Light attack spam weapons to get you through the regular star chart? You'll want anything with big range and high damage, so like slide attack whips, light attack and slide attack heavy blades, polearms.
Some picks:
Stropha is the highest light attack DPS weapon in the game, and it has punchthrough, and you can build it as a heavy attack weapon or a 12x heavy hybrid later on when you have mods.
Broken War is free and strong, and a Corrosive build will carry you all the way to SP. Run and slash, things die; very good.
You can do regular Circuit for the Duviri melees. Edun is great right out the gates.
Kuva Shildeg is a gigantic meat mincer and good all the way into SP.
It’s one of those early game weapons designed to bridge Tenno to better answers. Like Hek’s (but not Vaykor Hek) augment, or Skana’s, or Dual Cleaver’s, or so on.
For all that DE has no idea how to balance the late game, the early game is very carefully crafted.
I revisited Broken Scepter two years later. Now that I both HAVE all the mods and know how to mod, it’s not bad at all. The sound effect though… sounds like I’m hitting the enemy with maracas.