Also touching on what @Szalord has said about the double barrel and basics is the fact that you will run out of energy HARD by throwing only power attacks. Each time you’re dropping basics that 1 energy regened from GCD + any extra energy from crits.
Also of a note for shotgunners would be the breakdown of how Shell Salvage works. It gives 2 + (number of remaining shells) energy
I really should come back to shell salvage and extend the text on it.
Especially since it lacks maths and has an error on my part in it. Not that I really changed my view on it but it deserves some deeper going into.
I seriously ask myself which satanic being has designed some elements of shotgun. Giving the weapon with the worst value (or at least one of the worst) for energy an energy regeneration skill… shakes head
Best and worst value. It gives less if you have 1 shell left, if you have 3 or more, it gives more. other weapons get 4 energy, shotgun gets 3-8. If they do something about reloading like we’ve asked in the past HE HINTED LOUDLY it can help put shotgun a bit more up there with other weapons. Right now its simply a very good offhand because of Shell Salvage with passive and the only group buff in the game.
As offhand, it falls apart when you start overgearing content, when you don’t have time to stack up DB anymore.
Anywho Leo’s guide is more of a basics to shotgunning so it covers a lot more than just DPS but I can offer my two cents on shotgun mainhand DPS.
Passives:
Fire at will (Opening shot passive). This is kind of a mixed bag but ultimately I’ve ended up dumping this. The free shells require you to pay more attention to your shell count (thus more time staring at your UI less at the fight), the effect wears off it you take damage (so a hard pass for HR)
Point Blank Shot: A very solid damage boost but requires you to be in melee range. If your offhand is a melee this is a no brainer. If it is a fight where you will be running around a lot (MT) you may be better swapping thisfor something else.
Withering Salvo: If you’re using Full Salvo, get this.
Cleanup Crew(forget the name): Cleanup is too situational and finicky to be a reliable cleanse HINT DEVS so this is a waste of space.
Shell Expert: Passive that makes a good skill better. Yes it forces a reload on you but give how energy hungry your weapon is the extra energy is nice. The passive lets you keep the option of the shells you salvage with (can bite in you the butt if you are salvaging away greens) and gives you 5 offhand energy.
Fatal Funnel: CQC is already pretty situational for DPS, needing to impair a group is even more so.
Cluster Bombs: If you’re running Bombardment you should use this as well.
Odds and Evens: Mandatory for doing damage. Get this. Shotgun eats a lot of energy so weaving Power, Basic shots helps with your energy regen and this passive gives a reliable damage boost for it.
WP shells: This is a very solid passive outside of a few fights (HE2 the boss cleanses this each time he runs so you can’t really get much burn time going)
Enrich: I more or less skip this but if you’re one of those adjust your build every fight types might be useful in fights where you can’t benefit much from WP shells. Just bear in mind the default and advanced weapon UI do not show the bonus 2 shells, they come up as 2 stacks of a buff on your character. Need to test to see if they treat you as 6 shells for all of these shots or not.
Munition Expert: I disagree with Leo on this one and don’t run it myself as I run 5 shotgun actives so the odds of getting Green shelled is low but if you’re a ranged offhand as well could work in lieu of PBS.
Combat Reload: Hard pass. This passive creates more problems than it solves.
Bombardment vs Full Salvo: Salvo generally wins out due to overall usability, Bombardment is not as good on bosses that run move around or have STOP FIRING phases. Bombardment picks a target in the circle so it might grab an add instead of the boss for the main hit. Full salvo also applies shell affects (exception being green shells, it only procs their effect once a second) while ignoring the 1 proc a second rule meaning you can apply 5 stacks of DB, 5 DU damage procs or several AP procs if you’re lucky. Bombardment can apply exposed however if your teammates do not have ways to keep it up on the boss.
So…after promising to calculate through shell salvage I finally did it. It’s with a lot ifs (like certain talismans, shells, the museum…yes, the museum, and such plays into it and I had to kinda assume that you have lightningreflexes so that the decision which shell to reload goes in 0 seconds) I came to the conclussion that in average you lose dps over just firing a few basics. Shell salvage isn’t much worse than just firing basics so it’S a situational thing (like said lot ifs).
