Poison Claw

The Poison Claw is a pistol made by Rancor. Similarly to the Trailblazer, it does not have infinite ammo (unlike most pistols), and rather requires special ammo that must be bought.

Like the Stripper (the only other chemical weapon) and some thermal weapons, the Poison Claw's destruction 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 damage over three seconds (with the version dealing a hefty 550 damage).

The Poison Claw's 3 pierce is good for controlling small crowds of weaker zombies. 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.

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.

The most crucial augment to have in this weapon is again, Tenacious, as it will increase damage over time significantly more than it would for the bullet itself (Deadly). Then, other good augments to add are Capacity for extending the duration of shooting, Adaptive to kill off enemies that are Chemical resistant and Race Modded to shoot more frequently.

This is rather strong when you get level 5 pistol mastery, when you get your pistol turned full-auto. It can kill a Savage Wicker extremely quickly for a pistol, and is especially good when your primaries are only Thermal weapons.

Trivia

 * This weapon is one of only two out of roughly 100 weapons in SAS4 that deal chemical damage, the other being the Stripper, which is also made by Rancor.
 * The Poison Claw looks a little bit like a smaller version of the mortar launcher used by Iron Legion soldiers in the game Battalion Wars 2.Mortar and Poison Claw.PNG
 * The Poison Claw bears some resemblance to the Vita-Saw from Team Fortress 2.
 * The Poison Claw's DoT, under all circumstances, cannot gib zombies (even frozen zombies).
 * This Poison Claw is one of the only Black weapons with color other than white, black and grey.
 * This the only Rancor weapon, perhaps the only weapon in the game, that has its logo move from the regular version to the and Black versions.