To clarify this a little further:
Katanas got the Beisa set.
Enforcer is easily BiS katana.
Shielding is good on most leather classes (especially Ninja with Ballistic and Huntress with Lotus) but in general you can rely on having a paladin buff in most later game content.
Banner is decent swapout.
Staves got Dammah set.
Superior is excellent swapout and BiS up to 50 def.
Genesis BiS spell, rivaled only by Tablet and potentially Parasite Spell.
Diplomatic is one of the best robes in the game, its only real competition is Vesture.
Cranium is a serviceable ring on most swords/daggers/katanas and can be used on longer ranged classes as well.
Daggers got Gemsbok set.
Avarice is BiS dagger.
Coin is one of the best decoy prisms in the game.
Turncoat is situational but not bad, usable on most leather classes.
Monocle is uniquely good on invisible classes, so ghost rum, crystallized mist, turncoat or Rogue. Even without the invis effect proc, it’s still a solid ring on most classes.
Wands got Leucoryx set.
Lumiaire is easily BiS wand.
Scripture BiS damage tome.
Vesture is BiS robe, only real competition being Diplomatic.
Coronation is one of the best rings in the game.
Swords got Oryx set
Divinity is one of two best swords in game, closest competition being Colo.
Escutcheon is BiS damage shield and also a usable stun shield.
Glad Guard BiS heavy armour.
Horn doesn’t even need to be explained, easily one of the best rings in the game.
Bows got Angel Bard ST
Harp is actually decent, but also only 5% fame bonus (all the other weapons are 8%).
Lute is good if you have rest of set equipped but that restricts this to only Bard.
Robe and Ring are pretty terrible standalone, especially compared to the rest of the stuff that drops here, they really only exist to enable the lute, which only the Bard can use.
Continuing on the previous point:
Weapons
both Katanas can use Enforcer just fine, all the Swords, Staves, Wands and Daggers can use their respective weapons with relative ease and also get the 8% fame bonus, not to mention every single one of them is forgeable.
Harp is the outlier here, it is ST (not forgeable), 5% fame bonus and only outdamages Void until 35 def. My point being that it gets outclassed by the previous BiS weapon in nearly all endgame content where target is not armour broken. Whereas all the others outclass their predecessors or at least compete.
Abilities
All the abilities are good. Coin is amazing, Genesis is really good, Star is solid, Scripture is good and Escutcheon is nuts. Lute is solid too.
Difference here is, Lute requires you to wear the rest of the set to get good use out of it, it’s somewhat mediocre otherwise. The other abilities are good stand alone and don’t need you to necessarily sacrifice your armour and ring slot to get really good use out of them.
Armour
Every class that can wear Glad Guard, does wear Glad Guard, it’s just that good. Same thing for Diplomatic and Vesture, both robes are really good on their own.
Shielding and Turncoat however are situational. Turncoat has a useful defensive effect and is a solid defensive armour overall but that isn’t what raids are looking for nowadays, regardless it’s pretty good IMO. Shielding while good, forces you to rely on other classes to get the full value of the armours effect unless you happen to be Huntress with Lotus or Ninja with Ballistic. This isn’t always reliable.
The ST robe is absolute garbage on it’s own, the only real reason to use it is to add the extra effect to the Lute, which only matters if you’re playing Bard.
Rings
Coronation and Horn are amazing and get used pretty much everywhere, they are both amazing.
Cranium and Monocle are a little more class specific, they are not usable on every class but tend to be pretty good on the classes that can make use of them.
Banner is not an amazing main ring but is a very good swapout and tends to be carried by some players that like using swapouts.
The ST ring is absolute garbage on it’s own, the only real reason to use it is to add the extra effect to the Lute, which only matters if you’re playing Bard.
Conclusion
My point overall is that I feel like bows got shafted in the O3 update. We make use of what we can from poaching it from the other sets but none of them feel like a perfect fit (except maybe Horn on Archer, can’t use mana that well anyway, what am I gonna do, spend it on an ability that does something? so combination of defense and offense stats is really nice). I hope that sort of got my point across.
You’re right, and I can see the logic behind the DPS meta, group tank meta got nerfed with tomes/puri nerfs. Status effect meta hasn’t been a thing since everything worth using a status effect on is immune to it, damage increasing effects notwithstanding.
So the safest way to finish content is to kill it quickly. The less time it spends in a phase, or alive in general, the less it shoots. I just wish all the classes got to participate in the DPS meta somewhat without feeling completely outclassed, whether that be through bringing damage, like Warr, Wiz or Ninja or utility like Trix, Mystic, Samurai, etc.
If they do balance each weapon class around having an offense class, defense class and utility class. Why not cement either Archer or Huntress as the defense class and recalibrate the other one to pure offense while letting Bard be the utility or if you consider Bard defense, then recalibrate one of the other bows as utility and one as offense instead of trying to squeeze both into the same niche and then outclassing them both elsewhere anyway.