Poison Claw

"On impact, Rancor's MAR-3 Molecular acid round activates and starts to react furiously and relentlessly to the area around it, causing horrific and irreversible damage to most substances." -Official description.

The Poison Claw is a pistol made by Rancor. Like the Trailblazer, it does not have infinite ammo unlike most pistols, and instead uses special ammo that must be bought.

Like other thermal or chemical weapons, the Poison Claw's main damage comes from its damage over time. When shooting this gun at a near-dead zombie, you can pretty much back away from it, forget about it, and get back to shooting zombies elsewhere. It deals 300 points of damage over three seconds (with the [RED] version doing 550 points).

The Poison Claw is good for single-target damage, like most other pistols, considering its pierce of one. The Poison Claw is particularly good against bosses as the damage over time stacks with each shot. Augmenting this gun with Tenacious increases the damage over time further, edging out weaker guns in damaging bosses.

However, outside bosses, there is not much the Poison Claw can do. The pitiful pierce compared to LMGs and assault rifles makes it awful for crowd control, and damaging zombies over time means that you must back away to avoid being damaged by the poisoned zombies, possibly cornering yourself.

When the Poison Claw is compared to the HVM 001, the starting pistol, it actually has a smaller clip, and the HVM 001 beats the Poison Claw in damaging zombies on each shot's impact damage. However, when factoring in damage over time and ample running space, the Poison Claw's total damage output downright surpasses the HVM 001's damage.