Shadowsun gives you damage+2 on handguns. Chaos Cloak gives you that and much more: damage+2 on swords, damage+2 on bombs, and CTR+2 on everything. And it comes with a cost of terrible status penalties. So you have to ask yourself whether Chaos' extra offense is worth the status penalties.

Here is a player for whom Shadowsun is obviously better: He uses only guns, and has no plans to use swords or bombs in the near future. He tends to use regular (not charge) attacks. He is inexperienced and on a pretty slow/laggy computer/connection. So his dodging isn't perfect and he gets hit by monsters fairly often, so he can't handle status penalties.

Here is a player for whom Chaos is obviously better: She uses a mix of swords, guns, and bombs. She uses a lot of charge attacks. She is experienced and her computer/connection are strong, so she dodges enemy attacks.

By the way, Callahan/Iron Slug is mainly for charge attacks and Phantamos is mainly for regular attacks. If I understand your experience level correctly, you might find yourself using more charge attacks, as you play the game more. (But not all expert players do.) So consider Chaos. Especially if your other armor piece is not glass cannon.

Yeah, we could also talk about your choice in guns. But I didn't want to give you a bunch of unwanted advice.

That's one reason why I think Iron slug would do the work slightly better than wintergrave against slimes/gremlins/constructs. But the freeze can be incredibly useful sometimes especially against toxoils on C42 and for sniping down puppies. I think riftlocker is useful against fiends/beast as a side-arm only, I'm pulling it out whenever there's no room for blitz/callahan charge attack and melee attacks. But against dodgy wolvers, I would just pull-out DBB or toothpick.

For Alchemers, you need to learn single-switching + internal/ricocheting. It takes some time to get used to it though. Switch shooting an alchemer does more DPS than just shooting normally.
For internal ricocheting, there's a chance for the bullet to spawn inside the target for double dmg.
It works by shooting the right-edge of the target, shooting between 2 targets (I think there's a chance for triple dmg), and shooting between a target and a wall (or any inanimate object).

I also think that shooting the right-edge of the target while moving clockwise has a higher chance of spawning a bullet inside the target.

Just wanna point out some stuff I found in this thread while skimming it...

Callahan/Iron Slug is mainly for charge attacks...

The only reason I used to use Callahan was for its regular attacks. It hits instantly as the shot is so fast, the less ping you got you can get a perfect shot on anything and even hit wolvers BEFORE THEY TELEPORT and can hit devilites BEFORE THEY BEGIN DODGING THE BULLET. Iron Slug is almost exclusively used for its charge though.

I'm not great at switch shooting, but I still find alchemers powerful, just in their charge attacks...

If you can single-switch properly they can have much more DPS than with only charges on crowds of monsters or cornered monsters.

Beasts and Fiends are dodgy. Will Riftlocker bullets be able to hit them?

Just spam single-switch mechanics while using any blaster. I have a blaster equipped almost at all times at my 2nd slot while having a sword in my 1st. What I do is basically spam blaster till I get close enough to use swords and when the enemy gets knocked back enough to be hard to reach with swords I switch to blaster and repeat till the enemy dies.

I think you should use wintergrave or umbra driver for a shadow gun instead of Phantamos.

Each got its use. Phantamos is greatest as a sidearm, Umbra Driver is great as a main weapon and wintergrave is great in a charge-oriented playstyle, it can still knock down gremlins which makes it useful.

I'm pretty sure that a single Winter Grave charge can also kill two lumbers.

Iron Slug can, that's for sure but Winter Grave can't do that all the time, freeze might kick in and ruin it sometimes.

Concerning the main topic though, gunslinger armors... Best bet is always Sunset Setson due to its blanket gun damage and the fact that it's almost a perfect pair with Perfect Mask of Seerus complementing it's defenses and lack of damage bonuses. Deadshot Mantle is great if you wanna farm FSC a lot and look cool as hell. The ASI ones are good too, but I wouldn't go for them first.

Well Bopp... You're a pretty old player, it's really surprising that you don't know single-switching. You need any help with the controls or something? It's really easy once you get used to it. The most important thing is to bind your weapon slots to buttons rather than using the traditional next/previous controls for switching. And to use the keyboard rather than the mouse wheel since the mouse wheel can be pretty annoying and is actually slower than keyboard switching since you can only use one finger to move between your 2 weapons.

