Something that I've wanted to talk about is the topic of Shotguns and Buckshot. I certainly love use Shotguns, it's satisfying to use them especially since they got insanely buffed with .12 and the vast array of new shotgun ammo.
But in my trials of experimenting with the different ammo types, it's made me heavily wonder what purpose all the variety of Buckshot ammo has in terms of usefulness and intended purpose, I wanted to get people's opinions about different buckshots and where they find them useless/useful or if they use 'em for a specific purpose.
TL;DR – My findings thus far indicate that, 12 Gauge 7mm and 6.5mm "Express" are best for general purpose and as a backup for accuracy shotgun builds, 12 Gauge 5.25mm is ideal for high capacity, high fire rate shotguns while 8.5mm is ideal for pump shotguns and low-recoil shotgun builds. Flechettes are ideal if you want armor defeating buckshot at close range.
20 Gauge Buckshot in 7.5mm and 7.3mm are best of the 4, 20 Gauge buckshots, the other two however, one is inferior to the default by a large margin and the other is indentical to 7.5mm except for a higher price tag.
A more detailed test of my findings thus far:
My rough guidelines on Range:
- Close Range – 3rd floor of Factory standing at either end of the hallway
- Medium Range – Construction Yard on Customs overlooking the News Stand and treeline
- Long Range – Shoreline Beachhead over to Scav Island, aka Slug ranges.
Here are my current verdicts of my own initial testing, starting with 12 Gauge ammo:
- 12 Gauge, has 5 different buckshot types, 1 type is only effective against Armor.
- 12 Gauge Flechette rounds behave similar to Buckshot in spread yet have increased effectiveness versus Armor, have -25% reduced accuracy and are subsonic, making them only viable at close range. It also has the least number of darts at 19 with a damage of 8, with a penetration power of 28 and armor damage of 26, making it effective against any armor that is class 3-4 and shredding high tier armor with multiple shots, recommended with semi-auto's only for best effect.
- 12 Gauge 7mm Buckshot is standard across the board from most traders and spawns regulary on Scavs, it serves as the general purpose buckshot for 12 Gauge shotguns with no negatives and a pellet count of 32 with a damage of 8. Ideal for Close range but relatively poor for Medium Range.
- 12 Gauge 6.5mm "Express" Buckshot is available at Jaeger Level 2 and is actually a great round that is decent at Medium range. Its the only Buckshot that gives a +15% boost to weapon accuracy and is a great alternative for accuracy builds with shotguns as an emergency ammo in-case slugs are in short supply or entering a closer range. This appears to be the best buckshot for range at the expense of pellet count, as it has 29 pellets per shell with 8 damage per pellet.
- 12 Gauge 5.25mm Buckshot seems to serve a purpose of the "budget buckshot with a wide spread" at Jaeger level 1, it's subsonic so it's slow and only viable at close range and has alot of pellets upto 34 with a damage of 8, second only to the 8.5mm "Magnum" which has 44 pellets. It has no penalties in accuracy or recoil compared to Magnum Buckshot however and is best used in high-rate of fire, high capacity shotgun builds.
- 12 Gauge 8.5mm "Magnum" Buckshot is available at Jaeger Level 2 and can be crafted at a Workbench. It is the most powerful of the Buckshot family doing the most damage but has heavy penalties, being a -15% to accuracy and +115% increase in Recoil. It also has the most pellets at 44 but only doing 8 damage per pellet. While it's purpose appears to be intended for raw damage, my experience of this round makes it ill-advised for semi-auto shotguns with no mods to help against the harsh recoil increase. Low-Recoil and Recoil reduction builds for Semi-Auto's can work but I've found that Pump shotguns benefit better even with little mods when using Magnum Buckshot as Pump shotguns require more finesse to use to grant that first shot hits its target. Only really worth using at close range due to the negative accuracy debuff.
Now onto 20 Gauge:
- There are 4 types of buckshot for 20 Gauge.
- 20 Gauge 7.5mm Buckshot is standard for Skier level 1 and spawns on most Scavs, it's the general purpose round only truly effective at close range. Has 24 pellets per shell, inflicting 8 damage per pellet.
- 20 Gauge 5.6mm Buckshot is standard at Jaeger Level 1, doesn't spawn on Scavs (to my knowledge) and is infact inferior to 7.5mm Buckshot sold by Skier. It imparts a -10% reduction in accuracy and a +10% increase in recoil despite having the most pellets at 25 with a damage of per pellet of 8. Best guess, intended as a "Budget" round, which seems pointless as your already going budget if your using 20 Gauge. Don't use these rounds at all as my experience was not great with them.
- 20 Gauge 6.2mm Buckshot is an odd buckshot type, it has the least number of pellets at 21 with a damage of 8, sold at Jaeger Level 2, it doesn't impart any negatives and while decent it seems identical to the 7.5mm Buckshot albiet being more expensive. This round feels like it's out of place and doesn't really serve much of a purpose.
- 20 Gauge 7.3mm Buckshot does the most damage at 9 per pellet but has a small number of pellets at 22, meaning if all pellets hit it will do 198 damage. It's sold at Jaeger level 2 and imparts a +15% increase in recoil when used, it's also got the highest muzzle velocity, meaning this buckshot is semi-effective at a longer distance and may benefit from a heavily modded TOZ.