The combat shotguns got a nice buff to their stats, namely:
sprinting doesn’t sap all your stamina now.
base cleave increase against trash enemies.
damage increase.
ammo reserve increase.
Slightly faster reload speed.
All sounds nice, but after trying all the shotguns, I can confidently say excluding the slug shotgun, they still suffer from major flaws, that are now even more apparent after the addition of the Arbites shotguns.
Agripinaa Mk VII (Slug) is now much better at picking targets from range, the ~20% damage increase was really effective, and the finesse boost while not aiming is good too, I think this shotgun is really good now, the slug needs a little bit more damage IMO.
Zarona MK VI (Wide shot) is better than before, but still suffers from the frustrating situation where you feel like the enemy should have died, but they still take 1-2 more shots than what feels right.
Accatran Mk IX (Fire shot) this one is sad, the special ammo does nothing, the ammo economy is pathetic, you can spam the special into a horde and they will still only take minor damage, you are better off never using the special attack on this one, also aimed shots are not that good beyond 20 meters, which is to be expected of a shotgun, but also you would expect close range devastation.
I would suggest lowering all the ammo of the shotguns and increasing their power, making them closer to the arbites shotguns in terms of power, they still should have 2-3 extra shots per clip, but the current 9-13 clip size IMO is the main cause for the shotguns sad state.
Good to hear, I have been staying away from them might have to give them a try now. I was a vet main when you could reload the whole clip for free with the shotgun, 24 shots in a row was pure bliss!
Agripinaa and Accatran both feel very good imo. Agripinaa in particular is kind of crazy right now. Accatran obviously suffers from short range, but if you are playing it on Arbities you can use your dog, and to some extent on Zealot you can use throwing knives. While the range issue sucks, on Havoc 40 with Vet the Accatran can really rip through rager packs with correct positioning which is really what I wanted out of it.
IMO the Zarona still suffers from being the weird middle child, not really specializing in anything and feeling a bit lack luster for it, although I do need to play with it more.
I don’t think the tube size is the biggest problem with the shotguns at the moment, but more so No Respite. Depending on the state of stagger, it will give up to 140% extra damage. This is a problem because it moves a huge part of the weapon’s damage into a blessing, rather than modifying how the weapon is played, and is also why follow up shots are so often required (1 shot to stagger, another to gain damage from the blessing). If they reworked No Respite to work like Execution on the Arbites Shotguns, than I think you could justify giving them an increase in power.
I’m ready for there to be 3 acknowledged/official weapon tiers:
A) Good weapons. Most of the sci-fi weapons, a few of the others. All the cool WH stuff is here.
B) OK weapons. The not-so-good sci-fi weapons: Infantry Lasgun, for example. Knife, which will have very poor damage but keeps its outstanding movement.
C) Poor weapons. You use them for bragging rights … And Penances? Events? The “Only recovered weapons” map modifier?
I was actually enjoying Zarona most post update. Ammo economy is high, you can one shot all the annoying mid HP special/elites and importantly hipfire the trapper all pretty easily. There’s also crits/weakspot damage/closed damage in every human tree that can make it hit harder than Accatran in range with the new balance. Just needs weakspots like the Agripinaa, but without the spiking damage of slugs.
In general I think the reload is still the worst thing ever and the main reason they go unused in the goofy modes where you barely have time/room to blink and respire normally.
In a world where the weapons are in three tiers, so - to answer the question above - the devs can stop trying to balance every weapon with every other weapon, and failing absurdly. Weapons would still be unbalanced, but sensibly.