I know all about those weapon’s quirks and downsides and I know they’re viable-ish in Damnation, but, what’s their intended purpose in the game?
What do they do and do they do what they do any good?
Bonus question: what do you want a shotgun to do?
Like I can pretty much pin-point my disappointment with them by expecting both to be comparable to Vermintide’s grudge-raker and blunderbuss, but that’s definitely not the case and I’m fairly certain now i don’t want or need that since we’ve got flamers, autoguns, heavy stubbers, and grenade launchers bringing all the horde clearing action I could want.
Kickback just needs some more range to shine. As it is, there is not much point to take it instead of whatever else and giving him more ranged utility would help with that I think.
Lawbringer is fine for a veteran with the right reload perks except for the alt fire which should have a way stronger effect to make it interesting as a whole. Could also use a bit of a damage boost maybe.
It could probably have an interesting variation of the gun too for people who don’t like its tight shot grouping.
The Lawbringer is quite good fun as a zealot, but I do admit I’d like to see a different special attack (Like a Solid Slug bullet for Anti Armour, Flechette for ranged, Flare or Fire Canister), either as new pattern (When weapon acquisition is changed)
For the Kickback, it’s just bad in itself, the shotgun should be reworked somewhat, honestly Id have the melee attack as the primary action, brace to be able to shoot, and special action to change the bullet (Either as a switch, like changing weapon state to either Steel Core or to normal Slugs, but either only working after reloading a slug, maybe changing state and then reloading will exchange the bullets)
i like the combat shotgun , ive even used it on vet as main dps weapon it is versatile , both the choke and duck shot are fine, the hip fire i do think is lacking in spread and damage .
and the kickback is unfortunately my go to ogre weapon. which i think says more about the sad state of his ranged arsenal than its quality, if it was given a better reload system it would be pretty good , like a 6 round drum or something
Lawbringer is decent, if you are interested in stagger…Admittedly I never brought it to Heresy or Damnation games, there are just far better options for horde clear, stagger and elite killing and I NEVER use flamethrower as its beyond OP.
Kickback is just terrible. The reload time and ammo count alone kills that weapon. So does damage type. It could be decent if it had alternative ammo type like slug for at least good flak armour damage and good range one hit one kill potential on some elites.
Still no reliable weapon for agryn against carapace (you need 4 nades from gauntlet to kill crusher and even 5-6 sometimes).
Kickback is terrible, 0 damage against carapace and no damage past 5 meters…
His bolter is weak against carapace too when vets’ and zealots’ are very efficient against it.
Heavy stubber is not that great.
Only viable weapon is gauntlet and I personally don’t like primary is a melee attack… and only 4 nades… like vet and zealot can have great melee and range weapons, but ogryn must have sh*tty weapons…
I run LB with Vet on Damnation, I can tackle everything (including snipers) except maulers(carapace).
Perks for Lawbringer
1 shot will knock off a dog pounch
can knock down carapace maulers
-Shreds rager/flak rager
can 2 tap snipers at 40+ meters (its busted, dont tell FS)
-highly accurate
-can bottleneck horde at choke
-staggers gunners, allowing you to close distance and stop them from firing
The main difference between the GR and LB for me is you have to be near point blank for GR and the LB can pick targets at a distance. The Lawbringer hits different. cringe
The GR is closer to the Kickback. I would be interested to try the kickback if its value it brought up to the GR.
Finding out its limits.
For me, when approaching or trying out a weapon, it’s not about what you want the weapon to do its finding out what the weapon is capable of.
Yeah, this part rings true. One of the reasons why I don’t use knives much, as Ogryn has no good anti-armour ranged weapons. I’m stuck with Power Maul and Bully Club.
I really want to like Shovel, but it doesn’t deal well with dense hordes. Light attacks lackr cleave and dps is poor also. Heavy attacks aren’t as good as on Power Maul and Bully Club.
Good DPS vs. Maniac, Flak Maniac, Hound, Bulwark back
Average DPS vs. Mutant
Pellet spread is reasonably tight during ADS to reasonably long range
Good Stagger
Extremely bad Ammo Efficiency (22k damage all shots fired; avg weapon is usually about 44k)
This makes it a very good Zealot pairing with Turtolsky, which clears horde like a lawmower but is bad against most other stuff mentioned above. It does leave your one weakness as Crushers, but they can generally be dealt with once all those other targets are killed.
It’s not the best pairing, as I still think Braced AGs are slightly better (they tend to be slightly worse against Maulers, but better against everything else).
What would I want shotguns to do?
Currently “chainsaw” weapons get a big bonus against fleshy enemies (mutants, bulwark backs, etc).
To me Shotguns fit that same vibe and should be huge damage against those targets.
On the flip side I’d then expect them to be slightly worse against all types of armor (still reasonably good against Flak targets, but not as good as it is now)
Kickback specifically I need to try the new changes first, but my previous suggestion was giving it Power Maul style Suppression where just firing the thing provides a minor stagger in front of your shotgun (because let’s face it: the barrel is large enough to fit your enemies’ puny heads inside). That alone means that every time you fire, you get this suppression effect allowing you to fire a bit more safely (though it shouldn’t be magically 100% safe just by holding down the trigger). But I really just need to play with the very significant buffs with it before weighing in, because maybe they found some other great place for it.
Kickback is a lot better but cleave limit still ruins it (you can one shot Dreg ragers with it, but target 2 will take like no damage). I think that is probably what this thing needs to shine, if they want it to be usable. Meanwhile it gets scuffed to like 900 max damage by flak? However it does incredibly good unyielding damage. I was 2 shotting Damnation Reapers with it when I threw on Heavyweight which still isn’t fixed lol. Get point blank and its 2000 damage.
Been running Kickback today (along with most of the other Ogryn’s I ran into).
I want to say the extra range/damage on it is noticeable. The lack of cleave makes me want to use this as an anti-elite weapon and maybe that’s the way to go given how it has the stagger power of a bus.
Shotguns in general just aren’t particularly good in any niche. I’m not entirely certain what to do to make them shine, barring classes specifically designed for close range gunplay. Kickback might be better after the buffs (Though I still don’t really see a purpose to it over another option personally), and the combat shotgun is a solid “Eh” tier. If you want it as a ranged option there’s better choices, and if you want it as a stumble weapon the revolver does it better IMO. It can still be fun to run just because pewpewshotgun empty head no thoughts only G U N but it definitely needs something to feel better.
The weapon special for the combat shotgun is the biggest standout to me in terms of “Why does this exist?” though. Making it apply a stack or two of bleed or some such would add some synergy while giving it a bit of added utility against ogryn enemies. Knock them on their butt while they bleed out. Perhaps give it innate rending/brittleness on hit instead. Soften them up as you approach and then execute them while they’re downed. Something to synergize with its stumble instead of the stumble just being there. Just tossing out off the cuff ideas.
Shotgun seems average.
It suffers that it can hit precisely something not close, something it should not be able to do (irl, shotgun are not precise like that and such weapon should have a spread mecanism)…
But, in the game, its main problem is the number of ammo
With this weapon, you become toxic for your team. The number of ammo you get is too low to make this weapon a real alternative to several things more efficient. The direct opponent is the bolter. Better damages, piercing bullets, more ammo in the mag, auto fire or / bullet per bullet, precise… The shotgun is really a bad choice if we compare both.
That’s actually a great callout, thanks! For some reason I missed how bad ammo efficiency is on it (22k damage all shots fired, and the worst weapons are 11-22k and the average weapon is 44k or so).
Definitely makes it bad for general use, though my Zealot uses it only rarely (basically only against special/mauler/maniac), so probably it’s not too bad if used like that.
