Here is how I would class a weapon, the weapon must have a good score in all three areas of my judgement to be a good weapon.

Weapon utility:
How many clock work levels is this weapon viable to? Of course, leviathan blade and valiance will get a very good score in this area, probably an A or a B in perspective, weapons like Acheron and DA will get a C, while final flourish and rocket hammer get D or E (due to pure piercing/elemental damage), if you catch my drift.

Enemy destroying capability (EDC):
In this area I will judge how many hit does it take for a weapon to take down an enemy(just one), all stats here should be taken from a monster that is neutral to the weapon's damage (acheron tested against construct, DA against fiends). Weapons like the swords will get A or B here, while guns and bombs get C or D.

Crowd control capability (CCC):
In this area, I will judge how much damage and demobilization can this weapon do to two or more enemy, bombs will no doubt get high score here, while sword like DA and GF get D or C, while brandish get B or C. Guns like Polaris will get good score as well.

My ideal score for weapons (just some examples):
Leviathan blade
-Utility: A
-E.D.C.: B
-C.C.C.: C

Acheron
-Utility: B
-E.D.C.: A
-C.C.C.: B

Shivermist buster
-Utility: C
-E.D.C.: E
-C.C.C.: A

Polaris:
-Utility: C
-E.D.C.: B
-C.C.C.:B

I agree with Bopp here. But I was thinking along the lines of classes. So Class A weapons, Class B weapons, etc. That way you can have a Tier 3, Class B weapon for example.

I would agree Midnight-Dj as well on that sort of ranking system.

So using the Leviathan Blades Utility, EDC, and CCC scores as the example was given, the total rank would then be...

(Utility * EDC * CCC) / 3

(A * B * C) / 3

where A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, D = 4, E = 5

(1 * 2 * 3) / 3 = 6 / 3 = 2 = B

Therefore a Leviathan Blade would be a Class B weapon.

EDIT: I also forgot, there needs to be a fourth score as well. Availability. Some swords are harder to get then others, so this needs to be taken into account.

So for the Leviathan Blade:
Utility: A
EDC: B
CCC: C
Availability: A (Due to the recipe being given to you vie missions)

So the new score would result in...

(Utility * EDC * CCC * Availability) / 4
(1 * 2 * 3 * 1) / 4 = 6 / 4 = 1.5 = 2 (rounded using standard rounding rules) = B

So the Leviathan blade is still Class B, but you could say it is Class B, but the absolute score was 1.5

Also what's wrong with calling them "tier"? It's something everyone familiar with gaming should know well.

The point of making a guide like this is to educate novice players. So the terminology has to work for novices. These players will confuse "tier" (A, B, C, D, E) with the official "tiers" (1, 2, 3) in the game. Don't expect them to figure it all out. Just consider how many "how to I get a forum avatar?" threads there are.

Maybe "rank" would be better. But who knows...they might confuse that with their Knight ranking then, lol.

I also had a problem with the amount of 5* weapons that you'd need, but I think 20 seems a bit much, I'd say you need at least 10 or 15 5* weapons of each type to have a say in them. It's not ridiculous, but it's enough to say that you know a large variety of weapons.

"Rank" will confuse new players, just as "tier" will. "Class" is fine. The scheme that I proposed in post #3 is also fine.

Hopefully we can get past the terminology and on to the substance of the lists soon.

@Shadowstarkirby I see where you are coming from in that regard, but for a new player who is looking for good weapons that are easy to get.. Shouldn't we oblige them and disclose that information for them? You could potentially figure out the class from those three main scores (Utility, EDC, CCC) and then as a 'on the side' show a Availability class for that weapon. So say a Leviathan Blade is Class B, and has an Availability of Easy (or something along those lines).

@Bopp while it will be beneficial to move onto actual content, without the terminology set first... Your a fish half out of water. Its a bit like writing a book without having any characters made. But yes, we can make content and assign terminology later. It just takes a bit more work.

I think bad, poor, good, great, is a bit extreme, I mean the difference between usefulness of weapons isn't that major. I wouldn't call any sword 'bad' so much as 'not as good as a brandish'

In any class list, there are suppose to be multiple classes to narrow down whatever is being ranked to the bare bones. It can't be that simplified, because in that case, you'd just put Iron Slug, Winmillion, Cold Iron Vanquisher, and Furious Flamberge in "Good", and we all know very well that they aren't good weapons; they just aren't "not as good as a brandish" types of weapons, they're more like "no point in using them over the other choices" types of weapons; bad weapons.

