Shotgun Changes Are A Bit Extreme

Title says it all. I'm honestly surprised there isn't more posts about this, or maybe there aren't many shotgun players.

The ammo count reduction in my opinion was fine, I can understand that change. But the damage changes per pellet is way too extreme. Can we please get a roll back on the damage changes at least?

Spent almost all today feeling out auto shotguns and pump shotguns. I feel so sorry for the pump shotgun fans, I wouldn't be surprised if you folks packed up and went home, they are an absolute joke. Auto Shotguns are about on par with the SMG's at 5m. Can't tell you how many times I ended up killing my target but was killed as well at the same time. Honestly though, at 5m any shotgun should out perform other weapon on the field.

Yeah, I run asp shotgun secondary on my engi and I only had one encounter yesterday where I tried my shotty,
Finding a cloaker, my shotgun has a flashlight on it for checking rooms
So I found him and began to fire, he ran away to a jump-pad while I peppered him with weak tickle-pellets...
Pretty depressing.

IF shotguns needed a nerf then it should have been to their range.
Remove flachette, increase the damage drop off etc.
Shotguns SHOULD be strong in cqc, reducing their cqc potential is nothing short of ********.
But hey, what more should we expect, we've seen this type of crap before with Phylactery and Symbiote,
Wrel is incapable of doing the job of a dev and actually balancing things so he nerfs them so bad
that they are pretty much removed from the game.

The only problem with shotguns are/were the Flechette ammo and the damage nerf doesnt actually do much, sure it does pull back the range a little but for example, auto-shotgun still has a stupid 23m range with Flechette where it does at least 100 damage per pellet = 500 damage per shot = still "instant" death for any non-overshielded HA infantry.

It was never the damage the shotguns could do at close range that was the problem, its that they can do crazy high damage "across the room" too.


Flechette tripling the max AND minimum range is just absolutely absurdly OP on shotguns that are supposed to be balanced with their weakness outside of their effective range. Bring it more in line with Soft Point Ammo and give it a nice 5m range or something instead, that way they probably dont even need to reduce the pellet count.

I've seen some full-auto and pump action shotguns and they couldn't kill me once, swapped to them and they're very bad. If you don't land every pellet you're looking at a 3-shot autoshotty kill and 2-shot pump kill by missing only 1 pellet. Brutal nerf when they used to be great but not OP.

I'm interested how good/bad the Jackhammer is now though, been used a lot until this patch.

Keep in mind that the changelog literally has this for the auto-shotgun changes:
Dev Note: This is a heavy swing. These weapons will very likely need to get tuned back into a more usable position once more data comes in.

and this for the pumpies:
Dev Note: Similar to the above, this heavily reduces these weapons' effectiveness, and will likely need to get tuned upward after this update to make them more competitive with the semi-autos.

So auto-shotgun nerf might not be so bad or they see that they were not hit that hard by it, which is my personal opinion, and I think the pump-shotguns will be completely reverted hopefully in favour of Flechette Ammo getting a range nerf instead.

Translation:

OH NO! DBC turned my crutch from a wooden one that creaked with the weight it carried to a rubber one. What am I supposed to do? Learn to aim? In a fps shooter? I want my lottery weapon back. I should only have to point in the general direction to kamikaze my one kill on a more skilled player before I die. I'm too lazy to learn to aim. I buy cosmetics, so I deserve my crutch. Give it back!

Why do people keep mentioning Flachette ammo as the reason people weren't a fan of shotguns lately?

It literally has nothing to do with mid range. Were shotguns outperforming Carbines at mid range? no.
Were shotguns killing a ton of people across the room? not really? not sure.
Also the problem wasn't all shotguns, it was 1 hit shotguns. Maybe 2 hit shotguns.

The only problem with shotguns was like anything else One Hits. Nobody wants any weapon type to 1 hit around door fights. Simple.

& that had nothing to do with " range ". They are over 1 hitting anything. 1 hitting knives, no. 1 hitting snipers around door fights, no. 1 hitting shotguns around tower floors, no. Are people ranting about 1 hitting knives or 1 hitting qcq snipers from flachette ammo? NO. Sorry just makes no sense.

Who the heck was farming Nasons tunnel with a shotgun, at mid range? Umm nobody was. If Flachette ammo was sooo good, then surely you'd see people use it for Nason's tunnel, yet no you don't see people use shotguns for nasons tunnel. Why is that?
Here I'll answer, they still were bad at mid range, that tunnel is near range, barely mid range.

3 hit shotguns didn't need a nerf, 4, 5 , or 6 hit didn't need a nerf, with any ammo type.

