What in your opinion is the most balanced weapon for all enemy types?

[TPTI]

What in your opinion is the most balanced weapon for all enemy types?

Eg

Except Crossbows

If you could pick one melee weapon to use at the start of the game - until the end - for robots, humans, heavy armour humans, and sheks, and mega animals etc.

What weapon would you choose?

Eg

A weapon like a Falling Sun you might not equip at start but it might be among top weapons

[Shidan]

I'd probably go with a sabre honestly. Which one is mostly irrelevant, they're all quite similar, so I'd probably use a Desert Sabre for the animal bonuses.

They are light weapons, with even the highest tiers having low strength requirements. They also have good damage, and are not bad against any target. Defense stat boosts from them will also help immensely at low levels.

Another contender would be a Polearm. Long reach, large attack bonus, reasonable str requirements, okay damage, 30% armour penetration, and 50% animal bonus. I don't usually use polearms, so it wouldn't be my pick, but they are good.

[bunny de fluff]

The heavy polearm like shidan said. But the nagitana katana looks way cooler.

[TPTI]

Nice thanks

[EnemigoDeLaMafia]

I feel fallen sun users are pretty solid on most situations. Although I do think heavy weapons are pretty universal

I have some reservations about dex weapons. They're not bad but they're not as universal.

[WalrusJones]

So, there are a few options I would consider with no dividing lines between them.

Of the basic attacks, polearms have a mix of fast katana stunlocking moves, and the heavy weapon attacks that hit up to 99 enemy attacks.
So heavy polearm (high base damage and armor piercing), nagikatana (high base damage and target modifiers) are top of the line contenders if you want a ball of people who beat everything....

Since they will stunlock in a duel and clip enemies who weren't their main target with the anti-crowd hits (Making ball of people-versus ball of people fights even better for you.)

The plank has a arguable role for just hitting giant crowds of enemies with its length, having enough crush to ignore most armor, having low enough blunt to not require cybernetics to wield it, as well as still having decent cut.

Fallen sun is also good, but requires very high stats to take off because its unusually short for a weapon that only has very slow attack animations.

Desert saber has long length without indoor penalties, and the combat cleaver has the highest damage total with no indoors penalty (AND ARMOR PIERCING.)

However, sabers lack crowd control attacks, and cleavers lack stunlock friendly attacks.
Both classes are great numerically but have bad attack animation variety that means if you fight slightly outside your element, you risk getting pounded.

General worst probably goes to a stick or the flesh cleaver, as the flesh cleavers anti-human damage bonus still leaves it as weaker against humans then other cleavers... Its damage is that low.

Obviously, any animations mod that adds high skill animations will break this.
Very.
Very Hard.

But if we are willing to count martial arts the high skill martial arts attacks are broken. Especially on skeletons, who have stronger fists intrinsically.

[Mokona]

MA

[TPTI]

Experts I would probably use Iron Club before this answers

[Dio]

Polearm, not the heavy polearm but the standard.

Great reach, attack animations and armour penetration make it relevant at all stages of the game. Also great against wildlife for easy money making.

Enough cutting damage to make enemies bleed and not infinitely get up but also enough blunt and armour penetration to put down late game enemies and skeletons.

Absolutely an under rated weapon.

[Triple G]

Imho the plank is the best weapon all in all. Great reach, great damage, also scales with strength, which is easy to get, while not having too high requirements. Falling sun does probably more damage, but is overkill, and shorter. In general the heavy weapons are a solid choice, as they deal good raw damage against anything.

But if it´s about early game to the end - it could be a plank, when counting in the crappiest of them - but i´d rather stick with a good old katana, or sabre, or polearm, as they don´t require much strength, and usually i aim for a mix of weapons - but also stick with a certain weapon choice for the whole playthrough, because weapon skill, and roleplay / fashion - and i like to get some dexterity as well, for faster attacks and blocks - and the plank, or heavy weapons in general do this rather slow.

[VMVXMK2]

Hacker spec into paladin cross.
Light enough for early game, deal with heavy armored enemies and robot with ease in the late game.
Slight weakness against animals, yes. But good enough against everything else.

If you want something that is not too painful at the early game and good enough in the late game. Hacker is the choice.

Either this or a Sabre.
Sabre are everywhere, and there are a fine selection of it. You can braindead slap a sabre on anyone and they will do fine with it. The best thing about a sabre are there are no obvious drawback.

[bunny de fluff]

Sabre class has terrible reach, which means bad aoe, which means it's only good fighting people with shorter reach weapons than you, which you know....

[supergtp]

What type of damage is martial arts at higher skill levels? Indoor bonus my guy started doing some jump kicks that really surprised the dusty banditos.

[Bomb Bloke]

At lower levels, Martial Arts mostly does blunt damage (0% cut at 0 skill). At higher levels, it mostly cuts (0% blunt at 160 skill). I guess that pans out to 50:50 at 80 skill, but there may be other factors at play, too.

MA tends to take hefty penalties with heavy armour, so using it to fight stronger enemies is a bit risky. On the one hand, you may just run in and one-shot them. On the other hand, you may just run in and get one-shotted.

[bunny de fluff]

MA lacks armor piercing, which means you are worse than the weapon that has 30 percent ap. Another problem is that the dodge anim is long, you can get dodge-locked quite easily. Before your dodge is finished, the enemies will start their attack anim. Overall a heavy micro-manage-ish build.

[MiddayEnglishman]

Do you include Karate as a melee weapon? Just focus on strength and core boy skills as well as dodge and toughness which help later on with swords. I never like how much armour weighs you own, the negative hit to pretty much everything. I'd pick something small and quick with no to little armour.