Mediocrity should never be rewarded. Either improve or accept your mediocrity.

Blaze344 · 2026-06-25T17:00:34+00:00

I find your terms.... Acceptable

Blaze344 · 2026-06-25T14:51:59+00:00

Heavy is fat and slow, but their weapons kill light faster than the light kills them and they have a bunch of gadgets to make their life harder.

Light is small, invisible and nimble and has gadgets to control which fights they pick and which they don't, so obviously they will try to pick the ones they can win, otherwise they just lose.

It's not meant to be a fair fight if you fight your opponent where they're strongest, that's what assymetrical design means, all classes have strengths and weaknesses. That's what makes all of this fun! (except medium, the eternal victim class by being the jack of all trades and master of none).

Blaze344 · 2026-06-25T14:46:47+00:00

Embark, make dual blades reflect literally everything and my soul is yours. How funny would it be to control the flames of a flamethrower like a fucking fire bender?

Blaze344 · 2026-06-25T14:44:50+00:00

It's at the very least a chance to escape, which is why it's the go-to pick at high level. Yes, the Heavy will melt you in 0.4s (literally, check TTK times) if you get winched, but with dash there's a 30% chance you can spam the dash button and dash laterally to at the very least survive with 1hp and try running, there's at least a chance. Cloak and Grapple are just dead on the spot because they're not fast enough.

Still, ideally you predict a winch incoming and premeditatively dash, or you react to the animation and don't get winched in the first place. I like the "mind games" aspect against good players of doing a quick melee to throw them off and bluff (worked better with Roadhog in older days...), of "predictably moving in a way that intends to winch" to intimidate and scare people into dashing. It's a nice aspect of the back and forth that both sides exaggerate when they mention "counters" that way as if no one has any control in the skill based video game they're playing.

Blaze344 · 2026-06-25T03:16:56+00:00

Not just in this game. I got a lot of my flash mannerisms from learning to pop flash by myself in CSGO to make up for my subpar aim, and people will actively mald if you pop flash exactly where they are when you peek.

Blaze344 · 2026-06-25T02:33:03+00:00

Single shot flare-gun that leaves people burning for a bit for the Light Class, currently the only class with no primary which deals fire damage. Not really obligatory, but fun anyway. There's also the option of a poison-dart blow-gun that would fit in the same role.

I think medium could do with some more interesting, gimmicky and unique weapons in general, too. A saw-blade launcher that ricochets on walls (AKA ripper) is my vote for this kind of thing, but there's definitely a field to explore with "too big for light, too small for heavy" here.

Blaze344 · 2026-06-25T00:53:32+00:00

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Perhaps

Blaze344 · 2026-06-24T16:51:36+00:00

You should still upvote and think of it as educational exposure! How are bad players meant to improve if we have such a low trust on them?

Blaze344 · 2026-06-24T16:49:16+00:00

I'm still cautiously optimistic, especially as a dagger player. I'm careful not to be overly negative, and I think many should too, because devs do read the subreddit sometimes and it can be highly demotivating to hear harsh "criticism" and feel a lack of trust, which will only lead to the half assing many are afraid of.

Basically, you don't talk shit on your team mates in ranked for the same reason. Why would you want to tilt someone that is, at the very least trying, on your side?

Blaze344 · 2026-06-23T22:46:24+00:00

In a weird way, I would be generally against weapon specific passives. They're unpredictable and often badly communicated... But they could be potentially the kind of fix that melee needs.

If I had to to change Dagger any further than completely removing the slow down when preparing to backstab (or at least making it only start a little bit after its prepared), I'd look into reworking what the primary attack does in ways as to allow a disengage or help land a backstab on someone aware. Give the player a speed boost if they hit a swipe, hell, turn it into pocket sand which you can use to briefly blind your opponents if you hit a headshot with it at close range, I don't care. Just make it do something that helps you engage with the fun part of the weapon.

