Since Double-barrel Shotgun is coming, we could think about shotguns' balance

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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(at the bottom of the text, I added a simpler solution, but let me dream)

Normally, when we think about a double-barrel shotgun, we are talking about a weapon with poor versatility, short range (mainly if sawed-off), very few ammunition in the barrel (just two shells, of course)… but with devastating power to compensate for the other cons

And I’m okay, but that makes even more important discuss about the current Combat Shotguns

Honestly, to me, they already are just weak :confused:… but I wrote “even more important” because with the Double-barrel arrival, for the purpose of variety and game balance, to differentiate themselves from the new shotty, Fatshark should make versatility their strong point

Relatively low damage is fine, it’s ok having to use even a couple of extra shells to kill a single enemy, as long as they are versatile and fast weapons

This is unfortunately not the case. Their biggest disadvantage lies in the small ammo capacity and especially in having to reload one shell at a time. This, coupled with the need to spend even three shells on a single enemy, kills the weapon. Besides being weak, imo it’s frustrating and boring because you spend more time reloading than shooting/playing

In my opinion, the best way to balance the Combat Shotguns and to give them a niche, is to add the magazines… which can be “box” type, the classic ones most weapons use:

Box Magazine
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Or drum mag, often seen on shotguns:

Tamburo
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This would allow the gameplay to be more fun and most importantly allow them to be versatile weapons for real

Moreover this would allow too for greater differentiation between the Combat Shotguns

For example, the Lawbringer, a shotgun with less damage than the Kantrael and less accuracy than the Agripinaa, designed more for crowd control (think about its special shell), could be equipped with a drum magazine (and a larger pool of ammo) to fit even more precisely into the crowd control sub-niche

Whereas, shotguns with higher damage like the Kantrael, or great accuracy like the Agripinaa, could be equipped with a standard box magazine

Last thing! I would like to point out that, adding a magazine, does not conflict with their “special ability” to insert a single special shell, because it can also be inserted sideways:

special shell
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Obviously this would require work to developers. I wanted to dream, but for me Fatshark could also buff them in more simple ways:

  • more damage?
  • the ability to reload more shells at a time without changing the animation (our character inserts one shell but it counts for 2-3)?

The important thing, however, is that they do not remain as now

Thanks for reading! :heart:

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I think the only changes shotguns need are the following:

  1. They need to do something about the minimum pellet mechanics + ADS changing how the weapons function. These things are too esoteric and partially untestable in the psykhanium. If you don’t specifically read about it I doubt you will ever figure out what a minimum pellet count is, or that ADS changes it and your cleave on the shotguns. Despite that those mechanics are integral to actually using the shotguns to the intended effect.

  2. They have 2 extremely strong blessings that are only available at T2, meaning you are mostly locked out of them at level 30 (since blessing tiers are tied to wep rating and wep rating is tied to char level). There’s like a tiny tiny chance you roll a t2 blessing but actually getting this to happen ingame AND for the blessing you want isn’t realistic.

If they were to fix these two things shotguns would be a lot more “accessible” and anyone could make good use of them, not just people sweaty/dedicated enough to actually research the mechanics and available blessings online. They are already pretty strong as is with these 2 things in consideration, so just straight up buffing them would make them OP.

As for the upcoming double barrel I think it’s not going to be very comparable to the current shotguns and instead it’ll just be a kickback lite. Kickback also has minimum pellet count/ADS mechanics, but they matter less on it because it’s just OP as hell to begin with.

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Lawbringer is another 3 mark loser; it really has nothing to do with being bad per se, its just becomes bad through comparison. I have yet to find a single weapon archetype defying this, at best 2 weapons are decent. Even in the case of very strong weapons there’s that awkward contender with no strengths of its own, like shotguns here.

I keep throwing down that the Kantrael and Agrip are near the top if not adjacent to it in range category. Its really hard for me to take the idea of a weapon with huge stagger, potential to kill every specialist and light gunhand in one hit and swap instantly as irrelevant and needing of huge buffs to function. The game is just too fast paced to actually reward all these stupid guns based around headshots, unless they have a very strong sustained damage like Columnus or Lucius. Shotguns come into their own playing a melee heavy play style and I wouldn’t want to see that changed around spending the entire game reloading. And swapping to magazine mechanics would limit the ability for people who do like this play style to have access to that quick on demand stagger if they like.

Basically I think they would need to look at dumb mechanics, like ADS cleave, and even then be pretty minimal. Kantrael is supposed to have that as an advantage after all with no blessings. They’re pretty good already, Lawbringer just stopped existing with the ammo changes (it was pretty decent on WS/BP builds respectively for crit gimmicks, but needing a lot of ammo to do so).

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I too hope for some changes. The Agri was my zealot favourite for ages, well until the Zarona Pistol took over its role almost entirely.

When I think of a long barreled shotgun, in my mind it’s not for crowd control. It’s so that I can hit a single target at “centre of mass” with huge amounts of impact (or damage, depending on armour). Seeing regular gunners get back up again afterwards, sometimes twice if I’ve admittedly clipped a limb, is just … gah :roll_eyes: .

The double barreled shotgun could be what the lawbringer is trying to be. A sawn off variant? But even now when I think about the weapons we have in game, do I need a 4th shotgun type? If each is supposed to fulfill a specific role, then what are we missing from the other 3 that refining the mechanics couldn’t solve? We’ve got long, we’ve got short, we’ve got wide. Do I want a kickback-lite? Not really; it’s an Ogryn weapon and I can’t imagine a ‘lite’ version being much cop in comparison.

They were “brave” enough to completely redefine the surge staff; why not do that with the lawbringer and save us having to level another mark?

