Want to get opinions from the forum on the state of class arsenals. I tend to think pysker with the 1 or 2 handed swords are both good especially with the deimos and mk vi greatsword. Staves are all fine except the surge which could use some tweaks.
Zealot’s weapons are good as well but i think the relic blade overshadows his other options. Not that the hammer or eviscerator are bad but, the relic blade does everything.
Can’t comment on ogryn or vet as i don’t play them.
Surge staff can cook, you’ve just been doing it wrong. I haven’t figured out the playstyle yet but I’ve seen SG Surge psykers absolutely dominate.
All the top tiers you’ve probably already seen endlessly complained about on the forums like dueling sword and plasma gun, so I won’t talk about those. Most weapons in Darktide are serviceable at the very least.
FGS mk6 is probably psyker’s BiS melee weapon for any build in my experiences, and choices that are always solid include Infantry Autoguns and Revolvers for anyone. Revolver isn’t good as an anti-armor weapon, don’t listen to anyone else.
I would say that probably most weapons are decent. It’s just high level Havoc pushing playstyle towards the certain things like high mobility, anti armor and cleave/aoe spam.
I will name few from the point of design, rather than minmax scoreboard efficency.
1h chainsword is somewhat fair balanced weapon and probably a golden standart of such.
Damage, mobility, attack speed, all stats are what you can expect how 1h weapon should behave. All rounder, but has cons. Doesn’t occupy niches of other weapon types like power weapon being better vs armored, or “smaller” weapons like knife/DS being more agile.
Just a well thought one.
Bolt pistol is the equivalent of 1h chainsword but for guns. It just feels fair. Maybe reloading time is a bit long, but just a bit. I kinda don’t have a feeling “it should take 1 less/more bolt to kill “x” enemy type”. Or that draw speed for that metal brick is too long or too fast. It’s just good and fair gun.
Trauma staff is a good example aswell, maybe if not in the terms of numbers (i haven’t played with it for a long), but design is good, you need some sort of aim, pre-charge, so there is some calculations involved, perill control (atleast it was). It’s just an interesting weapon, unlike surge or purgatus.
The recently buffed chain weapons qualify.
Legitimately been using chainswords on all available classes. Not the weapon for Psyker, but the fixed FotF interaction means Zealot can kill Crushers with a revved attack. It does work on Arbites, too… I know they’re OP but it surprised me, okay?
The elite buff has not been kind to ogryn’s off meta stuff. But the new Power Maul is good, it just needs to not turn off the second you get brushed by a gentle breeze/mutant.
90% of all the Weapons in the Game are just bad once you play Damnation and higher unfortunately.
And instead of buffing those they decide to buff the DS even more…really amazing. 99% of all Players at Damnation / Auric and especially Havoc playing the exact same 2-3 Weapons and 1-2 Builds…and if you go for something else in Havocs you don’t get accepted but can’t really blame them because well anything else but the Meta-Ones just aren’t good.
Kinda annoying because the Classes could need some more variety in Weapons anyway and for the existing ones just a handful are viable at higher difficulties but instead of fixing that…buff DS.
I saw you had a whole ‘nother topic for this but just want to point out you seem to be using a very subjective “bad”. IMO Damnation (which is T4 now) and even Auric are fine to play without prioritising meta over mastery.
What I mean to say is that if you have sufficient skill you can make it work just fine if your goal is mission completion. For instance I doubt I’ve ever out-damaged a purgatus psyker, but that’s not the bar I use to determine if my loadout is viable. Likewise for stuff like DS.
So… maybe I’m not sure what you’re saying, but I’m sure I don’t like it 
————
On topic my good-est non-outlier weapon is the basic latrine shovels for Vet and Ogryn. Good speed/stagger weapons to complement a wide variety of accompaniments!
That would be accurate for high Havoc tier.
Damnation and Auric it’s the opposite where 90%+ of the weapons can dominate comfortably. I would strongly suggest that if you think otherwise your perspective has been shifted wrongly by a handful of overtuned weapons that give insane performance while asking extremely little of the player to get those results.
Relic Blade is probably one of my least favourite Zealot weapons lol.
If you’re down with a Martyrdom playstyle I highly recommend giving the OG Chain Axe (Mk IV) a go with slaughterer + head taker. It’s almost shocking how well it scales with that setup, you can brainlessly mash heavy attack through basically everything below a mauler.
I think the newer chain axe is much much worse personally, but the OG honestly slaps. Very viscerally satisfying to use too.
Ogryn:
I actually think reworked paul is really good now, in fact thanks to it’s special i gotten better results than with pickaxe and bully club and i see a lot of ogryns in havoc use it too, it might be new meta no one talks about, because with nerf to bleed talent, impact talent, emergence of enemies with rotten armor and blue stims, boost to hp, special of power maul offers great single target damage, along with a lot of instant stagger and crowd control, on max stacks of heavy hitter it attacks almost as fast as bully club, got tolerable non charged combo for single target, got skullcrusher.
Kickback still ok. You can still use one knfie but it’s fallen off, same with branx pickaxe, shovel only blue folding one is decent i feel like, i tried using old one and yellow one, they kinda bad.