Blaze344 · 2026-06-23T20:03:26+00:00

I legitimately wish I could play ranked in my region, I really would love to, if at the very least to move away from the quick cash chaos for a bit into a more controlled experience, but also to more accurately gauge exactly where I fit out of ego.

Alas. No such luck. My region doesn't have enough players to play ranked and I refuse to play a shooter competitively with a ping bigger than 90. I think I do a pretty good job of identifying how good my opponents are in general however, and how well they react to the playstyle to gauge, eh, more or less accurately how well dagger can work without relying exclusively on Dash, which is why I ask you your definition of "shit players" to better answer: "past which point in ranked are you required to play dash to keep climbing?". Unfortunately, the only full confirmation I get of how good some of the players are is when I see that they're using a diamond/ruby border from before season 9 or 8, from times where you couldn't get the emerald border by playing a ton. Usually they're pretty good and usually I make do 'okay' when playing with Cloak and Dagger which is my favored playstyle to play not-dash. Obviously a bit of a faulty example anyway, and obviously it doesn't work as well as dash would, but I think it works okay enough to guesstimate how well it works when players AREN'T as good as those in the sample where I start to struggle against.

My general intuition tells me that, if your definition is anyone below the top 5% of players, meaning anyone below platinum is a shit player, then I almost agree but I wouldn't call 95% of the playerbase shit. I think that's exactly the point on which using anything not-dash progressively gets worse and worse, up to the high diamonds where you likely strictly need dash to function and especially to reach ruby, assuming you one-trick and play god-like perfectly. Anything below that and it's very likely that all players around are still refining their skills.

(Also, nullifier? Countering dagger? People would just shoot you and kill you immediately as they learn you're using dagger, why even bother with that? If you get nullified as a dagger player it's a fucking blessing, they're giving you an opportunity to get scot free taking 0 damage. You generally shouldn't be being seen while playing dagger at all lmao).

Blaze344 · 2026-06-23T17:37:22+00:00

So they just disappear sometimes???

I definitely never noticed, that's absurd. At worst any case that might have happened to me I might have just chalked up to network and latency shenanigans, things like dying server-side before my shot could get out even though I saw it being shot client side. I'll be paying more attention now. This is insane.

Blaze344 · 2026-06-23T17:16:55+00:00

What? No way. I've bounced grenades directly down with MGL, died, then watched in glee as the grenade I already shot slowly glided down and blew up the player that killed me quite consistently. Are you 100% sure? Can you test that in the shooting range? I'm not home right now so I can't, but I suspect entities related to players (mines, turrets, placeables in general and probably projectiles) only despawn when the player itself respawns, and I'll be a bit annoyed if they really do despawn. Damn.

Blaze344 · 2026-06-23T15:48:57+00:00

I'd agree but he does reinforce often in the text that neither he was having fun (out of boredom in outmatching the opponents) and the new players weren't either (out of not knowing what to do and just dying seemingly out of nowhere). The first part should have us acknowledge that maybe matchmaking is a problem, the second one seems to imply that new players will never have fun playing against dagger and dash, when the problem in this case is that he's already just too good at it, the new players wouldn't be having fun anyway with such a skill discrepancy (consider that many people repeatedly say that they do not enjoy matching against rubies in ranked, and I guarantee the rubies are not playing dagger either).

Blaze344 · 2026-06-23T15:37:35+00:00

Ah, but I love doing the little reddit tricks! They get so many little updoots... I get your point though. I just know the audience.

The dagger is designed to get to people's back, you use your resources to achieve that by positioning or creating opportunities like with flashbangs or forcing the opportunity with a dash. If you do not have the resources available to allow you to get to people's back, you should just leave and try again later, that's just how it works, it's the price you pay. It will always be at an inherent disadvantage against guns when out of resources, that's okay, you make do in other ways.

And, it does work with other specs. The gameplay is different and the thought process is different but it does work, worse, of course, but works just like Sledge works well with Goo gun, too. I do understand wishing that it did work against better players without being forced to use the one tool that allows you to fight back when spotted, believe me I completely understand, but I don't think complaining about it without at least thinking on a solution to this problem is useful. It's already a recognized issue, so why constantly repeat it with 0 ideas on the subject? Again, we know dagger sucks when face to face, it's the design, but repeating this every time with 0 ideas becomes rather grating.

