It's been stated a lot since the bugfix, but I didn't see a proper thread in this section for it, so here we go; Pepperbox needs a buff.

It's been underused forever, even when it was bugged. Low damage, low range, a negligible status effect, and of course, it's an autogun which makes it inherently clunky and often dangerous to use. It pretty much got the short end of the stick in all ways.

The only things that could be considered worthwhile about it were:

1. The neutral damage typing, meaning you did equal damage to all enemies. Unfortunately its damage is too low for this to even matter, since it's going to be outclassed by just about anything else.

2. The vacuum effect bug, which I probably don't have to go into. Simply put, it made the low damage of the pepperbox almost bearable, by dragging enemies towards the gun, resulting in higher chance of bullets hitting their target. This bug has since been fixed.

Even while #2 was still in play, the gun was underused and considered mediocre, if not terrible. Even I only made it because it was unique. (That is, I only got it because no one else ever used the damn thing, since it wasn't worth its cost.) With the bug fixed, and Pepperbox's charge now pushing enemies away, it's even worse than it was before, which was something I didn't think could even happen.

I had already been pushing for a buff before the patch, and now to see it nerfed is just absolutely bizarre to me. You would figure since the devs had been changing things, they would have considered that there would be adverse effects to removing the suction effect, or just that the Pepperbox was underpowered in general, but instead, all we got was a "nerf", which pushed the weapon even further into "lol why would you even make that?" territory.

So, obviously, I'm of the opinion something needs to change to make the weapon worth using again, and I'm looking for other people's thoughts on Pepperbox's current standing and what could be done to put it on equal footing with other weapons.

Personally, I think a straight damage buff would be the most preferable option. Keep the gun as-is, but give it the stopping power it needs. Considering the difference in damage between the Pepperbox and Blitz, this will probably have to be a pretty big increase.

Note that currently, if all bullets of a charge hit, Volcanic Pepperbox does about 1200 to enemies, while Blitz does 1800 to "neutral" enemies, and up to 3200 to enemies it has an advantage against. That is an absurd difference. You would have to buff Pepperbox's damage by +50% just to put it on par with Blitz's damage to neutral enemies, not to mention the Blitz Needle apparently has longer range.

Splitting Pepperbox's damage between normal/elemental might also work, but we have plenty of elemental guns already and the versatility of the Pepperbox is one of the most appealing features, imo, so I'm not really for this idea.

Changing the status effect to anything other than fire would be silly, and I don't think buffing fire's damage or proc-rate would raise the damage output by enough to "fix" the gun.

That's about all I got.

Thoughts? Signs? Disagreements? (Preferably from people who have actually used the pepperbox.)

Also, a pre-emptive note:

I know a handful of people are of the mindset "Stop complaining and just wait for the devs to fix it", but that's actually counter-productive. The devs listen for input from players so they know what needs changing; If you don't "complain", nothing will get fixed. The devs are not omniscient; they need to hear opinions before they can make any changes. So, speak!