, hold thight cause you guys are about to see a HUGE list of debuffs that made daggers useless as fack w/o an heavy p2w, here we go. Shadow step: Cancel target and stun effect removed. Enemy get a slow debuff that basically NEVER land. Really, it's 10% maybe. Switch, Trick, Mirage: Cancel target removed. So, if you know daggers now you'd be wondering "Wait, if those skills had as main effect the cancel target...what are they good for now?" and the answer is "nothing". Don't waste SP for such skills. Maybe just for mirage as it reduces Critical Damage received. Bluff: Cancel target removed. Land rate of the skill is seriously low. Probably not even worth using during pvps as you will have an hard time to land it even on players w/o PVP sets. Might as well be good if you have epics to increase land rate. Backstab: This nerf is basically not due to skill itself but from server changes. HP potions can be spammed here, making backstab kinda useless as you will be recovering a good amount of HPs per second and not slowly like you did on old patches. If your dmg is not good enough to burst a oneshot then GL. Also, landing a backstab is hard, without cancel-target skills your only hope to land a backstab is coming out of hide (so once/twice per pvp), go witness a miracle and land bluff or maybe with this server lag you can hope for a side-step backstab. Worth to notice update: due to Blows rework that now lands damage even when miss (blow miss land dmg of an auto attack or auto attack crt hit) you can now land BACKstab on enemy face. Which will land on CP tho. Shields: Eh. Blows are blocked with an 80% rate by any shield-wielder, even without mastery, when hitting on front. Which basically means you wont be able to land a full dmg on anyone that got a shield as you are mostly gonna stand and frontstab them all the time. You can test it urself, it takes 20 seconds and a shield. Focus buffs: For the same reason of the Backstab nerf, this nerf is due to game mechanics and not for nerfs to the buff itself. -30% crt dmg on front but +60/90% crt dmg from the back. But you wont be able to land Backstabs most of the time as, in 1v1 scenario, you wont be able to get on the opponent back so easly. Geodata glitch: this one is kinda weird. It's not a nerf to daggers but to anything that has to go melee. So basically you run after you target and, even if you're faster, once you are in range for the skill, your char will stop. Or he'll keep running behind ur target w/o performing any action. Sometimes clicking on the screen near the target while holding the skill fix the problem. Sometimes it doesn't. So you will get ur summon/melee DD to run behind the enemy w/o being able to hit. To notice that a similar glitch happens when the target is pulled by a tank or DK. The opponent will be glitched and will become "Too far", so you wont be able to hit him with skills (only auto attacks) as long as the pulled target doesn't move. Basically it means that if you are fighting 2 vs 1, and your mate is a tank that pulls the enemy, you will stand still like a bot unable to perform any action but melee untill the target doesn't walk. And i mean, literally, he can turn and flag/pvp but you wont be able to hit. Lethals and Half-Kills: And this is one of the most ridicolous nerf ever seen: a feature that made daggers strong was totally removed. Full Lethals are gone since Gracia/Freya updates, they used to drain CP and HP of the target down to 1 with a single blow. Half kills are still available for daggers in both Awakening and Classic (!!! Thinking about it, i'm unsure of Half kills being on Classic as well, if my memory is not wrong, they should still be there!!!) versions of L2, for some reason, on Essence this feature is removed. Half-kills drain to 1 the target CP and allow damage to go right into HP, so, for example, if you land a Deadly Blow + Half kill, you'd get enemy to 0 CP and the skill dmg will land right into HPs. Throwing skills: Daggers used to have a skill to slow enemy speed named Throw Dagger, this skill is not divided for the 3 daggers and got different effects based on ur class. Ghost hunter, Throwing Blood Daggers: ranged skill that, during pvp, drops enemy HP when trying to cast a skill. Sadly, the land rate of this skill is around 0%. Which means it never lands. Seriously. I just removed it from my skill bar as i use it basically to poke some range damage during mass pvps. Wind rider, Throwing dagger: ranged skill that slow down enemy, land rate seems to be...kinda low as well, but since i'm not a WR i couldn't test land rate, but i'm quite sure that it lands on me quite often. Adventurer, Throw dagger in wrist: ranged skill that interrupt an enemy skill casting. Land rate is really low. Idk. This server is srsly about P2W, and we'll get there later, so basically there's no good dagger around that use it. But i'm quite it's low as heck. So...yeah, we're only on the buff and nerfs of daggers on essence and we got a wall of text already, good. And i didn't even wrote about