The Crusader Shotgun

It would actually work if you have a very high level Crusader with Ultra Light Materials. Your cooldown of powers would be 3.72 seconds, which is not too bad. You could also use a Power Efficiency Consumable (and we all have plenty of those) and with that the CD would go down to 3.27 seconds. 

The only kit I use it on is the fat Tsent. Crusader has been my first UR and Tsent has been using it since his Bronze days. When I first transitioned to Gold... man, did I ever suck!

However, I gained some mileage since then. And the Tsent wrecks some serious shit with Crusader. I play on PS3 and I still do pretty decently with it, dare I say. Bosses have never been a problem, since they are hard to miss anyway. For mooks, you have Overload, for those juicy HS.

As an added bonus, you finally have a use for those Power Efficiency modules

It's a good combo. Not as good as Tsent/Saber(my personal favourite), but still pretty damn decent.

So I just did have a game with a Paladin and a ULM Crusader + Power Regen. It certainly works. Of course you're not gonna get as many combos like with a Hurricane, but it's certainly usable. And you have all bases covered. You have range, you have stagger, you can debuff and slow enemies and if anything sneaks past, you can always shield-bash the critter.

Would not use it without ULM and Power Regen.

Then you should try the Geth Engineer/saber combo, the rate of fire and accuracy boost really improves the saber and it's got the overload too.

Saber is good without improvements to accuracy, but with a scope it's even better. 

Oh sure, go ahead and make me feel bad for my lack of self discipline I tell you, with friends like these...

What can I say, couldn't held out without you fuckers for long And carrying pugs by myself is a tiresome work, I need some support

As for Crusader/Huntress combo... I did try it... once. I had the "luck" of happening upon geth in an offhost game. The rage... I am more than willing to give it a shot in a game when I host and preset Cerberus though

My huntress loves her Widow, but she has a soft spot for shotties as well, so I don't think it will take much to convince her.

The Crusader is currently my favorite gun in the game, I find it very satisfying to use and to me it is probably the most versatile gun of them all. Melee, mowing stuff down close up, snipe across the map, this beast can do it all. 

Most of what it is about has already been said, including its drawbacks, which are not trivial and can be infuriating. If you just recently acquired it and are on PC, the aim delay patch may be a good idea, as its shooting mechanics are different and it does require some precision to use effectively. For me it was the other way around, having used it a lot I tried the patched one and found that did not work well for me, so I reverted back. May be worth trying out which version suits you better.

Its biggest weakness is lag dependence imo. Above a certain threshold, the default version becomes basically unplayable except at point blank range and/or with a staggering power. I would expect that to be better with the patched one.

One of its great strengths is that you get a generous amount of 4 hard-hitting slugs in the mag and a speedy reload. This makes it ridiculuosly good for those situations in which you are being rushed f.ex. by Dragoon/Phantom mobs, as you can usually just walk away backwards and punch holes in them while doing that. Headshots help and are very satisfying with it, but especially on infiltrators the damage you will put out is high enough that you don´t really need them all the time, which nicely offsets difficulties its funky aiming mechanics may cause.

I like spamming powers and it is thus a tad too heavy for my taste on most characters, but certainly perfectly viable on anything. Here are some of my favorite setups:

QFI with Heavy Barrel and Mag Upgrade. Plays like a Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry movie. Feel Lucky, Punk ? Enemy Spinach !
Salarian Infiltrator with Geth Scanner and Drill Rounds, Heavy Barrel and Mag Upgrade. Death through the walls. Ridiculuosly powerful, but lots of fun to use. Copy that !
Melee Krogan Sentinel with Omni-Blade and Heavy Barrel. No smart choke needed means a match made in heaven and you can dish out the pain at all ranges. They´re dead !
   

 

Yeah. You'll need power efficiency III but it's hella fun. Pack that extra punch for a CQC Paladin and catch enemies at long range.

If you don't play on PC and use the fire delay fix then this gun is kind of annying off-host, on-host it's totally fine (I don't use the Crusader fix myself as I think it's fine as it is).

It's mainly an infiltrator weapon due to it's very heavy weight even at lvl X. The best kit in the game for it by far is the DAI.

Great post TopTrog, with the emboldened part my favourite - I'd wear that on a t-shirt if I knew how to morph Clint into a Quarian. 

At this point, I just have to assume that anything that was "easy" enough to fix by (m)gamers/mods, then it has to have been intended.

They said it gives the gun character, And it certainly does. The most accurate shotgun on paper, that constantly misses.