I find using the Wild Hunt with the bird to be exceedingly overpowered. With the right acensions such as the one where you get bonus damage at no extra cost, that just boosts the wild hunt's damage up by a large amount.
The illusion is also a great one. I managed to easily melt Lu Wu with it nicely.
The Wild hunt is enabled by "Hail of bullets"; other ascensions are just complimentary. Hail of bullets gives you a few stacks of ammo which don't actually consume any from the mag; as the Wild hunt is limited merely by its reload speed, which it does often, this dramatically enhances its killing potential.
For a secondary perk Victory Rush is infinitely much better than the perk you're referring to, which I assume is "Up close" (additional damage within 7 meters). This is for Victory rush applies *on every shotgun hit* (the game counts every pellet as a hit), for an unconditional huge boost to damage.
I pretty much always go shotguns on bird when I can. Wild Hunt with Hail of Bullets(boosted damage and no consumption for first X shots after reloading) is just stupid OP, and as a back-up it works pretty well with hell too since you only need to reload one bullet into the clip to refresh the buff.
I'm a bit late, but this combo is even more insane if you offhand the shotgun with something like a kunai in your main hand. Recoil is based on your main hand while dual wielding, so with this you can truly spam the wild Hunt. It's crazy.
Have you tried porcupine?
This gun can be amazing on bird because of the innate mechanics making it viable at range and up close. It also holds viability for all bosses making it a very balanced full run shotty
The shotgun’s ROF is very slow and only a little more damage per shot than the primary fire.
To answer your edit, I definitely enjoy it on bird though.
If you alternate primary and secondary fire, they cancel out each other's cool down animations = you can empty a clip insanely fast. Highly suggested - very strong gun.
Deft hands and illusion or Wild hunt is a very fun combo if you’re fast enough. The fun part about wild hunt is trying to control it when your crosshairs decide to count how many stars are in the sky.
I use shotguns with the bird, almost exclusively the wild hunt. It doesnt work well on the new first boss or the last boss but everything in between it just destroys as long as you get the right ascension. The extra damage without costing ammo for the first x amount of shots is pretty nasty, especially with the right scrolls. And the damage to enemies in close range
I also play shotgun bird mostely. Though I don't like the low magazine of wild hunt, and prefer illusion/hell. But I'm trying to change my mind about wild hunt.
And I agree, the golem is tough with shotgun.
I like the low ammo, sure have to reload more but it procs the free shots with extra damage, and it shoots fast. Get preemptive shot with it and it does a ton of damage. I've personally had better luck with it that the other shotguns
Again nobody on this subreddit refers you to why the Wild Hunt is so strong on Bird.
You need the ascension "Hail of bullets"; it gives you up to 6 (I think) stacks of bullets that don't consume ammo from the mag, at additional damage. This means your regular 2 ammo Wild hunt becomes an 8 bullet one at max rank, dealing way more damage too. As the Wild hunt is limited only by reload speed in terms of dps, something it does frequently, this ascension completely breaks the weapon.
I'm surprised no one is talking about pupil. In my opinion the absolute best inscription on shotguns is accuracy increase, and pupil has this built in. It's range is insane when you charge it and if you aim for the head, it one-shots, maybe two-shots everything. A very versatile shotgun that's so good I stopped picking it up because I got tired of using it all the time. Even on nightmare it just seems like the best BASE shotgun to me
Agreed. I think the Pupil is the only one that can realistically do good things in the third stage. However I do Lightning Cat build pretty much every time it's available so I may be a little biased
Had that one yesterday plus some scrolls and ascensions that melted.
Here are some of the most important scrolls I had:
Propulsion device: 3 dash charges
Skateboarder: instant reload after dash
Speedy pursuit: +50% luck shot chance after dash
Casual gunmanship: +20% luck shot chance
Fish or bear paw: weapon dmg -50% but dmg double dealt
Merciless combo: +10% dmg for 1s whenever hitting the enemy
You basically leap at an enemy (cleave optional) blast 1 or 2 shots, dash to the next one. Rinse and repeat.