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This has been slapping:

wh40kDTshot
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The secondary fire things youve staggered kills quickly (this works on the fire shotty too) but even normal fire staggers most things esp with carapace and flak perks but overall both are still VERY lacking vs bulwarks, crushers and muties.

It rips maulers apart in 4 w/secondary or 5 hip shots, just aim center mass.

shottymauler

It helps I love the reload style. I do think they should reload a tad quicker and a touch extra dmg would be nice, then imo it would excel! The range is kinda obscene with little need to aim properly just ads and spray.

Here Im about as far back as the arena will allow, I miss the first shot, kill the sniper on the second and fire a third because I suck! Iv reloaded by the end of the gif.

Shotty

Even bad luck or snipers etc peeking from cover kills.

My t3 blessing FireFrenzy isnt great although it helps sometimes I guess but meh, I dont have any other blessings that would be better yet. Im gonna change that so if anyones got suggestions Id love feedback.

Id say its mostly in a good place. The shotguns are deffo great just not amazing. They are quite all round and have a good niche I think.

Id love to see other peoples shottys and get some ideas too.

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Here’s a montage of my better Shotties on my Zealot. I have some on vet, just as good, but I feel as though the shotgun is just right for the Zealot style. I’ve highlighted what I probably would use in each of the variants, but I’ve some room for crafting as you can see.

image
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I used shotfuns pretty consistently from ooh, Feb-23 ish (post flamer nerf) through to maybe just before patch 12 in the summer. Post patch 13, I felt it suffered as it’s penetration on carapace and flak is lacking. Five shots from ten in total is not a very efficient way of tackling an armour pack.

I did like the Agri sniper shot though. Obvs the pistol feels just better right now.

*edit
In terms of play style; I almost always default to an ADS shot (ingrained since Counterstrike days!). Using the lawbringer was a bit of a style change as that’s better from the hip in many ways, esp the one highlighted. But I find dumping a load of enemies on the floor makes them harder to kill, so predominantly I use(d) the shotties for chain killing a group of shooters.

It feels like there’re fewer of those these days though, well - at shotgun range. I am noticing mobs of gunners at 100m raking fire down of late, but that’s a different problem!

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I’ll give you this, buddy, you’re right when you say you’re dreaming.

What you’re asking is that Fatshark decides to completely replace assets that have already been completely finished and which work entirely perfectly because the numbers those assets are attached to are a little too low.

Perhaps they could just spend a few minutes changing a couple of numbers.

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I do agree. Headshots on pistol just rip thru anything the game has to offer.

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I vote it as a win if you’d elect to use one of the most powerful weapons in the game over it. I mean, you didn’t even mention the absolute swamp of terrible primaries veteran/zealot have access to. Shotguns were the better options on your list still.

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I like the idea of a magazine fed shotgun but I just wanna say that the reason you can’t insert a round directly into the chamber on other magazine fed firearms is because it immediately jams the gun when the slide moves back and it tries to feed in a fresh round from the magazine into the full chamber

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The way it was written seems like the double barrel shotgun will be for ogryn - along with the two handed weapons and if correct it’s probably going to be two kickbacks welded together

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nah we cheated and we saw it in all its glory with weapon customization mod minus the break open animations obviously. it is for humans.

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Gotcha thanks!!

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O lawd. You’re paining me deep into my bones with some things you’ve said.

That image you posted is a drum fed shotgun… Oh it’s a drum… in a sense but it’s more or a fixed rotary magazine, but it’s on one of the worst shotguns in history. The street sweeper. The best part is that it isn’t detachable.

Anyway, you bring up a really great point about shotguns and that is what you misnamed “side loading”. It’s actually called breach loading, and it’s been done really well in a lot of games in ways that make sense, killing floor 2 for example - also rainbow 6 siege nailed it hard. If you are down to zero shells this should be the loading method, as it is faster than loading one into the tube and then racking the forend.

Skip to the shotguns, there are some well done animations for almost all of them.

Mathematically the loading animation for the special shell is kind of a mindf*ck. If your gun is fully loaded, let’s say 7+1, you are magically able to jam in an 8th shell in the tube and then cycle the action to load it since it would be next in line… But only in that instance. It’s like your character knows you have room for one more shell, but refuses to load it.

Over all shotguns are mostly well done I feel, especially aesthetically, and the feel. But they could always be better.

I really feel like fat shark needs to normalize ammunition across all of the shotguns and add penetration as a stat to them instead. It’s really weird that conceptually the better your ammunition stat gets the longer your magazine tube becomes.

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Full Bore is probably better than Fire Frenzy unless you can somehow keep up 3+ stacks of Fire Frenzy. Close Combat range was also accidentally nerfed to 8m several patches back and Fatshark doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to revert it back to 15m, so FF might not be doing anything at all depending on how you play.

Another decent one could be Manstopper if you’re running a crit build or have a way to garuntee a crit. Getting the slug shot to crit and cleave is pretty hilarious.

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Aye, I know of that one :frowning:

I do like to stick the shotty up close. Iv made another version with full bore. Its pretty decent!

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Hmmm.
Shotguns probably shouldn’t have penetration? Relative velocity and mass and all that?

Probably would have stagger. Not cleave. Yes to Native bleed. Yes to High crit chance.

But tbh, I’m not actually that fussed about accurate mechanics other than it should put a dreg down in a shot. :wink:

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My relation with IRL guns is limited to conscription (being from a 3rd world cesspool), but shouldn’t guns do less damage if the barrel is shorter?

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A quick google search would seem to confirm this: to a certain point anyway. Who were you replying to just out of interest?

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I agree here.

Lawbringer has a problem in comparison with the two other variants. But the variants are really fine.
Kantrael is a monster, especially as zealot. The Agri is fine but not extraordinary. The special shell is really efficient.