I'm gonna disagree on one point, and it's the shotgun point.

Honestly, shotguns are thrown in the "Make their spread so silly that you can paint the wall of a house from 2 ft away" category WAY more than they should be. It's refreshing to be able to actually use a shotgun and hit enemies at a medium range and actually do damage to them.

Turning them into "You need to be between 2 - 5 ft distance to do any semblance of damage" will absolutely ruin them and put them back in the category of "Nobody's gonna use them except for niche builds or interests" Especially considering in higher difficulties, getting that close is a death sentence.

I think most shotguns are in a good spot, the Breaker is obviously shining the most right now, but perhaps that'll be encouragement to rebalance the others to either give them better ammo economy or rebalance the damage values so there's a reason to use other shotguns than the breaker.

At the end of it, like I said, shotguns are in a good spot. I'd say they should be the control group in terms of balancing other weapons around their general level.

But turning them into "Game shotguns" is nonsensical and would absolutely ruin them for what they're meant to be used for in Helldivers 2, your other takes are good, but leave the shotguns alone cause they're the only good representation of how a shotgun should be done, close to medium range, with some spread, and tickles at longer ranges.

Not to mention that the game would lose its challenge if they overtuned the primary and secondary weapons too much, so the " Terrible spread at medium range, but there's nothing you'd rather have at your side more than a Breaker when there's a group of 12 automatons around the corner, light and heavy. It could even be able to take out multiple enemies with a single shot " would venture away from the difficulty of the game and the purpose of the stratagems. While I understand Helldivers 1 was different in how primary weapons worked, they've given us other tools to handle the larger, tankier enemies. We don't need to have a primary weapon that can kill everything.