Weapon Review: Acrid

[Balduron04]

After browsing the forums, I got a real push to do some tests on this gun. When it first came out, it was great. Hard to get, high damage, etc. I still like its flavor. It has a great reload speed, the animation is cool, and the gun looks good. I am sad at the dart speed, but I can concede to flavor reasons why the projectile speed should be much less than other weapons.

 

I got this weapon about two months after it first came out, hopping on the bandwagon. It took me about a day to gather the materials, and then about a month and a half to get to mastery rank 7 to actually build it. I haven't used a forma or catalyst, so I was shocked by the change after 2.0 was introduced.

 

In a comparison test against Dual Vasto's, I ran the same mod-setup and fought the same enemies. Here's the breakdowns:

 

In game, Dual vastos with Hornet strike lvl 10 and Barrel Diffusion rate a damage of 60, 60, 120 per shot. I'm hitting lvl 17 grineer elite arid lancers for 100 per body shot, 200 per headshot, and 1730 per head critical.

 

In game, Acrid with hornet strike lvl 10, barrel diffusion at 10, rates a damage of 96 poison damage per shot. I'm hitting those same grineer for 46 poison damage per hit, and a consistent tic of 7 damage. Head-shots are 70 for the initial damage and 14 per tic. Head-shot criticals seem to do around 436. I did note that there is a 100% proc rate for the poison, and it seems the dot is included in the base damage.

 

If anyone else could corroborate these numbers, I'd be greatly appreciated. I used Phobos missions for my testings.

 

I realize Phobos is a bit end-game, so I went to the other extreme and tested these numbers at Terminus.

 

Dual Vasto Numbers: 151 body shot, 302 head shot, 906 Head Crit. against grineer lancers. Armor does seem to make a marked difference, as I had headshots of 382 on meleeists and 273 on troopers.

 

Acrid Numbers: 47 body shot, 95 headshot vs Troopers(yellow), 54 body shot,  108 headshot vs Lancers (green)

 

Adding elemental mods:

Adding any of the 3 other elements to this toxic weapon will change its damage type. This increases the base damage, but seems to remove the 100% chance of a dot on hit. The now rarer proc will do a dot and have an effect based on the new element of the gun, while still having the main dart do roughly half of the stated damage. This claim is made based on testing the corrosive element against Grineer Lancers.

 

My Overall Findings:

The acrid is an interesting gun, and fun to play with. It is frustrating to have enemies move out of the way of your bullets. It is a tad ineffective on phobos in its current state, requiring three to four shots to kill things there. There is little in the way of base damage increases that many other guns enjoy, as it does not have slashing, piercing, or impact damage. Early game it is equally powerful as any other leveled and upgraded gun, though its damage remains relatively the same as the enemies get harder. It feels weak against normal enemies, and not as strong as something I would expect a weapon of Mastery Rank 7 to be. I would expect such a hard to get and expensive weapon to be ONE of the best, with the other "best" sidearms being of similar difficulty to obtain. I am not basing this on what it was, but what it is at the moment.

 

Comments are welcome.

Edited December 10, 2013 by Balduron04

[Zachles]

[Archistopheles]

Test Acrid vs Corpus, see how different it is.

 

(Hint: It's better vs Corpus)

[Balduron04]

I watched the video. That's a very nice review. It basically does everything I was going to, but better.

 

As for testing vs other enemies, I may get to that another day. I can see where it would do well against the corpus grunts, and worse against the robotic members, but I am open to surprises.

 

Most people seem to agree that it is not worth the resources needed to get it. What are your opinions on this statement?

[Archistopheles]

Most people seem to agree that it is not worth the resources needed to get it. What are your opinions on this statement?

 

If you're asking me personally, you're asking the wrong person. I am against clan-tech weapons.