All weapon have their own purpose, it is probably best for you to try all of the weapons and find which weapon that feel comfortable for you.
Al tough Longbow is probably hard to use, if you want ranged you might want to try Rifle, don’t get me wrong Longbow are awesome, just hard to get use to.
Axes is sustained Damage with Burst Attack that dose insane damage.
Sword is condition damage making the normal attack little weak but with Bleeds, Burst dose Low damage but you apply a lot of Bleed plus immobilize for 3 seconds at max.
Mace is Control with a Burst Attack with Stun which is different from immobilize because you still can use your ability while you are on immobilize but with Stun you can’t do anything.
Any of off hand of one these weapons serves almost the same purpose.
Great Sword is Burst as you may already know, Burst attack is kinda boring, you just get buffs.
Hammer is awesome for knocking down people stunning with their Burst Attack, just pure control.
Longbow is Area damage and Rifle is more single target.
As for dealing enemy, specially the thief is to try and make a some sort of combo going, and I am not talking about fields combo.
I’m Sword/Shield Longbow and if I do correctly in this order, people are on the ground before they know what’s going on.
The order is: Start from Longbow, #3 skill, #5 and Burst Skill, switch to Sword/Shield, Shield #1 skill, Berserker Stance, Flurry(sword Burst Skill), and Fear Me while auto-attacking.
If they are GC build thief, they are goner, of course I can’t make this happen every single time, but it’s good starter.
The point is, find your favorite weapon, and find your combo.
Hope this helps, cheers.
