Question: Why do weapons have 3 "base damage" types instead of just one?

[Zoretor]

Someone please explain to me like I'm 3 years old exactly why it is that weapons have all 3 damage types (with the exceptions of elemental only and whatnot, of course).

Like, why isn't a Grakata only impact damage? I mean, I can't help but wonder if WF's whole damage system woulnd't be less convoluted and more streamlined if weapons dealt just one of the regular damage types, but I'm bad at math so WF's damage system is cryptography to me, so what do I know?

I wanna understand...

[WhiteMarker]

4 minutes ago, Zoretor said:

Like, why isn't a Grakata only impact damage? I mean, I can't help but wonder if WF's whole damage system woulnd't be less convoluted and more streamlined if weapons dealt just one of the regular damage types, but I'm bad at math so WF's damage system is cryptography to me, so what do I know?

Would it be easier to understand? Sure.
Would people only use Slash-based weapons for the end of all times? Hell yeah, because Slash just has the superior status proc.

[Kuestenjung]

If you get hit by a bullet it will make you struggle ( impact ), you will have a hole ( puncture  ) and you will bleed ( slash ).

[Syvarin]

It's meant to reflect the differences between weapons and give more diverse choices.

Is an axe a bludgeoning weapon? No. It does impact damage in addition to slashing damage though to reflect the fact that it doesn't just cut - it also hits pretty hard. Contrast that to a rapier. Rapiers are designed to puncture without the full force of the weapon slamming into you. They can still cut as well, though, so they have a bit of slashing damage thrown in.

Multiple damage types also make it so fewer weapons are "strictly better than" another weapon. If a weapon does 55 impact damage per second and another weapon does 60 impact damage per second, the second one is better. If, on the other hand, one weapon does 55/30/10 IPS damage per second and another weapon does 60/3/36 it's less clear because they could each be better in different situations. One may still have better overall damage, but what if you're fighting enemies that are weaker to puncture damage? The "lower" damage weapon would perform better in that situation because it has 30 instead of 3.

It may not always make perfect sense, but having three different types of base damage on weapons adds a lot of diversity to the game.

[Hynek307]

Well, in very brief explaination (how it works at the moment):

Slash - cuts target and causes it to bleed (based on status, more on that later) - IE, shooting razor blades

Impact - staggers target and lowers its shield/overshield - 44 mangum FMJ round, or slug from shotgun for comparison

Puncture - penetrates armor - AP round

Now, status is how much of a chance you have of applying damage over time (DoT) on target, with exception of shotguns (due to pellet mechanics) and few others (cow-gun, AKA Quartak) - where you either get 100%, or you pray to Cthulhu for status to apply. Elemental damage is next, so - heat burns, electric shocks, cold freezes, toxin poisons - these are basic ones. Combos - H+C=Explosive (knockdown,CLEM), H+E=radiation (friendly fire on sovie...ekhm, Grineer and corporate-spartanwannabe[Corpus] or EIDOLON's bane), H+T=gas (insert joke which sends you to hell and gets you banned here, good against greedybas... Corpus and herpies, pardon, Infested) - C+E=magnetic (bye bye, shield/overshield), C+T=viral (for 8 seconds baddies health gets HALVED) - E+T=Corrosive (strips armor down by a fraction). Status effects by number, highest number gets priority over others - so, as an example, high slash with lower impact and puncture would make target bleed mostly, with high elemental - whichever is higher value, it procs first...

