Gear only solves half of the equation. You should be able to.

We can only discuss the effectivity of your gear. I can't tell whetever you're ready or not as a player.

A good player can DVS vana with proto armor.

Well, yes, it belongs in Arsenal but I'm not one to worry over whether each forum thread is exactly in its place.
EDIT: And yes, it is theoretically possible to solo Vana in just proto gear and nothing else if you're good enough, but few people are, so for those of us who aren't, here's some advice on equipping yourself.

I personally prefer Leviathan Blade over DVS against Vanaduke, and just in general, since the Cutter line of swords makes it a lot easier for me to run into hazards by just using it. Though the poison is nice to have, if pretty rare, so if you like it, go for it.
BTB is fine, but you won't be able to use it much in the later phases since he gets the fire orbs around him. You can put them out with water but they respawn without any warning making swords in general risky to use on him.
WRH is great, if you can use it properly.
Fourth weapon slot should be a gun IMO, if for no reason other than "hm, maybe I shouldn't run in there with a sword at 10% health" moments will probably happen now and then, especially given that your other swords don't have much in the way of knockback. I'd recommend one of the alchemers, preferably not firotech line since you're trading damage for a status that's useless in FSC. My personal favorite is the Hail Driver since freeze is overall a very nice status (you can use it to keep Vana put if you want some time to do other things like take out slags and put out shadow fire during the fight). If alchemers aren't your thing, Argent Peacemaker is an option. Valiance is great for normal damage if you don't wanna specialize. Blitz needle takes out fiends (so basically trojans and the few silkwings) with ease, and makes the fight with vana much easier.
Or if you prefer a bomb for the fourth slot, the vortex bombs synergize great with your swords. Place one, charge up a sword, unleash on the monsters while theyre all stuck in the vortex. I prefer electron vortex since the shock will often keep them in place even after the vortex explodes but if you don't wanna farm the pvp tokens for the recipes graviton is fine. You could also get a shivermist for general crowd control.

Defensively, it looks good. Vog cub is a classic choice for fsc, and for good reasons, and the elemental defense on the owlite will help you survive a hit or two from vanaduke's mace.

Blitz Needle or Plague Needle.

Well, the only thing in the sword arsenal that can help you kill phase 2,3 vana without getting yourself incenerated, is the winmillion. It is cool utility tool that shoots out projectiles on normal attacks. The disc will go through vana's fire ords and damage him.

callahan is "good" because it does piercing, which his body is weak to. The problem is that it deals a lot less damage than the blitz needle and I'm pretty sure its bullets don't go through the fire orbs. you could always put out the orbs, but if you're gonna do that you might as well use your swords while theyre out.

Get a Blitz, get a Dark Briar Barrage and kite, etc. The options are there.

Don't like people telling you better things to use than swords on everything?

Oh well.

First, let's distinguish FSC depths 24-27 from depth 28. If you're into swords, then you can do all of depths 24-27 with just an elemental sword -- no other weapons. You can help yourself a little by using a piercing weapon on trojans, but even that optimization is not very important. This means that your gear is more than ready to farm FSC depths 24-27.

The Vanaduke fight on depth 28 is different. If you're in a party, then make it your job to kill slag walkers and slag guards, and to put fire out with water. If you do this well, then most people won't mind that you can't attack Vanaduke himself. If you're solo, then you'll need to get good at putting out Vanaduke's fireballs with water, so that you can attack with swords. It takes practice. You will burn a lot on your first few tries. A gun such as Blitz Needle, Nova Driver, Storm Driver, Valiance, Argent Peacemaker, Polaris, Callahan, etc. would be easier than swords.

If you want a gun that's good for PvP and you can use on Vanaduke, get Valiance. You should have all the recipes for it already, it is #1 PvP sidearm IMO, and it isn't half-bad for Vana.

Callahan imo isn't a very good weapon overall. I use it against enemies that are weak to piercing but can attack more quickly than a Blitz charge can get to them (devilites and wolvers), but otherwise it's really slow and doesn't deal enough damage to justify it, especially considering how op Blitz needle charge is. The stun is nice but I've gotten it literally twice in the year+ that I've owned it. Maybe I just have crappy luck, or maybe the stun chance is higher with a charged attack (which, on Callahan, will probably end up having you take more damage than your target with how vulnerable it leaves you, and god forbid you miss), but I just don't have a very good experience with it. I haven't tried it in lockdown but I imagine the slow speed of the attacks makes it poorly-suited for pvp. A striker can dodge/tank it and quickly duck around and hit you while you're recovering. I'd recommend following Khamsin's advice and getting a Valiance. Rank missions provide you with all the necessary recipes so you just need to craft.

Callahan isn't bad against Vanaduke, but the damage per second is pretty low, so it's going to take you a while. And when you're not very experienced, longer fights are worse for you --- more chances to make errors and die. I've soloed Vanaduke with all of the guns I mentioned in post #16. Blitz Needle is the fastest of these, as everybody says. But give him a shot with Callahan, or Valiance, or whatever other (non-shadow) guns you have lying around. Any practice is good practice. If you find yourself spending a lot of Sparks of Life, then just return to Haven and start another run.

I concur with Bopp. For Depths 24 to 27, you can have a mixture of 3* to 4* gear and still pull your weight. Just be sure to be careful with your knockback if you're using a sword (and certain bombs).

