User Aegeri on the Penny Arcade forums wrote this post about the Sawed-off shotgun in Gears of War 3 and is much better at articulating why it is such a giant turd of fuck than I am.
"The Gnasher has no advantages vs. the sawn off at point blank. Unless we're talking about someone absolutely completely incompetent, if they get near you then you are dead. It is absolutely that simple with the sawed off. It has a very reasonable "instagib" range and aiming it takes absolutely zero skill whatsoever. You have one shot but frankly, if you miss that one shot with the ridiculous instant kill arc it has you're bad at video games and should feel bad. The only way to counter a sawed off at close range, is to pray they get overexcited and shoot where you were as you've done a roll just before they reached you. Then mow them down trivially: But I have yet to see anyone good who is whoring the sawed off fall for that even once. They will just track you and blind fire you into bloody chunks once you finish rolling.
It turns execution gametypes into an absolute joke and any map that is very tight (like Checkout) turns into endless double barrel shotgun wars in no time. It's literally no fun to play against whatsoever, which is ironic because this is the first of the gears games that has actually made the gnasher fun and reasonable. Then they go and add the fucking sawed off in its current state, so we're right back to gears of war 2 shotgun wars: Despite the improvement to rifles. The amount of skill required to counter the sawed off is far greater than the amount required to actually use the damn thing. It is the very definition of "n00b cannon" and like anything like that it is when you give it to skilled players that it goes into absolutely broken territory."
It turns execution gametypes into an absolute joke and any map that is very tight (like Checkout) turns into endless double barrel shotgun wars in no time. It's literally no fun to play against whatsoever, which is ironic because this is the first of the gears games that has actually made the gnasher fun and reasonable. Then they go and add the fucking sawed off in its current state, so we're right back to gears of war 2 shotgun wars: Despite the improvement to rifles. The amount of skill required to counter the sawed off is far greater than the amount required to actually use the damn thing. It is the very definition of "n00b cannon" and like anything like that it is when you give it to skilled players that it goes into absolutely broken territory."
