I find them to unreliable and find it hard to know what range or distance to use them at.

I do think they are noobish and easy to use in Hardcore but in Core they are not in any noobish.

Your like me, i've only just found my love for the shotguns - USAS in particular. Its so much fun and i actually get stressed less when using them. Damage and Extended mags all the way! I started using them before my last prestige and it took forever to rank up, but coming up to my next prestige i left the gun 3 kills short of being rewarded 10000xp, i prestiged then used my double weapon xp token i was up to lvl 12 after my first match

What really irks me about players who consider shotguns OP are the one's who haven't used it themselves.

Can someone please explain how shotguns are OP because this video below clearly shows my frustration using a shotgun over any Assault Rifle & SMG in MW3.

Also, Final Stand is more annoying to deal with using a shotgun.

In real life they shoot and do insane amounts of damage and kill from much, much farther away.

I absolutlely love shotguns, they've always been one of my great shooter game loves. If it wasn't for all the lag and hit detection issues of the game, they would absolutely be awesome and just ridiculously fun. As it is tho, I've almost learned most times not to even mind when I have to 3 shot people with my model or ksg, I don't mind so much getting the mind blowing hit markers because I've learned to enjoy how they make you bob and weave - they make you a much better player and I really enjoy what the shotguns add to an otherwise sometimes boring game.

In your shotgun journey I would say absolutely stick to the model and get that baby with dmg in gold, it's just to fun not too and it does improve drastically with dmg. If you don't mind playing it sometimes if you don't get the terrible connections, hardcore is great to lvl shotguns. You can even just play cowboys, only pump shotguns, bolt snipers and revolver pistols. For lethal equip. only t knives and C4, and tactical only smoke is allowed.

The second shotgun setup worth giving a go is the KSG with silencer and range, I didn't have much luck with the KSG even with dmg, and honestly wasn't having a ton of fun with it - the silencer setup changed all that . Now I shotgun on both my accounts haha.