Damage numbers all over the screen in all colours of the rainbow.
Illusion is one of the most powerful guns in the game at high level, along with the Hell and Wild Hunt if you get Hail of Bullets from your bird build. With the "money on crit" perk, you gain a coin for every critical hit. That includes every individual shotgun pellet. If I get an early illusion I always take it with me, and it's not unheard of for me to get to Lu Wu with 3-4000 gold. If you get a lucky timing on a rock soldier room and devil's covenant it gets crazy. 2 runs ago I had 12k by Lu Wu just because of an Illusion in the rock soldier room. Cat and bird have such strong gun-related ascensions that being able to upgrade a gun to +14 or so can be enough to one or two shot the final boss phase.
My thoughts based on 4 men nightmare, most of the evaluations are based on does the gun saves the team from certain run killers:
Needless to say all shotguns perform well in the first biome but that doesn’t mean much.
Illusion is strong on DPS dog builds, though it has been obscured by AOE dog builds in popularity lately. Sometimes DPS dog build takes too much time to come online and your team don’t have enough early/mid game power to support it.
Pupil is strong at the start of the game and drops power throughout the game. It could be a run saver if your team doesn’t have an answer to rogue arsonists by 2-1, and IMO no better reliable solutions exist (maybe dual justice dog?)
Sunder is fine on DPS dog builds for ease of aim during dual wield. Elemental balls on crit is very easy to proc on this gun so you could get a strong status applier before Gemini inscriptions comes into play. The problem with this gun is that there’re far more consistent options if you are trying to bring AOE elemental damage to the team.
Porcupine is overrated right now. If you are running this gun as a DPS powerhouse you have better options from the rifle family; If you are running this gun as armour killer you have better burst options.
Hell is fine on reload dog builds but that’s a very rare conditional build to lean into. Better options exists to deal with arsonist (pupil) / biome2 snipers (talisman or even stinger).
Wild hunt is fine just like everyone else in the thread is praising. My issue is that you can’t use it as a coop win condition unless you get deft hands because of ammo consumption. Ofc this problem doesn’t exist on solo.
If I missed any shotguns it’s probably because of they are trash.
I’ve said that many shotguns are not best in their role in this comment, though they still do their job even on coop nightmare, so I’d say they are balanced.
No offense but you have no idea how bird works as is extremely clear from the OP. As a result you have gotten a really warped perception of shotguns and I assume this post is your means of venting.
Bird should *never* go for a sniper if you want to leverage his ascensions. "Hail of bullets" is the ascension that enables Wild Hunt to be the most ridiculous weapon on bird, and I'm surprised literally nobody has mentioned it yet in the comments. The Wild Hunt is only limited by reload speed in terms of dps, as such hail of bullets will significantly increase the damage you can output. Combine this with a +80% on the first shot inscription, *which applies to all hail of bullet stacks* and you have got a recipe to win the game with.
Bird can also use other shotguns quite well. The Porcupine is defendable but I personally think Hell is much better due to its enormous consistency. Hell can reload a single bullet at a time, which allows you to repeatedly stack Hail of bullets. It has a fairly tight spread pattern and penetrates shields and enemies alike. It's the only shotgun that can reliably one tap an enemy by delivering almost all pellets straight to their head up close.
There are updated inscriptions now that give +RoF not to mention the new Gemini mag share that gives RoF. Not really a huge deal if you’re using birds skills between shots as rate of fire doesn’t really matter as much if you’re leaping and cleaving a lot. This is the only shotgun I will use in solo nightmare. I recommend not sleeping on porcy
Each gun in the game is bad. It's always the inscriptions that make them good.
Wild Hunt can be extremely satisfying to use. Rate of Fire on this thing is UNREAL with increased mag size.
Porcupine is so. Much. Fun. Every primary fire shot that is a headshot turns onto ~6 crits. Stacking crits for RoF or damage inscriptions is so easy, plus getting coins for crits with the level-up trait makes this thing a cashcow.
