You guys have been asking me to do a comprehensive shotgun review for months and months now and

I admit that I've been putting it off.

It's such a challenging topic to tackle because by their very nature, the shotguns

are pretty random in their effectiveness and very problematic to test but I have given

it my best shot and I am happy to finally be sharing these findings with you!

As always, if I drift off into rambling about minute details; feel free to consult the pinned

comment below for timestamps to the individual chapters of this video!

All the nitty-gritty data I have gathered on the shotguns will also be shared in my

only stat-spreadsheet, so do feel free to swing by there if you want a deeper insight.

And now, let's get this show on the road!

There are essentially four types of shotguns in Rainbow Six Siege: Pump-action, semi-auto,

the BOSG slug gun and Buck's Modular Accessory Shotgun System

(which I will refer to as MASS from now on).

I have already covered the BOSG in a previous video and since it essentially functions more

like a two shot DMR, I will be excluding it from this evaluation; Buck's MASS will be

evaluated alongside the semi-autos.

My effectiveness analysis and ranking of the weapons will be based on the following criteria:

Damage per pellet & damage drop-off, hip-fire & ADS spread, the fire rate, ADS times, reload times and recoil.

So let's kick things off with the damage per pellet and damage drop-off.

As you may already know, there are a few rules that apply to all shotguns in the game.

Each of them fires 8 pellets of buck shot at a time and one of those pellets will always

land perfectly in the middle of your point of aim with the remaining 7 dispersed around this.

Another general rule to keep in mind is that shotguns do not get a headshot damage multiplier.

Headshot damage per pellet is exactly the same as for body shots, so my first piece

of advice would be to always aim for the body, since you will have the greatest chance of

landing as many pellets as possible and thereby doing the most damage.

Another important factor is that all weapons in Rainbow Six Siege have a limited range.

Beyond that range, bullets will simply evaporate.

For most of the guns: pistols, rifles, DMRs, LMGs and SMGs this range is so great that

you will never really be able to notice the bullets disappearing but for shotguns the

maximum range is not that far.

As you can see in the test footage in the background, the shotgun pellets will disappear

at ranges beyond 40m and sure that is still a very long way by Rainbow Six Siege standards

but if you ever have the crazy idea of going for a spawn peek with a shotgun, you might

just end up in a situation where your bullets won't reach your target, so be aware!

When comparing the damage done by the individual

shotguns, we can see that, up until around 12m, the pump-action guns do more damage per

pellet on average than the semi-autos.

Between 12-18m the two types are pretty similar but beyond that, the pump actions regain a

bit of an advantage.

Diving into the two groups, the general rule we can see applied to most guns is that the

more powerful they are at close range, the weaker they tend to be at longer ranges.

Great examples of this are the GEO ITA12S sidearm, the GSG 9's M870, the MASS and the Russian SASG-12.

Conversely, guns like the ITA12L and Caveira's SPAS-15 are relatively weak up close but offer

more power at longer range.

And I say “relatively” weak because even the SPAS-15, with its 30 damage per pellet,

can still deal a combined 240 points of damage with every single shot; more than enough to

make any opponent regret taking you on at close range.

This rule of short vs. long range capability doesn't apply to every gun though.

Frost's Super 90 for instance, is quite weak at short range and even weaker at longer range.

Similarly, the SAS' M590A1 is one of the weakest pump-actions up close as well as at distance.

In terms of ranking the guns based on this first criterion alone, I would say that the

more powerful guns up close have an advantage over those with a little more power at range,

since the spread of the pellets will make shooting at ranges beyond 10m pretty ineffective anyway.

Hey, and that's the first aspect down already!

But of course if we really want to judge the damage output of these weapons the next factor

to take into account is the fire rate.

My assumption going into these tests was that each type of shotgun would have a fixed fire rate.

I.e. one fire rate for semi-autos and one for pump-actions.

But of course, this is Rainbow Six we're talking about

and any kind of standardisation would just be too simple.

As it turned out, there are a surprising range of calculated fire rates.

Amongst the pump-actions, I discovered three different fire rates.

The Japanese operators' SuperNova is the slowest firing shotgun of all, with a measly

fire rate of around 75 RPM, although it's only marginally slower than most of the other

pump-actions, which manage around 85 RPM.

At the top of this group is the GSG9's M870, with a fire rate of around 100 RPM.

So not only is the M870 pretty much the most powerful shotgun up to 5m distance in terms

of damage per pellet, but it also shoots the fastest….

Interesting.

Here's a quick comparison of what the three types of pump actions look and sound like

when shooting as fast as possible.

The semi-autos of course shoot significantly

faster and the slowest ones here clock in at around 200 RPM.

Significantly above this group is Valkyries SPAS-15 at 290 RPM, the SASG-12 at around

330 RMP and Ela's FO-12 at a massive 400 RPM.

And with this info, we can now calculate a maximum theoretical damage per second for

each gun, at each range.

The low damage per pellet of the SPAS-15 means

that even with its elevated fire rate, its damage per second output is not that huge.

The FO-12 and the SASG-12 on the other hand end up with an overall damage output that

is much higher than all other shotguns.

And, as long as you are within 3m of your target, Buck's MASS is also pretty powerful.

Keep in mind though, that the damage per second output is a theoretical value that assumes

that you can fire the gun as fast as possible and still hit every pellet of every shot.

For shotguns specifically, this measure is even more problematic than for regular guns

because no matter how good your aim, you will never be able to hit all of your pellets once

you reach a certain distance from your target.

