[Suggestion] 3 reasonable Jackhammer Buffs

Compare the shotguns & the roles they have.



The Jackhammer is geared to longer ranges.

MCG:

• Now has access to SPA
• BRRT attachment is built in.

Lasher:

• Now has an alternative fire mode that increases the blast radius & primary damage but decreases the velocity.
• Now has an alternative fire mode that increases the velocity & rate of fire, but decreases the splash.
• Now has access to HVA

Jackhammer is a master of all shotgun roles, essentially a direct upgrade to any other shotgun save for full autos.
Longer range is the baron's niche. Jackhammer has the same CoF and Pellet spread while having higher capacity and faster reload. It's essentially a direct upgrade sans slugs.
It can fulfill the Pump Action role of one shot killing with the 3 round burst, and does more damage and has better range.
With semi autos it's also a direct upgrade. Better spread, better CoF, better capacity.
The only drawbacks Jackhammer has in comparison to others is lack of slugs and lack of full auto, which to be honest is a perfectly fair tradeoff. There would be no reason to use the other shotguns as heavy otherwise.

+2m min range I don't see adding any value to the weapon. It already has the best range of all shotguns, it does not need more.
Smart choke hasn't been implemented for anything other than magscatter and directive shotguns, and again already has the tightest spread. Doesn't need tighter.
Slugs is actually a very significant upgrade. Considering the Jackhammer's stats it could extend the 1 hit kill range of the triple burst to be far beyond reasonable. It already has a further 1 shot range than the other 2 pump actions. Does not need more.

=|.... wow... you ain't to bright is you?


Do you have any idea what slugs actually do for a shotgun? My comment was pointing out what the weapon would be able to do if you implemented your batsh!t stupid idea.

Slugs+smart choke on a 3-burst shotgun. Of course my emotions are getting the best of me... I'm laughing and crying all at once because I didn't know people could be THIS stupid.

Clearly many of these players haven't seen or used a Jackhammer in quite a while.

I saw a few "JH two-shot kill shotgun" comments, which are unfortunately incorrect. At point blank, if all pellets hit the JH requires three shots to kill an uninjured target.

And to demonstrate the "JH OP" comments I saw as well:

[http://ps2oraclestats.com/?stat=kpu&weapon1=7528&weapon2=301902&weapon3=128]

Anyways, I think the only thing that would really be helpful or necessary would be the smart choke, to further define its niche as a "long range" shotgun.

I feel that extra damage range would be unneeded, and that while one could see some use out of slugs, I don't think they'd be very useful.

Yet I don't see you coming up with anything for the MCG.


My suggestions actually work & keep the balance of the weapon.

Misinformation is a deadly thing.(referencing people not understanding how many shots the jackhammer kills in etc etc)


These suggestions to the jackhammer won't make it OP, and if anything it could add more usages to its role.

If im not mistaken, the JH follows the 6x 112 damage model for pellets which would indeed make it a 2hit unless its a heavy or nanoweave at optimum range. Unless it was changed to have fewer pellets or follow a damage model weaker then the magscatter's I do believe the 3 hit kill is misinformation

Oh, you're right.

Apparently everyone in this game uses nanoweave, same as when I thought the Commie was buffed.

Very much so. (I was wrong, by the way. :<)

I don't think they would, but they would really be needed, save for the smart choke.

The "super shotgun" doesn't have all the attachments shotguns can possibly have.

I'm going to be quite honest here, I actually kind of agree with Scrn this time.


Not in the sense that I specifically want the buffs he proposes, but more in the sense that I recognize that while the Jackhammer may be the highest performing "shotgun" in the game currently, it's still inferior in the sense that the best shotgun isn't as good as the best LMG or AR. It's weapon class is simply generally inferior.

That being said, I also want to stick my Butcher up his *** for even typing out that dirty suggestion for the VS. Yes, make it the mediocre LMG it was always meant to be!

No, give it the same beam mode it had in the PS2 beta, with high damage and a smaller magazine and a 30 meter hard cap of range.

I feel like the intentions are valid: The JH could certainly use a buff, as it's underperforming in the sustainability category, but I don't think these changes are the right way to go about it.

