Assasins and weapons.

As you all know assasin uses dual wilded daggers. Howerver, in the free beta weekend I sort of wondered why they were using that. I know GW is not realistic and all that, but don't you mates think it's strange to fight with two short blades?

I have heard that in some cultures people would fight with a sword in their primary hand, and a dagger in the off hand to block certain attacks. Wouldn't it make more sense if Assasin worked like that?

I think it's a really cool proffesion, but it looked sort of strange for an assasin to go up like that and fighting with two knifes.


Im just asking because im curious.:P I wonder where Anet got the idea to implant this, and or/if dagger/dagger combat has actually been used in history?
Also.. Do you think that daggers are enough? Warriors have both Sword/Axe/Hammer to spec in - Maybe Assasin should have alternatives aswell? like a combat staff or a two handed kartana or throwing stars or a Glaive or a crossbow or something?

Well from what i know, short danggers are very well know to be the weapon of chose by Assassin back when their were such weapons used. Becuase they could be used to be thrown or used in hand to hand combat. If your very moble they can be very effect with them.

Assassins are fairly blatant takes on the popular Western concept of the ninjas, which are typically seen as wielding a pair of short blades, one in either hand. The Assassin's Dagger Mastery line isn't meant to be realistic so much as ninja-y and cool to watch in motion.

As for historical questions, I can't answer those, but I can say that in certain circumstances, such as indoors fighting where, I assume, someone labeled an 'Assassin' is going to do most of their fighting, a shorter blade offers much greater freedom of motion and combat options than a longer one. Using two of them allows one to guard without sacrificing the ability to attack. I agree it ain't the best way to go about hunting the alarmingly large beasts so prevalent in Guild Wars, but then neither are swords and hand axes.

The sword/dagger combination is fairly typical of some fencing styles, which would use a main gauche or similar parrying knife alongside their primary weapon so that they could defend while counterattacking immediately. The disadvantages to such is that a single hand cannot match the swing strength a two-handed weapon of similar make, such as a katana or hand-and-a-half sword, can create. That sort of strength is also difficult for a single dagger to parry aside. One-handed styles such as rapier or longsword sacrifice cutting strength for an independant defense, whether it be in the form of a parrying dagger or a shield.

Anyways, none of that really matters for the purpose of the discussion...as for Assassins having access to other weapons masteries, I figure they do just fine with Dagger. The only thing I figure Anet screwed up weapons-wise was a pretty much total lack of throwing blade type stuff. We have two spells which purport to mime the act of throwing a knife, and one of them stinks. The other is pretty good if used properly, but still - where are our massive shuriken tsunamis, Anet? :-P.

Enough rambling. Hope I helped even just a little bit. If not...well, hope someone else can, man.

A.) Spelled Assassin, don't get uppity, I intend to correct people till they learn to spell it right.
B.) Just saw the movie "V for Vendetta" gained a new found respect for knife combat.

Heh...ye can give up Point A right now, Ken. I've learned in my long years of correcting bad spelling that most people are proud of their bad spelling and just get annoyed when you call them on it :-P.

As for Point B, that is a seriously cool movie, but those were in no way throwing knives. Wonders of movie magic. Still, if Assassin primaries looked as cool with their knives as V did with his, every single GW player in Creation would have one XD.

There have been a lot of times when daggers are used in both hands...If you lower that to short weapons in both hands you open the doors to many many styles that are/were used.

Wow. I need to watch V for Vendetta

One thing people need to really get notice is that "Assassin are NOT duelist." In real life, a dagger should lose to a sword everytime if the two fighters were identical. In real life, missile/projectile>polearm>sword/blade>daggers>barehand. (in case you want to argue about the barehand thing, practically every old barehand fighting style that was developed in a warring country have moves that steal weapon. It just show how much weapon can be a threat.)

Assassin's job is to kill the target and get out asap, or die trying. For the "honorable" type, they will complete their mission at whatever cost.

If an assassin charge through 5 armed guards to get to the target (usually wont happen like that, but just so u get the idea), things doesnt go like the movie with "assassin killing everyone", instead the assassin will have guards' swords thrusted into his/her body and he/she will still go straight for the target.

