Just read that topic, it doesn't really state anything about either one aside from the first post. I don't know how someone managed to make a Lumber hit them by using the Pulsar's knockback.

The pulsar line is arguably the game's worst gun, at least if you're in a group. The big graphical explosions cover up the mob, so that your teammates can't see if it's attacking. That means that they have to decide to block or dodge without knowing whether the mob is attacking or not. So either they can stay back and let you fight the mob alone, or they can charge in and get killed. Either of those situations are worse than if you merely went AFK. Other guns don't have that problem, so try a better gun. Such as every single other one in the entire game.

Sure, the pulsar is fine when used correctly. I've had a bunch of teammates use it. I've had exactly one use it correctly, ever. Using it correctly entails holding your fire or switching to a different weapon a lot of the time, and most people who use it want to spam it on everything.

Other guns don't have that problem. If you're just learning to use guns, the pulsar is a terrible choice.

Look at the weapons' functionality and stats I have to say that the Kilowatt line for the Pulsar is the best. It is a very powerful ranged weapon that deals great elemental with the chance of a shock status effect. The particle effect may cover players' vision, but the knockback has saved the lives of myself and my team on multiple occasions. The only reason I wouldn't recommend the pulsar is if you have lag issues with the game already. The heavy particle effects can slow the game in heavy situations, like in IMF runs. If you do choose the Catalyzer pick the Virulent line. The shadow damage and poison chance make it very effective on many runs.

imo - the pulsar line is the best gun line in the game.

Catalizer is nice for shadow and for gimick, but if you want neutral or elemental damage go pulsar.

I love how people complain about the Pulsar's knockback making life difficult for the poor Swordsmen in party play, when this is an issue that Gunslingers have had to deal with from the very beginning. It's like complaining about Nitronome or Calibur charge spam.

Oh wait, it's not, because I'm not scattering a whole room's worth of enemies all over the place at random. I'm just hammering 2 Retrodes into a corner so they'll stop beam-spamming everyone else.

I can no longer count the number of times a Swordsman or Bomber has made my life difficult, either by knocking stuff out of my line of fire, or busting my face with a monster whose attack I made a special point of avoiding before you decided to slap-shot it across the room. You don't like me knocking stuff back? Tough noogies. Suck it up, and go kill something else.

For the record, I am LOVING my Kilowatt Pulsar. I think Shosuko is right on the money about Pulsars being the best gun lines in the game right now. I still prefer my Shadow Driver for dealing with slimes and gremlins, and probably would even if there were a shadow damage version of the gun, but for undead and mechanicals it definitely seems better than my old Cryo Driver.

I got my Catalyzer the other night, though Basil refuses to stock the 3* recipe I want. Hopefully I'll have that upgraded and have a chance to try it out soonish, but I'm anticipating great things from that. It's obvious to me that it's not a gun you'd bring to a PuG, but one of my duo partners is a Bomber, and I'm thinking Catalyzer + Shivermist is going to totally rock face.

^^Hey let's play RPS! BTW, paper and scissors are useless since rock beats them all!

You can keep your rocks sir.

Catalyzer is fun, but it's more of a solo gun. Pulsar is quite powerful actually, with knockback, explosions and all that.

Both not really a team gun, compared to the other gun lines which provides very good support.

But hey, swords are so much stronger than guns why not use the pulsar. The knockback and explosions will annoy the swordsman and tell them that gunslingers are boss :P

It won't be good against Vanaduke

I've solo'd Vanaduke with the Polaris with little to no difficulty. It may not have as much DPS as Argent Peacemaker but the constant shock is useful at times.

"Me and a friend with Pulsar upgrades blasted our way right through Firestorm Citadel"

So now carrying a pulsar makes you better at dodging environmental traps, which is the main obstacle to getting through FSC? Impressive. [/sarcasm]

"I love how people complain about the Pulsar's knockback making life difficult for the poor Swordsmen in party play, when this is an issue that Gunslingers have had to deal with from the very beginning."

Most guns don't knock back to the same degree as pulsar. Many guns don't knock back at all. Knockback can be good or bad, depending on how it is used. Large knocks to lumbers is a big problem. Knocking retrodes is a somewhat lesser problem. Knocking mobs that are actually interrupted by the knock is useful, and not a problem.

Regardless, the "mobs are invisible now" effect of pulsar is a much bigger problem than the knockback. It's also a problem not shared with any other gun line in the game.

"In rooms full of zombies, me and my mates can make them stay in one side while we all pick them off one by one or a few at a time thanks to the pulsar's explosion/knockback."

Rooms full of zombies are trivial, though, with nearly any gun or sword. The only mostly zombie rooms that are a meaningful danger are those where something else provides the danger, such as status traps, trojans, or phantoms. Saying to get a weapon because it's good against zombies is like saying to get a weapon because it's good in tier 1.

A player who spams a pulsar everywhere is kind of like a basketball player who takes way too many shots. His own stats might look good, but he's not helping the team win.

"Wow, lots of people have proved me wrong with first-hand experiences,"

I've had lots of first hand experience with a lot of different people using pulsar. And the overwhelming majority of them (as I said above, all but one) were bad experiences. If I were to take to kicking someone from the group as soon as he fires a pulsar line gun for the first time, I'd tend to end up with better groups. The same is not true of any other weapon line in the game, whether sword, gun, or bomb.

Perhaps I should back up a bit and concede that correlation does not imply causation. It's entirely possible that bad players tend to be disproportionately attracted to the pulsar line, which would lead to pulsar-wielding players being worse than normal.

I've actually seen a lot of this in various class-based MMORPGs. Good players will tend to distribute themselves more evenly among classes than bad players, as bad players tend to be attracted to only a few classes. Bad players tend to especially like damage dealers and stealth classes, while avoiding healers. The damage dealing and stealth classes aren't bad classes in themselves, but an average player of those classes is less useful to the group because he's not as good of a player.

On the other hand:

http://www.lukesurl.com/archives/2963

And there's also the issue that a bad player with a pulsar can cause vastly more trouble for a group than a bad player with any other weapon. The only other notably problematic weapon is people charging a sword and knocking lumbers halfway across the map, but there, the problem clearly isn't the sword, but rather, the idiot wielding it. And that's very, very easy to avoid while using a sword, unlike a pulsar, where you have to conscientiously avoid shooting at anything that is near any teammates.