Plasma Rifle

Note: Statistics pulled from https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hFNGhj1UtCvXIkFaZYbTJgV-q8yAUaKw4cvp1QvF9Ms/ (Official Dev Spreadsheet)

The Plasma Rifle is a Plasma weapon that falls within the rifle category in Splitgate: Arena Warfare.

Summary

The Plasma Rifle is a futuristic-looking fully-automatic rifle-like weapon which (as its name suggests) shoots balls of super-heated plasma instead of conventional rounds. Instead of being limited by a set magazine size, the Plasma Rifle instead has an meter which tracks the weapon's heat level. Continued firing quickly fills this meter, which results in an animation where the player's character opens the core of the weapon to vent the excess heat. This animation cannot be cancelled and renders the weapon inoperable while the animation plays out. In order to not have to frequently sit through the long animation, it recommended that users either tap-fire or fire the weapon in controlled bursts to keep the heat level of the weapon as low as possible.

The other distinguishing factor of the Plasma Rifle is that is one of only two weapons (along with the Rocket Launcher) in the game to fire projectiles instead of hitscan rounds. Although these projectiles travel relatively quickly, it is still recommended to lead your shots in order to take advantage of this weapon's below-average TTK. Because its projectile nature, this weapon is often extremely effective in narrow corridors (such as on Atlantis) where opponents have less opportunity to evade the shots, and less effective in the open.