I have a genuine question to people who have played with the different kinds of shotguns extensively on other classes. Personally, I do enjoy Scrier’s Gaze Gun Psyker alot. I combine it with empowered Brain Rupture. This has been my go to Auric Damnation build for quickplays with randoms for several hundred hours. I love the versatility, the fast paced gameplay and the relatively high skill ceiling.
Usually I melee lots of times, snipe elites within mixed hordes and /or far away hard to reach specials with my brain rupture. The gun is used for close quarter burst damage against elites and - if necessary - to counterfire gunners/shooters.
Both the Columnus Mark V as well as the Accatran Laspistol have served me well in this regard. The one excells at burst damage over a prolonged time, the other scales really well with crits.
As you know, part of the upcoming patch is psyker gaining access to 3 more shotguns. I’m really looking forward to test them out because they fit my gun’s role in my favourite build (roughly described above) kinda well.
I’ll probably use true aim in combination with Man Stopper and Scattershot Blessings. True aim for that guaranteed crit shot when switich from melee to ranged and Scattershot / Man Stopper to further have (almost) guaranteed crits regardless of whether I go for headshots or bodyshots - especially when Scrier’s Gaze is active.
So my question is: Which of the four Shotguns do you personally think performs the best and why? What perks do you think are the most beneficial? Flak Armored seems to be mandatory, however, the assault shotgun Hacker strangely might actually benefit alot from +10% reload speed. What other concepts / thoughts am I missing?
Also… what usage do the different special ammos of the shotguns have?
Probably my last hope for the Lawbringer. Perhaps the finesse boost and slight damage top up from DD will let the Lawbringer function without some terrible gimmick involving Marksman Focus (on THIS ammo starved reload experience its memey, it is good normally) and/or Executioner Stance. Though being able to ‘use your melee’ again and still loop EXE sounds maybe worth another look.
Generally for man-stoppering you want more big damage and just high spread. This is why Kantrael and Ironhelm sit at the top of everyone’s recommendations for exploiting that interaction. The other shotguns are more like rifles than anything, with stagger over damage on hipfire and non-headshot hits (and the stagger on the weak birdshot Agrip uses is even less, its headshots or bust for that one). The Kantrael/Ironhelm will also cleave decently when they don’t crit, and even if you aim with Kantrael. The other 2 shotguns go from weak cleave to almost no cleave profile by aiming.
Kantral is my favorite. The special fire rounds have near infinite cleave which I believe triggers scattershot for near gauranteed crits on the next shot. Can take flacette to also get bleed stacks.
Agrippa is nice since you have a shotgun and a sniper bullet basically in one, with on a Psyker with BB the value there is a bit less.
The ironhealm could be a close range beast with Scrier’s gaze. And then you have BB to compliment it.
I have a nice Scrier’s gaze build with BB that I also enjoy because of how flexible it can be. It’s like a Swiss Army knife of options.
Shotgun base crit for psykers is 22.5% (7.5% class, 5% passive, 5% aura, 5% gun base), → 42.5% with Scrier’s, → 102.5% Scattershot maxed. You get 47.5% with just Scrier’s + perk, so almost half your shots are going to crit regardless of where you hit. And then ofc. there’s True Aim on top.
So psykers do a LOT of crits. On top of that, they get up to +30% finesse dmg from Scrier’s, and +30% crit / +37.5% weakspot dmg from DD. To a total of max 67.5% weakspot and +60% crit dmg (which means +67.5% crit weakspot dmg). Because finesse dmg only affects the base finesse portion, and the other shotties do up to massive extra dmg on ADS finesse hits, the Hacker quickly falls far, far behind.
To summarize the shotties in a table (flak dmg):
Weapon
Base
Weakspot
(+67.5%)
Crit
(+60%)
Critical Weakspot
(+67.5%)
Hacker
842
994
1096
994
1085
1095
1265
Kantrael - hip
653
849
981
849
966
980
1200
Kantrael - ADS
653
947
1145
947
1123
1143
1473
Lawbr - hip
440
572
661
572
651
660
809
Lawbr. - ADS
440
757
971
757
947
968
1324
Lawbr. - Special
350
665
878
665
854
875
1229
Agri. - hip
354
545
674
545
191
673
319
Agri. - ADS
354
750
1018
750
988
1016
1463
Agri. - Special
665
1330
1779
1330
1729
1796
2559
Since we get a ~50% crit rate with Scrier’s + Man-Stopper & Scattershot + True Aim (which can be re-stacked on each consecutive shot even), realistically well over half our shots will crit. And they have to anyway, to make use of Man-Stopper & all those bonuses anyway.
Hacker
It has 62 ammo total and basically instantly falls behind even Kantrael’s dmg (which has 68 ammo, way bigger clip, way more range, and the special)
Hacker is NOT a good crit weapon, which is a shame given how powerful Man-Stopper & Scattershot are, but in the Hacker’s case they barely add any dmg, just that cleave
Kantrael
Strong as always and the definitive close range option
Even if its finess bonus dmg isn’t that remarkable, it’s good enough with its high base dmg and that spread & special makes it super easy to stack Scatter
Psykers can also expect to make more use of the special with some interesting burn + Soulblaze AoE combos, especially if the new + non-Warp dmg & ranged dmg talents & buffs benefit DoT’s. And they probably do.
Agri
Benefits the most from all that bonus dmg, but isn’t a good match for Scatter outside of cleave bc. of its low spread. Still, makes for the best long ranged option and that special certainly gives psykers some unprescedented ammo efficiency.
Lawbringer
Now this is where it gets really interesting!
Lawbringer actually does really nice dmg with enough of those finesse buffs, and since it’s a hybrid between Agri & Kantrael it’s good for both melee & mid+ range
But normally it suffers at really long ranges, except psykers have Assail & BB
But the best thing by far with Lawbringer is its special!
