Shotgun players in Destiny 2 may not be able to aim – but the kills prove them right

In Destiny 2, shotgun players may not be able to aim, but they can easily pump away anything up close without even thinking about it. MeinMMO is on the trail of the hated phenomenon of the “shotgun apes” and gives you counter tips.

For years there has been a stubborn accusation in the Destiny universe: Whoever plays a shotgun has no skill and certainly cannot aim!

In fact, this statement is not entirely wrong. Despite many nerfs and adjustments, shotguns in Destiny 2 are as popular as ever. No wonder, since it’s just a satisfying part of the gameplay to completely destroy your opponents at close range, with the added benefit of not having to actually aim to do so.

• Some of the guards try to position themselves tactically with snipers or pulse rifles in order to always fight precisely and elegantly over medium distances.
• The other part runs and slides towards its opponents without thinking too much and pumps every tactic, no matter how finely tuned, into space in fractions of a second.
• And when they’re not running, the shotgun players camp out in nooks and crannies for unwary Guardians to fall into their traps.

This is exactly the behavior the “shotgun monkeys”, as the shotgun-loving keepers are officially called, like to exhibit in their natural crucible habitat.

Always close to the enemy, they scent their tracks and are a horror for players who are not equipped for such attacks with charged melee. During a PvP match, some careless guardians will look into the “run of quick farewell” several times before throwing their controller or keyboard out the window in annoyance.

The list of guilty shotguns is long: In addition to the Riiswandler shotgun, it was and is also Felwinter’s lie that costs many Guardians the last nerf. There are also temporary reigns of terror, such as that of the pseudo-shotgun Lord of the Wolves.

If you can’t counter, you don’t deserve a chance

Sure, a shotgun has the ultimate benefit of not actually having to aim it. However, that doesn’t change the fact that shotguns in Destiny 2 are pretty damn effective on the side.

No matter how controversial this style of play is, in the end only the kills count. And this is where the effectiveness of a shotgun gives shotgun apes every right to use this weapon whenever they can. Even if they like to claim again and again that the large number of kills is of course only due to their extremely fast reflexes.

I’ll happily admit that I wasn’t initially a fan of the rugged and somewhat clumsy style of shotgun play. Too often for me, too, it’s been that one small, careless moment in combat with shotgun players that has cost me my life time and time again in the Crucible.

But I also realized over time that any Guardian who wants to be a good PvP player has to use a shotgun. On the one hand, this type of weapon is necessary on certain maps, and on the other hand, I now also say: “If you can’t find an answer to countering a shotgun, you simply don’t deserve a chance.”

It doesn’t matter if Guardians use a shotgun against you as their universal remote, or just use it as their personal “panic button” at close range. If you don’t want to change your own style of play, you have to learn to counter the monkey attacks.

Shotguns can be learned to counter: We remember – a shotgun player is able to blast away our finely designed tactics in a fraction of a second. That’s why you have to take advantage of certain situations and outmaneuver the shotgun opponents.

• The best solution is sure to just stay out of range. Here it is good if you know and can estimate the range of the currently hottest shotguns.
• Avoids melee situations. You can hardly win against a shotgun.
• Dashing around corners? Better not. The radar is your best friend and shows you where your grenade should go. The maximum radar range is about 40 m, which is five times the range of a shotgun.
• Precision or adaptive sidearms and fusion rifles are also recommended

And if you now say that these are all things that never work for me, then the simplest counter-tip is still to join the shotgun monkeys without further ado and beat them with your own means.

Are you a shotgun monkey too? Or are you one of those players who always get fed up with the one-shotguns in the Crucible? Of course, you are always welcome to write your opinion about it in the comments.