Shotgun is garbo

[Ado]

yes or no

yes for me so garbo

[Delta_Assault]

It’s good for killing weaker enemies

[NeverADullDoor]

It's good for grouped up cultists, but it really shines against weak demons (nurglings and blue horrors) that group up as they rush to get into melee range, making multi-kills easy.

Giving it the Mechanicus blessing also gives the shotgun pellets ricochet, which is really useful for crowd control, at least in the earlier levels, before tougher MOBs start to become common and the blessing is better used on another gun.

[recursor]

I stopped using the shotgun for blue horrors when I realized you can group them up and take out an unlimited number of them with the F charge move, then back up to collect the armor drops. However, I use it a lot when thinning out the unarmored cultists. It pastes them at a longer range that you might think and leaves all of your other ammo for the tougher foes.

[MorganaMaleficaVera]

I've found the shotgun a lot more efficient for clearing Blue Horrors and the weaker Cultists out. It does feel a bit superfluous since the bolter is, like, FINE at doing that, but it's not as good as the shotgun is at that specific thing.

[Dosto]

I used the shotgun on exterminatus the whole game, its great to kill lesser enemies and those annoying little critters. Its fun to use, well... like every shotgun in videogames should be. If you manage to upgrade it with those green spirits, it can clear a whole room with just two shoots.

[General Melchett]

Originally posted by Ado:

yes or no

yes for me so garbo

I quite like the shotgun, and have found instances where I'd actually prefer it over the bolter or plasmagun for handling chaos marines

Largely because it momentarily stuns a marine when they take a faceload of shot

[Mastodon_2]

I like the shotgun for clearing corridors and weaker enemies. It can take out cultists at much longer distances than you think too. Plus, it's just super satisfying to use.

[G-Man]

It's a waste of a weapon slot.

[IHateStairs]

I definitely think it's the weakest weapon but it's good when you switch to it, fire, and then switch back to something else and repeat

[int main() {_salt = 1;};]

everything the shotgun is good at, the boltgun does better

make it semi auto instead of pump action

[looper]

I"m playing on hard and the shotgun under-performs. The further I get, the worse it feels. The main problem? The boltgun is just as good, if not better in most situation and you're always swimming in bolt rounds (unless you're wasting the pickups).
On a case by case basis:
- The shotgun shines against humans. This is probably the best case for the weapon.
- The shotgun is bewildering against nurglings. Their small size and fast movement somehow - makes them impossible dodgers once they get close. Boltgun glasses them at any range.
- The shotgun is intensely frustrating against frogs. Small frogs are strangely tanky and eat pellets like popcorn. The big frog is armored for some reason (explosives work well against it though).
- The weapon is lackluster against armored targets like chaos marines. This is expected.

The game tends to promote using certain weapons against certain enemies, but the shotgun just never comes into its own with the standard boltgun having so much utility.

[Vesperas]

The shotgun does precisely what it should do. It's a solid, close / medium range weapon that's effective for wiping out groups of lesser enemies.

Good FPS players don't sit on one weapon. They swap between them depending on the situation. If you've played many retro shooters you'd realize this has pretty much always been the case. The chain gun in Doom outperformed the shotgun in basically every situation but players were intelligent enough to swap between them in order to maximize the efficiency of both weapons.

[StronkiTonki]

I agree. Doesn't feel as punchy. I feel like it needs a buff.
Claiming it's good at killing weak enemies is... silly imho.
Literally every gun is good at killing weak enemies, so claiming the only good thing about the Shotgun is killing weak enemies.. Well it just proves that it's weak, isn't it?

Even when incorporating it with other weapons it doesn't work. I tried switching around, giving a quick shotgun blast as I go, but the damage is just not there, and I regret switching to the shotgun every single time.

[Vesperas]

Originally posted by StronkiTonki:

I agree. Doesn't feel as punchy. I feel like it needs a buff.
Claiming it's good at killing weak enemies is... silly imho.
Literally every gun is good at killing weak enemies, so claiming the only good thing about the Shotgun is killing weak enemies.. Well it just proves that it's weak, isn't it?

Even when incorporating it with other weapons it doesn't work. I tried switching around, giving a quick shotgun blast as I go, but the damage is just not there, and I regret switching to the shotgun every single time.

It works perfectly fine.

The damage is there when it's used properly and the game blatantly explains how to do so. By default, it's a STR 3 weapon, while the boltgun is a STR 4. The shotgun also has a spread, causes knock back and when upgraded, causes the shots to ricochet around the room.

I'm not sure how much more obvious it can be that it's intended for short / medium range crowd control against groups of weaker enemies.

Using the same logic, one could argue that the boltgun should also be buffed because the heavy bolter deals more damage and never has to reload. Each weapon has a nuance and their effectiveness is determined by the player using them appropriately to the situation.

[X YdoC]

Standard shotgun is basically useless with a full arsenal. Bolter is better in almost every situation period (except maybe killing pink horrors), and when you use it like the guy above me is saying to use it, then it's still completely outclassed by the vengeance launcher. It has almost no place in this game in it's base form other than something to use at the beginning of chapters. It has short range and a slow(ish) fire rate and a low ammo capacity with a long reload, like a shotgun should(if your boomer shooter has reloads), yet has pitiful damage on anything stronger than a lesser plague toad. The balance is just not there any way you try to spin it. The only redeeming thing the shotgun has is the machine spirit upgrade. When upgraded by the machine spirit it feels exactly how it should and actually earns it's place in the arsenal. It now kills space marines in 2-3 shots instead of 4-6 and does comparable damage to the tougher enemies as say plasma gun shot. It's for this reason that I basically use the machine spirit on the shotgun every time. You can even get more than one kill with one shot on cultists with a well placed shot, and can take out a decent chunk of nurglings. It's nice, I recommend trying it out. It may not be better than say the plasma gun upgraded, but it actually fills the boomer shooter workhorse role in close to mid range like it should. Personally I think they need to make the base shotgun the machine spirit version, then rework the machine spirit to boost the strength level to 5 or so.