 

Now, TL;DR version:

3 basic types, plus few elemental ones, high numbers are your friends, what to use where and against whom depends on which is where on said weapon. 2 Videons for even less-literate or math-phobic people below

Video 1:

Video 2:

 

Edited October 20, 2018 by Hynek307
Typo

[SnuggleBuckets]

I'm happy that in recent years we have seen more and more weapons experiment with more exotic mixtures of damage types, from melee weapons like the two new ones with electricity plus slash/impact/puncture, or impact/viral, to phantasma with radiation plus impact, to Zakti with gas plus impact/puncture, and maybe a few others (reworks changed up a few elementals like Cycron in a neat way).
There was a danger with so many weapons being rigidly tied to the holy trinity of impact/puncture/slash combo that they would all blend together as we accumulate 200+ weapons in our markets and labs, so having more interesting mixtures for our scifi weapons is only a good thing for many different reasons, more builds, experimentation, different roles.
In fact I wouldn't mind seeing a quick revisit of a few old ones, the recent spoiler quest weapon could have swapped puncture for void dmg, some corpus weapons could get a bit more elemental, like maybe dera swapping impact for electricity, or spectra or Flux rifle swapping their punctures for heat.
And hopefully in the future keep getting bolder with mixing things up for variety.

[SenariousNex]

WTB impact rapier.

[taiiat]

the reason why IPS Weapons are a mixture of Physical Damage, is that this mixture is setup to determine the average effectiveness of the Base Damage vs the Enemies in the game.

it's important that it's this way as an IPS Weapon that was all of one Type would be extremely bad versus Factions it is not strong to. having a mixture makes IPS Weapons more flexible overall.
and since Status Effects are determined by your Damage Types... it means that most IPS Weapons have access to all 3 Physical Status Effects, with each one in varying probability which makes for another layer of tuning IPS Weapons.

having all of these layers to their Damage Types lets Weapons stand out from each other more. we even have Weapons featuring a mixture of IPS and Elemental, or removing part of the IPS, Et Cetera. 
elsewise, in terms of Damage composition, you could only have 3 Weapons. so if you wanted to make an Assault Rifle different by featuring a different style of Damage, you'd only have 2 choices to pick from (since your other Assault Rifle would already have used one of them).

 

while it would be mathematically simpler to not do this, it is also just arithmetic so it's not that big a deal.

[Zoretor]

17 minutes ago, taiiat said:

it's important that it's this way as an IPS Weapon that was all of one Type would be extremely bad versus Factions it is not strong to. having a mixture makes IPS Weapons more flexible overall.

Ah. This is the answer I was looking for. This answers my question.

I'm not a new player, been playing for about 5 years now, so I didn't really need an explanation about what status is or what status effects do. I just wanted to know why 3 dmg types, and @taiiat's answer makes complete sense.

Thanks all.

/thread

[(XBOX)Darthgollum 01]

Basically for balance purposes lol

[GrayArchon]

Quote

When assigning physical damage aspects to weapons we avoid making them 'pure' (100% in one direction). This ensures you can damage all enemies in the game.

This is DE's reasoning as stated in their original thread introducing Damage 2.0. As far as I know it's the only thing they've said to answer that specific question.

[Lost_Cartographer]

5 hours ago, SnuggleBuckets said:

I'm happy that in recent years we have seen more and more weapons experiment with more exotic mixtures of damage types, from melee weapons like the two new ones with electricity plus slash/impact/puncture, or impact/viral, to phantasma with radiation plus impact, to Zakti with gas plus impact/puncture, and maybe a few others (reworks changed up a few elementals like Cycron in a neat way).
There was a danger with so many weapons being rigidly tied to the holy trinity of impact/puncture/slash combo that they would all blend together as we accumulate 200+ weapons in our markets and labs, so having more interesting mixtures for our scifi weapons is only a good thing for many different reasons, more builds, experimentation, different roles.
In fact I wouldn't mind seeing a quick revisit of a few old ones, the recent spoiler quest weapon could have swapped puncture for void dmg, some corpus weapons could get a bit more elemental, like maybe dera swapping impact for electricity, or spectra or Flux rifle swapping their punctures for heat.
And hopefully in the future keep getting bolder with mixing things up for variety.

I'd appreciate changes like this, but let's not forget there's almost no money in it for them at this point...  A Machete that also does heat damage my save it from its decrepit state that for some reason they refuse to lift it up from.

Though it is a concern that maybe the damage system IS a bit convoluted and maybe some status effects could stand to be better (or simply replaced, like puncture's.)