Maximum damage output with Swords ...

To get maximum damage output with swords, assuming all other factors are equal, should I use:
(1) Furious (adrenaline) sword with adrenalin attacks and skills
OR
(2) Zealous (energy) sword with energy attacks and skills?
Thank you.

Shrug. There is no "best" sword type. It all depends on what build you use (for example, dragon slash with Furious can be great because of the chance to get 10 adrenaline from it). They are all viable. Play around with it yourself and see which one YOU prefer.

1 is better if you use mostly adrenaline skills, and 2 is better if you have a lot of energy based skills on your bar. #2 could be better when you have mostly adrenaline except for 1 high energy combo (i.e. headbash/plague touch 20e) so you can use it more frequently. lol, in short the answer is: it depends...

I would go with zealous and use either "For Great Justice"(50% more adrenaline for 20 seconds) and/or "To The Limit"(1 strike of adrenaline for each foe around you max of 4 or 5) and use an adrenaline build those 2 skills will keeep ur adrenaline up and zealous will keep enrgy up to use those skills. Furious is too iffy to rely on for an adrenaline build imo. of course, if you use only 1 energy skill(or 2) and you dont think energy for thsoe skills will be a problem then u could go with furious.

Vampiric is better overall for damage, but of the two...
Furious. There aren't any worthwhile energy-based sword attacks, and getting 10 adrenaline from Dragon slash is sweet.

DO NOT USE ENERGY BASED ATTACK SKILLS
THEY SUCK
The only reason you'd want Zealous is to pay for more Frenzy.
Furious sucks too. double adrenaline 10% of the time is not a lot. It can be fun in a Dragon Slash build (dragon slash>dragon slash), but even there it's not really worth it. The most damage will come from Zealous with Sundering or Vamp on spikes.
There are A LOT of threads about the vamp vs. sundering debate. I believe generally the Sundering comes out on top.
Your weapon bar should look like this: set 1: zealous, set 2: sundering/vamp, set 3: elemental (for attacking warriors) set 4: wand for ranged adrenaline gain.

Deadly Reposte definately does not suck, and I very much disagree that sundering comes out on top in the debates on these forums.

KANE

yah I'd disagree with that too, wtf thread said sundering was better?

From what I remember someone did a test stating that vamp added up to more overall dmg above sundering... which was in the latest thread.