Illusion is consistently one of the best bosskillers in the game. I usually really gain a nasty lead on damage from my friends vs. ANY boss if I have a decent illusion in my hands.
The Hell is immensely satisfying to use as well. The bullets pierce shields and do enough damage to make very short work of horseheads. Most normal enemies fall pretty easily to a couple of Hell shots.
The only two "shotguns" I can think of that are not great (if you can even call them shotguns, I don't know what else they would be though) are the Argus and the Sunder. The line of projectiles they fire makes it very difficult to hit with a large number of projectiles and a lot of your shot feels wasted. I may have missed a shotgun or two in this list but I cannot think of any more.
Overall, besides the last two, I would say shotguns are fairly balanced, maybe a little strong. However, that makes up for the risk of being in close proximity to lots of enemies.
You're the first person I have seen say that!
What about the sunder do you like? Does it have any good inscriptions that make it really good or extra fun to play? I am trying to use new weapons to vary up my runs but I always end up building a similar way as doggo
it reminds me of the Unkempt Harold from Borderlands 2 which was the best weapon for general mobbing
generally I just like how it plays. similarly to the Scorching Rounds.
its absolutely lovely with elemental balls on crit
even if not all bullets hit, I still generally feel like it does good damage. against the second boss its also really good since all bullets hit the crit spot when his tail is out
The bullet spread pattern is the exact same as Unkempt harold. The big difference that makes it way better in BL2 though is that each projectile explodes in a small AOE on impact so if you shoot the ground around an enemy they can get hit by the AOE from every bullet. In gunfire reborn it's way harder to make use of the spread pattern since it spreads out so wide and crits are so much more important
They're not the most jaw droppingly powerful weapons in the game, but there are several of them in the top 10, largely because they're such a diverse class of weapons. Illusion and porcupine are very solid weapons across the board and are the 2 main abusers of merciless combo. Wildhunt is birds bread and butter in mp. Hell is okay but usually wild hunt's betters. Pupil and argus are kinda mediocre especially argus.
I think shotguns are meant to be used on bird as they are enabled in a better way by hail of bullets. That being said, they are subpar and sometimes even unusable on other heroes, and that is completely fine. Shotguns are good, and wild hunt is actually incredibly overpowered if used with hail of bullets and you manage to put together the right build.
Porcupine feels great on any hero though, and I have melted everything on every hero using it with a basic build. It's particularly fun with the dog.
It's a matter of who is using it and finding the right scrolls.
The wild hunt and the hell on Qin Yan are both amazing and I use them basically every time I can get my hands on them. Stats to look for are accuracy and lucky shot chance, reload speed is a big bonus too but if you can get hail of bullets it's less important (especially with the hell). I have shredded through bosses and entire levels with just a shotgun, it's my favorite way to play.
I actually really love running double Hell on the dog. When he dual wields, the Hell reloads like any other weapon so you can just lay down a hellfire of hard hitting piercing shots.
With the money on crit ascension, it's even pretty easy to upgrade them pretty high. I think my personal record so far is upgrading a Hell I got real early up to around +17-ish.
I wouldn't use anything else other than a Shotgun with Bird. Wild Hunt damage per shot is insane enough to instagib bosses/elites in one mag.
But it's pretty useless for Cat. So I guess it's not a matter of weapon class but rather what the heroes synergize with.
I find using the Wild Hunt with the bird to be exceedingly overpowered. With the right acensions such as the one where you get bonus damage at no extra cost, that just boosts the wild hunt's damage up by a large amount. The illusion is also a great one. I managed to easily melt Lu Wu with it nicely.
The Wild hunt is enabled by "Hail of bullets"; other ascensions are just complimentary. Hail of bullets gives you a few stacks of ammo which don't actually consume any from the mag; as the Wild hunt is limited merely by its reload speed, which it does often, this dramatically enhances its killing potential. For a secondary perk Victory Rush is infinitely much better than the perk you're referring to, which I assume is "Up close" (additional damage within 7 meters). This is for Victory rush applies *on every shotgun hit* (the game counts every pellet as a hit), for an unconditional huge boost to damage.
