Alchemers:
-one shot turrets and most enemies on charge
-deal with crowds
-faster fire rate when dual wielded
-higher number of shots likely to hit
-stable when not fighting
-capable of dealing with enemies in a variety of ways due to different status effects/damage types
Polaris:
-easily kills turrets, but takes 2-3 clips
-bad crowd control; spreads enemies into your path
-bad damage at close range
-low damage when hitting enemies
-bad for party play
We cannot and should not judge weapons according to lockdown, as lockdown is fundamentally broken, and is meant to be that way: (evidenced by the inclusion of invincibility frames)
So tell me, why is Polaris the king of the world? Why does everyone seem to think that it does so well?
-I'm wondering
Well, for starters, at least two of your points are wrong.
"-bad crowd control; spreads enemies into your path"
Polaris does not spread anything, inherently. Enemies get knocked in exactly the direction the shot was traveling just like every weapon that's not a bomb behaves in regards to knockback. The gun has crowd control abilities rivaling Vortex and Shivermist, providing more control than Shivermist and more safety than Vortex. Simple strafe in a crescent around a group of enemies, push the whole lot of them into a corner and watch them fall one-by-one constantly damaged and interrupted by your endless barrage of explosions and shock. Melee-oriented enemies can never get close to you and ranged enemies just get interrupted.
It makes everything very, very easy. Whenever I actually expect to be in danger or just want to do something safely, I bring Polaris.
"-bad damage at close range"
It's identical to Storm Driver unless you bug exploit ricochets. It's also fires faster than Storm Driver unless you bug exploit weapon-switching to get around an entire aspect of how handguns function and are balanced against eachother.
It's a moot point, anyways. The gun doing damage at all is overpowered.
"-bad for party play"
You mean like Nitronome and Big Angry are bad for party play? Actually, actually- Maybe you mean like Electron Vortex is bad for party play? I've had people telling me to stop using Vortex because I was pretty bad at using it back then. You can use Polaris to gather up enemy groups more easily than supernova because of the shock being able to root enemies in place without needing a wall anywhere. The group can Brandish the gathered cluster of enemies, scoop them up in a vortex, use their favourite charge attack or join it with their own guns that are probably Polaris