Or introduce a blessing that lets us do so. I see this has been discussed a few times over but figured I’d just slap another topic down for it again.
Shotguns are very neat in this game, with their special ammo providing a whole host of benefits and variety. But the fact you only can ever put 1 in the chamber and have to constantly reload that 1 is so incredibly slow and drops the effective use cases of them considerably. I’d love to just shove my shotgun full of incendiary rounds and have a hoard CC/clear monster, or actually be able to deal with a line of crushers because my slug shotgun is full of piercing slugs and not just a single shot that does 1/4 of their health and knocks 1 over.
If you wanted the normal shots again you’d just have to load in a few more with the reload button again too, you’d be able to still flip flop if you wanted to but just load in the ammo you prefer to have as your respective ‘primary’, and I think that would help shotguns actually feel entirely usable instead of ‘niche fun boomsticks’ but nothing really ‘meta’. Wouldn’t feel nearly as bad to have to pump 4 shots into a crusher if I could actually have those 4 shots loaded, or need 2-3 to fire into a wave to clear it but only can fire 1 at a time.
Especially now with the game being a good bit more fast paced, let me load more fun shells dang it!
That makes sense, u actually can change every round of your shotgun with special ammo, but only one by one, it would make sanse that u could load only special ammo if u want. Don’t know how it could make a real problem of it, shotting 8 rounds of special ammo with fire shotgun sounds like it should be op, but in reality i don’t think it will be a game breaking mechanic, flamethrower already exist soo i don’t see why it shouldn’t be implemented.
It will ad a layer of complexity to the weapon, replayability and “content” to the game (that for sure is in need of).
Ok so first regarding the general suggestion. Sure why not. In reality it would only make a significant difference for Agrip, for lawbringer and Kant it would mostly just make a meme funnier but no harm done there (we will get to Kant special shell in a bit lol).
As a blessing is a no go. Meta shotgun blessings are too good to pass up. No respite is like half your single target damage, full bore is pretty significant (you might give this up specifically on Agrip to load multiple special shells), showstopper mostly just enables meme builds but they pretty much don’t exist without it, manstopper same thing as showstopper. It’d have to be a base function to do much.
I’m sorry to be a Debbie downer but gotta point out special shot is the least good thing about Kant Shotty. Its primary fire is actually pretty great, reliable two shots aimed at centre mass for most specials at short to mid range, high stagger, more base cleave than the other shotguns. Fire shot is very funny and I wouldn’t want to stop anyone from letting their memes be more than dreams, but for the shotgun with the least ammo reserve/mag shooting fire shots into hordes is really not something you should be doing. Lawbringer special unironically does horde killing better these days on a manstopper setup (still not good enough/at too high a cost for it to be more than a meme though).
@gpkgpk tagging in case you have anything to add here regarding special shells.
HA! That about covers it, I keep having this “debate” almost on a daily basis now on Reddit . Fire shot spam makes me leave matches…
I personally don’t think the Kant all that great still (an all shotty issue atm) but regular shots are leagues ahead of the fire shot spam. All shotties need some lovin, I was born a shotty ho, I’d like to die a shotty ho but in their current state they make me sad; thank Sigmar for the Ripper 5.
I’d just add ADS-ing the Kant seems to really benefit it a lot, if only for chc and better spread for proccing Full Bore much more reliably it’s worth it. I’m admittedly a bit rusty with shotties as I kinda gave up on them so you should always test things for yourself in the grinder. Oh and DO check out the fire shot penetration (cleave) after last update.
Rant-ish
The Reddit crowd seems to love the fire shots, obsessing over the slow and low fire dots, parroting InFiNiTe ClEAve 2 ShOt BulWaRk (some have come around to 3 burns as if it’s better). Most perplexing perhaps, they refuse to even acknowledge the changes to fire shot penetration (cleave) since last patch.
BUT, the head banging paid off some, as I think a lot of these parroting issues stem from streamers, so when they change their minds on stuff or notice the bugs, some may come around.
Next time you sit there scratching your head as to why people still spam constant fire shots on the Kant, it’s likely because of streamers.
(I can’t generally reply to two people so @alsozara too)
Yeah, tbh I just think of it as a funny budget flamethrower if this change was implemented. Crit build so you get more flame stacks, run it with 100% crit vet or 85% crit Zealot and just kinda dump rounds into the wave for fun before swapping to your melee weapon and being ‘useful’. I just feel such a playstyle would at least not be nearly as much of a detriment if one can actually feasibly stack fire through continual shots, instead of having to constantly shove a shell in each time and watch the tiny bit of fire you applied burn awayyyyy.
No idea if it would make it meta, but as stated it’s got real nice cleave to proc scattershot with so I like it for that reason largely. I know it’s main fire will actually hit things and get rid of the specials properly but let my vet set a poxwalker horde on fire dang it, he’ll make his own ammo he’s not hurting nobody
Do appreciate the general insight though, will keep it in mind for certain. Figured the ‘spread shot’ was probably better but burning the heritics (and slug obviously can just run No Respite/Fullbore with ease to at least drop specials pretty easily, but I’d mainly still like the above just so that a crusher doesn’t make me instant mald and can actually get No Respite procs off on one with the slug).
Last time I tested (not too long ago but never take anybody’s for it) I was surprised at how much tighter the spread got on Kant for full bore when ADSing, quite handy. IIRC the low pellet and naturally tighter spread of the agri sluggy regular shots proc Full Bore at a surprising range (again ,sans slug) which adds some value. Between that and the much better min pellet count it ~trades blows with an ADSed regular shot Kant despite having a “lower” sheet dmg number.
IIRC Kant did have a really nice stagger/cleave on normals as Al mentioned.
P.S. Disclaimer: again I may be way off due to time, so hop in the grinder and compare for yourself.
thinking about it, i can’t picture any real tactical advantage to firing several of the special loads in a row.
lawbringer’s round knocks everyone on their butt so firing several in a row is wasted since they’re unable to be staggered more until they recover, angrippa’s slug is effectively just a revolver shell and if you’re building around loading a bunch of those just…take a revolver, kantrel’s fire rounds provide…honestly little to no advantage over the normal rounds to begin with.
i’m not saying it shouldn’t be done but it’s kind of pointless and WAY down on the list of things to do. most of the other weapons could use fine tuning first anyway.
I was honestly so disappointed when I learned how piddly the firebullets + Flechette were on a DoT build I was theorycrafting with Veteran. They need to deal their damage much faster.
Mostly an ‘options’ thing really, sure yeah it would just be a ‘slightly worse revolver’ at that point but ‘revolver but with the option to spread shot if needed’ would be neat, verses ‘spread shotgun that can shot a single mediocre revolver shot sometimes’
Spread shot would be more a CC tool for sure, just be able to knock over more of the wave in auric/keep them down once you do so, verses only knocking over what’s directly in front of you before needing a reload.
And yeah, fire shot would still likely be whatever, but at least you could stack more DOT more reliably verses it just being a literal meme due to not being able to keep stacking fire.
And at the end of the day I mostly bring it up due to it hopefully not being a ‘hard thing to do’. If the spaghetti code would make it difficult though then yeah can ignore it, but given you can already ‘pull out a round and place in a special one’ being able to do that multiple times doesn’t seem that far off to implement.
Flechette needs to be buffed to at least 8 stacks of bleed to be worth a blessing slot IMO. Falls just short of reliably 1 shotting all horde pierced by lawbringer special on my memey manstopper + flechette + WS Vet build (I don’t have an infested property that’d probably also do it).