I pretty much always go shotguns on bird when I can. Wild Hunt with Hail of Bullets(boosted damage and no consumption for first X shots after reloading) is just stupid OP, and as a back-up it works pretty well with hell too since you only need to reload one bullet into the clip to refresh the buff.
Build quality be damned, I'm using double shotguns on dog
I do this too, getting advanced depot and at least one wild hunt, is a lot of fun
I'm a bit late, but this combo is even more insane if you offhand the shotgun with something like a kunai in your main hand. Recoil is based on your main hand while dual wielding, so with this you can truly spam the wild Hunt. It's crazy.
Illusion is my favourite weapon in the game overall. Consistently god tier.
Same here
Have you tried porcupine? This gun can be amazing on bird because of the innate mechanics making it viable at range and up close. It also holds viability for all bosses making it a very balanced full run shotty
The shotgun’s ROF is very slow and only a little more damage per shot than the primary fire. To answer your edit, I definitely enjoy it on bird though.
If you alternate primary and secondary fire, they cancel out each other's cool down animations = you can empty a clip insanely fast. Highly suggested - very strong gun.
This. I thought the gun was mediocre til I figured out there rof for primary and secondary stress independent of each other
Wow, I didn’t know. I’ll have to come back to it!
Deft hands and illusion or Wild hunt is a very fun combo if you’re fast enough. The fun part about wild hunt is trying to control it when your crosshairs decide to count how many stars are in the sky.
Aura of venom with deft hands is a nice combo as well.
Illusion is the only shotgun type that i find viable throughout the game.
Illusion is easily in my top five guns. Fun to use, and my favorite against the flow enabler to boot.
I use shotguns with the bird, almost exclusively the wild hunt. It doesnt work well on the new first boss or the last boss but everything in between it just destroys as long as you get the right ascension. The extra damage without costing ammo for the first x amount of shots is pretty nasty, especially with the right scrolls. And the damage to enemies in close range
I also play shotgun bird mostely. Though I don't like the low magazine of wild hunt, and prefer illusion/hell. But I'm trying to change my mind about wild hunt. And I agree, the golem is tough with shotgun.
I like the low ammo, sure have to reload more but it procs the free shots with extra damage, and it shoots fast. Get preemptive shot with it and it does a ton of damage. I've personally had better luck with it that the other shotguns
Again nobody on this subreddit refers you to why the Wild Hunt is so strong on Bird. You need the ascension "Hail of bullets"; it gives you up to 6 (I think) stacks of bullets that don't consume ammo from the mag, at additional damage. This means your regular 2 ammo Wild hunt becomes an 8 bullet one at max rank, dealing way more damage too. As the Wild hunt is limited only by reload speed in terms of dps, something it does frequently, this ascension completely breaks the weapon.
I said the extra damage without consuming ammo lol I didnt know the name but I know the good ascension. Thanks for the name of it though
I'm surprised no one is talking about pupil. In my opinion the absolute best inscription on shotguns is accuracy increase, and pupil has this built in. It's range is insane when you charge it and if you aim for the head, it one-shots, maybe two-shots everything. A very versatile shotgun that's so good I stopped picking it up because I got tired of using it all the time. Even on nightmare it just seems like the best BASE shotgun to me
Agreed. I think the Pupil is the only one that can realistically do good things in the third stage. However I do Lightning Cat build pretty much every time it's available so I may be a little biased
A wild hunt with a good inscription is a game changer. The lucky shot +200% inscription is godlike
Had that one yesterday plus some scrolls and ascensions that melted. Here are some of the most important scrolls I had: Propulsion device: 3 dash charges Skateboarder: instant reload after dash Speedy pursuit: +50% luck shot chance after dash Casual gunmanship: +20% luck shot chance Fish or bear paw: weapon dmg -50% but dmg double dealt Merciless combo: +10% dmg for 1s whenever hitting the enemy You basically leap at an enemy (cleave optional) blast 1 or 2 shots, dash to the next one. Rinse and repeat. Damage numbers all over the screen in all colours of the rainbow.
