What a great opportunity to adjust the shotguns with upcoming Arbites update.
First off, all shotguns should get significantly more base cleave. Also, with all combat shotguns, holding special ability should allow more special rounds to be loaded, up to 25% (rounded up) of the normal magazine capacity.
Agripinaa
Precise: Full choke, tightest spread, the highest cleave and damage of combat shotguns. Special Attack: Loads a rifled slug shell that has high Accuracy, Stagger and Damage against a single target. - Basically it needs to be Zarona Mk Ila Stub Revolver damage and cleave at long range with minimal recoil.<
Lawbringer/Zarona
Close Quarters: Widest spread of the combat shotguns. Great for crowd control. Special Attack: Loads the weapon with one special shell that gives next shot wider horizontal spread pattern and highest Stagger of all shotguns. Great for knocking an incoming group of Ragers on their butts.<7
Accatran
Spreadshot: Medium spread, great for horde clear. Special Attack: Loads an incendiary round that applies 8 stacks of Burning to all enemies hit.
Crucis
Boom Cannon: More range, tighter spread. Crucis should have the best cleave, stagger and damage of the shotguns within it’s effecive range. Special Attack: AP slugs. Loads 2 rounds that apply 40% Rending to the next 2 attacks or single attack if ADS.
Shotguns should be absolutely devastating at close range, yet they hit about as hard as a wet fart. Which isn’t great seeing as Nurgle will just revel in it.
I’m not sure how much cleave manstopper gives exactly, but it seems pretty enormous.
I strongly agree shotguns need more base cleave (current cleave is pathetic). Ideally enough to cleave a squishy human sized elite like gunners.
I do think giving manstopper cleave as base is way way too much. Manstopper can still exist for funny rail canon shotgun builds, but base cleave should probably be somewhere around double barrel, or bare minimum revolver for manstopper to not be a mandatory blessing.
Yeah man stopper lifts cleave stop completely, definitely overkill. But 2.0 hitmass is awful, and only the Kantrael has this the others have even less; buff it to 4.0 (double_cleave). This is still 2.5 less hitmass than the Zarona…maybe make the Kantrael have 6.5 hitmass too because its range is still pathetically short (not even 8m of max damage). If a ranged weapon can only perform alternatively to melee at least make it a monster there.
Just more ammo and ability to load more than one special shot is enough for me tbh.
Also they probably will buff its in Arbites patch anyway since it’ll have to compete with the new one, or well, knowing FS they might just do nothing and leave it to collect dust.
There’re so many shotgun thread poping up lately though, you should just bump some of the old one and keep all suggestions in one place instead.
Special ammo: that should just be a toggle button imo. Loading one at a time makes it clunky.
The damage profiles feel wrong to me. On a base non-blessed profile - and at ranges relevant to the model - one shot should be one kill on anything non-elite. Maybe shotguns just need higher crit chance?
The “ADS” element: could actually be the reverse for the Lawbringer for example. You don’t zoom in on RMB, you zoom “out” - i.e. wider. Then you can use the special ammo for whatever; stun, bleed, blind… the world is a slimy wet mollusc.
Yeah it needs spread reduction. The Crucis is already limited heavily by it’s ability to only hold two rounds compared to the combat shotguns. Crucis should be more like this, with the AP slug special shot loaded against Scab Ragers, Maulers:
And like that against regular unarmoured Elites without the slugs.
Went up to a crusher with, point blank head shots…
Several reloads later it finally drops. Funny how a ds only takes two lmao.
Anyway, not sure what the solution is.
Maybe have just two shotguns. One slug, high armour pen, maybe go through a target or two and accurate at distance, the other buckshot almost no armour pen, but great at hordes and no armour squishy stuff, at close range, with a small stumble effect, but pointless at anything at distance.
Get rid of the special shot, gimmick, and replace it with some really cool and unique blessings.
That is the solution - Agripinaa with up to 4 rifled slug rounds loaded, capable of Carapace armor penetration. If they did away with special ammo and just made Agripinaa single target focused with high pen slug rounds that would work too.
God, I want the Double Barrel to be viable so badly. I’m running it now, but I can’t realistically take it into Havoc—for obvious reasons. It’s just way too ammo-inefficient, and when you’ve got something like the Bolter, there’s honestly no reason to pick a shotgun. The Bolter does everything better—more range, more control, and it’s way more forgiving on ammo.
They really should take advantage of the Doom: The Dark Ages hype and finally make the Double Barrel feel like a true super shotgun. It’s so close—it just needs a bit more love to become a real powerhouse in close-range combat.