The special fires a cone of pellets in a perfectly horizontal line. You can easily cleave 20 heads per shot in a mob. And psykers have True Aim!
Which means we don’t even need Scattershot to do back-to-back crits! And even without True Aim, we still have that ~50% crit rate!
Which means we can uniquely pair Man-Stopper with anything else from Power & dmg blessings to Flechette!
Imagine firing massive spread cones of autocrit infinite cleave Flechettes back-to-back, each with all that bonus finesse dmg, with the DoT’s themselves getting a ton of extra dmg from the rng bonuses too
So yeah. I think Lawbringer is going to be the new thing. And I think it will be so insane they’ve either nerfed something day-1, or will follow up with appropriate nerfs soon.
Another thing I would note however is that psykers can also do a quasi-Weapons Specialist vet thing. Illisi & Scrier’s & DD is already an incredible match and makes for some insane melee psykering, while stacking True Aim in an instant. Which offers another way to get those crits off without Scattershot. So another thing I can’t wait to try is all that with Agri & Assail, with the sword & Assail clearing most of everything on their own, with the Agri offering a more ammo-efficient & infinicleave alternative to a Revolver for the biggies.
Thank you very much for that reply. A delightful read indeed
To prepare for this patch and my shotgun psyker adventures I started playing with shotguns on veteran. I must admit I have blatantly ignored those weapons until now. Shame on me.
I got a decently rolled Kantrael and a good Lawbringer. I enjoyed them both. Lawbringer is surprisingly versatile - I wasn’t expecting it being so decent at “sniping” stuff mid range ADS. lol
Welp.
After reading your reply, I guess I have to roll a good Agripinaa yet To test out that slugshot special. Thing is, my Scrier’s Gaze Psyker can hold his ground in melee against hordes well enough with lots of different weapons. I ended up using Chainswords because I just enjoy the gameplay flow of them the most haha. But I digress.
In my playstyle I do use guns mainly against packs of elites within trashmobs - in moments where I feel me and/or my team are being overwhelmed in melee and brain rupture just is too slow/too dangerous to use. I have a feeling that Agripinaa might well be better than I first thought to play that role. Your comparison with the revolver made me thinking. As I said, I have zero experience with agripinaa and always thought it to be bad xD
I must now continue my hunt for T3 and T4 shotgun blessings on my Vet to not have to grind too many hours with my Psyker when the patch drops : )
Its a shame that the Hacker seems underwhelming. I have a kinda good one already in my possession and I got another one with a godlike base stats roll waiting to be freely modified. I played a couple of rounds with this Shotgun on my Psyker already. It just performs subpar to other options. But damn… its so much fun . Maybe Hacker gets a buff somewhen in the future, who knows. One can dream. But I heard weapon specialist Vets can make it perform very well so there’s that.
All I’m going to say, unless they genuinely rebalance Man-Stopper, and frankly few other blessings/talents, the September patch is going to introduce LOLance, not balance.
Hey if my game will load I want to try out this build for auric today I gonna have to farm shotgun blesssings for a bit but can you give me a link to the build youve found works the best.?
Fire up the mods and go test it in the grinder, anything resembling “infinite” (when it actually was) is long outdated.
Test with various scenarios and observe, both static and attacking mobs, trash, mixed, elites etc. More massive mobs in the mix drastically change expected outcome. Throw in some bruisers, ragers etc.
For even more fun, throw in some bulwark in the mix, then shoot the first one. Hit it first dead on , then slightly to your left. Repeat all test many times.
My first thoughts before and after reading everyone’s replies, including the shared stat charts as well, my karkin brain comes to these hypotheses:
With Scriers Gaze and Disrupt Destiny, these effects on each shotgun getting increased crit damage makes for each shotgun emphasize its role
the go-to for a whole combination of DoT procs is the Kantrael with Flechette and Manstopper. As it opts in to wield & yield for crits & crit builds
Fire Special Incendiary Shell: Burn DoT
Flechette bleed stacks on Critical Hit (DoT)
Manstopper: Increased Cleave on Critical Hit and gain +10-25% Ranged Attack Stagger
Note: I believe they are going to introduce T3 and T4 versions of Flechette and Manstopper, so there may be higher “xx% Ranged Attack Stagger”, so maybe Tier 3 gets 30-35% and Tier 4 gets 35-40 or 50% ?
The Lawbringer with Manstopper and Scattershot comes to mind with getting those sweet headshots using its Special round with the horizontal spread, procs stagger on crits, and in general hitting those crits makes for horde and special clearing
Agrippina with Manstopper and Scattershot seems great for singling out and handling Specialists. The Special Solid Slug Shell further bolsters the role. I am curious to see if it works just as effectively to handle Elites.
Already have played with Ironhelm Hacker Shotgun on Psyker, it was fun, I just found myself using it in some lower difficulty fun missions like Atoma Heresy. Mostly since I have tended to use Columnus Infantry Autogun or Recon Lasgun for gun psyker.
I also listed things in the order of what I want to try 1st, 2nd and 3rd Respectively heh
I want to see first what I can do with a Kantrael Mk IX Combat Shotgun the most obviously, yet really excited to see what happens when the charted stats show which combat shotgun in-action is going to be the top boom for buck!
Zaro-Lawbringer Shotgun is totally back on Psyker. The reload talent is tailor made for top up weapons, and the cleave scaled on peril makes it brutal on hordes with the special shot and psyker’s various finesse/damage scalings (I’m pretty sure the Lawbringer special is like 1.9x). I was pretty letdown by Kantrael here by comparison, but that’s more because that weapon is already disappointing outside close range and there’s less to round it out with Psyker than Zealot (throwing knives fly a lot farther than assail darts and brain burst is still fart).
