title, otherwise it is a loss in DPS and annoying.
If you disagree and have used the pushback to your advantage, please post below.
Also we never really complained about the Pepperbox charge, but I have heard people would like the shadowsun changed because it needs it to be more in line with skolver...
pure antigua changes were great though.
It's relating to the arsenal, and some people don't like the suggestion forums.
Anyway on topic:
Another great idea is to completely remove any type of movement period?
I 100% agree. 100% =(
The nurf was unnecessary, now the gun is absolutely useless.
Edited title to include the other idea.
It's charge is sort of like a close range Polaris. I would say that's pretty useful if you are cornered with not-mecha knights.
At least for the new pepperbox charge... it changes the weapon's style completely. And Knockback for the other autogun lines? Is it really necessary? (IMO, no it is not)
I would like to agree with this topic but I won't, for now. Before I go jumping to outlandish conclusions on how this patch has altered the pepperbox for the worse, I think I'll do a few depths and see how it compares to before.
There's already a gun which the charge is like 'a close combat Polaris'. Its called valiance and it knocks enemies clear half way across the room.
I've played with the Pepperbox in missions for the day and I believe that this is an immense nurf. Without the charge doing damage, Pepperbox's damage is now laughable. The normal attack of this gun now does more damage than the charged attack and the damage of the normal attack does not justify the risk you take to use it. In terms of DPS, the Pepperbox will now be beaten by Valiance, Valiance also comes with less risk in its use, a push back in its normal attack and also the charge attack of the valiance pushes back enemies more than Pepperbox.
Without the pull to increase its damage, the Pepperbox is now absolutely worthless. I mean the only thing which is better about it now is you can push guys back... that's if you are willing to take significant risk in doing so and also if you don't mind doing no damage.
Actually if the devs want to buff the Pepperbox, what they should do is make the normal attack push enemies back and the charged attack suck them in =3.
That way People who likes to charge would be happy and people who were complaining about the sucking in can now get a v high asi and push them.
I would be so happy of that happened.
Then we'd have one more SK weapon that actually has some depth to it. Yes, please.
Great idea. It would be pretty cool for one gun to both push and pull enemies.
I think the goal on the Pepperbox change was to allow the gun to set fire to a greater number of enemies. I don't have one, so I don't know if it will do that, but yeah. On the other hand, the vacuum effect was really cool and knockback is totally not that cool, so I prefer the old way.
Any gun that was negatively impulsing monsters on hit (pulling them toward you) was bugged. This bug has now been fixed. Feel free to discuss the degree to which the impulse impacts their effectiveness, but please note that inexplicable inverse impulsing (say that three times fast) was never an intended feature for these guns.
That was dev-speak for "we're not gonna change it, now go spend ages buying CE to craft the Valiance/whatever the new best Normal Gun is" wasn't it?
If you don't intend to re-add the harpoon could you at least narrow the cone of fire to make it more accurate at range?
Verodius - There is no need to decode my original statement. I have no intention of reverting a fixed bug.
Is there opportunity for a handgun to be designed that uses an abnormal attack style like pulling monsters toward you? Absolutely. But if that were to be designed, we would be explicit in our doing so, as well as the presentation to the player.
@Nick I kind of figured it was a bug, it's easy to get those vectors pointing in the wrong direction. There definitely seems to be a lot of interest in having a gun with a pulling action though. I made a suggestion thread about it, and it's been discussed elsewhere before.
Even if it were a bug, it was the thing which made this gun effective.
Even if it weren't intentional, it is reason many players got this gun, we didn't expect it to change, it has been this way since beta almost a year ago.
And due to this bug, the Pepperbox, unlike many other guns, was balanced in terms of effectiveness vs risk with all other weapons.
In the past there has been many great games with elements which had began as a bug. One example is the infinite jumping of Gunz, which essentially enhanced game play of the game and also created a massive Korean and Japanese fan base. And it has been left in there because it made the community happy.
Many of us paid the CE to buy UVed Autoguns, and the CE + time in order to upgrade it to 5* all due to its ability to do damage and pull. We never expected it to change. If it were a bug you should have told us MUCH MUCH earlier that way we would never EVER have gotten the gun and instead spent the CE on something useful.
