Weapons have varying degrees of efficiency against armor which also depends on the attack used.
Halberd’s 2nd attack has finesse. It’s strong in headshots.
By champion/legend I don’t think anyone can successfully run without any versatility whatsoever.
So there are a few different hits you can land on armored enemies and you can test them on the armored dummy. When the armor reduces dmg it will show as a green number, yellow for normal damage, orange for headshots and red for crits.
A weapon that actually has Armor Piercing, like Bardin’s Axe, will do roughly the same dmg on armored and unarmored dummies, like 1575 and 1700, both yellow numbers.
Lighter weapons like daggers will do 0 on armored except for headshots.
And for versatile weapons like Kruber’s Halberd, the first (or versatile) swing will do like 1900 on unarmored dummy but only 1075 on armored dummy.
Weapons like glaive and halberd do half damage to armored enemies on their wide swing when you hit armor… Daggers and hammer do zero damage. But weapons like Bardin’s 1h hammer are still very good because the crowd control still causes stagger on armored enemies even when you hit for zero, and the overhead strong attacks are very powerful and easy headshots.
When you can headshot reliably, armor piercing or versatile is nice but not necessary at all. I prefer Bardin’s 1h hammer to axe+shield because it is only 0.5 less stamina, has maximum dodge distance, the push+horizontal swing attack is as amazing crowd control as a shield push, light attacks are very fast, have amazing cleave, and stagger beserkers, and great headshot power attacks. Definitely one of the top weapons in the game and no armor pierce or versatility.
Versatility as in the capability to deal with most/any enemies, not the item description.
It’s not just about damage, but also mobility, range, attack pattern, etc.