Plasma Caster is the title of a group of E-tech submachine guns made by multiple manufacturers. The Plasma Caster is obtained randomly from any suitable loot source.
Usage & Description
Plasma Casters fire relatively slow-moving balls of energy. All brands of Plasma Casters have in common increased damage, higher magazine sizes, and elemental effect chance when compared with a standard SMG of the same brand. Like all E-tech Weapons, Plasma Casters have unique effects compared to their standard counterpart at the cost of 2 ammunition per shot. In general, Plasma Casters are best fired in controlled bursts at short to medium range, although are generally accurate enough (with the exception of Bandit versions) to be used at long range if needed.
Plasma Casters' usage and effects differ from brand to brand:
- Maliwan Plasma Casters have the highest elemental damage and elemental effect chance between all the brands of Plasma Casters. The projectiles have a small splash effect when they hit any surface which causes the weapon to do additional damage than stated on the item card and may trigger elemental effects on very close enemies. It can cause significant damage when used on appropriate targets (ie: corrosive on armored enemies).
- Hyperion Plasma Casters deal the highest amount of projectile damage of all Plasma Casters (although Maliwan Plasma Casters still do higher overall damage because of the splash effect not stated on the weapon card), have larger magazines, and fire projectiles in a straight trajectory.
- Tediore Plasma Casters can be powerful when reload-thrown, because of the larger magazine sizes when compared with standard SMGs. This can cause huge damage when combined with COMs, relics, and skills that boost magazine size. Beyond these considerations, Tediore Plasma Casters do not exhibit additional effects.
- Dahl Plasma Casters have greatly reduced recoil compared to any other type of SMG, even Dahl non-E-tech SMGs. They also feature high direct damage, only surpassed by Hyperion, but with a lower fire rate than other brands. However, their effective fire rate when using burst fire mode can easily exceed that of all other brands.
- Bandit Plasma Casters have the lowest direct and elemental damage between all manufacturers and behave in a significantly different manner than all others. The projectiles fired by these vary in speed and swerve off course in an expanding sine pattern, exploding at a set time after being fired. There seems to be a small chance to spawn a new projectile once one of them explodes (~<10%). This makes bandit plasma casters practically unusable at mid to long range. It does, however, make them excellent (if not at times superior, depending on weapon stats) shotgun substitutes, if one is not overly concerned with the monstrous ammo consumption such an approach results in.
Notes
- A Plasma Caster adds +50% bonus splash damage that is counted as grenade damage, thus skills that boost general gun damage, fire rate, or grenade damage will increase the effectiveness of the weapon.
- Unlike other Plasma Casters, a Bandit Plasma Caster's damage is not increased by skills that boost grenade damage.
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