If you are in the process of making another Harpooning gun, it would make more sense to instead leave the Pepperbox as it currently is and make another gun which does what the new Pepperbox currently does. That way we wont feel that we have been cheated and completely wasted CE and there will be also gun in game that pushes in an arc.
To solve this you could also make the new changes to only apply newly crafted Pepperboxes...
If you are worried about presentation or the design of the gun, simply change the model.
The Pepperbox was never and has never been overpowered. It has always been balanced and the community accepted that. Now it fails in pretty much every aspect. Along with Iron slug, this gun as it currently is badly needs a buff.
"This bug has now been fixed. Feel free to discuss the degree to which the impulse impacts their effectiveness"
If you meant by saying that as in how the knockback makes Pepperbox not as good:
The main issue I see is that it was a gun to blast into something's face, and knockback got rid of that. Plus gunners don't exactly use a gun like Pepperbox with survivability in mind, especially when charging it. We want power out of the slow charge / immobility instead of bullets knocking them out of other bullets.
The suck in charge was kind of cool on it because we could suck in the monster and have it get hit by more bullets when used on something a distance away, while still being its same usefulness up close.
Then there were other uses, like mender fishing. But it being a bug is understandable, we just need to have no knockback and no vacuum period to make it what it should be.
If I interpreted that statement wrong sorry, still consider the above.
I find that adding knockback to pepperbox's charge attack is unnecessary. Most of the guns that will knock enemies back are already normal typed such as valiance, supernova, neutralizer, and now iron slug.
They care fehzor...
because the common belief with the devs (revealed by the hall of heros gunslinger) is that close range, we are less effective. They could have thought that, and then they thought they were helping us by creating knockback.
It was a mistake, and now they know that it has to be changed, there was no gunner scheming because we complain a lot. Complaining isn't bad for a game anyway, they like it because it shows what we want. For example, nerfing toothpick damage by 10% ish. We want that. That is why we complain for it. so...
No vacuum because it was a bug.
No Knock Back.
Done and fixed.
If you seriously used the pepperbox just because of the fishing lure, you have one quite specialty use for it, and you may have to deal with not having it again because it is just wierd and a "bug". I highly suggest you investing your time into specialty damage type guns or you start using the charge to be more damage dealing oriented. You should notice that that extra screwy mechanic might not be as helpful as ripping things up. Personally, I like to use its charge to deal an amazing amount of damage which it can regardless of being normal damage due to charge mechanics. Reach for VH ASI and damage bonus that will help with launching and damage. Knockback ruined that use.
I have all kinds of elemental/shadow/pierce guns... but ...
Knockback on it is probably better than not on it. Not sure yet; haven't had a chance to test it out... been using ap/sentenza/my new alchemers I made the other day.
Also- this gun isn't new. How on earth do the devs manage to ignore something this incredibly obvious for over a year?
Sometimes they don't immediately go fixing the bugs and exploits. For example, how long was the divine avenger's bug allowed to stay before they fixed it? Fixing bugs like these I don't think are too high of a priority but they have to get to them eventually. I really think it's silly to think they're trying to put down gunners or spite someone.
AP and Sentenza were rubbish. The change has actually made them useful. There are hardly any shadow damage weapons, and now there's one more.
Rename the Volcanic Pepperbox the Volcanic Vaccuum, and the rest of the line similarly. Change flavor text to note how it pulls crap in. Revert changes. Problem solved. Don't even have to add a new graphical asset, though a slight vortex swirling into the muzzle of the pepperbox would be a nice touch.
@ The-Rawrcake
'If you seriously used the pepperbox just because of the fishing lure, you have one quite specialty use for it, and you may have to deal with not having it again because it is just wierd and a "bug".'
There's also weapon balancing to think of. Without the pull Pepperbox is simply a [special] version of Blitzneedle. In terms of base damage Blitz needle has much higher.
The Pepperbox with its damage without the pull does not justify the risk of using that gun.
Plus remember that most people here got this gun because of the pull. It was NOT announced to us at ANY time that this was a bug, it was just laid on us around 1 day ago. If it were a bug which they had wanted to fix later, they should have announced that ages ago so we would have spent the CE on something useful.
