🔘 Now that Range has been buffed on hitscans (and Mei), NOW spread should

Agreed.

Edit: after reading earlier replies, I want a fixed spread and a guaranteed center pellet.

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Why not?

For all DPS heroes;

  • There’s an optimal sweet spot where you can kite and reasonably expect to win a fight in a duel
  • There’s damage falloff to ensure that you don’t dominate beyond your sweet spot
  • There’s RNG to add counterplay

With the damage falloff changes, hitscan just received a buff that raises their their mid and far range combat effectiveness. The mid range was their sweet spot and it was just made better.

What change can you implement for shotguns that achieves a similar buff to their sweet spot, without changing their sweet spot?

  • They can’t change the base damages/pellet count without drastically dominating close range and making tank busting super easy. That’s unhealthy, given how hard of a time tanks have with CC nowadays.

  • Shotguns falloff can’t really be touched, because otherwise they’re just changing the sweet spot altogether to encroach upon hitscan.

  • Shotguns can’t remove RNG, because that’s a necessary counterplay element… you’d need to implement spray patterns for hitscan alongside static shotgun patterns (like CS:GO) for that to be considered fair.

As far as I can see it, there are only two buffs that can buff shotgun characters in their intended sweet spot.

  • Pellet speed (which doesn’t help heroes like Reaper/D.Va, but helps Hog/Doom/Torb).
  • Spread cone tightened up and standardized (which helps Reaper/D.Va/Hog/Torb, but doesn’t help Doom)

Given that Doomfist’s shotgun is kind of an extra accessory to his kit, it kind of just makes sense to buff everyone else. Almost mirroring Widow’s sniper/SMG exactly.

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Mei, I spread your ice :smiley:

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seriously i used to fear Reaper to no end no matter the hero i played, we need to sharpen the edge of the edge lord,s

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That’s why I want to go with less spread. This way it extends their range, however it would have extreme falloff so it would only be good in close, up to mid, ranges.

Unless you memorize the spread pattern, it won’t help unless you are point-blank from an enemy. THAT is what I’m trying to solve, the problem thT you need to be point-blank to do damage or get kills.

Added.

Yes, him, because he suffered the same problem as the shotgun heros. His damage is tickle damage at mid-long ranges. Meanwhile he’s still fragile in close ranges. He needs compensation for his IC nerf.

Not a full spread revert, but enough to compensate his 35% -> 20% IC nerf.

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Sure, he shouldn’t be trying to 1v1 a Widow, but he does a lot more than “tickle damage” at medium range

It’s criminal that they can get away with giving Reaper and Hog a spread as wide as 20.1, when the next widest is “only” 4.15.

As for making spread not random, but not exactly the same each time, you split the spread into regions. If we use current Reaper as an example, he fires 20 pellets per shot. Let’s imagine his spread is split into 8 regions, and assign the pellets to them:

Region 1 = Dead Centre, 1 pellet
Region 2 = Left Centre, 2 pellets
Region 3 = Right Centre, 2 pellets
Region 4 = Bottom Centre, 2 pellets
Region 5 = Top Left Outer, 3 pellets
Region 6 = Bottom Left Outer, 3 pellets
Region 7 = Top Right Outer, 3 pellets
Region 8 = Bottom Right Outer, 3 pellets

That’s 19 of the 20 pellets. They are locked within their region, but can be anywhere in that region. The final pellet is completely free, it can be anywhere in the entire spread.

Plug any healer into the equation and Bastion will lose compared to any mid range hero also being pocketed.

I’m not asking Bastion to roll the enemy at that range, I’m asking for a higher chance at success than the low percent he’s already at.

This. Shotguns shouldn’t be used to snipe. But they also shouldn’t result in completely random damage due to inconsistencies you can’t control.

So basically like Hammonds ult, only with pellets?

I still like the spread reduction more, but I’d rather have this over the constant spread suggesting above elsewhere in this thread.

Less spread = less inconsistencies.

Yes, but it also turns weapons meant to be effective at close range into medium-range weapons. At that point they’re not really shotguns anymore. The shotgun heroes are designed to have more survivability due to that close range requirement.

Changing the pattern to be non random would make them more effective at killing without screwing up their balance in other ways.

You’re ignoring falloff. If you reduce reapers spread then he will still only be good at close range because he has an extreme falloff.

Reduce his spread means you won’t need to be point-blank for all of his pellets to hit. Thus it makes him more consistent because more pellets hit, but more consistent in engagements because he won’t always lose because the enemy was just out of range for most of his pellets.

This is my overall goal.

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Well, before storm arrows we had scatter arrow which also instantly disintegrated him in the molecular level from 3 city blocks of distance, so different arrow, same champion.

I don’t know OP, DVa would be way to powerful if they changed her spread.

If they do then she needs to have an ammo clip like everyone else. Her being that mobile, with decent dps shot gun fire, with consistent spread is as asking for trouble.

Bastion can hit often enough to chew through the armour in the right conditions and high burst like Widow and McCree take less shots to strip away armour.


At the very least, they could have randomly cycling spread patterns, say 4 or 5 that change after each shot to any of them.

Shooting at a Bot at the 30m line in the practice range, aiming at center mass, the number of shots to kill the bot ranges from 2 to 5. All because of random spread.

(Also bear in mind the exact damage of individual shots varies, even if the total shots to kill are the same.)

It’s actually pretty absurd how much extra damage is left up entirely to chance. Almost TF2 Critical Hit levels.

His spread is still ridiculous and the OP is right in how Sombra had a massive amount of wasted damage due to her previous spread. Bastion has high theoretical damage but wastes most of it like Sombra used to.

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I agree, spread damage should be more consistent. Instead of Roadhog sometimes one shotting people, he should never one shot people.

Actually, it was much harder because you had to shoot under a hero to pull off scatter, which was far more inconsistent than Storm Arrows are currently.

Originally she wasn’t on the list, which I added her because I got a request. Originally I wasn’t going to include her since she’s pretty balanced atm, whereas Reaper, Torb, Hog, and Bastion are all in the gutter.

Which are never available.

Bastion has far too much to mow through, and when he does his damage is then wasted. Armor against Bastion is irrelevant because his spread already reduces his damage far more than armor does.

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They did screw with Soldier’s spread sometime around season 2. Hes never been the same since. He was more consistent in dealing damage. Today, the first 4 rounds he fires are 100% accurate, then the rest fire in a spread pattern. This is ridiculous and that’s not how automatic rifles work.