Rate the weapon: Day one - Ore Swords

[Ami]

Inspired by another topic, it occurs to me that many of us think weapons are bad or unusable, simply because we know what we like. But, do we know what we DON'T like? What's a worthy investment of your time and resources? In the case of polls which have multiple items bunched together, such as the ore swords, pick only the best one. If you love silver sword, but think iron sword is a waste of the bars, vote as if this were a poll for silver sword. I'll be logging these in a spreadsheet and making a compilation of which items users think are good, bad, OP, or a waste of space.
If they're bad, what would make them better? Lower cost? Autoswing? Projectiles? Different attack animation?
If they're OP, what would make them balanced?

Day one: swords made from common ores. Do you get these?

 

[General Milky]

Almost never; shadewood/ebonwood sword is equal to iron, and lasts until the first EoC kill to make the crimtane/demonite sword. The only reason I'd ever make a basic ore sword is if I have too much silver/tungsten while looking for gold/platinum.

 

[Xakk]

The problem with ore swords is they establish a baseline, which most melee weapons exist above. Most people only use them when they are failing to acquire the next rung of melee weapon through exploration. For example, at the beginning of the game, wooden swords are made obsolete by the cactus sword, as well as copper. An enchanted boomerang makes all the normal mode ore weapons obsolete, as does the katana, ice blade, enchanted sword, falcon blade, or bone sword, at least one of which you're likely to have before working up through the various ore swords, and moving on to demonite/crimtane. Whose weapons are a step up, if you have yet to go to the jungle.
In Hardmode you might be tempted to give yourself that quick damage boost right away. That is if you get a cobalt naginata before your dark lance, or your cobalt sword before you can make a phasesaber. Afterwards, the KO cannon, Beam Sword, Frost Brand, and Cutlass outperform all ore weapons till maybe Hallowed. And at that point you have Bladetongue, Ice Sickle, Mushroom Spear, Light Disc, and Dao of Pow, just to name a few. And things fan out even more in Hardermode.

 

[PTpirahna]

Personally I find them quite useless, if I wanted a sword then I'd craft a bow and kill the Eye of Cthulhu for it.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I tend to make them, but I find that they quickly become obsolete once good ranged weapons and magic becomes available.
[doublepost=1465907599,1465907445][/doublepost]

The problem with ore swords is they establish a baseline, which most melee weapons exist above. Most people only use them when they are failing to acquire the next rung of melee weapon through exploration. For example, at the beginning of the game, wooden swords are made obsolete by the cactus sword, as well as copper. An enchanted boomerang makes all the normal mode ore weapons obsolete, as does the katana, ice blade, enchanted sword, falcon blade, or bone sword, at least one of which you're likely to have before working up through the various ore swords, and moving on to demonite/crimtane. Whose weapons are a step up, if you have yet to go to the jungle.
In Hardmode you might be tempted to give yourself that quick damage boost right away. That is if you get a cobalt naginata before your dark lance, or your cobalt sword before you can make a phasesaber. Afterwards, the KO cannon, Beam Sword, Frost Brand, and Cutlass outperform all ore weapons till maybe Hallowed. And at that point you have Bladetongue, Ice Sickle, Mushroom Spear, Light Disc, and Dao of Pow, just to name a few. And things fan out even more in Hardermode.

Yeh, they really need to make unique weapons like that much rarer. The other day I found like 5 of those frost swords in the tundra. It was on a large world, but still.
Even in my medium world I have chests full of duplicate weapons I found.

 

[Vitrolic Medicine]

I prefer to make Grass blade than ore swords if the resources (stingers and spores) are accessible... It completely skips the stones... you need to make two yoyos first, (one is wooden, second is amazon). Then kill with Wooden yoyo enough enemies to advance to Amazon. Rinse and repeat to the Blade of Grass... With this way even EoC becomes obsolete (unless in expert mode)

 

[Sigma90]

I only use ore swords at the beginning of the game until better swords are available (e.g. Night's Edge). That's assuming I use a sword in the first place and not something better like an Enchanted Boomerang or a Yoyo.
Hardmode has plenty of swords better than the ore swords. I used a Cutlass for a large portion of hardmode in my first playthrough.

 

[Xylia]

I've never used an Ore Sword before, except for adventure maps.

1). They are too slow.
2). Iron/Lead don't do enough damage to warrant the bars used in their construction.
3). Silver/Tungsten goes for Armor first thing, Gold/Platinum goes for a Pickaxe ASAP.
4). Cactus Sword is almost as good and 10x easier to make and IIRC has more knockback and bigger hitbox.
5). It wouldn't be used for very long at all, given upgrades are easy to find.

Basically, my weapon progression tends to be something like this:

Cactus Sword -> Ice Blade/Starfury/Enchanted Boomerang/Ice Boomerang/Grenades/Bow&Arrow -> Amazon -> Fiery Greatsword -> Night's Edge

Once I make an Amazon, I kill the EoC, then the 2nd Boss, get the Pickaxe, and then go to the Underworld and then I'm sporting a Fiery Greatsword very soon after. Once I get the Greatsword, Molten Pickaxe and Hellstone Armor, then I go and do the rest of Easymode.

As for what would make them actually useful? Perhaps a good start would have them actually be better than the Cactus Sword, lol. IMO, a lot of early-game weapons need to be re-balanced because they are all too similar or too weak to even bother messing with, or by the time you finally have the materials to make it, you might have already found something better.

The least they could do is give them auto-swing. But even then, the Ice Blade already has Auto-Swing, as does the Enchanted Sword.

 

[Ezel]

Sometimes, if you mention only the early-game swords. If you mean HM ores too, I use them much more than these made from copper/iron/gold/etc.

 

[thatRaGe]

Pre-hardmde ore swords suck. But when you get into hard mode ore swords such as the Excalibur or the Clorophyite Claymore really help if you cant get that boss drop you want. I would rate them a 4

 

[Okkusen Man]

I never use these. There are so many other melee weapons available at the same time as the ore swords that are way more useful. Usually by the time the higher tier ore swords are available, I'll already have a Starfury or something.

 

[Trollking6]

I just keep making new worlds until I get an Arkhalis and use that up until the mechs.

 

[Varsia]

Ore Swords are nice to have, but I'll rarely if ever go out of my way to make one. There's plenty of better alternatives to go for (Ice blade comes to mind), and they tend to last an extremely short time (maybe up to EoC, but even then they can be a tad underwhelming against the actual boss). Of course, if luck is down and resources are a-plenty, could be worth making. Otherwise, I prioritise the ore armours over weapons. Gets a 2 - too obsolete compared to alternatives.