The biggest problem is that your gun and your sword are both elemental. So you're weak against gremlins and beasts, and not great against slimes and fiends either. You need to coordinate your damage types. You might find my detailed sword guide useful. There is also a section on armor. Keep in mind that Snarbolax armor is hard to get.

"I want to be a sword beast, everything offensive"

Aha! The Chaos Set with Swiftstrike Buckler is for you! Place Elite Slash Module and Elite Quick Strike Module in your trinket slots...
There you go! ASI Ultra, DMG MAX, CTR MAX DA set!

By the way, the Chaos Set is the 5* version of Magic Set *wink*

Anyway, if you want to save your money and use your Dusker Set, I recommend you to have at least one piece of Vog Cub instead of Skolver/Snarbolax since Sealed Sword line requires some sort of speed buff due to its slow swing speed. Or you may just use Swiftsrike Buckler and Skolver/Snarbolax to gain ASI high+DMG VH.
Be aware that Snarbolax set can only be obtained by doing a Shadow Lair run, you may also buy them from Auction House but that's way too costly. So I guess you better get Skolver or Vog Cub before getting Snarbolax set because a Shadow Lair run is a bit too hard for a 4* player to do for their first time.

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As others said, you should get another damage type of weapons. I recommend you to get a Flourish if you are a sword man.
For bomb, Electron/Graviton Vortex can make DA kills more efficient. Many people like having Shivermist to freeze monsters, but the point of using DA is the knockback and the pulsar's point is the knockback too, so freeze status make them pointless.

Since you decided to make a slow sword, DA, you might want a fast gun rather than the pulsar line to hit switch or break blocks faster. So I would say that you should replace your pulsar with one of the Antigua line.

Chaos set can be obtained by upgrading Magic Cloak/Magic hood.
It has negative fire/freeze/shock/poison/curse defense in exchange of having CTR Medium and DMG Medium UNIVERSAL offensive bonuses.

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I'd say
=Sword=
-Divine Avenger for sure, yep?
-Either Final Flourish or Barbarous Thorn Blade for piercing. They are the easiest thing to fight against fiends and beasts, also great in Lockdown (PvP content)

=Gun=
-Argent Peacemaker(upgraded version of Antigua, obtained by grinding JK and trade token)
-Sentenza (shadow version of AP). But I recommend AP as the targets you will use guns against are mostly turrets which are weak or neutral against elemental damage.
(-Polaris (you wouldn't want another slow weapon if you get DA. and knock back is enough with a DA, you don't need anymore knock back and the gun is not too friendly for a party if you don't know how to use it))
-Valiance (Normal damage and medium knock back, fast bullets and so-so damage output)

=Bomb=
-Graviton Vortex. Even though many people say that Electron Vortex is better(and i do too), if you dislike playing PvP games, it will be a pain to get the recipes. So Graviton Vortex is a wise choice for PvP-haters.
-Any mist bombs you would like. Id say "excluding shiver" for the reason above my last post.

=Helm=
-Chaos Cowl(MOST offensive helm in the game, it gives CTR+DMG Med on ALL weapons, not only swords, not only guns, not only bombs, EVERYTHING. but it has negative defensive status. skill can cover it though.)
-Vog Cub Cap(Fire and elemental defense are very worthy as you will grind Fire Storm Citadel in the future to get crowns and heat. and its Attack Speed Increased Medium bonus on sword is worthy too if you use a DA.)
-Skolver Cap (Piercing defense is the least important defense in PvE side, jellies and beasts aren't big fear for many people. but if you focus on Lockdown, there are many piercing damage sources so you may want to take this one. also if you don't care about DA's slow speed, you can use this skolver cap for its Damage medium bonus on swords to power up your DA.)
-Snarbolax Cap (fiends will be one of the most annoying monsters in this game; they deal shadow damage, so you may want to protect you from the threat from shadow fiends. this one is the shadow version of the skolver cap with less freeze resist for exchange to the same amount of poison resist. it is hard to gain because of the shadow lair)

