Winter grave is an amazing gun. I am extremely pleased with its performance. The thing is, this gun can be effectively used against 3 classes of monsters, not just the two that are vulnerable to shadow (slimes and gremlins). I have used this gun with almost as much effectiveness against constructs too.

Even against mecha knights. The key is to have your charged attack ready, walk backwards while knights come to you, and when they are close enough and prepare their attack, fire the "missile" to knock them to the other side of the screen for an insta kill or if freeze kicks in, you just got to do another charge attack from behind them.

The Winter Grave is no doubt the only handgun that complements its Freeze status exceptionally well, combining the Magnus line's crowd control mechanisms with an excellent trapping ability to create an unprecedented monster of a gun that, in the right hands, puts the likes of famous crowd control weapons to shame. To put it into perspective, imagine a Glacius that can flinch mobs on all hits regardless of the type of attack used, whether it be charge attacks or even regular attacks.

Whereas the Hail Driver's and Permafroster's multi-hit/spamming potential makes it hard to consistently benefit from the Freeze status, the Winter Grave's burst shots allow you to not accidentally hit mobs right after they got frozen. Add in the fact that the Magnus line can and usually will flinch almost everything, and you got a gun whose normal shots can easily pick and cripple priority mobs, leaving them or the rest of the horde wide-open for its more devastating charge shot.

Winter Grave's charge shot is by far the best self-synergy of a charge shot I've ever seen, usually creating two distinct situations that can only be summarized as such:
1) You deal insane amounts of Burst and DPS as the shot plows through everything
2) You freeze everything in its path and leave them open for another charge shot
Either way, you will be able to efficiently crowd control with it as the shot will flinch everything that isn't a front-shield or a block, if not outright carry them all the way.

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On the other hand, the Permafroster is arguably the worst Shadow-type handgun in the game, and even by Pulsar standards it fails to reach the same amount of utility as its brothers do.

As stated above, its Freeze status will usually be a non-existent entity due to the spamming potential that comes with the Pulsar line, and even when the Freeze may pop up, it'll more often than not be a hindrance as it nullifies the knockback received, thus helping you less in trapping hordes in a corner or even creating breathing room for you.

Furthermore, despite its huge AoE, its slow travel speed will make you hard-pressed to hit any gremlin with it, and while it may superbly handle most slimes thanks to its knockback and flinching, the Winter Grave already does that just as well while better handling most gremlins, and even the underwhelming Biohazard, on top of being just as good against Slimes, has at least the added bonus of quickly disintegrating Jelly King/Ice Queen with its more useful Poison status.

So a friend is inviting my to an Ice queen run and I was wondering if the Permafroster would be better for the polyps than the Winter grave or better than a black chaingun. I also have a shadow driver but I am not to good with alchemers so I wanted to know which of those guns should be my third weapon.

I am currently going to be going with chaos cloak, vog cap, barbarous thorn shield, Cumbuster, Acheron, and a gun for the Polyps. Since I have never done a SL before I was wondering if this is good or if I need to tweak it a bit.

Your planned loadout is good. As Neometal said, Ice Queen is probably the easiest of the Shadow Lairs.

I would much rather use Winter Grave, Umbra Driver, or Grim Repeater than Permafroster. On the plus side, freeze-invulnerable monsters will be knocked back fully by Permafroster's shots. So at least that defect of the weapon is nullified.

If you want us to comment on other possible loadouts, you should tell us what other items you have. For example, Ice Queen is one of the few places where Gran Faust might be better than Acheron (for holding back crowds of slimes with knockback). But Acheron is great there too.

IQ hp-vise is about the same as JK, but her healing is better, there are more mobs to aid and there's also the swarm seed in the middle of the area. So if you can do enough dmg fast, it's about the same. That's why your chaingun or tundrus would be better for the boss. You could try with swords, but the jelly bosses are the easiest with guns.

If you haven't alrdy, you should watch some vids about the fight, maybe the first 2 depts, too.

So first off I want to say I loved finally feelling like I had a challenge in PvE. I loved how tight most of the areas where and how challenging they where. Now that being said I only had to revive once (even though that was in the core level) while my friend who had soloed the shadow lair like twice reved probably like 12 times. Even though I only had to rev once I was on like half health most of the run lol.

Now I did decide to bring the 4* Permafroster and I have to say it worked wonders. I really don't understand why people say it is bottom line when it comes to shadow weapons. It interrupted the enemies from attacking, did a nice amount of damage, and knocked them away which was useful in those tight areas. As far as it being useful for non freeze levels I would still it is a very decent weapon and it is even useful in D&N for the toxic slimes. I love this weapon.

I know this may seem weird but when my brother used his polaris I thought it was a really cool and good weapon, but once I got one myself when I started out I hated it. (this is the weird part) I absolutely hated the knock back. I thought it just messed with everything you and other players where doing and that the only time the knock back was good was when you where in a tight spot. So I sold it to a vendor after only 3 days of getting it. When I decided to give the Permafroster a try I instantly liked it. The freeze makes it so that they aren't knocked back as often while maintaining a very nice dps (which I love), if you want you can spam it enough so that if you are in a tight spot it will knock them back (which is useful sometimes), and on freeze levels I actually like the knock back since I have no freeze protection and freeze slimes are really annoying.

I know this will sound SUPER weird and you may think "what is wrong with this guy" but I like the Permafroster WAY more that the Polaris. With that being said I think it is a very nice and under rated weapon but I think that the Winter grave still beats it out by a solid amount.

That is my thought on the weapon :)

I know that this is pretty off topic but should I get the winter grave or the iron slug? I was impressed by the DPS even it is normal damage weapon

In general, freeze can be helpful or hurtful to your playing --- hurtful because it hinders knockback, kiting, shield-bumping, and other tactics used by expert players all the time.

Specifically for Winter Grave, it's true that freeze lets you set up another charge shot. But you need to aim that charge shot into the front of the monster to get the full effect. Also the freeze stops the charge's knockback. You want to set up your charge shot so that it hits the target near the end of the shot's range. So Winter Grave forces you to do a lot of maneuvering, which wastes time. It would be a more powerful gun if the freeze were replaced by poison, stun, or fire.

You are right that Iron Slug does so much damage that the fact that it's normal hardly matters. And normal damage can actually be helpful, when you are firing into a crowd of monsters with differing protections. And Magnus-style charge attacks lend themselves to that kind of play. And Iron Slug's stun doesn't have the problems that freeze has.

So in the end I'd go with Iron Slug. But Winter Grave is not a bad choice (except against undead and fiends).

Have you read the Gunslinger Guide on the wiki? It's not perfect, but it offers a lot of advice.

If you're thinking about armor, then you could read the Handgun section of my armor guide.

If you're just thinking about weapons, then I recommend the alchemers and Magnus-line guns for both fun and power. And the Autogun-style guns are good for power but not fun. And some of the other guns can be useful (e.g. Pulsar-style guns for knockback) or interesting (e.g. Catalyzer-style guns).