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tskitz

Can some people maybe list the pros and cons of dagger explorers and knuckle knights and maybe even help me choose which to use? D:
Please also post which you, yourself would pick.

THANKS IN ADVANCE!

Arri

I'd pick a dagger explorer.

They have damage, evasion, insane crits thanks to their luck, and fun skills.

I was a knuckle knight up to 18, but then switched to 1h sword.

Knuckle Knight has low damage, lower defense, and lag hurts them much more than sword/mace knights.


If you wanted to be a guardian, most people are recommending you go with 1h sword/mace / shield to 80, then reskill

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Cereal&Milk

The gameplay with Knuckle Knights feels pretty visceral after you get your 2nd skill (4th, if you're a dual-skill tree user). As Arri said, though, lag hurts like a *****.

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Kashis

I have them both and I have to say I like them both but it was a lot easier solo and do quests on my knuckle knight than my dagger traveler but higher up my dagger traveler has a greater damage potential.

My knuck knight's High HP and Stamina stat made it so that take a decent number of hits while handling a number of enemies. I went with beams and kicks for skills and I'd have to say those skills attack really fast. Both sets can be chained together better than a dagger traveler's close and ranged skills. You can keep enemies, even 4 or 5 of them, off balance with an onslaught of attacks. Their accuracy seems to be better than dagger explorers IMO as well.

The main problem though is that even though they can take a hit due to their high HP, their low damage (due to a low Str Stat and lack of criticals compared to a dagger explorer) makes it so that you can burn through all your skills and the enemies can still be alive. Normally that wouldn't be problematic but because of Knight's horrible max SP, it's hard to keep enough SP to be able to unleash a full set of skills back to back due to pot cooldown times and recovery over time.

My dagger traveler has some excellent evasion and criticals like crazy (there's even a critical mastery skill that adds addtional damage when you crit that is "absolute damage" which is not measured against an enemy's defense value. That skill alone maxed combined with Masquerade, which can hit up to four times, gives a possibility of doing 600 extra points of damage if you are lucky. (dagger mastery (expert) adds 15 damage per level, 10 levels max = 150 additional damage per critical). It's not uncommon to see enemies fall quickly because of critical attacks.


As you can see in the picture, when I critically hit, there are two values: The faded values look to be 189 and 90 and the more visible ones appear to be 196 and 90. Notice how the 90 is constant every time i critical, no matter what I critical on, which is what leads me to believe that is how dagger mastery (expert) works. Mine is at level 6 currently so going by the description of the skill and the damage, I think that's how it works lol. Just had to explain that just in case people were wondering where all the numbers were comming from.

However, due to a traveler's low HP value, handling mobs greater than 2 can prove difficult since dagger traveler's lack the nessescary HP to tank. Even with the high evasion and a shield, you will still get hit (more so with the close range skills than the ranged) and criticals, though frequent, are not consistant which isn't enough to keep monsters off of you at times. Combine that with the statistical missing, I've gone through monsters with two skills because of criticals and at other times have had to use 4 and they still live. It's a hit or miss situation, offensively and defensively, when it comes to them.


Knuckle skills (kicks and beams) like I said before are very quick and can be chained very easily compared to dagger skills. The delay between using skills from different trees for knucks is very small which allows a player to use Flame Kick + Sonic Boom almost as if they were from the same skill tree and vice versa. Because of the ending poses for the short range dagger skills, there is a larger delay between skills of the same tree (dancing dagger + Illusion dagger) even larger one when going from a short to long range skill (vice versa is shorter though) such as dancing dagger and sonic dagger.

Another small thing to note, for the dagger close range skills you need to be a certian distance from your target to get the full effect of the skill. I've physically missed monsters because they have moved too close to me and I fly past slashing wildly. That's more of a player's skill issue rather than a statistical one though and can easily be fixed with practice.

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Beatrix23

1. seeing that picture, you took both throwing and melee skills . Thats a big mistake, just a waste of skill points. I recommend you just stick to 1 skill tree.

