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Name Class Rarity ↓ Useful? Notes

Elphelt

Elphelt
Shotgun Special Usable

She has good stats. But shotgun powercreep is real. Also if you have her, you've been playing a long time. Why don't you have a better shotgun? Huh? Waifu? No, she's shit. Get over it.

On top of that she has a nuke skill that... honestly doesnt usually come up, but when it does, it's pretty much the biggest nuke on a shotgun you get (2 hits for 8x vs primary, 12x area around primary). As a bonus, if the first shot kills the primary, the secondary BOOM changes targets (uses standard grenade targeting). Note that due to her ammo and reload speeds, if you want to fire the first nuke immediately, you will likely need to reload cancel her.

Triela

Triela
Shotgun Special Meme Shotgun Goes Stab

On one hand, she's actually not bad in melee. On the other, she suffers from dumb mechanics (like not being able to switch to melee while reloading, which WOULD HAVE BEEN REALLY NICE). She's not terrible at the role of "melee shotgun" (she's actually quite good at it), but the number of situations where you'd actually want a melee shotgun are quite limited.

Minos

Minos
Shotgun Special Overly slow with her shield, sadly, but the shield value is high

The beef-loving cowgirl from a very weird show. She has a shield, but it takes way too long to pop up before it's useful in most cases, as it only pops up with her reload cycle. On the other hand, it's a huge shield, but in many cases you're better off with other shield SGs. She's not the worst SG though I guess, so run her if you don't have anything better.

Kel-Tec KSG

Kel-Tec KSG
Shotgun ★★★★★ Good

If you want to stack armor, she's one of the best for it, with one of the highest base armor among shotguns. That combined with her skill, she can easily hit some insane armor thresholds, making her take 1 damage (zero with flash rounds) where other shotguns can struggle. This does come at a price of having her HP be on the lower end of shotguns.

However, there are now plenty of other options at this point in the game that can produce similar, but better results. That doesn't make her trash, but yeah. Still usable.

FABARM SAT-8

FABARM SAT-8
Shotgun ★★★★★ Usable

She's still usable and good enough to deal with older content just fine, but the new shotguns currently available just blow her out of the water so hard. Sad day to be a pizzalion.

That skill happens to be giving your entire front row a 35HP shield, that takes armour into account first. It also has 5/8 uptime. Basically, if your SGs took scratch damage before? They should take literally nil now, unless its a really major fight or you were silly enough to go fight anti-armour enemies.

Winchester Model 1887 Shotgun

Winchester Model 1887 Shotgun
Shotgun ★★★★★ Usable

Aka M1887. She's a shotgun, so she will do shotgun things shotgun-y (read: facetank with her armour), but is not particularly impressive at it. Her stats are okay (but worse than most other 5* shotguns), her tile buffs are the weakest of all 5* shotties (and most 4*!)… and her skill is downright useless, because it has a ridiculously long 15 second cooldown and if you can use it appropriately, well shotguns aren't what you want to use for that fight.

As far as free SGs are concerned, a minor upgrade over 97S if you don't consider 97s's mod.

Atchisson Auto-Assault 12 (AA-12)

Atchisson Auto-Assault 12 (AA-12)
Shotgun ★★★★★ Good

Sometimes, you wonder exactly WHAT goes into T-doll rations when she looks like that, after having the lolipops. Has a severe sugar addiction problem. Very severe. WHAT THE HELL KIND OF ROBOTS IS IOP MAKING!?

Potentially has a powerful skill held back mainly by the awful initial startup time and the fact LTX exists. On paper, her skill blows USAS away. In practice, they're functionally equivalent because you're using LTX instead of either of them anyway. When it does come up though, it's good for what it does, letting her pour knockback shots at enemies. Armor is alright (middle of the road for shotguns) and is carried by decent stats.

Saiga-12

Saiga-12
Shotgun ★★★★★ Solid General use 5 star Shotgun

Basically the world's most widely available magazine-fed self-loading Shotgun that actually works. Packing 23 base armour (2nd highest on an SG), a 3-tile FP buff, and a generous HP pool (1320 at 5 links), 5 shot mag (very high baseline for SGs), her base stats alone make her a pretty solid SG doll to take along.

That's good, since her skill is actually a little awkward.

First off, the 8s ICD actually puts it in the middle of a reload animation, so she doesn't actually fire it off at 8s unless you manually handle movement so she can fire at that point or you adjust her RoF (usually by giving her a scope with badly calibrated -RoF). Next, it's actually a skillshot, so it doesn't benefit from things like crits. On the otherhand it also means it can hit scouts at night, so hah. It's basically pretty goofily coded. However a side effect of the goofy code is once the skill is triggered, she can actually continue to fire it while moving so lol? Also it actually does a pretty chunky amount of damage if it does work.

