Are the shotguns just horrible or am I using them wrong?

[Eevee Boy Ben]

Next to no damage at mid-close range

[Artek [General]]

Vets will say the latter. Most of the shotguns are bordline S tier when used right, with sole exception being Slug Shotgun who is a contender for the worst weapon in the game.

HEL Shotgun can kill a biter in 2 clean shots, but requires to be point blank for it to work. Not that it's what its supposed to do - it's a crowd controll weapon first due to penetration.

Sawed off, Pump Action and Choke Mod shotguns all deal the same damage - 30. The only difference is their spread and range fall off.
Which means a guaranteed kill on small biters as long as 66% of the shell hits.

Sawed Off and Pump are just same thing, different mag size.
Choke Mod only starts losing damage to range at 15m and combined with tight spread can be very effective at medium range.

[Artek [General]]

Oh crap, I forgot about Combat Shotgun's existence again.

It's basically HEL Shotgun, but it trades penetration for more straight damage. You can one tap biters to the head if you get close enough - crazy ammo efficiency if you learn to do that reliably.

Scattergun is within a weight class of its own. Oneshots giants, nukes waves, can kill bosses in like 10 seconds... Pretty much the most broken weapon in the game, if you know how to use it.

[Ghoul Hunter]

The only shotgun I use (not that the others are bad, but I prefer precision weapons) is the HEL shotgun. It's really good for tanking a horde of unlimited size/composition coming from one direction. A steady stream of firing will hold everything back for the duration of the clip. It's mediocre for general skirmishes, though, so you shouldn't be using it like that.

[Prowler™]

Depends...slug shotgun is one of the worst weapons in the game and taking it is actively harming your chance of clearing most levels haha Fires 1 bullet, its basically a short range rifle with low ammo pool.

Sawed off is actually super strong but high risk as you need to be up close to connect the pellets. It does nearly as much damage as the Pump shotgun per shot which is honestly insane, its like carrying 2 special weapons.

Pump shotgun is the OG weapon, its always been good, just remember it has an animation glitch after reloading so you will want to cancel it with a quick swap or you'll be forced to wait 2 seconds before the gun will fire again...

HEL shotgun is also a bad weapon but only because its damage falloff is so short that even if the pellets penetrate targets they do 80% less damage to the ones behind. In all cases the HEL revolver/auto pistol preform better than this gun. Source? Trust me bro. I've played some GTFO. Yes i know it staggers, no i dont care because the auto pistol does that way better with more ammo and the revolver kills everything at safe distances.

Combat shotgun is slept on these days, back in the beta it was the speed runners gun of choice as it mowed down everything at high speed...it still does this but with the power creep of HEL rifle/Splattergun/MK12 MG its lost favour. Still a good weapon. Very short range.

Choke mod is the door bangers weapon of choice. It can unload its magazine in a split second allowing you to instantly kill any giant threat at a safe distance. Its just not as good in a sustained fight so you don't see it used that often.

Scattergun is the notorious boomstick, the devs constantly tried to nerf it yet it still keeps on trucking. Still capable of blowing through all the biggest threats in the game with ease. Its only limit is how confident you are at playing GTFO lol. To use this gun effectively you need to be running up point blank on dangerous targets and deleting them. Its not as easy as it looks.

[D4RKEVA]

Originally posted by Prowler™:

Depends...slug shotgun is one of the worst weapons in the game and taking it is actively harming your chance of clearing most levels haha :Nutcracker: Fires 1 bullet, its basically a short range rifle with low ammo pool.

Agree

Sawed off is actually super strong but high risk as you need to be up close to connect the pellets. It does nearly as much damage as the Pump shotgun per shot which is honestly insane, its like carrying 2 special weapons.

Agree (its the same damage tho with only precision multi (aka headshots) changing

Pump shotgun is the OG weapon, its always been good, just remember it has an animation glitch after reloading so you will want to cancel it with a quick swap or you'll be forced to wait 2 seconds before the gun will fire again...

Agree. Tho the animation is not a glitch. Its the animation being able to be cut short thats the glitch

HEL shotgun is also a bad weapon but only because its damage falloff is so short that even if the pellets penetrate targets they do 80% less damage to the ones behind. In all cases the HEL revolver/auto pistol preform better than this gun. Source? Trust me bro. I've played some GTFO. :emofdr: Yes i know it staggers, no i dont care because the auto pistol does that way better with more ammo and the revolver kills everything at safe distances.

Heavy disagree. Gun is giga busted. The damage outputs is insane (and its generally rated just behind hel revolver. It staggers nearly as good as hel auto pistol while it out damages pretty much every other main by over 50% without even considering pen

Combat shotgun is slept on these days, back in the beta it was the speed runners gun of choice as it mowed down everything at high speed...it still does this but with the power creep of HEL rifle/Splattergun/MK12 MG its lost favour. Still a good weapon. Very short range.

I can see the underrated with the busted guns. So ye agree. Overall a clear good gun

Choke mod is the door bangers weapon of choice. It can unload its magazine in a split second allowing you to instantly kill any giant threat at a safe distance. Its just not as good in a sustained fight so you don't see it used that often.

Kinda niche due to being so „all roundish okay“ at most things. Incredibly rolecrep with hel rifle/scatter/high cal

Scattergun is the notorious boomstick, the devs constantly tried to nerf it yet it still keeps on trucking. Still capable of blowing through all the biggest threats in the game with ease. Its only limit is how confident you are at playing GTFO lol. To use this gun effectively you need to be running up point blank on dangerous targets and deleting them. Its not as easy as it looks.

Agree. Tho the devs didnt rly try to chain nerf it. It only got buffs after its og r6 nerf