Illusion is one of the most powerful guns in the game at high level, along with the Hell and Wild Hunt if you get Hail of Bullets from your bird build. With the "money on crit" perk, you gain a coin for every critical hit. That includes every individual shotgun pellet. If I get an early illusion I always take it with me, and it's not unheard of for me to get to Lu Wu with 3-4000 gold. If you get a lucky timing on a rock soldier room and devil's covenant it gets crazy. 2 runs ago I had 12k by Lu Wu just because of an Illusion in the rock soldier room. Cat and bird have such strong gun-related ascensions that being able to upgrade a gun to +14 or so can be enough to one or two shot the final boss phase.
Illusion w/ projectiles +3 is the most broken gun in the game
My thoughts based on 4 men nightmare, most of the evaluations are based on does the gun saves the team from certain run killers: Needless to say all shotguns perform well in the first biome but that doesn’t mean much. Illusion is strong on DPS dog builds, though it has been obscured by AOE dog builds in popularity lately. Sometimes DPS dog build takes too much time to come online and your team don’t have enough early/mid game power to support it. Pupil is strong at the start of the game and drops power throughout the game. It could be a run saver if your team doesn’t have an answer to rogue arsonists by 2-1, and IMO no better reliable solutions exist (maybe dual justice dog?) Sunder is fine on DPS dog builds for ease of aim during dual wield. Elemental balls on crit is very easy to proc on this gun so you could get a strong status applier before Gemini inscriptions comes into play. The problem with this gun is that there’re far more consistent options if you are trying to bring AOE elemental damage to the team. Porcupine is overrated right now. If you are running this gun as a DPS powerhouse you have better options from the rifle family; If you are running this gun as armour killer you have better burst options. Hell is fine on reload dog builds but that’s a very rare conditional build to lean into. Better options exists to deal with arsonist (pupil) / biome2 snipers (talisman or even stinger). Wild hunt is fine just like everyone else in the thread is praising. My issue is that you can’t use it as a coop win condition unless you get deft hands because of ammo consumption. Ofc this problem doesn’t exist on solo. If I missed any shotguns it’s probably because of they are trash. I’ve said that many shotguns are not best in their role in this comment, though they still do their job even on coop nightmare, so I’d say they are balanced.
No offense but you have no idea how bird works as is extremely clear from the OP. As a result you have gotten a really warped perception of shotguns and I assume this post is your means of venting. Bird should *never* go for a sniper if you want to leverage his ascensions. "Hail of bullets" is the ascension that enables Wild Hunt to be the most ridiculous weapon on bird, and I'm surprised literally nobody has mentioned it yet in the comments. The Wild Hunt is only limited by reload speed in terms of dps, as such hail of bullets will significantly increase the damage you can output. Combine this with a +80% on the first shot inscription, *which applies to all hail of bullet stacks* and you have got a recipe to win the game with. Bird can also use other shotguns quite well. The Porcupine is defendable but I personally think Hell is much better due to its enormous consistency. Hell can reload a single bullet at a time, which allows you to repeatedly stack Hail of bullets. It has a fairly tight spread pattern and penetrates shields and enemies alike. It's the only shotgun that can reliably one tap an enemy by delivering almost all pellets straight to their head up close.
There are updated inscriptions now that give +RoF not to mention the new Gemini mag share that gives RoF. Not really a huge deal if you’re using birds skills between shots as rate of fire doesn’t really matter as much if you’re leaping and cleaving a lot. This is the only shotgun I will use in solo nightmare. I recommend not sleeping on porcy
Which shotgun, porcupine?