Anyway it doesn't super matter, since most MG fights are over before the skill will matter anyway, so her really good base stats will carry the day.

DP-12

DP-12
Shotgun ★★★★★ Pretty good defensive/utility shotgun

Even if she sucked, most of you degens would go after her anyway. Thankfully, she's actually pretty good.

Not quite in the same vein as SAT8, as she only shields herself, but the damage reduction effect allows her and allies to tank a bit harder against shots that exceed her armour value, and yes, that applies to shots that ignore armour outright. So basically if she's on the forward center, then positions 4, 5, and 6 benefit from the DR, and so on.

Because of her passive and the 3 second ICD on her skill, she actually has really good uptime overall (similar to but slightly worse than SAT8), and yes, she can be made to pop her shield more often via shooting faster and going into reload faster (though this can produce an odd gap in uptime past the 13s mark).

CAWS

CAWS
Shotgun ★★★★★ Gimmicky; base stats are cool.

G&K's equal opportunity things means even penguins are accepted, I guess. She has a finnicky, slow, and generally not reliable shield. On the other hand, her gimmick relies on having shields.

She relies quite heavily on outside shields if you want to use her gimmick, so stuff like SAT8 and LWMMG mod will come in handy if you want to do so.

However, while she has good armour, her HP is the worst of the 5 star shotguns, and she doesn't have particularly good tanking gimmicks. She's usable, but probably wont be your first choice unless you want to use her gimmick that badly for whatever fucking reason

LTLX7000

LTLX7000
Shotgun ★★★★★ Competes with SAT8 for the best shotgun to use your True Core Mask on

OBEY. Made from a less-lethal shotgun meant to give police forces more options to put down people without killing them. In G&K's case, however, she certainly helps with takedowns.

Incredibly good stats for a shotgun, good formation buffs, and her skill has the unique ability to cancel enemy buffs. These buffs include ENEMY SHIELDS (including Patroller shields) and stat buffs (including bullshit enemy evasion buffs). Her mechanics are unique, so she actually ignores normal knockback immunity. Oh, and her armor buff stacks are multiplicative. Unfortunately, the Minotaur's damage reduction is a weird thing that can't be removed, but regardless, you get so much utility from her. Even if you don't need her skill, her stats are just that good.

If you don't have her, get her from a True Core Mask or something. She's just too useful in things like later Theater events.

Type-97S Mod

Type-97S Mod
Shotgun ★★★★★ Hotter on the outside, mostly the same inside

The change of artist did her a world of good. She went from kind of cute to straight up hot. Too bad your waifu still sucks. She isn't the shittiest shotgun in the game, but her mod's not exactly groundbreaking. The decrease in enemy movement speed is almost an afterthought since it lasts one second and she has a very low rate of fire making the skill questionable at best. If the duration were longer and knockback didn't have such a low chance to go off maybe it'd be better, but alas.

United States Rifle, Caliber 5.56 mm, M16A1

United States Rifle, Caliber 5.56 mm, M16A1
Assault Rifle ★★★★ Niche use with special equip

With her special gear, she turns into a hilarious tank with 20 armor and 90 evade (more evade when oathed) which, while not ideal for most things, has its uses. Her stun grenade can also be handy. Not really used anymore, but hey if you find yourself back in 2017 farming, she's great.

Not, however, a DPS, unlike virtually all other ARs.

Mossberg M590

Mossberg M590
Shotgun ★★★★ Good

The other shotgun besides KSG that has +Armor skills. Has higher HP and really good armor, but has an offtank aura meant for 2-shotgun formations which means you'll either need to move her every fight or have another shotgun. The aura effect is less flexible than a firepower buff, but potentially useful buff to a lot of MGs like M2HB or PK who could really use an acc boost. Regardless, If the primary consideration is just sheer defensive power, she makes an decent pick.

Hawk Industries Type-97

Hawk Industries Type-97
Shotgun ★★★★ Usable

CAPTAIN CHINNNAAAAA! Surprisingly good for a free unit. Has the lowest armor among the shotguns (tied with Super Shorty), but she will get you started considering how easy it is to get her. Aura optimized for 1SG/1HG/3MG setups, and works well with Mk23 and M2HB (which are both given for free to new players too). Has a very tiny 3-shot magazine compared to the usual 4 most SGs get which limits her firepower somewhat, but her skill offsets this a bit. A flawed unit and not a first pick for many lineups, but most SGs are interchangeable as far as front-row tanks go anyway, even if she's not as good at it as the other ones you'll get eventually. Her main merits are a decent aura shape and being free.

She does have a mod which...kinda makes her better? Will add that article soon...probably.

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