Seriously, these weapons are absolute garbage, probably one of the weakest in the game. They do basically no damage and have limited ammo. They need a big buff badly.
I have 2 possible buff solutions:
Double Combat Shotgun damage and ammo. This would at the very least make them viable to use on heresy/damnation. Might still be outclassed by other weapons, but at least somewhat viable.
Make Combat Shotguns hit like trucks at close range, I’m talking massive damage on enemies that are closer then 10 meters. A 5x damage or power multiplier at those ranges would do the trick. I still think a decent ammo boost would be needed here, maybe an extra 20 or so rounds.
But yeah, Combat Shotguns feel super weak at the moment and I hope you buff them how I have said.
I definitely apreciate the new shotgun variants, but they need some buffs.
The slug shot doesn’t seem to stagger enemies that much, and the incendiary shot does little damage on impact and doesn’t set on fire enough enemies to make it worth using in comparison to the normal shot.
Still, the 3 shotguns need to have at least 20 more ammo.
I bought a green with bad stats just to try it so keep in mind the following is not at all optimised. The incendiary round:
one shots Damnation shotgunners
pierces bulwark shields, about 3 shots to kill them with dot
has literally infinite cleave. I assume it’s infinite because one shot manages to hit 50 consecutive lined up bulwarks so at very least it’s effectively infinite.
The shotgun also has really high suppression. Not saying shotguns don’t need more ammo but the Kantrael shotgun definitely looks good to me.
Infinite cleave looks like a major bug. Still I don’t think I’ll find 50 bulwarks lined up, or any enemy honestly. I would prefer it to not have infinite cleave, but instead had a wider area, I think it would be more useful. Sure, if it works as you say, and you line up enemies on a door frame, you will be a god (which is not good) but if you are not in that specific situation… I think that it lacks in area damage. Still, it’s the best variant of the 3 for me.
Certainly the dot damage is good, but it’s dot damage, I personally prefer to go and kill all specials and elite as fast as possible using the normal shot, to avoid danger.
Still, the fact that it pierces the shield is good, but bs haha
Oh for sure, but being able to shoot through any number of enemies between you and what you want to hit definitely isn’t a bad thing. It may indeed be a bug though the Bulwark shield pierce makes decent sense to me. Those shields look like they’d be pretty conductive to me, though obviously that is a little inconsistent with flamer.
Also worth noting you can do stuff like swap to head taker/slaughter melee weapon after shooting to boost the dot a fair bit/get stacks going on your melee weapon quickly. Seems like a decently versatile utility gun overall, just again, all the shotgun variants need more ammo, I just think that’s probably all they need, though I wouldn’t complain about a faster special loading animation either.
On Kantrael IX it’s 8/41 with 56% ammo stat and only 9/46 on 80% ammo stat. Ammo is kinda a dump stat and it sucks. In terms of damage shotguns feel ok on vet, on zealot - underpowered. I think MKVI and VII need a bit more damage, 15-20% maybe as starting point. And 50-70% more ammo for all patterns.
Also probably depends on what buffs you have up etc, but I did some testing with a profane 70% damage roll and it is very dependent on range and whether or not you are aiming down sights. The one shot kill range for Scab Shotgunners goes down drastically when you’re not adsing, but otherwise it is pretty consistent at short-mediumish range. Did some more testing and it can almost kill both gunners if you get the full flame stacks. It’s really bad against maniacs, you get half damage on your fire ticks. Funnily this means its better at killing Scab Zerkers than the Dreg ones. It does alright damage to Reapers and Bulwarks but pretty much nothing against Crushers. 1 shot to kill sniper has to be within 15m which I was disappointed by, and in general that seems to be the max range for 1 shotting elites with the shotty unless power up blessings give increase fire tick damage.
I don’t mind shotgun damage, but please explain me ONE thing. Why Bolter has more ammo than shotguns? Freaking BOLTER?! Gun that does pretty much everything:
Horde clear, delete monstrosities and ogryns, suppression and range for days… and still has bigger ammo count than shotguns.
Is it? I thought it was mostly just stagger around whatever is actually hit?
Also if a gun can do something, even if it can do it pretty fast, but does so in a terribly ammo inefficient way, then I’d argue it isn’t “good at it”.
It actually is one of the best guns at horde clear because it overpenetrates chaff and because bolts explode if they hit something harder than a poxwalker. Nowhere near flamer of course.
It has good pen, will kill like 3 enemies per shot, will also explode targets and do a small amount of AOE damage. (unlike the plasma gun, which should have an AOE and doesn’t). Not saying you should do this but you CAN do this. But I agree, the shotguns do perfectly adequate damage. Their problem is ammo supply. I don’t even care about the lore or real world counterpart justification for carrying some number of ammo. As a zealot if I get stuck on shooter duty because nobody brought a real gun then I will be out before the first room is over unless I mad-dash them. Its not fun to have to not use my gun all game, they’re fun guns!
Also, wrong thread for it I’m sure but the lawbringer seems to have a number of ADS bugs that cause the sights to flop off target the same way the bolter used to.
