I'd rather have it be an alternative type of Piercing sword, myself. We already have three (well, four if you count the hammer) different 'styles' of Elemental sword.

Could be fixed by making the energy disks NOT count as projectiles for the purpose of dodging/shielding enemies. Again, the issue with elemental is that we already have a TON of elemental swords, in four(!) distinct styles: 3 types of Brandish line (fast 3-swing, retrode beam charge), DA (heavy, triple sword beams charge), FoV (slow 3-swing, calibur-type explosion charge), and the P2P Hammer (heavy with an extra dash, double smash charge).

What we're lacking is alternatives for Piercing and Shadow. For piercing, we only have toothpicks, of which only two are considered viable anyway: The BTB and the FF, for which the regular attacks are identical. For shadow, we have the Nightblade and the GF.

I know, piercing would be a stretch, and probably still not as useful as toothpicks, but seriously: Do we need another elemental sword? Consider the odds that the sword may (or may not) be gaining a 5* version in the near future, like the Troika line did, since it was adjusted in this recent patch. A fifth endgame elemental sword option would be downright unnecessary.

To be fair, it's not like I'm personally campaigning for a piercing Winmillion line, but some variety in the way of piercing (and shadow) swords is certainly something I'd appreciate. But that's something for another thread, I guess.

Divine Avenger, Brandish x3, Fang of Vog, Warmaster Rocket Hammer…oh come on do we really need more?

I've made the statement before, I'll make it again.

The Wild hunting blade would be the perfect Piercing/Normal Damage weapon, just bump down beast to med. Sentenza and AP have it, so why not this, or hell since it's a sword, and not a gun, it can keep its high due to OOO loves the idea of swords being really powerful compared to guns.

Also: There was a thread which had some decent ideas for the brandish line

http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/26992

I really liked the ideas here, and I always thought that this should have been the route they went with. This way this weapon could become the brandishes rival, in a way.

The only Shadow-Piercing and Elemental-Piercing was removed because it did what Elemental-Shadow would do. Be considered "weird"

In my opinion, I don't see why it's so weird:

Wolves are strong to elemental, so it's be strong to it
Devilites are strong to dark, so strong to it
Construct are weak to ele, so weak to it
Jellys are weak to shadow, so weak to it
Gremlins are strong to ele, but weak to Dark, so neutral
Undead are strong to shadow, but weak to ele, so neutral

2 strong
2 weak
2 neutral

Just like any normal elemental/Shadow, except now it's not the same 2. I really liked the concept of my AP doing good damage to wolves, and my Sentenza to Devilites. It was a cool concept. Sad they removed it, really.

Well, some people like to go with more of a "musketeer" playstyle, which is to say they don't use bombs.

Look out! Someone has an opinion!

Tsu hides under a desk

But really? Guns have more range then bombs, and keep you safer.

I don't really approve of Spur going Ele damage... Its more wind based then anything... all its attacks just remind me of a breeze... And they should make the dash's more... dashy... and the first swing, if it is to be standing still, lightning fast, so you can dash around like you used to...

~Tsu

Bombs may be pretty versatile, but there aren't a lot of them (Tier 3-wise) that damage directly. The only ones I can think of at the moment are the Blast Bombs, the Spine Cones, and the Irontech bombs (although I forget if they are a part of the Blast Bomb series). All the others leave either a haze of sorts or fire shrapnel, but either way, aren't true explosions.

Guns, on the other hand, are the most versatile weapon. Most of them are either pure-damage, or a combination of 2. This means that they specialize with certain enemy types. For example; Callahan rounds are pure-piercing, and are very suitable for beasts and fiends, especially since those rounds are faster than Wolvers and Devilites can dodge. The (not-so-recent) addition of Arsenal Stations means that specialization is an even better option.

Oh, and as a follow-up to the joke, could the sword also be called the Divine Faust, or is that too much of an oxymoron?

I didn't say guns are useless. I said they're the least useful. They're really weak and for the most part limited in utility. And bombs can give you just as much distance without needing to aim.

I would really like to have more split abnormal (hereafter "SA" for brevity) weapons to better complement what we currently have, and as others have mentioned we have too few options for non-Elemental swords. (Though IMO the bomb options are much more in need of filling out...)

If we had a good Shadow/Pierce sword, it could make the sword options feel less lopsided and also be an easy recommendation for newbies trying to gear up for the next tier as quickly as possible since the default recommendation is to get/upgrade an Elemental gun and either a Pierce sword or Shadow sword first, then thirdly the second of those two sword types. It wouldn't be better, and there's still be a case for going for the toothpick and Nightblade first, but more options are nice IMO. Also, I would like to see Three Rings do something with the Spur and something regarding SA damage that does not ruffle a lot of feathers. :P I could get behind adding an alternative Spur path starting at 3-stars, and take both paths to 5-star, with the SA path having higher base damage to make up for having more monsters be resistant to half of its damage. I would also like to see all the Snarble gear with "Dark" in their names changed to SA, or for simplicity just all the 4- and 5-star ones, but that would probably bring on torch- and pitchfork-wielding angry mobs. :(

Since damage type resistance is much heavier than vulnerability, it seems to me the most obvious "fix" would be to bump up base damage for SA weapons until overall usefulness feels about right. I'm really interested in seeing more players' opinions on where that sweet spot lies. I think it would be somewhere that puts "optimal" damage (split nuetral/strong) at less than pure abnormal damage (like Snarbs vs. Beasts) but more than half-Normal. (like Nightblade vs. Gremlins) IMO, and I suspect many would disagree, it should be buffed just to where "neutral" (split strong/weak) is still noticeably weak compared to Normal and neutral damage, but not cripplingly so.

Yes, safety is most of the point of being able to attack from afar. In addition, I often use a gun as a melee weapon even when I have a sword handy mostly because most guns slow down my movement less than any swords do, which allows me to attack more often since I don't need as big an opening to do it safely. It doesn't work so well for Antigua, at least for me, because in all the excitement I kinda lose track of myself, but it has other useful defensive perks and YMMV anyway.

What really kills most bombs for me is that there are a lot of guns and swords that are really great for AoE and similar multi-hit perks, pushing monsters around, AND inflicting status effects. I prefer the Brandishes' "strong" status effects that're quick to charge up and apply and come with a generous serving of sword damage over the bombs' "minor" effects anyway. I am looking forward to combining a Vortex and Shard bomb, as they offer unique capabilities, though. I hope the charge and fuze times let them combine well, but even if not I still expect to have fun with them...