=Armour=
Same as the helms

=Shields=
-Barbarous Thorn Shield aka Snarby Shield/BTS (nope, it is NOT hard to get. you DONT have to do shadow lairs to get this shield. you got confused, it seems like. many veteran sword man take this shield everywhere due to its sword damage medium bonus. literally everywhere, not only in piercing level, even shadow/elemental level or shadow lairs.)
-Swiftstrike Buckler aka SSB (it is only 3* shield. so it is a paper lol. you can only tank 1-3 hits with this shield in Tier 3. However, its UNIVERSAL ASI HIGH bonus is amazing. many veteran sword man/gunner/hybrid players take this shield almost everywhere too(not much in SL since its a paper lol). since you will need to have FULL 4*/5* to pass 2 of the Hall of Heroes missions, you will have to get another shield even if you like this shield. so it is worth getting BTS AND this shield.)

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Another option is to have Divine Veil+Skolver Coat. It looks amazing with DA (really, its divine knight lol). Also you will have spread defense for Normal/Piercing/elemental/Shadow damages and Freeze/Fire/Shock/Curse status effects, DMG bonus VH vs Fiends, and Medium sword damage bonus. since the set covers 3 most annoying status effects, fire, freeze, shock, and has 4 types of damage defenses, you can run any levels only with this set. which means you can save crowns for weapons and shields. then when you feel you have enough weapons, you can switch to other armour/helms like chaos.

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You can have up to 4 weapons by buying weapon slots. it is available at Kozma (press K button to browse her shop) or at Auction House for slightly cheaper than Kozma.

Thunder-The-Bright, there are four 5-star piercing swords; you left out Fearless Rigadoon. Blastcore, there is no particular reason to go for normal swords; just stick with piercing, elemental, and shadow.

Just because you already have the 3-star or 4-star version of something, that does not mean that it's too late to switch alchemy lines. More than half of the cost in making a 5-star item comes in the final upgrade from 4-star to 5-star. So you may think that you almost have a 5-star sword, but really you're much less than halfway there. In particular, don't do the final upgrade unless you're sure that you want it.

I recommend that you keep your Sealed Sword, but put off upgrading it. First get an elemental gun and a piercing sword (or shadow sword). Then upgrade your Sealed Sword to Divine Avenger.

For a sword you should also get a toothpick, and I suggest you replace DA with an elemental brandish as it can easily out dps the DA.

That might work. Vog Cub will be nice for some elemental, and snarbo will be good for shadow. It's only the piercing you need to worry about, but piercing monsters should be easy to kill with those weapons.

slot 1-Divine Avenger
slot 2-Argent Peacemaker
slot 3-Graviton Vortex
slot 4-Final Flourish/Barbarous Thorn Blade (There are 2 more with status effects but only a few people choose them because of low damage and low chance of inflicting status effects)
helm-Vog Cub Cap
armour-Snarbolax Coat
Shield-Barbarous Thorn Shield

Yep, should be okay. However, Snarbolax Coat is hard to get. You know what a Shadow Lair is? It is a Lair that is harder than Tier 3. Let's say it's a kind of "Tier 4". It is hard to complete without 5* set. For Veterans, they are not that hard but it will be your first time to go to Shadow Lair when you are getting Snarbolax Coat so you will die a lot with Ash Tail Coat 4*.

But with a good team, it can be very easy. "Good" means players who are skilled, it does not matter if they have 5* with fancy UVs. That does not make you skilled, it would help you make you skilled, but I have seen plenty of people with 5* -- some were with fancy UVs -- who are very bad and dies every second in other word "noobs".
Choose your team wisely. Don't just /shout in Haven "looking for Shadow Lair Team", I've seen plenty of case that the team of new player for snabolax set got full of 5* "noobs" in Haven. Make trustable friends who are 5*, and ask them to help you.

Also there are some factors that you could use:
-Amount of prestige: People with high prestige points usually have played this game long and have done SLs many times. However, sometimes it doesn't meant anything, of course. I have seen plenty of people with low prestige who are very skilled or the opposite, people with over 45k who suck at everything. It is just a factor you could use to choose people for SL.
-Guild: People who are in guilds that require you to pass tests to get in are usually (again) good. Yes yes again, I have seen plenty of people in minor guilds who are super good at fighting.
YES THEY ARE JUST A FACTOR YOU COULD USE.

