Most of the problem with Pulsars against monsters, in my experience, is that they knock monsters out of the way of other knights' attacks. This benefits the Pulsar user, because then the monster is in the right range to get hit again by the Pulsar.
So, if EVERYONE in the party used Pulsars at the same time, wouldn't the knockback benefit everyone?
Is there some other problem with Pulsars that I'm missing? Why are they so unpopular?
"they knock monsters out of the way of other knights' attacks."
Depends on how you see it, it also knocks monsters' attacks away of defenseless knights.
Wouldn't you love it if an evil group of mechaknight were about to kill you, your shield lays broken in your hand and then a bright light saves you?
The problem with pulsars is that 80% of it's users spam it all the time instead of using them when they should.
The Pulsar is a utility weapon. You use it to make breathing space, or to push enemies out of your path, or to disable a gun puppy (somtimes several gun puppies).
If you keep that in mind, and you remember to NOT use it as a DPS weapon (unless you shooting gun puppies), then you're alright in my books, and it shouldn't be that harmful to your teammates.
If you want a DPS weapon against hordes, Alchemers are far superior and significantly less disruptive.
I don't even use a pulsar line often now that I have nova driver.
It depends on how you use it, really. I have run FSC supernova/polaris only, it was fun, I rarely took damage, but it takes actual skill to do it properly, whatever anyone says.
Regarding spam... Spam is well, spam and silly.
To your main point:
Pulsar knockback is hard to control properly, resulting in enemies flying away from a teammate's attacks or pushing enemies into another teammate, but an experienced user can use it to save teammates or use it in situations where it has more benefits than ruin the party. Another problem with pulsar is, specifically the Polaris line, the shock may ruin the knockback etc. and mess up certain situations.
Supernova seems to slap dodgy gremlins around quite a bit, they tend to jump back to avoid the small shot and then get knocked down by the large one. It is however exceedingly inefficient against wolvers and would probably get you kicked from a party trying to use it on them - in practice I find myself using the charge attack pointblank on the pack in order to hit without causing burrowing.
With a Supernova you should be trying to hit with the big shot most of the time and giving chase while doing it, the small shot is wasted damage potential. An aggressive strategy like this probably works better when playing solo.
In contrast when fighting elemental weak monsters, Polaris can be used as a short range gun - it's an alternative to Storm and Nova Drivers, but with a different quirkiness.
As far as I can figure, going for normal damage guns rather than always using the appropriate damage type requires you to work harder. In some respects this means you need to use them differently than their counterparts to make up for the inability to do heavy damage
What he said.
If you must spam Pulsar shots at least push them against the wall to maximise damage from your spam and minimise disrupting everyone else.
Two guildies and I did a run today, from emberlight to the core, using only the polaris and supernova. We had to get through:
An arena
A devilite level
A danger room packed with wolvers
A graveyard
The entire firestorm citadel
The pulsars demolished everything, there wasn't a single party wipe out. It was SO great.
Depends on how you put it, some people will claim they get bored by the lack of challange.
I've soloed the entire FSC using only polaris/supernova, only things that gave me trouble were the wolvers on D27.
Devilites are pathetic against supernova/polaris if you know how to aim it well. And dodge.
Graveyards are boring. It's like FSC minus wheels, shadowfire and fire status. Add in a bit of phantom.. but that's not a challenge either, even if you're using a gran faust or umbra driver. It just takes longer to kill.
Arena... Mecha knights can be a pain.
Danger room with wolvers... Eh, so much teleporting, presumably.
If you use the Supernova's charge attack at point blank, they don't have time to dodge away.
For FSC, the pulsars are pretty good for knocking back the slags into walls for Calibur users to charge attack, as well as getting rid of any puppies, but I don't find them as useful in a lot of other levels.
Pulsar shots are of slight help against Devilites, but I can't get up close to them since they're being knocked around so much. This applies to a lot of knockback-prone monsters.
Against heavier enemies, like the Lumber and Trojan, an Alchemer could outdo a Pulsar by a long shot, as the explosions partially blind me [especially with Polaris and Supernova.].
But when I'm bombing...
It's frustrating. The explosions from the pulsars knock all the enemies out of my radius, so I end up having to spam mist bombs to hopefully hit a guy or two. It ends up so that it only takes two pulsar users to go down a whole tier in the Clockworks without the bombers doing anything.
They're unpopular because of the knock back, as you say.
I disagree that the knock back is perfect for the Pulsar user himself. In my experience, one bullet often knocks the monster out of range for the next bullet. You have to manage the monsters carefully, to achieve consistently high damage.
So, even if everybody in the party did agree to use Pulsars, I'm not sure that it would work as well as you predict.