Isn't that the case with any melee class but fighter and rogue?
Overall samurai gets to combine critical strike skill with most %kill gear while dual wielding save for Faerie ninja. So I think maximizing number of attacks per turn and crit chance is the way to go with samurai.
Samurai get (imo) weaker weapons than either faerie ninjas and staff monks and they have less defensive stats as well (since stealth is really effective on them). The only counterpart to this is the lightning strike thing but RNG make it pretty bad overall imo. They're still a great class on their own accord though, don't get me wrong.
So wrt swords it's Muramasa > Fang > Bushido or?
Muramasa (*IF* it appears) is pretty much the top of the line for samurai, with hefty bonuses, nice damage and 15% kill, along with leaving offhand free from secondary weapon.
A good alternative would be *Light* *Sword* with horrendous damage, massive bonuses, 2x damage against Savant's droids and 10% kill, but it almost never drops.
Fang is a good guaranteed sword - nice damage, 10% kill, +10 str.
Bushido blade may be a welcome replacement for whatever you're swinging, especially with 5% kill to make it worth considering.
OTOH you might be swinging Bloodlust at this point and it gives berserk attacks (2x damage for 10-26 effective damage range), an extra attack (doubling it again at least until you'd start getting extra attacks with normal sword) giving additional critical hit opportunity, +5 sword skill and massive +6 ini (no to hit bonus, though and berserk attacks already impair hitting/penetration, also cursed and nomnomming a lot of stamina).
You can also just go with staff samurai. There is no inherent disadvantage in it compared to staff monk - both forfeit their class skill (sword and martial arts respectively) while doing so, both can use Zatoichi Bo and Staff of Doom, and both have critical strike skill to stack with SoD's 15% kill.
IF you can lightning strike regardless of weapon type (
someone please confirm or deny), then staff samurai will be even better choice than staff monk, because even occassional lightning strike with SoD will seriously murder shit.
If samurai with stick rubs you wrong for some reason, you can always LARP Miyamoto Musashi (who coincidentally was also pretty much *the* dual wielding katana + wakizashi samurai dude) who was quite known for caving duel opponents' skulls in with a fucking bokken
(after first trolling them by arriving late
).