At the very least we should have 4 classes, but I would strongly prefer if we stuck with 5 (though I think there should be 6, an S Class for broken weapons like Dibsville mentioned) because it's much more flexible; Great, Good, Okay, Poor, and Bad. This way, we'd properly class weapons in their strength when put up against one another; using ABC ranking, if a Glacius and Leviathan Blade are both put in Class B, that's wrong, but you can't put Glacius alongside a Combuster and Acheron in Class A...and you can't put Leviathan Blade in Class C alongside a Winmillion and Furious Flamberge.

@Military-Lupin I agree, if we could mention Availability alongside the ranked weapon that'd be especially helpful.

It's quite the norm to have an S class in a list like this, cause there are weapons that are truly exceptional vs. others that would be in A rank. I agree that Acheron and Combuster's differences aren't that large, but they still stand to be ridiculous when put up against other brandishes (whereas if I change their positions in my list, I'd put Voltedge in A and Glacius in B), to the point where I believe they should be in a special class of there own, which makes it more fitting to say they're S Class weapons. I feel the same about Blitz too, it's very versatile, more so than it's brothers (even vs. Constructs and Jellies when compared to VPB?), but again I haven't given them much credit, especially VPB, because I don't have them at Lv 10. I only put them so low because they're too heavily overshadowed. I'm thinking VPB is better than I think, but I really can't tell you. In fact, I'm getting ahead of myself, we all haven't settled on the framework of the list yet.

On Availability, I agree that footnotes would work just fine. Would that be the "Ease of Access" bullet?

Another thing I want to add is that I believe that the "Usefulness In Lockdown" bullet should be another list in itself, so we could use two class lists; one for PvE and another for PvP.

If the purpose of this is entirely to help new players, couldn't we just give them a breakdown of the facts and call it a day?

First:
The game is mostly split into enemies that are weak to shadow, and enemies that aren't weak to shadow. Generally, focus on getting those damage types over piercing. Most common pairings of enemies are: Beast+Slime = Shadow; Undead+Fiend = Elemental/Piercing; Construct+Gremlin = Shadow; Slime+Construct = Shadow/Elemental;;; Ergo, bringing Elemental+Shadow damage will cover most situations for you.

Second:
Are you looking.... you should look towards:
---------------------------------------
To become a swordy... a shadow+elemental brandish, maybe the sealed sword line if you'd prefer.
For a general use sword... Leviathan line, cutter line, troika line
For a counter to grievers... Any flourish, rigadoon line works best for this purpose
To be a hybrid of some sort... This depends on what your other weapons and general strategy are; inquire further and test out 2* versions.

We don't really need a huge tier list/ranking/CLASSIFICATION OF WEAPONS for something like that, do we?

@Fehzor Yeah, Bopp's guide explains all the weapons well enough, but as you know many people don't read and make 3 brandish threads in the time span of 2 days. This could just be an easy look at it and go type of list for those who want to just grab the best of the best without the "hassle" of reading.

...besides, this is all just an activity the Arsenal community can do, it's not just for the newcomers, it's for the whole community. I don't just want to know how one person thinks, I want to know what everyone thinks. I also believe it's fun seeing how weapons are ranked against each other.

@Military-Lupin I think that giving pros and cons under a weapon would be a good idea, it'll give people the explanation on why the weapon is there if they want to ask.

Another thing I think we should do is give all weapons a number rank, so it's specified to the bare bones which is the absolute best and worst. So it could go down like:

S Class (assuming there is one):

1. Acheron

Pros:
+ Overpowers all families, only being negligibly outdone in damage vs Undead and Fiends by an elemental brandish and Final Flourish/Barbarous Thorn Blade.
+ Incredible crowd control with charge attack.
+ Incredible single target DPS.
+ Medium speed.

Cons:
- Moderate knockback
- Small normal attack arc.

A Class:

2. Combuster (still up for argument if this is above Acheron)
3. Voltedge
4. Obsidian Edge

B Class:

5. Glacius
6. Divine Avenger...

And so on. Yeah, most weapons are good in their own right, but we should really find out which comes on top of one another in the majority of situations.

