- Too dependent on pumpkin: if you don't find it, you can never come close to what an average melee build can do in the first 20 waves. Once you find pumpkin, the game feels normal again. DLC adds more ways to pierce but only 1 item reduces the penalty so it actually matters. Feels really bad finding eyepatch instead of pumpkin! We already had enough pierce with sharpbullet+bandana. No other playstyle requires 1 item so badly, not even elemental or engineering. You only have to find pocketfactory once, but a ranged build has to find tons of pumpkins.

- Because pierce mostly doesn't work without pumpkin past wave 9, you tend to build up crowds of enemies. You never attack from any farther away than a melee character would, but your guns don't do the damage of melee weapons. The advantage of guns (range) never shows itself. Once you find 3 pumpkins or 50 knockback it starts to feel like guns aren't just bad inaccurate melee weapons.

- Guns have a terrible set bonus. Medium amount of added range when you already have lots of range. A thiefdagger build buying glasses gets more real value from range than a gun build completing a full set. Tags like blunt/heavy/primitive/medieval carry your defense in early waves while a ranged build has to buy all that from items (while being unable to find ranged damage).

- Ricochet is still a complete joke. Legitimately worse than Torture. At least make it so pumpkin reduces the bounce penalty! You know, the bounce penalty that is completely hidden and never mentioned anywhere. Can't wait to buy tons of ricochets so I can lose!

- Lack of low level ranged damage items: it's way easier to find melee damage, AND you find it at 2x the value (hedgehog etc all have this pattern). You can play a ranged damage character with 6 guns and build higher melee than ranged by accident just by trying to buy enough HP with commons.

- The 2x value pattern on items makes no sense. Melee attacks have infinite pierce AND you buy their damage way cheaper, why? It's made as if enemies aren't running into melee range of your guns getting tickled all game no matter what.

- The shop is overall melee-sided. Guns have to buy 200 luck to get the items they need?

- Melee can build around healing with consumables and regen, Ranged wants to build around lifesteal and regen. Lifesteal is the weakest healing source in the game, and the most expensive/rare to buy. Lifesteal has 2 forms of hard cap: 10/sec and 1/attack, both are totally unnecessary. Other forms of healing have no cap like this - jerky consumables or fairy regen can carry your build's healing on their own in the first 20 waves.
Have fun with no healing until you find tons of tentacles and goblets on wave 25! Melee characters can use both of those more effectively than you, of course.

- Manual aim is ineffective, there's no way to target big important enemies other than running into melee range. The most consistent way to play guns is to use a bunch of shotguns and play like a weak melee character, since stuff like lasergun just wastes damage on little guys half the time.

- Pretty much all the new spellcasters are anti-ranged. Tendency of ranged is to let back-line enemies stay alive longer, so you spend more time pressured by spells while a melee character runs in to clear them fast. If I have to use shotguns and run in to clear them, why am I playing long range guns? Once you find some pumpkins on wave 28, you can start easily killing molluscs the way a melee build does when it first sees them on 17.

- Pistol is probably the weakest weapon in the whole game. Totally pointless having it in there. You can reroll your shop searching for pumpkins and find pistols, what a great deal!

Very unfortunate stuff! I think the piercing and bouncing penalties alone totally ruin ranged. Everything else just compounds the issue.