Slash build vs Elemental buil

[(NSW)MrRamey]

So I have been reading and watching on how to build (mod) weapons for over a year now. Today the meta seems to be viral for the most part, but my question comes from something I have never thought about. I saw a video stating that when modding your melee for a slash/viral (with the hunter mod) make sure your viral is not over powering. He stated that you may want to use an unranked mod to make sure your viral is less (just below) the slash proc. That really got me thinking about all my builds. So I thought I would ask the GREAT COMMUNITY to get your thoughts.

The melee I am currently working on is the Pangolin Prime which has a good amount of slash damage. I have always modded my viral to what ever I can with two mods either prime mods, regular or the 60/60. So I ask... should I mod viral to stay below the slash proc? what are your all thoughts.

Thanks in advance.

[rapt0rman]

Yes, usually when building for slash+viral you just want the two 60/60 eles in order to not displace too much slash, it's worse now that physical damages no longer have 4x probability. Incidentally with Hunter Munitions you don't need to worry about that since it's entirely separate from your status chance, stacking more viral can potentially be better in that case (but also, as said below, HM is primaries only)

[ShortCat]

13 hours ago, (NSW)MrRamey said:

Here is my current build slash 436.5 and Viral 297.6

Stance: Crimson Dervish

Condition Overload, Prime Reach, Blood Rush, Weeping Wounds,

Buzz Kill, Primed Fury, Vicious Frost, Virulent Scourge.

did not know about changing fury for Berseker? And I do have Prime Fever Strike.

I would replace Buzz Kill & Fury with Berserker and Organ Shatter. Reasons: Berserker will offer more attack speed for less capacity costs and crit damage is important on a crit build.

You were right on the status weighting and that sometimes it is more advantageous to equip unranked elemental mods to not overwhelm possible Slash procs. For melee weapons it is slightly more complicated, since your attack rate = status aplication rate and it is significantly lower than a gun. Guns tend to overproc Viral, which is not desired since Viral has a status cap. Melee on the other hand is slower and if your enemy is not dead by that time it got 10 Viral stacks, you have other problems. Furthermore, melee stances will proc Slash on certain combos by default. As such, I would say it is not a mistake to use fully ranked 60/60 mods on melee; I would not use Primed Fever Strike to create Viral though.
However, at this point it is important to know what content you are aiming at. If it is Sortie lvl or early Steel Path you are good to go with ranked mods, since at that lvl it hardly matters and enemies will die anyway. If you plan to go really long, then there is an option to forgo elements alltogether and focus your melee solely on Slash procs, since people will usually prime enemies with needed status effects with a utility weapon (Kuva Nukor in most cases).

[Duality52]

1 minute ago, (NSW)MrRamey said:

your melee for a slash/viral (with the hunter mod)

Melee weapons cannot equip Hunter Munitions, which is only reserved for Primaries.

2 minutes ago, (NSW)MrRamey said:

Pangolin Prime which has a good amount of slash damage. I have always modded my viral to what ever I can with two mods either prime mods, regular or the 60/60. So I ask... should I mod viral to stay below the slash proc? what are your all thoughts.

I would post the entirety of the build on your Pangolin Prime just in case, but Pangolin Prime is sufficiently strong. Elemental damage is more likely to apply Status procs than Physical damage procs unless it's forced on certain stances and Heavy Attacks. I would keep the Viral damage high, but some builds forego elemental damage entirely.

If you need something else to apply status procs, you can switch to certain Status weapons or equip certain Sentinel weapons to help with that.

[Dauggie]

viral on melee is just straight up pointless. viral is NOT a damage element, we use it for its STATUS effect, which results on depleting overall Enemy HP depending upon how much viral stacks you got on the enemy. so most players use secondary or primary weapon to apply Status on enemy, then a Radiation/Corrosive can be used to deal DAMAGE. currently weapon like kuva nukor is greatly used for applying quick status on enemies.

Also most melee can be build for Red/Orange Crits, so i mostly go for high elemental damage mods (if you need extra dmg) otherwise even 60% onces are fine

[(NSW)MrRamey]

Here is my current build slash 436.5 and Viral 297.6

Stance: Crimson Dervish

Condition Overload, Prime Reach, Blood Rush, Weeping Wounds,

Buzz Kill, Primed Fury, Vicious Frost, Virulent Scourge.

did not know about changing fury for Berseker? And I do have Prime Fever Strike.

[McCIoud]

45 minutes ago, (NSW)MrRamey said:

Here is my current build slash 436.5 and Viral 297.6

Stance: Crimson Dervish

Condition Overload, Prime Reach, Blood Rush, Weeping Wounds,

Buzz Kill, Primed Fury, Vicious Frost, Virulent Scourge.

did not know about changing fury for Berseker? And I do have Prime Fever Strike.

Remove buzzkill and fury, swap in organshatter and berserker

[Duality52]

3 hours ago, Dauggie said:

viral on melee is just straight up pointless. viral is NOT a damage element, we use it for its STATUS effect, - then a Radiation/Corrosive can be used to deal DAMAGE. currently weapon like kuva nukor is greatly used for applying quick status on enemies.

Against the Grineer, they differ between Ferrite Armor and Alloy Armor, which are weak to Corrosive and Radiation respectively. That splits your choice between dealing heavy damage against common Grineer with Ferrite Armor or heavier units with Alloy Armor. Their primary health type that all of them have, Cloned Flesh, is weak to Viral damage.

Corrosive is pointless against the Corpus since most of them have no armor, while Radiation is penalized against Shields. You can go for either pure Toxin or Viral and/or Elec against them. 

The only viable choice I could see with Corrosive melee weapons is against the Infested, particularly the Ancients and heavy Deimos Infested such as the Carnis.

[(NSW)MrRamey]

Thank you all for the comments. Someone asked what I am playing so I thought I would answer. Currently I and doing daily Sorti, Arbitration, and trying Steel Path.