Massive weapon imbalance?

[Squinch]

is it just me or is the sword the only weapon actually worth using in combat? the dual rapiers are nice and mobile (appropriately), but if you get hit EVER their damage goes completely down the drain and the parry doesn't even work sometimes. the flail feels like total garbage to me; it's super slow and only has the one single attack without wrestling with the ignition stuff or dumping all my skill points into it, and being locked out of parrying with it out feels like I'm charging headfirst into combat with no pants on.
the sword, meanwhile, has a pretty extensive moveset (grounded 3-hit combo with uppercut, cyclone, or 4th hit overhead slam as enders, the blood rite special attack), the parry window feels actively more forgiving, and I feel like the lack of forced movement is a huge benefit.
not saying this is necessarily an issue, since the sword feels really good to use and the rapiers + flail still very much have their uses for travel anyway, but I'm curious if anyone else has been having a similar experience. I will admit I've been dumping all my points into the sword and haven't quite finished either of the other two trees, but the flail still feels relatively unusable even with about half of the upgrades and the rapiers don't seem like they could ever keep pace with the sword.

[Eden]

Flail's advantage is that you can outrange enemy, that's how i used it.

[Pwnbeard]

Worst thing about the rapier is if you're going for completion you have to unlock the combo that locks you into an animation after 4-5 hits, which is usually when you want to back off from bigger things. I didn't enjoy the sword too much except for some cheeky early loot by dragging myself through the air with enemies.
Started rapier and tended to swap between the aoe of flail and the raw dps of rapier.
There's a figure to make it so you only lose 1 charge when you get hit for rapier as well but I cycled it out as I got better damage options.

[GudEbening]

Especially after getting double jump.
Do uppercut, double jump and do the improve down+X move for good damage.

[lazymagpie]

I think this is very much playstyle dependant. I started sword, got the rapier second and was amazed by its movement gimmick (honestly, this feels so good to use), and then got the flail last.

I find myself switching between sword for general combat and flail for regenerating fervor and spamming miracles, with the rapier only coming out when it's needed for traversal. So for me, I think the rapier might be a bit underpowered, with the sword being a bit too generally useful, and the flail having weaknesses, but also offering great range and fervor regen to make up for it.

I'm no game designer, but I wonder if rapier and sword should switch their parries around, to nerf the general usefulness of the sword, and give the rapier a much needed upside

[Skoomacat]

I cannot defend the rapiers, but on the contrary I find the flail immensely op. In a game like this high range sometimes is even more important than higher damage. I think the only boss so far (3/5 doves) I couldn't obliterate with the flail was the last phase of Infanta because indeed it made me too slow to dodge, I had to switch to the sword. Otherwise I switch off the flail only when I'm in an area with lots of one-hit or easily counterattack-able enemies and against fire-resistant enemies.

[Broso]

I think it's mostly down to personal preference. I've been mainly using the flail but I don't think it's OP. The range is very helpful, yes. But it has no parry and it has the slowest animations and thus the slowest recovery out of all three.

[Ashe]

I think it's partly a "feel" kind of thing, too.

I'm about 10 hours in, just got the the chapel with the doves. Been using the rapier, chose it because I just thought it looked the coolest, and I've been doing fine with it. I think I just like the feeling of having a weapon that attacks a lot of times very quickly, even if it's suboptimal. Like, I guess I've been playing in hard mode essentially haha.

[Pythios]

I’ve been using the sword since it lets you just tank some hits (either on purpose or accident) and heal it back. Plus if the boss has any adds it summons it gives me extremely high uptime on the sword special because of the figure combo refreshing the duration on kill.

It really is down to preference since they each offer a different way to fight things, and all 3 of them did enough damage to be comparable to each other when using proper figure combos.

[GladiatorA19]

For me the flail's main advantage is the MASSIVE fervor gain on hit when you level it up. Just jump attack something out of range and you'll get a huge chunk of bar back, then use the ground wave prayer to nuke everything.

The rapier is great for DPS on anything immobile or weak to lightning, and the curved sword just was good if there were annoying enemies that were easy to parry.

[wildcardbitches]

The dual swords are definitely the worst weapons. The parry does the exact opposite of what a parry is supposed to do. It stuns you instead of the enemy.

[LotusBlade]

Well there is combo effect that gives +1 rapiere charge after drinking potion, so it becomes ok. Sadly, game forces to beat puzzles all the time and that requires weapon swap which ruins charges. If devs fix that and fix charges loss on saving, it will become as good as sword.

Flail is just great for starting game until you unlock sword, cus it kinda has all the benefits from flail + block + high speed. The only exception maybe jumping enemies and those with non-stop attacks that can stun lock you, so you should use flail to kill them from afar... But we can just use spells for that.

Rapiere good for killing bosses if you figured right timing when they are staggered. ..Sometimes they are doing animation which leaves small widow for attack, but thanks to high speed and ridiculous dmg at 2+ stacks, you can chop 25% of their hp in no time.