Your weapon ratings? here's mine

[Scyris]

Top Tier: Bow, Seriously, hits like a truck, can hit enemies from a LARGE distance away meaning you can skip many mechanics, and hits hard enough and with enough hits you can chain hazard things. I've killed a level 62 Relic quest monster at 42 with a bow, and never got hit once. Feels kinda cheesy though to use, since it makes combat so easy.

High Tier: Dual wield, 2 Hand sword. DW lots of hits, fairly high damage with Starburst stream SS combos. 2 Hand sword, can do massive damage with skill speed, and meteor fall/calamity vs downed targets.

Mid Tier: most other weapons. Katana would be high tier if Sanka didn't require a counter to fire off. I do feel most of the mid tier weapons need their 500 proficency sword skill to have higher power, as many of them are kind of low.

Crap tier: Daggers, Maces, Daggers do like no actual damage of value, and maces are more about buffs than doing any actual damage.

I also find the generally lack of sword skills in this game to be kinda sad, there is a very small selection for each weapon.

[Nedrith]

Bow's nice, but for a lot of bosses unneeded. It's average damage compared to something like duel wield but a bit safer. Though most raid bosses have some decent ranged attacks. 62 relic boss at 42 isn't anything special as a lot of relic bosses lack a decent ranged attack.

Overall the various weapon types are well balanced enough that it's hard to give a good tier list. Any weapon type with a build that supports it well can be viable.

SAO's never had a ton of sword skills, it's mostly made up for it with a decent number of viable weapon types though.

[Scyris]

Originally posted by Nedrith:

Bow's nice, but for a lot of bosses unneeded. It's average damage compared to something like duel wield but a bit safer. Though most raid bosses have some decent ranged attacks. 62 relic boss at 42 isn't anything special as a lot of relic bosses lack a decent ranged attack.

Overall the various weapon types are well balanced enough that it's hard to give a good tier list. Any weapon type with a build that supports it well can be viable.

SAO's never had a ton of sword skills, it's mostly made up for it with a decent number of viable weapon types though.

Main reason bow is top tier, is generally how safe it is, dual wield most likely does better dps, but bow is so safe lol.

[Nedrith]

Which honestly once you get decent gear, you don't need. I can duel wield a raid boss from 100%-0% in a minute or less. Most mini-bosses in a raid can't even hit me anymore I dodge their attacks due to my high evasion.

If something does go wrong, the battle takes a little long, I switch to my tank and wait 30 seconds for Kirito to recover. I'd rather have a faster kill than a safer kill since in the end everything's safe as my tank takes a lot to kill.

[Tiasmoon]

For DW its hard to pull off the skill connects for Circular, which is where most of its damage comes from.

Spiderboss has 3 areas it can be hit in, which means 3x the dps, and staggered 3 times as easily.
Safe dps still matters if you plan on doing higher difficulties or arent super equiped.

You also have to take into account how easy those weapons are to play. Most people wont be able to do DW's Skill Connects at all.

[Velmoria]

Having problem with Dual Wield Inferno Raid & Shine Circular?Let the AI do it for you.
Soul Linkage FOR DA WIN!

I kinda more attracted to presumably unpopular weapon, like mace.
1H-sword for story & 2H-sword for lul.

[Tiasmoon]

Mace was surprisingly fun when I tried it...with attack speed boosts. Felt a bit like Thor swinging that hammer, haha.

[ZombieNation]

idk about you but my rapier hits like a truck with that quadra skill. Like this guy said most weapons are viable with right build.

[Velmoria]

Gotta love rapier's mudamudamuda stabs > launch enemy > Star Splash > Flashing Penetration
Then replay it with at least +60% attack speed

[Scyris]

Originally posted by Velmoria:

Having problem with Dual Wield Inferno Raid & Shine Circular?Let the AI do it for you.
Soul Linkage FOR DA WIN!

I kinda more attracted to presumably unpopular weapon, like mace.
1H-sword for story & 2H-sword for lul.

Circular is a pita to branch the timing is so exact. Inferno raid is not too bad.

