Mastering the Shotgun in Apex Legends
Apex Legends is a high-movement hero shooter built on the battle royale structure. The game lends itself to the battle royale genre’s successful “last team standing” formula and merges it into an arcade shooter that is highly mechanically reminiscent of Titanfall 2. Just as with other high TTK battle royales where close-quarters engagements are commonplace, such as Fortnite, shotguns play a critical role in Apex Legends. There are four shotguns in the game as of now: the Peacekeeper, the EVA-8, the Mastiff, and the Mozambique.
Due to the layout of the maps in Apex Legends, ranging from vast open areas to claustrophobic buildings with narrow corridors and plenty of rooms, there is a frequent occurrence of both long and close-range engagements. The game allows you to equip two weapons of your choice, with no restrictions across weapon classes, this means that ideally your kit should consist of a medium to long range weapon, as well as a weapon suitable for dealing with close quarters engagements. Shotguns truly shine in the latter instances.
While shotguns may seem like a noob-friendly weapon class in most games, this isn’t necessarily the case in Apex Legends. Due to the game’s higher TTK and sporadic movement, hitting consecutive shots on highly dynamic targets is critical. In order to do this, you will need to build upon your ability to time your clicks onto moving targets so that you don’t miss a shot and get beamed before you have time to re-engage.
The following task will train your ability to deal with dynamic targets on single-fire weapons. You will be prompted to fire at a bouncing, fast moving sphere bot that jumps around your position. You have to hit the target 5 times to eliminate it, and then it respawns.
The task is great for training close-quarters combat with shotguns, as the target often pushes up tight into your position. Work on maintaining strong accuracy by focusing on tracking the target, while paying attention to your click timing so you are landing your shots when your crosshair is over the target.