2. Since im a lv54 throwing dagger. I can only speak to that skill tree. Lets just say I can spam my 3 skills almost endlessly. The damage is huge(1k crits), but you can only hit 2-3 monster at the same time. Only the 3th throwing dagger skill will hit 3. I can solo Canine Gods 2-3 at the same time with no problems. so this build is very viable. Only get the dagger masteries if you go melee. If you go throwing stick with the misc. skill tree with critical increase skills.

Cereal&Milk

He took them in order to level faster. No doubt he's going to Skill Reset in order to take one tree.

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Beatrix23

Level faster? He could have used those 9 skill points for tiger claw, +30% crit damage. Now that does help. 3 attack skills is all you need till 60. Then you get your 4th skill. Your 4th attack skill costs 2 skill points btw. So 6 total. You gonne suggest taking both also at 60? Whatever works for you I suppose. But I rather play smart.

Elegance

I guess I see your point..but I can't fit into that play style. >_<
I practically "need" both trees in order to function with the way I fight. Two skills until twenty, four skills until forty, T2 and T3 skills until 60. I haven't gotten past that though, It's a little lacking into the later Miscs..but I'm having fun.

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Kashis

To C&M: Nah I plan on keeping both sets of skills and that is because my build is based on offense only.

To Beatrix: You don't get tiger claw until level 50 though. So up until that point you are stuck with just three attacks.

I've calculated what it would take to get Tiger Claw maxed and go down both sets of skills. you have to sacrifice one of the level 4 tier skills for daggers to max out Tiger Claw.


Masteries
Dagger mastery (novice) - 5
Dagger mastery (Skilled) - 10
Dagger mastery (Expert) 10
Total = 25

Short Range
Dancing Dagger - 3
Illusion Dagger - 3
Masquerade - 3
Dark dagger - 6
Total = 15

Long Range
Sonic Dagger -3
Assassin Dagger -3
Dagger Rains - 3
Bombing Dagger - 6
Total = 15

Total SP used for Attack Skills = 55

This leaves you with 25 SP (you get an additional skill point I think from a iris point otherwise you'd have 79 SP from 1-80. At this point in time I don't know if you get any others.)

Misc. (working toward Tiger Claw)
Good luck - 5 (that's all that's needed to get to evasion
Evasion -10
Escape - 1
Eyes of Falcon - 5
Tiger Claw -10

Total SP used for misc. skills = 31


Total max SP need to get all dagger attack skills and get Tiger Claw maxed is 86 SP. As we all know, you change jobs at 80 so you'll be short 6 SP (leaving Tiger Claw at 4). So you cannot get all of the attack skills and get Tiger Claw Max

End result is that you have to sacrifice something and that is simple. You don't get either Dark Dagger or Bombing Dagger. If you do that you free up 6 SP which will allow you to get Tiger Claw maxed.

Now most people may be thinking, well why go through both sets of attack skills just to end up one short?
1)You were going to end up with none of the other tree's skills anyway if you went with one skill tree, so you having to decide on which final skill to get isn't all that different.
2) It's a lot easier to level from 1 to 40 with four skills and not two.
3) You'll have the advantage of playing close and long range which works to your advantage by utilizing hit and run tactics and playing keep away with monsters.
4)The alternative to having seven attack skills with all your dagger masteries maxed is 4 skills with less max potential damage and only 2 skills from level 1-40.
5) There will be 15 SP left over (I do not see why anyone would not get all of the masteries if they are going for damage) to go into the other misc skills if you stick with one skill tree. What skills do you get then? Your only choices are mean attack and coward stab which both are related to attacks from behind which is semi helpful if you are fighting with someone and putting enemies in a pincer attack, the item drop rate/ely increasing passive and buffs which is not needed to make money but again helpful, and unlock which can get you some extra items, but you cannot master them all. I didn't plan on getting those skills anyway so I don't see why I should limit myself to only 4 attack skills at the end of my traveler days.

I'm going to make another note of something you guys are missing. Beatrix stated to only get the dagger masteries if you go melee right? I'm going to explain what you are missing out on if you do not get dagger mastery(expert) and it's effect on the close range and long range skills.

