So, I will be honest, I've never used an alchemer outside ATH before. BUT from experience and knowledge I know nova driver's the best DPS elemental alchemer, but I'd like to know if other alchemers are worth getting to 5*.

From experience hail driver seems... very mediocre, the freeze can mess with teammate's knockback and irritate them (had a run with 2 friends, one of them having a cryo driver, he froze my friend's target, and according to that friend the freeze removed the knockback and he got hit by zombie swipe). Plus I remember somewhere stating you can get the bullet to ricochet back into the enemy and my immediate thinking was: Why bother freezing them when you very well can break the freeze with a second shot/ ricochet? As for magma it can set fire to the enemies, while the damage most likely won't output the damage on nova but at least it can burn and get rid of pesky menders and such. Storm is pretty much just shock, mostly self-explanatory.

However if I plan to get a nova driver, are the other alchemers worth it as well? I also have a silversix and gigawatt pulsar, but I'd like alchemer lines for the sake of having variety. As for Umbra though, I'm quite satisfied with my Sentenza.

In LD however, it seems that magma, storm and hail can be quite useful. Except storm can be compared with polaris, so I might consider getting a 3* of it for LD (I have lots of LD gear and I'm still not 5* lol. Don't mock me >:P)