Shotgun or hand mortar

[Eat__Food]

I'm looking to create a good range weapon and can't decide if I should upgrade a shotgun or hand mortar since they both seem to be useful in the end game. I'll mostly be using it while kiting for the challenges that require you to stay above a specific health % or not get hit at all. I'm leaning more towards shotguns since I have more experience using them.

In the realm of shotguns I'm unsure what the best modifiers would be. Usually it's vicious/cursed/assassin with most weapons, but if split timing is used with the shotgun the target should be vulnerable the majority of the time. This would make the assassin modifier fairly obsolete in most cases, especially with stronger enemies where I would be focusing my attack on one target. With this in mind I looked at the other options for modifier suffixes and the two that seem the best to me are Ram (inflict Daze on crit, 20 second cooldown) and Duelist (add armor penetration).

What are your thoughts/opinions?

[Eat__Food]

Thanks for the quick reply KOS-MOS! I've used your guide already and really like the Berzerk build. Definitely a fun/effective build. It's especially good at taking out lots of smaller enemies so that I can focus on stronger ones.

I'd like to make a shotgun that is vicious/cursed/dancing, but can't use all of three of those since they are all prefix modifiers, so it's impossible to find a weapon that has any two of those modifiers already on it at baseline. That's why I think using Ram is a good option, since it's a good substitute for Assassin in the prefix category.

Do you think Dancing is better than either Vicious or Cursed? I'd be hesistant to swap out speed for raw damage since I often use divinity cards that give me a speed bonus on kill.

Thanks for the tips on the hand mortar! I'll certainly look into making one of those!

[Xeorxe]

use two weapons, shotgun for speedy and one targeted damage from afar and something like hammer for aoe and gapclosing

[HiImTye]

the shotgun I use is Cursed/Mauling/Dancing, and the hand mortar that I'm building is Dancing/Vampirism/Efficient.

the Mauling on the shotgun helps keep enemies at a distance, so I can more effectively split-time, and the I tend to prefer Cursed over other abilities, because you tend to get greater returns, and you get a gold penalty, rather than a penalty vs. crit immune enemies. Dancing lets me fire off several rounds to help me proc Mauling, which lets me keep multiple enemies at a distance if needed. if you keep your speed buff up, Dancing lets you fire off crazy fast rounds, and you can end up taking out a large group of lower enemies, or a couple tyrant enemies in a couple seconds.

for the hand mortar, I find that with a controller, Dancing makes gives me a much lower time penalty when I miss a target, and Efficient lets me drop fire lakes, and explosive jump like a mother. with Vampirism, because it's an "on hit" mechanic, an effective fire lake keeps enemies inside it because of the move speed penalty, and can fill you to full, and keep you there for the duration. this means that you only really have to worry about one-shot enemies, and being unlucky with getting critted.

as far as which one is better, that depends entirely on you. I don't think that any weapon in VV is "better" than any other, I use all of the weapons depending on how I'm feeling, and it adds to the replay value of VV, on top of level scaling, and hot swapping equipment and outfits. the shotgun is an effective single target weapon, providing that you keep enemies at a distance. the hand mortar is a mid-range weapon that is most effective while, or after fighting large groups of enemies. you can make arguments for either weapon being better, like all weapons in VV.

[DragOnGamer626]

One thing I will say is if you use a gamepad, the mortar is really hard to aim properly. But other than that, both are great weapons. :D

[HiImTye]

that's one of the reasons that I give for Dancing on the mortar, DragOn