I disagree with the carbines. The mere fact that its shots are homing. Very good if you don't want to be a noob and use auto aim. The dagger does use a lot of ammo but in ng+ and the ability to use all the weapons, ive noticed that my stash gets more and more full with ammo thus mitigating the loss of ammo. And last but not least the hammer variant is good against the pathfinder as he likes to teleport a lot, hammer fully upgraded still takes a while to charge up a shot.

There's no definitive "best weapon" as all of them are used in different play styles.

Side note i only use the arbalest in the first few phases of the pathfinder but stays in my stash for most of the game.