But we'll get to spread in a second, before that, I think it's worth noticing that even

the most powerful pump action shotgun (the M870) still delivers less damage per second

than the weakest semi-auto shotguns (the M1014 and the Super 90).

Does that mean that the semi-autos are better than the pump-actions?

I would actually say overall, yes.

With the pump-actions you really need to make sure that you hit your first shot and that

you're close enough to get an instant down or kill if you want to survive the engagement.

With the semi-autos, the ability to spam fire in panic situations or after missing the first

shot, can allow you to survive where the pump-actions might not.

While this DPS data allows us to compare the shotguns on a theoretical level, the info

becomes very misleading once you're only a few meters away from your target since in

reality, many of the pellets of each shot will start to miss.

So now let's try to get a more realistic view of the damage output by taking into account

the hip-fire and ADS spreads.

Let me again start off with a few general rules.

Unlike other gun classes in the game, the hip fire spread for shotguns (and I assume

the same applies for the ADS spread) is not affected by your character's stance.

Crouching or lying down will not give you any spread advantage.

Moving on the other hand will open up the spread.

Furthermore, in the past, the amount of zoom provided by your optic could improve your

ADS spread and the benefit of the laser would stack while aiming down sights but neither

of those features are in the game anymore.

The laser will now only improve your hip-fire spread.

With those general rules out of the way, let's now look into the specific spread for each

gun and more importantly, let's try to use that data to adjust our DPS table.

I have measured the diameter of the hip fire and ADS spread for each shotgun and here is

an overview with the raw spread sizes in pixels.

Of course, the actual pixel count for the spread size will vary depending on your resolution,

so these numbers won't be exactly the same for everyone.

But there is an important lesson to be learned already.

Some of the shotguns (like the MASS and M590) benefit more from aiming down sights and others

benefit less (specifically the semi-auto defender shotguns) but the bottom line is that aiming

down sights is always worth it.

Here is an image with examples to show you just how much you can improve your gun's spread.

If you are going to breach with buck, hip-firing

gives you a much larger spread and bigger hole but if you are going to use the MASS

to fight, aiming down sights will MASSively improve your chances of landing multiple pellets.

The spread of the MASS in fact reduces by more than half when aiming!

The next thing we can do with these spread diameters, is to overlay the one for each

weapon (for hip fire, hip fire when moving and ADS states) onto a piece of test footage

showing an operator at various distances and then estimating how many pellets are likely

to land at each distance.

And this is where we finally come to some the really juicy conclusions.

Once we have an estimate for how many pellets will land when hip firing or aiming down sight,

for each shotgun at each range, we can estimate the damage for a single shot as well as an

adjusted damage per second that only takes into account how many pellets are likely to land.

Of course the estimated number pellets you can land at each distance, is not set in stone.

Depending on the individual pattern you end up with for any given shot, you may land 7

instead of 6 pellets… or maybe only 5…

Also, I purposefully picked a medium sized operator to compare the spread sizes to but

that means that smaller operators will receive less damage while larger ones may take more.

And a final caveat is that these damage tables will be only applicable to level 1 armour body shots.

For level 2 or three armour, the figures need to be multiplied by 0.9 and 0.8 respectively.

Despite these limitations, I think that the adjusted damage per second stats we can derive here

will still give us a clearer picture of the true damage output of each shotgun.

As you can see, the close range damage stats are of course not affected since you will

still be landing every pellet but once you push past 5-6m range, the damage output starts

dropping significantly across the board.

If you are hip firing or hip firing and moving at the same time that drop off will start

between 3 and 4 meters distance and will be even steeper.

Guns that are affected the worst by this are the GEO's ITA12S, Buck's MASS, Ela's

FO-12, and the Russian SASG-12.

Having an adjusted DPS is a great start when trying to rank the shotguns but with the estimated

pellet hit information, we can also calculate estimated damage per shot stats at various ranges.

This is especially useful, since it allows us to gauge at which distance you are likely

to get a one hit kill with each of the guns when you're aiming down sight, hip firing or hip firing and moving.

Let me mark the fields where you are likely to get a one hit kill in green.

Yellow fields may get you a one hit down but could also result in your opponent surviving

and orange fields will frequently not be enough to down your opponent but could still work

out for you if you get a lucky pattern.

Unsurprisingly, the pump action shotguns, with their much slower fire rate, have an

advantage of 1 or 2 meters critical hit range over the semi-autos.

And as much as the damage, damage drop-off and spread stats will vary from gun to gun,

these tables make it quite clear that they are still balanced quite well in terms of

their effective range (with the exception of maybe the ITA12L… that guns just seems bad).

The tables for level 2 and level 3 armour are not too dissimilar and I will let you

peruse those at your own leisure; link to my online sheet in the description.

And now, since aiming down sights is so important, it is also worth taking the ADS times into account.

Most of the guns have the same, or at least very similar ADS times but there are a few that stand out.

The difference between the first and second groups here is only one frame (at 60 FPS)

and so I would say that they are practically identical.

The next group is around 85ms slower than this and again, it is the semi-auto defender

guns that are being put at a slight disadvantage.

The weakest of all, with a significant disadvantage in terms of ADS time is Ela's FO-12.

It's time is almost half a second but since this shotgun is also capable of attaching

the angled grip you can take that time down to around 268ms.

The choice is yours, vertical grip for more stability, angled for a 40% better ADS time.

Ok, we're making good progress, there are only a couple of factors left to consider

and one of those factors is the reload time.

I discussed the reload times for the detachable magazine fed shotguns in a previous video

but as a reminder, those times are on screen now.