-Dagger haver faster drawing speed than any other weapon. (if a sword and dagger start a fight in extremely close range, dagger will almost always win)
-Dagger are easier to hide.
-It is easier for short/steady (not necessary light weight) weapon to attack a critical spot.
-People do not simply wear armor outside of war/combat situation.
-Before the invention of "silverware" (fork, knife, spoon), European guest must bring their own knifes to dinner. Talk about inviting a bunch of dangerous guest. (I assume dagger are more overlooked)
-Orgin of "Assassin" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashshashin

-western sword are changed into fencing style after all the armor being so thick, slashing damage cause practically no damage. The slashing style of fencing came back right after the invention of guns, when people wear less armor.
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As to GW's assassin using dual daggers, that is because it is GW. Also, technically they got ALOT of daggers on their suit... so they will just pick a random one and chuck it at you =P

edit: Must be expensive buying all those daggers... Dressed to kill. I will lmao off if they decided that dagger is one of the crafting material for assassin armor.

Yeah I checked wiki for info on ninjas, hashshashin, Assassins, knifes, daggers and so on. And I simply couldnt find NO record of anyone in the history of war/fighting/martial arts using dual wielded daggers.

I mean... it looks strange. Almost funny in GW. For a person with two small fork knifes to go kill a large monster. They are not focused on stealth and can't protect themself. For the sake of illusion you can make the argument that warriors can hide behind a shield or block attacks with an large hammer covering most of their front bodies.

I do not question the use of knife/daggers in history and effiency, but Assassins in GW are not stealthy. They are front out light fighters, but they look funny when they fight. Their animations has allot of cool spin and agility, but it just does not look cool when fighting I think...

I remember that elf from lord of the rings had two daggers, which looked cool. Very dynamic.

From what I could find on wiki there was plenty use of dual wielding throughout history. Some Samurais fought with two Katana swords.
I just think that daggers for Assassins should be noob weapons, and then later they should be able to dual wield swords/axes/maces/flairs/sticks... anything is better than daggers because they are so short.

so why are ArenaNet doing it? I have never played a fantasy RPG that has so few weapon choices like guild wars. Im simply baffled why there is no spears or two handed swords or chain mauls in GW yet.
I remember back in beta way back at the e3 event, Jeff Strain said that there would be many more weapon types in release, but here we are almost a year later and only one new type in a hole seperate game. Since it's a new game shouldnt it at least have as many new weapon types as the old one?

wont assassins look repetitive when EVERYONE is using daggers? Warriors at least had some choices there.
Maybe thats just me who feel that way though...

Guild wars isn't even a year old yet. Give the design team a bit of slack. This isn't exactly your normal MMO. So don't expect everything to be historically correct. After all as you said FANTASY which guild wars is. It's not supposed to be realistic.

Im not mate. Im just saying that I think it looks funny/strange.

I love over the top unrealistic stuff myself... Im just curious of the motives why they went with Dagger/Dagger. It just looks silly to me TBH.

Perhaps Assassins would have been better of as a martial arts proffesion with hand to hand combat and kicks instead...

i saw butterfly knifes in the preview event and Kama's too. those weapons are both used in martial arts like Kung fu and stuff... so it isn't that weird they use it in gw.

The Butterfly knives rock. Can't wait to give my warrior a pair of those.

My take is that since they are duel weapons, if one was a sword, then people could use Warrior swords instead.

It's for game balance.

Now, would I mind if the daggers were bit longer (short swords)? Not at all.

Oh, yeah, and "V for Vendetta" kicked ass.

I think you're speaking of the Ninjaken/Tanto combination depicted in many animes and Martial Arts films. While a one-handed sword and short knife does look "kewl", its interesting to note that the Ninjaken, a straight bladed katana that was not fold-forged, is widely accepted as a toursist item, and in no way historical. It came into mythos during WWII, marketed as a ninja sword for soldiers. Also of note, the tanto was a historically a Samurai weapon, not ninja.

Most "real" ninja weapons of the Fuedal Japan were commonplace and found in many households of the time (ninjas did not/do not like to advertise to the public). Weapons like the rokushkubo or bo staff, the kusari-gama (sickle and chain) or Naginata (Japanese Spear) were easily made, easily lost and easily replaced.

Then there is the Sai, a three-pronged dagger resembling a trident (or 3-pronged "fork"), which was typically used in pairs.

