User blog:Gracchus Mccarthe/Is the RIA Trident actually too overpowered for NK to put it in SAS 4?

To start with, here are the Trident's (Black) stats:
Damage: 960

Pierce: 3

RoF: 8 full-auto

Capacity: 100

Reload: 3.5 sec

Movement mod: -25%

Class: Assault Rifle

Damage type: Physical, Thermal, Chemical

Ammo Cost: $960 for 200 rounds

Now then, is the Trident OP? My answer is "Absolutely not!"

Compare this things DpS to the Hornet's.

Trident: 960 x 8 = 7680

Hornet: 2775 x 5 = 13875

The Hornet is much, much more powerful. With pinpoint, Target Assist on your helmet, a lot of points in Critical Shot, and the level 5 Sniper Rifle mastery, the Hornet would completely blow the Trident away in terms of damage.

The Trident does, however, work very well against crowds. It fires 8 times per second, throwing out 3 flechettes that have 3 pierce each. That means you could hit 72 zombies in one second if each one had health equal to or less than 320.

In my opinion, the Trident is a very balanced weapon. It is pretty powerful, it can take on crowds, and it has a good capacity. Its drawbacks are its sluggish reload (the slowest for AR) and its movement penalty, which is comparatively high.

Overall, the Trident is sort of a poster boy for Assault Rifles: It's a very good general use weapon, but it's not really the best at any one thing. It's a jack of all trades and master of none.

960 total damage, or 2880?
BTW, I e-mailed Aaron from NK asking about the Trident's damage stat. When hacked into the game, the damage stat says "960". According to Aaron, even though the Trident deals three kinds of damage, its stats still follow the ordinary from. It deals 320 damage pr flechette, not 960. Therefore, it deals 960, not 2880, damage per shot.

320 damage per flechette isn't perfectly divisible by 3/2 (going from Black to ), but if you think about it, neither is the M1000's damage. As someone on this wiki suggested, maybe NK will add the Trident and M1000, but only with Black variants.

Anyway, I would love to see the Trident in SAS 4, but the M1000 might be a bit too powerful to be in the game. But that's a topic for another post. :D