I think that shotguns have receive a nice buff at the last update. And it's good so, they do cool damage, you cant hope do pvp with a single shotgun. Try to rush with a tank small guns+ pancor jackhamer and you will see that shotguns works good =)
Shotguns are not viable in PvP stop
Hardly. Crit shotgun isn't any good if you can't get bypasses. And most builds have 4 or more luck which means you won't be getting them. So your crits would do about as much damage as avenger build does by default.Shotguns need HQ ammo with either higher dmg multiplier or armor bypassing abilities.
In 1vs1? not sure. With a pancor, and a good critical chance, the big gun have no chance to shoot you at 1 hex.
But they would be with my suggestion.
On top of that each knock-back could deplete the opponent of, for example, 1-2 action point/s
1 ap loss to target per bullet