Is there any chance Shotguns will be buffed with the incoming balance patch?

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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In my opinion Shotguns have two big problems:

  • they depend too much on headshots. Already now all weapons are headshots based… at least shotguns should deviate from this mechanic. Both as a matter of variety both as a matter of weapon style: they have always been famous for their wide buckshot rosette, suitable for mindless shooting, certainly not for accuracy

  • slow reload/not enough damage. Different but closely related points. If we take the Revolver, which shares a slow reload, one bullet at a time, we notice a really high damage. One hit, one kill. Often more than one kill. This is not true for Shotguns, which may need even 2-3 shells to kill one enemy, especially if it’s not close. This results in a frustrating and boring situation in which you spend more time reloading than shooting

And to this must be added the natural limitations of a shotgun, such as low range. It’s not easy to kill a distant sniper or to clean a room of shooters

In my opinion, we could take two different paths. Simply increase the damage… or versatility, that is, more rounds in the “magazine” and pool, but most importantly a faster reloading speed (in many games, when you load a shell, it counts as 2-3)

Thanks for reading

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Well, nice thread… I just started to play again with shotguns.

So, let’s start for the reasons. Shotguns are incredible, they can deal with Bulwarks, at least for Agri and kantrael.
The first, permits to open the shield, the second has a special that can go through the shield. To be honest, I prefer the agri for this.
And, what is causing me more problems are not crushers but these bulwarks when they are not alone but with several friends (like 6 ragers, 3 crushers and lot of lesser enemies).
Kantrael is great to deal a max damages to a special (hello dreg rager). It can also deal with horde with correct blessings (but not interested by this part).
Lawbringer is also great, but here you need to deal headshots. This is the weaker of the 3.

Lawbringer and agri rely on headshot, not kantrael, as explained above.

I disagree, you reload bullet by bullet and it is better than a revolver on this.
However, the problem of shotguns are or their damages, or the fact that revolvers are too strong (OP).

I have shown by the past a video showing that you can one shot a sniper at 60 meters. you need an agri shotgun and use the incredible special of this weapon.
For the faster reload, I guess you did not use the talents that boost the reload, especially on veteran. You cannot increase this or it will be instant reload.

My opinion is that shotguns are the best balanced weapons of this game. And that revolvers are too strong. They should deal incredible damages and cleave at short range, but never at long range. And the main problem is that a revolver does better damages than shotguns AND also cleave every times you use it.
Lawbringer still would benefit from a damage buff. But really a tiny buff, cause it is really in a good position.

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That’s what Kantrael is for and why it’s the main shorty I run. Pretty easy to get consistent two shots on priority targets out to medium range just aiming centre mass. Can’t speak much for the new shotgun, the thought of refarming shotgun blessings has me putting that one off till crafting changes, but as far as I’m aware it also very much is not a headshot weapon.

I personally lean towards giving them more max ammo. The last ammo buff was nice but I definitely wouldn’t mind a bit more.

That said I do think there’s reason for caution here. Manstopper has really crazy scaling into density and letting shotguns shoot too much more than currently could be a bit silly. I’d probably give them like +1 mag of total ammo then re-evaluate how they’re feeling.

While I would like to be able to shoot them a bit more they’re really not a high priority candidate for buffing in my experience.

Obligatory @Elodie tag for any shotgun thread.

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I have never run out of ammos with shotguns, on veteran and on zealot (true on zealot it does not really matter). I have said it a lot of times, players don’t even try to loot the ammunitions. Yesterday I have met again a guy that wanted that I drop the ammo crate cause he was too lazy to pick all ammunitions packs I tagged (and there was a lot). Once he had moved forward for 2 meters, he never tried to return to pick ammos he did not see (it seems he was blind).
I simply ignored the “I need ammos” messages (anyways, I could not type in chat, I had the famous bug that forbids you to use the chat).
However, I agree that, when we compare with other weapons, shotguns are a little short on ammunitions. So, one more mag would not be a balance break. But more… not sure it would be a good idea.

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Thanks for the answer!

