So I had an observation- weapons like brandishes, electron vortex, and status bombs tend to make other weapons redundant. Why use catalyzers when you can just suck all of the slags up and beat them with glacius in 2 seconds? Sure, catalyzers can be better over all in terms of damage if your party uses and practices with them enough, but its much easier to plan your strategy around others using anything.

What I'm getting at is:
-Players are lazy and don't want to create custom loadouts every level that are perfect; they use loadouts
-Players must choose gear that is optimal for a large number of situations
-Some weapons will cut off the damage of other weapons by killing specific weapons, while others will "work" to deal damage regardless of a strategy.
-Knights are NEVER challenged to work together unless faced with new content, or "mysterious challenges" where they don't know what they're fighting.

This translates roughly into a stag hunt game, with little incentive to branch out and reach for the stag, even while communicating with your friends... though depending on how you view success may fall more in line with the prisoner's dilenma in that some players view their own success over their friend's as a bonus... that is to say that a mentality of "I killed the most; thus I am the greatest" takes hold over "We dealt the most damage as a party; we are the greatest."

Examples of collusion between players-
-Ice strategy which includes: Biohazard, Neutralizer, Glacius, Triglav, shivermist buster, blitz needle (and friends), dread venom striker, wild hunting blade, warmaster rocket hammer, and hail driver (Freeze+Repeatedly charge attack; control crowds to control menders)
-Knockback strategy which includes: Polaris, Supernova, Biohazard, Neutralizer, Nitronome (and friends), volcanic pepperbox, valiance, leviathan blade (Focus on controlled knockback; stick together using blast bombs to shield while pushing away with other things, be courteous)
-Poison strategy which includes: Venom veilor, Ash of Agni, Voltaic tempest, stagger storm, your party knowing the effects of poison and acting on that knowledge (Leave menders alive. No menders? Use ash of agni/VT)
-Vortex+charge strategy, which includes: Graviton/Electron vortex, 5* brandishes, 5* troikas, blitz needle (will override other strategies and clash with them)

Examples of failed collusion between players-
-Fire/Shock during ice strategy; usually fire.
-Lack of knowledge regarding poison (killing menders)
-Bringing items that don't fit into the strategy used

So given these things, the most logical choice is to go for a strategy- specifically vortex strategy. Why vortex strategy? Because its unrealistic to expect your party to always have things for a particular strategy, or even to say "lets use ice" or to look at your gear and plan for it. So you go for gear that fits into the strategy known as "Me versus the world", which has a relatively low payoff.

Me versus the world strategy:
-Brandishes
-Autoguns
-Ash of Agni
-Warmaster Rocket Hammer
-Nitronome and co
-Dark retribution
-Voltaic tempest
-Polaris
-Argent peacemaker/Sentenza

Of those, we can eliminate the ones that people will get mad at you for using due to how obstructive they are to the other party member's "me vs the world strategy"-
-Brandishes
-Autoguns
-Ash of Agni
-Warmaster Rocket Hammer
-Dark retribution
-Voltaic tempest
-Argent peacemaker/Sentenza

Then, if one party member decides to collude while the others don't, she will be forced to use weapons that collaborate with other's me vs the world strategy-
-Electron vortex
-Shivermist buster
-Haze bombs

But lets go a step further- we can eliminate most of the strategies, as your party is using things that go against them. So we arrive at a dominant and forced strategy- being vortex+charge, or, in some cases we are left with no decision but to use our own "me vs the world strategy". And that is why bringing the item "electron vortex" is at what I see to be the nash equilibrium of what to bring.

To design a loadout around it, we'll start with things that boost the stats that we'll be using most. This is referring of course, to chaos cloak+hood. For more specific levels, we'll want to boost our defenses up for fighting specific enemies. This usually only happens in danger missions however.

For weapons, we'll need to start with electron vortex, and then build up from there. We'll want things that are good for killing things in the vortex, as well as things that are alone, all very quickly. Graviton vortex will also be needed for shock levels. So we'll want to add on two brandishes- one being acheron, the other being elemental. These are best for taking on things that are alone as well as in the vortex. Vortex fails at fighting fiends, so we'll want to make a piercing sword or gun of our choice for fighting those. This is preference... although we'll want to lean toward blitz due to its nature in regards to FSC and the vortex bomb in question. We'll also want a bomb for fiends, if we have slots for it. For our last slot, we'll ant something that we can strafe with through bullet hell.. this of course, would be an alchemer. Why an alchemer? Because it gets a boost from ctr, while argent peacemaker does not. We'll want to go for magma driver for fiend levels, and another for FSC/fire levels.

For a shield, we'll want to get something strong and durable. This doesn't matter so much, as long as we choose one that makes sense for the occasion, and make a few to defend against various things. Preferably, we'll want to start with a plate shield and go for volcanic plate first, and then wait until we're done to make others.

For trinkets, we'll want to first max out our strategy regarding charge time reduction, when we've got time we'll craft additional ones for our blitz needle if applicable.

-Chaos cloak
-Chaos hoodie

-Volcanic plate shield (Eventually others too)

-Electron vortex/Graviton vortex/Scintillating sun shards (Electron vortex fist)
-Acheron/Blitz (Acheron first)
-Elemental brandish (glacius first; would be voltedge, but we'll need our k coins for e- vortex recipe first)
-An elemental alchemer (magma first)

-Bomb charge time reduction (Later handgun CTR)
-Sword charge time reduction (Later handgun Damage/ASI)

So you may be wondering "Why don't people use this if it is what game theory dictates?", and this is for a number of reasons.
-Chaos set appears risky on the front, and is in fact, risky. People don't like this, and so hold back.
-Searching for defense, players find their way to vog and skolver sets for the obvious reasons.
-Vog/Skolver (or other armor sets) dictate using different weapons- vog for gran faust/da/toothpics, and skolver for brandishes... in both occasions, argent peacemaker/sentenza will prove useful... obviously, different trinkets will follow.
-The misconception that specialization is greater than hybridization (Though specialization in an area can be effective if colluding)
-The setup above is not generated for use by all players; it is generated for use by those of us skilled enough to use it. Lag reduces "skill" in this case.

So what do you guys think?