Is it better to just use daggers for stabbers because of the stab bonus or is grabbing other short blades better?
If you’re just looking for sneak up and stab bonus then dagger for sure, but swapping weapons is only 0.5. Short swords aren’t really worth it but rapiers are.
Since the sneak stab game isn’t reliable you’ll probably mostly be swinging on confused or blinded enemies. Due to the flow of battle, I usually just run a rapier and commence to whacking. If it’s a big baddy that I know has a lot of HP I’ll swap to the dagger for the extra, but otherwise it’s just too much of a hassle to swap back and forth.
Quick blade plus confusing touch is the business here because it hits hard enough that most enemies you can one shot (first hit confuses, second kills) and the double attack has better damage overall. Really though by late game I’m just as likely to be hexing with long blades.
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By the way, you get a stabbing bonus even when not wielding a Short Blade, they (and especially daggers) just get a larger bonus. But I don’t know how good the stabbing bonus is without a Short Blade. Does it ever make sense to use something other than a Short Blade as a stabber?
Outside of some artifacts that are game changers for anyone, I’d say not really. General advice is to have a scimitar (or better) to whack the occasion hex/will resistant high AC target, but most stabber kills are either going to be popcorn or have a status effect applied that makes the bonus worth it. The general damage mitigation of having a confused or blind enemy is still a bonus that can help more general hybrids but usually if I’m going str tabber I want to go heavy on the tab.
Usk/new Dith are options as well but I don’t have any experience there, so I’m not sure how well non-short blades work for them. It might be annoying to build Usk piety and have to swap all the time idk. There’s one Redditor who recently 15 runed a “pure stealth” build with new Dith. Pretty hardcore imo.
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I ran a new Dith stabber and that Shadow Swap thing is fantastic. Nice to have a guaranteed way to stab. But it doesn’t seem to last long. So I stuck with daggers.
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quick blade should be just as good for stabbing as a dagger, but more reliable. You get half as much stabbing bonus, but attack twice as often, so on average you deal the same stabbing damage. At least that’s my interpretation of the mechanics. I don’t know how it works with sleeping enemies.
Also I’ve got a Dith character going currently that uses a lajatang. You still sometimes one-shot sleeping enemies. I wouldn’t be as confident about one-shotting an OOF with the character, but sleep-stabbing is still strong.
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