EDIT: Vermilion Okeanos: your synopsis of sword versus knife is inherently flawed. It relies on one facet to make the knife fighter win easily:

The sword fighter has to be dumb enough to let the knife fighter in range without drawing. With equal skill, a sword fighter could use superior reach to cut the knife fighters hands off and remain outside his opponents strike zone (just an example). Though, since I mentioned the dual weild Sai, it should be noted that a skilled Sai weilder could use the tsuba and central prong to "catch" the incoming blade. A simple wrist twist would disarm the sword user and leave him open.

But thats tactics; we were talking historical.

Don't forget that there were about 500000 threads about duel wielding and in my thread ideas for the assassin among the half a dozen posts we did suggesting stuff, most said that assassins SHOULD get duel wielding of some kind.

I have to say Anet did a good job on balancing duel wielding.

You answered it on your own.

All the dagger have to do is make sure the sword user is dumb enough to start a fight in that close range. (an assassin have to be dumb enough to let the sword user know that he is armed) Yes, those are indeed tactic. A sword should beat any dagger in "fair" fight.

Are you denying that sword would lose in an extremely close drawing contest? If no, then there are no flaw in those fact.

In my opinion, you are picking on that for picking. Or simply, you despise me

That's also what you can do with butterfly knives, they have a small extension at the base of the blade used for catching enemies attacks and disarming them, especially polearm users.

And if you want to block a pole arm with a one-handed knife, I've got some farm land in Alaska I've been trying to sell for a bit now...:P

Translation: If you are looking for a grave, I can sell you my farm land in Alaska.

Did I do that right?

I was using it as a segway into explaining one way in which the Sai, or dagger is a useful (ie practical) combat weapon. Though, since you press the point, I will elaborate. You say the knife user need only make sure that the sword user is "dumb enough" to allow the knife user tactial advantage.

How does that make the opposing fighters "equally skilled"? Pressing an attack when your opponent has tactical advantage is in no way "skilled". When they have advantage, you retreat, even if that means running like a "coward". real world, dead is dead, so real world fighters would try to achieve tactial advantage before pressing their own attack.

To your last statement: if you take personal offense to someone offering a counterview to "pen and paper" tactical discussions, I humbly suggest you speak with your Teacher/Sensei about this matter and meditate on his response.

In any case, the point in made; dual weild daggers are both practical in combat and have historical relevence.

That didnt make sense. How can you be offering me a counterview when I already offered both "sword/blade>dagger" and "if a sword and dagger start a fight in extremely close range, dagger will almost always win"? Since what you wrote is what I had already wrote, but you called my logic flawed, then what the hell is it if it is not personal?

Maybe we have some misunderstading, but that is how it was seemed to me.

Also, if your word can hurt anyone simply, you need to find a teacher to teach you how to use words better.

Are you actually attacking my english? I misspelled one word; segway, which should have read segue. Read your own posts and see if you can say the same. My english is not the issue, your ego is.

What the hell? Where in my post did i state that you spelled something wrong. Point it out to me. If the sentence somehow do act as an insult in your spelling, I will indeed apologise. As to the "if your word can hurt anyone simply, you need to find a teacher to teach you how to use words better." That had nothing to do with spelling, it have everything to do with using the "right" word or as in "How to talk". That was my answer to your "if you take personal offense to someone offering a counterview.... I humbly suggest you speak with your Teacher/Sensei..."

However, now that you avoid the previous question. I will ask again.

How are you offering counterview to me when I had wrote both view? I have no problem being a flawed man, but I do not believe how I can be flawed when we agree on the SAME THING! You simply use the word flaw in the worst place.

I believe we have culture issue mixed in between.

I can drop this issue anytime, just tell me. I do not believe we hate each other in any way, but we somehow got on each other's edge without knowing. Perhaps by different culture.

Edit: weird, somehow I can't do copy and paste for some weird reason.

Real combat (as much as you can call real) has been about group tactics for thousands upon thousands of years. Most of the issues above aren't combat but dueling - which is a different beast altogether and generally run by a set of rules. It doesn't resemble anything we see or know about in anyway. The vast vast majority of our ideas come from hollywood - and you should be able to guess how accurate that is going to be. but, since we want fun, not real, I'm pretty much OK with that.