The CoF is extremely tight, on par with the Baron, if not smaller. Slugs would turn this thing into a real problem once they get the compensation for the recoil and bullet drop down, since RNG would become nil. The 2m change isn't about a question of OPness, it's more a question of "Why." 2m isnt much in the game, and wouldn't make much of a difference if put in. Smart Choke is interesting, actually, but that's been reserved for the directive guns, hasn't it?

EDIT: I think the main reason the JH is in such an awkward position is simply because of the fact that it has to be a shotgun. I'd much rather have a rework on it and have it be something fitting of the name more. perhaps a Slow firing or single shot Railgun, perhaps?

You? Noooooo, what a shocker! You're only like the biggest shotgun homer Forumside has ever seen.

I'm not a shotty expert so please don't flame me: these are genuine questions:

On the defaults (idk about the NC heavy weapon) I believe slugs do 500 dmg at very short range and 350 at medium. They have an enormous CoF i.e. devastating but only if they actually hit something. I would have thought that firing slugs by burst or auto fire in particular would make them pretty useless over anything other than in-your-face range due to recoil on top of CoF - Yes/No?

Choke irl is supposed to tighten the spread of pellets - does it do that in the game? I don't understand why it would make hipfire worse as they come out of the barrel the same way whether you are aiming or not - or is this hipfire drawback a game balance thing?

With jackhammer being pretty much the best shotgun, I don't feel it needs any buffs before others get them.

Keep in mind that slugs increase already large ADS CoF by 75%. In burst mode it would fire first slug more or less accurately, 2nd and 3rd slug would fly perpendicular to the first one and each other

Choke in general - yes, reduces pellet spread. But PS2 uses "smart" choke, which adapts to situation. If user fires from the hip, it increases the spread to cover wider area. And if user aims down sights, it reduces spread to increase accuracy.

The problem is that in PS2 shotguns' pellet spread is too large regardless, so smart choke doesn't fulfill its purpose.

Someday, the CoF will be so large you can TK yourself!


On a related note, I was wondering as to why exactly the devs thought it would be a good idea for slugs to have such massive CoF. It really just doesn't make sense, even the in-game description claims slugs are more accurate.

I wonder if the ADS CoF is an oversight? Perhaps they wanted the hipfire CoF to be larger, but didn't realize that they were also making the ADS CoF worse?

My guess is they didn't want slugs to be too accurate. That would be like giving every class a sniper rifle, basically. Before VS-no-bullet-drop was removed from slugs, that was the only way anyone would use them: 4x scope on VS shotty and go snipe with LA.

I think it was intentional, though we can come to some interesting results if we look at datamined Attachment Effects Spreadsheet (sort it by attachment name, if it's not already).

There are several values affecting Cone of Fire: CoF, CoFRecoil, CoFMoving and CoFScalar.

CoFRecoil refers to bloom per shot, and it was the field that told us that Flash Suppressor increased CoF Bloom by 20%, until it got changed recently.

So we can assume that the rest of the values refer to CoF in different states or stances.

We know that Compensator increases hip fire CoF, and that Laser Sight reduces it. So we can assume that whatever fields are affected by these attachments refer to hip fire CoF.

And this is already where things get weird:
Compensator increases "CoF" and "CoFMoving" by 20%.
Laser Sight reduces "CoFScalar" by 33% to 40% depending on whether it's basic or advanced version.

So it would appear that all three values refer to hip fire CoFs, but in different ways.

It's also interesting to note that on PA shotguns, Slug Ammunition affects CoF and CoFMoving, while on others it affects CoFScalar. What's more weird, it appears that penalty for Phobos and Deimos is only 50%. Though that sheet is quite old, and it's possible that got fixed at one point or another.

Come to think about it, it is possible that slug CoF penalty only applies to hip fire. I'm not sure there even is a way to test CoF for ADSing, and datamined attachment stats don't shed any light either.

I guess I got a little bit ahead of myself when I claimed that slug penalty applies to ALL CoFs.

I suppose a very ghetto way to test that would be to compare the wall grouping of a Mattock Slug vs. PA slug at 40 meters. Shotguns have nearly a 1 CoF on the move anyway(Still completely unreasonable), same as mattocks.

That is, unless Scattercannons also suffer from larger CoF with slugs.