I'm all for making gear reskins, since it seems like the animation team has plenty of time to make new costumes... but concerning a brand-new weapon type..

I should say this first. There will always, always be a problem with charge-based weaponry, and that's how absurdly influential CTR is in deciding whether the weapon is anywhere from garbage/decent to outstanding. That besides..

If I had to make a bow for SK, it'd probably be some mix of gun and bomb mechanics; shoot projectiles like a gun, but you're forced to use charge attacks like with a bomb, with some sort of tradeoff like being able to move much more freely or having instant travel time on the bullets. It's likely very difficult to make that work well, since you need a good balance between how difficult and how effective the weapon is. Pulsar vs. Catalyzer is a joke. Brandish vs. nearly everything is a joke. Shivermist vs. other 'support' bombs is a joke. Stuff like that should be kept to a minimum, if not removed entirely.

If anything, a mechanically difficult weapon should be more effective than a mechanically easy weapon. Rocket Hammers are a good example of that, since you need to know what you're doing in order to use it effectively (and not kill yourself).

Guns are difficult to balance because of that, I think; how do you balance something that lets you be perfectly safe, excluding situations where kiting just isn't an option (Grinchlin Assault's last fight, for example)?