It feels like shotguns have one big issue for me - they almost NEVER seem to hit the head when you deliberately try to. I sometimes run a marksman’s focus build with the slug combat shotgun - you know, the one with the tight spread and extra ADS damage to heads.
I swear to god, having 10 stacks of MF, exe stance and trying to nail every headshot will still not get one taps even close up. It’s almost always a double tap because some stray pellet always seems to miss.
When it does end up being a double tap, the second issue come into play - shotguns are primarly stagger weapons meaning lining up follow-up shots on enemies is neigh impossible.
Compared to the newly buffed bolter or zarona which exceed both the range, mobility and multi-kill capability of the combat shotguns tenfold an issue similar to one that thunder hammer had arises - why use a weapon that requires stupid amount of minmaxxing of stats, talents and gameplay while you can pick another option that has none of the hurdles to get over and does everything better?
If you ask me, all combat shotguns should:
- Prioritize the headshot hitbox, always.
- Make it so a single pellet that hits makes the target receive full damage of the shot (think PD2 shotguns)
- With that, make it so when shooting in ads, one pellet always hits dead center - it makes it much less annoying to deal with specials at range - this should be balanced by damage drop off values and base damage, not by rolling the dice on whether or not a pellet hit the enemy.
Then individual shotguns should change like this
Lawbringer (or whatever it is, I think Zarona, the spread one)
- The horizontal pattern is now the baseline standard shot.
- Special loads bleeding flechette (can stack with the blessing).
- Make it have the most ammo so it can be the de-facto go to anti horde combat shotgun.
- Reduce effectiveness versus flak and maniacs a little to compensate.
- Make it middle-of-the-road in terms of range. It should be able to deal with a stray sniper or special quickly but it shouldn’t be able to trash gunner packs at a distance.
Agrippina (slug)
- Retain the spread and improve range drop off. Basically turn this into an M1 garand like battle rifle.
- Might need reduced base cleave but honestly it’s already so bad due to spread I’m not sure it needs that tweak.
- Reduce ammo cap to be in the middle - reward and allow longer range one or two taps but have it balanced by reduced cleave and multi kill capability. I think more ammo then revolver and similar one tap potential at range but with vastly reduced cleave and a clunkier reload feels balanced.
- Slug special could have better anti-armor capabilities to help with crushers and maulers. Maybe relegate this to a blessing that increases rending on weapon special?
Kantrael (fire)
- Base shot has wide, square-shaped spread. Reduce amount of pellets but vastly increase cleave values. This shotgun should absolutely waste mixed elite packs up close. Less so for maulers and only serve as a stagger cannon for crushers.
- To balance this, drastically reduce effective range. Kantrael should not be better at range than the slug version. It should be able to reliably take out snipers with two shots and bomber specials with like 3. It needs to have some functionality against them or it will be useless.
- Retain the current ammo values, i think its okay.
- Considering the ammo capacity, the special fire round could apply a bit more stacks to help with bulwarks or bosses. Having the innate ability to apply brittleness on enflamed targets would definitely help give it a unique support role in the weapon family.
I think with changes like these combat shotguns would feel much more fun to use and have their own unique niches without being overly overpowered. The effective range factor should give them the ability to perform greatly in their intended combat space.