Assault shotgun

The assault shotgun is a rifle skill weapon appearing in Deus Ex.

Game item
The assault shotgun does less damage per pellet than the sawed-off shotgun, making it do less damage per shot, it is also less accurate. If you don't aim for the head, it's very likely that your target will survive. Even if you do aim for the head, there's still a real chance that he could survive if not all pellets hit. For best results, try and hit the upper body; this way you can hope for some of the pellets hit the head as well because of the assault shotgun's rather large spread.

With sabot shells, the assault shotgun can quickly take out the Spider Bots, which are by far the most numerous and annoying bots in the game. It can also be used to destroy cameras and is one of the few firearms which can potentially take on a Karkian, depending on your skills and mods.

An unmodded assault shotgun is not nearly as powerful as it seems. While its magazine and automatic fire should allow you to shred through enemies with ease, its recoil and inaccuracy makes it impossible to use past very short range, and even then a pellet or two might miss. In addition, its reload time makes you vulnerable for 4.6 seconds, which is way too long in sustained combat. Fortunately both reload time and recoil can be reduced using weapon mods, and the already impressive magazine size can be further increased. Accuracy can be increased by raising your Rifle weapons skill, maxing out at 85%.

Trivia
It appears to be based on the custom-built automatic shotguns that appears in The Matrix movie.

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