I rocket jump very often and even more often with gunboats as i find it very helpful in my gameplay. But on the other hand, i love how the shotgun is very effective as i can finish people off once my rocket laucher has no more ammo in its clip. So which one should i use SOS :-(
You should use the Shotgun. It's very effective and when you finish all your rocket launcher ammo, you switch to your shotgun and kill the enemies. You can use the gunboats, doesn't make a big deal. You find a lot of health packs in the map, so I see no reason to use gunboats :/
Gunboats are good for roaming soldiers. For those of you that don't know, roaming soldiers draws the fire away from his team mates and forces medics to popping the uber early,thus creating an advantage for your team.But to do this you have to go to the front lines fast which can be attained by rocket jumping,which makes you lose alot of health really really fast, thats why gunboats are used. The shotgun is a useful when going offensive soldier and is used to finish off enemies when you need to reload your rocket launcher.Also,it's useful against pyros that know how to air blast very well. So,as you can see the gunboats and the shotgun are both used in certain situations. But what type of soldier you are is your choice.
the only reason you should ever use the boats are when you're ridiculously good at rocketjumping and can use it to assassinate the other team's medic.
Personnaly, I'd keep my shotty. If you use the Equalizer, you can quickly escape back to a medpack. Plus, a Soldier with low health and an Equalizer behind the enemy is a very effective surprise attack. Some say that if you want to keep your shotgun and rocket jump a lot, you can use the Cow Mangler, since it's projectiles do less damage than a normal rocket. It's kinda like the middle ground.
Shotgun works for me the best, sure, the Gunboats are great but for my Playing style the Shotgun is the best.
If I'm being Trolldier, I use the gunboats. If I'm actually trying to do anything productive, I'm using the shotgun.
Shotgun is great but the ability to get way above a CP and fire down 3 rockets just isnt equaled by a shotgun, i prefer gunboats massively because i can get where i want, go straight into combat, and have a chance of winning, 20 health per rocket jump compared to about 60 without the gunboats is just a no-brainer for me. versus scouts though it becomes more useful with the shotgun... depends on your playstyle and situation.
Overall, the shotgun is most effective. Like said above even though the gunboats reduce rocket jump damage, there are still many medkits on the map. And when at low health you can use the equalizer to quickly sprint to one of those medkits. So overall, the shotgun is the best secondary soldier weapon, it's something you just can't go without.
I'm a pretty good jumper so I usually go Gunboats, unless the map isn't fitting for them or the enemy Soldiers/Pyros know what they're doing, it which case I switch to the shotty.
I prefer to use the shotgun, it gives you an extra 6 shots when you run out of rockets (which does happen very often) and saves your life many-a-time.
When you're on smaller maps, the gunboats are useless. I always go with the shotgun. It's great if you run out of rockets and need to get to a dispenser.
Shot gun NO FREAKING CONTEST. The Gunboats are for people making themselves feel better cuz they cant use the shotgun
