Its a never ending discussion whether a certain weapon is op or to weak. And as always, the weapon you like and use is to weak, of course and most of the other weapons are op.
The Thesis: A correlation exists with the strength of a Weapon and their AH-Market-Presence.
The Intention: To provide you and the developers with a fresh idea how to look at weapons for determining whether and where changes might be appropriate. This without having to enter all the endless discussions concerning properties, abilities, PvE, PvP.
The Approach:
I have taken a few simple Key-Indicators.
The number of GS600 Weapons offered in the AH: The more they are used, the more likely they get crafted, the more are offered.
The number of Weapons offered overall in the AH. Similar to above, there should be relationship to the strength of a weapon, since people tend to sell weapons where they know a market exists, more often. This KI has some dependency to crafted items, it should not be that strong though. To ease my work of counting I have just taken the number of pages in the weapon listing.
The price of Timeless Shards for a certain Weapon in the AH. There should be a relationship to both of the other Key-Indicators, since high price indicates high crafting activity.
Finally I have multiplied all the Key-Indicators to get more distinct values.
World Albraca, Date 30.01.2022
Weapon #GS600 #Pages #Price Timeless Shard #Product of Multiplication
Great Axe 44 31 49G 66836
Void Gau. 40 29 37G 42920
Bow 50 29 17G 24650
Fire Staff 55 27 7G 10395
Hatchet 21 24 12G 6048
Rapier 19 24 5G 2280
Life Staff 32 23 1G 736
Spear 27 21 1,2G 680
Musket 7 17 5G 595
Ice Gau. 25 21 1G 525
Sword 11 18 1,5G 297
Overall there can be correlations seen between the Key-Indicators. Weapons with high market presence both GS600 and overall, tend to have higher timeless shard prices. That the approach is not to accurate is shown by the Life-Staff and the Musket, with biggest outliers concerning timless shard price and their market presence. Nonetheless the thesis seems to have a foundation, as the weapons with highest market presence have highest timeless shard prices as well. Further two Weapons which, to my knowledge, are considered strong in the Meta, GA and VG turn up at the top of this list too, whereas weapons which seem to be considered weak like Musket and Sword are at the bottom. And just to point out, this is the whole Market including PvP and PvE-Players.
What is now the conclusion, for e.g. developers and weapon-balancing, without having to go to the detail concerning exact weapon-properties and abilities ?
Great Axe, Void Gauntlet and Bow are considererd strong Weapons on the market, no buffs needed.
Fire Staff, Rapier, Hatchet seem to be ok.
Life Staff, Spear, Musket, Ice Gauntlet are considered weak Weapons on the market. A closer look whether to provide buffs is recommended.
And especially the Sword seems to be in need of love. Only few people seem to like it, as result it is not crafted and sold a lot.
P.S.: This is not real scientific work, so please bear with me. The idea I found sufficient compelling though, which is the reason for creating this thread. And please do not start to discuss in this thread exact weapon abilities and properties 
.