Shotgun quandary

#1

The most recent weapon I’ve unlocked is the shotgun and I find myself puzzled by its mechanics, as there seems no way to control what type of munition it’s going to reload after a clip is spent, so the wielder is forced into the awkward position of having to change style to fit the operation of the random selection.

I know it’s mainly a tank weapon and I’m experimenting on it for DPS, so that may be part of the problem, but that aside am I missing something: like is there a way in the choice of actives/passives to give more control over the reload? Sometimes, Shell Salvage seems to be doing that, but then it’s not consistent.

Appreciate your expertise, thanks!

#2

Shotgun main here

It’s not even mainly a tank weapon. I think it takes a distant 3rd of the 3 tank weapons.

The main way to control your reload is to have as many options as possible. For each shotgun ability on your bar when you run dry you get a reload option, yes you can get unlucky and roll 5 green shells but chances are you’ll have at least 1 orange or purple shell on your bar and those two are the best for damage. The passive Munition’s expert reduces the chance of green shells and ups the chances of blue, orange or purple shells. Shell salvage with it’s passive will force the shell salvage key to come up as the same type of shells you had.

#3

If you want more control Munition Expert, the new cache shotgun or sov-tech demolisher are you options. Also the more abilities you have the better your chances to get what you need.

#4

Yes, the shotgun gimmick mechanics could use an overhaul. Losing a gcd for reloads is a detriment and picking the right type of ammunition while trying to focus on the most visceral action combat in the whole Secret World universe is not very user-friendly.

#5

The entire gimmick concept could use an overhaul. It feels too gimmicky, which is kind of the anti-thesis of credible modern horror…

#6

The way it probably should work, realistically, Is that it reloads the shells automatically, and you get a mix of types. I mean, I always envisioned that you’re reaching into your ammo bag and grabbing a handful of shells… probably not getting 100% of a type.

#7

While I quite like the idea of randomised shells as a concept, I thought there are no actual bullets, with the gun effectively focusing our Anima?

#8

I never found the shell mechanic that bad. I mean yeah it is random but you have incredible control over when reloads happen. And if you glance down ever 6-7 seconds you know what is on the table. After picking shells for a time you stop thinking what you do but just do it.

I mean it’s miles easier than elemental and blood and more controlable than sword, fist, chaos and such.

The biggest issue I have with shotgun is that some of it’S abilities are detrimental or illogical to the core skills and some skills are designed to underperform at their task. The strengths on the other hand lie in a relative relaxed mechanic, great basics and good elites across the board.
But I really chewed through that already in the past.

#9

Part of it is both the gimmick and the abilities. Namely the GCD tax and the issues with shells and elites. Also CU requiring you have full 6 shells right there on the spot makes it spotty since you could be stuck with whatever debuff/dot you need to ditch asap for as long as 6 seconds. (Dump 6 shells and reload) Would like to see it changed to “Uses up to 6 shells lasts 1 second + 1 per shell consumed, cleanses an effect every second”

#10

While I quite like the idea of randomised shells as a concept, I thought there are no actual bullets, with the gun effectively focusing our Anima?

Then why do you have to reload at all, while you have a neverending supply of AR ammunition, or Blood magic? :slight_smile:

#11

Ssh. No asking logical question that expose how illogical gimmicks are.

And no, the excuse with something about expectations on how stuff works isn’t good enough, as the only gun where a sane person would expect six bullets is a six shooter.

For a shotgun, they’d expect a cliche 2 bullet reload on a retro double barrel or a modern magazine that’s larger than six bullets.

#12

These replies are very useful, thanks!

As I work more with the weapon another issue comes up. Since the anima shells throw out heals, doesn’t doing that in a dungeon pull aggro from the tank and onto me as DPS? I was told for instance not to use AR’s Unveil Essence – a big burst of healing anima I use to stay alive solo and in scenarios – in dungeon runs because the heals i throws out redirect the boss. Doesn’t that happen with shotgun’s anima shells too?

#13

If tanks in general couldn’t hold aggro over anima shells, people would’ve stopped using shotguns a year ago.

(If your tank can’t, get a better tank.)

