Talking strictly in the melee sense, but these are the guys who already had the best chance to kill prepped mages too.

True or False?

You can't nerf playerbase perception, but right now playerbase perception is pretty spot-on. Dagger by itself not only maladicts as good or better than an assassin but also works better as your opponent loses more stats, even if you get maladicted yourself.

If you don't have alot of maladictions, short of being an AP or certain rangers you're pretty ####ed right now. Worse still, there's no reason to switch from dagger once you're winning.

Right now you could stack all the HP in the world on a warrior that would be reasonable but just being tougher is flat not a viable option. Unless of course Riddle of Resilience gets an unannounced buff to reduce the severity as well as the duration of maladictions or otherwise becomes comparable to STSF in as many situations versus players.

There is also the problem that somehow there is nothing forcing the dagger specs to tank mobs (either that or they are taking a real tanking spec with dagger) with the new shifters and rangers around.

Axe/Mace combo still won't pack the punch dagger does alone, and with the slight overall nerf to the chance you'll land your skills with them, dagger officially does more damage AND maladicts better. And that's wrong. It pretty much kills the viability of alot of mediocre combinations that aren't mages in a cabal raid. If you're eating a -str maladict when a battle opens, you can't use pummel/drum/flurry to end the fight, and if you do without a nodisarm weapon you're going to lose one if not both those weapons.

Don't forget that many of the best dagger maladictions are one round of lag, making assassins pale in comparison anytime you're not whoring martial trance. But I'm speaking at all ranks anyway. Between the lag nerfs pre-25 (which at the time were much needed) on top of evade added that removes alot of key skills hitting people that are faster than you, and the new weapon tweaks, brute force characters are now pretty much dirt. Not only can't they tank, but they can't-tank-even-more now once their skills and regular melee keep missing and their stats go down further. At that point... dagger ends up doing as much or more damage than pincer or drum.

Mace also still has the age old issue of potentially KOing people and allowing your target to escape, but that's probably a minor issue compared to the rest. It seems to me if weapon parry orders were put back where they were and the rest of the tweaks made since then were left alone it would be an interesting experiment. But certain legacies (naturally) are exacerbating this situation horribly and the counters aren't powerful enough now, especially in comparison to the other situations you're going to face.