I think the alt version is better overall for different reasons:
- More damage overall
The combination of high damage and ricoshot makes it devasting against single enemies
- Better "economy"
The slow fire rate make it so you don't waste coins as quickly (forcing you to switch weapons)
- Works better with the normal Piercer revolver
We know having both Alt versions heavily hinders fire rate and swapping between revolvers, but the damage bonus is always worth having on one revolver at least, so we have to choose which Alt is better to have in our "inventory"
The Alt Piercer has very high damage on Charge shot, however it charges twice as slow, so it's not very good to swap to it often or use as primary source of damage, for me it'a a NO
The Alt Marksman gets no downside on the cooldown of coins, but does lose the ability to splitshot
However there's many ways of dealing with multiple targets than just splitshot and if you want you can switch to the normal Piercer which still retains the ability to splitshot, but it's only easier to split when it has been in the air for long, so it's YES for me