Leviathan Blade of course! The striker line isn't so easy to use. Also, it doesn't really matter about how cool it is.

The Cutter series (DVS and WHB), can deal insane amounts of damage in the right hands (can compete against Blitz).

Based on the Lancer Knightz data, a DVS with ASI+6 and CTR+6 does:
* 433 DPS from comboing as fast as possible.
* 324 DPS from charging as fast as possible.
These DPS numbers are not at all impressive. Other swords do far more. So are you using DVS/WHB in some other way? Or thinking of another measure of damage?

Leviathan is definitely the more useful sword especially if your playing style is more solo oriented. It is also a very fun sword in danger rooms because you can charge, whack, kite, charge, whack kite. Also great for whacking constructs into other monsters as well as other players! If you (or the people you play with the most) don't like the big knock back effect it causes, then aim for the Leviathan's stylishly emo bro, Cold Iron Vanquisher.

The Wild Hunting Blade has a fun charge attack, but if you are using the cutter line, you will likely be using it more for Jelly King to gain tokens and heat armor and other weapons. So you may want to raise a Vile Striker->Dread Venom Striker. Poison prevents monsters from getting healed. Inflicting poison (and/or curse) helps you to kill faster than the monster can kill you.

If your aim is to first heat armor and weapons via the RJK, Vile Striker->Dread Venom Striker is recommended for beginning sword knights.

Depending on your resources, you can raise more than one sword or complement your sword with guns and bombs.

The Lancer Knightz data are, in my experience, carefully collected and hence highly reliable. But you are certainly right that they are artificial --- in real battle, no one combos as fast as possible all the time, etc.

Your other points only bolster the case against DVS/WHB. The fact that it has low knockback, and can't easily hit multiple enemies, and the charge takes a long time to complete (kind of like Blitz) make it even weaker overall than the raw combo/charge numbers suggest. So I strongly agree that DVS/WHB is not the best choice for the original poster. (It is kind of fun, though.) Cheers.

Well, the first table tells you how fast the sword is in regular attacks. There are various ways to measure this. Lancer Knightz have chosen to measure combos per minute. It's a little artificial, but it's pretty reasonable and reproducible, and it gives you a good idea of speed. The combos per minute depend on how much attack speed increase (ASI) you have, of course. Lancer Knightz have measured many swords at many different levels of ASI, from 0 (None) to +6 (Maximum!). That's what the first table shows.

The second table shows one particular measure of DPS. They use the ASI+6 combos-per-minute data, and the damage data from the wiki, and combine these into a measure of DPS. Even if you're not operating at ASI+6, this table gives you some idea of the damage output of swords relative to each other. The 433 DPS figure that I quoted above comes from this table.

The third table is similar to the first table, but doing charges per minute, at various levels of charge time reduction (CTR). The 324 DPS figure I quoted above isn't in this page, but it's easy to calculate from the charges per minute and the wiki damage data.

The moral of the story is: DVS/WHB are fun, but they don't really deliver a lot of damage, compared to other swords. In particular, against beasts WHB is hilariously, completely outclassed by the piercing swords. Against every other monster, WHB is outclassed by DVS. I strongly discourage you from getting WHB if your goal is to kill monsters safely and quickly. I hope this helps.

lol

YAY troll Bopp is back!!!!!

I'd say definately WHB. Many people are instantly biased to saying that levi is better, but from some who actually has both andwas originally biased towards levi, WHB is a betyer sword overall.
First we should look at the combo, the WHB has a much stronger combo than the levi, even though the levi takes slightly shortrr to finish. Also, since the WHB damage is split, getting it to level 10 means you get the 30-odd dmg bonus on both hits, effectively giving you around 60 extra damage for each hit, this may not seem like alot, but if you times that by 5, you end up dealing an extra 300 damage with one combo. With the levi, you get 30 extra damage for each hit at lvl10, which means only 90 dmg extra on a full levi combo. This means that levelling up you WHB gives you a much greater reward.

