^YES

The whole purpose of the gun? The purpose of the gun is to do small damage at short range, large damage at long range. It even says so in the description. Nowhere is it said in stone that "The purpose of this gun is to cause so much knockback, monsters nor players will be able to get anywhere near you while you're firing this".

The knockback is uncalled for, buggy and way too powerful: It's faster acting and comes in higher quantities than the nitronome, not to mention less predictable and unlike any other knockback-inducing weapon, is not reduced by shields and invulnerability. You can fling spawning enemies, Trojans, Darkfangs and Mecha Knights across the room regardless of what they're doing or which direction they're facing, while the Big Angry Bomb and the Troika/Sealed sword do jack.

Shock is pretty nasty on its own, that's why Storm Driver, Voltedge, and especially Voltaic Tempest are quite effective. But those three weapons don't consistantly block spasming people from getting any closer than 8 tiles to the firer.

about 90% of the guys who use it will throw it out of the window

Why wouldn't people who crafted a weapon purely because it's overpowered throw it away because it's no longer overpowered?

without knockback I may as well get an alchemer, it would be way, way better

Actually it wouldn't.

Firstly, without knockback, your massive blasts can hit the same bunch of targets over and over again. It would essentially be a difficulty increase for using the weapon (since monsters can actually approach you now while you're firing it) but it would also be a damage buff (since you can consistently hit targets without knocking them flying out of range of you or your teammates)

Secondly, Polaris does the same amount of damage than Storm Driver with unexpanded shots, but 20% more with expanded ones. The splash damage means that you're always hitting more than one target, regardless of where you aim, while with Storm Driver you need to jam shots inbetween mobs so that they collide with both simultaneously.

Thirdly, Polaris has three rounds, Storm Driver only two, meaning less time needed to reload. And don't say "what about alch-switching" because you can do the same thing with two Pulsars. And before you say "well who has more than one pulsar?", remember the gun update.

cause if it barely stops a lumber coming my way, I will never advance.

Guns aren't supposed to stop lumbers in their tracks. That's what the freeze, shock, and stun statuses are for, as are heavy weapons that actually incur a penalty for using, like Troika/Sealed, Big Angry Bomb, and Vortex.

a damage nerf cause hit staking shouldn't be instadeath

Being overpowered damage-wise isn't really a big deal, we still have Blitz and Acheron (or just brandishes in general) still being a thorn in our side. At least Polaris will be overpowered in a sensible way, not in a way that screws over teammates, monsters, and PvP opponents alike. You'll actually be able to advance on a bunch of Polaris-spamming players, instead of just having to find another way completely in the case of choke points. (even haze bombs aren't that lethal. Well, it's debatable, but Haze bombs take time to set up, and interuption is a pain for bombing)

Compare with TF2. What if instead of doing triple damage, critical hits knocked players flying backwards?

I'm agreeing with removing the knock back here or reducing it to that of the valiance.
Removing the knock back won't really break the pulsar, it just increases the difficulty of use. You already have a very strong CC on that weapon known as shock. If you really won't use it with how much power it has just because it no longer has knock back I feel you should look at what you value in a weapon because it seems like you only want to use brokenly strong ones.

^

Is that it barely does anything for PvP, because of how knights react when they're hit. You wouldn't be sent flying across the screen, but you'd still be stopped in your tracks. +.5

Pretty amusing to suggest any nerfs to Polaris with the gunner update on horizon and with the fact that OOO has shown that they try to at least rebalance the damage of the weapons with inflicting statuses versus those that don't (see the much undeserved hate that acheron gets): read it as Polaris expanded shots will more than likely do the damage of the storm drivers shots with the gunner update.

Balance is not the master of a fool, balance is the master of a fairer person. If one fights unfairly and unbalanced then they should not fight no mater if they are the one with the balance in there favor or not, for the battle was lost before it began.

Brandishes as a whole don't need much change in my opinion, only their charge attack does. That's what gets on everyone's nerve and unarguably needs some tweaking. Normal attacks if we are to compare sealed lines vs brandish lines then it's the balanced wide, slow swing (that can apply a status if we were to specify gran faust) vs fast, concentrated slashes (on which the charge attacks only applies the statuses).

Normal damage weapons are something that ignores the whole concept of rock, paper & scissors in this game and with the fact that you can only change your gear at arsenal stations which are only located at start of the level if you pick up a normal damage weapon you accept the fact that you are picking overall lower damage for the fact that you will be dealing the same damage to everything. When I was starting to hunt danger rooms ages ago and had been using 2 slots only, I was pretty much always carrying a Leviathan. But if ever one desires, they could expand their weapon slots and specialise. You can't really expect normal damage weapons to out-class the specialised weapons even on neutral enemies. Though, much of those specific pairings contributes from Brandishes being split specialised/normal which I totally forgot about so I guess that would also need making them but after they'd be, let's say, made specialised damage only they'd be another horror weapon in Lockdown. Also, yes, FF is outdone by Acheron since the buff but FF does have the massive wide first swing (and slightly bigger knockback) which is the horror of plenty of Lockdown players since always. You have to have that also in mind. You wouldn't want a FF buff now would you? All in all, I wouldn't mind changes but I also don't mind (aside of the brandishes charge) the current state of things.

Oh, and, your link doesn't work, redirects me to this page so had to test stuff with my toys in game.

Generally speaking I was talking about PvE but I see now, I had no idea that this is how stuff works in Lockdown, it's hard to test it like that without coordinating testing with two guilds/creating two guilds. In that case I'd be more than happy to see brandishes made into pure specialised damage weapons. And again, for the third time already, yes, the charge attacks on brandishes needs tweaking but I don't agree on making normal damage weapons (at least not Leviathan and who knows, Iron Slug might be getting that promised buff with gunner update) any better, they aren't as good as you would want them to be but as they are they fullfill their role at ignoring the rock, paper & scissors quite well.

I don't think Levi needs a buff, it's just Brandish and Sealeds that need a nerf.