Any of the above ideas loose to a phalanx of soldiers (or whatever your state called your organised group of soldiers) VERY quickly - see the roman conquest of most of the known world and has been around since 1000+ BC. That type of battle is very boring to watch - those little blocks of wood pushed around a tabletop most accurately represents that. You didn't do individual combat, if you did you lost VERY quickly (some peoples tried to do that, but didn't live very long).

As such, it's really hard to guage what would be realistic or not. Realistic would quickly turn into each combat operation forming squads with overlapping shields and short swords or pikes (again, see the Roman tactics used for thousands of years). Since this game doesn't support real life it's all pretty much fair game. If you want more real life type of war/conflict there are quite a few well done real time strategies. If you want realisitc just think how boring it would be to play an individual soldier in one of those groups - that's realistic.

Even the real one-on-one type scenarios are boring - usually days to months of doing nothing with seconds of fighting (even in lands where one-on-one dueling was common average fights lasted < 20 seconds on average - nothing like what we imagine, most of it was trying to get position on your enemy and no edge-to-edge contact of your weapons). Realistic is not fun in a video game. There was talk above of "ninja" - while the description of weapon usage is accurate, real life wasn't hollywood. If you were in enough danger like a game you wouldn't make it past pre-searing, in fact you would be lucky to make it to level two or three.

Better to focus on fun. The dual wielding may look wierd (i'll hold off judgement until this weekend) and thus be non-fun. If you want real, it will be VERY boring (to my knowledge no ultra-realistic game has ever done well, ones that follow "hollywood" real do well though). It's like arguing who would win in real life, Batman or Superman. While that may be interesting to a segment of the population and have some bearing to "which would win in reality" (and OK to argue, I've done so in the past. Just don't think that Batman or Superman are in anyway whatsoever realistic) it's kinda moot point and not really resolvable. Though as long as that is kept in mind - wear it out

Very true strcpy and thanks for bringing the discussion back to one of the matters at hand. I tried Assassin on the first PvP weekend; the only thing I found weird looking was how the cape dangled to one side. I liked the weps and most of the skill animations

Although there are more input I can add onto strcpy's point. I will save myself and the readers from an overly long typing that isn't exactly what this thread was about.

Basically, that is correct. Real world fight is very boring. Anyone watch UFC or something similar? All they do is use ground work to fight, so you end up watching two men hugging each other on the floor. You know why wrestling is fake? To make it exciting so people would watch.

The Roman had gladiators who fight to the death. Perhaps that is the only real enjoyable fight people would enjoy.

If Guild Wars had to be realistic... everyone would be riding a horse and use a bow or polearm. Mongols anyone?

One last question, how do I pronounce strcpy's name?

How can anything in Guild Wars be historically correct when you go out to fight large dog-like creatures with an unhealthy obsession for fire and wield a shield that spontaneously makes you more healthy?

As far as I know there has never been a time when combat with two daggers was really used. Come to think of it, the warriors are using hammers, axes and swords, when actually the polearm was the weapon of choice for most foot soldiers. Nobody complained about that Fighting with two weapons was more or less common in duels though (think of florentine or the Niten Ichiryū technique), but then again duels were not as common as hollywood may want to have us believe.

Leaving historical accuracy aside, I like the attack animations. It's over-the-top and nice to watch, other than the "let's prod him with the axe" attack that makes me cringe

Actually, the Visigoths used warhammers and battleaxes extensively in their campaigns. Swords were often reserved for noblemen in later european wars (to the point where they were illegal for commoners to own), but if you reach back to the Legeonaires of Rome discussed before, the standard weapons loadout was pike, shield and a short bronze sword. Also; again, the Sai, which was used widely in Feudal Japan by Ninjas, whom Assassins are losely modelled after.

But on the axes.../signed. Since so few GW axes have a spike (Tazits and another skin I think) they shoudl drop that animation. The thing to remember about them is that they were 2-handed weapons, same as warhammers.

in fact, that would rock! 2-handed battle axes with damage on par with a warhammer. Maybe some 2-handed swords too, like the claymore. One point made previously was about weapon diversity. If Assassins get more goodies, shouldn't everyone

...nobodies goanna say anything about the cape?

lol, I completely forgot about

*Stab* with an axe.

The cape, I didn't have that much problem with it as I avoid doing things that would make it crazy O.o But now I come to think about it, I did complain about cape way back when they go over character's body. I eventually grew out of that thou, came to expect it in every game.

Someone go to suggestion forum and post about axe animation