@klipwc

You fail to realize, that argent peacemaker only deals HALF elemental damage, while your pulsar deals FULL elemental damage.

So of course it's going to inflict more damage. it's a weapon with half clip size and lower firing rate, and does entirely damage that crits on undead, rather than half normal half crit.

...

Pierce/elemental. It's an undead/fiend killer.

Beasts have pierce weakness, but elemental resistance.

Think of it like this.

gremlin/slime "low" damage target
Construct/beast "normal" damage target
undead/fiend "bonus" damage target

The Argent Peacemaker has only 1 use. This is it's one and ONLY use (imo);

Sidearm ppl through fsc.

It is good against the fsc slags and trojans.
It's pretty much crap anywhere else, against anything else.

A main gunner has no need of the Argent Peacemaker.
Make a Polaris, make a Callahan, win.

can the polaris shoot through the monster barriers? if not, the AP still has a place in the FSC... I suspect the AP also shoots further, giving you a little more margin of error when fighting vanaduck

Except the damage penalty for hitting a beast with energy is far greater than the damage boost for hitting it with piercing.

That doesn't matter in the end. There are still a group of two monster families that it is better at, two that are in the middle, and two that it is worse at. The penalty vs bonus difference basically has the same effect as an adjustment to the base damage.

I hear that some monsters, such as the JK and vanaduck are 'neutral' to everything, so the AP may have a fourth class of damage, while single damage type weapons have only three. I'm not sure even that really matters in the end.

no gun can 'shoot through' the barriers, but all guns hit monsters that are right up against the barrier.

Hmm... I didn't do the most careful testing, but I could not get my storm driver to shoot through, my magnus would shoot through some, the AP shoot a lot. And, it doesn't seem like the monsters have to be right up against the barrier, at least not or the AP.

submit a bug report instead of measuring which weapon is better

bug reports have been submitted, to the best of my knowledge, this has been going on since beta. I won't be upset at all if/when this bug gets fixed, but until then, it is part of the game, much like zombies that sleep, etc.

The Silversix line is inferior to the Alchemer and Elemental Pulsar lines in every way except in FSC. Against any enemy you would gun, alchemers and pulsars do more damage, with no significant loss to mobility or range (alchemers do have slightly shorter range). However, in FSC, the Silversix is the only line able to reliably go through the barriers, as well as sniping wheels from the side (while facing the wheel). Hence, as long as those bugs/features/exploits exist, the Silversix line will remain a common fixture in most advanced players' arsenal.

Pulsar vs. Alchemer is more interesting. If only DPS is considered, the Pulsar wins by a slight margin, due to longer range, blast radius, and higher refire rate (3-clip versus 2). (Un)fortunately that isn't where the story ends- as pointed out, the knockback from the Pulsar reduces DPS, and can be incredibly frustrating in a party. What this means is your average player should stick to Alchemers- they are easier to use, do damage more consistently, and don't interfere with teammates. Pulsars are better for players with a good grasp of combat mechanics; they can use the blast knockback to shape crowds and inflict more damage, with out without teammates. Of course, their teammates also need to be cognizant of the Pulsar user's strategy. In solo play, teammates are no longer an issue, but the knockback remains- a player that doesn't know how to shape crowds with the blast will do less DPS and be in greater danger than just kiting around with an alchemer.

As such, I will swap in my Silversix in FSC, and Pulsar when I play with guildmates that know how to take advantage, but otherwise I stick with the Storm Driver.

If you're considering APM over any other gun because it can shoot through barriers, then you're plain reta***d and need to L2 play.
I don't understand why people stand there and shoot, first of all, it's not intended gameplay, it's also outright slow, boring, ineffective and most of all a complete waste of time. (I hate people who waste time)

Anyway putting the barrier exploit aside.......
I find that my Polaris can be compared to spamming DA's charge in certain mass mob situations.
I havn't used APM but I honestly doubt it's damage would be that much over Polaris.
In fact, I would imagine Polaris does more damage then APM if you're using it properly, probably ALOT more.
By the time you shoot one set of APM, you could shoot 4 bullets of Polaris.
Where each bullet would hit atleast 3-5 mobs, dealing 120+ damage and extra damage from shock
As far as I know, APM Shoots 6 clips of 66 and can hit up to 3 creeps.
Polaris would be dealing double the damage and also inflicting shock
It also works wonders on duke, explosions are large enough to bypass his flame spheres and it keeps him shocked.

And plus, APM isn't as good as other guns outside FSC =]

'edit'
@pringerX
Actually, Polaris kills wheels faster then APM as each shoot is 100% sure to hit.
Anyway, you shouldn't even be bringing up a point like that in this sort of discussion
Like in the first few sentences above, if you are inclined to choose something over something else because it has an innate ability to exploit something unintended, then... yeah you get my point.

Sooo a 4* gun does more damage than a 5* gun in FSC correct? Since the AP is almost useless everywhere else then I'd go for the Polaris. A gun is a gun. As long as I can shoot them from a distance where they can't attack me then I'm fine. Thanks for letting people know.

It does matter, since we're not talking about general utility, but use against specific monster types.

