After deciding my gun,I am really confused about my sword, I see guys doing better with silent night blades than my Faust, in bot PVP & adventuring, please give me the real facts, not opinions please.
Thank You
Acheron line vs Faust line
Gran Faust tears up LD with horrifying damage/swing ratio, has an insane gamble charge(that isn't worth using).
Archeon is a Shadow Combuster w/o Fire, even more powerful if you stack CTR/damage bonuses.
Take Archeon if you want reliability, Gran Faust for PvP/like heavy swords
I also have both 4*'s, and I can say that Nightblade is both more reliable and has a higher single-target damage output on the normal swings. Faust can hit more enemies in a swing, but Nightblade's charge can hit even more while having the added bonus of not cursing you. Faust might be better, but only if you get CTR and curse resistant armor.
For PvP, GF is easier to spam and get high damage with, but Acheron is just as if not even more potent if you know how to handle it and have decent UV's. Ask Leadmonkey.
better charge or better swing? Faust/GF can also curse, which can be pretty deadly, but sice it is such a DPS heavy sword, curse is hardly neccesary for support. Acheron has an incredible charge, but doesn't hit as hard.
So yeah. My thoughts
Insane Gamble?? You're insane if you think it's that bad. I've only gotten cursed from it like ...20% of the time or less, and if you have even ONE weapon slot upgrade (or divine veil) it will barely matter if you do get cursed.
I've found that using the Acheron's charge attack works well on the slime family of monsters, yet the Gran Faust's double-swing combo is devastating to small groups of gremlins. In short, Acheron for Slimes, Gran Faust for Gremlins.
And I quote:
Acheron VS Gran Faust
Acheron's main attraction over gran faust is its charge attack- while GF can be used for what is good damage on normal hits against enemies, acheron can do the same thing but better on the charge. Gran Faust on the other hand, has one huge thing over acheron- knockback. Overall, gran faust is better against mobs that don't dodge on its normal attack, but isn't nearly as effective at taking out polyp turrets, while acheron is better against polyps and the same against everything that GF excels at. It can be argued that GF is fine for taking out polyps, but again, the same tricks used to make GF take them out can be used on acheron, but to take it out faster. GF's charge is better at one thing- taking out huge crowds that have silkwings inside of them when the user has weapon slots/curse resistance... however, such crowds are not always common on levels that lack the features that make acheron better, and it is not such a big deal if you know what you are fighting as there are far better ways to deal with such a crowd. The other side to using GF's curse to your advantage is that you yourself will be subjected to the curse, requiring you to bring gear to avoid the curse. While not such a big deal if you have 3 or 4 weapon slots, GF's curse can be a hassle when the one weapon you need is made unavailable. That being said, GF's curse also condemneds most enemies to death, which can be a huge boon. The problem being that the curse is unreliable- you'll still be killing most of the enemies with just GF, so relying solely on the curse is not recomended. Acheron is not at any sort of huge loss because of the curse, due mostly to it's amazing charge attack, which performs the same duty as GF's curse- taking out a single target quickly.... unless that target is a silkwing, in which case the curse is quite amazing. Neccessary? No. Amazing? Yes.
My PvE answer is here: http://wiki.spiralknights.com/User:Jdavis/Swords#Shadow_Swords.