Sarpa

The Sarpa is a short range gunblade combining a keen blade with a burst-fire rifle. It normally fires five-round bursts, although some stance combo attacks fire ten rounds at half damage.

Characteristics
This weapon deals primarily  damage.

Advantages:
 * High damage – effective against Infested, Flesh and Cloned Flesh.
 * Moderate charged attack damage.
 * Can attack enemies at range using the charge attack function.
 * Shooting builds up the combo counter very quickly as each pellet counts as a melee attack.
 * Has innate Punch Through.
 * Fires 5 pellets in rapid succession.
 * Enemies hit by the shot have a chance to be stunned for a moment, while any enemy within 4 meters will be ragdolled.
 * Does not use ammunition.
 * Damage can be increased by channeling.
 * Has no recoil.
 * Unlike the Redeemer, status chance is not divided between pellets, and the pellets damage is physical and is increased by physical damage mods and works with.

Disadvantages:
 * Shots have damage falloff starting at 20m.
 * Shots have a wide spread.
 * Low critical chance and critical damage.
 * Mediocre status chance, is a lot better than it might seem due to the mechanics of the 5-round burst.
 * Long attack animations combined with the input queueing of melee attacks often leads to being locked into an attack and unable to evade attacks.

Tips

 * The charged shot can be chained, even while sliding, by pressing and holding E with the right timing (rather than making a first melee attack followed by a shot).
 * works extremely well with this weapon; Each pellet fired reduces the targets base armor by 6.
 * with a status chance build is excellent on it.
 * Each pellet counts as a separate hit on nullifier bubbles making it fairly good at destroying them.

Trivia

 * Sarpa (सर्प) is the Sanskrit term for snake or serpent.