I am a gun enthusiast, and I love love my alchemers. I wanted to request a pierce style alchemer. or Pulsar. Both?
I think a pierce alchemer makes sense themewise, like it has shrapnel that splinters on contact. If permafroster and winter grave can be shadow, why not this.
Maybe make the Magma driver/ wildfire deal pierce damage, that seems like a super quick fix.
Currently the only pierce guns that you can move and fire are Riftlocker and Gilded griffin. These have elemental and shadow counterparts.
However there is no pierce alchemer or pierce pulsar though there are ele and shadow versions. I think pierce guns need some love.
Here's a number of guns per type, not counting exotic reskins like Nog blaster etc
Normal: 6 total, 6 unique (merging same gun with different statuses)
Ele: 12 total, 7 unique
Pierce: 6 total, 5 unique
Shadow: 9 total, 8 unique
I'm pretty sure it wouldnt hurt for Ele to share the Magma driver and Wildfire with the pierce family.
These guns currently see little to no use due to being outclassed by Nova driver/storm driver and polaris. I also think that people will be interested in getting the guns and farming will increase player activity. People will buy orbs from the supply depot. There we go, more revenue, more activity, better weapon coverage, world peace, and some seared brisket barbecue.
First off this should be in Suggestions and not in General Discussion.
Second, I like the idea of a pierce alchemer but it'll lean more towards a specialized role and not general utility. A pierce pulsar wouldn't make sense because the shots are energy-based plus the enemies that are weak to piercing are fast and dodgy that having that would only cause more chaos and latency issues than what the game's current pulsar line already has.
Also, Callahan. I saw that you referred Winter Grave and if you know Callahan is a pierce only gun that's also part of the magnus line shared by Winter Grave. It's just as fun and great to use as IS and WG but as mentioned, it isn't as great as the other two because most of the enemies are either resistant or neutral to piercing and the other two play a better role in dealing with enemies. The bullets are fast enough to hit those weak to it sure but you have to have either amazing aim or AT on just to land the hits, plus with ASI on it you can single/dual switch between so you have a consistent damage output with the gun which is a bit more difficult than other guns due to the slower output. Or you know... spam OP charge shot.
I'll take the "magma driver/wildfire is outclassed" as an insult because if you're a real gunner, then you should know that magma driver has the HIGHEST DPS in the alchemer lines due to consistent fire damage. Nova/umbra driver have the HIGHEST DIRECT DAMAGE output for each shot but they lack a status which balances it out. What you should be concerned more on is Hail Driver because the status on that gun can break if any of the other bullets hit the enemy that's frozen by it. There's several threads discussing this particular gun but the way I see it is that with this one you have to be more technical with it in order to get effective crowd control. It's the confusing one in the alchemer line but it shines in certain situations that the others don't. Same goes for Wildfire as it deals the HIGHEST DPS output in the pulsar line. I wouldn't consider these two outclassed by others and if you know most gunners then you will see that they have at least magma driver in one of their main loadouts; the only issue with these two guns is that you have to be careful that you don't light oilers on fire and same goes for storm driver that you don't charge up quicksilvers.
Finally, I'm not sure if this was part of the devs plan but the majority of SK gunners tend to have guns that are mostly elemental/shadow. Why? It's because most of the enemies in the Clockworks are either weak/neutral to them and elemental hits critically to two of the three enemy turrets, while the last one it hits neutral. Also some of the elemental/shadow guns have a status to them which makes them more preferable than the piercing guns, the only one having a status is Callahan. Pierce in clockworks is also more of a specialized damage than the other two because for those weak against it, shadow tends to produce either the same or higher damage output than the piercing ones; an unrelated example would be Acheron killing wolvers much faster than flourishes even though it's shadow and flourishes are piercing.
To have more players attracted to these guns (my own opinions and they don't have to be correct), either increase the damage output to the current pierce guns to outshine the ones that hit harder on pierce weak enemies or add a status to them. Even then they wouldn't be more popular because they don't have as much use as the other two damage lines and pierce leans more towards specific scenarios. Even normal guns like valiance or iron slug tend to outclass pierce guns. Adding two more pierce guns wouldn't increase player activity, it'll only remain the same because 1.) its only two guns and 2.) it's only specific towards one damage line that isn't used as much. For better weapon coverage, pierce really isn't viable since as mentioned shadow hits reasonably hard on enemies neutral to it and if they're resistant to it then switching to elemental is viable. If any case the majority (I may be wrong) of gunners normally go with two damage types and adding a third only adds more work. With two types it'll be easier for them to single/dual switch and when it comes to alchemers it gives them consistency in damage output and crowd control.
If there's anything that needs to be added to the game weapon-wise, I would only suggest giving bombs a buff because that's a priority since bombers aren't getting enough credit for being useful in clockwork runs besides being support. Guns are already OP from the gunner update and hit just as much as swords when used right. Look at the blaster line: Arcana hits very hard and covers for most the enemies and in LD is the preferred gun for almost all the strikers; heck it's also better in utility than Valiance which is normal damage. I'll go with you on the pierce alchemer but it's gonna take a lot more than that to have players interested since this damage line isn't all that popular, plus as mentioned it leans more towards a specialized role and/or are normally collected just to have in their arsenal. I may be right and wrong in some aspects of this whole thing but it's gotta take more than just adding two pierce guns to increase player activity. Til then! o^o/