Board Thread:Shadow Fight 3 Discussion/@comment-82.10.131.186-20190830200512/@comment-31479589-20190831011849

The order of upgrade based from their effectiveness, is:

Armor > Helm > Weapon > Ranged Weapon

If your armor is stronger than your weapon, then the weapon will use the armor's unarmed stat to determine its damage instead. Which means you can use any underpowered weapon, as long as you have strong armor.

Helm determines the damage of shadow abilities. And Guardian Dragon relies on shadow abilities due to the nature of the set bonus. If you have some spare shadow energy, I will also recommend to go for Helm upgrade after your armor is upgraded, so you can deal higher damage with shadow abilities.