How does shotgun priming work?

It is inconsistent among the shotguns.

www.reddit.com/r/MECoOp/comments/66ryzl/inconsistencies_in_shotgun_ammo_priming/

.per 5 pellets compared to a normal shot. Or more precisely each pellet counts 1/5 as much as a regular shot. The exceptions are the venom and crusader.

Most guns take between 2 and 10 hits to prime. Shotguns take between 10 and 50 hits to prime. All depending on rate of fire.

<50rof takes 10 (2), 250<rof takes 50 (10), scaling in between.

So the ruzad that has 5 pellets per shot is worse at priming than a katana that has 7 pellets per shot, while the dahn which only fires one pellet will kill the target long before putting in the 20 or so shots to actually prime the enemy. On the other hand the venom cluster grenades will overlap multiple aoe's and can prime enemies in a single burst.

The best shotguns for priming are the ones with far higher than 250 rof, which I think are 2? Piranha, and hesh?

Actually the reegar is awful at priming, also awful on armored targets

i know disciple takes 3-4 shots and it fires about 8 pellets per shot

Seems like Shotguns aren't that great for priming then and I should stick to different weapons for that.

it does seem less consistent than ME3, but i do like that ammo power primes do full damage, rather than the pansy weak ass rank 1 detonations

ROF / 25
shotguns, ROF / 5

so a gun with 125 rof takes 5 shots, or 25 if it's a "shotgun"

Max 10/50, min 2/10

Since there's no combo scaling with power rank, maybe all combos do rank 1 damage?    Blew your mind, didn't I?


My ME3 bias is coming through, but one of my favorite drellguard setups is falcon/hurricane and incendiary ammo.  Pop a falcon round, wait a second and then Charge for a glorious fire explosion.  The falcon in this game misses too much, the falcon in this game is crap at priming, the falcon in this game is not a falcon.  And the widow distrupor-primed every non-lethal shot my engineer ever took. 

Yet another example of inelegant design in MEA.

You have a point there. But making it dependent on fire rate just puts semi automatics on the side.
Then again making it damage based (i.e. 150 accumulative damage done means prime) would make hard hitters too good...
I guess they maybe found a middle ground, with the detonations doing full damage.