Dagger mastery (expert) works like this: No matter what you attack with be it a plain attack, hard attack, or attack skill, when it's maxed you will do 150 every time you critical + what ever damage the attack/skill normally does. That doesn't sound like a lot huh? Well let's dive deeper into that.

Since dagger mastery (expert) when maxed adds 150 points of absolute damage per critical, skills that hit multiple times have a greater damage potential. Masquerade hits four times (once for the low cut then three times in the air) so you have a chance of critically hitting four times. Now based on the damage that you see in the pic it's fair to say that i can at least hit on average 190 points when I critical and since my current expert mastery is set at 6, I get 90 additional damage, per critical.

Mind you people this is all potential damage assuming on all attacks hit and you critical 4 times. I'm aware that you can miss and/or not critical when you attack.

So, if one were to hit all four times with criticals, that would look like this:

using my average damage on a single target with dagger mastery at LV 6.
(190 x 4) + 90 x 4
760 + 90 x 4
760 + 360
Total 1120

Now keep in mind people, I'm level 40 so masquerade is at level 1 and my mastery is only 6 (90 additional absolute damage per critical). If mastery was at 10 (150 Absolute damage per critical hit would look like this:

using my average damage on a single target with dagger mastery at level 10
(190 x 4) + 150 x 4
760 + 150 x 4
760 + 600
Total 1360

Now compared to the ranged skill, Dagger Rains (same tier as masquerade) which hits only once, you are only going to get the critical bonus once per attack (150 absolute damage). Even so, if you were to get all four attack skills with dagger mastery (expert) maxed, you'd still get an additional 600 points of damage if you critical with all four skills. That may not be as helpful to long range skills which hit only once on enemies, as to short range which hit multiple times but it's still more damage.

Beatrix, with the build you suggested you do not have the same damage capabilities as I do because you are lacking the short range skills plus mastery (expert). Long range skills tend to do more base damage but because they only attack once unlike the short range skills you don't get the same amount of critical damage. From the example above that should be clear considering you keep saying how you can do 1k damage with crits at 54 while me at level 40 I can do 1120 damage max with masquerade. I do not have the same gear nor skill levels as you do so that should also be taken into consideration when comparing damage. I'll do more than you with Masquerade at your level than you will with Dagger Rains.

So it's on you guys to decide on what you want to do. I've looked at it like this: I want offense, I do not care about the ely/item drop buffs, unlock, or back attack damage so I'd be better off getting an extra set of skills to help me level.

Edit: Btw I'll probably be going with Dark Dagger and drop Bombing Dagger for my final skill.

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Beatrix23

Ughh..where to begin. You say your offense only, but still lack so much damage. I out DPS you every day of the week. Let me tell you my build. BTW, its not really mine a lv.161(jap server) told me this is the fastest dagger build to reach 80. Anyways, here it is.

Misc. skills.
10 good luck - +30% luck. This is a must. Luck is what makes you crit so much.
10 Evasion - combine this with physical evasion boots and shield. And watch everything miss you ALOT.
1 Escape - Mkaes you run faster. Even more evasion. Good for saving your life.
5 Eyes of the falcon - +5% crit= same affect as 75 luck
10 Tiger claw - +30% crit damage.
10 Mean attack =20% back attack damage+ behemoth adventure title= +30%
1 coward stab = Now you see the full power of back attack.

Dagger Tree.

5 - dagger mastery(novice)
3 - sonic dagger
3 - assassin dagger
3 - dagger rain
3 - bombing dagger

The skilled and expert masteries are pretty much useless for this build, unless you go melee attack tree. Then the masteries do help much more.
The throwing skills have the lowest cooldown. Even with 3 you can already spam endlessly. So no worrys about attack power. also you will complete it bewlow 70. So you got some skillpoint you can spend on whatever you like.

About the crit damage. With 1k+ I mean I do 1412 damage crits to be exact, on 2 monsters(white ninjas) the same time(dagger rain). On 1 target this can get higher, im lvl56 now. But I never attack 1 target. You cant and never will do such damage at your lvl. So dont even try to compare numbers.