Ready or Not – How to Use Breaching Shotgun as a Weapon

I did some testing on the range and lethality of breaching shotgun, a tactical device in game.

Guide to Use Breaching Shotgun as a Weapon

Breaching Shotgun

After acquiring “Medal of Valor” with vanilla AI in 1.0 (currently at Hotfix #2), I’ve discovered a new way of entertaining myself lol (btw if you haven’t attempted this yet, I strongly recommend against going for S rank or running less-lethal on any map until the game is rebalanced. I can tell you that after unlocking the achievement I regretted every minute I spent on getting it. It is NOT a pleasant experience in this state, far from it. It’s incredibly frustrating and an utter waste of time. If playing a game is not a fun experience and leaves u angry and frustrated afterwards, I think it’s fair to call it a waste of time.)

Anyways I did some testing on the range and lethality of the breaching shotgun, the now brand new stockless Remington 870 MCS (also featured in MW2019 as “Model 680” albeit not the “masterkey” variant as in RoN). I was very surprised at the fact that the breaching slugs are actually quite powerful.

Breaching shotguns leave decals and impact enemies like real bullets, causing visible bleedings but not capable of stunning them like combat ammunitions.

What Breaching Shotguns Can Do…

The range is understandably short just as irl, cuz breaching slugs are delicate projectiles and break apart easily. It’s basically like how shotguns feel in CoD. That being said, when I tested the breacher in that room at HQ with the prisoner, it’s still capable of creating decals and bleedings when fired from the furthest spot in the room. The damage tho is laughable. At point blank range body shots do what feels like about 20% the damage of a 9mm round, or less. Headshots are 1-hit at point-blank or even at a few steps away where body shots do virtually no damage. But beyond that not even repeated headshots can effectively stop a target.

Shooting enemies in the head kills them instantly at close range…

Also, don’t expect breaching slugs would disorient suspects like pepper balls/beanbags. From what I’ve seen so far, hitting enemies with breaching shotguns has just about the same effect as your sidearm, and we all know very well that in this game pepper balls and beanbags scare the enemies way more than real bullets.

Why Should You Try Using Breaching Shotguns as a Weapon

Other than being fun and goofy to use, the breach shotgun can actually have some practical uses.

For the most part, the breaching shotgun, along with the launchers, are the only tactical devices with lethality. Launchers, of course, are much less practical as a lethal weapon for obvious reasons (slow reloads, nature of its projectiles, and having only 4 grenades in reserve etc.). So running a shotgun basically gives you a third weapon if you know how to use it. Its ammo pool does not take up any slot, therefore you would have a last resort if you run out of ammo completely (a more common occurrence for heavy armour users).

Also, the breaching shotgun is much more compact in comparison to shotguns available as a primary weapon, probably due to the lack of a stock. This is important if you are fighting in an extremely enclosed space.

Soloing the Gas Station with Breaching Shotgun Only

Last but not least, I did a quick run with breaching shotgun only at the gas station, completely solo. It was actually quite fun!! But other maps? Forget about it.. for me at least. They all have rifles.