Is Slug Ammunition BS?

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by moooosa, Feb 17, 2013.

  1. moooosa

    Hey, I don't roll (NC) MAX all that often, but a little while ago I certed into Slug Ammunition because I was frustrated with the thing's pathetic effective range, thinking that should improve it with little-to-no drawbacks.

    Very recently I dropped in on a TR Bio Lab with my MAX and one slugged Scattercannon equipped. At the pad a few dudes ran out. One stopped right in front of the aircraft terminal and so I took the obvious opportunity and let loose into him. I was around 10 meters away, near the corner of the junk they put on the sides, and it took exactly the entire clip to kill this one guy. Once again, he was standing still the whole time and I just held my reticle directly on him and fired. Most of the shots clearly missed. By this time I had like three guys unloading into me, and after an eternity of reloading I managed to kill one more who was barely outside of melee range with a couple quick shots the instant before I died.

    This was sickeningly bad. He was even an infiltrator for goodness sake. And while I won't express my distaste for my factions "style" of MAX here (oh shoot, I just did), I am seriously questioning whether there is a clear benefit to slug ammunition. It seems like in this particular case the ammo spread of buck would have at least struck the target more consistently. I certainly find the "keep shooting and pray something hits him" style of play rather frustrating, especially with the tiny clip sizes. But I'm hoping some of you might have more experience and insight into this and can tell me what exactly you're getting out of slug ammo.

    Any thoughts?
  2. Marked4Death

    I've only seen videos of max slugs, never certed it. It looks like it makes your max worse within 15m, but increases your effective range by about 10m.
    I thought it may have a very low cof like slugs on the normal shotguns, but it doesn't look that way.
    Really all the max's are terrible at range, who would use shotguns or hipfired LMG's for range on any other class?
    If you want more range / flexibility, the Falcon is probably your best bet. Best single hit & slpash damage of the MAX AV weapons. It's still less effective, though more survivable than other classes at range.
  3. moooosa

    The thing is, as far as I can tell, it only increases your effective range if you get really lucky. It's like trading the piddling-out of effective damage at range for the full potential damage that most likely wont hit (slug ammo does 500 dmg vs 600-something maximum with buck BTW). So, while what you stated is more or less what I thought, after some experience I'm questioning whether there is any effective benefit beyond a slim chance at "luck."

    Well the NC and TR MAXes sure, though the VS MAX is very capable at range. But hell if I wanted a weapon that was only effective at point-blank I'd use it on a class with mobility, wouldn't you?
  4. HyperMatrix

    I'll admit I was a little ignorant of how slugs worked on shotguns before. So instead of having 10 pellets or whatever with a normal shot, you have a single accurate bullet. Now...the difference with using it on a shotgun, is that your shot is accurate, and right on the dot. On the max...there is no such thing as accuracy. I've been curious about getting sluts on my hacksaw as well as I've seen some videos, but I haven't gotten around to doing it yet. But from the videos I saw, it was as effective at range as my dual mercy TR max, albeit with a much smaller clip.
  5. moooosa

    I'm glad to at least know that slugs are very sensible on non-MAX shotguns, so thank you for that.

    LoL
    • Up x 2
  6. Endlos

    NC Slugarms probability people to death. The more rounds you can get out (double ext-mag arms) in a smaller window, the better it will be. Even at medium ranges, it only takes 2-4 hits to drop someone, and most people that see a NC max tend to ignore it if they are more than 15m away. They will literally stand there, thinking they are immune to you. Then you fire 24 slugs in their general direction and more-than-likely kill them.

    Yeah, the slugs make you clunky in CQC, and it will take way more shots to put someone down than it would if you were just pelting them with pellets, but the range isn't to be scoffed at when handled properly. It definitely takes patience and 'luck' (and even then, aware enemies that stay distant and don't stop moving will be hard to put down) but it's great for firing at stationary targets or into crowds or narrow chokepoints.

    If you only have one Shotgun arm and not even the ext-mag for it, slugs are most likely a wasted investment. On double arms slugs are good, and if you can ext-mag both of those arms they are even better.
  7. NietCheese

    I always use slugs to get that extra effective range.

    The thing about slugs is that they are only good if you are a good aim. You can't shoot "near" the guy and get a few pellets on target like you can with default scatterguns.

    Try standing still while firing them, if they behave anything like slug shotguns in this game, your cone of fire is substantially tighter when standing still. You are a big target so jumping around won't help much. Just stand there and concentrate on getting the slugs on target.

    I wouldn't use anything other than slugs because of that extra range which comes in handy on a regular basis.
  8. moooosa

    So to interpret this one way, if I put 1000 certs into a second Scattercannon, 400 certs into slug ammo for both, and another 1000 certs into extended mags for both, then after 2400 certs they end up being useful? Is that fair to say?


    Apparently they don't.
  9. Purg

    It's what I use almost exclusively on my NC MAX - I equip Hacksaws if I know I'll be going up against a large volume of close up enemies because.. well, I paid $14 for them and my hand is sore from clicking all the damn time with my Scatters.

    You lose a lot of the CQC benefit equipping the slugs - they won't down an enemy MAX when you're toe to toe but you'll do a lot more damage to them when they're 20m+ from you. I can pull off the odd 50m infantry kill but don't ever rely on being able to do so consistently.

    This is slugs at Vanu Archives. The first guy with the lasher would have melted if I didn't have slugs and he took 3/4 of my health - the drawback of slugs. But there are quite a number of kills there I would not have gotten if I didn't use slugs.

