[Punisher]

the addition of skills completely changed the way people choose weapons....then it was a logical step up for each new weapon that was introduced....with the last two new batches of weapons, al could now choose weather they wanted pistols vs shotty vs other with each having max crits potentials that were comparable

the high end requirement of the sb1 and pistols pretty much meant that if you had the pistols you were going to go straight into the sb1 and most everybody did, and because of that being the best ranged weapon around the same people all went shotty skills for the most part