Why are you so angry about this?
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Maybe not knock back, but a momentary stun might work. If you think they donât strike with a lot of force, shoot 20+ slugs in 5 minutes and your shoulder will tell you different.
I also have to admit that the shotguns are basically weak revolvers with big mags. If you pick one with any spread to try for crowd control, they donât have enough damage per pellet when you get into real trouble.
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Literally 15s later âu madâ ok I guess.
No, really. You seem to be taking my opinion on the shotgun personally. It doesnât make sense.
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Doesnât mean things that equivalent to real world works different in 40k.
Increased knock-back/stagger
It exists. Power increases ability to stagger aswell.
Kantrael shotgun has the highest stagger power, you can knock back any human sized enemy with 1 shot, mauler will take 2.
Ladbringer has lower stagger power and Agripinaa the lowest from all shotguns.
I used (past tense) shotguns extensively throughout Damnation on both zealot and veteran.
IMHO theyâre a bit lacklustre. As has been mentioned, there feel like times you have to shoot the same target two or three times - and thatâs just regular flak scabs. Missed hits? Repeated hitting of flak rather than unarmoured areas? Some weird target on the floor bug? I dunno. I stopped worrying about it and stopped using them. Which is a pity, as it feels like the perfect weapon for a speedy zealot.
What role should shotguns take in DT?
Shotguns are meant as crowd control tools arenât they? I think so. It puts the Agrii sniper in a weird spot, but letâs just go with it. IRL (as far as I can read, Iâm not in to guns) they have poor armour penetration but really high chance of hit vs regular guns⊠albeit (and this is from wiki) each pellet only doing the damage of a small ammunitions round (thatâs 80-100 damage in DT??).
That doesnât translate very well to DT where itâs not hard to miss a target I think. So my suggestion would be that they should have a massively higher chance of a crit. Maybe someone will tell me they already do, in which case Iâll pipe down, but it doesnât feel like it?
I think that makes more sense; a mini-stagger on non-elites as we have now, high chance of crit. Terrible against carapace and bad against flak (as should the pistol be, I would say). I would also suggest the cof is increased with no loss of damage at the centre⊠i.e. just increase the size and reduce the damage scale-off as you move away from the epicentre.
Difficulties I can foresee: Does DT calculate trajectory of each of the pellets? If not, then that whole flak thing is going to be annoying as so many targets have at least some of their body covered in flak.
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Just increasing pellets number will help imo - will increase dmg vs solo and hordes. In addition they can change how pellets count.
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Do we know if each pellet is traced; or is it just a random number generated against all targets inside the âhit boxâ ?
Because if the latter, then youâre just increasing shotgun damage. I wouldnât be against that, but itâs just a flat out buff?
If itâs the former - and there are extra pellets - would that change much? Other than the wide-shot special of the lawbringer itâs a fairly tight cof at short-mid range isnât it? Would you hit that many more targets? If not - itâs just a damage buff again ?
No?
It has, because it has a minimum pellet count stat that different for every weapon, so even if you hit target with 1 pellet, damage will be multiplied.
Sorry - where do you see the pellet count stat?
Also, and again apologies, but I didnât actually understand what you were saying there? You mean, the mechanism does one random roll for each pellet, and if that roll is successful, then a target gets some damage?
Not even close.
A Kantrael with Scattershot & Man-Stopper is the best AoE cleaving weapon by a mile. The special has infinite cleave (note, infinite cleave doesnât penetrate oggies or monsters, not even with plasma), so leading with that always stacks Scattershot. You can then follow with regular shots which now have infinite cleave from Man-Stopper, and stack Scattershot themselves. Hipfire for spread and ADS for single-target & higher dmg. Vets and zellies both have ways to stack enough crit that Scattershotâs +60% makes it ~100%.
The same blessings on an Agripinaa makes it into an infinicleave sniper. All crit, weakspot & finesse bonuses are based on the portion of extra dmg from crit / WS. An Agri gets almost double the extra dmg compared to other shotties or plasma. Its base crit/WS dmg is already the same as plasmaâs hipfire shot, but if you add the various talents on top not to mention something like Marksmanâs Focus, it becomes far stronger. All on top of having more ammo, no delay, and no heating issues either. The Agri special can easily do far more dmg than even plasmaâs charged shot iirc.
A Lawbringer meanwhile meets the middle-ground between the two, with its special having a spread & dmg similar to Kantrael while its regular shots are closer to Agripinaa, with ammo likewise exactly between the two.