No, it really doesn't. You're ignoring this part: "The penalty vs bonus difference basically has the same effect as an adjustment to the base damage." Or else you simply don't understand variable rescaling. The mixed damage does change the shape of the damage levels, so that the difference between "middle" and "high" is greater than that between "middle" and "low", the reverse of pure damage weapons. But saying the "middle" is reduced damage is equivalent to saying "high" and "low" are improved, but for a lower base damage.

That's the problem with the Antigua Series. That's the reason why they are so weak. If you tell me "but they are good in FSC" i have to tell you ... no, they aren't. In FSC the Silversix will deal 60 damage against zombies and fiends, 30 against slime and 40 against construct. If you use a Strike Needle you deal 95 damage against the Fiends (horses) ... yea 95x6 or charched 120x15 what is 1800 ... you deal even faster your 6x95 than the Silversix. You can shot 3 shots with Silver in that time. Against Undead the Gigawatt Pulsar deals 180 damage and has even a huge splash + shock (+4x 25).

Silversix is a weapon for Swordmen who don't know what gun to take. A simple Master Blaster will deal normal damage - 70 to anything, also gets a huge bullet speed buff at *****.

mfg

-Polaris is a relatively new weapon, I started playing before the steam release and got my AP long before snarb was introduced, let alone the roarmulus twins. I also get the feeling that most experienced players couldn't be bothered with heating up and getting recipes/mats etc. to get themselves a new gun when they have one that is just as good.

True

-like many people have mentioned, in team battles polaris actually lowers the dps of the team as a whole. Because of its explosions, it often pushes mobs away and can be as annoying as someone who is inexperienced with a nitronome can be.

Only with an unskilled polaris user; a decent user can keep entire groups of enemies under control, and if they're doing so by keeping a group of enemies in a corner, the rest of the party can target the same area to -boost- dps.

-The bullet speed on the AP is slightly faster and the reload time is slightly lower.

True, though it's more than slightly faster. Reload time, I have no experience with.

-The rarely used charge on the AP is significantly more useful in FSC than the polaris. The polaris charge will do an explosion similar to a bomb while the AP will knock back a lot of mobs while doing some damage. And as most people will agree, in FSC crowd control/pushing things back is extremely important.

Yes, crowd control/pushing things back is very important in FSC. Guess what Polaris is best for? There are entire rooms in FSC that are normally considered hard that Polaris TRIVIALISES because of its' crowd control.

-AP works better with shivermist buster (a commonly used bomb in FSC that provides AOE freeze) than the polaris. While shooting, the AP will just deal damage, but with the polaris, it will explode and push all the mobs all over, making bombing less useful/more difficult.

Frozen enemies can't be knocked back. So, yeah, Polaris is made even better by shivermist. It allows you to focus all of those 200+ damage shots without worrying about knockback.

Other benefits the polaris has:

+ Shock increases DPS even further.
+ The explosions have such a large blast radius against vanaduke that you don't have to aim between his fireballs at all
+ The explosions can hit things around corners
+ The explosions can be aimed to hit a trojan in the back, firing from his front
+ When the pellets expand, they suddenly hit things to their side. You can destroy the wheel throwers from the front by aiming just a little to the side.
+ Third shot of a clip prevents enemy attacks the same way the last hit of a sword combo does. It stuns gun puppies from a distance.

Maybe you're suffering from a common human bias where you don't want to accept that something you don't have can be better than what you have.

Not sure. Gigawatt pulsar is 4x4, up from 3x3 on Kilowatt. I don't -have- a Polaris yet, but it's at least 4x4 and possibly 5x5. Somebody else should confirm there for me.

-Thats interesting. Are you sure?

Certain. It can take out a gun puppy without allowing it to fire as long as you attack before it sees you; third shot stops the first attack and sixth shot kills it. The third shot also knocks down gremlins and wolvers and occasionally prevents attacks from zombies; the key is that the shot has to connect during the warning flash, especially on gun puppies. The shots only do this once they expand, but it's very helpful.

The polaris shots can hit the wheels in the maze section from the front pretty easily, is all. Certainly something no sword or bomb can do, and doesn't particularly need much aim. The ones that have no way to go beside.

As for shooting around corners, it only has to be timed so the pellet expands there, which is only a half second or so. But this is incredibly useful for enemies that use ranged attacks regardless of whether you're behind a wall or not - retrodes, puppies, and the like.

And trojans, there are specific instances where being able to shoot them from the front is useful - the one that comes to mind is the last floor of fsc before vanaduke, where my playgroup tend to use the grim totems to build walls they can't pass. It becomes possible to shoot them without any risks using pulsars at that point.

Dealing with the pulsar's knockback is a critical skill for using the gun; a decent user can aim the monsters by placing shots well. When I play in a group I tend to use it to push monsters into the blast radius of bombs, rather than away. If there isn't a bomber, I either group monsters together or split them apart depending on what we're fighting; the knockback affects every non-boss except gun puppies, and can be key to seperating pairs of Trojans or groups of Lumbers, for example. But using a pulsar on a technical level is a skill that, admittedly, not everybody is going to have. Perhaps I speak from the point of somebody who's confident he can use it properly, but the potential is part of the gun.

I honestly believe the Pulsar is the ultimate gun for crowd control; two players armed with pulsars can defend just about any corner from anything short of a Trojan or boss, or it can be used to group monsters, or single targets out, etc. It's a gun that's easy to use mindlessly, but so much better if the user thinks.