Shot Gun SLUGS are usless now.

If they remove the C4 from LA'a, then you can have practically any gun you want, short of mini-guns, imho. Whoever came up with the idea of giving the jetpack class Sundy exploding C4 was either stone drunk at the time or flunked 'Balance 101'. /oneofmypetpeeves

When they destroyed no bullet drop on VS slugs, I swore to never again call for a specific ability to be nerfed.

Nah, just kidding. I was devastated though, believe me.

Lol, when they added Bullet drop that is when slug sniping became interesting. I haven't played in 6months,(crappy wireless internet and PS2 is expensive on bandwith) but i love me some Shotgun slugging. I use a 4x sight but i generally engage outside of minimum range. Headshotting @ 75m + with shotgun bullet drop is an art, not very efficient one tho. If i seriously wanna murder someone i'll just switch to a carbine and play properly but nothing gets the blood pumping like chain headshotting a moving target @ 75m+

3000 Slug kills(3700 total) with a Nova, HSR of 20% with an overall Acc of 41%. Accuracy is a bit low but that is what you get when you consistently shoot @ moving targets @75+m. HSR was elite last time i played, emphasising my play as a slug Marksman.

Gonna quote that for shotgun guide

Oh shut up.

Not useless. Auraxed the auto-shotgun with slugs recently, with engineer/HA, i didn't feel weak in the slightest, way better than buckshot in my opinion. Longing for ammo as HA though!
More recently, on my way to Havoc, i've started using the high-capacity shotgun with slugs and laser sight: i find no point in it with ext mag, default shotgun's reload speed trumps it when both have ext.mags, since number of shots isn't proportionate to default magazine size (it should have +6 shots instead of the same +4).
I must however concede the laser sight addition does feel barely any stronger than default, in terms of effective range; slug SA shotties feel less accurate with LS than a scout/battle rifle in same conditions. I've accepted that shotgun usage is disheartening at times, but that doesn't make it any better when RNG goes too much against you.

I'm not convinced about the point of slugs on a LA however, because in my opinion LA is the class which gets the most out of hipfiring, since speed is essential to it on one hand, and on the other hand LS can help a little in those situations where you need to shoot while jet-jumping or right after landing. In that light, 6 slugs by default is crippling considering poor accuracy, lower damage/shot of slug shotguns and wide usage of nanoweave and heavies. As such Laser sight is barely usable at all with slugs, except on the high capacity one, in exchange for a disproportionately slow reload speed.

I also feel, in general, that buckshot Baron with LS gives the semi-auto slug shotguns more than a run for their money within their effective range, either in ads or hipfire, effectively depriving them of a niche, especially for a LA. This in my opinion, is the most obvious proof both that slug shotguns should be buffed (buckshot too, though mostly the fall-off range...outrageously low min damage at 18m is a joke).
Sure you may once in a while encounter a situation where slug SA >buckshot Baron, but it remains the exception, not the rule.

What i do find effectively useless are slug PA shotguns. Apart from the occasional cheesing which Iridar showcased in his videos, the sheer awfulness of their accuracy is appalling, considering how impractical they are.

Vehicles can kill me, why should I be unable to kill them?

I'd gladly give up C4 if I had, for example, a fracture-style grenade launcher as a tool for AV work.

Because because uuuhhh COMBINED ARMS!!! Everyone has to combine to kill me. You can't use insta-kill xplosions on me!

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

One vehicle hardly qualifies as combined arms.

I've never used Slugs outside VR. Seems like a Battle rifle covers all its advantages and gives you even more attachments including underbarrel stuff. Only disadvantage might be hipfire I guess.

I never quite understand how anyone can compare such vastly different guns. They're as much alike as a SMG is to a Gauss Saw.

Did that include non-VS slug shotguns?

Perfect! I'd actually written much of that for your guide and intended to PM it to ya but never got around to finishing it. Then I saw this thread and decided to "kill 2 birds" as it were.

If you use LA with an up close, run-and-gun playstyle I can see where slugs may not be the best option.

But when I'm using slugs with LA, I'm generally focusing on positioning, not speed. I use LA to get onto rooftops, tall rocks and cliffs, etc, and fire down on troops below me, ducking back into cover between kills to reposition so that it's tough for enemies to keep track of my exact location. with this playstyle you'r generally too far away to reliably hipfire most weapons, so ADS is the way to go. And with this playstyle slugs work well.

I can see that with hipfire, but ADS? I regularly kill opponents out to 75m+ with SA slugs. I highly doubt that's possible with Baron pellets.

You can and do kill people far away from your effective range every now nad then, but that's not where you want to fight anyone in the principle, due to the velocity and drop (even moreso as VS). I mean i did get 2 or 3 kills past 30m in my last session with the Haymaker, but i got like maybe 40 or 50 within my 20m.