The Pepperbox was also agreed generally by the community to not be overpowered. In fact the general community will tell you that they think it did bad damage even with the pull. It was not in any way overpowered with its pull. If the gun were to lose its pull then it would then be underpowered.
Even if it were a bug, it was one which made the weapon balanced with every other weapon out there. The actual being a 'bug ' thing never mattered.
I agree with Lomase because i actually made the pepperbox just for fishing lure which made it easy for me to kill mobs and helped in teamplay as well.
But when i used pepperbox after the patch, i thought that the pepperbox has been changed to a useless gun.
now i think that i wasted CE on that useless gun. it would be better if the gun was back to the gun before the new patch.
Imagine that you are a scientist. One day, while you were producing a perfectly standard solution using a perfectly standard procedure, you stumbled across the cure for cancer. At first you released it to the public, the cure working perfectly and the people love it. But now you decide to recall the cure, saying that it was an accident that deviated from the standard procedure.
If the end result is good even if it is by accident, why try to change it?
If the intended result for the Autoguns were so that it could push enemies away; then you can make it so that the Autoguns can push AND pull at the same time just like Lomase said earlier. I believe this result would please both your original intent for the gun and the exsisting communities that like the 'original' Autoguns.
Uhhhh
Please don't compare fixing a fictional weapon to curing cancer. These two are not comparable at all. Curing cancer would save lives and reduce terrible, human suffering. The other is just a little toy for an online game that people can optionally go without.
Just because it made the gun "good" doesn't mean it made it balanced. If the gun was doing something that wasn't intended at all how is that balanced? I thought the trade off anyways was that you'd go down the blitz needle path if you wanted the DPS and the pepperbox if you wanted the fire status affect. At times I've seen that usually you do make a choice between DPS and status affect.
If there was some bug that made the firotech alchemer out-DPS the prismatech would that make it balanced? There wouldn't be incentive to roll the pure-elemental gun with no status affect if it didn't do higher damage as the trade-off. The only reason why people insist it was balanced before was because they could exploit the weapon.
I don't consider a bug-fix to be a nerf. When they fixed the charge attack for the divine avenger people called it a nerf but they were the ones exploiting it for firestorm citadel. After the fix the sword still turned out to be decent and popular and used constantly. People learned to adjust by playing and using the weapon on the terms that it was supposed to work at. People with their pepperboxes are going to do just that.
Finally: Why would a pepperbox created a vacuum affect and not a knock-back affect? The only weapon I think that would logically suck things in are the ones that deal specifically with gravity, which are usually bombs, thus making it a unique thing for bombers. There they sell it upright that that is what the weapon is meant to do; suck the enemy right in.
Do you own this gun...?
Seriously
Pepperbox even with vacuum usually doesn't usually out damage blitz against normal or type effective monsters.
Balancing and intention are 2 different matters. What is illogical about what you said is simply because it is unintentional doesn't entail that it is unbalanced. Vice versa, simply because it is intentional doesn't entail that it is balanced. Take Iron Slug for example, intentional ---> unbalanced.
Plus the status effect only did significant damage if you affect many mobs at a time. In terms of Pepperbox, with the recent changes now the changes of inflicting fire is low ... and also not on many monsters at a time. The damage given by the fire status is really not a big deal.
With what you said about choosing either status or damage.
There's the Polaris good AOE damage, high range, 70% chance of inflicting shock
Also there's the Alchemers as you mentioned, in the right hands they do a high amount of damage and will give a higher chance of inflicting status than Pepperbox does now and also likely on more enemies.
Finally, what you said about the Avenger line is a different matter entirely.
Firstly, when people exploited FSC they understood it was an exploit or bug. They all understood that it was not meant to happen and people got the sword fully knowing that thy can bug FSC.
With the Pepperbox though, it was different everyone thought that is how the gun was meant to function. It does not open doors, it does not do anything, to the stages, that it was not meant to do. It sincerely looked like a legitimate weapon without a bug.
Secondly, back then the the Avenger line is also IMMENSELY Overpowered, with an ability both to provide both good mob control in a wide arc and deal massive amounts for damage with its charge in a crowded room. So everybody got this weapon.
