I think it is up there with the highest burst damage. If you land everything it can do at the correct range then it is very high burst.
What damage it actually deals is hugely dependent on so many “ifs” though. Successfully landing shock wave on a light target is a good way to remove the need to ask many of those “ifs”.
If a target maintains a 5m gap or is so in my face that I have to constantly track them and manage through staggers so I can actually reload when my initial attack doesn’t go well then the “ifs” stack up pretty rapidly.
Shrapnel is not strong at any range outside of the radius of the capstone grenade aoe damage. I can still do good damage outside of that range by aiming and I do spec into the perk that gives me more damage at 20m but if you dare suggest that be taken away then I question your motives.
Where I get a lot of my damage if it’s not from shrapnel (and I stress, it is usually not if I’m fighting anyone who knows how to play against BB) is burn and anti heal and that’s way more important to me in small scale pvp than being able to maybe lock one guy and maybe kill them in one hit.
Take the squishy targets and put them in front of any well geared WH with any other big follow up hit and they’ll die just as easily.
I do sometimes pull off a good flick shot with the shrapnel combo on a moving target who gets into its ideal range and that’ll sometimes be enough to turn the fight way into my favour. But so what? If a bow hits me in the head with a heavy and follows it up with any high damage skill then it’ll do the same for them. All most GS players need to do is chain all their big hits together and at least two of them will hit me. A sns can stun lock me and ignore 70% of my damage just by blocking. Up until now, if I’m facing a similarly skilled musket I may as well not apply. Some hatchet players who avoid my cc just left click me as I’m trying to gain space to reload and they don’t care I’ve triggered my 50% damage reduction perk.
This combo doesn’t make me a good player. It’s just one tool I can potentially use and unless you’ve actually tried it yourself I don’t think you can really understand how hard it can be to pull off consistently.