Also my Pandora performs 100% the same with or without flachette ammo, it's barely advantageous. Same amount of kills either way. & no I don't see mid range shotgunner's winning the board. I do however have to knife a 1 hit shotgunner 2 times & if he is HA I have to knife him 3. & If he has a 1 hit shotgun, he will kill me with 1 hit. Am I worried about the range he's dueling me, I'm a freakin knifer I run to him. So it's not the range.

My pandora with flachette ammo isn't winning at mid range kill streaks over a carbine, it's equal if anything or the carbines win mid range. TBH I don't remember if flachette shotguns were killing me at point hold rooms, from the other side of the room, maybe you're right, I don't know. I play ambusher & stealth often. Maybe I forgot what range they were when I get shot running away.

Still even if they nerfed flachette, that won't stop a 1 hit shotgun from killing me with 1 hit from 2 feet away when I'm knife.

Solution: 1 hit shotguns, they are now 2 hit shotguns.

I was able to knife fight anyone who took 3 shotguns hits to kill me just fine from any range. It's those who only take 1 or 2 hits that are the issue & keep the rpm slow. So maybe only 3 hit shotguns should exist.

I'm sure I started that paragraph wrong, as I'm not entirely sure, their may be some times where flachette gets you from mid range when you're jumping from the 2nd floor to the 1st floor, that's just not right. So I dunno. Any ammo type 2 hitting from 4 to 6 feet away is unfair to knife duel. My knife requires to be nearer to 2 hit. If I'm hiding around a box, they'll outgun me before I run around the box. I suppose I have approached this thread as a knifer or ambush LA juker. When medics & engineers are over dueling HA with mid range situations.

Interesting points. However, I still believe shotguns should be king in any fight around 5m. The damage nerf to the pellets was quite uncalled for. I've swapped back to the SMG and I'm doing much better at ranges where a shotgun should be the best option, to me this is odd but it is what it is while the nerf is active. I'm hoping the pallet damage change gets reverted back.

Now all this talk about Flachette, I have no idea as I never used it. But if this allowed shotguns to exceed at medium ranges, then yeah, that's a problem. So perhaps changes JUST to Flachette ammo was needed.

The damage now is exactly as it was pre-NWA nerf (assuming 95+% of people were using NWA) except with increased consistency and new attachments, and semi-auto wasn't nerfed at all. The reduced ammo for autos is a little ???, and I expect that to get reverted.

Nothing more needs be said tbh. If you aren't doing well with shotguns now, you might want to look inward.

It's not really a matter of not doing well with them, but the fact that other options seem to out perform shotguns at their ideal range, this is the root of my concerns at least. I personally dig SMG's and they really are the shining weapon in CQC at the moment.

Maybe I'm speaking for all shotgun users here, but the play style of shotguns is exciting! Having to rush up to walls or corners, closing the gap on your target that's trying to pick you off from 50m away. It's just a fun experience where you're at a massive disadvantage unless you can manage to close that gap while using the environment to do so. So moving onto something else isn't really the ideal option as that's a drastic change to the engagement style.

Flechette wasn't that good, sure you pushed your max damage to from 5m to 15m

2 problems though

Range is this game make no sens, 5m away from a vehicle could be as far as sitting on it

The trade off for that extra range was loosing 3-2 pellets per shot depending if it was a pump or semi/auto shotgun

Pump shotgun with flechette before did 1k damage within a 15m range meaning 100% accuracy needed for a reliable one shot now you need to nearly land headshot only with all pellets for the same result

Why not use any other weapon which neither suffer from extreme spread at medium range with higher RoF and accuracy then?

Increasing range on a shotgun is also not playing into your favor : the further the target the higher the spread and the chance to miss most pellets and when you get into CQC the missing pellets per shots are more likely to get yourself killed

Nothing out performs being able to insta-kill (or near insta with auto-shotty) with body shots.

NWA nerf buffed all weapons, and all cqc weps got some pretty sizable ttk decreases, but going from 0.6 ttk to 0.4 ttk (cyclone, the best SMG in the game) isn't as impactful as going from 0 ttk to 0 ttk at longer ranges.

All shotguns can still 1 shot with headshots to.

And your play style really doesn't change at all. You just no longer insta-win at ridiculous ranges. Continuing to force people to fight you in shotgun ranges by hugging corners or playing classes that can use shotguns + another main weapon (or ambusher jets) will not change.

But isnt that a nerf then? The shotguns are pre-NWA but all the other weapons are post-NWA.

Also if you look at shotguns they dont seem to have a superior role atm. The F1 Barrage, a purpose build CQC weapon, has practically the same TTK as the Trac-5 which isnt a purpose build CQC weapon. And that assumes you are within the shorter maximum damage range and hit all pellets. Despite greater consistency shotguns are still not as consistent as regular automatic weapons. Just to drive that point home: the pellet spread of the F1 barrage before regular COF comes into play is as large as the jumping COF of the Trac-5 after firing 10 shots. I dont know about you but I dont call that very consistent.

