I've tried.
I usually average around 5-7k, meaning I get hits in here and there but cannot take on larger groups or even come out on top against decent players.

of course, I play recon so I have deathmark and cloak on my side. Honestly, it tends to go down to having to play the melee footwork game, except attempting to give it more space to hit with the projectile instead of the punch. I usually get the most out of punching charging players, making it something like Blitz, but less potent :/

It doesn't have the long range BAM damage that Callahan does, hits like a valiance with projectile... it's like playing a reverse winmillion with the speed of a fov. :/

I've been playing with an ASI ultra DMG max set, but it still feels slow. A lot of tricks you'd do with heavy swords (swing, delay, shield cancel or combo) apply. The 2nd punch has great knock back (I've used it to punch someone into a fire trap... haha) and has a higher chance of comboing into the projectile with no invincy frames.

The most damage I've done with them in my inventory came from using them like bombs: distracting and moving people into more powerful attacks (Callahan charge, etc) and the most damage I've done wit pure fists have come from people holding charge and stupidly running into the spikes.

the best success i've had with it is essentially treating it like a magnus line on regular shots to finish people off, though there's been several times where i've caught someone shocked with the full gun sequence (punch+bullet x2) to great effect

couple of other ways i've used it a bit more offensively:

-catching bombers on capture points and effectively one shot them (really any player who uses charges often can get destroyed by this)
-firing the charge into choke points (paths to bottom/middle on stadium, for example)
-catching a distracted hammer player with the charge

and so on - basically anything that involves the removal of invinciframes, but it's more functional than blitz on the regular shot which is really the only upside i see to it. the actual functionality behind tortofists as a whole just gives me the impression that it's almost a hodgepodge of gun, sword, and bomber tactics all thrown into one package: it's a very niche weapon in the sense that it does a bit of everything but doesn't excel at anything on its own.

as far as playing defensively goes, it really is a great area denial weapon if you can get two of them going on your team or can manage to get ctr max and a significant asi investment on it as well. at least with ctr max, by the time the first set of shards are ready to vanish, you have a second volley up in the air. however, the only way i can keep the shards up borderline-constantly is to doubleswitch between charges so you don't go through the reload animation for it.

obviously the downsides to the gun are the speed and the fact that it's almost too reliant on charges to be effective, but the movement speed you retain while charging mitigates that issue pretty well, at least in the sense that you can get away a bit easier without letting the charge go. and even if you do let the charge go, the moment your knight steps backward from releasing the charge, you can hold down your shield button (whatever the hell you all use to boost, defend or cloak) and get out of the remainder of the animation fairly easily

I think the twist here is that the tortoguns are ACTUALLY balanced, and other stuff is OP. It's like chaos armor, but a weapon. Chaos is supposed to do everything, but not as well as other armors because of the status weakness. In practice, ofc, the status resist is virtually meaningless and chaos just ends up being really broken.

I'm sure Chaos users appreciate unlimited shock death, or 8-9 second hail driver freeze (hi, Gran Faust charge!), or catching on fire of any sort.

In the case if the tortoguns, it didn't work out that way. It's like a more extreme version of the Winmillion: while the Winmillion is a gun and a sword, the Tortogun is a Gun, sword and bomb. That means that, as it should be, it's one of, if not the absolute worst of all, of all those respective categories. Its strength comes in its flexibility and the fact that it is a mix of everything. But since you have up to 4 slots, you have space to equip the best sword, gun, and bomb, and whatever else too. Plus, combining the three worst weapons does not give you something good, it gives you three bad thins at once.

In PVE, yes, it's actually rather balanced, and leads to either ineffective solo use or amazing team use (ex: you cannot vortex enemies into the charge spikes solo, but you can have a teammate do it, with added bonus of timing into the landing damage, with a teammate).

The thing that it has going for it in PVE is what happens when the multiple hits work:
- the punch combos naturally into the projectile (to the point that there's almost no reason NOT to use it in melee range) and does full damage of both hits
- multiple overlapping shards can damage at once
- you can punch, projectile, AND get multiple spike bumper damage on the same enemy within 1 second.

But in Lockdown with player invincibility frames? You're forced to pick one of these:

- A melee attack with a thin, slow, and weak damage.
- A gun with a slow and short projectile range, keeps you still while firing, AND moves you TOWARDS your target. It's 1 tile shorter range than alchemers, and nearly 2 if you count from your shooting location instead of your starting position, FYI.
- A bomb that you can't layer alone (ex: with max CTR, every other bomb save blast bombs can layer into at least a second charge), but had a unique ability of being a constant damage hitbox.

@ Retequizzle That's the first time you never used gifs in your comment... :U

With the amount of delay between pressing attack and the shot firing, I don't think AT would be any help.

One charge attack that came out of a lvl 10 omega gorgofist completely tore up a group of 3 players on a node: one guardian, 2 strikers. The Guardian was stuck guarding and eventually died. All 3 of them were frozen thanks to what looked like an extremely lucky shard setup, so in turn they all were trapped to death. All in just about 3 seconds...

@Sho:
Yes and no. As someone who can doubleswitch (single-weapon switch) and get max ASI when wanted:

Sure, it will let you avoid the reload, which is (even if you can walk faster) still a long period where you don't have invincibility frames while taking damage.

Does it help in terms of combat? Eh.

The issue with tortofists (as guns) is that:
1) The startup is too slow (you need to lead ahead to make up for slow startup)
2) The projectile is slow (you need to lead ahead to make up for the slower bullet)
3) The projectile has low range.
4) You're committed to the direction as soon as you click (and cannot turn while shooting).
5) You have a weak hit (melee range) and a not-weak hit (from tile 2-5).

Switch shooting (at the very least, staying with only tortofists) doesn't help any of this.
However, switching from a tortofist to a more mobile gun, say, a status alchemer..? Might be more useful.