Both can be viable at any level. Shotgun seems to be quite popular in NA, not as much in EU.

real soldiers can play gunboats soli while still using the shotgun

gunboats are for chaos players only

I think at a lower level gunboats are easier to play because it's more forgiving. You miss one jump, or realize late that you need to escape, you can still do it with gunboats, not so much with shotgun.

Shotgun is for patriots who want to put out big damage. Gunboats are for weak commies. Stars and Stripes beats Hammer and Sickle. Look it up!

Shotgun lets you have more stopping power/versatility but gunboats lets you make space/escape for very little health. "Better" is subjective, with the scout meta I personally think gunboats are objectively* better since you can take a more independent role in terms of heals and making space for scouts.
But you dont have to play super meta if you can do efficent with shotgun, its pros and cons and how you work around those is up to you. Shotgun soldier is less about jumping around lots and more about staying within the medic range and utilizing hitscan for guaranteed damage.
Obviously nothing is set in stone but both are viable.

* = highest level

I'd also like to point out that gunboats pocket relies on the scouts and demos ability to take heals and hit shots/protect the medic, whereas shotgun pocket can be a one man army. If your scouts are bad and aren't shooting the same shit or playing a proper role in the combo, a shotgun can be really useful provided you have aim and know how to use ubers effectively. If your scouts are good enough though they can just act as a 185 health shotgun that jumps around and dodges damage shooting at the shit you hurt while you jump in and out and get arrowed. Also if your medic is good and can hit arrows shotgun becomes 100x more effective because he doesn't have to constantly be tanked and get 40% heals. The conch and battalion's backup can also be super strong for breaking stalemates.

i've always played with the shotgun because it fulfills your roll as pocket better. it's easier to deny jumpers and scouts when you have a reliable secondary.

Any soldier who can uber properly should use shotty almost every time, the reason shotgun fell out of favour of alot of top soldiers is mainly because people realised how good scouts are and that resulted more pocket scouts in prem/invite (haffi, astt, b4nny etc.) If a team relies on their scouts and demo to put out the most damage during team fights soldiers should be making space using gunboats and a 250-300 buff. In a pug scenario I feel shotty is great since the play is more traditional most of the time.

I think gunboats are stronger because it allows for more aggression and for your pocket to act like a second roamer in fights where scouts need heals. Really shotgun is only useful for finishing kills, and 90% of the time you should have a combo scout nearby anyway to play off of.

If u want to do everything pretty effectively, run gunboats.
If u want to be able to destroy things in ubers and have really good solo play at the expense of heals for ur teammates run shotgun.
If u want to have a stalematey game that you win/break a stalemate, run banners.

But if u are truly a giant brain player, run the most powerful gamesense unlock in tf2- the mantreads.

You rarely see pocket soldiers run with shotgun nowadays, they tend to use gunboats instead. But if you can manage your rockets pretty well, i think that you should stick with gunboats :)

I've thought for a while now that mantreads would make ubering into certain lasts like badlands through top left way easier but pyro still knocks you around so it doesn't really matter.

realtalk mantreads are actually lowkey really good in certain scenarios like when you're pushing top left into badlands last and there's a sentry/double donks whatever other gay shit juggling you backwards or if you're trying to push into gran last up top onto the pipe and want to avoid getting juggled everywhere (your'e going to be invincible anyways so the -60% explosion damage doesn't much matter)
pretty sure milo ran it in season 20 vs 20b and it worked pretty well https://play.esea.net/index.php?s=stats&d=match&id=5310653

pyro class is the devil
realtalk though why doesn't it resist airblast knockback that makes no sense

at least it won't have to resist a LIGHTNING GUN . . .

Ye mantreads are actually good for taking ubers into last and also the max dmg they can do to someone is 420 (u have to be going at 3500 hu/s downwards though). Also the reason they dont resist airblast is because they only resist the knockback done by damage. The way airblast works in general is dumb though because it just ignores where the pyro is airblasting you from or your current velocity. Instead it just makes you go slightly upwards and sets your horizontal velocity to about 0.

Taken out of context, you're saying it doesn't make sense that a pair of boots doesn't prevent you from being forced backwards/up?

I actually didn't realize the Manntreads don't resist airblast. Are there any other exceptions to them? Scorch Shot? FaN? I should go test this sometime...

Anyway, back on topic, the way your team plays matters when making this kind of decision. Sure, if you have awful/great shotgun aim, that affects the call on an individual level, but how the rest of the team plays should probably be the biggest factor.

As they said, only airblast because it doesnt do Damage, FaN and Scorch Shot do Damage.

Zesty's post hadn't appeared when I hit 'submit.'

Seems like a relatively easy thing for Valve to fix; just make airblast do 1 damage or .0001 damage (assuming the engine allows that).

first of all valve isnt going to fix anything any time soon unless a hoard of apes on reddit complain about it (even then who knows)
second of all your 'fix' makes even less sense if anything they just need to buff the mantreads so they resist all forms of knockback (afaik airblast is the only non damaging one but maybe there's others)

Right, that's why I used the word 'could.' I have no expectation that they will.

I'll concede that my idea is circuitous.

Anyways, I'll stop posting here. This thread is for shotgun and Gunboats.

i just use what international LAN winners use, which are gunboats. i52, i55, i58

shotgun won rewind lan. if paddie hadn't ran shotgun, that thalash pyro thing might have worked

But paddie won the most recent international lan running (mostly)shotgun.

Ninja'd

mecha cop said it all. carry on.

why do people get salty at me when i use gunboats only on mge ? :^(If you cant beat a soldier with gunboats while using a shutgun u should not ever play solly :^)

the real question, panic attack or mantreads?