Strategy:Combat pistol

The combat pistol is an exotic weapon and a direct upgrade to your feeble starting pistol. It has better accuracy (+5 vs. +4), deals more damage (3-9 vs. 2-8) and a much larger magazine (15 shots vs. 6). The only drawback comes from a longer reloading time (1.8s vs. 1.2s), and of course, its rarity.

Similarly to basic pistols, this weapon's damage output scales greatly with levels in Son of a Gun - 6 DPS at no SoG, 8.75 at SoG1, 13.33 at SoG2 and 22.5 at SoG3. I'm not considering values for Dualgunner trait - you may play through a whole game without seeing a single combat pistol, let alone two, but if you happen to find one, you can of course use it with any other pistol in your other hand.

Compared to assemblies and unique pistols, the combat pistol also has the advantage of being fully moddable, and of being a much better base item than a basic pistol. A single power mod adds 1.5 damage per shot (compared to 1 for a basic pistol). A high power combat pistol, a basic assembly requiring only two common mods, creates a 3d5 damage weapon (with 10 bullets in the magazine), that easily outdamages any other pistol. You can go with P3B2-modded combat pistol, for 3d6 damage and whopping 26 bullets in the magazine. And, last but not least, a P-modded demolition ammo combat pistol leaves you with a "micro-micro launcher" (would that be "pico launcher"?) that deals 6d2 fire damage in a radius 1 explosion and consumes bullets instead of rockets.

For all pistol builds, a combat pistol is a highly useful weapon. But it's the Sharpshooter talent that can turn this weapon into a true beast. Thanks to Eagle Eye 3 (prerequisite for MSs), every single shot has 98% chance to-hit, if you can see the enemy. Even an unmodded combat pistol deals 12 damage per shot - this guarantees knockback on each and every shot. The P3B2-modded combat pistol deals 21 damage per shot (at SoG3), which one-shots lost souls and three-shots revenants even through their 50% bullet resistance. And if you top that with 5 levels in Son of a Gun, you end up with an incredible 230 DPS. With a capacity of 26 bullets, you can kill every single monster, all the way up to a N! Spider Mastermind, with no need to reload even once. Most regular monsters would not even have a chance to act, if your timing is right.