What the strongest point of shell salvage is: Your weapon. Shell salvage profits hugely from the SPES bis shotgun. Giving a whopping 1,8cp per shell salvage cast from that source. On the other hand the one second you have to spend for an additional reload costs you a whole truckload of proc effects and a basic attack which on shotgun is a pretty big deal and while the basic attack alone is not strong enough to do the same damage as the damage you get from shell salvage all the small proc effects add up.
All this assumes up front that you get the maximum energy out of shell salvage and that you hit your raging shot passiv when spending the energy. If any of those two conditions aren’t met the use of shell salvage becomes a huge waste of potential dps for no reason REALLY FAST.
If you still like to use it (on top of cold silver dice or a spes of energy) do it but I can not recommend it in any capacity with good consciousness.
ADDON: For any interested…here the math how I wrote it down. I started out figuring out how strong a basic and a powr is. Than calculated best and worst energyvalues and than stopped labeling things and start counting together diffrent proceffects/effets in general to come to a sum that is at the bottom right without and with raging shot passive proc. Excuse the lack of readability but as I went deeper into the material it became to time consuming to explain every little step over just doing it. If interest is there I can work on a fully explained version else you just have to trust me.
You don’t really need that good reflexes, salvage gives you 5 offhand energy so you can always use your offhand consumer while your bar flips, and then reload after that GCD.
Not sure if it is even readable but out of curiousity I went ahead and did a closer look into Howling dog:
Since Shotgun is at it’S core relative rng it took a bit more math than I am used too. But the essence is that:
A.Through the improving of the shellreloads you have avaidable you get from 0,08 Cp/s to around 0,2 Cp/s. Which is less than the lowest number you get from shoting the standard SPES (by at least 0,22 Cp/s to 0,1 Cp/s)
If dps was the only aspect of the new gun worth looking at that would be it. There is on the other hand two other factors to consider:
B.While not calculated in the base assumption The Howling Dog Shotgun is overpowering Munition Expert by a lot. Meaning the need to run munition expert to get a better shell-lineup isn’t there and you get a free passiv slot for White Phosporus or any other damage awarding passiv. How much you get from that is hard to say as each passiv does you a diffrent amount good dps wise. But in general just keep in mind that the real diffrence between SPES vs Howling is somewhere between 0,1-0,22 minus whatever the passiv gives you plus what percentile munition master gave you.
C. Another thing that becomes possible but is a diffrent kind of a beast in terms of shotgun is AP shells and expose. In a scenario where you are in a group doing groupcontent but do not have expose the new shotgun makes it possible to apply expose relatively consistent with uptimes up to 93,79% maximum. While still not as easy as some other weapons or bombardment for relatively static enemies it can’t be denied that the shotgun gives your group a damage plus far outweighing the damage you would get from the SPES or even Teamfocused shotguns like the Redeemer. But only if noone else wants to cast expose on enemies and at the cost of a bit personal dps (0,8cps) and the fact that you have to have 6 or at least 5 shotgun skills slotted for decent uptime (83-93%).
My thought:
It definitly isn’t something that will kick SPES of it’s throne as the Dps meta shotgun but it has it’S uses.
It frees up at least one passiv slot and might even make the dropping of a shellwaster for a further active slot worth considering. In the same breath it greatly reduces the rng of shotgun and streamlines the shotgun mechanic for dps. It also opens up possible expose shotgun support builds. What it on the other hand costs is a lot of survivability that the occassional green shell could bring and raw damage.
There is a lot of info here. I find the comments here just as interesting.
I would add thoughts about specific shotgun weapons. SPES, double barrel, flame charged, oni… ect. Even if it’s mostly subjective. For newer players or those who wanna get involved in shotgun. Especially, since many folks might wanna be leveling something new after getting their two main weapons 70 red…
I will try. It won’t be something grand but I think I should at least be able to cover the base capabilities and idea with the weapons.
Took me awhile but added your request (other people requested it tooso how could I not?)
Hope you like the addition.