Secondly is the matter of charge attack. Hands down, the levi has a better charge attack, but the WHB charge is not as bad as people say. For one thing, each hit of the WHB charge interrupts a monstrrs attack(except for lumbers, trojans, etc.). So as long as your enemies are in front of you, there is no chance that they can hit you while in mid-charge. The DVS does not have this effect of interruption, so in that way, the whb is better.

Along with the interruption effect, the WHB wolver-bite has more range than the DVS ghost-hit. the wolver bites in front and around you, while the DVS ghost hit attacks somewhere behind you(assuming you are moving forward, otherwise it hits right after the original) While it's arguable which is more useful, there is that difference.

I have the levi, DVS and WHB. and i have to against what bopp said about DVS being better for general. First, you wouldnt get the WHB for the beast bonus, you get it for the awesome looks, the superior charge( to the DVS), and the range. The bonus vs wolvers is not at all useful, and was probably put there just to make it different to the DVS other than those little things. My loadout consists of glacius, umbra, and WHB. the glacius is obviously for construct/undead, and also freezing things. The umbra is for the sake of a token gun to hit switches, and for other things occasionally, i also switch this fir valiance sometimes. WHB is used for everything that glacius isnt GOOD at, since it has a much higher dpc against everything else.

All this info is great and all, but the obvious most-important-thing in a sword is how cool it looks. And since the levi is a fat moster-bludger with a blunt edge, and the WHB is a hunters jagged edge dagger with the power to summon phantasmal wolvers to omnom all your enemies with every hit, the WHB is clearly the better sword.

Hands down (up, sideways, or in front, whatever) the WHB is better.

Note: i must admit that the cutter line leading up to it are pretty crappy unless fully levelled up, cause the charge is horrible and there are no wolverbites.

Kreeara, in case it wasn't clear, my comment about never playing was a joke.

You could get Triglav, but Sudaruska is similar and easier to get. What are your other weapons? Is there some reason why you're not considering non-normal swords?

Yes, DVS/WHB does more damage per combo than Glacius. (The combos take about 1.5 times as long to complete, because there are so many strokes. That's why the damage per second turns out to be about the same.)

Lancer Knightz doesn't actually measure DPS. They just measure combos per minute. (The measurements are done with great care. That's one reason why I mention them all over the place --- I recognize the enormous work that they've put in.) Then, they compute the DPS, using the same damage numbers that you're using (which are deterministic and hence reliable).

...measure the usefulness of a sword less on data and more on how well I can beat things up

I don't know what that means, but have you tried this combination: Glacius and Final Flourish? You use Glacius on undead, constructs, and slimes. You use FF on fiends, beasts, and gremlins. The FF swings are long, and the first swing is wide, and they interrupt well. So it's really easy to hit monsters. And FF pumps out huge amounts of damage, against not only beasts (which at this point in the game are easy anyway) but also fiends (which are hard).

but yeah, that's my two cents (or eight cents, that works too)

With WHB, it's more like 10 cents, but it takes a while to get out. ;)

Kreeara, are you focused on Lockdown (PvP) or on Clockworks (PvE)? Disclaimer: I don't know Tier-1 or Tier-2 Lockdown very well.

There are various ways to play Lockdown, but as far as sword melee goes, you really want a fast, wide, long first swing, so that you can reliably hit the other guy before he hits you. The only sword swing in the entire game that is fast, wide, and long is the first swing of a piercing sword. And this is why piercing swords are popular. With Triglav, you get wide and long, but not fast. You can speed it up with armor and trinkets, of course. With WHB, you get fast, but narrow and short. With Leviathan, you get medium-fast, but narrow and short. Charging Leviathan in Lockdown? I've never done it, so you know more than I do about that.

