I agree but using lawbringer with manstoper and scattershot feels like a downgrade of the double barrel too me 
No Respite is for follow up shot damage which the Agripinaa straight up doesnât need to make on 95% of enemies in the game. The other 2 shotguns that can only one hit kill weaker targets without crits really benefit from it, because its up to 140% damage during stagger state and they have more stagger (not compared to the slug round, but you canât rapid fire said slug round).
No respite increases the agriâs effectiveness at range, close to medium range it will oneshot headshot most things but at long range no respite decreases the amount of shots needed to kill, it can also help with maulers and scab ragers. But yeah itâs mostly full bore that does most of the heavy lifting.
Itâs just free damage for the follow up shots after the slug, in addition my build allows killing Reapers/Bullwarks with slug headshot + follow up shots on high level havoc.
So you can see the use case for the blessing as a whole, but not into the majority of targets? Using Man Stopper is pretty unnecessary these days except into Havoc hitmass reduction, where the ammo constraints already push weapons that âtake 2â down. I donât expect variety in a game mode that handicaps so much of the game. No Respite is basically mandatory and what bridges the raw damage gaps the Exterminator Shotgun would have over them. Since it lets you pull most of those same 2 shot kills. If you elect instead for a crit build bleed yeah its terrible, that stuff has been left in the dust.
I mean why would I use Zarona with the same blessings as Agripinaa, when Agripinaa has great special, more ammo, tigher spread and almost same damage potential, except for hipfire maybe?
Because the special fundamentally turns it into a bullet weapon, removing the wide raycast. The standard birdshot on the Agripinaa is really weak except for weakspot hits, which the Zarona doesnât have while still providing high knockdown power, crit/finesse hits and range. Like at this point I play weapons to fundamentally feel like the weapon theyâre claiming to be, and the slug-rifle that has birdshot otherwise doesnât really do it for me personally. Can you use the Agripinaa to hipfire down 3 maulers in like 3 shots, or CC packs of ragers while potentially one-hit killing them. I canât play the game for you, but I can point out that thereâs a very wide niche of targets provided for the weapon to do well.
Just, like a lot of ammo-based weapons, not into a terrible nerfed mode where 90% of the difficulty comes from handicapped player choice, and totally gone if you use that cheese. such end game skill wow
I can tho. Remember that terrible meat grinder build with MF and shotguns? Now that the stacks donât decay instantly and you can easily get to max just by shooting at the horde, Agripinaa can one-shot mauler with the slug and rager with normal headshot. Of course itâs harder to do on higher level Havoc because of the BS ammo economy, I agree that it should not be the benchmark for balance.
I still think that Zarona is worthless compared to other two shotguns and needs love urgently. Maybe it should even be given drum mag like the shotgunners use.
1 Like
You can load 3 shots to do that or Zarona can just keep blasting hipfire or aimed with a couple WS stacks. There is a cost to having to load the slug, and the slug has the small raycast of eg. laspistol, which with the garbage hit registration of the game is definitely its own disadvantage. And its pretty counter to the aim-flexible and melee supporting play style the shotguns want to support. Especially not-having instant knockdown power without first using the slug round. Like again I canât play for you, but I can definitely point out there is a very huge upshot to what the Zarona does that you canât seem to downplay except by comparing it directly to the slug round. Like lol, that would be the point of the weapon overall bro, high stagger/finesse/range in the same shot, instead of splitting those advantages between both modes.
Zaronaâs special should knock down mid elites again, because that was one of the big upshots of using it in a melee-focused play style, and Iâm sad we never got that at the same time you could run fast with this gun. But it is definitely not hurting bad in the scheme of balance when thereâs like 6 lasguns and autogun families in the game bud, thereâs so much more immediate game value and impact in high stagger and killing specialists in one hit, as well as being immune to suppression at all times.
I feel like I am not getting something, because Agripinaa normal shots (especially aimed) definitely stagger everything except for Crushers and Mutants and No Respite works very well when dumping into elite spam.
