Talk:Phage/@comment-132.219.129.2-20170510144644/@comment-2605:6000:6DC0:D000:B0F6:E879:BB60:131C-20171129173950

Really, it should be very good on a 4xCP team versus grineer even into the endgame. Then that innate viral damage can really shine. Not necessarily so good versus corpus though, and infested is pretty much just a no-go eventually.

Its problems stem from a couple of things:


 * 1:  Low fire rate.  The damage is fine, but the fire rate is low enough it just doesn't do great burst like you need more and more the sturdier and more dangerous the enemies get.


 * 2:  It's a continuous weapon, meaning the status chance is absolute trash.  Here's the trick, take the listed status chance on a continuous weapon and divide it by the fire rate.  That's your actual status chance per round fired.  15% actually isn't horrible on a one-round-per-second weapon, but 15% status/second isn't a particularly good base.

Its upsides are very interesting though:


 * 1:  Innate viral damage type.  This means you can mod for corrosive/cold or corrosive/heat or radiation/cold or gas/cold, etc and still get that nifty chance at a viral proc.


 * 2:  Extremely ammo efficient.  About the only things you'll find that are clearly more ammo efficient are weapons that are either basically in the wrong category of ammo consumption -- such as the Opticor which consumes rifle rounds when it should definitely be using launcher or sniper ammunition -- or things like the Tigris Prime, with its crazy base damage and slash proc potentials, the Euphona Prime for the same reasons, and a few snipers like the Lanka that can pull absolutely crazy numbers and bleed procs now with Hunter Munitions.