Also entitled, "Shotgun? Heck yes!"
My favorite Headquarters server was down the other day, forcing me to do something I've never really done before: play Team Death Match. Let me tell you, I became twice the player I already was simply by playing on a TDM server. True, 16 v 16 can be hectic and there are so many nades that you usually don't get kill streaks, but regardless I did my best to help my team.
At first, I did horrible. I had taken off the martyrdom perk, which could have easily given me ten more kills that round if it had been on. The reason behind this was I wanted to move away from my reliance on the belief that it didn't matter if I died because then the enemy would most likely die as well. This I realized, made me a worse player. Then as the round progressed and I realized how my shotgun worked, I got better. I knew where the majority of the enemies would be and therefore knew exactly how far I could sprint, where I needed to throw a grenade, where I should prone and where to bottleneck the enemy. As soon as I got these concepts down, my score drastically increased.
In particular, I remember one life, where I proned by a garbage can, away from where nearly all of the nades fell. There, I had the perfect cover from people coming through the alley. Most looked straight ahead to where people usually camped and had their ironsights trained there the moment they entered the ally. Instead, I was to the bottom right of their vision (if they even saw me at all before I killed them). No sooner had I gotten into position but three enemies came around the corner. I got two with my shotgun before my teammates killed the other. There was a bit of delay while we waited and I tossed a stun nade and a frag, bouncing it off the wall and into the doorway. Getting another kill from that, I pulled in the 3 kill streak UAV. Almost immediately, more enemies came around the corner. I killed both and achieved the 5 kill streak airstrike which I threw down immediately. I don't remember if I killed anyone or not, but regardless, it gave me ten points. By this time, the enemy started to realize that I was somewhere to the right, but they still didn't know where. As they came around the corner, they spread out, most of them coming towards me. I pumped all four shells into the enemy, gaining a 10 kill streak, before the martyrdom of one dead enemy killed me. Over all, it was quite a satisfying run and from then on, I was much more proficient with my shotgun.
Martydrom is a cowards perk!
Yes, it is proven that the Pump action COD4 shotgun is the best balanced shotgun in the franchise. MW2 Spas 12 doesn't count, it was terribly unbalanced and had a stupid amount of range.
I used to run with marty all the time (if you read my last TFTB, you know I took it off), but nearly every player on the TDM server has it and the server itself isn't HardCore.
That shotgun really is quite good (the COD4 one :P ).