Even back on dreamcast I was using the shotgun whenever I got quad. I'm glad its still a good quad weapon.
Shotgun has always been okay for quad but it's not the best. What you want with quad is a gun that leaves you as little exposure as possible to return fire as possible, which generally translates into a gun that is easy to hit with. Because the shotgun has the possibility to deal non-fatal damage with quad, you have to be really careful not to miss with it or you could end up dead; you could even end up being killed by a non-quad SG.
The best weapon for quad on most maps is LG. Assuming you can aim, the LG both does a ridiculous amount of damage with quad and causes so much knockback that your opponent won't be able to move or do much to fight back. Historically, the next best gun has been PG, but I don't know if the hit detection is good enough yet for the SNG to really take that slot. The machine guns work okay on maps with big open spaces. Don't use rail unless you're a god or you have no other options because its dps is quite low.
The SG and MG are situational quad weapons. The SG works very well on maps like dm6 where you are unlikely to need any more range than quad SG provides, whereas the MG works on maps where players are very exposed and can't tolerate the higher constant damage output of quad MG.
Quad RL is a zen art form to be undertaken only by the goddiest of Quake gods.
I imagine it also comes down to being good at aiming
I'm ok but I tense my arm up a lot, in all FPS games these days. Possibly as I don't play as much as I used to, but I'm hoping playing something more twitch like this will make me more relaxed.
Your sensitivity might be too high. Tension is bad for aim and bad for your body. As far as Quake goes, FFA requires the least aim out of all the major gametypes to be successful at, although that's not to say that good aim doesn't make a difference.
I have been trying to avoid fights when I'm not equipped but it's pretty difficult, especially on maps like Burial Chamber. Which I'm not sure why it's so popular anyway. In TDM it seems I regularly spawn right around the corner from 3 enemies, and on a couple of the maps including this one it seems all the powerful weapons are stacked right on top of each other. The Rail, Lightning an one of the Rocket Launchers are all right next to each other on that map. On FFA half my spawns I was under fire really quickly too.
EDIT: THIS ADVICE IS FOR CHURCH OF AZANWHATEVER. MY BAD
- Mega is in a very open space on this map. You should have time on it but you can't really expect to control it in an FFA game. Stay away from here when quad is up unless you have quad.
- RA is close to SG and RL. You can control RA and RL at the same time very easily, which is good if you have RL but bad if you don't. However, if you're at RA and you don't know what's happening in RL room don't go through the adjoining corridor as it's very easy to take a lot of spam; use the teleporter instead.
- LG is relatively isolated on this map so you shouldn't have too much trouble getting it. If I'm spawning fresh, I generally try to get LG first so that I can get RA and/or RL. Also note that the RL room is a good size for LG but not so good for RL, although a player already in RL room can spam the passages easily.
- Rail is pretty useless on this map and it's positioned in such a way that you're probably going to get railed going for it. However, if quad is coming up soon and you're going to arrive early to that side of the map, it's best to approach quad from rail side and use the height/firepower advantage until quad is almost up.
- If you have quad and you have an LG, go from quad to mega, mega to RL, and then RL to RA (do this in reverse if you know RA is up soon). If you don't have an LG, go to LG first and skip mega.
- If you don't have quad, go to RA and use the teleporter if you hear the quad carrier. Don't go to SG; it won't end well for you.
My basic strategy on this map is to contest RA until I control it and then leverage RA into quad. It doesn't really matter if I get quad every time or not; it's really RA that's important since you can't really control mega in FFA so if you're picking up most RAs and keeping your health at a reasonable level you're going to be more stacked than everyone else. As I mentioned above, getting LG is generally your best shot since it's kind of close to MH but it's not central enough that it's likely to be heavily controlled. You can also go for NG instead if you really want to but its proximity to RA makes this a bit more dangerous. Unless you spawn right next to RA, by the way, I wouldn't go straight for it since you're probably just going to run into the guy who did spawn next to RA and get clobbered since he probably also has RL.
Still can't pick a character, I like BJ for the dual lightning guns so far. Doom Slayer was just annoying with the double jumping. Anarki was... ok. Might try slash but don't know what crouch sliding does. Need to give Ranger a shot too.
I use Nyx. I think she's very, very powerful for everything except duel. Her ability is both a free kill and a way to escape death.
The most frustrating thing for me in this is not knowing how close I was to killing someone. I'm pretty good at dishing out damage, but I don't really know the item timings yet so I'm rarely as well equipped as the players I go up against and often feel like I've done a ton of damage and not been able to finish enemies off. I racked up a fair few impressives last night but they rarely lead to a kill as well.
The characters most likely to be killed by two rails are the characters least likely to be hit by two rails. RG is best used -- in FFA especially -- for incidental damage and hitting people you can't otherwise hit. Don't expect frags and you'll be pleasantly surprised.