Well Bopp... You're a pretty old player, it's really surprising that you don't know single-switching.

Yes, I'm a very old player. I learned how to switch-shoot in 2011. What I said is that I'm not great at it. I've seen videos of people who are much better than me. Yes, I would get better if I practiced.

The problem is that my usual control scheme has only one key devoted to switching weapons. So I have to change to an unusual scheme to do this technique.

Poor Bopp, trying so hard to be PC, at the cost of building precious skill and insight.

It's true that I'm not an especially skilled player. My wiki page says so. But I don't try to be politically correct, and trying to be politically correct should not conflict with learning a popular technique anyway.

Get chaos, and adapt if you die too much. End of thread. Any other advice is just sugar coating the truth.

I've got horrible ping and still use Black Kat almost exclusively. You just need to have fast reflexes and practice switching right. Some of the more advanced techniques to deal with it is by knowing the timing of traps, they start before they appear to on your screen and they end before they appear to on your screen and knowing your actual place by looking at your pet rather than your character, your pet follows you in server time, you're located at the position your pet follows not exactly what you appear to be on your screen.

Rearding PvP though... Just try to understand how far players can reach you with swords and stay as far as you can from that range. For example, some players hit me with ACHERON from 6 tiles away others from 3 tiles. If they hit from so far, stay away and spam blasters, if they don't hit from that far then you can actually hit them with swords which feels so damn nice especially when you're not used to swinging your sword at all cause there's no one at your bad latency range.

The problem is that my usual control scheme has only one key devoted to switching weapons.

It can still be possible to single-switch like this but you're greatly limiting yourself. Why don't you put another button where you got a spare finger that isn't used. For example I use my index, middle and ring fingers for wasd movement with my index finger switched to e for moving forward when using swords or dodging while having left shift for dash which I use my pinkie for and my thumb on the space (fastest sword in the current loadout slot and button to press to press before pressing q or tab to single switch) and ring finger on q (gun) or tab (the slower current sword in the loadout or Blitz Needle) for switching.

This is something that I believe that every single gunner should know of, otherwise you're gunning wrong (except if you're playing with only charge-oriented weapons like Iron Slug or Blitz). It also boosts the DPS of the already fast swords like Acheron and the flourishes (got no idea about cutters though).

Not really, it all depends on your skill level. If you can single-switch, double-switch, dodge and kill trash mobs a few secs after they appear on your screen then you can consider yourself truly endgame. From that you try the hipster stuff like tortoguns, bomb-only runs, PvP (wait, wut?),etc...

attack > hold shield shield > press the switch button twice > release shield > repeat

It can be faster than just waiting for alchemers and blasters after one shot BUT that's only till you get to a certain amount of ASI (I'd guess very high and above). It will be faster for heavy swords and guns at all ASI ranges I think. It won't make the already fast weapons faster but slower like antiguas, flourishes and brandishes.

The problem is that when you use next/previous weapon switching there's a delay before the actual switch but when you use bound slots the switching becomes instantaneous making it as fast as you rather than as fast as the game wants it to be. An ideal single switch shouldn't take more than 0.2 sec where with the delay the game forces you in, it becomes so not worthwhile to single switch with the next/previous button switching mechanics.

I only found it good at double switching rather than single switching as you put in less effort by only using one button and the delay won't get in your way as you press the switch button while in your attack animation so the weapons will switch once the attack animation finishes. That doesn't apply to single-switching however, because you'll switch to the weapon that you're holding by pressing twice therefore it will stay at the weapon rather than switching twice. There's a way to minimize the delay which is by switching once while in the attack animation and once the animation finishes and you see your weapon has changed switch once again as fast as possible.

I still greatly encourage you to use one more button, it's really not that much of an effort once you get used to your hand placement on the keyboard.

Hope I helped you.

I do both, depending on situations. I usually carry alch/magnus/autogun as my orthodox gunslinger loadout.
The underrated volcanic pepperbox is also nice with dmg/ctr max. Its knockback is nice for defensive gameplay. Its still possible to neatly solo FSC with pepperbox alone though.

I dunno if Tactic A is faster than tactic B, but for me its very slow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUX30aL-yPE
^ Comparison of pause-shooting, shield cancelling (single/dual)