....Consists of one thing: RSS. That recon would be me.

~The Original Spiral-Hipster

Just remember to ditch your triglav in favor of an elemental brandish. A voltedge is considered to be a 1HKO to most players weak to elemental, and even if it doesn't kill them it will end up shocking them regardless of their level of shock resistance.

If you're looking for a CTR-based sword, please go with an elemental brandish. Think of them as anti-guardian weapons to use in 2v1 situations, or even alongside your bombs once you get them locked in place.

Recon playstyle can be really weird/varied:

- I've seen people cloak aggro with high-ASI rapiers and get relatively high damage (10k+)
- I've seen sniper-gunning using alchemer charge attacks, and ranged deathmark-baiting using guns
- I've seen bomb-spamming recons that act as awesome support with mist / RSS

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- Cloak-poking is more of a way to fight people without letting them auto-target you. I rarely ever see cloak-pokers go for deathmarks, though I see cloak-gunners do it more, since the pause between shots can be slightly extended to go for a ping.

- Heavy sword charge attacks:
Recently, I've really tried to give Sudaruska/Triglav a chance with recon/deathmark. I had a bit of 'success' harassing guardians by ping-shoot-deathmark with guns, then retreating and coming back with a Sudaruska charge on their shield (or if lucky, them). Troika line's lunge makes their charge usable as a way to deal heavy damage in the middle of chaos, while sealed sword's backstep/low ending lag makes them useful as a defensive charge (ex: you're sitting at a point).
If going with regular swings, I feel safer using a sealed sword line.

-I don't have a Voltedge, but the things that people have said concerning it (using it as a ranged power charge) seem like a sound strategy.

- As far as Normal weapons go, Valiance is really powerful with deathmark, and its fast fire rate makes it perfect for cloak-shooting.

- As far as bonuses go, ASI+damage are both very nice for guns/swords. For lighter swords, ASI might take more of a priority since it means you can poke, cancel, and move that much quicker. For heavier swords, ASI is valuable for that reason but if you're more patient and deathmark, extra damage might be more useful for you.
Bombs are max CTR by "default" if you're recon - level 10 gets CTR med + recon general CTR med + recon bomb CTR med = MAX, so if you want bomb trinkets, damage might be the way to go here.

@Traevelliath
For Recon vs Recon, sometimes you could also bait them into attacking by moving around with erratic changes to your manoeuvering at random intervals, especially if they're avid heavy sword users. You could then flush the area out with a Polaris spread or toothpick spamming like in 3) of On Strikers(alternatively cancelling on the second hit too, due to lower mobility). Oh, and none of those tactics would work properly with lag. In fact, most tactics in LD wouldn't work with enough lag. I also suggest waiting sometimes on a wall while cloaked to wait for the right opportunity. Great for capturing points or hitting stragglers, plus lag doesn't affect it as much(for capping, not hitting).
@Skold-The-Drac
Personally, I would highly recommend covering more than one type of gear, with swords being in higher priority with the popularity of Strikers. I'd usually prefer a toothpick, heavy sword, a gun and a utility weapon, but different sets of gear suit different playstyles.

Tobygirl, Gwen and Ancient seem to have that "strangeness" too lol. I think it's called pro skills, but then against, what do I know. I like the one on guardians, never thought/heard of it before, but what do "ping shots" refer to? Sadly for me, it looks like these tricks won't work if I try them. C'mon OOO, new server pl0x! T^T

Everyone here does know that a level ten bomb with the Recon Module grants you max ctr, right?
@Rueiwarrior So, if you're a recon a ctr UV is completely and utterly useless.
@Noogard Same thing. Bomb ctr trinket is completely useless.

Recon module gives med ctr to everything, and an extra med ctr to bombs, which makes vh ctr, to go with a L10 bomb (med ctr) it gives max.

Callahan + recon = awesomeness. But I would suggest heating it to level 5 before you use it. It doesn't stun much until then. Also have a nice sword to Wack them with in handy when you successfully stun.

@Fraxur:
If you want to troll people: a status gun, or RSS
If you want to harass people: a fast sword
If you want to hold points: a mist bomb

Common choices for status gun:
Hail driver (freeze when you're alone --> free deathmark or charge) or shock gun of choice (polaris, storm driver).

Common choices for sword: ...wow, anything.
Like harassing people out of the blue? Toothpick + angry shield cancelling is just as dangerous.
Alternatively, DA/GF/Hammer for group assassination on cap points. I'd take hammer just to spite Skolver's lack of elemental defense, but if you've got high ASI on a toothpick, it's just as dangerous.
Also viable: Charge-harassment with Brandish line or FOV.
You lose 1 level of speed, but at the tradeoff that if you deathmark, you hit harder than anything lol.

