Particle Rifle

The Particle Rifle is an assault rifle in Mass Effect 3.

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

 * Single-player: Obtained after completion of the DLC mission Priority: Eden Prime.
 * Multiplayer: N/A

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 main weakness with the Particle Rifle is its low damage, and requires some time on higher difficulties before significant injures are inflicted. On lower difficulties, it is much more useful due to the weaker enemies.
 * Another weakness is since accuracy is pinpoint, you need to constantly make sure that the beam is on target, as otherwise you can lose a significant portion of your "charge" very quickly. This will reduce combat effectiveness.
 * 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.
 * 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. 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.
 * If no ammo power is equipped on the Particle Rifle, 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 is similar to the effect seen on an enemy that is killed by Warp, Incinerate, or Incendiary Ammo.
 * Due to its unlimited ammo and very long range, the Particle Rifle is best used as a single weapon to benefit from lesser weight. The rifle is well-suited for powers-oriented classes, providing them with a cooldown bonus, while being much more powerful than any pistol or SMG.
 * 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 Adrenaline Rush. This will not reset the ammo to full, but it will bypass the downtime, with the rifle beginning to recharge immediately.
 * Using shorter bursts and never bottoming out your ammo counter.
 * 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. Since the "high damage" beam activates after you've used 50 ammo points, 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.
 * 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.
 * Equipping companions with the Particle Rifle makes 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.
 * The Particle Rifle works well with squadmates that equip Assault Rifles, especially when used with their appropriate Ammo Power. Using these during various missions on Insanity difficulty can let the player focus on key objectives and stronger enemies.
 * 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.
 * A hidden downside to the Particle Rifle is that the player will pick up ammunition regardless of whether their ammunition is actually full or not. Whilst most of the time this is not a problem, when performing a defensive action the player may run out of spare ammunition for other weapons.