For Depth 28/Vana, if you're a great water boy, no one cares if you can't deal damage. If you can kill slags, that would be a bonus, but the most important thing is to be awesome in putting out the Mask phase of Vana. It's very much the most important job in the entire fight. Even moreso than being a Shiverer. It's why some people focus on being hybrid Shiverer/Waterers. If you're in a good group, you wouldn't even have to deal with watering the Lava on the floor much either.

What's with everyone and their off beat strategies? Seriously, Blitz is the most farm friendly way to go about FSC and Vana even if you have zero gun damage.

Realistic scenario: Your party just got to Vana and someone in the party asks how many people have Blitz.

You say no and one of three things happen...

A) Party leader kicks you as you are not worth the HP your presence provides to the boss.
B) People straight up leave.
C) Everyone continues but you find yourself to be pretty useless and a burden on your party.

Basically, if you are a good player it doesn't really matter if most of your gear is 4 or 5 star but just make sure you bring a Blitz. It's what people expect from you when you participate in a Vana run. If you want to solo FSC then feel free to use whatever strategy you wish.

The method you choose to obtain a Blitz is ultimately up to you but it really shouldn't be very difficult to just craft one. Most people don't mind if you have the 4 star version Strike Needle so you can farm your eternal orbs for Blitz while doing FSC.

@Writhes
Sorry, I'll have to somewhat disagree. I'm not the greatest player out there, but if I got at least one good player on the team, it's really no problem to carry 2 total noobs against Vana. You just gotta advise them to stay behind Vana and not knock a Slag into whoever's shivering.

I think in most circumstances, an all melee player will simply be relegated to waterboy status, which again, is pretty much the most critical role in a Vana fight.

If a party leader kicks you outta the team because of the HP bonus to Vana, the leader is probably a bad player anyway. Both in attitude, and in skill.

If the party leader kicks you out because he secretly thinks you'll sabotage the team by (un)intentionally aggroing Vana incorrectly, well, that's his call.

People won't leave, they've already invested 40-60 minutes in this. Unless they're players who prefer to solo once they reach Vana.

As for being a burden on the team, it depends. Assuming that Nascarfan is new and not yet familiar with Vana, yeah, he might make mistakes. But everyone started a noob. He'll get better with time.

Am I saying I don't want people to use Blitz? No. If we got plenty of Blitzers, it'd certainly help in terms of DPS. Are other guns like Argent Peacemaker or Valiance not as efficient in terms of DPS and has a tendency to make Vana turn around faster? Well yes, but a good Blitzer can compensate despite the mobility penalties of the Blitz. SK's a co-op game though. Depths 24 to 27 would be pretty dreary to farm alone. So a little inefficiency at Vana is an acceptable price to pay.

Real men don't need a Blitz or Shivermist.

Although if you don't have either, then you will most likely get kicked from the party. Unless you host the game and don't allow full inspect.

Yes, some parties are led by insecure or impatient people, who can't or won't carry "dead weight" on their teams. But if you're doing all of the non-Vanaduke work (as I explained in post #16 above), then you're doing the team a service, and any reasonably kind person should tolerate or even appreciate your company. On many, many occasions I have done Vanaduke with people who didn't have either Shivermist Buster or Blitz Needle. Nobody in the party seemed to mind.

Nascarfan, you might get kicked from random parties if you don't have Blitz or Shivermist, as Writhes explains. But if you party with friends and guildies (who aren't jerks to you), and you handle the non-Vanaduke tasks competently, then they should be fine having you along. You should not have to rely on that one friend of yours for FSC trips.

@Traevellath

So I shouldn't use my hammer because to you it does barely anything? The Blitz needle doesn't instantly mean Vanaduke. Warmaster Rocket Hammer with Decent ASI is just as good.

Blitz at CTR+6, ASI+6: 17.5 charges per minute. At damage+0, each charge does 2,865-4,080 damage (depending on how vulnerable Vanaduke is to piercing). So we end up with 50,138-71,400 damage per minute, or 836-1,190 damage per second.

WRH at ASI+6: It's probably most efficient to use almost-combos: combos where you shield-cancel before the final stroke. I can manage at least 48 almost-combos per minute, but probably not much more. At damage+0, each almost-combo does 258+153+153+153 = 717 damage (assuming Vanaduke is neutral). So we end up with 34,416 damage per minute or 574 damage per second.

So WRH is not doing nearly as much damage as Blitz. WRH also requires watering orbs in phases 3 and 5. It also breaks the freeze perpetually, if your party is using Shivermist. Damage bonus would change things a bit, but not enough to change the conclusion that Blitz is better here.

By the way, I love it when people stray from the conventional wisdom and try funky new approaches to well-known enemies. But let's just be clear about the tradeoffs we're making, and why the conventional wisdom is what it is.

... They don't really work well.

As long as you have a gun, you should be fine for fighting Vanaduke. If you have someone in the party with a shivermist buster, then it's best to not attack Vanaduke unless you want to throw a shot or two in while someone's blitz needling him. A pure swordsman will have issues for sure, but not to the state of unplayability. Personally, I've beaten Vanaduke solo with my divine avenger and an argent peacemaker without dying, but that took forever, and I'll definitely put emphasis on the solo bit. In a party, I would have been a dedicated water thrower and slag killer, and when health revives were a thing, I'd also be a reviver.

In short, you're more or less ready, as Vanaduke isn't as hard as the game makes him out to be. With the standard party of blitzers, you won't be hitting Vanaduke too much, but you will still be a valuable part of the team, granted you can actually do your job.