Blinding Blow missing for GH/WR and Mortal Blow on Adventurer. You might be wondering "with all this nerfs, is it dagger still playable" and the answer is: No. Well, yeah, but it's all about how deep into p2w you will go, and i'm about to explain you why, but first, which dagger is the best? Ghost hunters are by far the best dagger on essence, as with that 35% passive it can land heavy damages, often allowing to burst through enemy potions. Wind riders damage is low as hell, making them dangerous only on....no, they are not dangerous at all, their damage tickle, they have quite broken dodge skill, so they can survive and land dmg during mass pvps, but mostly, in a fair gear/level fight, WRs can be a bother for the dodge duration, but if you manage to survive those 60 seconds w/o dieing of boredom, WRs wont be a threat. Adventurer: No. Seriously, it's useless. Adventurer main feature was being an heavy annoier with all those cancel target skills, allowing them to land backstab easly and to have a good survivability. On essence they are worthless. No crt dmg boost, focus power underpowered compared to WR/GH. I'd rather play a WR than an Adv here. And the skill that made them so good (Dash) is now a buff for all rogues (archers and daggers). Now, let's talk about "How can i make a dagger worth playing?", the answer is: pay to win. I'm gonna do a list of "must-have" and "critical damage" boosters for daggers, but in case you guys don't know how a dagger skill and crt dmg works, let me explain to you: Daggers' skill are named Blows. Blows used to land lethal & half kill, getting boosts from all critical damage multipliers (p. critical damage and p. skill critical damage) at the price of having a 10/20% chance to not land at all, resulting in a no damage skill. Daggers are, in fact, the only class that benefit from those boosts, as on essence and current patches we have different parameter for "critical damage" and "p. skill critical damage", with the 2nd one increasing ALL melees critical damage after a skill, while the 1st will increase auto attack critical damage AND daggers' skill critical damage. You can test it with Death Whisper for a better understanding. Critical damage & skill critical damage parameters are something "Hidden" that you can't see. The higher the stat, the higher is the damage. Basically i'm still unsure about the correct formula, but let's say that, so far, it seems that LITERALLY any critical damage point added to blows will increase the damage by that amount. For example: if you hit a target for 1000 dmg, and you get the Yul soul crystal that increases critical dmg by 200, your damage will go to around 1100-1300, mostly around 1200. So now that you know how blows works, let's see the list of "must-have" p2w items that will make dagger stronger, and for last, we'll talk about setup (dyes). Quick look into epics: AQ lv 3 & Baium lv 1+: Ant queen unlock the +10% critical damage bonus only on lv 3, making it useless before. While Baium, even at level 1, increases ur skill power (working on all classes, fighters and mages) and critical damage. Frintezza necklace will also be a good add, but that's not into game yet and it will give skill power, which works on all classes, just like the free valakas necklace you, probably, have. Notice: some items are event-only, means that at the current time they might be unavailable in the game and you'll have to wait for the event to come back to be able to get ur hands on one of the items in this list. Also, i will list the step from which the item will increase critical damage, usually the higher enchant = the higher critical damage bonus. Weapon Rune, Yul critical damage: You should have learned about blow's feature, so Yul rune will come in handy. Increasing ur blows damage by XXX critical power. Cloak of Protection 7+: Increases critical damage by 5%. Einhasad Pendant lv 3+: Increases critical damage by idk, 6%? I have it level due so not sure. Queen ant doll lv 1+: Increases both critical damage and skill critical damage by 3%. This item is quite OP for daggers as they will get a double-benefit from it, meaning that a doll lv 1 will increase ur dmg by 6%. Doll lv 2 and lv 3 are obviously even better as the bonus get way stronger. Zircon: A gem from the Brooch that increases ur critical damage based on its level. Level 4 Zircon +8% critical dmg, lv 5 +15% critical damage. Talisman of Authority: This is probably one of the most powerfull items for all classes and for sure one of the hardest to enchant. Increases p. skill critical damage & skill power. Higher enchant means higher power. Having it to 6/7+ is really good as you will get a really high boost on damages. Enchant chances are low as hell tho. Talisman of Speed: This talisman is another pain in the *** to OE and way weaker than Authority, but if you manage to OE it, wont be that bad. Has a skill that triggers for X seconds that increases p. skill critical damage by X number (no %). So basically, this is all the epics & p2w items and their "needed" enchant you need to improve your damage. Wearing all the following on AT LEAST the listed enchant will make your daggers hit pretty hard, allowing you to even oneshot most of the players. Sadly there aren't many daggers around so i can use only old players as example, but we had GH, on blue server, that even w/o any skill (hands) were able to land insane damages with those things, even on tanks. Time for setups now. You can increase ur char basic stats STR, DEX, CON, WIT, INT, MEN to improve char strenght. Daggers have "access" to 2 or 3 setups. Hitting certain amount of basic stat will trigger a passive bonus. After level 76 you will gain a bonus stat point that you can add as you will on a certain basic stat. Also note: Rumors are that STR increases skill critical rate while DEX increases blow land rate. Unlikely Awakening servers tho, we have no passive that explain that (Superior dagger mastery lands skill mastery with 2x time on buffs or skill cooldown based on your STR, while Super Light Armor Mastery increases skill critical rate based on your DEX) so, as long as we have no experimentarium to test it officially. I could test DEX myself on an alt char lv 40, and i noticed an increased land rate of blows, as for STR, i couldn't feel any difference, but sadly, i couldn't reach high STR amounts to effectively test it). So back to setups, you can pick between 2 of those: Offensive: Full +STR -Dex. Literally. Aim for 70 STR to unlock the 200 p skill critical damage. Players reported that STR setup is increasing by a lot the damages they do, imho, it doesn't. STR increases p.atk and to me, p.atk is still a useless feature on a dagger as you can't feel almost any difference on damage. I tried to hit 70 STR and i couldn't feel any difference on both damage and skill critical rate between 70 and 50 STR. But again, hopefully we'll get an experimentarium to confirm the theory. You are removing DEX as you have other items to increase atk spd and blow land rates (like Othell rune). Defensive: +CON -Dex & +MEN. This is my current setup. Since i'm f2p (as long as 20/40 euro per month is not considered p2w) i went for the defensive setup. As i said above, i tried to hit 70 STR but felt no difference. So i got my STR back to 50 and increased CON to hit the bonus & MEN to +4, even tho it doesn't trigger the MEN bonus, it still gives me m.def (which rogues lack) and some debuff resistance. It allows me to hit 12k HPs and 3k p.def & 2.6k m.def (no epics and +4 eva talisman). Is kinda "Low" but the HP boost allows me to escape/bsoe if needed, while not losing much on dmg. Also, there's a 3rd setup, for the p2w abusers which basically is: everything. In essence server there are items that increase your basic stats by a lot. Dragon belt is an item that, with every enchant, increases your basic stat. On +5, which is the "lowest/must have" enchant, you gain +3 str/int dex/wit and +4 con/men. Venir talisman is the real "essence" of "p2w" and "rng" as you will need A LOT of adenas to improve it, lot of luck and time. This talisman increases basic stat by 1 per enchant. Currently highest level available is 25, with safe steps (it means you wont fall lower than those enchants in case of failure) on 6, 12, 18 and 24. Failing an enchant will bring the talisman back to the safe step. So if you have it lv 3, fail the compound for lv 4, it'll go back to 1. If you make it lv 6 and fail the compound to 7, it will remain 6. The Venir talisman on lv 25 gives ALL stats (str int dex wit con me) +6. Combine Venir 25 & Belt +7 (which are hard as hell to obtain) and you will gain a +10 on all basic stats. Those 2 items will get you very close to trigger the stat bonus (for example, 50 CON will trigger +200 p.def bonus, 45 MEN will trigger +200 m.def). So, long story short: full geared/p2w top player on lv 85 can most likely trigger all bonuses togheter with 70+ STR, 50+ DEX, 50+ DEX and 45+ MEN. I didn't made a calculation specifically but i'm almost sure of it. So, this was quite a huge WALL of text about daggers. Well, is it worth to play? Yes and No. I still play dagger since this is my main since ever (privates, interlude/h5 retail, awakening, classic and essence) and, despite all the nerfs you can see listed here, i still love it. I got my hopes on the Korean rework tho as playin dagger here is basically a f1-f2 smash, hopefully you can burst through enemy potions. Essence is a game that is 99% based on p2w equipment and 1% on levels (as a full p2w 82 SPS can hit me 4500 on critical while an SPS 85 on a "normal" p2w equipment crits me for 3000). There are classes that we can't really stand if we're on a "same-status" (same gear and levels) as we got so many nerfs that we are forced to just stand still w/o any chance to remove enemy target or land more than 1 backstab per pvp. If you have anything else to ask, feel free to comment below. And in case some fanboy is wondering, if he'll ever read the guide: if you p2w you can even kill the enemy by clicking all skills with mouse. xd xd.