[Velmoria]

Originally posted by Scyris:

Originally posted by Velmoria:

Having problem with Dual Wield Inferno Raid & Shine Circular?Let the AI do it for you.
Soul Linkage FOR DA WIN!

I kinda more attracted to presumably unpopular weapon, like mace.
1H-sword for story & 2H-sword for lul.

Circular is a pita to branch the timing is so exact. Inferno raid is not too bad.

Yeah, it's pretty dumb how difficult to perform it & how easy to just bypass it with Soul Linkage.
I would remain quiet if the AI also can't perform them well.
Maybe I should send feedback ticket to their customer service, hoping the dev would rebalance it later.

[Scyris]

Originally posted by Velmoria:

Originally posted by Scyris:

Circular is a pita to branch the timing is so exact. Inferno raid is not too bad.

Yeah, it's pretty dumb how difficult to perform it & how easy to just bypass it with Soul Linkage.
I would remain quiet if the AI also can't perform them well.
Maybe I should send feedback ticket to their customer service, hoping the dev would rebalance it later.

Well i guess the annoying part really is having to swap characters to do it, especially when the game has a habit of ignoring button commands at times, Might do it when downed though as circular does a crapton of damage with the full combo a downed target, can you switch back to them the second you hit the command for it with L1+button? and it'll still do the full combo, then I can SS link into starburst stream? Can't count how many times i've had to repeadtly press a button to finally get it to do what I want, happens a ton with: main menu, swapping to soul linked char, or changing who I am linked with. Hell hitting R1/right bumper on a xbox controller sometimes takes a few times before it finally registers, its screwed up my SS's and such more than a few times. Or when I have full sp, and I am holding R1 and trying to cast a buff, and it makes me hit the key like 4 times before the game finally goes "OH player is trying to use this. I should activate it" If it happened once in a blue moon it'd be fine. but it happens so often that it really irritates me. I've tried 3 diff controllers, a offical sony Ds4, a offical xbox controller, and pdp rock candy xbox controller. All seem to have the same issues with the game just ignoring button presses and commands.

[Lyncher]

Hmm tbh I am not so sure branches are even worth it. Most of the damage comes from using ssc ex SBS so you want to be using fast sword skills with it to get it off as quickly as possible. For reference I can do 2-3.5 mill when geared and buffed up on spider raid boss without aoe passive. Branches hit though for like 200-250k in same scenario.

Each branch is somewhere between 1/6-1/7th off the time it takes to fully use animate SBS. So using these branches even at 7 times ( over the amount) its still only 1.75 mill which is still lower than 1 ssc ex starburst stream you could of fit in same time frame. The only advantage is if the branch applies a debuff which one does have but that won't work on endgame bosses anyway without heavy special acc investment which is not worth it.

To me ssc ex SBS asap seems better than using branches.

[Scyris]

Originally posted by Lyncher:

Hmm tbh I am not so sure branches are even worth it. Most of the damage comes from using ssc ex SBS so you want to be using fast sword skills with it to get it off as quickly as possible. For reference I can do 2-3.5 mill when geared and buffed up on spider raid boss without aoe passive. Branches hit though for like 200-250k in same scenario.

Each branch is somewhere between 1/6-1/7th off the time it takes to fully use animate SBS. So using these branches even at 7 times ( over the amount) its still only 1.75 mill which is still lower than 1 ssc ex starburst stream you could of fit in same time frame. The only advantage is if the branch applies a debuff which one does have but that won't work on endgame bosses anyway without heavy special acc investment which is not worth it.

To me ssc ex SBS asap seems better than using branches.

Yeah thats what I been noticing for single target, I usually go inferno raid->circular->SBS, without using the branches. Though replacing Inferno with that aoe dual wield has might actually be slightly faster, or countless spikes.

[Zappieroth]

'Daggers are crap tier' 'I killed a lvl 62 boss at lvl 42'
Hold my beer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFUMisPBEkY

[Velmoria]

It would be nice if the follow-up window as long as 1H-sword Vertical, or at least half of it. And the timing location is at the end of slash, not earlier or middle.