I know this would be quite a bit of a debate, but whats the best shotgun? it can be in general or depend on the situation, and please state your reasoning behind it. I'm trying to get into the shotgun game, but will not drop SC on a gun until I've heard from the community. Thanks for answering!
The Jackhammer. A very tiny COF, semi auto and fast reload. Tho it's only available to NC HA (if i remember right)
I have at least some experience with pretty much all shotguns available to LA, though I have only one auraxium with one of them, while there are people who long since auraxiumed all of them. I never really liked shotguns. In my opinion, if you want a shotgun to use as a shotgun; i.e. kill people at close range without giving them much chance to fight back, then you should use a Full Auto shotgun, that be Nighthawk / Pandora / Piston. It's true they do a bit less damage per shot and have the worst spread, further worsened by bloom, but with the amount of lead they send down range it just doesn't matter. It's easy to use, extremely powerful and cheesy. The only hard part is - as with any shotgun - getting close to the target in one piece. Fast ammunition expenditure can be a problem, but usually you can retreat to allies to restock on ammo without trouble. Using a sidearm with good range, like a Comissioner, is recommended, because if you are forced to engage at 15m, you'll have better luck with it than with a shotgun. If you want to use slugs, then I believe they are best used on a 1st generation pump action shotgun; Uppercut / Claw / Phobos. Reason for this is explained in detail here, and here's a video to demonstrate:
My 5 certs - out of empire specific shotguns, I've only used the NC starter shotty (Mauler), so my experience with shotguns is very limited. But the starter semi-auto would probably still be the one I'd use, based on its stats; I think it's the most versatile one. ROF is only slightly slower than on the full auto shotty, but you get half a second faster reload and tighter pellet spread (and very slightly lesser damage degradation). Often, you'll want to line up shots properly instead of spamming at full RPM anyway, and if you do that, the effective ROF is the same with both full auto and semi auto shotguns. In addition, even the semi auto at full ROF will decimate anything at close range bar another shotgun user, so where's the benefit of going overkill with a full auto, I might ask? And where's the benefit in paying 1000 certs for it when you get a shotgun for free? It's just more versatile - kill anything at close range, but without as much of a penalty outside of point blank range, and with less chance of getting caught pants down reloading.
Goodness - I think I'd be long dead given that uber slow refire rate! And I use slugs on NC Grinders just fine, but ouch, that is just so so slow with the pump action.
now I feel noobish...there's a starter shotgun? I'll play around with that and see how it goes. I prefer having slugs for medium range encounters, with another loadout for close-ranged encounters. What are great attachments for shotguns that you'd consider necessary?
I tried full auto slugs as well, and also thought they were fun. Fun, but ultimately, ineffective. On pump actions, slugs increase effective range from 5 to 22m, on full auto from 5 to maybe 10.
Disagree. The Piston was my first aurax mainly due to slugs and extended mags. I treated it like a battle rifle and plinked targets from afar usually scoring 3 hit kills. However, this was a long time ago; the slug damage model might have changed. The perch plinking would be done semi automatically to account for recoil. The benefit of the piston is that in cqc, a fully auto slug shotgun still drops insanely fast without the need for ads which is great for "oh ****" moments
The fact that you're able to kill doesn't necessarily make the weapon effective. Yeah, you can snipe with slugs. So with any other weapon. If I didn't die of boredom first, I'm sure I'd be able to auraxium any pistol by killing targets 50+ meters away, but how effective would that be? OP asked for the best, not "able to do". Slug sniping has the same issues the normal sniping does: usually it only can kill those who are unskilled enough to stand around for a sniper to line up a headshot. There's not much value in killing a BR5 medic who's reviving people while not moving and doesn't seem to learn from repeated deaths. Semi auto shotguns have better recoil decrease, making follow up shots faster. High capacity semi-auto has 8 rounds per mag, and can afford to use Laser Sight to make hip firing at least somewhat viable, full-auto needs extended mags. And without laser sights, the situation that you're describing where you can hip fire at someone, target needs to be within knife range for you to hit it outside of dumb luck. No, for optimal use, slugs only increase effective range to about 27m, where full auto / semi auto slugs maintain a 3 hit kill against full nanoweave and velocity actually allows to hit the target. Pump slugs have shorter range, only 22m, but they maintain a 2 hit kill within that range, and can OHK on a headshot within 20m. For that reason I think they are more effective, though, obviously, more skill demanding. Higher risk, higher reward.
I've got 160kills to this point with every shotgun available to me as VS, so not much, and my favorite with LA, was the Pandora (auto-shotgun) with slugs. I found myself pretty effective with it. I've loved playing the Baron too. Its accuracy makes it the pellet shotgun i prefer by a large margin, though it's weaker in absolute: i could still own most rapid-fire auto gun users at 10m, contrary to any other shotgun without slugs. Also, this might come as a surprise since nobody praises those weapons, but i actually liked the underbarrel shotgun from the Solstice SF, well except against HAs, even when i had the jump on them (same thing with pump action shotguns: too much time before the second shot). You can't rely on those for some extended action as a LA though.
If your standard infantry accuracy is > 25% then I'd say get a pump action. If it's less than that, you're probably better off with the automatic shotguns so you can spray and pray a bit. I say that as someone with an accuracy well below 25% - so it isn't from elitism Either way; Shotties are (in my opinion) good for LA's only if you're doing tower fights and like hopping up and down the levels picking people off. Otherwise, you may well find that the range disadvantage is too big a factor. Slugs make it a weird weapon imo and I'm not convinced the lack of spread is made up for the odd cheap long shot.
