Powerful DD Ultimate Weapons

This.

Savage Blade can spike much higher than Upheaval, the latter is normally in the 25-30k range, the former even without Kaja Sword can easily get to 35-40. But the WS frequency of Great Axe (and TP overflow) is just so much higher, then there's the random SCs you get even when spamming.

Kaja weapons closed the gaps with remas indeed (especially the financial one), but they're still not "free", and we need to keep in mind that the target of these weapons are the more casual people that are stuck spamming ambu on easy/very easy, for which it will still take a month or two to get a single weapon to Kaja, at least. Those users are not represented here on forums at all, but they exist and are the majority.

Anyway, situations where sword + shield is king:
- soloing or duoing with not-so-great buffs, assuming you end up tanking. WS frequency then becomes similar to gaxe thanks to retaliation, but you're sturdier because shield.
- caturae in escha, because Requiescat SB SB SB dead.
- Kin. It's the perfect fight for Fencer WAR and it's hilarious how far behind all the HURRDURRRESOLOL wars end up in the parse.
- fights where you do not want SCs to happen and don't have enough buffs to make Resolution worth it. Few, but they're there.
- fights where you get constantly dispelled and the rest of your PT gives up on rebuffing. Without any buff at all Fencer Savage Blade is still really strong, great axe less so.

That's pretty much it.

I'm not trying to discuss weapon A v.s B nor SC nor subjobs. I'm only pointing out in the discussion of weapon A v.s B, one of them not having armor break doesn't matter that much since it's just 200 tp lose every 9 min.