Tactical and Shoota don't have equivalent weapons. The shoota has straight up better stats than the bolter. It has a slightly higher dps, a higher rate of fire and more damage per magazine than the bolter. I'm guessing it's to make up for the lack of stormbolter equivalent but since at least 2 or 3 months prior to the release the shoota boy has been strictly superior to the tactical stats wise (just like csm). And I really couldn't tell you why. My guess is behavior is trying to give LSM slightly more armor/armor regen as a theme but these stats have always been grossly overpriced. The devs don't seem to understand that with the abundance of heals in the game and the very short range of most encounters, armor and armor regen aren't that much better than health (and sometime worse)
I- just closed my browser by mistake and lost my more in depth response, so I'm likely going to miss something off. They are the equivalents. If you bare in mind not all your Shoota shots will hit, and it's far easier for SM's to land headshots on Orks for bonus damage, which bolters make use of for their higher per bullet dps. The bolters also has noticeably less recoil if both have a Heavy Barrel mod, and are in general more accurate due to the slower firing speed. Armor regen is somewhat helpful in a static fight if you can hide in cover for it to regen, as that's where LSM get most of their EHP. As far as I'm aware, there's only the Ork armor that gives armor, which is far less currently than LSM's get, so I'm at least somewhat glad that we will get an equal amount if no decrease in delay. We have our trinkets and a glyph. We also have the Iron gob and golden gob, which are too expensive to put on a generic build unless you build around the massive LP sink that they are. Orks arn't suppose to stack Armor, their supposed to stack Health or Toughness. The first point above is however easily countered by a CSM/Ork/Eldar player by just not giving their armor chance to regen by staying in their face. If they do regen their armor though, they've more or less won the fight during the second round. As it can absorb a fair bit of damage and regens. Our niche weapon that's standing in as an Orky stormbolter until we get a kombi-shoota is the Rodeo, which is solely close range as it's wildly innacurate at mid to long range, given the recoil not being helped by the fire rate, leaving a spray and pay method the best up close. It's not the equivilent, but is used for the same role.
No offense but there's no logic behind the "bolter benefit from headshots more than the shoota" argument. They both have the same headshot multiplier, it's not a matter of damage per bullet, it's a matter of dps. And the shoota has a significant higher rate of fire than the bolter which directly translate into more chance of landing shots (and headshots) on moving targets. As for the accuracy the shoota is accurate enough to land headshots at a quite long distance, the difference with the bolter is pretty much irrelevant 98% of the time due to the average distance at which we fight in this game anyway. (Which is one of the reason why most experienced player will pick a vengeance storm bolter over a bolter anyday) Yeah I agree, that's why it's useless most of the time. In order to win in that game you need to get inside a room, kill everyone as fast as possible (win 1v1 and 1v2) and cap before they can respawn. In that sort of situation armor isn't worth more than health and I'd go as far as to say it's often worse considering you'll probably be bathing in some aoe heal during that fight anyway. You pretty much only get those slow static fights on fortresses (which is also a problem for some of the heavy classes imo).
@Arteek your far more likely to to land headshots on an Ork, given the heads so big and sits center mass, where the bolter recoil leads your aim. If your trying to say headshots don't increase Bolter damage I'm afraid they do, that's the sad truth. Your less likely to accidentally hit a SM's head given how high up it is and the spread more often than not just going over it if you actually aim for it, something the bolter doesn't do. On a per clip basis, if you manage to get all 100 shots to hit, sure it'll do more damage bur that requires 100% accuracy, something Ork weapons really aren't known for and, if you want to make a separate thread about this feel free but this isn't what this threads for.
@Arteek The Shoota is definitely not better than the Bolter. Not even close. Stat wise comparison is as follows on the current live version: Shoota : 28 damage per bullet at 80 penetration. Over 20m and falloff is 18,67 damage at 100m. 480rpm Bolter : 38 damage per bullet at 80 penetration. Over 20m and fallof is 28 damage at 100m. 333rpm So however you want to look at it as it stands, the Bolter is a literal DPS house per bullet at it's maxed out range when compared to the shoota at it's closest. Factor in things into your "combat equation" of CQC such as ADS's and Strafe shooting, alongside with any skilled player's use of the Burstfire rounds leading into autofire with the bolter for easy 8 pin point shots under 1 second as demonstrated in the videos below ( does not work as well with the shoota due to the inherent innacuracy ) and then tell me how exactly you can still support your claim that the Shoota is "superior". "B-buth Geisto, Orks can strafe fire too!" Sure, but they're not as accurate as a Hip-firing bolter. And their bodies are wider and clunkier. They will get hit more often in any 1v1 engagement scenario. Because it looks to me like you're going based on nothing more than feeling.
My guess is hurrhrurururr Look closer. The spread on the boltgun is 1 degree, the spread on the shoota is 2 degrees.
