I'm contemplating making a pure gunslinger (Nameless armor), and I'd like to know what guns would be ideal for such a build. I want a set of guns that can deal normal/critical damage to all enemies on the swap. I'm also not very fond of Blitz Needle, but willing to consider it.
I would like an Alchemer to be in the mix too.
Callahan
Nova/Storm Driver
Sentenza (if it EVER becomes pure shadow)
There's actually a lot of good guns out there which you can pick and choose between to create your ideal set. The best gunners will have multiple sets to switch around though. I'll give you a quick list of guns I'd recommend, from great to less great (in my own humble opinion, of course).
1) Storm Driver (NOT Polaris) - Highly underrated, this gun has a deadly charge attack and better overall damage to a mob of monsters than the Polaris. Great Elemental DPS as well as a great status effect. Its bullets fly faster than the Polaris' and both CTR and ASI UVs work well on it.
2) Blitz Needle, Plague Needle, or Volcanic Pepperbox - All of these are great piercing guns with a very high DPS, especially if you get a good CTR UV on them. Between the three, it's just a matter of personal preference on whether you like pure damage, poison, or fire.
***Apparently Volcanic Pepperbox is a normal gun. It's still good for DPS though, and viable as a 4th gun because nothing resists it. It also draws monsters near its line of fire farther into the center of the gun's area of attack. I wouldn't recommend using this over most of the more specialized guns mentioned here though.
3) Umbra Driver - Yes, it's an alchemer, but it does Shadow damage! No status effect, but great for getting high DPS on other monsters.
4) Nova Driver - Pick this if you don't like one of the status effect alchemers. This is the alchemer with the highest Elemental DPS.
5) Other Drivers - Only if you didn't pick a Storm or Nova Driver to put in your set.
6) Biohazard - I hear great things about this gun, but haven't personally used it.
7) Callahan - Alright for dealing with wolvers and devilites, but I hear rumors that its DPS is low. Stuns well though with fast-moving projectiles.
Hope this helps!
P.S. Yes I know I omitted the Argent Peacemaker. I did that on purpose because the devs were thinking about changing it to full Elemental, at which point it would become pretty worthless. Also, the Polaris is mainly a gun for knights who aren't specializing in gunning and the normal damage guns are a waste of a slot for knights who ARE specializing in gunning.
Volcanic Pepperbox is normal, not piercing.
The key consideration in choosing a handgun is damage type. You want piercing, elemental, and shadow (or at least two of them) at all times. You can see this in Fraxur's and Metagenic's responses. Succinctly, your choices are:
Piercing: Callahan (stun, mobility), Blitz Needle (raw damage), Plague Needle (poison)
Elemental: Nova Driver (raw damage), Storm Driver (shock), Magma Driver (fire), Hail Driver (freeze), Polaris (shock and knockback)
Shadow: Umbra Driver (raw damage), Biohazard (poison and Catalyzer-style)
In clockworks I run full shadowsun/damage trinkets, nova, umbra, and callahan. Everyone has their own style though.
My preferred loadout is full Nameless/damage trinkets, Crest of Almire, Blitz Needle, Magma/Nova Driver, and Umbra Driver. Although lately, I have been using Sentenza/Magma Driver with pretty good results. Sentenza is good against all the monsters that Magma isn't good against, and the Fire on Magma allows it to deal pretty good damage against Slimes/Fiends.
1. Prismatech Alchemer >>>Upgraded to>>> Nova Driver
2. Shadowtech Alchemer >>Upgraded to>>> Umbra Driver
3. Magnus >>>>>>>>>>>Upgraded to>>> Callahan
Why No. 1: You'll probably want to choose the prismatech over the elemental alchemer guns. This is because it gains extra damage instead of having a status. If the alchemer guns were not an AoE (are of effect damage) oriented line of guns, then status like shock might have been more useful so that you would be dealing AoE damage. But this is not the case, what happen is that your alchemers will eventually as you upgrade it split bullets that deal 100% normal bullet damage. These split bullets also ricochet and bounce off of things. Once you learn how to position split bullets, you can get ridiculous amounts of hits. At times, I see my Nova dealing damage 5 times per bullet while shooting it among 3 enemies. The charge attack also is a large amount of bullets at once. When you learn how to position the charge attack, it can one shot things with clipped split bullets. Because there are all of these bullets that hit enemies, that extra damage from the Nova / Prisma alchemer really shines. Status alchemers are also great and can offer more utility, but I would suggest the prismatech line.
Why not Pulsar / Polaris: This gun throws mobs around crazy and isn't used to DPS. When you only have 3 weapon slots open, you need one of each specialty type of damage (pierce, shadow, elemental) to take advantage of extra damage. Polaris / pulsars being a purely utility gun will take up that important weapon slot which you will need to be DPSing things. This gun will make your party members mad at you if you use it to DPS things as well. What is great about this gun is that it is the best to use against gun puppies, it is the best and safest gun against hordes of devilites, and it is great for survivability. But all three of those things are really specialty uses, and this would be saved for your 4th gun slot.
Who No. 2: You are limited on what shadow guns you use. The catalyzer / Biohazard line is difficult to use and leaves you vulnerable because the gun is all about chain charging (and charging is the most vulnerable time for a gunner) so the alchemer is much easier to use and safer. In addition, the normal bullets of Biohazard do not split so you cannot deal great AoE with normal shots and the normal shots are also slower in velocity. It can be difficult to snipe a gremlin mender with a weapon like Biohazard. On the other hand, the Umbra / Shadowtech alchemer gun is great all around and will still annihilate packs of jellies with its split bullets. The shadow alchemer works the same as the elemental alchemers. You will rarely see a gunner with Biohazard instead of Umbra, but you might.
