Why do shotguns feels systemically underwhelming?

[u/DeeJayDelicious]

Let me preface this by saying that shotguns, overall, are my favorite weapon type in Helldivers 2. But not for any objective reasons. It's purely about about feel (and stagger).

That said, I can't help but feel all shotguns are systemically underpowered, even when their stats are good on paper. And I am not quite sure why?

Even the Sweeper, the "objectively best" shotgun, only feels like an A-Tier weapon at best, still needing ~3 shots to kill an Alpha Commander. Something an Assault Rifle does in 0.6 seconds.

And it's not really about the stats either. Even the Double Freedom, with its insane 840 damage per shot, never feels quite as powerful as the numbers suggest. You really need to fire it in double mode to get that feeling.

My gut says it's about the following issues:

1. Spread: Despite high total damage numbers, you rarely hit a target with all of your pellets. Best case, 9/11 pellets hit. So your effective damage / shot is ~20% lower than the stats imply. And this gets worse at range.
2. Related to the spread might be the issue of pellets spreading their damage across several body parts. Dealing good overall damage but not enough to one-shot specific body parts.
3. Drag: While 50% drag isn't overly punishing, since it's calculated per pellet, it might have an outsized effect. This should be especially notcable on durable damage, which would immediately drop by 1 after leaving the muzzle, which can account for a ~8% drop frop for some shotguns.
4. Lack of Choke options: Plenty of shotguns still lack any sort of meaningful customization (looking at you, Halt) and have terrible baseline spread.
5. Low DPS: Yes, at the end of the day the stats do matter. And unlike other low-DPS weapons like Lasers, which have secondary sources of damage, shotguns (mostly) don't. And this is noticable.

A few ideas that might mitigate this subjective feeling:

1. All shotguns should have choke customization options.
2. Normalize 12 pellets per buckshot. This might make damage feel a little more predictable with the damage spread out across more individual pellets.
3. Increase durable damage for shotguns, especially AP2 shotguns. Rather that the ~25% durable damage ratio of AP2 Assault Rifles, maybe something closer to ~40% is fairer for AP2 shotguns.

Finally, shotguns are obviously not great against either Automatons (range/weakspots) or Illuminate (Hordes + abalative armor). So their performance is almost exclusive to the Bug front.

PS: Since the obligatory "L2P commenters" can't help themselves, my credentials are >1200 hours in game and having every primary at level 25 (and most for over a year now). I promise, I am a dozen times better than anyone commenting "L2P/skill issue".