Strategy:Plasmatic shrapnel

Overview

All this shotgun assembly does is turn your shotgun's damage type from shrapnel to plasma, with no other changes to its stats, but this provides three significant effects. The first is a substantial increase in power against high armored enemies, as while armor double reduces damage from shrapnel damage, armor has half its protection value against plasma damage. Against enemies with an armor value of 1 like Cacodemons and Hell knights this assembly will only be doing 1 more damage, but against enemies with an armor value of 2, like the VMR, Barons, and Arachnotrons, your shotgun will always be dealing 3 more damage with every hit. So against the most threatening enemies that will be your primary threat beyond Phobos and are the bane of Shotgunners, it'll be like getting an extra dice that will always roll its max damage, compared to just applying a Power mod where it'll more often be dealing 1 or 2 more damage. Then against nightmare enemies and bosses with even greater armor you'll see even greater benefit; against those with an armor value of 3 like the Shambler and Nightmare Demons it'll be dealing 4 more damage, against the Cyberdemon it'll be dealing a whopping 6 more damage each hit, and against the Lava elemental and John Carmack your Plasmatic shotgun will be dealing an even more whopping 7 more damage. If you're not investing in Whizkid and aren't running Army of the Dead, this assembly will provide your shotgun better DPS and save you more ammo in the long run than applying a Power mod will.

But beyond the damage boost making your shotgun Plasmatic will provide it two additional utilities. The first is the ability to gib corpses, and as is a Plasmatic shotgun is the best corpse disposal weapon bar none. With it all you need to do is aim in the general direction of corpses, and all corpses in its spread will be gibbed, without requiring a point of contact near the corpses like a Rocket launcher and BFG does, and without destroying any nearby items and powerups like those explosive weapons will, while a shell is additionally a relatively much cheaper ammo expenditure than a rocket and a ton of plasma cells. This is very useful when Arch-viles are around, and is invaluable on Nightmare and in Angel of Darkness, especially so if you're playing Angel of Shotgunnery on Nightmare where you won't have Rocket launchers around to destroy corpses. The other utility making your shotgun Plastmatic supplies is giving it the ability to destroy walls, but this can be a sidegrade. A Plasmatic shotgun is more flexible with destroying walls than Rocket launchers are as you won't have to worry about blowing up nearby items or yourself and again the ammo cost will be relatively cheaper, but now when corner shooting your Plasmatic shotgun will destroy your cover. So essentially, you'll no longer be able to corner shoot with a shotgun you make Plasmatic outside of levels where the walls are indestructible, but for shotgun builds you'll have multiple different shotguns you can corner shoot with instead, while non-shotgun builds won't need to be relying on corner shooting with a shotgun by the time they can make a Plasmatic shotgun for its other utilities.

Is it worth building?

For a shotgun build, if you find a Sniper mod but no Plasma shotgun, it definitely is just on the basis of the additional utilities gained, and on a damage output basis too if you're not investing in Whizkid as covered prior. If you are investing in Whizkid however, do note that your shotgun's offense potential would be greater with multiple Power and Technical mods compared to making it Plasmatic, shotguns with two additional Power mods attached will see a greater damage output than making it Plasmatic will against regular enemies (for example against the prominent armor values of 2 having two power mods will increase damage by 2-6 for an average of 4 compared to always 3), and decreased firing time with Technical mods will more than make up for the less damage output against highly armored bosses. If you do find a Plasma shotgun, making one of your other shotguns Plasmatic is much less useful, as a Plasma shotgun will outperform it at its uses while being fully moddable and allowing shotgunners to make use of another ammo type when shells can have shaky availability in Hell. For other builds that don't primarily use shotguns, it'll depend on how useful a Sniper mod is for their primary weapons and if they have a Power mod to spare, if they can spare the two mods and haven't ditched shotguns completely it'll certainly be handy for the extra utility, but if playing on Nightmare or Angel of Darkness they'll be hard-pressed to find a better use of those mods when easy corpse disposal is so valuable.

What shotgun to use as a base?

Now the biggest question, if you want to make one of your shotguns Plasmatic, which one do you use?

The base Shotgun isn't a great choice, as having to reload between shots limits its corpse and wall destroying capabilities in a pinch, and it doesn't fare so well in open and distant combat, so it relies more on corner shooting and thus it suffers more from losing it.

Since it fires twice, the Double shotgun will see its damage increase from being made Plasmastic effectively doubled, so against the 2 armor enemies it will deal 6 more damage per fire. But the Double shotgun being so notoriously short-ranged makes it much more suitable for corner shooting, while a Plasmatic Double shotgun will shred any nearby walls. And if you're investing in Whizkid, making it a Focused double shotgun will give you a much more combat-effective weapon in all areas while you can get the extra utilities from making another shotgun Plasmatic. A Plasmatic Double shotgun might only be worth it as a boss killer for Shottyheads and Fireangels that aren't investing in Whizkid, but Whizkid is a really good investment for them that they should get every run.

With the Super shotgun, it fares much better in open combat than the Double shotgun and doesn't rely on corner shooting as much, so for combat purposes making it Plasmatic can really amp up its effectiveness for clearing out hordes of tough enemies and wrecking bosses. However with it always having to expend 2 shells with each shot and needing to reload between each shot, it's much less efficient for destroying corpses and walls. Additionally since its damage dice have 4 sides, it sees even more benefit from Power mods than other shotguns do and a Super shotgun with multiple Power and Tech mods will completely blow out a Plasmatic one for any combat purposes. So again might be worth it for Shottyheads and Fireangels without Whizkid that want to make their Super shotgun as powerful as it can be against hordes and bosses over having the most efficient utility usage, but if you do have Whizkid you're just hindering its potential by turning it Plasmatic, especially when you could save it for a potential Nano-shrapnel Super shotgun to instant win the game instead (and if you already have a Nano mod alongside a SSG, why would you be contemplating making it Plasmatic instead?).

Now a Combat shotgun is an ideal shotgun to make Plasmatic, it fares considerably better in open and distant combat than the Shotgun and Double shotgun do so it's not reliant on corner shooting to be effective in combat, and while it has to pump between shots, the pump is considerably faster than reloading, making it a lot more efficient at destroying corpses and walls. You should probably prioritize turning a Combat shotgun into a Tactical shotgun, but you can always get a second Combat shotgun to turn Plasmatic, that is unless...

...You find an Assault shotgun, which is like a Combat shotgun but doesn't require pumps between its shots and has an additional shell in its clip too. The Assault shotgun is easily the best choice for this assembly, as it fares well in open combat to make giving up corner shooting for not such a detriment, and easily does the corpse and wall destroying utilities best. It's just too bad you don't get a guaranteed one until all the way in The Mortuary/Limbo, which isn't really worth waiting around until, though a shotgunner with a Sniper mod that wants the least painful Mortuary/Limbo might still find it worthwhile waiting until then and making an instant mad dash to the Assault shotgun to turn it Plasmastic, especially so in Angel of Shotgunnery, Angel of Darkness, and Nightmare.

Then finally it should be mentioned that you can use the Plasma shotgun for this assembly. Of course since its damage type is already plasma, turning it Plasmatic does absolutely nothing, and considering how doing so would be giving up all its modding potential for nothing, needless to say doing that would be a really dumb and wasteful move. Omega Tyrant (talk) 16:51, 2 November 2019 (UTC)