It’s fair, different opinions. But, just to explain myself better, it’s not only about Revolvers. I took it as example because the reload is similar, but if we consider the Plasma gun, any autogun, the new buffed auto-lasguns… they’re all weapon that, answering to this other post too…

…are able to inflict muuch more damage in the time a Kantrael killed one target with two bodyshot. Plus are not limited range side.

If it was only about Revolver, I could even agree, but we’re starting to talk about too many options that overshadow shotguns

Using shotguns I feel limited when there is a far target, when I have to deal with a room filled of shooters… I feel I spend a lot of time reloading. I feel I must be more accurate than using a rifle (single bullet vs pellets)!

While, with most meta weapons, I can deal the same and more damage without all these limitations

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With the exception of plasma, manstopper Kantrael (or any shotgun really) massively outdamages all those guns when shooting into density. Yes it has worse single target, that’s the trade for crazy cleave, and it really doesn’t take long to pump out two body shots per target when things are spread out and you can’t benefit from manstopper as much. Not caring about headshots is a somewhat rare luxury and makes retargeting between shots very quick.

You’re welcome to feel shotguns are lacking, to me they’re middle of the pack at absolute worst. Scaling very well with density is a very powerful trait. Regardless a small ammo bump is something we could both agree on.

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Kantrael, absolutely.
Lawbringer, I believe it could with the special, but never tested with this role.
Agri, not even in my best dreams.

Maybe we see them differently. I love them to clear a room. If you chain 10 headshots, you can kill 10 (agri with low ammo modifier) to 13 (lawbringer with 80% ammo modifier) scabs riflemen…
The agri is really good as sniping with the special. And this special can also kill a crusher, even if it does not excel against them.

Meta = OP = need to be balanced = need a nerf
So the question is if Fatshark thinks that the metas are the normal damages we should have.
If yes then you are right. They need to buff them.
If no, then an increase of ammos is enough.

But even balancing the plasma gun could be something harder. This weapon can record lot of damages when you shoot at hordes… but that will be ammo wasted. Where skilled players excel is when they position themselves to get the best of the cleave…and it is not an infinite cleave, it doesn’t even cleave at all on a crusher.
But, with the exception of man stopper on a kantrael, for me shotguns are bad with hordes. Their strength is the number of ammo in the “magazine” and their precision. You will sometimes need 2 bullets to kill an elite, but most of the time you just need one. And this is incredible to clean a room, as I said earlier.
And for me, I will disagree with @alsozara, kantrael is incredible at killing the single targets that are for me the biggest threats of the game: dreg ragers and trappers.

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I feel the problem with shotguns, given my first love was the Agripiina so I’ve done some time with them, is that they don’t put down specials and armoured targets fast enough. Sometimes even flak targets - though that might be no-hit bugs.

I know you can spec Man Stopper and Scattershot, and I know Elodie will be here any minute to say this, and yes that is fun, but it’s generally a horde thinning tool … and pretty much everything can do that, including most melee options.

I feel the current game demands you pick your melee/ranged weapon to accommodate either anti-horde or anti-armour/specials. Shotguns kinda sit between the two?

IDK necessarily how I’d change them. I think more cleave maybe on the Lawbringer. More damage on the Agrii without the reliance on the headshot finesse multiplier quite so much. And more range on the Kantrael. Basically just touch up their weak areas.

And they could all do with another 2 shells in the clip or whatever it is you call it. I’d love to see them become overpowered for a little bit, then we can tame them slightly.

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shotguns should have a common sense level of ordinary cleave so they can rebalance Man Stopper to a sensible number of hitmass reduction. I don’t disagree with it cleaving ordinarily cleave resistant units, but hitting ‘anything between origin point and the nearest wall’ is a bit bonkers when the game is still so often dumping all enemies and the kitchen sink on you in tougher scenarios.

That is my take on that, however shotguns have some gimmicky uses outside that. They just all pale to the current man stopperage, except maybe Agripina if you trust your aim enough to forgo manstopper in crowd situations for more versatile breakpoints. Like killing Gunners without loading slugs or using exe.stance.

