BD personally. Figher dances, plus Siren, medusa, and shadow walk are great. Vamp dance also :p Arrest is nice, along with hex too. :)
They are a somewhat decent secondary damage dealer (as is an sws) and with their dances they can do decent crits with a bow. BD's aren't that bad for pvp imho. They aren't great dps dealers like archers/daggers but like Judas said if you stand in the back with a bow you can still get a few pvp marks your way.
I vote for BD (maybe because main is BD :)), but it, as always, depends on player.
Personally I am pretty aggressive player, tank style grind is not for me. Sws is more tank and bd is more damage dealer.
Comparision.
BD:
- attack spd, crit.dmg, p.attack, VR, shadow, m.attack, cast speed dances are yours bread and butter. As you see, dances increase attacking performance
- low hp should be decreased even more for better attack power and/or attack speed - aka -con which is quite low
- designed to carry dual hand weapons. Best DPS is with dual swords, but in some circumstances bow may be used
SWS (know not much about that class):
- max HP, p.def, crit rate(!), m.def, run speed, regen, reuse songs. It is more defensive and supportive songs.
- can carry any weapon
From "welcome to party" perspective, BD these days are quite common, many peoples sub to BD, because they are great in pve (duo with G.Wolf rules), SWS (and good ones) still are quite rare, because solo grind is a little boring, you leak dps as main killer, so you should act as tank, but sws defensive abilities is lower than tank.
you can pole with sws :) need a bd for dps though and ee for heals. and btw if you first sing all your songs and the invite bd to dance you can have 8-9 song/dance and bd will still have mp for the next dance round :)
didn't vote as all it would do is show my preference as am a sws myself =)
at end game lvls an sws is stronger then a bd hands down, sws get good/decent from lvl77 to strong at 83 but bd's will be good/decent already at lvl58 so it's all a matter of personal taste.
ps a good sws doesn't need a bd for aoe poling just an ee/bish for pulling non stop mobs and a dc for cov, bd does help in killing faster but that also means more ppl to share the xp with so it's all about personal game style
I'm not about to vote either way. Some people much prefer a BD for their offnsive boosts. But I play mostly Orc fighters, and on those characters, I seem to get a pretty good boosts from both BDs and from SWSs.