When i refer to speed by the way, i don't exclude positioning. I do emphasize speed, because that's what Icarus jets (my default LA jets) are about, but positioning is LA's trademark either way.
However i find that, in general, i can't abuse a good position and need to be on the move as soon as i've unloaded a mag, if only because a SA shotgun have a loud and characteristic sound (at least the TR ones, i don't remember the VS/TR ones in this instant,). It would be even worse with auto shotgun.
Since people are scared ****less by shotguns, they tend to forget anything else which had captivated them a moment ago and turn towards me in an instant, like i'm the star of the show.

Slugs essentially turns Shotgun into a battle rifle if I'm not mistaken. Whenever Battle Rifle is not available that's the only reason I would ever use them. Maybe LA would work well with them because they don't have a battle rifle. Then again the Cougar or Trac-5 burst could probably do a better job at range if I ever needed that from a LA.

I admit I've never used the Baron outside of VR. Those ranges sound pretty impressive for a pellet shottie. But double them and you get a typical Thanatos slug gun session for me. I'll have to play w/ the Baron a bit more. I still have some doubts about its pellet range but I'm open to being proven wrong. We'll have to see...

Absolutely. Just like I don't exclude speed when I talk about positioning. My playstyle generally has more of the latter than former tho.

Hmm interesting. I can't say I've noticed that in particular w/ slug guns. Maybe the increased range from slugs means that players hear the report of my shots but disregard them more frequently because they sound to far away to possibly be a threat at that range.

Baron absolutely has more pellet range than other shotguns. I was surprised by it myself, when I switched to laser sight. With it, I'd say Baron has about double pellet range than a normal shotgun without laser sight. But that's still only about 10m for a reliable kill within one magazine, and you do limit your magazine size this way. Miss / land too few pellets with 1-2 shots and you're screwed, especially if you're trying to power through HA shield. You also have to pace your shots to let CoF reset. All in all, you will get about the same TTK as an SMG at range, but with way more RNG. But at least you do have that option. With normal shotgun, trying to fire is pointless.

I'll tell you what got me ,... I have a "Haymaker shot gun" so I go to shoot the infultrator from the amp station on the other side of the road from a tower on the lower level, the bullet almost drops out of the gun and the COF is all over the place. Can't hit the guy for anything like one shot in 10 might have hit him. And he did not move much when he figured out I could not hit him... his pistol did a better job of killing me than a shot gun slug did him.
Total garbage on the shot gun slug. COF is 5 times what it should be...if they what to add vertial kick ok but the gun if worth less unless your 3 meter away.

I am tell you a sunner almost could out run the bullet. The bullet drop was bad very bad. OMG a fast moving tank or aircraft could easly out run the slug.

As soon as VS cry about being shot to much the DEV's nerf the gun.

Yes, I'm aware of that. The Baron and Jackhammer both have a pellet spread of 2.5, whereas all the other shotguns are 3-4. But that's not what we're talking about.

Nehylen is asserting that a Baron with pellets has a competitive range to an SA shotgun with slugs, during both hipfire and ADS. And that I'm just not buying.

Having just come from a VR session where I compared the baron w/ pellets to a Thanatos (default VS Shotgun) with slugs.... Well, quite frankly, there is no contest.

With hipfire they're pretty close. In fact, I might even give the edge to the Baron, since if you miss with slugs you miss the whole shot, so they're a bit more unforgiving of misses.

But during ADS? It's not even close. Slug guns easily have twice the effective range of the Baron. More if you're good at leading targets.

It's not only the pellet spread that's good about the Baron: its damage drop-off is way milder than your typical shotgun: where your typical shotgun loses >60~65% damage between 8 and 18m, the Baron "only" loses 40% between 10m and 30m (Jackhammer loses 37.5%, over same range as Baron).
I'm convinced that if shotguns suck so much after 8m it's mainly due to that crazy high damage drop over such a short range, not because of the spread, however awful it can be.
And that's without counting the better ads CoF if/when you ads, which i guess helps a bit, but also much higher velocity than typical shotguns, which helps a lot, adn the one big thing you can't appreciate on the VR dummies.

It's not necessarily always better than would be a slug shotgun, but a generally more adequate tool for CQC engagement for me as LA, and i still consider slug shotguns as powerful CQC guns, just with a smooth transition to medium range, compared to buckshots. I'm also much more comfortable with the reload mechanic on LA than i would be as ground-bound infantry (where i prefer the traditional one), as it fits my hit-and-run playstyle perfectly.

I would not attempt to "snipe" (for lack of a better term) as a principle with slugs. It's doable at times, and i do indulge into it, but i cannot imagine doing so as the meaty part of my gameplay. I mean if i do dare to compare my stats between my battle/scout rifles and slugs shotgun usage, the accuracy is somewhat similar (around ~40%), despite engaging into more long range fights with the former, and my HSR slumps from around 33% to around 20%. This is enough to tell me that the randomness of the CoF is going to kill me at some point if i forget my ideal engagement range.