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Others have already said plenty. You can check my posts for big huge detailed comments about shotguns from before if you like.

Shotguns aren’t as simple as just headshots, and as for slow reload and not enough dmg that’s just not even remotely true. There are other ways to build and especially for psykers after the itemization update is out, but here I’ll assume the shotties have Man-Stopper and Scattershot.

Here’s a picture from my notes to help:

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Just to make sure you know: any finesse dmg buffs (finesse = weakspot, crit, both) apply to the portion of finesse dmg only. So if a weapon does 100 base and 150 weakspot, +10% weakspot from talents etc. is only 10% of that 50. In the case of shotguns ofc. that means something like Agri with low base dmg gets almost exponentially more powerful than say Kantrael, the more of those finesse buffs you stack on top.

So ofc. it may seem like all of them but especially Agri & Lawbr are ADS & headshot guns only, but a difference as large as Kantrael’s base dmg is not so easily overtaken. More importantly there’s the issue of spread, breakpoints, and Scattershot. Hitting one mob in the head killing it & losing your Scatter stacks is a heavy price to pay, when 1-3 hip shots could’ve killed it and 10-20+ whatever elses were around too instead, each capping Scatter again and again.

This is why all 3 shotguns are much more complex than just about any other gun. You really need to use hip, ADS & specials to reach their real potential. Every shot needs to consider what comes next, whether your Scatter is stacked or not. The moment you lose Scatter, you lose crits, and when you lose crits you lose both a huge portion of their damage and that infinite cleave from Man-Stopper. And therein lies their balance.

Agri as fantastic as it is for weakspots struggles sorely with stacking Scatter bc you need those mobs in a line to hit them. Losing scatter in the middle of a fight means dealing a fraction of its potential dmg with several shots wasted until you get the cleaving crits going again. So often enough it’s better to fire through the chests of at least the front row mobs, sometimes even with hip fires despite losing a ton of dmg when it does far more overall dmg and keeps the Scatter going.

Agri’s special for example is often best used to cleave through whatever line lets you hit as many things as possible. Bc despite its fantastic CWS dmg, that pinpoint accuracy easily loses the Scatter. Yet its raw dmg is so insane it can easily kill a line of just about everything with just the crits alone. Now ofc. I’m not saying Agri isn’t a weakspot weapon, it absolutely is. But it’s not all it is.

Lawbringer specials with its perfect horizontal cleave is ideal for spread headshots. But it’s slow, does low dmg (this gets addressed in the next patch btw) and has poor range. So you’re always forced to balance between it and regular shots on a case-by-case basis. But as the hybrid between the two its hip spread is already pretty nice. So switching between spread & Scatter > ADS headshots > repeat plays a much larger role with it than Agri. Ofc the spread shots soften things up so nicely those headshots are even less important unless you’re shooting for long range.

Compared to those two Kantrael is ridiculously easy to use. A single special from about any distance always stacks Scatter on account of its spread & cleave, and its base spread is so wide it’s harder to NOT stack Scatter no matter your distance anyway. Kantrael shines specifically because it doesn’t need to care about headshots - often not even ADS -, it will still kill about everything in the general vicinity of whatever you’re pointing at. In fact, its dmg and spread is so high, and its finesse bonus dmg so low, that most times you’ll do more harm than good if you even try to go for heads. It’s part of why I like it, an easy chill choice when you just want to ram right through in a chill game. :smiley:

Anyway tldr; Yes, shotty headshots do more damage just like they do on every single other weapon. And yes, especially Agri is highly reliant on them. But shotgun’s real power isn’t whatever they do to one head. It’s about crits & cleave and how losing one means losing both. Their real priority is practically always cleave & Scatter first, heads far second. Sure, sometimes you can do both and when you can that’s your obvious best move. But almost more often than not, that’s not going to be the case.

Edit: I realized I again just yammered too much and made it too confusing. So I just want to get back to this point. →

There’s 10 specials & elite in a ball. What’s the better move:

  1. Aim for the heads, each shot killing what it hits but they only hit a few each. Meanwhile you lose Scatter, lose crits & cleave, while the mobs move to spread around or shoot you back?
  2. Just blast the middle of the ball 3x and done? Including whatever was in front or behind them too.
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No Respite Should be nerfed, and that amount of damage should just be applied to the shotguns at a base level, so you don’t feel as much between having a shotgun that works as a gun or doing something weird and interesting.

