Shotguns: Did I bet on the wrong horse?

[RetroNutcase]

So, early on I figured Shotguns would lend themselves well to my playstyle of being up close a lot, and trying to evade/block since I mostly melee anyway. I figured "I'll just burn my OP with a bunch of shotgun ammo."

The problem I've found is that in terms of damage output with custom bullets...Shotguns...Kinda suck.

I can get about 300-400 with buckshot on my Rank 8 shotgun. Meanwhile, with a Rank 8 sniper I JUST crafted using an HDH (Not sure what it stands for, but it's the common term) bullet recipe, I'm dealing 1700+ per shot for only a bit more OP.

Has anyone found a recipe that actually makes shotguns worth one's time? Because I can't find a way to do it.

[Ahriman]

Blast guns are better if you want to get up close and personal with custom bullets

[Cake]

HDH stands for Head Direct Hit and yes, Sniper and Blast deal vastly more damage than Shotgun/Assault. Though Assaults capability at staggering still makes it somewhat useful.
The lack of 2 Modules makes out a lot and then theres also Arbalest and Gabbro with their multipliers. I don't think any Shotguns go that high.

[H.U.N.K]

you have to be stood nearly right next to a target for shotguns to do any dmg the closer you are the more dmg you'l do its a good weapon to mix up with melee builds imo as you can just switch pump a few point blank shots then switch back and continue melee allso seems easier to break armor but im not sure about that but it does seem to break a lot faster with a shotty.

[Watchman]

^ That's the Spread shells yeah (woul love to know the functional difference bewteen the varieties, but anyway...). But as the bullet creation rules are pretty lax in this game (at least compared to GE2RB) you can cheerfully concot any amount of nastiness based on Sniper shots if you want some reach... slaving Bombs to those seems to work fairly well overall.

[KOS-MOS]

shotguns are good for breaking armor fast with buckshot, and depending on the bullets you use and taking advantage of elemental weakeness you can deal alot of dmg to the enemy and stun them alot aswell, i deal around 900 to 1300 damage normally once i break their armor and sometimes close to 2000+ hits with my rank 14 set :3 their is also a air predator form later on you can learn that can regen 90% of your oracle meter in one bite so you can essentially just = bite + spam shotgun + bite + spam shotgun

[RetroNutcase]

I guess the problem I see is, yeah, I could craft some neat HDH style ammo for my shotgun, but at that point it would make more sense to use a Sniper for better piercing. Though I might try making a bomb HDH for some long range crush.

I guess the main issue I see with shotguns is the spread shot is fun as hell at close range, but I can do far more damage with a better damage to OP ratio using an HDH recipe on a Sniper.