mixed feelings
Boy am I glad to see this thread because I have most certainly been having problems with WLR primers. Not so glad since I have 7k plus of them.
As best as I can tell, I have not had any pierced primers, but I have had plenty that had gas blow by between cup and primer. You must pull the offending primer and take a magnified pic and then view under higher magnification to actually see the gas cutting along the side of the cup, otherwise it looks like a pin hole.
loading 168gr HPBT over Varget in 308/7.62 LC brass had leaks as low as 39.5 grains. Certainly not an excessively hot load.
I had been using some demiled LC Top Brass and thought the problem was that TopBrass cuts out the primer crimp rather than swaging. So I thought perhaps they had removed too much metal. Then I picked up 1K of Diamond K LC brass and carefully swaged the primer pockets with a Dillon Swage to just enough to reliably seat new primers, and still had a leaking primer with 39.8 grains.
So far all of my problems have been from one 1K box, Lot# GHL339G. Hadn't thought about trying a different lot#. Maybe good is that 5K of my primers are Lot#GDL233G. I guess I need to work up some loads with these.
I got these primers several years ago and seriously doubt Winchester will help me. Besides I got these from a now mostly defunct big box store for $3.96 per 1K!! (that's a whole different story I'll have to explain to St Peter.) So I can't complain too much, except for damaging my bolt face.