the secondary stats on hauteclaire are a bit trash but +2 weapon damage is always a huge deal and besides, its only 695 tomes, gotta take advantage of the pld discount.
Printable View
Sword isn't great, but most of the armor is just garbage. See so many plds out there with the new body, and it just makes me cry. But either way, weapon damage is kinda king. A sword upgrade with crappy secondaries, is still better than an armor upgrade with great secondaries.
The Hive Battleaxe has Determination which was greatly nerfed in HW, the Parashu has Crit which now stands out over Det. Both have Parry on them (yuck) so it's a wash there. Overall I would consider the Parashu an upgrade over the Hive Battleaxe in both weapon damage and secondaries.
Weapon, and I would go for Alex body and focus on Pants from Eso after weapon. The Eso Body/Alex Body have the same secondary stats for WAR, which are terrible, and the Alex body is probably easier to get at this point because it should be all you have left out of Alex. Once you do upgrade your chest, regardless if it's Alex Norm or Eso you will lose a pretty hefty chunk of ACC so the pants can help fix that.