Shotguns and elitists

Having been watching some of the streamers lately, I can't help but notice a trend against shotguns. Whenever mentioned, they are called noob, unskilled or cheap.

But, as I check the profiles of said "elites", I find what expect every time:

Not a single shotgun araxium. Not a one. Maybe 50 kills or so if you are lucky.


Why is this always the case? Having nearly 7 araxium's on shotguns myself, as well as some CQC carbine/SMG araxiums, I can say with certainty that shotguns are pretty mediocre at best, even in bases that artificially force qcq.

So, I ask the elite, how are shotguns cheap? They still require high situation awareness, suffer from the disadvantages of being semi-auto, have extremely tight margin for error, hilariously short range, and can't be suppressed either.

Best of all, they require all this and sacrifice all the advantages of a carbine or SMG, for TTK's that can still be achieved with headshots from a carbine.

Am I wrong? Are they still somehow cheap? Am I missing something, some magical fire mode that makes shotguns ungodly CQC pwning machines that I have never known about?

http://ps2oraclestats.com/?stat=q4kph&weapon1=41002&weapon2=1894&weapon3=1939

According to these stats, the directive LMG scores hilariously higher then the directive shotgun or PA shotgun. If shotguns are so cheap or so cheesy or so OP, how is this possible?



Black magic?..


Or what if, just maybe, shotguns really are worse then normal weapons? What if, because the MLG elite can't get sick killstreaks with them, and because they force you to think differently to both use and to fight, they hate them? What if they can't stand shotguns disregarding their medkit shuffle meta?



I might be a little salty here. But if you sit there and whine that shotguns are cheese without even a hundred kills on your stock fast reload shotty, and then think you're funny when you circle-jerk with your other MLG pro friends about how cheese, you have a problem.

I feel like I did more effective with carbine than shotgun in CQC or least to my experience ,TTK with a shotgun is about the same as carbine but NC and TR's shotgun are very effective at indoors and CQC but correct me I was wrong but shotgun with slug or not can hit infantry at far range but no damage to it

Slugs have very steep damage fall off as well as pathetic velocity. They pretty much exchange any CQC ability for pathetic medium range capacity.

Shotguns aren't cheap. People just don't like their ability to OHK them without the opportunity to fight back. So they call them cheese.

Which is understandable. But the only shotguns that can reliably OHK(Reliable being subjective here) are the PA shotguns, which can only do that inside 5 meters.

Is it really that hard to keep anyone outside that range?

The cof of the nighthawk expands way too quickly.

I love shotguns and should really use them more lol.

Which is better in terms of shotgun, TR or NC?

NC is shotgun. I know I find myself on the wrong end of Maulers and Jackhammers a lot.

I mean which Faction have better shotgun, NC or TR?

All shotguns are exactly the same across all factions, the only difference is the weapon model(And the little bug that VS still have slower velocity on our slugs after bullet drop was added to them).

The only exception is the NC's directive shotgun, the Brawler, which has 2 rounds less in it's magazine and an underbarrel shotgun. The Havoc and Chaos, the TR and VS's directive shotguns respectively, are exactly the same.

There is also the Jackhammer, that while classified as a Heavy Weapon, it's a shotgun none the less. The Jackhammer has the longest effective range out of all shotguns, having a very tight pellet spread and reduced damage fall off compared to ordinary shotguns.

I don't really care for them but had to use them for auraxiums. Just do what the elitists say when they use shotgus, say "well yeah but I'm just auraxiuming it"

The reason why most people perceive shotguns to be 'cheap' is because they require very little aiming skill. They're also the perfect weapon for abusing ping with. The higher your ping, the better it is to be an aggressive shotgun user. Why? Because you can literally kill people before they even see you.

My understanding is THAT is why people, including myself, find shotgun users to be cheap noobs.

You can look up my stats, I've auraxed at least 5 shotties on my TR, maybe I've auraxed them all, I'm not sure, I can't remember the last time I used a shotgun.

But requiring no aim is a misconception. Sure, they don't require recoil compensation, which for any half-decent player it should be second nature after a few hundred kills.

But shotgun users have to constantly deal with CoF, as well as the semi-auto nature of shotguns. If your target is moving erratically, it's very difficult to hit because of how narrow your window of opportunity to fire is. Iridar has a great video that demonstrates this:



Which is why I say regular CQC weapons such as the GD7-F, the Serpent, The Jaguar or various SMG's/CQC AR's are superior.

Yeah, I have to agree. Shotguns aren't that hard to avoid if you're paying attention and they really aren't that powerful (with a couple of exceptions) on this game. I don't even bother using them at all because I prefer my trusty Orion even in CQC. I'll admit I used to occasionally get annoyed when I would get blasted in the back by a shotgun but in the end, there is always something you could have done differently to avoid dying. If people want to use shotguns, I have no issues with it.

I once received a /tell criticizing me for using my TR's Blackjack in a fight. I replied that I had ground over 1200 certs for that thing (attachments and all), and that I could use it how I saw fit, seeing as my laptop makes it harder for me to play this game well.

His tears were delicious.

All shotguns are identical across factions. (save for Jackhammer, AirHammer, and Canister of course)

Way back in the day that wasn't entirely true, but close enough... however VS traded 50m/s velocity for no drop.

Later drop was added because of slug headshots, but velocity nerf remained for a ridiculously long time. Apparent oversight.

I use shotguns on my light assualt exclusively because you can take advantage of positioning to make up for its weaknesses and its easier to hit targets while flying around them

Shotgun + Blackhand

Players can complain but that doesnt change that the shotguns are situational and require positioning to not get rekt

Most of the "elite" you are talking about uses LMGs though, so (imo) they dont really get to complain about nooby and cheap playstyles.

But honestly, i personally dont really mind how people play. I just found it a bit ironic.
If people want to use a weapon that is outclassed outside 0-10m combat, thats fine with me.

The thing people don't like about shotguns is that when you're caught in close range against one, you're dead and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. It's that disadvantage and that helplessness that causes frustration. Using a shotgun gives you a great situational advantage at the cost of an overall disadvantage. It feels like cheese when it's used in the proper situation, and in every other situation it feels completely useless. I don't think there's much we can really do about that.

Last time I brought this argument to people who are actually good at this game, or at least at the medkit HA meta part of it, the answer was "it doesn't require aiming skill to get fast TTK, you get close to someone, aim vaguely at center mass and get a 2 shot TTK".

Interesting to note that person still didn't have a single shotgun auraxim, so there you go.

I share your PoV that shotguns are mediocre at best.

Some people are just salty because in certain circumstances shotgns can invalide all their years-polished mechanics of headshotting and ADADing and med kit popping and overshield management, so they feel helpless and frustrated because it feels like there's no counterplay.

Less enlightened people are salty against everything that kills them. Even less enlightened just repeat like parrots what they hear from others.