After a previous post earlier this week and considering my extremely terrible luck with recipes this week, I thought I may as well ask this question and get it out of the way.
So, I am a 3* gunner (all my stuff is 3*, but I don't remember the names of my weapons ^_^; ) and I have a Shadowtech Alchemer, Magnus, and Kilowatt Pulsar. I also have an antigua, but it was a temporary pierce weapon and was purchased more for PvP. (I also bought a Snarble Barb for giggles because I had left over tokens). I have been spending the past weeks, whenever I have time to play, to not only buy 4* recipes, but also to get some more variety in my arsenal, as well as try to get items that I probably want for FSC and whatnot when I get the T3 clearance.
I would really like to have all status weapon options (well most of them) and pretty much have as much weapon choices as I can. I've been looking for a freezing weapon and was just wondering how the Shivermist line would be (as more of a sidearm/situational weapon). I know I've heard it's really good for FSC, and I imagine the CC would be fantastic while I grind RJP.
There's a frost gun as well, but from seeing someone in one of my runs with it, I mixed feeling on it. It was nice for freezing the jellies, but they were almost always broken free a few seconds later. From what I've read it's more of a solo gun as well?
What about a fire status gun (or weapon)? Is the Pepperbox any good or would sticking with the firotech alchemer be better?
As well are there any other guns I should consider looking into? Any swords that might be good as "sidearms"? (I have the blitz recipe as an in case)
I wouldn't worry so much about the fire status. It looks very powerful when you take a 2* firotech into tier 2 and see the fire ticks deal more than the actual shots, but it is not as great the farther you upgrade the fire gun. Eventually, the raw damage will get more and more powerful especially once you hit 4*. Fire damage or any status damage is based on depth / stratum / tier etc.
The Hail Driver / cryotech is definately more of a solo gun, and you shouldn't use it to freeze jellies (as you saw the one person do) because your shadowtech's extra damage will help more. The thing about Hail is that you have to learn how to use it unlike the other elemental alchemers or you will be upset about breaking freeze.
Pepperbox has low mobility and slower than normal movement speed while charging (as opposed to other gun charging movement speeds). So it hinders your survivability, while having a heavy burst charge attack. If you do not have all 4 weapon slots, I would suggest sticking with one elemental, pierce, and shadow gun.
Having a wide variety of guns is always fun - for example, you can switch your Storm to a Hail if you enter a shock-themed area, or to Nova Driver for extra raw damage.
If you want a nice sidearm, I hear that a vortex bomb with Polaris combo works well. Never tried it, though it is something to consider trying. Otherwise I do not know much about non-gun things.