I've been giving the problem of early hardmode swords some thought, and I think I have some ideas. I'm going to run through my general thoughts on what the different swords in consideration should be before I get on to changes.
Ore Swords should remain statsticks; nothing fancy, just numbers tweaks. They're also the least important because frankly they'd probably never be worth the ore it takes to craft them.
Phasesabers can and should be given unique functionality to set them apart, since they're currently just statsticks like the ore swords.
The Night's Edge shouldn't get any abilities that would later be lost in its crafting tree; it would be counter-intuitive to have the Night's Edge capable of things the True Night's Edge lacks. Given that it's the ultimate prehardmode sword, it should also be desirable to use, not just a crafting material.
The Breaker Blade should retain its current niche of clearing out groups of weaker enemies from your immediate vicinity. It shouldn't be a dud drop from the Wall of Flesh, but it doesn't need to be super great either, as it's relatively simple to acquire.
Now, on to my suggestions.
Ore Swords, as mentioned, stay as they are, perhaps with numbers tweaks.
Phasesabers (and
Phaseblades) get a near total revamp. Give them a Defense piercing ability like that of the
Blade Staff, and turn them into low damage high speed weapons. At least to me, this makes sense for a laser sword, since it won't weigh much (fast attack speed) and wouldn't be stopped by armor (Defense pierce). This gives them unique properties to help make them more attractive.
The
Night's Edge really suffers from coming at a point where pure melee weapons just don't make the cut, because getting close to enemies gets a lot more dangerous and/or difficult. My proposal is to give it a projectile similar to that of the
True Night's Edge, but only triggered if the weapon itself hits something like
The Horseman's Blade. This would hopefully make it a lot better against the Wall of Flesh which has lots of adds, while also giving it value in early hardmode where melee really appreciates any range they can get. For the sake of parity,
Excalibur would get the same effect, and it also could use a buff.
The
Breaker Blade is the trickiest one to balance, in no small part because I have no idea how easy it would be to code things. Some ideas I've had:
Killing an enemy with the Breaker Blade very temporarily boosts its damage. This makes it good at tearing through crowds of weak enemies, and the duration could be made short enough that swapping weapons to use the buff on another weapon would be impractical.
The Breaker Blade deals more damage to enemies with no/low armor. This makes it the reverse of the reworked Phasesabers, and the fodder enemies tend to have low Defense
The Breaker Blade deals additional damage based on how much knockback an enemy takes from it. Probably too hard to code, but gives it a unique mechanic you could make silly builds around, and fodder enemies also tend to have low knockback resistance.