Hi!
There are several compounding issues with using the Long Dagger effectively, which could be alleviated with a secondary mode making thrust attacks easier to perform:
1) It has a length of 47, and the range of swings is even shorter than thrusts.
2) The hitbox of its hilt is large in comparison to the hitbox of the blade, so that hitting the sweet spot is especially difficult.
3) It has to be used up-close, but because of the hitbox problems this means that a lot of swings will just cause the hilt to collide with the enemy, causing a bounce - which stalls your ability to block or swing, and so is often fatal to the dagger wielder.
4) Even the thrust attack has this bouncing problem if it's used from too close of a range, which is silly because - hey, it's a dagger.
5) In these up-close melee battles, there's generally a lot of turning involved, which makes it a real bitch to trigger the long dagger's "real" attack - the stab attack - reliably, due to moving one's mouse or pressing the directional keys.
We were having another thread about the drawbacks of the Long Dagger, where Zapper posted an idea that a secondary mode for the long dagger, with stab only, would be a good way to improve its usefulness by effectively turning off swings when they would be completely ineffectual - which, in my opinion, is anytime you're not chambering or fighting a cloth-wearer. This would make it immeasurably easier to use in close, turning fights, which is really the only time a low-range weapon like the Long Dagger is going to shine.
Since the dagger can't block, and won't be able to chamber side-swings in this secondary mode, making it easier to employ the dagger's more-damaging attack is a measure that effectively balances itself. Basically this is just making it a lot less frustrating to use the dagger the way that makes the most sense.
I know that it's a low-tier weapon and so many people would assume it should be gimp - but keep in mind that with a length of 47, it's still going to be outranged by virtually every weapon the wielder engages, which means that there will be higher requirements on agility to enable the kind of footwork necessary. Any build with a lot of PS is going to have better options. It will remain pretty gimp overall, but become just a little more useful.
I like the idea of having an overhead included in this secondary mode, just to be able to switch things up in close melees in order to prevent being instantly and repeatedly blocked.
Poll