Can someone explain how elemental mods increase damage?

[Fayth2567]

Hi tennos,

I am wondering if someone can explain how elemental mods work with ips weapons.

when a mod says increase by 90% does it increase damage on top of the base damage or convert it to that element?

For example the soma prime with base 12 damage with a 90% elemental mod, does it do 12 ips damage and 10.8 elemental damage on top of it? When I shot someone with one bullet does it do both damage types at the same time?
 

I see a lot of builds using prime elemental mods. Are they worth it? Why are they more preferred than vilante armaments with 60% multi shot? 
 

Thanks in advance!

[Drasiel]

elemental mods take their listed percentage from the weapons total damage and add that as elemental damage. So if you had 10 IPS total damage and added a 60% electric mod you would end up with 10 IPS 6 electric. 

This is what makes elemental mods grossly supperior to IPS mods. IPS mods only add a percentage of whichever damage type they are. So a 60% slash mod only calculates off the listed slash damage, if the weapon had no slash it adds zero damage. 

[schilds]

31 minutes ago, Fayth2567 said:

For example the soma prime with base 12 damage with a 90% elemental mod, does it do 12 ips damage and 10.8 elemental damage on top of it? When I shot someone with one bullet does it do both damage types at the same time?

Yes.

31 minutes ago, Fayth2567 said:

I see a lot of builds using prime elemental mods. Are they worth it? Why are they more preferred than vilante armaments with 60% multi shot? 

The simple answer is that +165 % is larger than +60%

 

The complicated answer is it depends on what other mods you have on.

Edited June 17, 2020 by schilds

[Kallale]

Damage mods have a specific order they are applied in. If I recall correctly it follows this order:

Base Damage (All mods with +Damage) > Elemental and IPS mods > Faction Mods
All mods of the same type (for example toxin damage) are added together before being applied in this manner

So if your Soma Prime has a base of 12 damage, Serration would boost this to 19.8 damage first.
Then your elemental mod would add an additional 90% of the new 19.8 for a new total damage of 37.62 (19.8+(19.8*0.9))
After this your faction mod would boost damage again to the specific faction. Bane of Grineer (+30%) for example would take the damage to 43.906 against all Grineer (37.62+(32.62*0.3))

Multishot gives a chance for an extra bullet. 60% chance for an extra bullet vs a flat +165% damage increase should speak for itself 😉

Edited June 17, 2020 by Kallale

[schilds]

Here's the damage formula (taken from the wiki):

Total Damage = Base Damage × (1 + Base Damage Bonus) × (1 + Elemental Damage Bonus + Weighted Physical Bonus) × (1 + Faction Damage Bonus)

Multishot is just another multiplier on top of that.

You can sub in various values yourself and see what happens, or use a damage calculator web site.

Edited June 17, 2020 by schilds

[(XBOX)not kere]

Hello, fellow skoom. TL;DR: 

On 2020-06-16 at 11:53 PM, Fayth2567 said:

when a mod says increase by 90% does it increase damage on top of the base damage or convert it to that element?

Yes; the mod adds on more damage based on the overall IPS values.

Longer format:
Yes; Elemental mods increase damage on top of the base damage. If you slap a Serrations/Point Blank onto your primary, the elemental damage will increase respectively with the base damage, an example being:

On 2020-06-17 at 12:26 AM, Kallale said:

Damage mods have a specific order they are applied in. If I recall correctly it follows this order:

Base Damage (All mods with +Damage) > Elemental and IPS mods > Faction Mods
All mods of the same type (for example toxin damage) are added together before being applied in this manner

So if your Soma Prime has a base of 12 damage, Serration would boost this to 19.8 damage first.
Then your elemental mod would add an additional 90% of the new 19.8 for a new total damage of 37.62 (19.8+(19.8*0.9))

However, mixed elemental types, such as Viral, Radiation and Blast, mix together the elemental bonuses and add either 120% (two 60/60 mods), 150% (one 90% and one 60/60) or 180% elemental damage (two 90%), depending on your elemental damage setup. So the 12 damage would go up to 19.8, then the two elementals would add together and multiply with the 19.8, making the overall damage 35.64 (19.8*(0.9+0.9)). If you're looking for only the elemental damage value, just remove the first damage value from the equation.
But, regarding weapons with an innate elemental damage type, such as the Opticor and the Zakti, there's a few things to take note of. Firstly, the damage (90% and 60/60 additives) will still stay the same. However, if you implement an elemental type which mixes in with the innate damage, you'll effectively be boosting the innate elemental type's damage, i.e adding Blast damage onto a Zarr, changing the damage values to 315 with two 90% mods (175*(0.9+0.9)). Despite this sounding excellent on paper, it can be troublesome in practice. Especially in the case of the Zarr, you're not looking to make your damage numbers look bigger, but rather the chances that you can amplify that damage, with critical chance and critical damage mods, or the chance that you can get a status effect of one of your elemental damages to "proc" (programmed random occurrence) on a target, an excellent example being a Viral proc. But since you're asking about how damage works, forget about critical chance/damage and what I mentioned, until later. 
Sho-lah! Early breakfast for contributors.

Edited June 29, 2020 by (XB1)not keremal
Mixed + innate elemental calculation error.

[taiiat]

you're thinking of it correctly. in short, what you see on the Arsenal screen, is the Damage that your Weapon deals when it Damages an Enemy. nice and straightforward.

 

 

Primed Elementals are often worth it, but not always.
Primed Cryo Rounds would definitely be significantly better than Vigilante Armaments, yes.

look at Mods/Stats in terms of Relative Bonuses.
adding Vigilante Armaments on top of Split Chamber, is 2.5 Multi-shot vs 1.9. so that's a Relative Bonus of 1.3157x average Damage. Multi-Shot also indirectly increases Status and normalizes Crits, so it has other benefits, but that's a different matter.
adding a 165% Elemental on top of 2 90% Elementals (so, basically the worst case scenario), is 345% Elemental vs 180% Elemental. so that's a Relative Bonus of 1.9166Rx.

so, just raw on paper, it's considerably better. in play it may be stronger or weaker than this, such as whether the Enemy is weak or resistant to that new Damage Type, but generally it will considerably outperform even if the Enemy was a bit resistant.

that leaves other considerations though, like Status Effect balancing or Crit/Status probabilities. if your Weapon is applying a fair amount of Status, adding another Damage Type, especially such a massive amount of it, could potentially harm your Damage in play if your Weapon is atleast somewhat relying on Status Effects. or it might make it stronger if that means it weighs your preferred Status Effects even more.

[Kalvorax]

26 minutes ago, Drasiel said:

This is what makes elemental mods grossly supperior to IPS mods. IPS mods only add a percentage of whichever damage type they are. So a 60% slash mod only calculates off the listed slash damage, if the weapon had no slash it adds zero damage. 

make me wish IPS mods acted like elemental mods then. then i could add slash/impact/puncture to weapons that DONT have them.