Thank you for your guide xHaseo, you truly are the only dagger source on here. I have a ton of questions for you and I really hope you can answer them all but let me first explain. I play on red server and it's a pk festival all day long. I always played as a tank and I've never had any problem at all pvping even 1 vs 3 but on red is a constant gank 5vs1 if not 40 vs 1 The only ones able to fight back a little bit before bsoeing are the daggers but it's a mess so lets go with the questions hoping innova will open a service to transfer from red server to blue 1] Why all the daggers on red are running around with a shield instead of wearing a sigil? I've never seen you wearing a shield [mainly DC shield]. It's just a mess on red server or what? 2] Which a grade armor should I go for before jumping to the lightning set I've seen you have in your inventory both the nightmare and mj light. Can you describe the advantages of both sets for a dagger 3] I understand you went for a bit more of con but can you be more specific? +20 con +10 men? ok con - dex but men - ? 4] Is the baium talisman really a must for a top end game content dagger? 5] Assuming you are running around with a brooch lvl 4 which jewels do you wear pve and pvp wise? I'm sure I have a ton of more questions simply because the dagger isn't a tank and it's completely new to me Thanks for your time.
1) Daggers probably run with a shield due to the bonus. Giving you "critical rate received -X%" allows you to get less critical from ur nemesi: mages. 2) I used to run with both before getting the lightning for a simple reason: MJ is 50% stun resistance against melee and NM is super usefull against supports. As i said earlier, mages are you nemesi with dmg going totall braindead (SEs hitting me 1000 normal, then crit 2500-3000 but somehow can get up to 5k, for no reason. Almost feels like mages got chance to triple-crit) and so are supports. With SE, BP and EE landing both root and sleep with 100% rate even if you have over 50-60% resistance, the NM set helps you a lot, making the debuffs landing lot less. 3) So, STR build is good if you wanna go full dmg, but is not suitable for players that are not deep P2W as you'll end up with 6000 HPs, making you a useless glass cannon. Even if you can kill a target with, let's say, 3-4 hits, if that target touches you you're dead. And sadly daggers are so nerfed that we have no CC, forcing us to go head-on against targets. So to survive more, after i tried the 70 STR build (and tbh, it was worthless to me) i decided to build defensive. My current dyes are +8 CON -2STR/DEX (cause i couldn't find all -DEX) and +4 MEN -4 INT. I can't trigger the MEN bonus cause i don't have an OEd venir, but i have, right now, 52 CON. 11.600 HPs w/o scrolls and +200 p.def coming from CON's trigger. 4) Baium talisman is a "not-so-must" but is totally worth as last item. Skill power and resist to weapon are both good add to the set but for sure, as dagger, it's not the first thing i'd aim for. Baium lv 3 is (obviously) the strongest jewel you can get, AQ comes right after even if it's nerfed (AQ 1 and AQ 2 are useless so you need it lv 3 only) and gives 10% and not 15% anymore. After that, baium talisman. Baium talisman boosts a boosted char, if you're going around A set (A set = Non-pvp set, so tallum, mj, nm or dc) and B grade weapon, baium talisman is worthless. 5) I got brooch lv 4 and currently the 2 brooches I DON'T USE are Moonstone (XP) and Amber (dmg on HP). When i had the lv 3 Brooch i was switching Opal and Moonstone but at some point i realized that who cares about 4-6% XP? I'd rather not waste my time to switch for that. Amber is useless right now, as the best dmg it lands on lv 5 is like...3k? and even tho is not that bad, is not so necessary. It misses A LOT and the "interrupt skill casting" is not working. If you got a brooch lv 5, then you can even get an Amber, still extra dmg, otherwise is srsly not worth a slot. Feel free to ask as many questions as you want, don't worry. To give you a quick reason behind your "dagger isn't a tank and it's completely new to me", as you could read above, daggers here are over-nerfed. People w/o brain on server thinks daggers are OP cause they have as example top donators with top top top gear and, ofc, with the gear those guys had you could be OP even by hitting with bare hands. Facts are still there tho: we lost all our CC, making us really nerfed on a head on fight. Our top damage comes from behind with Focus death boosting dmg by 90%. If you have focus death and front-stab you lose 30% dmg. But sadly you cannot move behind enemy cause trick and switch are not working...shadow step is not stunning or removing target and bluff land rate is low as hell, i barely even use it as 99% of time the enemy resist. Best chance is to side-step and try to land an old-style glitched backstab but it's srsly hard to land it w/o cancel target. So in order to avoid to get killed too fast, people build daggers with shield to resist criticals and with CON to increase HP and p.def. In the end the dmg is 100% on P2W items & AQ/Baium lv 3.