This may be too late in the game, but maybe instead of all of us making our own personal lists, we could do something like this:

Every week, Krakob, you could choose a weapon of each type (sword, gun, and bomb) which we could discuss to be placed on the class list for both PvE and PvP. For e.g, you could choose the topic of the week to be Final Flourish, Supernova, and Graviton Vortex. Everyone else then decides to discuss and vote on where the weapon should be placed on the class list for each weapon in both PVE and PvP based on [S], A, B, C, D, and E ranking. A poster states the class they want to assign the weapon to and a short explanation to why. At the end of the week, Krakob can tally up the votes so it can be assigned to a class and then from there, you can choose the next weapons for the following week. Once all weapons have been listed, we could move onto step two with number ranking.

This will take a while and a LOT more than this subforum will need to participate because we need a bunch of votes, but I think that this would be an interesting and involving way to make this. There needs to be a requirement though so we don't have spam posters and newcomers that just say silly things wrecking the list, so I'm thinking that we could incorporate a requirement of having at least 200 hours playtime and a picture of their arsenal; having 10 4*/5* weapons of a type will allow you to vote in that category...is that too excessive?

Bombs?

@Xephyris The classes to be voted on actually seems to be SABCDE or ABCDE. Also, sub classes was already ruled out I believe. For what weapons etc, why not start with swords and then work your way into the other weapons, then proceed to armor? Sure it will take a while, but it will be fun as new members turned veterans that match the requirements can vote. Ease of access was already ruled out for being a factor for the rank. That is definite it seems. A little note about how to obtain that weapon will be given though.

As for winnillion etc.? I'll let you veterans decide :P

I vote against the "S" category, for two reasons. First, having a category above "A" would confuse the audience. Second, five categories should be more than adequate to differentiate among swords. Having too many categories gives the impression of precision, in a process that is actually highly subjective, non-repeatable, and imprecise.

By the way, another strategy is just to have everyone rank the swords from 1 to 19 (or 20 with Winmillion). This is equivalent to having 19 (or 20) categories.

- we'll have ranks ABCDE
- no sub-ranks
- we'll start with swords, then move on to bombs, guns, and armour in their own separate lists.
- winmillion and other 4* only weapons will be included
- ease of access will only be included in a little footnote.

personally i still think including winmillion and other 4*s would be pointless as they would definitely be last.

true, but my main point was that it's sort of unfair and pointless as they aren't even in the same spiral-knights star level, there's no point us telling people that a 4* sword is worse than a 5* sword, it's sort of a given.

ALSO: I will probably start work on the wiki page just to get some placeholder down within the week, so;
- what will it be called?
Sword_Ranking
Community_Created_Sword_Ranking
etc.

I wanted to avoid using the word 'tier' as it's already used in the game for level tiers, so it could be confusing.

Community_Gear_Ranking as the general
and
Sword_Ranking_List as the specified one.

If this becomes popular enough, maybe people in the future will start saying "oh that sword is in CGR rank A"

http://wiki.spiralknights.com/Community_Gear_Ranking

will work on it more later, I added everyone here onto the contributions list.

Of course everyone feel free to edit, but consult here or on the discussion page before making any huge changes.

I thought we agreed that "rank" was just as confusing as "tier", because it also has another meaning in this game --- the rank of a knight, based on missions. I thought we agreed on the term "class"? It's not too late to change the wiki page title.

Wewps, I'm going to hold off any work on the wiki until we get some more progress, as it's a bit annoying to change the names of pages for equinox.

Correctness is not the only important thing. What's important is to communicate the relative merits of these swords in a way that is understandable to players, especially novice players. Going out of our way to use confusing terminology ("rank", "tier") when non-confusing terminology ("class") is available seems crazy to me.

I would call the page simply "Sword Classes". The word "List" is not necessary, and hence should be removed, because generally shorter titles are favored over longer ones.

Xephyris, I agree that getting a page moved is tedious. But you can always make a new page and copy-paste the text yourself. Yes, this breaks the edit history, and so it's regarded as bad wiki editing. But the page is so young that there's not much edit history to break, at least.

Edit: At this point I find my own posts in this thread tedious and bossy. So I'm going to shut up for a while.