Faust vs Acheron has been beaten to death. Choose whatever your prefer.

But even then, you shouldn't take a shadow weapon in FSC. There are less than 10 oilers in there, and most things are resistants to shadow, it's not worth it. Instead, get a piercing weapon for trojans.

For the remaining slot, generaly the pattern to kill Vanaduke (which is really the only difficult thing in FSC once you get used to the run) is Shiver + Blitz. That means you need either one, or both to be more versatile. Note that Blitz is the perfect weapon for Trojans too, the charge can OS them in a 3 man party, and with a med damage in a 4 man party too.

Polaris ? only really useful for the rocket room. For the rest, DA do the job better and Polaris 360° direction knockback is hella annoying.
AP ? Not that great either. DA + Blitz combo do way better against everything. It's main advantage is mobility, but it's seriously lacking in damage.

@Odinthefather you know the edit button right ? Use it. Thanks.

Divine Avenger - for slags (both zombies and guards), Vanaduke's mask, slimes, gun puppys
Barbarous Thorn Blade - for wolvers, trojans, silkwings
Glaceus - for crowd control, putting out flamed oilers, holding Vanaduke in place if nobody in your party has a Shivermist Buster, replacing Shivermist Buster if your not a fan of bombs
Argent Peacemaker - taking down enemies too dangerous to get near (slag guards when charging), taking down enemies when low on health

Replacing the Argent Peacemaker with Blitzneedle is not recommended if you are a swordsman and will only use your gun when low on health to 'kite' enemies and slowly take them down. The Blitzneedle's con with the inability to move is an extremely big disadvantage, to you, against faster moving monsters and ruins the whole aspect of kiting.

This is just my suggestion and there may be some flaws so feel free to improve it.

But there you have it a loadout that does either neutral or high damage against all the monsters in the Firestorm Citadel

^^^ basically what I said but replacing AP with Blitz

@Gianor

The VPS is ok, but Owlite is a more popular option because of elemental. You encounter puppies, lumbers and mechaknights in a lot of place, and they all deal elemental. Specifically for FSC, the fire from the mask (the only real phase where you need a shield) do elemental too. Oh, and VPS will not take one more consecutive hit from Vana mace, so you'll have to avoid it anyway.

The Penta-Heart is a bad choice. Leave it to PvP. You don't need more health, but you certainly can use more offense. Which one is up to you. I personnaly don't use any Sword Focus because charge REDUCE your dps compared to what you could do with normal attacks, at least for Divine Avenger.

CIV is ok too, but Leviathan has a little edge. Vanaduke is not considered an undead, and the only place you should use this sword is on Vana mask (and P1 if you want). So Leviathan will do a little more damage at no cost (actually, you'll not have to search for CIC/CIV recipes)

Then, for Blitz vs AP, the only problem is : is your team going to use shiver + Needle or AP/Polaris spam ? Keep in mind that a Blitz do more than twice the dps of an AP. Generally, if there is a Needle and Shiver, AP/Polaris will also be forbidden to break the freeze, because it mess up the Needler (which do way more damage and thus shouldn't be hindered).

@Fehzor the rest of your advice is good, but that really makes me twitch : "The armors you get don't really matter much"

It matters a LOT. There is so much fire down there that you are going to get on fire. If you don't have any fire resist, that means each time you get on fire, you'l loose roughly half (or a third if full life with vitapod) of your health. When you begin FSC, it's a huge difference. I generally advise to get one fire resist part before anything else (NOT the shield) to try FSC.

I agree with Demonicsothe. Yes, fire resist is EXTREMELY useful. Is it totally and completely necessary? No, not really. Hell, I started running FSC in Virulisk set. I've only recently crafted Vog Cub set, and I can safely say both that fire resist is extremely useful, and that it's not necessary.

skolver set
BTS
DA
Levi
Final flourish
AP/strike needle
do it like the pros you never get lit on fire

@demonicsothe - BTS is the shield not the blade.

Never getting lit on fire through is still fairly tough regardless of what the "pros" say. Have a stupid team that leaves you cornered by Trojans when you are trying to set them up for the kill along with some zombies and a fire pit and you don't have a lot of options. You tell me how you are going to get out without getting either hit or set on fire for massive damage. With my high fire resistance I can run through the fire pits, save myself and only take a few hits of damage.

I recently crafted a fire high ash tail coat. Once I beat the shadow lairs I'm going to craft it into a snarbolax coat and it'll be perfect for FSC.

