It's not my favorite sword, but I think that the best sword is Final Flourish / Barbarous Thorn Blade (which are equally good). These things slaughter fiends and beasts, obviously. But they're also quite good against gremlins and undead. Of course, they stink against constructs and slimes, but that's why you carry more than one weapon.

+1 Bopp's comment.

FF/BTB --> Speed, range and knockback to save you by a hair's breadth on the 1st swing. How can it not be the best?

However, my underused leviathan is still my favourite.

Again, +1 on Bopp's comment. I definitely agree.
But then this is where I be a fence-sitter and also agree with Sypsy's comment about the underused Leviathan still being the favorite.
Though I rarely use it, it was my first 5* and still has that elegance and swiftness that yearns to be used every time I ponder on which weapons to bring with me before going into a run.

Nearo, Liu-Tenant said as much in the original post. The point is not to seriously create a general-purpose weapon setup with only a single sword in it. It's to take a freaky stand, declaring that sword A does A's particular thing better than sword B does B's particular thing. In other words, which sword is the most overpowered?

I never go anywhere without faust unless it's a boss stratum. It's the only shadow weapon I really use.

my jalovec or khorovod. The charge is just so fun.

either those or my shockburst. the charge is so useful in Robo Rampage Arenas and PVP.

Acheron gets my vote for best sword overall...

Basic info:
- Fast, three swing combo.
- Deals half shadow, half normal damage.
- Great against goblins and jellies.
- Good against beasts and constructs.
- OK against undead and fiends. Because half of what it deals is normal damage it really isn't that bad even versus these.

The arena advantage:
- Undead and fiends are the least likely enemies to show up in arenas. This mitigates Acheron's weaknesses and accentuates its strengths on the most challenging level type.
- Great for quickly killing the goblin menders in stage three of the arenas. Mender elimination is a key to arena success.

Ultimate instrument of JK death:
- Jelly palace is arguably the best place to earn CR for new items... and Acheron does very well there.
- There's no better item for killing JK now that he's weak to shadow damage. Acheron damages JK so fast, he almost falls too easily.

Acheron FTW! The most epic looking sword eva.
Levi is my most versatile.
But if you consider the effectiveness of a sword without the specialized damage type, like pure normal, which one do you guys think would be the best?
I think it's BTB/Flourish tied with DA/GF. (I put GF not because it only has one projectile charge atk, but it can curse)

No, it is not true that all 5-star swords are the same.

yup

Levi was my first love -- good for just about every situation and has a nice charge attack (and attack radius in general). But now I lean hard on DA / GF / BTB since i acquired those (depending on the strata).... especially now that we can change weapons floor to floor.

Snarby - BTB + FoV
JK - GF + FoV
IMF - DA + GF
FSC - DA (+ Blitz Needle)

well i think glacius is best

Agree with Slayzz, combuster is all-purpose. Its fire damage and half-normal damage makes it powerful to all monsters.

The best sword is an opinion. No better way to get every knight in haven fighting.

Anyways,

Best swords for the heavy hitters based on damage type.

Normal: Levi/scissor blade

Elemental: WRH, pure elemental that deals more damage than DA's split normal/elemental.

Shadow: GF, deals a lot of damage and can inflict curse. Also is split normal/shadow so it is still slightly effective against devilites and undead.

Peircing: FF/BTB

Shiver + Glacius charge = win

and even that is probably better done with Blitz charge

Pepperbox>Blitz. The mask is resistant to all types except normal.

Never tried WHB myself, but if nothing else it's just blindingly cool to see in action.

In terms of PvP, flourishes are the best. They've got the greatest range, speed and attack force.

The best in terms of attack pattern for PvE is easily the warmaster rocket hammer. It certainly leaves holes for the brandishes and even DA to come in and shine, but for pure damage? WRH; its what I take on all of the most dangerous missions (provided they aren't beast/gremlin/oiler flavored)- so I can instantly KO the turrets... then when my team mates or I drop shiver, I can come back in and KO everything in 3 seconds again. It's pure elemental, but if it were a set of 3, then the shadow and elemental versions would easily get a good bit of use... not sure how I feel about a piercing WRH. And a normal WRH would be OP.

@Aroxian The banstick is a tool, not a weapon.

Why you may ask? Well, all hits, even it's charge attack has a chance to inflict fire which does a good amount to damage. Even through it's a little slower then medium-speed sword lines.

It's charge attack however, it's one of the most powerful in the game, it can kill enemys easily if you get them in a corner as they take all the hits from the attack at once, if that does not kill them, then the fire will likely so. (unless you are fighting fire resist enemys or if theres a Mender/Silkwing healing them.)

The downside of it is the charge attack, which has a chance to inflict fire on you as well but this can be countered with fire resist trinkets or armor.

I call the Fang of Vog "The Naught Smasher" as the name suggests, can nearly kill Deadnaughts or instant kill, even Cursed Deadnaughts like the ones in LoA.

*tapes 3 Final Flourishes between A DA and a GF* This one!

Actually WRH is my fav and what i would call the best one

i think that the best sword can be any sword, depending on the user and situation.
for instance: WRH will make a better ICM run than an archeron does a RJ run.
and likewise, if you are terrible at the WRH, then a DA is a much safer and easier bet.
but if you can master the WRH then it pays of better in the long run.

At first I only used Calibur. This was long before the Brandish update while everyone was derping around with DAvengers. I started going for Vanquisher line because I liked having less knockback, but eventually I got a Sealed. I knew everyone else always grabbed Avenger but I went for Faust because of its cursing ability. I never used the charge on Faust and even when I used Calibur I barely ever used the charge; it was all about basic swing combos to maintain control of the battle without derping around everywhere. I only had Plate line because I never thought I would need the offense bonuses of Wolver and the loss of attack speed was never too important to me. I used Plate because I wanted defense over attack, seeing as it was more important to me to survive than kill faster and die immediately after. Before getting VPlate and Vanquisher, though I had GFaust, I got MadB and started using bombs. At that point I stopped using my Carver (it became Vanquisher a couple months later) and began using Barrage, Graviton, and Faust lines with only one weapon upgrade at a time with MadB as my armor. From then on I started collecting bombs, eventually getting VDemo, then I came back to finish my Plate and Vanquisher. After that I went to derp up some other stuff.

For the time, I invested in basically the worst choices for how I was playing. I was one of the worst noobs. However, when it came to actually playing it became about enjoying the game rather than winning everything. Gameplay never felt like a grind because I was focused on playing the game for the sake of playing the game over amassing a fortune.

In case anyone cares how I went from some new idiot to whatever I am now. An old idiot.

I have DA ASI med and the split normal/elemental makes it pretty spectacular. It's not bad against gremlins/beast because it has half normal dmg and for other weapons it's either normal or OP, also, the charge attack is beast. It's also a very usefull sword for PvP

Combuster for me.

Normal + Elemental means it deals a little less damage to Gremlins and Beasts than it usually would, but its part Normal typing salvages some of damage it loses. Plus the charge attack kicks arse, sets [scrap] on fire if it isn't a Fire themed monster, which can often finish it off.

I'd probably say the same for the Voltedge, if I owned one.

Gran faust are the best because you curse AND take huge damage
Warmaster Rocket Hammer because it is super strong and has strong attacks
Final flourish because they take good speed
Voltedge because it causes strong shock and strong damage

That's my opinions

in reality, my combuster is my duct tape. if for some reason i don't have my final flourish available, then i use it for literally anything except oilers. but i mean if you told me i could only use 1 weapon, odds are that the combuster would be suitable for the situation.