Shotguns
What is with the excessive nerfing of shotguns? This is coming from someone who rarely uses assault class. 99 damage three times today at close range with the pump semi auto is now almost unusable...
Forum Discussion
The trick to shotguns is to understand why they are unreliable. The hipfire circle is not a good indication of the spread of the pellets. It's an indication of accuracy. The cluster of pellets is much more precise than that though.
So what tends to happen is that even if you're shooting center mass, many of the pellets may still group together at the outer edges of that circle. Other times they may be at the aim dot.
So if you want to hit your shots consistently, don't aim using the circle, but aim using the aim dot. Make sure that the entire circle covers the enemy. If it doesn't, use ADS instead.
The trick to shotguns is to understand why they are unreliable
It’s not a “you don’t understand shotguns” issue. The guns themselves are underpowered and inconsistent. You can know every detail about pellet spread and it still won’t change the fact that shotguns and snipers are regularly hitting for 93–99 damage in situations where they should be securing kills. Nobody here is confused about how pellet spread or hipfire circles work. The discussion is about weapon balance and consistency, not aiming technique. It's not a “learn the mechanics” issue.
I don't consider shotguns to be underpowered. The fact that you're hitting a value that's near 100 is not an issue, it's an expected behavior of a gun where you can miss pellets or when you're shooting at a range where damage drop off is an issue. It's no different from shooting a 25 damage gun at a range where the damage drop off puts it at 24 damage, meaning you'd shoot 4 bullets for 96 damage. There could be other issues at play such as netcode, but that's a separate issue from shotgun balance. As long as your pellets hit, you can drop people just fine.
I'll agree with you that they are inconsistent, but that's just how they work. I'll also agree with you that not understanding how they work is not the issue. However, you can at least partially mitigate the issue as you can make choices that'll increase consistency. The way I see it, that's also part of the discussion of whether a gun is balanced.
ghostflux If I’m in proper shotgun range with a clean, centered hit and still getting 93–99, that’s not “expected behavior.” You even admit they’re inconsistent and that’s the whole issue. That inconsistency can be tuned. Full, clean shots shouldn’t feel like coin flips. If a shotgun does everything right and still gives 93–99, that’s not “how they work,” that’s just bad balance.
These values, spreads, pellet counts and drop-off curves can all be adjusted so that “you did everything right” moments are actually rewarded without turning shotguns into long-range laser beams. Too many good plays get turned into coin flips. Saying “you can mitigate it” doesn’t fix that and players shouldn’t have to fight both the enemy and the RNG of their own gun just to get the result the weapon is designed for.
Nobody’s asking for brainless one-shots everywhere. The ask is simple: if you take the risk, close the gap and land a proper shotgun shot, it should be consistently rewarding, not like you rolled a 97 and lost to an SMG pre-firing a doorway. That’s why many of us think they’re underpowered in practice even if the spreadsheet claims they’re “working as intended.”
And it happens consistently with Headshots using snipers. It just shouldn't happen.
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