@Elduderinoo The random roof is actually not random. Only the position is, not the time : it will ALWAYS fall after Vana use his mace, and thus is easy to predict and avoid. Just pay extra attention when he is swinging.

Only occasional lag spikes can't be planned. Or the eventual stupidity/afk of teamates.

As with all advice, this is just information about the statistics and game mechanics; you don't have to follow it in any way. I just want to ensure that you are making an informed decision- there is nothing wrong with deciding to go against convention, but going against convention out of ignorance is something I find appalling.

1. Get at least 4 ranks of fire resist (1 pc of vog/salamander or a Max UV), more if you know you have skill/latency issues. No matter how pro you are, s*** happens, and losing half your health at an inopportune moment is very inconvenient.
2. Get at least one 5* armor's worth of normal defense. Other special type or status defenses (other than the aforementioned fire) are useful but not critical, but if you lack normal you will lose a lot of health to the errant mace or trojan.
3. Be at least full 4* gear; run a shield that either has good bonuses (BTS line, Swiftstrike) or defensive properties (normal, fire, elemental)
4. There are 4 weapon types important in FSC + boss: elemental sword, Shivermist Buster, Blitz Needle, fast normal damage sword. Always bring at least two of these weapons; bring more if you aren't heating anything and have the slots.
-Elemental sword includes Brandish lines and DA- these are your main workhorse for clearing out the Citadel, which is crawling with slow, elemental-weak zombies.
-Shivermist is the favored method of locking down trojans and Vanaduke for easy Blitz kills.
-Blitz is the premier anti-trojan, anti-Vanaduke weapon. Sure, other weapons work well too, but it's hard to argue they are easier and faster than the Blitz-Shivermist combo.
-Fast normal swords like Dread Venom Striker or Leviathan are the easiest, most effective weapon to use on the mask phases. Again, there are other weapons that fill this role adequately or possibly more effectively, but they tend to require more skill, or have reduced damage output.

If you meet these 4 criteria, you should rarely if ever be turned away from a Vana run because you will fit right into the most commonly used strategy for FSC+Vana. Of course there are exceptions; some people prefer using Argent Peacemaker (a perfectly viable method for the boss), which is mutually exclusive with the Blitz-Shivermist strategy. And you may see gunners using Nova or Storm drivers in place of an elemental sword, which is also perfectly viable. In short, there are many reasonable styles of play. Vanaduke is a team fight, and with only two weapon slots you'll have to rely on your teammates for certain parts. So tailor your gear to specialize in a particular department- for example, full Vog pairs well with a DA and DVS, allowing you to be tremendously useful in most of FSC plus phases 1, 2 and 4 of the boss fight.

So even though you know how it is trigger (which is not obvious, I didn't notice the pattern for a while), you actually get hit by the roof and this is a danger for you and is something you can't plan ? I don't think "pro" means what you think it means.

@Mohandar you said there are other weapons that fill mask phase "adequately or possibly more effectively" than DVS/Levi. Could you expand on that ? Because I have no idea which weapon could be better for this niche. And, in my opinion, that slot is the most optional. Your standard elemental sword is usually good enough for the mask, as it is fast anyway.

From a strict DPS point of view, Blitz is better than Levi only if you can reliably pull off 2 charges (which is not possible without CTR/ASI UV or trinkets).

The Blitz charge only do marginally more damage than Levi and is substantially harder to use. I don't have reliable data for DVS, i'm only under the impression that it's very similar to Blitz/Levi damage output

I agree for the hard to see fire tiles. It could actually be added on the list of things are to plan. But it's preventable : be good enough so that Vanaduke never swing :p

@Bopp the problem is that for optimal dps, you charge Leviathan. I'm not sure DVS is worth charging (perhaps one time so you can do one to start, and then do normal shots). There is no data that I know of for charges on those swords. I also have doubts about DVS damage measurement. I would need to double check them to be sure.

Long story short : the data is lacking, but i'm too lazy to gather that myself, currently.

Good point, Fradow. Certainly you start off by delivering a Levi charge on the mask. After that, do most players charge again, or just take regular swings? I don't remember. (I don't take Levi or FoV there, myself. Only three weapon slots.)

It would be great to know sword charge times --- particularly for Levi/CIV/FoV --- so that we could rationally compare charges to regular attacks. Time for a new data collection project...