Babushka says not one step backward. Every seventh shot, she gives a damage bonus! Also, the thing starts active, making her one of very few buffers with a start-of-battle skill activation. Her first skill is still defensive in nature, and the percentages got bigger. She's actually useful in a number of situations, either for reducing enemy firepower in specific fights (usually Gundam or tank related) or just the straight DPS boost from the get-go. You only really need her up to Mod 2, but the Mod 3 art is cute.

Her pre mod form is here

Expensive AND still doesn't do anything useful? Say it ain't so.

Shame, since I like the shotgun, but she sucks harder than the vacuum cleaner she should be using instead of her broom.

Note from Kyazuki: Xecty doesn't like DPS shotguns, but she's alright if you want her for that. Probably not worth the cost for most.

The Chicago typewriter, the classic mobster gun (ignoring the fact mobsters actually used M1918 BARs most of the time for actual hits), and TaneRisa-chan proving that even as a gun, she protects us. Highest HP among SMGs but conversely has abysmal evade. Has a very good invul skill though, and is a solid tank overall, though she'll need a lot of repairs after every mission.

With LTLX7000 being out, the main question asked of most shotguns is "are they as good as LTLX?" As for M26-MASS, she does her damn best trying to be. While LTLX has her SUPER dumb damage mitigation in her active skill, M26 has it baked in as a passive. If any damage she takes is 5 or lower, it’s completely ignored, as if she had very good flash rounds. This is applied AFTER armor mitigation AND flash rounds. With flash rounds, she’s essentially immune to anything 8 damage or lower, which is very strong. However, if the enemy does too much damage, this passive does nothing. However, in current day, LS26 exists. This fixes damage taken to 5 which, spoiler, is negated by MASS's skill. Can be very strong to force MASS to tank some insane things. How often will that be used? Eh. It's neat at least.

The one thing she does have going for her with her passive is that she can actually mitigate damage that bypasses armor. You can entirely mitigate stuff like grenades through it. You could sit in gundam range for a bit and not fussed about it. You could even sit in Typhon lasers and be fine. (Depending on firepower of Typhon, please do not attempt without consulting a local doctor)

Overall, she does fall short of LTLX just due to the sheer power of doubling your armor along with 20% DR. The utility of her active also is less relevant compared to LTLX. Removing HP shields and buffs (which get far more common) is stronger than a Molotov and DR to backline. To add to that, the 6 second initial cooldown hampers the effectiveness of the backline portion of the skill. This is because most things that do target the backline would already be skullfucking you at that point. Other cases this is bad include maps M26 shouldn’t be brought to for one reason or another, like when shotguns are bad for it in general or you can’t use machine guns.

After literally years, M4 demonstrates WHY SHE IS THE HEROINE and becomes METAL GEAR.

She keeps all her old benefits but has 5 star multipliers and better stats now. This gets even better when Mod3 when she gets a unique that ups her firepower and ALSO gives her armour, so she can kinda tank in a pinch. Her buff tiles are ALSO slightly improved. Her mod 2 skill also tags enemies and enhances the mod skills of other Anti-Rain units.

The big thing however is the desperation mode. At mod2 onward, when 3 or fewer allied dolls are in battle (you can retreat 2 units to force this, or simply deploy her with a partial strength echelon), she pulls out the portable cannon and proceeds to deal hilarious damage that makes grenadiers wet their pants, as huge AoE blasts firing from every dummy. The blasts are kinda 100% accurate (the main hit can never miss, even at night, but the splash damage can. Its weird), and can partly crit (its complicated), and is meant to be a last ditch thing to save a fight under dire circumstances (of course, we instead abuse it). This is however, a doubled edged sword, as her RoF also goes down, so its possible for some enemies to slip by if you havent taken this into account.

Basically, Mod her first. She's pretty much priority #1 for modding.

Another one of those funny two-mode dolls. She's actually not an awful damage dealer, but her damage is still less than other dolls that are pure damage dealers. Also, despite having a rifle mode, she can't equip AP rounds so you're stuck with only the AP stats you get from her skill.

She might have use in some formations (mostly shenanigans), but most people probably won't use her.

Like every other DPS shotgun, she really doesn’t have a place in current content. A phrase commonly used around here is “a solution in search for a problem”, but the real problem with MAG-7 is that I’m not entirely sure she’s a solution either.

Her passive effect can be very nice when enemies start having 600 armor, but the times there are less than three targets are very rare. Her active skill can make her damage go sky high if it’s allowed to stack, but her being on the frontline gives her the same issues a lot of DPS SMGs have. She’ll lose links, cutting her damage by a ton. Not to mention that it takes a little while for it to ramp up. The DR afforded to her by the skill isn’t high enough to keep her healthy enough to do much.

Is your name Ian McCollum? If not, you probably don't care.

She's Honeybadger, but 3 star, and the tiles are kinda upside down.

She's surprisingly alright for a 3 star, but she's not going to wow you.

Insert bad joke about 7mm French Long here.

Basically Glock 17 but with different tile buffs (and personally less goofy). Often compared to Nz75, but reduces damage outright instead of RoF so I personally find it better. Tiles are ok, and more importantly, unlike Nagant, she works the same day or night

She's not actually bad, but you won't usually need the exact combination of what she offers. She's there if you need her though.

Also she appears to have gacha currency on hand.

Passively, she's Mk23 with better tiles. Regarding her active abilities, she isn't as nice as Mk23's straight damage upgrade for some, but better for others (such as fights with Grape that require her to shoot faster). They're similar but not interchangeable so you'll need to use the space between your ears.

Also she's kind of boring and has no easy jokes besides the Viking name, which doesn't suit her at all, so blah.

Welrodski! ...By which I mean she's basically Welrod but 3 star, with lower numbers and an aura that wants her in the middle (or front works too). Usable if you lack Welrod and honestly not actually bad, but HG builds are cheap and she's pretty common so she might get annoying to get eventually. Also her -acc skill stacks with Welrod, and can be combined with a +evade skill for silliness.

Her mod has other uses and is quite interesting, see her mod entry here

On one hand, her passive debuffs the enemy quite nicely. On the other hand, her stats kinda suck, and her active is basically a glorified stun, and yes, anything immune to stun is immune to her, too.

Since EN lacks the chip, she actually has good DPS. Once EN gets the chip, her DPS is kinda meh.

An alright firebomber if you don't have Vector, but you won't get a shitton of free copies of her like you do with Skorpion. Slightly but not significantly better than Skorpion at actual firebombing, but has a much much shittier aura. Bullied by a lot of artists for being retarded.

Her mod makes her a lot better, rivaling if not surpassing Vector. Look at that article for more info.

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.

MURRICAN SHOTGUN. The most usable aura of the 3 star shotguns currently on EN, though forcing her to be in an offtank position. 21 armor and a +armor skill. There's really not much to say about most of the shotguns besides "they'll do work if you really want them to."

Also a better catgun than IDW. IDWSG DA NYA.

She also has a mod, and the review for that can be found here.