The ideal weapon for close encounters, shotguns discharge shells filled with pellets, each of which is essentially a bullet. Rounds don’t lose power with travel over distances, so firing a shotgun at something far away may still net you some damage if some of the pellets hit, though most of them generally miss. At close to mid range when you can coax all the pellets into striking the same target, a good shotgun can surpass just about anything for raw ferocity. As a bit of a tradeoff, Critical Hits from a shotgun are weak relative to other weapons because individual pellets scoring criticals isn’t as forceful as full-on rounds doing the same thing.
Shotguns can be terrific weapons in a pinch, especially against groups of fast, pesky enemies or against foes higher in level who are resisting damage, because of front loading. Front loading just means that you’re delivering all of the damage immediately when you pull the trigger. Put another way, you have to aim correctly only once, and you get the benefit of a dozen or so shots simultaneously. On the other hand, with non-shotgun weapons, you’d have to land those same dozen shots spread out either across a dozen trigger pulls, or over an automatic burst where it’s incumbent upon you to successively hit with each and every shot. Well, maybe you don’t have time to stand there putting every shot on target—maybe you don’t even have time to do that expertly while circle strafing. Perhaps the enemy’s too fast, too accurate. In these cases, you can pop out from behind cover just long enough to fire off a dead-center hip-fired shotgun blast, then duck back or simply sprint away, turning just long enough to fire one blast before continuing to flee. Lather, rinse, repeat, and you create lemonade out of awfully lemony situations. When you finally upgrade a Goliath into a God-Liath, you won’t wanna back off just because there’s now a flashing skull next to his name and he’s breathing right down your neck even as you sprint, will you?
Shotgun prefixes[]
| Accessory Effect | Bandit prefix |
Hyperion prefix |
Jakobs prefix |
Tediore prefix |
Torgue prefix |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Melee damage + | Slising | Restructuring | Barbed | Swiss | Bad Touch |
| Magazine size + | Drumed | Scalable | Sidewinder | Extra Large | Desperate |
| General Boost + | Redy Stedy | Social | Well Kept | New and Improved | Sinewy |
| Accuracy + | Sketer | Potential | Huntin' | Original | Potent |
| Critical damage + | Critikal Hit | Critical | Doc's | Royal | Juicy |
| Reload speed + | Quik Loadeder | Reactive | Texas | Basic | Impetuous |
| Pellet Count + | Assssult | Practicable | Rustler's | Gentle | Casual |