This is the whole problem with shotguns currently despite the buffs: they dont really give an advantage in the range they are supposed to be good at but do carry some hefty disadvantages. Why use a shotgun if almost any Carbine or SMG can do the same but have a more consistent hit chance at range with less damage falloff? In fact with the exception of the automatic shotguns they are harder to use since an SMG or Carbine in CQC can be used by holding the trigger and looking at the target while a pump/semi shotgun requires pinpoint precision as you face your enemy to make sure your shot counts and finishes the fight without too many pellets landing next to the target.

The only time shotguns can carry an advantage is if you can score a OHK with them, which technically you can too with CQC Carbines for example by simply unloading enough damage into the target that you beat the server latency.

Shotguns need their own niche. For example if enough pellets hit simultaneously it could debuff the opponent, or shotguns need to have utilitarian options to make up for the range they sacrifice even when using flachettes simply because that pellet spread doesnt magically disappear.

So yes there IS more to be said about shotguns. At what point are they superior? Only a OHK is better. But they are more punished at range, more punished by RNG, more punished for when the player misses and dont really surpass anything when they manage to get a regular TTK.

Let me just quickly demolish your argument with some actual facts: FA1 Barrage was not even touched in the update afaik?




But still lets demolish it with all our favourites, facts and math too!

FA1 Barrage has a RPM of 225 = 3.75 per second = each shot takes 0.2667 seconds to fire, the first one obviously has no delay making the TTK in the proposed scenario a nice 0.2667 seconds, almost half of the TTK the Trac-5 has unless it goes for 100% headshots.

This also means that needing to fire 3 times to have a decently consistent 10-15m range kill potential only takes ~0.53 seconds and its decently consistent since you only need about ~66% of your pellets to hit and still get the kill, unlike the Trac-5 that would need 100% accuracy and still clock in on just under that with 0.48 seconds(stolen from wiki).

Ah I forgot about that, thanks!

So they are superior in CQC if you've got the skill to make sure enough pellets land within that 5m distance (that is half a Sunderer).
Anything to say about the lack of range, the still severe RNG that increases with range, the need to be pinpoint accurate to minimize RNG effects and the higher punishment for missed shots?
Because even with that TTK advantage, shotguns arent the scourge people make them out to be. They still need something. I've always been a fan of adding more utility and taking that range disadvantage away by letting players switch to solid slugs by simply going ADS. its still inferior to any other ranged in almost every case. Having the ability to load a single mini-grenade for a utility attack (EMP/concussion/flash/whatever) would also make shotguns more worthwhile beyond shortrange engagements.

On the other side of the coin, OHK's arent fun for the one being OHK'd. I've proposed before to change OHK's to an "almost dead and debuffed" if you were full health&shield before.

It technically is but also isn't; in the same way that if they were to nerf bolter damage by 20% it wouldn't make a difference in most scenarios.

Shotguns got buffed with consistency, which adds range. They also got some attachments that either increase consistency or range directly. Even with the damage nerfs they can still do exactly what they used to pre-arsenal update (1 shot or very low ttk ~0.2 seconds), just a touch further out.

I think botji went over this part.

Carbines have been buffed pretty hard, yeah. Especially as LA, they are in a pretty obnoxious place, but even they need 100% headshot acc just to match the weakest shotgun body shot ttk. SMGs actually received the least buffs for arsenal update, but most of them were already really good. That being said, the cyclone (the best SMG) has double the TTK of the worst shotgun.

Gotta be honest with the last part, while complete misses with shotguns are big ttk loses, in most cases you still hit some pellets, and anyone who can't land hits with a shotgun isn't going to land enough with an smg/carbine either. At least with shotguns they can get lucky and delete someone before the other person can even react.

Somewhat agree with this, the problem is that the way the game plays, you can force players into the ranges where you can reliably OHK (or have one of the fastest TTKs in the game ~0.2 secs). Most maps have objectives with plenty of corners, halls, etc. that force attackers into these cramped spaces. On top of that, ASP and ambushers exist, which lets you largely circumvent the negatives of shotgun's lower range: Medic (shotgun primary, BR/SR secondary), Eng (shotgun sec, any primary), Heavy (shotgun prim, heavy weapon sec... or jackhammer sec if NC), LA (ambushers, impulse nades, shotgun prim, smg secondary... punisher impulse underbarrel).

You are forgetting about the Flechette ammo that extends the maximum damage to 15m which is far enough a lot of the time since its not like you suddenly cant kill someone a few meters further away than that. Take them for a spin in VR and you will see it yourself that even the 30m targets are within your range with the semi/auto shotguns.

