Dealing with armor is the primary reason for people not using certain weapons right now. Some times it’s just Chaos warriors (which, discounting a few specific ranged weapons, need to be dealt with in melee), other times Stormvermin too are troublesome, especially shielded ones. Both are quite ubiquitous especially in Legend, often enough found in patrol-like quantities as roaming enemies, so a good weapon setup will need to be capable of dealing with several of them, at least keeping them at bay for others to arrive but preferably slaying them in reasonable time.
Shields in general are in quite bad spot. It seems the only one effectively usable right now is Axe and Shield, and even that is often better replaced with another more offensive weapon. The reason is that while a shielded weapon has a good block angle and more stamina, they also have a huge mobility disadvantage, enough to actually reduce the defensive options when carrying a shield. As Maulers, CWs and bosses have attack that will smash through your stamina in one strike no matter how much you have, and bosses can damage you even through blocking, having a bit extra on that side is far less valuable than dodging, and actually renders the whole point of shields kind of moot. Giving a few special blocking mechanics for shields would mitigate this, such as even the heavy overheads (except maybe from bosses; those will push you far away anyway) not beating down your entire defense and, more importantly, at least reducing the amount of damage bosses can do through block. After that, individual weapons would be better addressed.
As for specific weapons, running on OP’s comments:
In addition to both my above comments applying, little crowd control beyond pushing and bashing, and weird attack pattern that’s hard to learn to use effectively. When still running Champ, I learned to use it somewhat effectively, but its capabilities are just not enough even after the pattern is learned.
Damage and cleave, even if not good, are something that can be dealt with, and Merc can compensate cleave with his own passive. FK, on the other hand, can add to the crowd control with his Career Skill. But dealing with armor is _really_troublesome with this one. The best attack against armor is the third fast strike, but good luck using that effectively, as the first two dont do anything to even Stormvermin. That is, no damage, no stun. Unless you can whiff those two on purpose, you’ll never get the third one through. Other strikes, while more usable, deal even less damage against armor and take forever to whittle down even one SV.
On Markus, even if it’s getting closer to being useful (and on Merc, it actually is, especially when combined with certain ranged options), gets lost in Markus’s other weapon options. Two-handed Hammer, Exec Sword, and Halberd all occupy pretty much the same niche, while being able to do other stuff besides. The Two-hander will need to be very good at crowd-clearing to have a definite purpose on Markus. Of course, it has troubles against armor, which doesn’t help the case. A bit more reach (10, 15%?) for safety in attacking would go a long way, I think, and changing one of the attack patterns (preferably the heavy) to include an overhead would help with the armor part.
Even if there’s nothing special going on with it, it’s usable. It’s a middle ground between the sheer damage the Blunderbuss does and the long-range sniping of the Handgun. It’s usable, but either of the specialist options are usually better options. I can imagine using it with, say, Two-handed Sword simply for better dealing with armor and specials than BB (hm, I actually need to try that combination), but you’d likely need a high-ammo sustain party as the rest to be able to maintain it. Certainly need something to be done, but I 'm not sure what.
Either of the charge attacks are usable if you learn it well, but it’s not easy. I’m not sure how it works on IB or RV, but on Slayer the Pick works wonders as crowd-clear weapon. Probably needs a bit more mobility and/or attack speed to be useful outside Slayer.
This is where I think different. the One-handed Axe needs either a better base damage to be capable of hitting certain significant breakpoints, namely against Fanatics and Stormvermin, or a better mobility to be safer from retaliation. Possibly both. It’s too slow to deal effectively with either as is. I’d prefer the damage addition, as I think that would better define its niche as a high-damage armor-piercing single-target weapon, but the mobility option would add to survivability when using it.
While DS’s capability against armor is certainly bad, I don’t know how it could be made better sensibly. An attack pattern change to allow easier headshotting and possibly better armor-piercing on one attack would probably be the best solution again, but it would run the danger of moving too close to SnD. Luckily, this can be somewhat mitigated by running longbow, but CWs are still extremely troublesome. Shade can certainly rock the Dual Swords, though.
Every way? Its crowd-clear is hugely better than the Glaive, similar to Dual Swords. It could use some tweaks to armor-piercing and/or headshotting, though.
Why is the Swiftbow still in the game? - #8 by Yzneftamz There’s my argument.
On Victor, the Two-hander is actually in better place than on Markus. He doesn’t have really any weapon to compete in specialized crowd-clearing. While the Falchion can do it, and the Flail can do crowd control, and the Rapier is certainly comparable (or maybe even better) on WHC, their excellence lies elsewhere. Falchion is a generalist, Flail works wonders against armor (and Shields), and Rapier is a headshot and crit machine. Otherwise, the points stand.
While the projectile travel time is just something to be learned, it certainly needs a zoom option (I would prefer using Weapon Special for that), and better charge state indication. Faster charge time wouldn’t go unappreciated either. Overcharge, though, is quite fine I think.
It’s not a “worse version”, it works exactly the same. Which is kind of the innate problem: It sacrifices range for a huge hordeclear. Range being Sienna’s primary point, that’s a huge trouble for the staff’s usefulness. Added with heat generating quite fast, the power (well, duration of a fully-charged burst) being not quite enough to clear a single wave completely, and Sienna’s generally weaker melee options, it’s still lacking. I don’t think anything could really be done with that, as the staff fulfills its role pretty damn well already, and the perceived uselessness is innate to the design (and a bit of the problem being from outside the particular weapon).
The one’s I didn’t comment on are ones I don’t have enough experience playing, at least recently, to comment on, or ones I just couldn’t find anything to comment.