I've used a dagger mostly because my sword skill is already maxed out from lvling my RDM to 30 (so I could "activate" advanced jobs)
At lvl 30, with both dagger and sword maxed out, my dagger actually does more total dmg. I seem to miss more with my sword and swing slower. Also, I'm using out dated weapons (Mercenary's Knife (lvl 20) vs Fire Sword (lvl 18)).
How I end up choosing? What weapon has the WS that I want to end a renkei that my pt has set up. Since as a bard meleeing is my prime objective, I typically build enough TP for 1 WS every 2-3 my pt members do. So I pick a weapon w/ a WS that can chain onto the end of their renkei.
Like yesterday, I forget the name of the WSs, but it was samurai -> Ninja -> dragoon. But when I had my WS, we did a full Samurai -> Ninja -> Dragoon -> Me -> Samurai (again, I love meditate). On Smithies, that's an avg of 50 additional dmg on my Gust Slash from renkei, and another 90 on the scission from the samurai.
It's just fun :) Also, I like to max skills for the hell of it. So I just bought a staff to work on that too. Not to mention Monster Insignia (I think that's what the weapon is called) kicks ass.. if I can ever get my hand on one.
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75BRD, 75BLM, 75WAR, 72RNG, 65THF, 62NIN, 42WHM, 41RDM
Kayile On Fairy