Thanks for the reply, glad to have my thoughts validated. (This is J F from above by the way, changed my alias - new to the boards). The juggling is what caught my eye too because it came up several times in your guide/this thread as having only a few good options for how to do it.
Bullet rend I feel is, eventually, about as good as Up Close and Deadly, which most people seem to feel is the "highlight" of the pistolero. It's damage is comparable (actually a bit higher if you go straight BPH, but if you take 3 levels of TF it about evens out), but it costs no grit so you can theoretically use it every round. You have to hit with two separate guns though, which means either two-weapon fighting, or shoot/draw/shoot, either of which would require Quickdraw (which is really sort of required to get much use from juggling anyway), and you can't miss (not usually a huge problem with guns, but still). Too bad it's only once per round (per target, I suppose if you have enough attacks you could get a second target in), but if you use UCaD more than once a round you're going to be burning through grit pretty fast, so I don't see that happening often anyway.
The build I'm looking at is a tricky one. It's for a small group (3 people so far), and I was the last to join. The first two are a sorcerer and shaman, so they and the GM suggested that I be a melee character, which I agreed to. It's a homebrew setting where guns are a thing, but uncommon (emerging guns) and I wanted to try them out so I'm trying to make a melee gunner, which I know is not optimal, but I figured I'd see what I could do.
Because of that, I'm going for both the Deft Shootist and Snap Shot trees, which eats up feats like crazy. I can have Deft by 3rd, but won't be able to get Quick Draw and Snap until 9th, which kind of sucks. I don't like builds that take so long to get up to speed, but it's not like I'll be completely ineffective until then, just hampered a bit. In fact I'm thinking of taking a 4th level of fighter for the next bonus feat, but then that delays all the slayer stuff for another level, so I'm not thrilled with that option either...