Butchers sickle is great for archon because it has everything you need on it already (lifesteal, crit, black dmg) you just need one with a socket, high dps, and + int. The proc on it is actually really helpful, I used to use a pretty nice echoing fury with 1100 dps but sold that for 150m and bought the butchers for 40m and it's just an all around better archon wep. The fear isn't what you need for archon you're so tanky already and the chain grab is useful cause you'll be pulling elites to you where you can arcane strike/blast them instead of using your beam which is far more DPS on big targets. Basically lot of people seem underrate these weps and you can find good ones for cheap.
As for leveling I mostly did MP 3 (never lower than 3), but sometimes when I was bored I would do MP 4-5 with improved archon over teleport. I did two different runs where I would just do the standard alk run and hit core, tower 1, crater 2, keep 2, fields, then remake. that was 70-80m an hour. For most of my leveling I did my own variation of the alk run where I would hit core, tower 1, skycrown battlements, keep 2, crater 2, fields then rakkis and that was probably 60m an hour. The amount of elites you get doing that run is crazy good for mfing though, rakkis and skycrown are the two zones with the most elites in act 3 so adding them in your run will up your legendary rate a lot.
For 95-100 as motivation I stashed all my good legendary then I.D'd them all at the same time, found a nats rings worth 300-400m.