Shotguns

7/6 3.2.1 - Too complex to summarize. Search for “Weapon Archetypes”.
8/21 TWAB - While sliding, players now incur the following weapon penalties: -20 Stability, +15% shotgun pellet spread, 1.5x flinch

Rifled Barrel v. Full Choke

Tested both barrels on all four shotgun archetypes because there was a common misconception that barrels perform differently on different archetypes (they do not).
“I wouldn’t say there’s a clear cut winner but I would say that Full Choke seems more likely to get a better pellet spread. It’s possible to use Rifled Barrel and get a better pellet spread than Full Choke, by chance. … The winner by a hair is Full Choke.”
“Both barrels are great. If you’re chasing a God Roll Dust Rock with an almost perfect roll and Rifled Barrel, you should feel great about that.”
“Want a good OHK PvP Shotgun? You want: (1) high impact (2) Full Choke (Rifled Barrel also fine) (3) the highest possible range for that archetype (4) A long barrel.”

Tested two high-impact shotguns with different ranges and a third with lower impact and higher range and “The higher-ranged shotguns were able to more consistently deal more damage.”
“It’s not that range doesn’t matter, it’s that it doesn’t matter as much as a high impact stat or a good pellet spread. It’s not a make or break stat. If you have a shotgun with gigantic impact, you should feel good about it even if it doesn’t have max range for its category. It can still get the job done for sure, barring a little bit of RNG here and there. I will continue continue to reccomend Range Masterworks on most shotguns in my God Roll videos not because it’s wildly amazing, just because it’s kinda the best option out of everything on the table.”

In Season of the Drifter (March 2019) there were several material changes to shotguns.
- Full Auto rate-of-fire bonus for Shotguns is now +10%, down from +100%.
- In addition, it no longer increases the Shotgun pellet spread.
- We also took the opportunity to slightly adjust Shotguns for the Crucible. While Shotguns will remain effective in the Crucible, we have toned down the range at which Shotguns could secure a one-shot kill. (translation: they lowered shotgun base damage)
If you recall, rapid-fires used to be super popular in Crucible because they could two-tap at 11m with an insane rate of fire - no longer!
New “Consistent” OHK ranges:
- Precison (excepting Slugs): 8m (e.g. Well-rolled Dust Rock Blues)
- Aggressive: 8m (e.g. Curated Mindbender, Botheration)
- Lightweight: 6m (two-tap @ 9m)
- Rapid-Fire: 5m (two-tap @ 9m)
- Chaperone: 13m (15m with Roadborn active)
- Legend of Acrius: 9m
“Both Full Choke and Rifled Barrel should remain your barrels of choice.”

“Still” is in reference to a patch that nerfed Full Choke in late 2018. It was previously the go-to barrel choice for shotguns.
Range on shotguns appears to affect pellet spread (timestamp).
“More often than not, Full Choke is still going to have a tighter spread than any other barrel option, which makes it a good pick because your odds of hitting with more pellets is slightly higher.”
“Full Choke I would say is more consistent at realistic ranges, but Rifled Barrel can also get the job done especially if, for whatever reason, you’re trying to get a lucky kill past the very edge of the damage dropoff point.”
“But what about losing precision damage with Full Choke???”
- “Losing precision damage with Full Choke from close to medium range hardly matters. Precision pellet damage is minor (Slif: 24 versus 26 in the screenshot he showed), and more often than not your goal is to just hit as many pellets as you can, anywhere on the target that you can.”
- “The extra damage is nothing compared to how many more pellets you’ll hit with with Full Choke on average.”
“Aggressive Frame shotguns benefit way more from Full Choke due to their naturally low range. Precision Frame shotguns that already have very high range (and I mean very high, like a God Roll Dust Rock Blues or Retold Tale) may not need Full Choke after a certain point. Don’t quote me on that though; more research is needed.”