I actually had to buy a 4x scope because the IRNV was just too short compared to the range I can engage targets outside. Sure you won't often hit people running 100+ meters from you but stationary targets are a breeze
I use a 1x reflex but never really look down it. I use the Pandora on Engineer, Nova on Light Assault. The reasoning being the ammo pool on the Pandora is just too small without resupplies.
I get killed by the nova probably more than any other shotgun, possibly more than any other weapon. Please don't choose it.
Take a look at the values in red The Mauler, Nova, and Nighthawk have a cone of fire less than half the size of the other shotguns (within their respective tiers) when you aim down the sight. This is a big deal if you do a lot of jumping around in close quarters. Seeing as this is a LA forum, I'm going to go ahead and assume you do or at least should.
Simply if you jump (assume jump jet) the Nova is approx. 3 times better than the others. If you crouch and move the others are approx. 3 times better than the Nova.
I used to use the Pandora religiously and no other gun would do. Sometime in the past though they nerfed it, which was ok. The way in which they nerfed it though...made the weapon borderline useless for me. Damage-wise it does just fine, same as with pellet count. The rate of fire is fine as well as ammo count in a full mag (you burn through it quickly but that is one of the balancers, also never use anything but the extended clip or you'll curse your existence). That being said, what really makes this shotgun useless is the whole cone of fire and its relationship to what I believe is called bloom, I'll explain. First you have your cone of fire, self explanatory, cone goes from the barrel of your gun and widens as the distance to impact is further away. Then you have bloom (which is what I believe they call it, but do not quote me on that). Basically...its like a completely separate cone of fire...within the other cone of fire. Unlike the original cone of fire though, this one is completely random, you cannot adjust for it in any way shape or form. I'll explain with a scenario. A "common sense" effective range for a shotgun is about the distance from one side of a small room to the other, within this distance it should win all the time (not counting poor aiming and blah blah). That sounds fair yes, as long as it does not become too effective past that range (or effective at all). Imagine you bust into a room, and you spot an enemy. You decide to engage said enemy. You fire from the hip, as most shotgun users would (without slugs), well within the effective range of your weapon, let us say ~5m. First shot, the pellet spread is clustered around the middle of your reticle (which for ease of understanding looks like a circle with a dot in the center, like a red dot sight for VS). Second shot, for some random reason, the pellet spread decides to be waaaaay off to the left side of that little "circle reticle" with only one pellet actually hitting. Third shot, the pellet spread is now randomly clustered at the bottom of that "circle reticle", out of the 4 pellets that hit, they all hit the legs, thereby only doing 90% of their damage. Fourth shot, your cone of fire is now wider, the pellet spread within that cone of fire is now clustered all the way to the bottom left for whatever reason, all pellets have missed. This would continue likewise for the rest of your shots. Oddly enough, throughout this whole engagement...the center of your reticle has been on the center of their chest the whole time, though you still missed those shots point blank. For those that could understand the point of the scenario, I am talking about the random pellet spread within the cone of fire. Basically, to shrink your cone of fire you could always shoot slower, to control the pull of the gun you could always pull down and to the left while firing, but there is nothing a player can do to make up for a completely random pellet spread. That being said, I have actually been in one on one battles at POINT BLANK I have shot an ENTIRE CLIP without my reticle leaving the enemy's chest and have been killed because so many of the pellets missed the mark. They would land too far left, then right, then top right, etc etc instead of center, thereby making me lose to a Gauss Saw at point blank...which is stupid. I didn't mind the shotgun damage being pulled down a bit, nor am I against keeping shotguns ineffective out of "from one side of the room to the other" range, but the way in which they nerfed it made it ineffective at close range and even pointblank range. You could be point blank and still be missing, it is ridiculous. And there is nothing you can do to correct for it, just hope that the pellets decide to land where the squishy parts of your enemy are and not to his right side. Final thoughts, due to the inability of this weapon to even reach across small rooms, the Thanatos outshines it. What you give up in raw damage and DPS, you more than make up for in just being able to hit someone across the room, let alone the nice ammo pool in the mag. The Pandora is a weapon that relies heavily on luck of where the pellets will land, which obviously isn't' a good mechanic for a good player. Last but not least, they need to tighten the cone of fire from the Pandora back to about where the Thanatos is, because where it is now, it is only effective when the enemy is so close you might as well just knife them. I don't care if they tighten the cone, and just make shotgun pellets disappear after 15m, as long as I can actually harm something across a small room reliably. Either that or spread the pellets evenly throughout the reticle and the area between pellets just widens as the cone of fire widens. ps. I really think shotguns would work better if we just tightened all the cone of fires back to where they were prenerf, and just made pellets disappear after 15ft. so...yeah
