Poison Claw

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

Like the Stripper, Furie and Vitriol (the only other chemical weapons in the game) and some thermal weapons, the Poison Claw's major 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 400 damage over three seconds (with the version dealing a hefty 900 damage). Couple that with its weak, but still present, contact damage, and this gun will deal 460 damage (1020, and 1470Black) per shot, which is the second-most for a pistol.

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, thus 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 001's damage.

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 three out of roughly 100 weapons in SAS4 that deal chemical damage, the other 2 being the Stripper and the CM X1 Furie.
 * 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.
 * As of the October 5th, the Black version had been released, along with 3 other pistols.
 * 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.
 * This is not the case in mobile version.
 * Its description in the alpha version was "molecular acid", just like the Stripper.
 * The Poison Claws Black version on mobile uses the same image as the PC version, as with almost all Black guns on mobile.
 * Poison Claw's reload sound is a bit different from most pistols.