Common bomb choices: Stun, Shock bombs. Ice is good...except for when you're fighting some Skolvers.

As for armor, depends on your trinkets too. The highest-damage recons I've seen tend to have a combination that sets them to VH+ ASI and VH Sword Damage.

Mercurial could be useful if you're a bomber/cap-focused because your cloak walk is slower than uncloaked walk and the bonus makes up for it, but you trade off losing the offensive stats you would have from Vog/Skolver.

For all its weakness when you get hit out of cloak, recon is REALLY versatile. You get Med gun ASI (faster cloak-shooting), Med CTR on all weapons and pretty much max CTR on bombs, so you can really use any weapon and be fine with it.

I can't claim to be anywhere near a 'pro' recon, since I only started playing it partly just to troll and partly because I'm dreadfully bored of having to compete against trollaris/AA spam/dual heart trinkets/dmg max GF as a striker, but I've been able to piss off a striker or two so I'll throw in my two cents.

The true strength of a recon lies in its cloak, which, aside from the obvious applications of sneaking an attack on a random capper or slipping behind dense enemy lines, allows you to exploit an opponent's openings by out-predicting them. I can't really give a good description of what I mean by this since I don't really put much thought into it, and the situations vary, so I'll just ramble a bit.
In general you should show yourself to enemies as little as possible, since people aren't stupid and can predict your general location just based on your move speed, and since if you immediately recloak after you pop up to deliver an attack, the lack of forewarning and knock back disguises your direction of movement, and sometimes even your original location, afterwards. This means that pulling out full combos is generally ill-advised, as you not only leave yourself terribly vulnerable, it also gives them a good sense of where you are and where you'll be going (cloak fadeout time). Also two important things, this doesn't mean you should walk everywhere around the map cloaked, otherwise you'll have none left once you actually engage an opponent. You need to guess where the enemies will and won't be based on their speed and your map so you only cloak right before they see you. Other important thing: if you know you'll get hit, do NOT cloak. It's hard to fight this instinct since it would normally be our shield we're bringing up, but once you loose your cloak you're usually a dead man walking.
In order to play recon well, at least for swordplay, you also need to be extremely good at prediction. Since opponents will often attack madly in your presence, leaving them extremely vulnerable in every direction but the one they attack in, if you know where they think you'll be, it's trivially easy to dodge their attacks and hit em back harder. Also, since in order to land a hit all attacks first require you to get into range, and then a few precious seconds to actually execute the animation, you can attack a second before you predict they will be so that they not only have their attacks canceled on you, but run straight into yours. This is actually something i picked up as a striker, where I'd be capping and I'd see someone rushing in from the side of my screen. Most strikers aren't smart enough to change their minds after deciding a path to take so I could just start a combo in their direction and watch them dash right into a pointy place. If you can master this prediction, it'll be the only reason you'll live against good strikers once your cloak breaks. One last note on this, you do NOT want to twitch about erratically. Doing so only serves to make their attacks more chaotic, often giving your cloak, and therefore your life, to chance.

Since a recon can exploit openings so well, a good one could really make any weapon work. For swords in general, imo it's better just to stack as much damage as you can and just forget about asi, since the only time it really makes a difference as a recon is when you're already cloak-less against asi maxed strikers, in which case you're usually dead anyways. Of course, if you're rich, asi never hurts. Anyways, this means that slower swords with massive damage per hit are favored, particularly the DA/GF/hammer, and I'd definitely recommend getting one of them to recon with. Probably better to start with a sealed line though, the hammer is a tricky beast that takes a certain finesse to master. Also, I don't want any competition smashing things =P.
Of course a status field bomb is recommended since it'll be ctr maxed by itself, and RSS is certainly viable.
The gun can literally be anything. Spam polaris/AP/sentenza if you want, or run around with drivers, doesn't really matter imo so long as you have something to pew bombers with and aid your team when you otherwise can't get into range. Personally I've been running around with an iron slug for the lulz, but I can still get it to do the job if you don't believe me. Special note to drivers though, since you can throw out charge attacks more easily while possibly providing status effects form afar. Otherwise, probably best to go with AP/sentenza for maximum interrupt potential.

TL;DR DA/GF with dmg boosts, AP/sentenza, optional status bomb. Don't care to reread my ramblings myself to summarize the rest. Basically, if you can read minds or want to spam bombs/brandish charges, then this is the class for you! Otherwise, sorry, good luck and godspeed.