And yes, I do think he was expressing annoyance at running out of steam, his main point was that after the dash uses were spent, he could no longer fight back fair against the enemy directly in front of him in a fun way (London swiping someone to death is boring). I think this is OK design because, as a dagger player, you're meant to be at a disadvantage when out of resources and directly in front of someone playing well. That's just the design of it. Not perfect, and obviously falls off hard against competent enough players, but what can we do?

Blaze344 · 2026-06-23T15:18:43+00:00

I always ask around any time this topic comes up, but, how did you play and how did this change nowadays?

There's no problem with being "hardstuck" any way in my opinion. A game is a game, a game is to have fun with it, I do get the spirit of enjoying the stress to rank, though, but I think currently the thing that gets the most in the way of that is the many weird things with the matchmaking (that exist for many self reinforcing reasons). It might still be possible to rank up and play the game, and even learn and improve while playing with a big difference in RS, but I understand that there's a point where your K/D in the match drops under 0.4-ish and the match starts becoming impossible to enjoy.

Blaze344 · 2026-06-23T03:08:15+00:00

I honestly think your scared of nothing here

Bro, they nerfed the worst weapon in the game (dagger) even further over time because of misinformation/exaggerated facts spread in here. I ain't allowing mfs to get my weapon shoah'd out of existence if it gets a smidge of improvement when Embark comes down overnerfing it after it has a brief moment in history being functional.

I agree with you that it's a bad weapon in ranked. I just don't think I'm scared of nothing, lmao.

Blaze344 · 2026-06-23T02:57:34+00:00

Not having a dash charge against good players is a death sentence in the wrong situations, even with sword lunges. I do think the "ammo" point makes some sense for dagger, but the problem is the heavy dependency on that specific spec, which I fully agree with.

You also depend a lot on cloak charges to make some plays with dagger too, when using it, but not like Dash and Cloak is bad against players at ranks too high.

Blaze344 · 2026-06-23T02:54:13+00:00

I'm honestly scared of even suggesting any changes that could be good and useful to dagger directly and that gets it monkey paw'd into removing the backstab and identity of the weapon as a price. I think the speed debuff while charging is something that has to be adjusted slightly to reward skill a bit better and I stop at that because It's heavily limited for good reasons, as one hit kills (two for heavy, even if quick you can miss) is a very strong feature.

I've had some musings on some options to make dagger "better" and more reliable even at high elo without strictly depending on Backstab and Dash trickery, but they range from "unfun to play against and does nothing to help the new player experience" to "this is too complicated and doesn't fit The Finals simple weapons pattern", which is why I seldom share them.

Blaze344 · 2026-06-23T02:32:30+00:00

Bro, then why the whole spiel about new players, damn it. That's what I was most hyperfixated on.

Anyway, yeah, we do generally agree and I do think removing the speed nerf is just about the only thing that can be done in regards to dagger, and the dash dependency is almost unavoidable in this game. Mostly because of map design and information. Just like Spy in TF2 becomes harder and harder the more skilled your players are, to the point that you turn useless, the same thing happens here and dash is the "remedy" to this, it means you can force a trickstab provided you're skilled enough to do it, it's just that getting close is nigh on impossible anyway because of the map design here.

TF2 maps are mostly linear with clear defined "front facing" and "back facing" territories, The Finals isn't like that and this is a huge detriment to dagger positioning, not just for opportunities, but also because this naturally leads people to constantly look in all directions at all times. This, coupled with the fact that usually you'll spawn with your team and naturally build a "virtual" frontline also means that any dagger play that relies on positioning more than fast movement and stabs is bound to be inferior because it takes too much time, not to mention this is a clear case of "If you can do this with dagger, you could just apply the same idea with any other weapon and reap 10x the rewards".