Veteran: 2 barrel shotgun, if you use it with WS and auto load talent. Chain weapons became a bit better so they also ok option, shovel too, but you need to put correct blessings on it. Tac axe and combat axe can work too. New weapon is bad. Among ranged: helbore. heaviest version, revolver. Bolt pistol(old model) for grenade veteran. Las pistol. You can also use combat shotgun, but only agripinia.
Zealot: can make any melee work, my favorite is eviscerator, crusher, heavy sword, though this one really fall off significantly against armor, not that it was ever good, but it was tolerable. On the other hand you get strong maniac killer and overall cultists got no chance. Tactical axe good too, model with upward/downward heavy strikes works with stealth. With ranged: i often outside of havoc play with las pistol(if using crit keystone) and shredder. In havoc i used also used revolver, it’s ok if you don’t take knifes. Las pistol viable too for havoc.
Psyker: voidstrike among staffs, las pistol. Among melee aside from force swords, tactical axe is good if you play melee psyker. Bolt pistol with all buffs also decently powerful.
Arbites: Shield, crusher, both great options for havoc and below. Tactical axe works too, combat axe a bit worse but still very usable, at least in auric. With ranged arbites got real bad situation, aside from bolter and bolt pistol if you want to boost dog explosion i don’t see a lot of great options. Executioner shotguns became weaker probably due health increase of scabs, so if you don’t play talents that would boost ranged damage, you will get really mid results. You can use them still, can use shot pistol, revolver, but they not as good as they were.
Actually, it’s more like
90% of all the weapons in the game are just bad once an unskilled player plays Damnation or higher.
Nonsense, despite being boring AF for moveset and extremely dull in the sensory department vs the glorious visceral slaughter of Mk4 the Mk12 is stupendous in safety and reliability. Most of the enemies in the game can’t survive a push stab light, and push stab staggers everything on headshot with very high finesse damage. Like killing mutant with a crit damage. You don’t do nearly enough ripping and tearing but on high marty you can kill maulers with 1-2 heavies depending on crits. Its really strong. And with the rev buff the boss damage is yyuge. Its just kinda like Mk15 Evis where you want to prioritize one heavy (H2 here) which unfortunately does not combo the push stab. That would be my one fix.
I’ll take your word for it. I tried it a few times when it came out and it just felt dull and wrong to me so never came back. I think spamming heavies on Mk4 is more than safe enough (and can generate insane toughness on Zealot) but I’ll believe you 12 is good, just not for me.
when it came out it was dull, but at some point (I think around Mortis update) they changed the push stab which makes it a lot more dynamic to use and extremely disruptive for battling elites. the Mk12 is also the only one that’s overpowering Crusher’s seemingly new resistance to getting chainsawed too. and the lights have 8 hitmass just like Mk4 heavies, they are almost dirty how generalist and spammy they are…you can literally get away with just doing that and push stabs.
Crits all the way, Electrokinetic works great as a pocket Specialist zapper for Psykers that prefer melee combat.
With Malefic and +25% Maniac it’s usually a one tap to Flamers, Bombers, Trappers, etc. Then stack on Flayer to include Ragers, Maulers in the one tap category every 12 sec. Primary suppression is great for shutting down gunner groups and Reapers too.
Build in bio for Electrokinetic, my favorite staff.
Latrine Shovel with Serrated Blade slaps hard in Auric ngl. With Uncanny on it buffing the bleed DoTs it puts in serious work. Lot of fun.
Uncanny is still very busted and needs to be nuked from orbit.
If only it wasn’t so boring compared to the Mk IV. It feels more single target focused, which can be useful, but the lack of rip and tear makes me sad.
I’ve got mine with decimator (power on hit) and hammerblow (impact on hit) and it flings Maulers when stacked up lol. Doesn’t do much damage, but sure moves ‘em around and keeps you safe from anything smaller than an Ogryn in melee! Rager packs are hilarious lol.
Uncanny + bleed sounds better though I may never find out first hand! 
the vet shovel is the only weapon that gets skullcrusher and uncanny strike, and its a pretty good example of why those things are just disgusting but especially together with their abundant staggers and DoT access. you also help fry captains because skullcrusher is for everybody (the only working application of communism).
For Ogryn melee the pickaxes are still pretty meta IMO, but TBH most his weapons are actually very viable now. His arsenal is smaller but actually quite well balanced. I find myself using different weapons A LOT more than I used to. Somewhat bizarrely I find the shovels to be one of the least effective when they used to be the best. They’re ok but not top of the list anymore by any stretch.
Some people will say the bully club is meta because it basically disables everything, but a pickaxe in the right hands is serious bit of kit.
The recent update to Paul made it very satisfying but you have to be quite skilled to be able to use the extremely slow activation correctly in messy situations.
I can’t speak much for ranged as I barely use it and when I do it’s rumbler to pick off snipers or reapers that the team has ignored. I’m not interested in ranged ogryn.
Tldr: ogryn melee all options are pretty solid right now.
Paul can be useful in current havoc if you cycle between push taunt and the slow Paul recharge, but if you have encroaching garden and rotten armour then a branx is the only thing that doesn’t feel like a foam sword tbh.
My trick is to stat a branx with 60 damage and the rest get 80…including mobility. The damage is still crazy high but that extra swiftness really gives the branx that extra mobility that’s required in havoc.