Up to +25-40% Strength, as Stamina depletes.
+12-24% Rending on Enemy Weak Spot Hit for 3.5s. Stacks 5 times.
Increased Cleave on Critical Hit and gain +10-25% Ranged Attack Stagger.
Killing an enemy by firing both barrels makes your next Reload 40-70% faster.
"trenches have been around for humanity longer than we have records for, and nothing clears out a trench like a double barreled shotgun" -Unknown Kriegsman
this build is aimed at getting the most out of the shotgun, so this is what ive come up with. you may have noticed this is a manstopper build with no scattershot and thats because we will be relying on deadshot and weapons specialist to get the crits we need. i also left out decimator on the shovel since with the ridiculous attack speed from this build you will end up missing a lot of hits anyway so it doesnt stack very well.
strategy: your job is to clear the big blobs of enemies. if its a narrow corridor with stuff in it, its your job to delete the entire corridor. the DBS can kill anything effectively except for bosses and crushers, which it does in a medium amount of speed. for crushers the shovel can do the heavy work but for bosses its a little more tricky.
when using infiltrate it will give us +55% close range dmg for 5 seconds, so that's between 2 and 5 double shots (depending of both barrels blessing is procced). this will one shot reapers and almost one shot bulwarks. use infiltrate as the nuke button.
mutants can be one shot in point blank, dreg ragers can be one shot (normal shot) and the rest is better off double shotting. trappers can be one shot in about 20m range. maulers can technically be one shot point blank but in reality you want to use infiltrate to hit that breakpoint from beyond melee range.
every melee kill you get reloads the shotgun so yipee, but try to aim for at least 3 kills to get a guaranteed crit (and therefore manstopper cleave). dont put too much brainpower into worrying about weapons specialist stacks though, its better to focus on the main gameplay.
for bosses using infiltrate and double shot will be about one brain burst of damage per shot. you can kill bosses in about 20/30 ammo if done right, but bosskilling is simply not your job tbh. she shovel can poke the plague ogryns down pretty easily but spawns risk braking your stamina.
the shotgun, like all shotguns (and kickback) has a "minimum damage" mechanic, where if only one pellet hits it still does a certain amount of damage. this means something that can be killed with 2 single shots from far away will not die to a double shot. use this info to 2 shot snipers form up to 75m away.
dont go demonhunting, you will lose your soul
weaknesses: this build has purposely low stamina, so if your caught out in a corner without ammo or infiltrate you will die, so always have at least one excape plan. ragers can be a problem but the DBS will mean you give out as much dps as you will take at the minimum. gunners will ruin you if you are caught out so get the jump on them with infiltrate.
and thats about it. enjoy working behind enemy lines and clearing out huge groups of enemies before they even notice you