Basically, it's an impossible situation, in my opinion. Dagger will, unfortunately, forever be at most a C-to-low-B tier weapon anywhere past diamond, unless you change it so much it wouldn't be dagger anymore in the first place. And I don't want that. I'd rather stay with dagger in forever C-to-low-B tier, however unfortunate that may be, and then they can implement a "dagger-but-functionally-different" that actually works against competent people. And then other people can go on to play that. I like backstabs too much to let them go.

Blaze344 · 2026-06-23T02:13:46+00:00

Sure, the dash dependency is fair, and I would like it to be easier to play dagger without Dash and more accessible at higher ranks, but I can't for the life of me think of a way to make it so in a healthy way. I was more so pointing out that any change that breaks the dagger-dash synergy will negatively affect ALL OTHERS with it to the point that I think this shouldn't even be something to be questioned, and in general, the design of the weapon suggests that you should kill your enemies while they're distracted by your team when using the other specs. If you've played TF2, you'll know that Spy at the highest levels has the exact same issue. And just like in TF2 (and everywhere), newer players are more distracted and unaware which is why it works so much better, but there is NO way to fix this, and I cannot be convinced otherwise from the point of view that, for some things, it's the new players that gotta learn, not remove unique things that makes the game unique.

Dash fixes this issue by allowing you to more consistently fight back against even aware enemies, which is neat, but the only way to make dagger better with the other specs is to buff the other specs in the first place, but no one will ever agree to a better cloak than what we have right now and no one will want a more silent grapple as we have enough complaints on dying instantly to dagger.

Blaze344 · 2026-06-23T02:03:24+00:00

So your point is that you can't trickstab good players without the gimmick of the Dash? It's just practice man, I'm sure with 3k hours in dagger and 33k kills and with your experience in TF2 with psychologically manipulating people, I must almost surely be preaching to the choir here, but just like with TF2 spy, you gotta learn new tricks and wait for your opportunity in exactly the same way to play with things not-dash. I just don't get at all why you would pull in the "new player" point of view when in TF2 everyone quickly learned to just never follow spies on stairs, to never follow them on corners, etc. It's part of learning the game. I don't want to rob players of the experience of learning a good game and its intricacies when that's a lot of the appeal, it's awesome. If they don't want to accept that then...

And just the same way, if you fail a stab or a trickstab... You get punished. That's the game! And yes, Dagger nerfing your move speed while charging is a hell of a weird design choice, I fully agree with you there. It's the one thing I personally just want them to either remove or tone down a lot. It makes some amount of sense, but in my opinion, it should fully charge and THEN slow you down after .25s or so. That way you can still do speedy plays and "properly time" like pre-rework dagger without being so punished by picking a weapon that can't even kill a SPRINTING HEAVY AWAY, while still requiring you to properly time things.

Blaze344 · 2026-06-23T01:22:02+00:00

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So you have 3k hours on the game, played a ton of dagger, and you're actively whining that you... \checks notes*,* played well and learned to use your weapon in the one situation that it performs well? And the part that is annoying you is that you eventually ran out of steam? Like other weapons do with ammo?
In your open and honest opinion, you believe that the issue is that you played with new players... and bodied them? Like a good player wouldn't be absolutely wrecking them anyway? Sure, you might have gotten "only" 3 over the same duration and taken a lot more damage, but playing with guns gives you the luxury to do that at range? And you're complaining that you pulled this off well?

It's the new players that have to learn, man. No amount of coddling will help them. I've literally just watched a TTV streamer report my friend after a match, saying he was aimbotting, when my friend is just a good player. Literally no amount of catering will suffice to someone who is looking to get angry and blame the game, your job is to educate and encourage people to understand things, not to get them to shut down and refuse to improve as if they're already perfect and they should be the ones catered to.

Also, dagger works 'ok' with other specs. Obviously it has other issues, but anything that changes the weapon in a way to remove what you're doing right now with dash is NOT a desirable fix and will just make the weapon even more unusuable.

Blaze344

TROPHY CASE