Elemental and shadow UVs are not going to give you as much protection as real elemental or shadow armor. So, unless you're super-skilled, I'd recommend getting a better mix of armor and wearing Mercurial as a costume over it.

Aesthetically, the best shield for your "Crystallized Quicksilver" concept might be something like Surge Breaker Shield. Practically, it's not very good.

If you want an elemental gun with good knockback, the obvious choice is Polaris. Valiance isn't bad, though. It's nice to have damage UVs against specific families, but it's even nicer to wear armor and trinkets that give you blanket damage bonuses against all six families, Vanaduke, and other players in PvP.

In general, I'd say that you may be overestimating the effects of UVs (see the wiki page "Abilities") and you may be underestimating the costs associated with getting the specific UVs you want. (If you're not, sorry.)

You're attracted to the increased movement speed. Have you seen it in action? If not, try to preview it on YouTube or something. The increase is so small that it's barely noticeable.

You can get trinket slot upgrades for less than 8000 crowns, and weapon slot upgrades for about twice that. Alternatively, if you have an alternate character, then you can use his ME to get these for 50 CE and 150 CE, respectively. So I spend 250 CE each month to maintain two trinket slots and three weapon slots. That's about 20,000 crowns per month.

The wiki article "Unique variant" suggests that your chances of getting a Max UV on armor may be as low as 5%. So getting a Max armor UV is expected to require 20 tries, at a total cost of 400,000 crowns. That's nearly two years' worth of trinket and weapon slot upgrades at my rate. And it might not even be the UV you want, of course.

But it's true that you will eventually have more money than you know what to do with, and you might as well spend it on exactly what you want. I'm just trying to make sure you know the costs involved. Enjoy. :)

Swiftstrike is worth it on all weapons, except bombs. I hear asi also affects bomb's up and down movement, but really, it doesn't help that much. Arguably the best T2 shield due to its moderate defence and high offensive bonus, ssb is amazing as long as you remember it is a more fragile shield than most.

I skimmed through the posts above, and it seems like you simply want normal damage weapons to fight all of clockworks, since you won't encounter anything that resists normal. I'm not sure if this is explained somewhere up top, but having 2 specialized weapons allows you to deal effective damage to 4 of the 6 families, and normal damage to the last 2. This is in comparison to your weapons loadout which deals simply normal across the board, with no extra damage. I apologize if I missed anything.

For weapon uv, you have the choice of damage vs family(6), asi, and ctr. Damage vs family is generally not a preferred uv for a few reasons. Certain armour/trinkets give your weapons damage bonus. This damage bonus is usually med on a 5* piece, and a full set gives you vh. That's med/vh to all monsters, including exceptions like vana and knight, when you are using the weapon type. Second, damage vs family do not exceed the maximum value. So if you were to have a vh damage sword set, and roll a gremlin high, your damage vs gremlin will be max. The extra point in your uv is not counted. And people prefer asi/ctr on weapons to family bonus, because rolling is expensive for most and family bonus tends to not sell well.

It is possible to obtain 2 normal weapons with vh damage to 3 different family on each weapon. But let me remind you the costs of rolling 3 uvs. 225k for that one ticket. You could use the 1 uv ticket to roll a uv you want, then move to 2 uvs, keeping the uv you want and rolling that second. Then you have to use the 3 uv ticket, check the 2 you want, and keep rolling until you got what you want. Have you any idea how expensive it is, compared to buying just 1 weapon slot for 15k-18k cr. In fact, that's cheaper than buying the 1 uv ticket, with which you need to be very lucky to receive a vh damage vs whatever. And even if you don't want to craft the 3rd weapon to fill the last slot, 225kcr is about 2700ce, if you set the conversion at 8300cr. That's still enough for you to craft a weapon up to 5*.

/endrant

Anyways. I might have mathed wrong, so don't take ce/225kcr number too seriously. In the end, what you want is up to you. Having 1 armour set for each defence is great, but you can make do with only one set, whether it be a general purpose, gun spec, sword spec, bomb spec, or hipster.

Unless you're prepared to spend inordinate amounts of time and/or money to get those UVs, I recommend just building multiple armor sets. The Arsenal stations at the beginning of most levels basically encourages you to build a loadout for each type of level, and in Tier 3 it is much more effective (gameplay and costwise) to do this rather than shoot for a max UV set. The amount of CE/cr you would have to spend to get those UVs could easily fun dozens of vanilla 5* items (actually, you can get lows and mediums pretty cheap most of the time).

My recommendation is to first figure out your style (swords? bombs? guns? hybrid?), figure out what types of monsters you have the most trouble with, and build two sets of gear- one that you are comfortable with in your playstyle and can handle most enemies, and a second set that buffs up your defenses and offensive capability against the enemy you have trouble with.

For example, lately I've taken to playing gunner so I use Shadowsun Slicker paired with either a Nameless or Justifier Hat, giving me ample defense against normal damage, as well as moderate defense against whatever special type I may be facing. I then load out with a Storm or Magma Driver (elemental, depending on whether oilers or quicksilvers are present) and an Umbra Driver (shadow), as well as a haze bomb (Voltaic Tempest or Ash of Agni). This handles about 80% of the floors I encounter, but the lack of piercing damage means I need a separate loadout for beasts and fiends. Because these two enemy types are naturally tougher to gun, I have a Valkyrie (and later Snarby) set and Barbarous Thorn Blade to deal with those. Ever since the nerf some while ago, beasts have ceased to be a threat, so I've basically given up on pierce protection for beast levels, though I wound up making a Skolver eventually for completeness. (In fact, wolvers are a complete joke with Dark Briar Barrage.)

Esteemed regular advice givers: You're missing the point. This guy really values speed. He wants to run as fast as possible (hence Mercurial, even though the effect is tiny) and swing a sword as fast as possible (hence DVS). All other loadout goals are secondary. He doesn't want to kill monsters as efficiently as possible; he wants the best possible shield and gun to go with his already-made choices.

Xiongataosenai, I apologize if I'm misrepresenting you. If I'm right, and you really do value speed this much, then go for Swiftstrike Buckler and Argent Peacemaker. Don't worry about the lack of knockback; you will adjust your tactics to handle it. Go for ASI and two monster damage UVs on each weapon.

And plan on getting one piece of Mercurial and one piece of Mercurial Demo, to diversify your damage protection a bit. I'll let other people comment on the armor UVs.

I get it now.

Re: Swiftstrike, it really should be viable in T2. (Pros with decent connections can run with it anywhere--T3, SLs, whatever. I can't.) If SSB is not doing it for you in T2, you probably need to work on your skills. You should not be blocking everything.

There's little else to say. You want this loadout. You can make this loadout. You will still be able to kill things. Yay! :P

Don't forget about trinkets! Especially if you go for having more than 2 weapons, then trinkets can help you with buffing whichever weapon type you favor. Or in the case of not favoring anything, you could always get heart pendants which will help you stuff one or two more attacks in T3 or so.