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Shotguns are in an awful place, you can show me any tables and stuff and I won’t care because in game they don’t play well. People don’t choose them over other guns and it’s not that everyone is missing on it. They underperform in comparison to other guns.

Kantrael doesn’t have enough ammo to be used consistently against hordes. And the alt fire lost all it’s value after the cleave nerf. Why would I waste ammo on a bulwark???

Agripinaa is more of a rifle than a shotgun, relies on headshots. Just use a revolver better. Why would I care about opening a bulwark with the alt fire? Wastes a bullet and I can just wait for it to attack. There’s no emergency single bulwark engagement situation where you REALLY need to open it.

Lawbringer is the only shotgun with a decent alt fire… as long as you have Flechette and Scattershot, and you are playing vet with the extra ammo… and the extra dmg on distance. And the extra crit on aiming… huh.

You know what’s funny? I like Agripinaa because it feels like a BOLT ACTION RIFLE reloading the alt fire all the time to get some value out of it.

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As I was saying, I fully respect your opinion, but this point isn’t necessarly true. Meta are just the strongest weapons… but this may be because they’re OP… or because the others weapons are bad

So in certain situations the meta weapons must be nerfed. In others situations the non-meta weapons must be buffed

In my opinion, Darktide’s case is the second one (with few exceptions)

Yep, imo that’s one of the problem. I mean, with the Zealot I can easily kill the hordes melee. While a range builded Veteran but with an anti-hordes weapon!? Dunno, at this point I build it melee and I use a weapon ables to kill specials

This without consider that shotguns have few ammo, both magazine both pool. Veteran’s aura has been nerfed. I would not waste ammo on hordes

First of all, interesting post and thanks for this deep answer

Still I can’t fully agree. If a weapon needs so badly both specific blessings and it has a so complex use, this often means the weapon has some problems

I mean, Darktide is about players’ skill, so that could seems a good thing… but nope if it’s the only so complex weapon

Specifically about Kantra, instead, you describe it like a cannon able to reap body after body… but I can assure, even in a non-so-far-mid-range, it may need THREE shells to kill a single Gunner (just to take an enemy as example). On a weapons with 10 shells. Reloaded one by one.

In the meantime of these three Kantra’s shots, with any of the meta weapons, I can kill more than one Gunner and at any range

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I loved the Launch Shotgun builds, shame. Hope to see them back!

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Please buff shotguns (i main the mk9 combat shotgun for all difficulties)

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Just to be clear here, fire shot will not go through shield, but it will set the first bulwark ablaze if it hits the shield (might be a language issue). After the bulwark rework though it’s pretty easy to shoot to the left (your left) of the shield and have it behave “normally”.

I’ve said this repeatedly, but they could have just added 50-100% more max ammo a while back might have solved the shotty issues if only till a major balancing pass could be done. Human shotguns haven’t felt good in a year.

P.S. Before someone starts talking about Kant fire shot “Infinite cleave” etc., they need to fire up some test scenarios in the grinder, with various densities and varied beefier mobs mixed in, there’s a rather large variance in the cleave and what gets hit due to pellet spread; the reality may not match expectations our outdated notions. Then redo it all with normal shots, then ADSed normals.

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and I said:

You can play with other blessings.
I have read the post also. I would not say that shotguns are limited to scattershots + man stopper.
In fact a lot of the blessings are interesting. Also man stopper works great on a veteran, less on a zealot, even if it is totally possible especially with a kantrael and scattershots.
I would not use scattershot with an agri shotgun. In fact for it, I use no respite or deathspitter + full bore (in my opinion deathspitter + full bore should be the way to go with this gun)
Hit and run and terrifying barrage are also good blessings usually. I would not use them with shotguns cause of the lack of ammos. Hit and run needs that you chain kills, terrifying barrage is good when you can arrose enemies. Both are difficult to achieve that with the shotguns and their few ammos.
Flechettes, I never liked bleed blessings. So can’t comment.
Fire frenzy… boost to the damages. Not really good in my opinion (boost of power is far better). But deathspitter + fire frenzy can be more consistant.