But since no one takes my word for it here is some video evidence taken a few moments ago(FA1 Barrage being used, Extended ammo, Smart-Choke and Flechette).


Shotguns consistently killing with 2-3 shots up to 20m or 30m with 3-4 cant really be considered "short range" or being at a big disadvantage by it.


So I will keep my opinion that the real problem with shotguns atm has little to do with their damage in close range and everything to do with Flechette giving them a unreasonable effective range since you can literally 2-3 bang someone from across a room while still being nearly unmatched up close too(lots of headshots can compete).

I agree that there are other ways shotguns could be viable weapons without locking them into super close range and instant to near instant killers. It wouldnt be too crazy let shotguns have decent range like this, nerf their damage a bit more but also give them stuff like concussive effects(like the grenades) when hit by them, ramped up in severity depending on how many pellets hits as well as giving them a higher 'flinch' effect to really push the whole "If this was Hollywood you would be flying across the room" thing people like to think happens if you would get shot by one.

Why does anyone think they are any good?
To take the F1barrage again: 6 pellets 100 to 84 damage each, 600 damage max and 504 damage minimum.
Flachette ammo takes one pellet, so 500 damage at maximum, which is already lower than the minimum damage without flachettes, AND because one pellet is removed you have less chance of hits per shot meaning more likely that you need an extra shot.
So in 100% of the cases flachette ammo is worse. Unless it also gives a pellet spread reduction that I'm unaware off?

Small edit: looking further it has some uses on other shotguns that have higher damage falloff, but still at the cost of basically already starting with half your damage falloff and less chances to hit the target it just doesnt seem to have a solid application even if you can say that the TTK could stay the same over most distances (which is already an indication something is wrong, when does it make the weapon superior? Only at longer ranges where RNG is in effect!)

Yeah! High TTK kills at range when aiming at stationary targets while you are stationary as well! I'm convinced!
Also if you are doing such a video shouldnt you do a comparison with flachettes vs without flachettes and vs other CQC oriented weapons?

Wait what? At 20m the minimum in your video was 4 and at longer ranges 5 to 7? How can you claim 2-3 or 3-4 shots? Its 4+ at minimum at +20m! And again that is for an almost ideal non-moving COF against a non-moving target!

When? Where? How? Your own video doubles that number in ideal circumstances! How the hell are you supposed to kill across a room if we have to do that in worse conditions?

As much as hollywood blows it out of proportions, a shotgun still transfers most of its energy into you upon hit (more so than a bullet that pierces you). The recoil (and the energy in the shells with it) is also substantial, so its more that they've expanded reality than made a myth due to most people who have experience with shots would have seen* the shotgun to have a harsher impact on the target. Although if you are wearing enough protection an AK47 shot would transfer about the same energy. The second although: that would be for civilian shotguns&ammo, not a military one.

But if we are in agreement about reducing OHK's, then we also need to have consolation buffs for pump-action shotguns that have a high focus on finishing the fight instantly. It would be rather sad to have such a weapon with in-build long time between shots and be worse off in almost every single engagement as you require at minimum 2 shots suddenly without compensation somehow (even if the target is concussed, as PS2 isnt just 1v1 contest especially when you have to close the distance somehow). The only thing I can think off is again a utilitarian grenade-sluground. If you can fire a mini-flashbang at a target and blind some opponents you have more time for that second shot, besides the mini-grenade possibly still functioning as a regular sluground and dealing damage.

*I say seen since I'm assuming someone is unlikely to have personal experience with both and tell anyone about it.

Because despite all the production, editing and commercials for this video all it was supposed to show was that the range is in actual fact much further than half a Sunderer as you said it was.

I just slapped on Flechette Ammo because its what I use on the auto but used the Barrage in the video since that was the one you had as example. If I did not use it I imagine the complaints would have been about me using an entirely different shotgun than what you were talking about instead, really no pleasing you.

Good, shotguns dont suffer any penalties from moving so im happy you understand, as well as shotguns filling the space with pellets making the targets movement matter less than a lot of other weapons, making the VR dummies surprisingly effective at showing actual combat effectiveness since even on a moving target you could probably aim kinda centre mass and fire a few times and they would likely die just like the dummies.

0:06, 0:21 and 0:24 so, every single one of the 20m targets were killed with 3 shots.
I fired more because why wouldnt you in a normal fight and not exactly my fault the VR dummies takes a while before they flop over dead.

Video quality not the best so might have to slow down to see it clearly but they all die with the 3rd shot hitting them, about when I fire the 4th so the 4th just hits the now dead dummy falling over. Like the HA at 0:13 that eats the 3rd shot because he was still standing(but dead) when I shot the 3rd on him.