There are more ways to build them than this though. For example:
- Thereâs the obvious meta of Full Bore & No Respite for max single target dmg, shines especially with Agripinaa which with specials becomes a better Revolver without the rending. Specials benefit from +reload speed so you can massively up the rate of fire on those too.
- If you put Flechette & Man-Stopper on a Kantrael and get crit via other means, the bleed from Flechette likewise has infinite cleave. A zelly can use stealth to do this twice, stacking both fire & bleed DoTâs to a cone twice per stealth, easily clearing an entire corridor of anything but oggies (but heavily damaging them too), or to some monster in particular.
- No Respite contrary to its description actually adds a stacking +20% dmg for each consecutive shot as long as the target is staggered and canât reset. This bonus maxes out at almost +200% and applies to DoTâs too. Shotguns are the only No Respite guns with enough stagger to easily push even crushers until theyâre knocked down (Agri doesnât even need +firing rate for this), so they can use this in so many ways. Kantraelâs special Burn and/or Flechette DoT becomes insane with NoR & stagger on top. Any +firing rate talents let you stack NoR even faster for higher bonus faster, or even on enemies you normally couldnât. Man-Stopper lets you cleave this effect to everything. Lawbringer special with its already innate high stagger & spread can use NoR to combine CC with insane dmg. Frag nade (bleed) or flame nade builds can lead with them followed by NoR stagger spam for insane dmg ofc.
- Shotguns are also uniquely compatible with some talents. Zellyâs The Emperorâs bullet (+30% impact & +10% attack speed for melee 5s after emptying ranged) is tricky with most any other gun, but for shotguns itâs downright easy to keep that active since you can manage their clip so easily. Dance of Death (-75% spread & -50% recoil for 3s after dodge) likewise can turn even an AoE shottie into a precision weapon.
- etc.
Shotguns are entirely unique, and can be blessed and built in so many ways. Many of the things they can do are simply not possible on other weapons.
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You seem to be quite irrate actually using them in the game and then posting about how you would go about that successfully. Why so serious?
Knockback is really very fantastical for shotguns, it looks cool in movies, but if dumping a handgun magazine into someone isnât going to throw them back, a shotgun shell isnât either.
Shotguns in games run into the same problems they do in real life for the same reasons. When you see shotguns in real life, theyâre pretty much for hunting, crowd control, or entry/clearance (blowing hinges off doors/etc). We donât see military infantry units carrying shotguns into battle as primary weapons, even stuff like magazine fed automatic shotguns see only very niche use. You get something with the bulk and weight of a rifle but thatâs got a fraction of the magazine capacity/range/barrier penetration thatâs harder to keep on target in rapid fire. While spread can help hit a target that might otherwise be missed, not usually anymoreso than a burst of automatic fire from a normal rifle would. In games, all these same things apply, and as a result to make shotguns viable weapons they often get massively overstated spread effects or absurdly overtuned point blank damage.
I think leaning into the alternate shell types is the better route. That is where shotguns can really offer some differentiation in real life, and I think paying more attention to those aspects in Darktide is the best way to enhance the viabilty of shotguns.
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They kinda make sense in DT setting more than irl - clearing narrow corridors and tunnels in a hive. Short barrel, lesser chance for ricochet.
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Cool but honestly the best buff imo would be a magazine in order to avoid to reload one shell at time⊠this kind of reload can work on the revolver, when 1 bullet means 1+ kills, but shotguns need more shots to kill most specials/elites (unless a very short range+headshot)
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Okay, so tell me how a sword can cleave through 5 bodies in a single swing. That argument is trash. A shotgun 40k years in the future should pack a harder punch than what you can buy at Walmart today.
No, the shotguns donât need this. I think theyâre actually well-balanced ranged weapons. Itâs other things that are over-performing, not shotguns being too weak.
If you encounter a horde of enemy shotgunners, you get close and engage them in melee, using slides to approach. That pretty much neuters them (which is too easy, really, but thatâs an issue with enemy design).
What is with this âreal lifeâ argument everyone is bringing here? Did I miss something about 40k? Where guns fire explosive shells the size of soda cans, or where a sword can cleave a fully armored unit in half with 1 swing? Get that out of here. A Hollywood style shotgun blast totally belongs here, especially since DOW2 had the same knockback mechanics for Catachans and Space Marine scouts with shotguns.
Says a guy who doesnât even main shotgun. I seriously donât understand the nay-sayers like you.