Well, the shotgun is useful 'cuz you can at least move and shoot at the same time, you're more mobile. Not so much with either of the machine guns.
And it does take a full 4 seconds or something to eat one. You really have to make sure you're safely away before chowing down.
There is no argument about the shotgun being useful only that
Valve themselves sited it as an weapon for use against snipers, ergo long range, which it's not. I use the shotgun a lot playing as other classes but prefer to mostly use the mini as a heavy.
I think the sandvich is probably the best weapon upgrade valve has added to the game yet. It directly addresses the issue of heavies being of less use without a medic. I just would not have given the heavy an
infinite supply of them but I don't think it will make the heavy to powerful (It's hard enough getting just 2 soldiers to coordinate fire it's even more unlikely you will find a large group of coordinated heavies which is what it would take).
I think it should be like the scout video and if you kill a heavy eating a sandvich then you get to finish it...
I've been told (yet to see myself) that if you kill a heavy with a sandvich he drops it for a health pick-up which I think is the proper, and great, way it should work.
Haven't gotten any of the weapons yet but my impressions from the other side are...
Sandvich A+ Given my personally limited use of the heavies shotgun I will easily trade out for this.
Natasha B Seems to be a nice alternative to Sasha but I am not sure which I'll be using. It seems like they would each be better in different situations.
K.G.B. C- Do you know how hard it is to melee as a heavy? It's hard and I tend to melee quite a bit as other classes. The thing is if you try to melee from behind as a heavy you are going to have a time catching up to people moving and if you melee from the front most classes can still run backwards faster than you can run forward. Also it's just not that powerful. Example, I was in 2fort coming up the sewer stairs as a heavy (with no medic) when a buffed enemy heavy and medic were coming down. He managed to hit me 2 or 3 times with the K.G.B and I opened up on him with Sasha point blank. He died first then his medic, I had ~70 health left. It may be ok for sneaking up on stationary enemy groups from behind but the heavy does not excel in ambushing.