Disclaimer: This post contains a lot of statistics many players may already know about; rather this may act as a gateway to further understanding for players not yet at that level.
So I've been playing SK for a while (about 2 and a half years? Not as in total play time, but rather how long I've been familiar with the game) and I have a bad habit of jumping around from weapon to new weapon before I fully complete a loadout, as I'm sure if I'd stuck to my originally planned loadout (discluding trinkets, pets, anything 'extra'. Just the basics e.g. 2 weapons, armor + shield, no (planned) UVs.), I'd have it maxed out with maybe a third weapon lying around.
That being said, for a long time I've only had fragments of experience with a variety of things (i.e. switching from Leviathan and Hail Driver lines to Sudaruska and Graviton lines, and more), mostly because honestly it's pretty hard to stay dedicated to maxing out even a single weapon, mostly so if you're not sure about how much you'll be relying on said weapon within loadouts if/when you upgrade. As a result of said habit, I've come to really favor all-around useful loadouts because I'm not the type of player that has 4 different loadouts for FSC runs and 16 loadouts for Lockdown ready to be deployed the moment situations change.
Now that that's out of the way, back to the topic: Your most fun/best 'raw'/general use loadouts. In most threads I've dug into, there's always some mention of a trinket or a luck-based UV, or the combined use of a Combuster and a Blitz Needle, or a Combuster and 2 other situational weapons.
I'm not into that. I don't like how basic and easy, albeit useful, the play style of Brandish + Blitz is*. I want to enjoy utilizing somewhat reliable weapons. This doesn't necessarily mean harder loadouts; it implies fun yet effective ones.
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>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> tl;dr guidelines: <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
• 2 weapons, may include UVs but should not rely on them.
• Any armor, though same as above regarding UVs. May be mixed and matched with other armors.
• Any shield. Same as above regarding UVs, but that shouldn't be a problem here.
• No trinkets.
• It's not absolutely required to include Battle Sprites, but I'd be really interested in seeing what roles they play in your loadouts.
• Short description of loadout's uses/play style.
• Preferably a description of why you enjoy the loadout, unless you don't and you just find it effective.
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lol here it comes
To start off, here's my first ever fully 5-starred 'basic' loadout, which I still find pretty viable for soloing:
Weapon 1: Barbarous Thorn Blade (ASI low)
Weapon 2: Polaris
Shield: Barbarous Thorn Shield
Armor: Vog Cub set
Battle Sprite: Maskeraith
Short description: Multi-functioning toothpick and knockback-based retreating loadout. BTB charge becomes more useful in more ways than one may presume.
Long-ass description: I may be biased to this because of my play style, but overall the very least it's done for me is kept me alive longer while I focus on sword attacks. Vog Cub + BTB + BTS takes care of pretty much everything except Slime and Construct. However, most constructs you need to worry about are the low mobility ones (Lumbers, Retrodes, Gun Puppies) or ones that already have pretty low base HP, which means you're gonna have an easy time keeping the slow ones away, and won't always have to land distance shots with the Polaris to take care of Scuttlebots. The only real threat that seems to arise from Constructs in opposition to your Polaris are Mecha Knights, which are common nuisances for a variety of loadouts but can nonetheless be dealt with accordingly though somewhat painstakingly. Now as for Slimes, I cannot vouch for this loadout. To put it simply, if slimes are a problem for you, then this loadout will be absolutely no help. As with many sword-gun hybrid loadouts, Polaris is there as a handy self-support weapon to keep enemies away if you've taken too much damage for swordplay; not as a full reliability weapon.
And for any other situation, Maskeraith is a big help for when you're just not dealing enough damage or if you need to hide from a mob and get that Polaris space to keep them at bay. Admittedly this is incredibly spammy at times but it's fun (arguably), it works, and it keeps you alive with no recoil on your part.
You may argue this loadout contradicts what I mentioned previously about the loadouts being tedious*, but as I said, I may be biased to this one because of my play style; I find it really fun to "dance" with enemies, i.e. bumping them away right before they attack, yet quickly coming back to deal those quick blows with the Thorn Blade, or any type of circling around an enemy while being able to deal damage. I just find Combuster + Blitz and the like to be extremely basic in play style.
About 95% of my loadouts look like this when I'm not using slot upgrades-
Armor: Chaos/Seerus/Black kat/occasionally volcanic demo
Sprite: Whatever I feel like using, usually maskeraith
Shield: Some defensive shield
Weapons: Whatever I feel like using
Description: I get tons of stats from black kat/chaos and then I kill everything using my weapons. I'm fairly decent at dodging things and using remedy capsules, so statuses aren't much of an issue most of the time. When statuses are a problem, I use seerus or sometimes volcanic demo to dodge the status.