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Anyway, it's just a loadout helping thread...not a SL team advice thread so I will stop. lol

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well you are only 3* now, you haven't come half way through yet. just start thinking about it when you get your first 5* weapon...which takes a long time

By making Strike Needle, your Vana runs will be 10 times easier. You can one shot kill Trojan with its charge at lvl10 and it will deal a lot more damage on Vanaduke than...AP or DA. However it takes long time to master, and you will die a lot until you get used to the immobile shot.

I think you should make Strike Needle, then Divine Avenger, then Argent Peacemaker.
You can keep SN/AP at 4* until you get DA. Because upgrading them just increases the damage (AP's charge changes but anyone rarely uses the charge) while DA's charge gets a lot better.

To tell the truth I kept 4* SN looooooong time lol. But there was no problem unless I was soloing Vanaduke, it took a bit long.

DA->Strike Needle->Silversix->Blitz needle->AP order should be okay.

If you make Strike Needle, Flourish' priority goes down but you should at least have the 4* since Wolvers are hard to hit with autogun line, and flourish is much easier. And Graviton Vortex' priority is the least, it is just a support bomb to kill enemies faster.

I don't know if you did that for challenge or you're just a Tier 2 person joining FSC to get some crowns. And I don't know if you died or the another person had blitz or something high DPS weapon.

I wouldn't know if you are a super pro who doesn't mind spending a long time to beat one Vanaduke for a good challenge or just a T2 person happened to be a beast until you write something more specific about that episode.

Edit: Nevermind, I didn't realise until now that you are the person who made this thread lol

I've beaten vanaduke with a Polaris and a Mega Magnus but i wouldn't want to do it again, it's just a waste of time.

I've already given you my best advice, to get an elemental gun with a piercing or shadow sword. But you don't want to take this advice, because you're wedded to your elemental sword.

Okay, since you don't want my best advice, here's another piece of advice. Are you going to try Firestorm Citadel a lot? Then get a Blitz Needle. The combination of Divine Avenger and Blitz Needle is very good for FSC.

We've given you just about as much help as we can on your question as posed. Either just pick a gun and try it out, or come up with some new questions. Good luck.

I don't know why you're considering Argent Peacemaker. Was this explained above? I haven't re-read the thread. Anyway, if I had already decided on Divine Avenger, then I would certainly choose Blitz Needle over Argent for my other weapon. To reiterate and clarify, here are the reasons:
* Choosing Argent would leave me with two elemental weapons, which is silly.
* Argent isn't even the best elemental gun.
* Blitz Needle is very powerful, especially in FSC.

You'd be better off getting some fire/elemental resistance.. use one piece of Vog and you'll get that and ASI and then use another damage trinket instead.

Although you could use a BTS instead if maxing damage is your main priority, to free up a trinket slot for something else (you might want sword focus, depending on the weapon you use)

About that point B.
DA Charge+Vortex isn't as good as Brandish Charge+Vortex but DA Swing+Vortex is as good as DA Charge+Vortex. With ASI Medium you can swing 4 times while Vortex is sucking. Monsters are pretty much dead in solo play with the combo.
Here is the video of the DA+EV test I did a few mins ago. One with DA ASI Medium/DMG Max, one with DA CTR Medium/DMG Max. Both works quite well.
http://youtu.be/gyEoCcD4_Vg

P.S. I just realised, that I should've done the test with no DMG bonus. Well, too late, not gonna make another video again XD

Yes, you're talking about very powerful items, and they'll certainly work. Although I don't mean to suppress your enthusiastic discussion, my advice is simply to get this stuff and see how you like it. At some point you have to stop planning and just do it. Cheers.

Congratulations for the Snarbolax Coat.
With the charge attack of DA, Unknown Passage can be very easy ^^ I prefer spamming Nitronome, or EV+Brandish with friends, though