[quote name='nintendokid']"Hey...I think I got it!"
I was experimenting and training over the winter break (staying away from XBL to improve). Some good shotgun tactics to improve your skills:
1. always keep your left stick at 11:00 - 1:00 when rushing forward. When retreating, roll or roadie away. Walking backwards and left/right makes you about 25% slower.
2. don't click repeatedly or time your shotgun shots like Halo 2, especially over XBL. Just HOLD ON to the right trigger:
a) since there is always lag, by holding the trigger, your shot always comes out as fast it can always come out.
b) you can fully concentrate on strafing and your opponent's movement
3. Melee! I hate this and I can't get yet get it to become second nature, but if you get 1 or 2 clean shots and are within range, melee brings them down right away.
4. Melee stun-gib. Melee the person at close range so they get stunned and stop dead in their track. Immediately hold the R-trigger, start strafing left or right (11:00 - 1:00) and use right stick to keep him in your view altogether. A clean shot guarantees gib. NOTES:
a) strafing to the left is easier because the camera defaults to keep your character on the left. Strafing to the right after the melee forces the camera to shift sporadically to the right to keep you on the left of screen and is very hard to get in a clean shot.
b) if you don't think you can get a shot after the melee, RUN LIKE A BITCH and maintain. The following melees after the 1st one do not register. Also, if you do not strafe or run out of his view while he is stunned, he can just gib you out of the stun.
5. ROLL AS A DEFENSIVE MANEUVER!!!!!! It is a legitimate tactic and forces your opponent to initiate a new tactic. How many times have you been gibbed while fighting standing? All the time. How many times have you been gibbed while rolling out of the way? Rarely. It is not a "cheap" tactic. It's the quickest way to immediately move about 10 feet in any of 4-directions.
What I do is I go to split-screen MP by myself and hone my movements. Split your tactics into 2-3 moves and work hard to chain them together so that it becomes fluid. Just playing XBL has its own training stimulus but also has distractions, like the other 4 mofos trying to blow your head off. You can't work on refined movements on XBL.[/quote]Wow, seems like you're really trying to get good with the shotgun. I don't think there's any need to go through intense split screen training to become useful with the shotgun, just mess around for a minute or two to see where the shotgun hits (without scoping) and adjust that to Xbox Live (for example, if you notice any sort of delay online then lead the opponent a bit with the shotgun and you should have no problem downing them).