  10. TheSc0urge

    With dual mattocks, slugs are absolutely deadly- The accuracy from the mattocks means you can effectively snipe people with it, and the MAX scattercannons actually shoot three slugs per click due to the fact that they're triple-barreled shotguns.
  11. Zaik

    Slugs as they are are an RNG ***********. Sometimes you'll kill half a dozen infantry out of 24 shots, other times you'll be stationary and crouched shooting at an AFK guy 15m away and miss 2/3rds of the time.

    Hilariously enough, all of the scattercannons are horribly inaccurate with them so the best one to use slugs with is the Hacksaws so you can brute force it with the faster firing rate.
  12. moooosa

    That looks a lot more effective than I recall experiencing. I'm going to have to test this out a bit more. Hopefully it's not just the Scattercannons that are oddly gimped.
  13. Purg

    Shoot them against the wall and you'll only see one shell impacting.
  14. Purg

    As Zaik suggested, there are times where you'll jag kill after kill and feel like you can't miss.. and other times you'll sit perfectly still, line up a stationary target with 24 shots at 40m and miss every single shot.
  15. Devrailis

    There is a certain range at which slugs are very effective. Around 10-15 meters. This is about when pellets are dropping off in damage, and slugs are able to pick up the slack. Past 20-25 meters, they do become a bit of a gamble, but that partly depends on your ability to aim as well.

    I normally run 1 arm with pellets and 1 with slugs. The mix of high speed spread damage and narrower focused damage actually works quite well. I regularly snipe LA's out of the air at 15-20 or so meters (I can't emphasize enough just how important this ability is for MAX survivability, many of those LAs were specifically seeking to C4 me), and slugs are very useful when firing downhill at medium ranges.

    Don't expect slugs to turn you into a long-range killing machine. Even at 10 meters, you WILL lose to a stand-off fight against a competent TR/VS Kinetic MAX if you are packing slugs. However, they are far from useless.

    I generally use slugs in a number of situations:

    1) I am firing at infantry at stand-off distances - usually down a hill-side or across a large room.

    Examples of such areas include the hillsides going down the Crown, or the initial generator room in the Biolabs (people use this room as an example of NC MAXes not having an advantage in every area of the Biolab, my slugs and kill streaks beg to differ).

    2) I am engaging in a situation where it is not possible to get into point blank distance to the enemy but I am able to get into roughly 15-20 meters.

    Using the Biolabs as an example again, just today I was in both a situation where the NC was forced to stand-off on the outside a Biolab pad during an assault, and a situation where the NC was hemmed inside the courtyard just past the pad during a Biolab defence. These are some of the few situations that favour medium to long ranged stand-offs. In both instances I managed to kill about 20~ish people with slugged rounds before the fighting moved into closer quarters, kills that would not have been possible with pellets. Once the fighting closed into CQC distances, I simply switched loadouts.

    3) I am providing covering fire for a squad so they can advance.

    All modesty aside, I very often pack an Extreme Menace bonus on me. A lot of people who spot me know this. Its amazing how much people will ignore other targets when they see a juicy MAX target like me dancing around back and forth. Enough to ignore an entire squad pushing up the side. I like to run a slugs + kinetic armour set up in these instances, where I can dance back and forth out of cover while chewing up infantry and forcing their heads down. It's a very effective way to get a position pushed, so long as you have a decent squad that clues in and advances. You can't do this with pellets however, as their damage spread is pathetic at mid-range and people often just ignore the odd pellet hit.
  16. THUGGERNAUT

    slugs are very situational and you have to ask yourself whether they're worth the mass amount of certs to upgrade both arms. they're probably better if you bought mattocks.
  17. moooosa

    Okay I've been playing some tonight. I've found a couple of things to note.
    Testing the bullet patterns, I find the slug shots seem quite accurate. However, there is some COF bloom if you fire the scattercannons as fast as you can, to the point where you'll see some shots quite accurate and then some shots stray wayy off the mark. Firing a bit slower seems to prevent the COF from growing. This isn't exactly unusual in this game but without any visual feedback in the reticle it is rather counterintuitive.

    That said, I just had a run-in at the amp station. I dropped in right as it was being capped by Vanu, on the roof, and I thought I could get inside before they got the shield generators up. Well they apparently had engies on top of both generators and I got trapped inside the shields at the elevators, you know how it goes. So I'm standing there, and some doofus inside finally sees me, comes up to the shield and thinks he can pop through and fire a few shots at me and pop back. So he does, and, being an NC max, I greet him accordingly. Yet I COULDN'T HIT HIM. He did this like three times, stepping clearly through the shield for a few moments, right in front of me, and only two of my shots actually hit him. I don't normally have any problems with lag or anything like this.

    I'm beginning to be suspicious that there's some issues in the game code with hit registration here.
  18. Marked4Death

    Not sure if trolling or never played VS MAX...
  19. Sifer2

    Slugs for all guns were nerfed or changed at some point. I know since I had certed slugs on my Nighthawk back near release, and it was a straight upgrade. Just made your shotgun deadlier at about twice as far. Then I came back to the game a week or so ago, and tried using my Nighthawk, and was shooting people 4 or 5 times at melee range, and they were not dying. I unequipped the slugs, and lo an behold now my shotgun kills people in a shot or two again. I think what is happening post nerf is that instead of shooting 9 or so pellets with crazy spread, your shooting a single accurate pellet. So your giving up a lot of damage for accuracy. But so much that IMO your better off just using a Carbine for medium-close range instead of a Shotty with slugs now.
  20. HyperMatrix

    Lol. It's probably because they said the VS max has the best effectiveness at range in the latest AI Max announcement. Which...is stupid because I have a much easier time with my Dual Mercy TR AI Max than with my Dual Cosmos or others.