Most Damage Dealing MAX CQC AI Weapon at 0M? (After the nerf)

They can indeed use slugs, and they are indeed a strong mid/long range option in the hands of a skilled player.

Yes, they do have access to Slug rounds, and find their best use inside a pair of Mattocks with extended clips. The problem is that the accuracy isn't great, the overall ammo isn't wonderful, the 10 shells clip combined with the reloading time isn't really great to play that role of 'huge chunk of meat doing intimidating suppressive firing', in exchange, if you can get the time to stay still, crouch and fire moderately, each shot hurts like hell and it's rather made for fun purposes than efficiency which most of us do accept.

Before you ask, yes, the Mattocks and its long range damage also got nerfed.

Jeah, I feel for you...forgot that MAX has non existent reticules making any longer range shooting a gamble.

An NC MAX with slugs is really surprising to the enemy.
I was an LA on top of a Bio Lab roof, and I was taking pot shots at quite a few NC MAXes.
I chose the wrong one. I shot at him, he turned around and I thought he spotted me. But in my mind, I said "He's an NC MAX, what can he do at this range?" That was a bad decision. He crouched, corrected his aim for 1 sec, and took me down instantaneously.

I sure was surprised.

The slugs are horrible, you have to use Ravens on infantry beyond 10m

Slugs are not horrible; they're quite useful if you can aim. If you're just spraying and praying, yes, of course they're useless.

Slugs are great, a big reason for that though is nobody expects an NC max to have any ranged capabilities which translates as a free kill really, their damage is superb and you can really scythe people down if you can aim.

They do have quite wide variance on the shots however, sometimes you can lineup dead center on an afk persons head at decent range and fire, sometimes you'll double headshot, sometimes you can use the entire clip and all of them spray on either side. I find them well balanced keeping that in mind however.

Too bad MAXes can't aim.