The Pepperbox again is not like this. It did damage comparable to Brandish or Calibur charge at quite a short range. It was NOT good mob control and it certainly did NOT do massive damage to multiple enemies, it only did pretty good damage to 1 enemy.
Pepperbox even with the vacuum was generally considered to be underpowered hence why you rarely see one in any run.
We're not making this fuss because we want an overpowered weapon to still be overpowered after a nurf. We want an underpowered/average weapon to go back to being underpowered/average after an unnecessary change.
At its current state Pepperbox is seriously Iron Slug useless and we don't want to see another one of our guns to suffer the same fate as the Iron Slug.
I owned it in the closed beta before all of our things got wiped and started over again. I can't recall in the beta if it had the vacuum because it's been such a LONG time since I played. But I do know that a lot of things have been changed and changed again, and if there was some trick that you could work to your advantage, chances were they'd change that too. Sometimes they didn't get to the change because there were bigger things to work on (like the missions) and they'd just bundle the changes altogether.
The Polaris needs nerfing and it's been discussed.
Also I was discussing the tradeoff between damage in status affects in the same -line- of weapons. I was comparing alchemers to alchemers, and in this case blitz needle to pepperbox. You get one or the other based on your own preferences, and each are considered balanced in their own respect. Obviously your preference was that you'd prefer to damage enemies more rather than set them on fire, so the solution then is to go for the other weapon. On top of that the volcanic pepperbox says it deals normal damage so it'll do more against constructs which are pretty common, as well as jellies. Each weapon has its respective quirks (there's also the plagueneedle) without the need for the vacuum affect.
Let me put it simply if you still do not understand.
This gun currently offers low damage, mob control comparable to the useless Valiance charge, crappy chance of setting stuff on fire because of the low amount of times the charge now hit. High risk in its use.
This isn't about preferences or different functionality of different guns. I own at least 1 gun from every branch in the game and i use all of them regularly. I don't even use swords. I understand the difference between its changed and when compared to other guns this gun is pretty crap.
It's not a matter of preference, because at the moment the gun has nothing going for it.
I mean if i ask the question would anyone prefer to use the Iron Slug as a non-joke weapon? No one would say yes. This is how bad Pepperbox is at the moment. If i want mobs set on fire I would use Ash of Igni, why because its got low risk, sets a lot of guys on fire and funny enough about the same range if you stand in the middle.
But i see your point, on the off occasion that I want to set 1 or 2 mobs on fire whilst the rest of arena tries to stab me in the face while I'm standing there shooting for 2 seconds, well maybe ill use Pepperbox.
Ohh and Nova drivers only did approx 20% more damage. Which means status is only worth around 20% damage. I would be very happy with 80% of blitz needle's damage. This calls for a bigger buff than mentioned before. =)
Ohh and by the way I'm comparing Alchemer to Alchemer and Blitz to Pepperbox
Umm, my friend and I both use the slug as a non-joke weapon. Its shots are accurate and it can even make turrets flinch and disrupt it. I would like it if the range was a little better looking but it's funny to assume that the weapon is bad because it's not to -your- standards. Also I thought the valiance is a pretty decent gun, the only complaints I've heard was that it's "vanilla."
It IS a matter of preference because if you don't like the pepperbox you can go for another gun in the line that works like the pepperbox but maybe does something a little different. In the future they may choose to balance guns more, but just because they removed and exploit doesn't mean that the gun got "nerfed." It was broken and they fixed it. I already gave examples of broken weapons people abused that they fixed as well. A mechanic didn't work the way they wanted it to and that's just tough, but that's part of the game.
Personally even using a 2* Autogun to test I don't really think there's any problem. In fact for me (with bad latency) it(knockback) has actually saved my life more than in the past when i couldn't shield in time. Thus I might still go on making a pepperbox, whatever the case.
Fair enough. But now that the unintended bug is fixed, it's clear that this weapon needs a buff. Please give it one.
Oh man... This^ is my thought when I read "This weapon needs a buff"
Because the way things are set up, it gives the impression that the normal damage is SUPPOSED to be sub-par in comparison to typed damage equivalents.