Thank you very much xHaseo. Due to this pk thing I didn't play for like 2 months now and I'm just returned back Has Innova already implemented the new boots and helmets, like it was for the gloves of silence, or they will come up with the new patch on august 2020? To me the amber it's worth the deal, pvp wise, but the problem is .. there are too many high level characters full stacked which change owners in a matter of a single week so why bother to do + 3k damage?
Yeah both items are available into game, more or less. We had an event where you could get'em from boxes and sometimes you can still get the "Special armor coupon A-grade", that allows you to get the "sealed" version. The owners of a char doesn't change the amber utility, the problem with it is that the rate of missing is reaaally high. Like 80% of the times it'll result in a miss, where on lower levels you can land it easly. Problem is, at least for me, that those on who i can land those 3k dmg easly are even the ones that i usually hit for 5k+ so...If you got the brooch lv 5 and really got a slot to spare, you can even get it. Let's not forget Koreans update has increased the levels of the gems up to 7 with most of them gaining a brand new effect and, if i'm not wrong, Amber will reduce enemy defense, so it'll be a lil more usefull to use.
Another set of dumb questions for the dagger master xHaseo 1] runes ok 1st rune yul ok 3rd rune lilith which rune do you suggest as a second one ? othell for more crit rate or siegel for more con or what? 2] assuming you don't have the new helmet and boots [i don't] which ones are you using right now? nm light ? There will be more questions, trust me. Thank you in advance.
OMG i totally lost this reply, i will update the topic with new """""""""rework""""""""". Koreans are srsly mongoloids. So essence is confirmed to be a braindead version of L2 where all it matters is how much you spent for epics and L2Store, nothing else. Runes you need Othell first with Blow land rate. After that it's up to you. Yul for more crt dmg, sigel for p.def or HP or tyrr for atk spd. I got yul since i used to setup my dagger on crt dmg and stun, but we have no stun here. Helmet tallum robe for m.def against nukers and boots MJ heavy for atk spd bonus.
Well, believe me or not, you saved my ingame experience on l2 essence xhaseo it isn't funny, at all, to be a tank and to be 40 ganked all day long Much appreciated.
Hi, I have read your guide, and it's been long time since I last saw you online. Are yo u taking vacations? Coz I want see more videos on youtube aswell
Hiho, yeah sorry for the long delay but between work and summer is a bit hard to keep up. Also, sadly, Blue server is kinda unstable right now. Blue side is made of ******* so they barely fight, also we kicked our old ally (vietnams) cause they were basically parasites and garbage that couldn't follow rules, like untamed dogs or uneducated kids, pick the one you prefer. But as soon as i'll get time i'll work on 2 new videos, one is a PVP video, the other one is going to be named "The Chicken War" and will be a short montage of VN bsoeing, porting away or fighting 2+ vs 1. Just because ToanNang told me on chat "Vietnams don't chat, they fight", i'd like to show how VN illegal players fight.
what about the abilities on dagger?and what about the armor mj hv boots and tallum helm rode?the other parts are mj light?
