If I use the special weapon button the shotgun lowers its loaded ammo count by 1 and loads another pellet. I am not sure if the shotgun has a special, but certainly that should be it.
The shotgun’s special loads a special round with more AoE and damage, I believe. It’s difficult to notice if you aren’t firing into a crowd though. It only works on the next shot, but wow it can clear a hallway.
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The shotgun’s special is a duckbill round, with horizontal spread and higher stagger damage. Very useful for blunting the charge of a horde.
I was going to open a thread about this just now 
Looking at the spread patterns from left to right, first is aimed down sights shot )pretty tight), second is normal shot (about as big as the reticle), third is special ammo (about 3x as wide as the reticle). Special ammo makes no difference regarding ADS as far as I can tell, and it does about the same damage (in total) as the normal shot. It does have a stronger push, though. While not a lawnmower, it’s very useful for thinning out hordes.
What I would like to see is different shotgun variants with different special ammo, like a solid shot for high single target damage even at range, incendiary ammo to set enemies on fire, or melta ammo with very high damage at point blank distances but useless at range.
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Thank you very much for the visual. One thing I find the game lacking in the explanation department. I can do stuff, but hell if I know what they actually do.
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