Alot of the things i am going to say have already been meantioned im sure but i personally love testing items in sandbox mode and have found some stuff that is quite meta or even surpasses meta in some regards, while not being considered the best or sometimes usable by most:
Mechs: Ah mechs, they are so OP as a single target weap
Hell/Demons mechs are insanely OP and demons mechs alone can 1-tap the entire game for the classes that can use it. The highest raw damage mech weap in the game actually is type/MEmes once they are sphered. Surpassing even GM and MM although sacrificing the autoaim/extra range.
Shots: Shots are so OP they removed them from ps0, which in many ways is a remake of pso. Many believe the Baranz Launcher to be the strongest in the game which is true to an extent. It is the strongest 4 target available shot. However typeSH/shot surpasses it in overall damage per combo when targetting 5 monsters. The next benefit is that you can use either spirit or zerk specials as well which help greatly in preserving ones bankroll and just sitting back and safely spamming from far away even if you only have 3 hp. The bullets also travel faster and are not as much affected by manual evasion. Dank Meteor is a good honerable mention and great when sphered however even with its unique mechanics is outclassed by other stronger pierce weapons mentioned next.
Rifles: If you cant tell by now i love playing RA. Rifles are RAs bread and butter early on but they can however get some use later on as well and for some niche uses. Everyone knows frozen shooter of course but its older sister the Snow Queen is quite good. Usable as a “ghetto freeze trap” for human classes it can freeze many enemies at once, even entire screens with a lucky trigger of the Ricochet Glitch. It can be very fun to also try and line of enemies or spot lines of enemies during regular play and try to freeze them. Many believe is needs to be of high hit but this usually isnt the case, a 0h SQ will freeze mostly every enemy in the game its hitbox colides with except for a few high EVP monsters where its hit is needed to hit reliably. It does pierce, however is it outclassed by another rifle with a much higher base atp which i will mention next. This form of pierce damage is also very niche and only used within a few boss battles.
The rianov-5 is the next weapon worth mentioning which has the highest base atp for a rifle (550) as well as piercehowever its uses are extremely niche. Using this on a RA in the correct postioning during the worm boss fights you can produce more damage than any other method available for RA. HU can also do something similar and much stronger with agito+samurai armor. This basically renders excaliber not the best in slot for these fights for all classes except FO. For this reason as well using rianov in these fights as RA leaves you no reason to use excaliber whatsoever as a RA. The only other reason would be for lizards in ep 4 which cannot be shot with ranged weapons however even this situation is outclassed by s-beats arms which can reliably defeat 2-3 in the amount of time it would take to defeat 1 using a different weapon. Srank scythe can also be used.
Needle: Needles unique animation makes it increidbly powerful for its Srank specials. Common ones include demons, hell, arrest, berzerk, and spirit. Most of the other specials are generally not super useful however the blizzard needle works great particuarily on a RAcasael. Now it might seem dumb since you can always FT but retrapping is reliant on having scape dolls and using them and for a hardcore player they would be burning actual ingame resources which drop at about a 1/1k rate. Using the blizz needle allows you to also save time as a HC not having to do slow-RTs at the medical station, or quests that dont allow you to return to p2 while never fully running out of FTs.
Launcher: Guilty light with high hit can be used as a ghetto SQ
Bazooka: Meteor Rouge can be used as a ghetto demons needle.
Handguns: HS steals the show here but optimally you can have HP so that you can use DP while still using HS if you wish. Contrary to popular belief DP is very useful in ep 1 and 2 for stunlocking dangerous spawns such as mericarols. In ep 4 many enemies are weak to light damage and being able to shoot lizards is nice.
Sword: Laconium axe can hit quite hard but is ultimately weaker than excaliber. However it is much easier to hunt and find with hit. But also has a worse animation and only targets 1 monster vs 3.
