pump shotgun seems oddly weak

i have been using the phobos for a while now and am half way to auraxiuming it, and it seems to roll dice when it decides whether or not to kill someone.

i have hit players dead centre from close range with it and had them live and kill me for my effort many, many, many times!. what it going on? seriously, i am curious if anyone has any advice or explaination. some of the worst offenders are engineers in mana turrets, where i shoot them in the back at obviously lethal range and they live! heavy assaults are also very very frustrating for this.

would i be scoring more instant kills with the other pump action, or does this issue happen with both?

i hope someone can help me with this.

Here's a secret that tryhards don't want you to know: PA shotguns are bad!

Specifically for the 1st gen PA, lets look at it's damage.

It deals 130x10@8m, and 50x10@18m. This means that you will deal a maximum of 1300 damage in a single shot. While theoretically you can OHK any non-overshield class, this often isn't the case, for two main reasons:

The first reason is nanoweave. Most players still run nanoweave, and at max rank it's a 20% reduction in small arms damage. Quick math tells us that against a max NW target, you will only deal 1080 damage at point blank.

This is where the second factor comes into play, pellet spread. At 1080 damage, you will need to land every single pellet in order to secure a kill. Consider the fact that 90% of PA shotgun users can't manage over 50% accuracy, and suddenly it's pretty easy to see why they are so lackluster. Even at 5 meters away, aiming down sights, pellet spread can screw you over and cause you to loose a 1v1 simply because the PA has such a slow refire time. And against an actively dodging target, getting an OHK is quite unlikely.


The one redeeming factor of a PA is as an ambush weapon. If your target isn't dodging in the first place, you have a greater chance of hitting every shot. This means that your target will have no chance to react, no time to pop medkits and scoot around like a squirrel on LSD(This is the part that pisses tryhards off).


This is also why I prefer the 2nd gen PA. The pellet spread increase is quite negligible compared to the improved reliability of it's OHK. It's still not reliable in the sense that I'd main PA shotgun, but it's more workable then the 1st gen.

That's something I've wondered about before. For buck shot shotguns, is accuracy recorded per shot landed or per pellet landed?

Try pausing a little before shooting. The spread goes down if you aren't sprinting which I found helped me a lot. Just little stutters before each shot.

Not to self-promote too much, but there's a lot of PA action in my latest video, might show you how I use the phobos. (I personally prefer to the deimos because I can feel that extra spread and don't really like it)

They're pretty bad outside of 2m where OHK isn't guaranteed. Every single time I used it, it's practically decided by RNG. If you don't hit enough because the game said "Nope", you're gonna die despite being better than your opponent.

The RNG factor is in general ********. They should just tighten up the CoF so a shotgun is actually competitive and reliable. Magic in-game math shouldn't decide who wins and who loses.

Long ago it was per shot, so it really screwed up your accuracy hardcore. But now it calculates based on the total quantity of pellets landed, so if you have 70% accuracy then on average 70% of your pellets land.

Funnily enough, while I was working on my Lasher araxium, I noticed that I consistently beat Jackhammer heavies. I have actually counted 14 instances where I won or tied against a Jackhammer. Which, as I've said before, is most likely due to the tendency to miss a rapidly strafing target with a semi-automatic weapon.

Pump shotguns in this game are OHK knives that don't require activation at the cost of taking your primary weapon slot.

PA shotties are like OHK knives except they
- Take your primary weapon slot
- Reveal you on the map and make lots of noise
- Need to be reloaded
- Have a limited ammo pool
- Can't be carried by every class
- Take longer to equip

Thanks for the replies. Mustarde, I learned a lot from your video, like the fact that you are a better player, and also you must be cheating because I know for a fact my shotgun would sooner kill me than ohk on some of those shots.

BTW, I saw a launcher in there so if I may impose again, anihlator or swarm?

Like I have been saying for over a year now: The first wave of shotgun nerfs was needed (they were a bit OP) the 2nd wave was not.

Some raw facts: first gen pump actions (like phobos) have 3 degrees pellet spread and 2 degrees hip fire cone of fire while moving standing.

So that's 2 + 3 = 5 degrees total pellet coverage area.

Here are different angular sizes of the enemy center mass at different ranges:




Based on this, I would define the effective OHK range for these shotguns as ~3.5m. If you aim perfectly at enemy center mass within this range, you should be able to OHK with 100% probabiltiy.

If you ADS and stop moving, you will get CoF of 0.1 instead of 2, so your total pellet coverage will reduce to 3.1 degrees.

In which case OHK range nearly doubles to ~6.5m



Of course, size of the hit box depends on how the enemy is turned to you. If he's sideways to you, hitbox will be smaller.

The album with full sized screenshots is here: http://imgur.com/a/igtqh

So you can get a feel for the size of the target relative to the while screen.

Which considering the distance a player can strafe in the time it takes you to ADS(Demigan posted it somewhere in my shotgun thread, I don't know it exactly but it's actually kind of far) and the fact that there's a pretty high chance that you will need to land every pellet to secure a kill...

Yea, pretty mediocre.


Also, as a side note related to my first Shotguns & elitists thread, I remember a comment you made about someone being able to secure OHK's reliably(But only if they played 6 hours a day 7 days a week). But I remembered today that PA shotguns have gotten several nerfs since they were introduced. When they first came out, the 1st gen PA could OHK someone from across the B point room at Listening Post. A guy I knew had it arax'd within the first 24 hours of it being introduced. So it stands to reason that a consistent OHK might be even less likely under current game circumstances.

One thing to note on this. That is perfectly center. If the aim is slightly off there is a chance you will likely miss with a few pellets. Meanwhile an SMG with a ALS (much tighter CoF) is slightly off center you will still hit with all your shots.

Like I said, "If you aim perfectly at enemy center mass". It's about finding theoretical maximum range of consistent OHK. Not about shotguns vs SMGs.

*shameless link is shameless*

Aw, dude. Shotguns are literally the worst weapons in the game in literally every circumstance (especially CQC because it's literally impossible to reliably get into close range in this game, seriously,) literally never do any damage even if you hit someone with them, and you'll automatically be one-shot by any other weapon that shoots at you, regardless of how far away your opponent is or what weapon he's using.

Any player that can get a kill with a shotgun, ever, is the greatest player in the game. Hands down. They're also probably smarter than any MIT grad in history due to their obviously unparalleled ability to position themselves in a location where their shotgun might actually land a hit.

Just take it in stride. Sometimes, shotguns are too hard for the any non-godlike PS2 player. They're literally for only the most elite players in the world.

I don't have a problem with Pump action shotguns, always play to their strengths and weaknesses.

Yeah the ONE SHOT KILL of the Shotgun is pretty weak.
I want a Shotgun which automatic aims for heads too...
Please buff NC shotgun Maxes.
How about buffing Mustang AH?
Nerf Vanu because they have no bulletdrop

*Sarcasm off*

Don't worry about him, he's just salty since his *** was handed to him in my Shotguns and Elitists thread.


Anyways, yea, shotguns are theoretically powerful, but there in lies the problem; their power is only in theory. In fact, only around 100 players worldwide can manage to consistently kill in less then 3 shots, and within that same skill bracket some players can get consistent headshot kills with LMG's, giving an even faster TTK, but out to 30 meters at the same time.

If I were you, I'd keep working with them, but only to learn good positioning. Then you can bring out a legitimately competitive weapon and use it, and reap the sweet rewards of intelligent play.

It is likely the disco-blinding factor is helping with misses as well.

Since they last nerf they aren't really so good (although orginally they were far too good). They suffer from many of the issues that Scattermaxs do, only more so often, because they have less wiggle room in a 1 shot kill.