Thereâs also bulwarks that you canât stagger with the Agripinaa buck, mid stagger is also not the same as heavy stagger. Nor are bodyshots worthwhile at all with Agripinaa. How many ranged weapons are you going to honestly rank over combat shotguns for humans in game. Does 1 variant undo everything good about another weapon? That was never articulated to me. Especially when weâve already roundly established that much of what the Zarona does well (HEAVY stagger, not being married to crits or headshots and secondary ammo, relatively proficiency at all distances, good hipfire) are not strengths of the Agripinaa. Bizarrely a powerhose hipfiring, heavy staggering weapon with high damage in all cases is not the slug shotgun.
Zarona is the most reliable one on the normal shots⌠Has the highest inbuilt cleave and has a good mixture of raw damage and medium distance damage falloff. It is the one I wanna switch to for special and elite deletion.
Then it has a lot of boni:
- high inbuilt unyielding damage
- suppression resistance
- the special can screen stun and with manstopper screen wipe
- the gun and run blessing for builds with low shooter resist
1 Like
Eh, I just ran a couple of Auric runs with Zarona and not convinced. Guess I got so used to Agripinaa, because it feels way more consistent and effective to me.
In general I am not a fan of the concept that I should be cherrypicking very niche positives about the gun to make it feel decent. I still stand that Zarona is not good and at least the special should be heavily buffed.
I see the combat shotguns as a prime example on how to do marks. Each one brings a very distinct flavor to the others and it is absolutely ok if not every mark caters to everyone. After all in Darktide the value of a gun is determined by the enemy composition. Zarona is the most budget ranged horde clear with good swap and special snipe capabilities. In a game where hordes were halved because of Xbox release this gun sure lost some of its value. Doesnât change the fact that it does its job.
2 Likes
Yeah I think combat shotguns are the best handled range family besides the recon lasguns. Zarona gets to do everything âalrightâ to âgreatâ while the 2 marks double down into close distance and cleave or long range and finesse. Its the quintessential Goldilocks weapon. The 2 not slug special shots are bad currently but 90% of ranged specials are useless bunts and bashes so its only a numbers tweak away from being useful again. It isnât doomed to be horrible forever. Gimme some stagger, gimme some burn stacks. 3 stacks of burn when you hipfire is a terrible trade for loading 1 shell, and hugely counter to using its wider spread hipfire for spreading burns.
1 Like
I suspect Iâm neither the first nor last to point out that the combat shotgun in Darktide behaves like a real shotgun - that means a tight choke with a roughly cylindrical pattern.
If you want a gun that shoots in a cone, the double-barrel and exterminator are right there for you.
1 Like
Accatran is pretty âvideo gameyâ as well.
TrueâŚ
But in real life, I donât see chaos influence, Nurgle is not an evil entity and shotgun are acting like you saidâŚ
But in the fantasy of all shows, shotguns work like what I describedâŚ
You know that space is not cold? but in all movies, it is shown like a cold space⌠in fact it is not cold or hot⌠it is just full of void space.
Thatâs the same⌠yes, shotgun are irl like in Darktide (at least combat shotgun). But in all movies and show, they act like the Arbites shotgunsâŚ
I absolutely cannot stand âthere are fantasy elements so any realism argument is mootâ arguments. âAcceptableâ is the operative word in âacceptable breaks from reality,â and that line is subjective, but the existence of fantasy elements does not automatically justify all breaks from reality.
The combat shotgun acting like the real thing, while the double barrel fulfills the âhollywood shotgunâ niche is a great compromise. Run the double barrel, since itâs the weapon that acts the way you want it to. That, or hop on Ogryn and run any of the rippers; theyâre basically WW1 trench guns.
1 Like
Double barrel fails badly⌠and again, arbites shotgun works like what I expected from Shotguns.
Anyways, I ceased to use shotguns⌠and tbh a lot more of other things. I think I actually use 5-6 weapons of the game. All others are too bad and I have ceased to hope for a balance.
(tbh: I hope for a company to create a game on a similar gameplay⌠I do not care of warhammer at all⌠and Fatshark is just a bad company⌠they do not communicate, they do not respect their customers, they make promises they donât fulfill, they are slow at fixing their game etc.)
1 Like