As Wolfe-Knight said, there is no single overall best weapon. If there were, then everyone would have that weapon, and there would be no reason to have any other, right?

What Zeddy is saying is that Acheron is now disproportionately powerful, so it may be the leading contender for best all-around sword. But if you don't understand how damage types work in this game, then you might be confused by its behavior. You need to learn about damage types.

I have a detailed sword guide for people in your situation. You can learn more about swords and damage types there. For guns, you might start with the Gunslinger Guide on the wiki. Perhaps also search Google for something like "gunner loadout site:forums.spiralknights.com".

Strategy plays a role in this topic. Almost all of the weapons are balanced in equal respect, but they all have bonus damage against a certain monster family. Acheron is wisest if going against slimes, flourish is best for beasts, Glacius or Combustor cover anything not resistant to elemental. This is easily answered with a question, what monsters do you fight the most?

Acheron+Polaris

GG PvE and PvP

Acheron, Blitz, and Polaris. You won't need any other weapon if you have these things with you.

If you wanna fill that last slot, throw in a Shivermist.

Dark Briar Barrage is the most overpowered weapon in the game as it clears waves of fiends without breaking a sweat, you can do this by just standing and dropping it under your legs. You don't even need to aim.

@Gonkor

No it isn't because the enemy gains invincibility for a few milisecs when hitting him with the DVS. So you'll deal dmg with the first hit but not with the other hits. And that first hit alone is horrible.

It really isn't smart. The first strike isn't particularly fast compared to a flourish, and the ghost blades are not going to hit due to invinci-ticks, effectively reducing your killing power and survivability by 60%.

However, if you can make it work, then good! It's really nice to see originality in LD. If you pair your striker with a storm driver or *gasp* Polaris, you can use the shock to cancel invincitics, and deal major damage with some asi under your belt. It won't be the best but it'll be fun and that's what counts.

The long combo lets you keep continuously flinching in 1v1 if you can land the hits.

^Chaos actually seems pretty fine. Damage is still very hard to take advantage of without asi. I like to think of it as either a really weak shadowsun (if they use a gun) or a really weak snarby (if they use swords). That way, it makes it more manageable.

But yeah, chaos if so weak that it kind of makes up for it.

Acheron on the other yand was something a person who cares about balance woupdn't do. It doesnt have any drawbacks to the gained damage either. If they reduced speed to that of fang of vog, that would be fair. But they wouuldnt think to do that.

Chaos and Swiftstrike.

@Rezzler
If Chaos only gave gun damage or it only gave sword damage, you might have a point.

As it is:
Shadowsun gives +2 gun damage
+5 health
142 normal defence
125 shadow defence

Chaos gives:
+2 sword damage
+2 sword CTR
+2 gun damage
+2 gun CTR
+2 bomb damage
+2 bomb CTR
+5 health
125 normal defence
125 elemental defence

As for ASI, just equip swiftstrike for instant +3. Add UVs or whatever if you want, but +3 is honestly plenty.

Also, can you name me five people who use swords and only swords? Even on Vana runs? Five people who do not bring any guns whatsoever when fighting Vanaduke? Through my entire time playing SK, I can only recall meeting a single such person.

And you're dismissing the CTR. Every single sword except DVS and at least half of all guns are drastically improved by CTR, not to mention bombs.

I think that not considering mad bomber, the buffs chaos gives are perfect, but that its too strong on non-status levels, and when status is covered up. All it would take to fix this would be a removal of its elemental damage, and even greater pitfalls for status conditions; i.e. negative max shock, rather than negative med shock, per piece.

That's a forge bonus, you know, the bonuses you get from leveling up your gear with the forge. Those bonuses disappear after you level up again.

Now UVs are a different story.

For armor, your bonuses levels are low (+1 resist), medium (+2 resist), high (+3 resist), and maximum (+4 resist).

Possible choices for resistances are:

Defense: Normal, Shadow, Elemental, and Piercing. Normal is generally the best since it protects you against most attacks, though defense is a lackluster thing as a whole.

Status: Fire, Shock, Freeze, Stun, Poison, and Curse. Fire and shock are known as the killer statuses and it's highly recommended you stack resistances against them. Freeze is also deadly, but unless you have immunity (+7 resist to minor, caused by Wisps), it doesn't help much...also teammates can break freeze too. Stun, Poison, and Curse are just not deadly enough to care about in general clockwork areas to require a UV for them.

When you do get a UV, you can remove them upon crafting it into the next weapon in it's line, or alternatively you could overwrite them with Punch, but not recommended you do so until you use up all your crafting chances and reach 5*.

Three uvs can be applied to a single object, this does not include the bonus 25% heat from forging, which isnt a uv. There is a possibility to get more than one uv per craft but I have only seen this happen once and it is quite rare. You can also buy UVs but that can be quite painful and I would not recommend it unless you have thousand of crowns just gathering dust.

So do I have to be the hipster and say Sudaruska? It kinda seems like it.

Anyways, Sudaruska and Triglav are both real nice weapons because they have high base damage and really nice knockback. There is unfortunately one really big downside in these weapons: attack speed. If you manage to master heavy swords (like me) then these two weapons are beasts in your hands!

Also, the charge attack is INSANE!

Hmmmm, should I use my 3 Eternal orbs to get a
Strike Needle lvl 10 to Blitz Needle (Only use the charge, especially in FSC),
level up my Silent Nightblade lvl 7 (Ironically, I had this before SoA but it was under leveled and I lacked materials) to Acheron,
or continue to craft my way upwards to Shivermist Buster (Currently Freezing Atomizer lvl 1)?

Saving Radiants for DA lvl 10. Stupid radiant drought.

does upgrading a weapon that isn't heat 10 make it weaker than if it was heat 10?

No. Read the wiki page "Crafting", and in particular the section "Upgrading". It says, "...the heat level of the precursor item has no effect on the quality of the upgrade."

Similarly, your question about UVs in post #26 is answered in the wiki article "Unique Variant". Our wiki isn't perfect, but there really is a lot of information on there. I'm not yelling at you; I just think that you might like to find answers to your questions immediately, rather than waiting for people on the forums to explain them to you.

if you want to specifically know how much heating affects damage, check one of zeddys threads (cant recall which one, feel free to point it out zeddy), but I can clearly tell you that its not worth to upgrade a 4* item till you can heat it at least till lvl 7 or so, even less worth if you want CTR.
RIP dreams of having a lvl 10 triglav, gotta make due with my jalovec then
also, when i started playing SK, i made due with only a levi and a supernova (still have both, still love both) and I can only recommend both of them.