Particle Rifle/ME3SP

Description
After the Reapers obliterated the Prothean Empire's warships, the Prothean resistance was forced to develop weapons that did not rely on intact supply lines. The Prothean Particle Rifle is a stripped-down, powerful assault rifle modified to fire without thermal clips or specialized ammunition. Alliance scientists agree that it appears to share some principles with the Collectors' particle beam weapon, although this gun requires a temporary cool-down period if it overheats. An amalgam of two different eras of technology, the particle rifle is still a deadly, efficient weapon.

Acquisition
The Particle Rifle is obtained after completion of the DLC mission Priority: Eden Prime.

Player Notes

 * The Particle Rifle does not use thermal clips. Instead, it uses a cooldown system like the weapons of the original Mass Effect. It cannot run out of ammunition as a result, giving this assault rifle a significant advantage over the other assault rifles. Players may want to treat this weapon as a weaker Collector Particle Beam with a smaller, but regenerating ammo pool.
 * The Particle Rifle's beam does have a finite range, after which no damage will occur. This balances out the beam's perfect accuracy at long range against other, more traditional rifles.
 * Due to its continuous fire, Particle Rifle is perfect for killing low-HP enemies (e.g. Swarmers and their gestation pods) and exposing invisible enemies.
 * The Particle Rifle's initial DPS is very low, but goes up dramatically after 50 units of energy (half the initial clip size) has been consumed. This property makes it well-suited for long, sustained fire against targets and can do very high amounts of damage in a short time as long as the beam remains on-target. Pre-charging the weapon behind obstacles can be useful on higher difficulties, where you might get killed while your weapon is charging to full power. Using active powers will interrupt the charge, however, as well as depleting ammo reserve. This strategy is best used with a thermal clip capacity mod.
 * Enemies killed by the rifle will light up in green "flames", the same color as the particle beam, as they topple to the ground and disintegrate. This serves to destroy the corpse of a fallen enemy to deny a Cannibal any buffs from devouring fallen comrades.
 * The Particle Rifle is perfectly accurate and has no recoil at all, so accuracy and stability upgrades are useless. The most useful upgrade is thermal clips upgrade, which enhances ammo capacity beyond initial 100. Clip upgrades drastically increase the time you can use the sustained, high-damage beam, allowing you to tear through multiple enemies or hardened ones quickly. The piercing upgrade is also very useful with the Particle Rifle: enemies in cover and most armored enemies become easy prey.
 * Equipping squadmates with the Particle Rifle makes it easy to focus-fire enemies. The AI also ignores smoke grenades (and sometimes even solid obstacles) so your companions will pinpoint enemies you can't see.
 * If used with Incendiary Ammo, the Particle Rifle is very effective at quickly killing enemies with health or armor. A fully-upgraded Particle Rifle with Incendiary Ammo, combined with the damage multiplier and thermal clip capacity mods (giving a maximum clip size of 180), will decimate most enemies even on Insanity. However, the rifle will not perform as well against enemies with strong shields or barriers, such as the Banshee.
 * The Particle Rifle's biggest drawback is unique to it: if its ammo counter reaches zero, it initiates a reload animation in which it vents excess heat, followed by additional downtime before the rifle's ammo pool begins to refill. This downtime will be aborted if the player takes just about any action, such as using powers, switching weapons or entering/exiting cover; after doing any of those things, Shepard must complete the entire reloading ritual from scratch. Potential countermeasures include:
 * Using shorter bursts and never bottoming out your ammo counter.
 * Using Adrenaline Rush. This will not reset the ammo to full, but it will bypass the downtime, with the rifle beginning to recharge immediately.