Kantrael is great against single targets. Great with the famous man stopper +scattershots. However, I would never use full bore on it.
Lawbringer is more a weaker agri with less finesse damages and with more ammo in magazine. For me, this gun is the weakest of this family and could get a buff.

But, if Fatshark consider the DPS of revolvers, plasma gun or void strike as what is balanced, then shotguns need absolutely a buff. And inj my opinion the buff should be MORE ammos (yes even with the last buff of the ammo pool)

Just tested with headshots, as it is what I target. Tested on scab and dreg gunner (same result for both). Precision: when you aim, you deal more damages than hipping fires.
On zealot

With agri special 1 shot
agri without special 2 shots
Kantrael 2 shots
Lawbringer 2 shots

On veteran without deadshot and without exec stance
Every gunners, every shotgun 1 shot

I was a little surprised… At first I have think it was deadshot (this is usually what I use with shotgun on veteran), but even removing it doesn’t change the result. You aim, you hit the head, they die in 1 shot.

If you hit body, this is not the same story, of course.

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Like I said I just used those blessings as an example, since they’re basically the meta. I dislike using that term with Darktide tho since there’s literally like a thousand+ ways to build, meta here is little more than what the community agrees is the easiest to make good use out of. Other blessings can work too, but they tend to be for more specialized builds.

For example No Respite (+20% dmg on staggered) actually stacks per each shot up to almost +200% dmg as long as you maintain the stagger chain. But despite how that sounds, few enemies stay alive long enough to make good use of it nvm what it does to your ammo, unless your build or team keeps applying that stagger through other means.

As for calling a weapon bad if it needs a spefic blessing or build that’s just a gross oversimplification of almost every game out there. Most games have varying degrees of high & low difficulty characters, builds & playstyles. Darktide has psykers for instance. Whether it’s the Devil’s Claw with its parry, Helbores, the Crusher, Bolt Pistol, Hammers etc. Darktide has tons of stuff that take varying degrees of extra skill to use. And then on the other end of the scale you have stuff like plasma that takes nothing, not even a build to be strong.

Variable skill & challenge makes for meaningful choices, it’s what gives a game its complexity, a meaning to discovery and learning. What makes it fun. Very few games offer a completely flat experience, and for good reason.

As a great example of all that btw: Take plasma (meta) and Agri shotty (not). Few would argue against plasma there. But take a vet with a crit build & finesse talents like Precision Strikes & Marksman’s Focus for ~+105% finesse dmg, and suddenly that Agri shotty does more dmg than plasma with the same talents, far more than plasma on its own, except the Agri has more ammo, no delay, and its special doesn’t cost 3x more ammo & a charge either. Ofc to use an Agri like that you actually need to hit those heads consistently, so it’s a lot harder to play and a lot more demanding from your build too than a plasma.

Darktide is chock full of stuff like this. It’s why I’ve stuck with it for so long. :joy:

Also for that Kantrael, if you’re shooting at a singular rager then ofc you want an ADS headshot which with most of your buffs running & that crit will absolutely shred it and knock it on its butt if not. My examples were to point out that most of the time you’re dealing with groups of mobs at once and that’s where it shines, and where headshots often don’t. 3 shots really isn’t a big deal when it kills everything in a cone.

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This was just to answer to the other users, who talked about that combo. I often use different blessings, but the feeling of something lackluster remains

I was talking about bodyshot.

About headshots, remains the style problem I was talking before… and anyway, as soon as the enemy is far, it’s almost impossible all the pellets hit the head

Then I misunderstood you, sorry, I thought you meant that combo as mandatory. I am the first to try different options. Anyway, I appreciate all the info, but I have to stick with my idea… I don’t like having shotguns designed for headshots and, about bodyshots, I find the Kantra non-competitive for the reasons already written

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