Said it since launch and I will keep saying it, shotties need more reserve ammo. I don’t even understand why it seems to be so hard to add more. Not like giving 30-40 more rounds in reserve would brake the guns.
If ammo is not in the table then at least add something extra to whenever you pull the trigger, be it damage or cleave. Its just insane to me that these weapons are on the same level of ammo as bolter and are just nowhere close to it in impact.
Its the same reason I don’t really like running revolver even tough I think the weapon itself is fine and even fun to use.
I’ve seen two polar opposite opinions that I think are equally reasonable depending on where you’d like the balance of resources to be at. Obviously most seem to think shotguns have too little ammo, while I’ve seen a few argue that shotguns are the correct amount of limited in their supply and most other ranged weapons are too generous with supplies.
I’m not arguing either side here but I do think your opinion is going to depend on how ranged focused you think the game should be and how much you should have to try to actively conserve for situations that genuinely require shooting. I do see a lot of people in PUGs shoot elites I already have comfortably engaged in melee, I feel like in general a lot of people resort to shooting things way before the amount of pressure calls for it, so I’m a little sympathetic to the latter argument, but I do also feel like shotguns generally don’t have the kind of impact per shot to justify their ammo reserves.
Agrip feels pretty generous on ammo if you’re mostly using the slug, meanwhile Kantrael feels nice on Zealot where I’m mostly meleeing anyway. I do struggle to find a loadout that makes Kantrael shine but its cleave and stopping power is appreciated regardless.
Lawbringer feels the least impactful of the three, I’d definitely like to see its special shot buffed in both cleave and damage, and I would enjoy the special load animation being sped up a bit across all 3 shotguns.
Another interesting thing to note is the current wording of scattershot suggests that it might be given the ability to stack in the big upcoming patch. Assuming usual stack count of 5 this could have some interesting application with manstopper to make a shotgun with very high cleave almost every other shot (on Vet with crit chance perk, deadshot also possibly) that might open it up to be used as a genuine anti density tool.
Sorry this is kind of a disjointed ramble, I guess overall there are some shotgun improvements I’d probably rather see before just straight ammo buffs. Kant and Lawbringer I definitely wouldn’t mind seeing get a slight bump up but that certainly wouldn’t make me thrilled to play lawbringer on its own.
Based on experience with Kantreal you can just spam special ammo forever with 1 Vet on the team (or if you are the Vet) similar to how something like Rumbler works. It’s very effective.
2 special shots will kill any special apart from mutants and 3 will kill almost everything… And it fully penetrates so if there are 4 different specials coming in the middle of the horde you’ll penetrate the horde and kill them all.
Agri is skill-intensive since you do want to hit heads with the special rounds, but you can think about it as a mini plasma with more ammo and better efficiency.
I’ve seen both used to great effect with 0 ammo issues and I did use the Kantreal a few times on vet with 0 issues. Ammo dumping with normal shots is an option to clear space or stagger specials but should be used only in moderation.
The only one out is the Lawbringer, but that’s just a weak weapon with weak numbers and bad special ammo. Ammo is not the issue of the weapon the low damage number is (even in close quarters).
Something like +20 shots would be a start but I think they should increase them to the next breakpoint for getting additional ammo back from the veteran aura.
Lawbringer basic shots actually are pretty good, especially if you account for no-respite. Its only two issues are low ammo pool and special shell loading too slowly to benefit from blessings while also doing far too low cleave and damage especially on infested.
All shotguns have normal shots pretty good.
I love my Kantrael shotgun with man stopper on my veteran…
The issue of shotguns is clearly ammo reserve, like for revolvers. You have to pay too much attention to your reserves when you play with these weapons… at contrary of a boltgun, braced autogun etc.
I don’t think that a massive boost is needed, but a 20% increase for shotgun and 25% for revolver would be nice.
I think that’s the main issue with the weapon apart from the not-so-good close-range damage. Special shells load super slow and blessings that seem to be made for it (Cleave on crit and bleed) are neither impactful enough nor consistent. At least it has a damn good stagger.
I tried to make it work several times on Vet and played around it with Zealot, but newer Shotguns just make it kinda redundant.
Man stopper is great… try to use it using a kantrael shotgun on a veteran with a critic template.
It works great, but… you can run out of ammos fast if you don’t pay attention.
Flechette… won’t talk about that. Any blood blessing / infernus seems, as damage dealer, a waste of time. Of course bleed for a zealot critic template can be something good, but I must say I have been never impressed by such blessings. So, can’t talk about that.
I generally run mine with flak and unarmored as perks and it can one or two tap shooters pretty well out to decent ranges. Its not that far below a boltgun in raw damage. No respite takes it over the edge on a lot of targets. But it really just careens through its ammo pool consdiering the frequency that it twotaps instead of 1 taps. And yeah, we’re in alignment on special shell.
For Lawbringer: it is precise and deals average damages. I tend to use it with no respite + full bore or a damage boost blessing
For Agri: no respite + full bore
Kantrael: I told it, my prefered is man stopper + no respite on a veteran. However, I use it on my zealot and then I use no respite + damage bonus blessing.
All shotguns are pretty solid, and not just cause of their special. However, they just lack ammo reserve. Off course, an agri has a great special that permits to one shot a sniper at 65 meters. But the non special are not bad. Also, we cannot think about a weapon with saying “if you spam special”, especially a ranged weapon.
But, even the special of the lawbringer could be useful, if we had more ammo. This is great to permit your team to regroup and can eliminate lines of horde. However, you cannot use this gun to eliminate an entire horde or you will run out of ammo. So, you shoot one or two special shells and start to use your melee weapon (sidenote: man stopper on a kantrael with a vet is better at this role than the special of lawbringer).