DA>Suda
Because of faster swing, and no perks. Stun it too short, and freeze does not work with knockback.
FoV/Brandish>Levi
Brandishes deal more damage (And typed should) and give statuses on charge, not to mention that the FoV can reignite on almost every swing, and it has a bigger charge that deals more damage (Again, not a problem) AND gives strong fire.
Callahan>Iron slug
The Slug might have more range, but its knockdown is nerfed because it doesn't get the bonus damage enough to knock down most. (As it should, due to flavor text) And the callahan also gives a useful stun.
Flourish>Winmillion
The spur line is actually a good replacement for a flourish... until t3. At that point its usefulness is greatly nerfed due to the projectiles stealing away the main swing's damage and knockback.
Polaris/Biohazard>Supernova/Neutralizer
Simple: same damage, one has stats and a boost/nerf on some creatures.
(Witch actually seems kinda decent, balance wise... kinda...
And now:
Blitz>Volc. Pepperbox
Blitz does that same thing, but without a status, FAR more damage (Including fire damage) and quite a bit more range.
This bug was a unique way to make the Vpepper almost equal to the Blitz.
Now, I'm not saying that this is what they think and mean, but that seems to be the general consensus by players, and by the presentation of the weapon.
Here's what I think...
The typed damage should obviously deal more damage then the normal. (Man its painful to say that...) In return, the normal damage weapons should have useful and unique traits and tweaks. Two examples would be the lunge on all attacks and crazy awesome hitbox on the spur (Until the winmillion :C ) and the now gone Pepperbox charge vacuum effect.
My suggestions for these would be a different topic entirely, and I would to hear the reason why the normal damage is what it is; from the ones who made them like that...
I'm not against the change, because I feel that it now does what it was supposed to, but I am sad to see such a unique tactic vanish.
~Tsu
Since it was mentioned here:
Back in the last preview, the charge attack had no effect until the last month or two, where the charged effect was bugged and always pushed enemies to the left, regardless of the direction you shot them from.
@ Rawrcake and Tsubasa
I obviously meant against normal or type effective enemies. Tasubasa, if you have used this gun, you would know that the Blitzneedle has always dealt SIGNIFICANTLY more damage than Pepperbox to Wolvers, Devilites, Undead and Gremlins.
I was going to show you the wiki but the damage values on there are all screwed up. For me atleast each charged bullet of the Pepperbox did around 70 damage x 15 against zombies whereas Blitz did around 120 - 130 per changed bullet against zombies. So in terms of damage I'm talking about a bit less than half. I do have damage increase v high though. Fire did around 4x60 for things which can go on fire so it wasn't much damage as many people put it.
With the push, the Pepperbox now does even less. When I said it does NO damage I don't think people take me seriously it really does almost no damage.
In my other post when i made Pepperbox sound better than it really is well that was before I got a Blitz...
And Vortex+Pepperbox is a good idea. It sets a lot of guys on fire and the bullets actually do a surprisingly good amount of penetration. Don't know how that works technically but a lot of damage. If you want a demo I can show you as i have both a Vortex and Argent.
@Espeonage
Pepperbox has sucked in enemies since beta i don't know what you are talking about.
@ Wuvvums
I doubt u and your friend actually have a Iron Slug. But assumeing you do, I would like it introduce you to a new gun. It's called Supernova. It features 100% stagger rate for turrets making sure they NEVER attack unlike slug. Features higher damage in 1 shot and it shoots 2 times... unlike slug, even if the bullet didn't explode it would do more damage than Slug. Also features less risk to user... unlike slug. And the aoe but some people don't like that. Also features more range...
I just did the arena mission with a friend who has the volc pepperbox, and honestly the changes look to be pretty good. It's no longer a mender harpoon, this is true, but the knockback actually makes it remarkably effective against mechaknights. You can kite like a man when you're charging, then just as they're hugging your face telegraphing their attack you let it loose, blasting them back and setting fire to them. Similar strategies work for slimes, alpha wolvers, etc.
Given that mechaknights can be very obnoxious to gun against (damn those shields!) I think I'm happy with this change. That said, I still would like to see a separate harpoon gun introduced.
Once again, Lomase I am aware you meant on those 4 families and you did not mean on slimes and constructs, but you have to consider the other two.
