Crispy_Calamari

Oh okay. Its not often that I see someone in the squad who is not running a viral/slash setup so on the rare occasion that I do, without exception they always run with corrosive cold, whilst also always bringing armor stripping capabilities. Its been happening so often, that I started to believe that there was an actual reason for why people do that. Considering that people usually (not always) have their builds well thought out when trying to go to level cap and also taking into consideration that guns that cannot deal slash due to bad IPS spread or low crit chance really rely on the correct element being used, I expected people to pay close attention to what damage types are most beneficial to their loadout.

If the raw damage value is what people are after and the damage types that the raw damage value consists of does not matter, then I understand this as "as long as the number is the same, it doesnt matter if its corrosive or radiation or cold or heat or whatever". I agree with this. But what I dont agree with is how that leads to corrosive+cold > viral+electricity. Because at the end of the day: damage types do matter. And against unarmored enemies, viral+electricity is better than corrosive+cold, right? The corrosive+cold damage TYPES have literally no bonus against just pure cloned flesh health. Whereas Viral does. If the target is armored, THEN I completely get it. Because then not only is the corrosive+cold damage TYPE useful, the status effect is useful too. But the people all strip the enemy armor anyway. So they are (in my eyes) literally removing the only part about the enemy health that their damage type is good for. So why not mod for the damage type that the enemy is susceptible to AFTER removing the armor because thats what they do anyway, right? To me this is the same as modding a weapon for magnetic damage but before you shoot the corpus unit, you remove all the shields with something (idk Styanax ability or mag or whatever). Why??

hm ok but then there´s one more thing I dont understand. You but also taiiat made the same argument regarding the primed elemental mods. But I dont understand to be honest haha. You have access to Primed Chilling Grasp and Primed Charged Shell. Those are the only primed elemental mods right? (for shotguns). So yes, you can make corrosive+cold using both of those primed mods and a 90 toxin mod. But you can make viral+electric too, once again using both primed mods and a 90 toxin mod. So the "total damage" (not considering what damage TYPE it is) is the same, no? (Assuming all the other mods in the build are the same) because youre using all the same mods and youre simply rearranging them. And in my eyes, one of those combinations has the advantage when it comes to killing unarmored enemies. If the base damage is the same (which I think it is, right?) and it all gets multiplied by GunCO the same.....then why choose the one that not only doesnt give you a 75% dmg boost (due to the elemental weakness of the cloned flesh) but also doesnt even have the better status proc? For simplicity lets say the felarx deals 100 dmg (and lets say thats the value you get after ALL the dmg calculations including the multiplicative gunco, arcanes, what have you. everything that matters before you shoot the enemy. The only thing thats missing is the elemental weakness of the poor soul that youre about to murder.) and you were aiming your gun at an unarmored enemy Why on earth would you ever choose the elemental combo that does no bonus damage, over the one that does get a slight boost? Reading what you guys said, I get the impression that Corrosive+Cold somehow deals more "raw damage" than viral+electricity, even though both elements use the exact same mods, just in a different order. Once again, if the enemy was armored or the goal is to slow it down with cold procs, then I completely understand your argument. But against an unarmored enemy.....? I dont follow. For clarification: I dont mean that the viral build is a status build and the corrosive+cold one is not. Both builds are EXACTLY the same: The only difference is that one of them has the elements in a different order. Raw damage, status chance, multishot everything is the same. Its really just Corrosive+Cold or Viral+Electricity. I feel like I am either misunderstanding something about elemental weaknesses or im just plain dumb

ok, but even so. in case of shotguns, viral is still an option. And in case of pistols, there´s only primed heated charge. so why not go for viral heat?

Im kinda new to endurance runs and looked up a few builds. Most of them are viral/slash (as I expected) but some others are also interesting to me, especially the incarnon weapons. So regarding the Incarnon weapons with the 2000% damage buff: what would be wiser to use for endurance runs? I know that corrosive damage falls off due to the armor scaling in the higher levels. The Kengineer made a cool video about that topic. When going for a slash / Hunter Munitions build, viral is the better choice but here is where people start doing things that I dont understand. In endurance runs (especially in grineer disruption) people run corrosive or corrosive heat/cold on their Felarx or Laetum. If they wouldnt reduce the enemy armor, I can understand that they´d wanna do as much raw damage as possible and just murder the enemy that way. But to my surprise they instead whip out the epitaph, prime the demolyst, strip their armor (ash´s shuriken most of the time) and then shoot them with their corrosive felarx/laetum. I dont understand why. Viral should be much better no? If people go as far as priming the target AND stripping their armor, then why not use viral for maximum overkill? Corrosive isnt even a good element to use against a non-armored unit, whereas viral should give players a nice damage boost due to cloned flesh being weak to viral. And i didnt see this just in the videos on the internet. During my own endurance runs I see plenty of people doing the same... When I ask my fellow tenno in the squad chat, they just say -> "it does more damage." Does it though? Same with melee weapons. They dont put viral on them (which i understand if you have a primer) but instead of going full slash, they go for corrosive.... Am I missing something? My only guess is that during the first hour or so, where enemies are not really super tough yet, people dont wanna go through the hassle of armor stripping and priming every enemy and because of that just slap on corrosive to help them deal enough damage at the beginning, whilst at the later stages of the mission, the dmg you deal to a primed and naked enemy is so big, it doesnt matter that its corrosive rather than viral. Is that it? And also: Primed base Damage mod even though they alrdy have a dmg arcane....why? Any fellow endurance loving smart people here, who can enlighten me?