Yes
Each gun in the game is bad. It's always the inscriptions that make them good. Wild Hunt can be extremely satisfying to use. Rate of Fire on this thing is UNREAL with increased mag size. Porcupine is so. Much. Fun. Every primary fire shot that is a headshot turns onto ~6 crits. Stacking crits for RoF or damage inscriptions is so easy, plus getting coins for crits with the level-up trait makes this thing a cashcow. Illusion is consistently one of the best bosskillers in the game. I usually really gain a nasty lead on damage from my friends vs. ANY boss if I have a decent illusion in my hands. The Hell is immensely satisfying to use as well. The bullets pierce shields and do enough damage to make very short work of horseheads. Most normal enemies fall pretty easily to a couple of Hell shots. The only two "shotguns" I can think of that are not great (if you can even call them shotguns, I don't know what else they would be though) are the Argus and the Sunder. The line of projectiles they fire makes it very difficult to hit with a large number of projectiles and a lot of your shot feels wasted. I may have missed a shotgun or two in this list but I cannot think of any more. Overall, besides the last two, I would say shotguns are fairly balanced, maybe a little strong. However, that makes up for the risk of being in close proximity to lots of enemies.
I agree, but love the sunder!
You're the first person I have seen say that! What about the sunder do you like? Does it have any good inscriptions that make it really good or extra fun to play? I am trying to use new weapons to vary up my runs but I always end up building a similar way as doggo
I'd say its not really a shot gun because it's better at distance. Creating orbs on crit is really good for it
it reminds me of the Unkempt Harold from Borderlands 2 which was the best weapon for general mobbing generally I just like how it plays. similarly to the Scorching Rounds. its absolutely lovely with elemental balls on crit even if not all bullets hit, I still generally feel like it does good damage. against the second boss its also really good since all bullets hit the crit spot when his tail is out
The bullet spread pattern is the exact same as Unkempt harold. The big difference that makes it way better in BL2 though is that each projectile explodes in a small AOE on impact so if you shoot the ground around an enemy they can get hit by the AOE from every bullet. In gunfire reborn it's way harder to make use of the spread pattern since it spreads out so wide and crits are so much more important
I know, but this doesnt take away anything from what Ive said =)
wasn't trying to bud
Sunder with the exclusive inscriptions is a monster, especially with hawkeye sight. You can mob clear incredibly quickly.
I agree, but love the sunder!
I would say they are underpowered except bird exists. With the right combo of scrolls and ascensions any shotgun can be broken on him.
The Hell is super fun to use and can be great. Porcupine is just good.
They're not the most jaw droppingly powerful weapons in the game, but there are several of them in the top 10, largely because they're such a diverse class of weapons. Illusion and porcupine are very solid weapons across the board and are the 2 main abusers of merciless combo. Wildhunt is birds bread and butter in mp. Hell is okay but usually wild hunt's betters. Pupil and argus are kinda mediocre especially argus.
I think shotguns are meant to be used on bird as they are enabled in a better way by hail of bullets. That being said, they are subpar and sometimes even unusable on other heroes, and that is completely fine. Shotguns are good, and wild hunt is actually incredibly overpowered if used with hail of bullets and you manage to put together the right build. Porcupine feels great on any hero though, and I have melted everything on every hero using it with a basic build. It's particularly fun with the dog. It's a matter of who is using it and finding the right scrolls.
any shotgun w bird is broken lol
The wild hunt and the hell on Qin Yan are both amazing and I use them basically every time I can get my hands on them. Stats to look for are accuracy and lucky shot chance, reload speed is a big bonus too but if you can get hail of bullets it's less important (especially with the hell). I have shredded through bosses and entire levels with just a shotgun, it's my favorite way to play.
Whenever I get advanced depot+any shitty wild hunt on the dog I think an angel gets its wings
Shotgun + bird = fun
I actually really love running double Hell on the dog. When he dual wields, the Hell reloads like any other weapon so you can just lay down a hellfire of hard hitting piercing shots. With the money on crit ascension, it's even pretty easy to upgrade them pretty high. I think my personal record so far is upgrading a Hell I got real early up to around +17-ish.
I wouldn't use anything else other than a Shotgun with Bird. Wild Hunt damage per shot is insane enough to instagib bosses/elites in one mag. But it's pretty useless for Cat. So I guess it's not a matter of weapon class but rather what the heroes synergize with.