I can't decide which to get. I was told the Jackhammer is worthless, but there are a few common pool ones I could pick up. Been trying the Sweeper, but someone suggested the Piston. Which should I get? Or none? I do well with shotguns.
Piston. If you like playing super-up-close: Piston ... all-day. Heck, why ask us when you can trial it? =)
Piston.... it says semi automatic in the description. but it is automatic. either that or the sweeper is pretty beast as well
I trialed the Sweeper just now so I have to wait to trial the Piston. I'll go with Piston, then. I'm assuming I can swap firing modes anyway.
Shotguns really suck. They are so situational, and even in the proper situation I'm not sure they are better than a high ROF machine gun. edit- shotguns are sweet for other classes in my opinion. I just think for HA we have some better CQC options in our LMG selections.
Shotguns really don't off as much of an advantage as I believe is reasonable given the 5m effective range. That said they do kill in less than half the time of the most powerful CQC carbines, but in reality that is only saving you a quarter of a second assuming you 2 hit kill. However what shotguns do offer over carbines is the ability to go through 3-5 enemies without needing to reload, with that in mind I believe the high ammo count "Sweeper" to be the best choice. The piston will save you in situations where you need the 3rd shot to kill and won't have time to place it with another shotty, the Mauler is great if you are accurate and like to reload often. Really it's the 12 extra total ammo that the Sweeper has that does it for me, the reload and rof advantages of the other 2 are minor, whilst the equivalent of 2 levels of ammo belt is not.
Oh and I just unlocked it at half price - Jackhammer still trash. It now reloads pretty fast and fires pretty fast, but it somehow was not working out better than my Mauler.
Really? The Jackhammer is crap? That's devastating That's the whole point of being NC, it used to be an absolute monster in PS1! Piston it is then...
Yeah, unfortunately this is the case right now. I had the luxury of a few biolab force field farms against the Vanu these last couple weeks and tested three of the guns. Hardly a test of any statistical merit, but more my experiences. Had constant medic support and pretty much just played forcefield games or point rushing. Did the mauler first, usually with HA and ran something to the effect of 7 deaths and 23 kills over the 30 minutes. Did the jackhammer the next day, obviously with HA and got 14 deaths and 11 kills. Grabbed the sweeper a couple days later at another biolab fight and ran 5 deaths and 41 kills. Like i said, hardly capable of saying that the sweeper is the best gun because of this....just that I had the best performance in this particular fight (and it helped that the vanu seemed oblivious to my presence while fighting the TR untill i slaughtered them from behind their turrets and sniper perches). Now the juicy parts... The mauler felt like a fun gun. Very capable of reliably wining a CQC fight without the need of going for headshots. I felt that i could effectively spray and get results most of the time. It did seem to do better(things died faster) when fired from the shoulder though..no idea why. The Jackhammer felt week and made me feel like I needed tons of practice with the gun to get it to perform because pretty much every shot felt like a miss. This may be due in part to the burst nature of the gun, maybe I just wasn't my best at the time or maybe all the people i fought were just that good. But, to me, it felt like the gun just missed all the time and this would cause me to wait around to fire more shots/kills, get caught by other players and subsequently killed. No matter how I tried, even in point blank ranges, the jackhammer just refused to get kills easily. This was compounded by the fact my SAW easily outperformed it after the trial ended with basically the same play style. Something about the spray pattern is just too random, not enough "hit points", not enough damage...etc. It Feels bugged/nerfed. And finally, the sweeper felt perfect. It seemed like i just sprinted from enemy to enemy, dropped one/two rounds in each and collected kills. Extremely easy to control and get fast results from both the shoulder and the hip. Granted, I had what you could call close to ideal kill farm conditions here; but, the kill performance of the gun helped make this possible. It honestly felt like what I expected from the jackhammer coming from PS1. TLDR...the jackhammer doesn't feel or perform like the other shotguns and has noticeable mechanical accuracy issues and this translates to damage. After it gets fixed at least to the levels of other shotguns then it will be worth the investment.
That's a shame. Good job I didn't waste any station cash on it then. Still too scared to spend anything until the game has been out a bit longer and we know which guns are best!
I couldn't agree more with you bamboozled. as someone with at least a silver medal on 6 shotguns, I found the jackhammer somehow felt worse, like I was missing more often than usual and I honestly have no idea why. Light assault has so many advantages for shotgun play over Heavy, that frankly the Jackhammer would need to be AMAZING to justify not having the jetpack. It probably is better than I think but you are never getting the drop on people, its always a slugfest and if they have any cover then you can't hit them with a shoty and you can't retreat without a jetpack. But I even seemed to be doing better with the mauler on HA and I don't know why, it felt like it fired/reloaded at similar rates and was still 2hitkilling people but I never seemed to be hitting consistently. I am both confused and disappointed. Max dual scattercannons on the other hand - oh my.
Every NC player will tell you Piston. My poor Vanu character has been on the recieving end of a Piston too many times.
The full auto shotguns are all close enough to identical on every faction, and they are always the best of the three at the moment. No clue when/if that'll change.
4290 AS16 Nighthawk TR 3575 TS4 Haymaker TR 3575 FA1 Barrage TR 4290 Piston NC 3575 Sweeper NC 3575 Mauler S6 NC 4290 Pandora VS 3575 Nova VS 3575 Thanatos VS That's DPS, reliable up to 20-25 meters.
Technically you're correct, but that's DPS before reloads, if you equate for both fast and slow reload times as well as magazine capacity you wind up with this, assuming they are all three un-upgraded and that the user waits till the last round to reload for fast reloads. Fast / Slow 1372 / 1042 Mauler S6 NC 1403 / 1159 Sweeper NC 1261 / 1029 Piston NC Now clearly this isn't 100% true to in game realities as most people tend to reload a lot more often then is absolutely necessary, but for the argument's sake, if one waited for the last round to preform a fast reload the above would be true, while the slow reload is without doubt true as slow reload only occurs when the last round is fired. But that's not the end all be all of the weapon stats either, because the Mauler has certain attributes that make it attractive to Light Assaults in it's fairly accurate Aim Down Sights (ADS) while moving and especially jumping, over 250% more accurate than it's competitors while jumping which includes the use of one's jump pack (the use of which is a skill unto itself but certainly a considerable advantage worth consideration none the less), while the Sweeper has an ammo reserve of 40 rounds for a total of 48 in all, 12 more rounds than it's competitors which can be attractive for classes that can't supply their own ammo out in the field like the Engineer can. Additionally one could bring up the horrendous recoil of shotguns which is only magnified by a factor of 1 (as opposed to .75 for most Carbines) per each additional shot in an argument against the Piston's supremacy, especially if one was to consider it for the Slugs upgrade. Regardless, there's a lot more to consider than just raw DPS, but if that's all you're concerned about, then by all means take the Piston, just stick close to an Engineer if you aren't one yourself.