#14

Sure but it’s not just that, is it? I mean the tank’s job is to pull to themself the aggro the healer generates keeping the team’s hp up, and as I’ve been told adding to that load is discouraged, as with using AR’s Unveil Essence and Anima Canister.

The big difference being that with AR you can choose to heal or not to, while with shotgun it becomes part of the rotation.

Speaking of which, Schmidy’s “Shotgun DPS” on youtube suggests that anima shells can be largely eliminated, but his explanation isn’t clear enough for me to see how.

#15

Dragon’s Breath Shells generate more aggro than Anima-Infused Shells (so do purple ones… blue ones don’t do anything so won’t), the only reason to avoid healing abilities is because they don’t make the boss die any quicker.

Healing the tank in particular can be bad because they want to generate aggro by self-healing but that depends on the tank’s build.

The only time you need to worry about heal aggro is when adds spawn and everyone starts out at equal aggro levels, even the tiniest attack or heal can aggro them and once they pick a target it takes a larger amount of aggro to get them back.

#16

Onevia hit the nail on the head about aggro and anima shells. It is only part of the rotation if you get green shells on your rotation which if you’re mainhanding shotgun should be fairly rare as the more shotgun abilities you have (4-5 ideally) the more ‘rolls’ you get on a reload.

As for ways to reduce your chances of getting green shells there is the passive Munitions Expert which lowers its odds, the Sov-Tech shotgun where lowers odds of green and ups odds of purple and the recent Howling Dog shotgun which removes them outright and makes blue shells proc expose 100% of the time.

#17

As I understand it, tank hate abilities generate about ten times the hate as a damage ability and healing abilities generate half the amount of hate as a damage ability. Also blood barriers and face-pulling fist hots both generate more hate than rifle healing.

I would place Unveil essence and Anima Canister somewhere at the bottom of all weapon abilities as hate generators.

#18

after the initial (kinda small with dps AA) group heal Unveil Essence puts a leech debuff on target, so averyone who hits it will get healed by a % of the damage dealt. I am not even sure to who that leech heal aggro goes to, to the one who fired UE or to the one who got healed ?

Anyway back to the OP question, anma shells heals is sooooo tiny that I fail to see how a tank could loose aggro becouse of them. More in general I fail to see how a tank could ever loose aggro to heals, which generate half aggro then dps and 1/20 aggro of tank dps aggro (even less becouse of Immutable).
The only time I have seen heals taking aggro is becouse of pre-heals or heals trown in before the tank even touched a mob (Machine Tyrant facepull first cleanse or DW4/PO5 adds for example).

#19

The thing is that a Tank can only agro what they hit, and there’s a 6-mobs-per-hit limit, whereas a Healer puts out a “Hey! This person is doing a thing!” ‘aura’ which draws a little bit of attention from any and all mobs. The agro generated by a heal is less than what is generated by a hit from a DPS or Tank, but if there’s a lot of mobs they’ll all agro immediately to anyone doing heals first and only peal off if someone else hits them.

That’d be why some Tanks prefer no one else heals them, so that they’re the only one putting out that ‘aura’ and making it easier for them to grab initial agro from mob swarms.

If there’s just one boss in an encounter the Healer is gonna be the lowest on the agro-meter, but yeah, having a Healer on the team makes it harder for a Tank to grab the agro from all of the mobs when there are swarm mechanics, and with so many cleave/AoE attacks from bosses it’s not a good idea to just have a healer stand with a Tank to have all the mobs go to one spot, because the Healer is not gonna last long in the line of fire.

Now I haven’t personally noticed any differences with Unveil Essence, but it is possible that, since it’s applying a leech effect to the target, and anyone hitting that target gets heals applied, it might be dispersing that ‘aura’ out to everyone instead of just the Healer, which can make rounding up mobs even MORE difficult for the Tank, but that’s just guesswork on my part. I find that I prefer Healing with Fists (even though I have, and use, Blood and AR on occasion), so my experiences with UE are limited to only certain specific encounters in the game.

#20

Aside from the “Having a healer in [THE CURRENT YEAR]” bit of lollery, very rarely is there any group content with so many mobs than the tank cannot hit them all at once or need to hold them in the case of NYR.