In the Clockworks, you want to tune your damage types to the monsters that you're facing. Ignoring other considerations, this puts normal weapons at a disadvantage. For example, DA and GF do more damage than Suda/Trig (according to most ways you can measure), and they are faster. For me to give you any better advice, I'd need this information: In your typical loadout, how many swords do you use, how many guns do you use, and how many bombs do you use? These three numbers must add to either 2, 3, or 4, depending on how many weapon slots you use.

The Lancer Knightz data is great, I agree. I completely trust their data as accurate measurements of dps. But what I meant was that dps isn't the only aspect of a sword. If this was true, then the only sword someone should get would be the thing with the highest dps, meaning that no one should get the SS line and everyone should stick to brandish line. There are many more aspects of a sword which can make it good. Here's an example.

Say you ran up to a gun puppy, which needs 400 damage to die. To kill it with a sudaruska you need to do one whole combo, or two hits. To kill the same gun puppy with a WHB it only takes 3/5 of a combo, or three hits. So this means that you need to waste one whole combo one one thing. It also means that you wasted about 200 damage with the sudaruska, since the gun puppy was almost dead after the first hit, but since you cant deal out any less damage in a quicker time, you have to finish the combo and wait for the post-combo animation to finish.

another example:

suppose you went to a coffee shop. the cashier tells you that they can't give change. you want to buy a $4 coffee, and you can choose to pay her using only $3 bills (sudaruska), or only $2 bills(WHB). so you can either pay $6 and waste money(damage) or pay $4, and give her just the right amount. Not finishing a combo saves alot of time, since at the end of most combos in swords you have to wait a bit. (this is why shield cancelling is practical).

I used two extremes with the above example, but you get the gist (i hope)

--when i said I measure the usefulness on how well i can beat things up, i dont just mean dps, but how the sword works with a monsters attack patterns and behaviour. for example, and elemental flourish(if there was such a thing) would not be as good for jellies as a sudaruska, since jellies like to clump together, and a flourish has very small and define hit boxes compares to the sudaruska.

wolvers and devilites like to mess with you and dodge, so using a flourish which is slower than the WHB can mean that you waste more hits attacking somewhere that a wolver just teleported away from. With the WHB, you can quickly change direction or end the combo to doge/move if you miss. also, the FF has one wide swipe, followed by two small stabs, which have pretty small hitboxes, and when you lag as much as me, sometimes you end up attacking where something was about a second ago, so the best way is to get a sword with bigger hitboxes. the WHB attacks much like a normal sword with wide sweeping swings, with aditional wolver-ghosts to add a bit more hitboxes. the WHB can also hit more wolvers than the FF if they are clumped, since the WHB has more range.

With WHB, it's more like 10 cents, but it takes a while to get out. ;)

haha i get it :)

Kreeara, read the Bombing Guide on the wiki, and the numerous threads on bombs, to get more opinions on Irontech Destroyer.

Zeddy, I did read that post, but I'd forgotten about it. I can easily believe it to be true on the charge --- no dispute there. But aren't their hit boxes on regular attacks identical? That's what I was talking about.

I've had the DBB-vs.-FF argument too many times already, with inconclusive results. I like both, and choose between them based on the other party members' needs. (For example, DBB causes some people to lag for some reason.)

dbb: dark briar barrage
ff: final flourish

It's cool looking

I dont want my heavy plate training wasted and i will be using ironmight for jk not vana ok Bopp and is big angry bomb good or not good?

Making a 5-star item costs a lot of resources. Most of this cost comes in the final upgrade from 4-star to 5-star. Yes, the final upgrade is really that expensive. So don't go making a 5-star item just because you happen to have its 4-star or 3-star precursor. Don't throw good money after bad.

Since you use swords, Skolver Cap and Skolver Coat would be far preferable to Ironmight and Skolver. Damage bonus against all monsters is an extremely useful ability to have on a piece of armor. Also I must add that 5-star armor is not really necessary to beat the Royal Jelly.

I've never used Big Angry Bomb. The conventional wisdom is that it's clearly worse than Nitronome; see the Bombing Guide.