These certainly show a good general approach, but there are issues.
I’ve long said shotgun base cleave is their primary issue, making manstopper mandatory, your damage output drops off a cliff without it (this in turn also locks in scatter shot in most cases, so effectively both blessing slots are locked).
Great to see an attempt to address things, but those cleave values are still pitiful, not even cleaving a bruiser (thanks @MarxistDictator for pointing this out in the announcement post). Unironically those new cleave values need to be increased by bare minimum 50%, doubling would be within the realms of reasonable, to unearth manstopper as a mandatory blessing.
Other major issue with shotguns is clunky special shell mechanic. I find Zarona’s almost unusable since pre loading it is bound to put you in a situation where you actually need a normal shot, and not pre loading it means you need a 1 second pause before firing when you do want to shoot into a nice dense group with it.
Just personally I was also really hoping Accatran special shots might be given a reason to exist again. In retrospect removing their infinite cleave when that was more or less the only thing they had going for them was a mistake. Just do something with this special shell to make us want to shoot it please.
As a side note more mobility is a nice change, but I really really don’t think the assualt template should be handed out so readily when the player base has spent the majority of the last year complaining about how assault mobility on dueling sword breaks the game.
Its like they went numbers > bigger without a lot of forethought. About the only impactful and weapon specific buffs I see are them having the same cleave ADS and hipfire, Agripinaa having the same finesse curve with buckshot hipfire (it can one hit kill gunners without special ammo so this is neat) and more max range on the Accatran even if its only 3m that’s like 33% more than right now.
I think they should revamp the reload to where you reload 2 shells at a time though, that will always be the biggest reason not to use these things ever. Even with reload time talents or weapon specialist its just all the time. You do nothing with the shotgun but reload and pick up weaker enemies. Possibly being a poor man’s voidstrike for killing a bunch of generally horde in a line with man stopper. But wait the double barrel still does that and probably gains the most on ammo considering the amount of damage it can already do. Running fast opens up melee slot more without running revolver or bolt pistol, so I think I’ll throw that in the neutral category too.
All in all it feels like they just juiced some numbers because they had to do something with Arbites coming out (and I heard that shotgun is still not game changing). But with less global changes and some more dialed in ones for the marks. Good start and probably more attention than they’re going to get for another 2-3 years. It could be worse, they could be one of those guns that just exists to fluff the count and were probably also forgotten by the devs considering how they remain trash update in update out.
0.25, 0.85 corresponds to the math that we don’t get to see in game because our reject stuff caps at 80%. reducing that number lines up with 0.19, 0.79 like the revolver and double barrel shotgun use. the las pistol has a very slightly higher modifier to speed that is also realized less because of this goofy fuzzy math. knife and las pistol are the same speed.
so yeah it will be las pistol > shotguns, recon lasgun, bolt pistol and revolver > basically everything else sitting at -0.45, 0.45 on the spread or that + costing more than normal to move (boltgun, flamer and some others).
Fatshark do love their bizarre, overly-complex math behind the scenes.
Beyond that, we’ll have to see if shotguns are better after this, because right now they’re just pathetic. Half the time you can aim for a head at a low-tier enemy and just knock them down with a shot.
Also, loading two shells at a time would be so nice. It’s a real technique, so why can’t we do it?
Yeah I agree 100% on what comes across as actually impactful. Why they didn’t normalise hipfire vs ads finesse across all the shotguns while they were doing it for Agrip is a mystery to me.
Oooooh magic guns that do more headshot damage because I moved my eyeball next to the sights. I don’t get it or why it was ever made this way.
Even for Agrip isn’t the spread tighter even you ADS? If so you’ll probably still end up glued to the scope for aim consistency.
But yeah the shotguns having less cleave than a revolver is eternally frustrating. They weren’t everyone’s cup of tea in VT2 but at least they got the feel right in terms of blasting a dense group of enemies. Getting to specialise in berserker removal wasn’t a bad niche either. It’s not really clear what targets exactly in Darktide you’re supposed to be eager to pull out your shotgun for.
There’s weird relationships between shotguns and armor types in 'tide games. They don’t do well against armor - okay, that’s fair, since they’re a bunch of smaller pellets. But they’re also bad against monsters. And in Darktide they’re not very good against Maniacs. You know, the things that you’d think would be best handled by mangling them with a load of buck.
As @alsozara says, just what are they supposed to be good at?
I feel like their numbers against monsters and maniacs should be tweaked. If they were decent against Maniac, they’d definitely have a niche. As it is, it’s nice when you can one-shot a Mutant with the Double Barrel.
Eating up ammo currently for the last 1.5 years and not much else; INB4 fireshottyinfinitecleavesogoodbro even a year after it wasn’t infinite.
To your earlier point about “overly-complex math behind the scenes”, OTOH I think it may be the opposite here, not complex enough to do what FS (or us) wants it do, maybe it needs some more conditional complex math in cleave (penetration) ? Armor and ranges taken into account? IDK…
Brain hurts thinking about human shottties, I want to love them oh so badly but I just can’t…yet. 1.5 years of shotty sadness and counting.
