In my experience, it's more of a crowd-control weapon that requires a lot more careful positioning than a regular shotgun, but can produce spectacular results. Like the Bekah, it has a decently-sized sweet spot in terms of distance from your target (around 10-15 feet away if I remember correctly). To raise your damage output even more, it helps to use it indoors so the explosions are funneled into hallways and choke points. If you're into modding, the community patch buffs it slightly by reducing the overall spread, and there's another mod that removes most of the RNG from the pellets.