If one is a fan of autogun charging into something's face, then the pepperbox is the choice for slimes and constructs.
70x15 is about 1k damage per charge if you are capable of charging it into something's face. That is nothing small, even if it sacrifices raw damage for a fire status. Then you should also consider the small amount of fire damage as well.
What makes me upset is that Pepperbox is still knocking back, not yet fixed to be no knockback and no vacuum. And no, knockback is not helpful for this gun's purpose just to get that out there. It is a straight up nerf what happened and it is extremely unecessary and needs to be changed back to A. vacuum or B. what I think should happen, no vacuum and no knockback.
"shoots 2 times"
This might be a typo, the nova shoots off 3 shots.
Also bullets move slower and cause knockback when expanded, some people do not like the mechanics of the nova. It is uncalled for to say that him or her and his or her friend did not have a slug, that is rude and not even a valid argument. Especially in a skill > gear game.
"but the knockback actually makes it remarkably effective against mechaknights. You can kite like a man when you're charging, then just as they're hugging your face telegraphing their attack you let it loose, blasting them back and setting fire to them. Similar strategies work for slimes, alpha wolvers, etc."
I'm not sure what you found out with the mechaknights (bullets go through shield? or something else significant) but this isn't exactly a gun with survival as its purpose, that is what the nova is for. This gun was, from what I hear, mainly to one shot bigger things like lumbers. Fire isn't exactly a desired status when compared to raw damage. Your better gun for an Alpha wolver of the same gun line would be Blitz. Personally, I would rather kill something than toy with it.
But that is all just my opinion. If we really are all going to start agreeing that the knockback is good and not realis/ze how there is an entirely different gun for that purpose, then we will persuade the devs by giving them false feedback which they will easily use as an excuse not to make the change. Then, the possible user of pepperbox that doesn't have its intended use in mind nor uses pure guns will "benefit" from knockback, while the pure gunner is screwed once again, and we lose one of our tools.
Again, this is all just my opinion. Right now, I highly support getting rid of the knockback, this isn't the gun for it.
"I doubt u and your friend actually have a Iron Slug."
http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/5983/orlynow.png
Supernova is like on the bottom of my list of things I wanna get. I've already seen the polaris and other guns in that series and I got bored of it even before I picked it up. I really do like the iron slug for being like a shotgun and I've used it on devilites. Guess what? This game is about preferences and not aiming for the best gear, but the gear you like best. Mine just happens to be all these odds and ends guns. Honestly I would rather get the pepperbox for anything but its DPS. *shrug*
A friend of mine said that he hated the vacuum affect in closed beta because it got enemies too close to him and nearly get him killed. Its charge attack is still quite useful and even more so with the knockback because it has such a wide spread compared to the others in the line. With a knockback you could probably push a wall of enemies away and make your escape in a pinch if needed. I can't afford to test this myself at the moment but from what I heard from others this made them like the gun more since it's no longer broken.
I don't know why you're laughing at my comment when you actually agree with me. You said:
"In return [for reduced DPS], the normal damage weapons should have useful and unique traits and tweaks. Two examples would be the lunge on all attacks and crazy awesome hitbox on the spur (Until the winmillion :C ) and the now gone Pepperbox charge vacuum effect."
Yes, I fully agree that the Pepperbox line should get some unique and useful (not counter-productive, like the push!) effect/trait in return. And what would giving it such an effect be?
A buff.
QED.
It does not need a damage buff or anything, it is fine in its perfect state. Normal type weapons aren't made to excel everywhere, but to be used everywhere. Pepperbox does excel in comparison to a Blitz in certain areas, and that would be on constructs and slimes.
This knockback is extremely counter-productive for the purpose of this weapon as you said and needs to be removed.
Well i believe there is some confusion here.
@Rawrcake
What i meant by two shots was 2 shots without reloading. You really do not want to trigger the reload animation when shooting anything really. I should have made that more explicit.