I think a nice balance here would be having monsters with different armour types and shotguns get to be good against some but bad against others. Make shotguns strong against maniac mid against flak and unyielding and bad against carapace. Make chaos spawn maniac and let shotguns mess it up.
Leave plogryn and burgle as unyielding which it can be mid against.
Then it’s bad against flak captains and all feels reasonable and balanced.
Just thinking “logic- wise” here, but it would make sense if it was good against Infected, too. Nurgle things are usually quite soft, and it’s massive tissue damage that disables them completely that does them in, right? Seems like that’s what a shotgun would do.
Would also mean it could be good at smoking hordes of poxies and hounds. Again, kind of unique, and fits the “hunting” concept of shotguns that you go hunting pox hounds with it.
I’m looking forward to the better sprint speed and mobility. I should because I frequently asked for it every chance I could. If Shotgun’s killing power dissipates after 8m then shotties should be allowed to close the distance on ranged enemies.
10% reload speed increase is possibly not enough? I can’t know for sure without trying it. I know that shotgun play requires micromanaging reloads, but there’s always 40 - 50 things on screen which is why I’ve been saying in the other thread a shottie needs to be able to reload enough shells to take out a dude faster than a bolter. A bolter reload is, what, 4 seconds? Spend 4 seconds, take a few hits, and then kill absolutely everything on screen. Obviously combat shotgun can’t compete with that, but if it still feels like it takes 4 seconds to load enough shells to kill a single flamer after the buff than it’ll remain a dead weapon class.
I need to not be at work so I can play with shotguns again , like I know what I want is a snappy close to mid range threat deleter that pairs with aggressive playstyles that match with melee builds. Y’all mention them being usable against bosses but my main concern is fodder, gunners, flamers, trappers, maniac ragers, bulwarks and reapers.
I definitely agree on the cleave values not going far enough, as it is the shotguns just don’t really have a role like they did in VT2. Give them enough cleave to hit enemies through flak armor, bump the numbers for maniac/unyielding to at least give them some enemies they excel at, and buff the reload more than 10%. I also wouldn’t be opposed to a blessing similar to Power Cycler that allowed us to load multiple special shells at once, or even a rework of the special shells functionality allowing us to load between special shells and standard throughout the reload. Ie, let me alternate buck and fire rounds while loading.
Disagree with this. Their problems have been range, damage, and reload. The cleave is only if you want to mag dump hordes (and to some extent snipe specialists, but bolt pistol level cleave fixes this).
If the damage buffs mean they can more consistently kill specialists at decent ranges (and now they can do so through chaff), and be effective at close range against ragers and maulers than they’ll be in a fine spot.
Based on my limited experience with shotguns in Darktide, I think this is the more desirable change I want. Specials sometimes takes 2 or 3 shots, combined with a slow reload, makes it lackluster compared to other alternatives.
With Infantry Autogun I can kill 10 specials, with one mag, in 4 seconds, and reload it in 2. If shotgun could kill a little bit more reliably, at an increased range (+5-10m?), with a little bit quicker reload, then I think it would be golden.
All I’ll say is that giving the double barreled shotgun 0.1 more unyielding damage, 10 more ammo and 0.15 more range is not going to suddenly make me a fan of it.
I don’t disagree those are issues, I guess when I said main issue I meant more with weapon feel. They could do ten billion damage with zero range dropoff but if my shotgun doesn’t even cleave trash mobs consistently then something feels very fundamentally wrong to me.
Completely agree with you, OP. I also want to add that the reload is one of the biggest drawbacks to the Shotgun. And you know what, that’s fine. It’s supposed to be the main drawback, something that should be present with every gun. The problem is clearly that the shotguns don’t do nearly enough to justify the long reloads.
I personally don’t find cleave to be an important identity for shotguns. At least without manstopper. When I try and think of a quintessential video game shotgun, usually its something with slower fire rate, only the most effective at close to close-ish range and the fire rate of a pump action. Cleave really isn’t something I think about if the thing in front of me gets misted.
As for Darktide I’m not sure how much cleave you would want them to have base? Now that they have more significant cleave, deathspitter well make it cleave more (if I understand power scaling correctly) which means you don’t even have to get manstopper or go into crits. I guess if we compare it to flamer we can say it’s horde clear is sub par but I don’t think thats a road we want to go down.
Biggest issues for me personally are reloading and special shells. I assume they can’t make the reload speed any faster, because then stacking reload speed talents would break it. The double load method seems the best way to do it, especially now with more reserve ammo. However I am unsure if this will ever happen because it would require FS to make a new animation for them. Special shells I don’t know, but I prefer a “normal” shotgun anyways so it doesn’t bother me too much.
Running these weapons to remind myself what they are like.
Ain’t no way 10% reload speed is enough. Veteran’s 25% reload speed and 30% reload speed cannot defeat how bad the reload is.
Also
I can’t believe this is only just occuring to me
The mobility won’t mean anything because you can’t sprint or move fast while reloading, and reloading is what I’m doing the entire time i have this gun out.
, like I know what I want is a snappy close to mid range threat deleter that pairs with aggressive playstyles that match with melee builds. Y’all mention them being usable against bosses but my main concern is fodder, gunners, flamers, trappers, maniac ragers, bulwarks and reapers.