Katana and Broad Sword are pretty much identical sets (more so than them vs the other weapon melee sets like mace and axe). However, when you look at any DPS spreadsheet/test/user experience playing both, Katana is better just about across the board. The damage of each power is slightly less in Katana however the costs, base recharge, and animation times, are much more in Katana's favor, leading to a overall significant DPS increase for Katana over Broad Sword. Currently the only advantage that I can really see to using Broad sword vs Katana (other than aesthetic) is the ability to pair it with /Shield.
Is there any plans to take a look and even out the balance? Maybe it's just as simple as increasing the damage of Broad Sword powers to be equivalent to whatever the animation time/recharge difference is to their Katana counter parts so that the overall DPS is equivalent? This spreadsheet from the scrapper forums shows enough of the data to know that for "identical" sets, there's a tad of an imbalance.
I'm not saying Broad Sword is unplayable (I main a BS/SD scrapper) but it would be nice to not feel less than because I'm not at least using Katana (usually one of the first things I hear from folks is how Katana is just better Broad Sword).
Thanks for reading, If there is other feedback or ideas please feel free to put them here as well.