Also what i said about the Pepperbox needing a damage buff here:
"Ohh and Nova drivers only did approx 20% more damage. Which means status is only worth around 20% damage. I would be very happy with 80% of blitz needle's damage. This calls for a bigger buff than mentioned before. =)"
was in direct relation to what Wawums said here:
"If there was some bug that made the firotech alchemer out-DPS the prismatech would that make it balanced? There wouldn't be incentive to roll the pure-elemental gun with no status affect if it didn't do higher damage as the trade-off. The only reason why people insist it was balanced before was because they could exploit the weapon."
and
"I was comparing alchemers to alchemers, and in this case blitz needle to pepperbox."
Since he/she was so keen to compare these two types of guns together, I simply felt the need to do some comparison myself.
I do not in any way feel that the Pepperbox needs a damage buff but simply believe that the vacuum needs to be reinstated.
@Wuwums
You can argue that all the guns are balanced as they are all you want. You can believe that the Iron Slug is balanced but people simply don't understand/prefer to use that weapon. But at the end of the day that weapon simply doesn't give much reason for anyone really to prefer it over say all the other weapons out there. Its benefits are limited as I have explained in detail before and it has got a lot of downsides most notably damage and the stopped attack time. Sure you can still prefer it for reasons you have not yet stated, of course except the one in which u said because 'it feels like a shotgun' but in my opinion that 'being like a shotgun' feeling is part of the problem... You know the knocking your character back for 1 second thing.
Secondly, of course I understand that its not all about the damage. I am a full gunner who owns 1 at least 1 gun from every branch and i use them all regularly. It's about when compared to all the other guns this gun seems to be a bit lacking in its usability. I simply so not understand why you are saying otherwise but Iron Slug clearly lacks in almost everything except the stagger really.
Thirdly, your friend did not know how to use the Pepperbox. The No 1 rule for using the old Pepperbox is shield bounce after you pull. He needed to spend more time with it. It's like hes saying I just started using this gun and its hard to use...
Fourthly, from the community I get the gist that most people either don't care or think it's a bad change. The people who think it's a bad change are of course mostly the people who owns this gun...
For people who do NOT own this gun, but also happen to have an opinion on this topic, (you know people such as yourself) for some unknown reason they tend to think that this is an absolutely brilliant idea... no idea why though. This is unknown to me, no legitimate reason has yet been given.
Of course the people who own the gun are going to think it's a bad change; they were benefiting mostly from an exploit and they no longer can. The people who didn't like the DA fix probably felt the same way, but they never reverted the change because it was a bugfix, not a nerf. Maybe in the future they may make something that harpoons monsters in, but they're clear that that was not the intention for that gun. You can say it nerfed the gun but it's making the gun work the way it's supposed to; it fixed the gun.
You can think that a weapon doesn't have the utility or rank it depending on how you feel about it but this game is largely based on preference and experimentation. The slug really does seem to have its merits in the hands of the right knight, but for a casual player who prefers a laid-back pace it could be just as fine. Though in the end it's up to the player to figure out what is the most fun for them and for me it was trying out different guns.
I think the way the pepperbox works could in fact be useful especially since the charge attack has a sweep, it can work on multiple targets. If I recall before when it sucked in a target that was the only one you were going to hit, but now you could fend off three or four because the spread is so wide. It also gives a little bonus of knocking them back, which is always a plus to have a little more space. Some people said with the way the changes are the gun seems more desirable than before. But when it comes down to it it IS largely subjective. People are going to find certain features more attractive than others, and some people will love certain features that you think are useless and unneeded and vice versa. It's really preference and opinion-driven over which setup was better. And I don't think DPS is the end-all argument for what makes a weapon "good."
Sigh you seem to give your opinions without backup this has been a trend since this started.
I have already explained why the Pepperbox was not overpowered... with legitimate reason...
I have also explained with reason why the situation with DA is different than the Pepperbox in the relevant manner...
Of course this flew right over you...
Now It is your turn to explain...
Explain in point form what merit exactly the Iron Slug has...
Explain in point form why you think the Pepperbox was overpowered before and good now...
Keep in mind i have already countered your previous argument.
"What is illogical about what you said is simply because it is unintentional doesn't entail that it is unbalanced. Vice versa, simply because it is intentional doesn't entail that it is balanced. Take Iron Slug for example, intentional ---> unbalanced."
Great idea, wrong forum.