I crafted a Blaster yesterday to replace my starter pistol, and will be starting Tier 2 soon. Is this weapon worth upgrading to the Valiance, or would I be better off crafting one of the Alchemers (I was planning on making the Cryotech one)?
Blaster worth upgrading?
Valiance is excellent if you carry only one gun and then swords/bombs since it does push back as well as having no weakness to anything. However, if you are filling up a damage slot on your character (elemental, shadow, piercing) then it's better to get a gun that will do your missing damage type. One of the best guns to get is elemental since most things like gun puppies and knights are bad guys you don't want to get closer to if you can help it, hence you mostly use your gun on those types of monsters.
The Blaster line is decent (or mediocre, if you look at it that way) DPS for a gun anywhere, anytime, from the 2* through the 5* variant. I used to like it, but then I discovered Alchemers. They only start to shine around 4* when the shots ricochet more, but the added chance of status effects is great. Plus, being elemental, they do bonus damage against the types of enemies you'd want to gun- Constructs mainly.
^
I plan to have 2 guns for each dmg type.
Shadow: Biohazard and Umbe Driver
Piercing: Blitz Needle and Callahan
Elemental: Polaris and Argent Peacemaker
Normal: Valiance and Volcanic Pepperbox
I'm probably gonn get elemenral resist because of the constructs which are the most common projectile enemies.
The next best thing would be shadow def for the next most common projectile enemies and plus, the shadow defence sets are the only ones that offer a gun dmg boost while the other ones offer gun ASI med per piece. The nameless set (i think it's nameless, it might be the justifier set, I'm not sure) that gives ASI low and undead dmg boost med per piece.
When you spot a necro in 0.004 seconds by taking notice of a legacy username...
Valiance is considered the best all rounder. Good damage, good magazine size, good rate of fire, weak vs nothing.
Alchemers do different damage types and have some status effects. They're kind of a love them/hate them deal. It won't put you back too much to craft one and try it out, see how it fits.