For me personally there are a lot of options mainly depending on if you want a pve or pvp weapon.
For PVP purposes almost everyone uses bows of different kinds. This is due to the Lower Parry Cap and Parry damage which can only be added to bows currently.
I like Xbows for their abilities and strong damage potential.
Mages often use the quick repeater for doubleshot coupled with alot of hit spells. since they generally have alot higher SDI they get more use of those additional hit spells than a dexxer would I guess.
For PVE I would just look at weapons with abilities you like, coupled with a swingspeed that lets you keep 1.25 with your current stam.
From the testing ive done myself Armor Ignore and Doublestrike are the best bang for your buck. As soon as resists are somewhat high on a monster the crushing blow and concussion blows becomes somewhat lackluster.
Let me clear up some misinformation.
Pvp uses bows because with a 1 handed deed added to it, you can equip a shield and add balance to the bow to chug potions without having to disarm either your weapon or shield. Parry kits are just an added bonus and for most players, far too expensive.
Mages are balanced across the board as far as which bows they equip. Each has their own benefit based on special abilities. All bows have the ability to have the hit spells added to them via either crafting or levelling. However take notice that SDI is capped for pvp and the cap is so low that any general player will achieve this markup. So... No, do not anticipate stacking sdi with the anticipation of making a quad hit spell weapon and one shot a player because of the spell damage.
PvM is all about your ability to hit multiple creatures with a single swing while having leeches (mana, stam, hit points) to replenish you stat bar. Hence why the general weapon of choice is the double axe. The whirlwind ability is a highly popular special ability as it hits multiple targets when enabled thus leeching off of each target hit. Added mods for pvm are hit area attacks as they provide a similar approach. When you want to 1 on 1 a boss, the chivalry spell consecrate weapon will change the damage type from your weapon to hit against the lowest resistance of your target. For instance: Boss A has resists as follows - 70 phys 65 fire 30 cold 45 poison 60 energy. You are weilding a weapon that deals 100% fire damage. Normally you would be dealing damage to its fire resist. For informational purposes only we will say that your swing will do 100 damage to the target with zero resists. However in this case we display 65 fire resist so you will hit the enemy for 35 damage because your wep is 100 fire and it resists 65 of it. Now if you use consecrate weapon, your 100 fire will change its target attack resistance from fire to cold thus enabling the damage to be calculated at colds 30 resistance. So for the short duration that consecrate is active each hit will now do 70 damage.
When I have more time I can get more in depth. Any real questions on game mechanics feel free to pm Des Sanct on discord.
