Guide Ned Reddavis' Guide to Dagger Damage

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Ned_Reddavis

Honorable Pirate
Hello fellow pirates, here is my guide on the best damaging daggers currently available in the game. We'll first discuss all of the skills for daggers, and then look into the damage and damage per second (DPS) of them and find which ones are the best. To start here's an image of the skill tree that I advise for a majority of the daggers using the best damage setup that will be clear later:

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Dagger Attacks
The top four abilities are going to be your main dagger attacks. They lead into combos, with the final attacks dealing the most damage. For this reason it is most important to have points in the later attacks, but as many skill points as possible should be put into the attacks, since these are the main source of damage.

Throwing Knives
Ignoring the throw dirt ability, which won't help our damage at all, there are four throwing knives that can affect our damage.When comparing use times, cooldowns, and damage it is clear that the last two, sidewinder and viper's nest, are the only ones one should really be using, even if a dagger has bonuses in asp or adder.

Dagger Passives
The Blade Instinct passive increases the damage of dagger attacks, and hence should always have the most points possible put into it for the most damage. Finesse is trickier because it reduces the cooldown of abilities, indirectly increasing damage. It is not quite clear how many points should be put into finesse in order to do the most damage while not being wasteful and putting unnecessary points in that could be reallocated to a dagger attack. I only tested with five points put into finesse, but in some unique conditions four points may also do the same job without decreasing damage.

Damage Equation
So, to do the most damage we should perform combos as fast as possible and then apply throwing knives and abilities as necessary to improve damage further. Also, combo attacks for non-throwing daggers should be done to an enemies back to gain the bonus 25% damage increase for a backstab attack. The following is the damage equation to find how much damage any dagger attack will do that is found after much testing:

D=1.5*(1+PA)*(1+.005*A)*(B+0.5*P)

  • PA= Passive Ability (blade instinct) damage increase (see chart below)
  • A= Attack value of weapon
  • B= Base attack damage of weapon (as displayed in game)
  • P = Powerful rank
upload_2019-3-2_21-30-34.png


Damage Per Second

DPS is the most important trait of a weapon to see how useful it is in taking down the big bads in the Caribbean. We take the damage that the weapon can do over the time required to make that damage happen. With the case of daggers this becomes tricky to pin down the best DPS for any given weapon as there are many options that can be made and build optimization. For this reason I have listed several different forms of attacking enemies and found the DPS potential of those for the best daggers in the game. So, here is the large chart to look at and then below that we'll analyze what it means.

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DPS Analysis

The far right column displays the best DPS range that the daggers can achieve, and is what will compare daggers in the end. Except for the one red test DPS, it is best to perform a full attack combo before performing whatever ability or throwing knife is off of cooldown. The damage is also done under optimal conditions for what is being found, for the optimal DPS column on the right it uses the skill tree setup shown in the picture at the beginning of the guide. It can be seen that throwing daggers deal less DPS than non-thrown daggers, except for Silver Freeze. Dark Whisper does decent damage, but appears to not be the king, doing about the same damage as other top tier famed daggers, except for Cutthroat's Dagger. The ability on Cutthroat's does an incredible amount of damage relative to it's cooldown timer- more damage than viper's nest and can be used three times as fast, but must be used on an enemy's back. For this reason this dagger has an incredible DPS potential compared to all other daggers. Daggers of all types benefit from the use of throwing knives, and benefit the most in nearly all cases from Viper's Nest over Sidewinder. Likewise if a dagger has an ability it is also important to use as often as possible. So, the best daggers to use seem to be Silver Freeze for thrown and Cutthroat's for non-thrown.

That is about all the information that I acquired and thought would be useful to you pirates. Hopefully this has been helpful in some way and please comment if you have any questions about this information. Ned Reddavis out!
 

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