Why No. 3: Magnus is the safest gun to use against dodgers. The Blitz Needle / autogun piercing line will leave you vulnerable while shooting and charging. With a magnus, you can easily dodge attacks from shooting > shield cancelling > shooting > shield cancelling without wasting the second bullet and having to reload. Magnus deals a high amount of damage with each bullet which explains why the gun is so slow. If you attempt to look at the DPS of the gun, it will be bad, because the Magnus / Callahan is not a DPS gun. You will usually get just one to a few bullets off on a dodger with any fast firing gun before it dodges so that high amount of damage per single, quick velocity bullet in Magnus is handy. The magnus will also knock down dodgers (gremlins, beasts, and devilites) on most occasions. In higher tiers, the magnus / Callahan will still knock down dodgers when they attempt to attack / bark. Note that knocking something down is different than knocking something back (like Polaris).
I have both Magma and Nova Driver and I find that I actually kill large groups faster with the Magma Driver unless they resist Fire. It does about 20% less damage per bullet but the fire ticks for ~50% of the damage of a normal shot and the chance of Fire is so high that things catch fire almost immediately. The stray bounces also set nearby monsters on Fire quite frequently, even if they resist Elemental, which is nice when there are Menders hanging around. I keep both guns around since Nova does have its advantages and it can be used in more locations. The big one is of course FSC, which is probably the main reason Nova is so much more popular than Magma.
I'm not a big fan of Callahan, and I think it doesn't really have much going for it besides its niche as the only Piercing gun besides Blitz/Plague Needle, and as a pretty good weapon for Devilites. You don't need knockdown to deal with monsters that dodge, especially not Gremlins and Wolvers, which can be endlessly kited as a gunner. Dodging was more of an issue back in the day when Gremlins would shuffle across an entire room while you tried to chase them down, but even then it was more of an inconvenience than a threat. You might miss with a few shots, but you'll still land the majority of them if you can properly aim. I have no issues killing them with either Blitz Needle or Sentenza. Blitz Needle is also capable of handling Devilites, though it is a lot more dangerous to use it. Callahan is not a terrible or useless gun, but it is below average as far as both DPS and mobility go, and the knockdown is more of a compensating factor that alleviates its low DPS than a useful feature. Compare it to the bread-and-butter gunslinger weapon, the Alchemer. On a neutral target, Callahan barely does more than a Nova Driver without the bounces, it attacks slower, and it forces you to step back, slightly limiting your movement. If there was a Piercing Valiance, or a Piercing Alchemer, or a pure Piercing 5* Antigua, I would rather use that than Callahan.
Hikaran volcanic pepperbox is a normal dmg gun. Not very useful for anything but vana mask phase.
these three guns are the most effective in my opinion:
1. blitz needle - mows down everything much faster than a calahan and breaks blocks and minerals faster. learn to use its charge.
2. umbra driver - the most important gun in solo pve, it can kill gremlin healers in two shots or one charge. it also flattens jellies.
3. nova driver - nova always works. magma, storm and hail drivers lose their bonuses on fire, electric and ice levels, respectively. magma can do as much or more damage than nova, but not on a fire immune level, like firestorm citadel. storm driver is really nice for turrets because its shock locks them down and prevents them from firing. hail driver screws up your kiting - you want groups of mobs to stay together when using an alchemer.
greavers are the only creatures that give this rig a problem.
the blitz needle will smoke greavers if you know they're coming, but once they're on you, they're a serious pain.
if i know i'll be fighting greavers, or if i have a 4th weapon slot, i take a flourish with me.
alchemers benefit from asi better than any of the other gun types so you'll want to get used to using them if you're making nameless armor.
calahan benefits from asi more than blitz and is a lot of fun to use, but blitz just does so much freaking damage and clears things away so quickly that i never want to use my calahan.
if you just don't like using autoguns, definitely take a callahan - it's a great gun (it just can't kill 2-3 t3 wolvers in one charge, that's all.)
Mmk, so several people have corrected me concerning the Volcanic Pepperbox, which they are correct about. I've amended my post as such.
On the other hand, I want to reiterate a few important points already mentioned by myself and the others here:
1) You should always be carrying guns of at least two damage types, if not three-NOT including normal. For example, I am not a pure gunner, but I like to carry a Storm Driver and a Strike Needle at all times, which allows me to hit 4 of 6 monster families for critical damage and all monster families for normal damage or greater.
2) Since the introduction of loadout allows everyone to quickly and easily switch weapons sets, you don't need to focus so hard on getting that perfect gunning set that can kill anything. Instead, it's best to switch guns around as necessary. (i.e. on Wolver, Gremlin, and Devilite levels you could use Callahan or Blitz + any Elemental or Shadow Gun(s) to take out the Jelly turrets; on Construct levels Storm Driver, Prisma Driver, or other Elemental Driver + Shadow or Piercing Gun(s))
3) There's no need to focus your setup on only having three guns. Eventually, if you reach endgame, you will find yourself using every single slot that can be unlocked. The only reason to reduce your set to three guns would be if you were planning to carry a sword or bomb in every set. This applies to me, however, because I currently choose to carry a Leviathan and a Shivermist in my arsenal with two guns chosen based upon the level's monsters. Once I get a Callahan I want, I'll be switching freely between it and my Blitz Needle for Devilites/Gremlins and Wolvers, respectively. Due to the lack of skill trees and stats in this game, it is not necessary to confine yourself to one "class" either. While I often refer to myself as a bombing gunner, I actually carry a weapon of each type, making me more of a balanced knight than anything--but my Elite Trueshot Trinkets and Nameless Set make me more of a gunner than anything.
Callahan for dodging enemies and for piercing damage
Polaris/Elemental Alchemer for elemental damage
Umbra Driver for shadow damage (Using Biohazard for Gremlins takes some practice)