Corrosive or Viral vs Grineer steel path

[DeckChairVonBananaCamel]

I'm not familiar enough with the current enemy armour/DR calculations to do this myself so ill ask my fellow tenno:

I understand that when up against the grineer the current damage meta is slash+viral, but if slash was not an option, I'd like to know which would be better to mod for against the steel path grineer out of corrosive and viral.

• Viral:
  • The viral damage deals +75% damage against all grineer (except robots, but they don't have many of those)
  • Can grant a further 325% damage from all sources
• Corrosive:
  • The corrosive damage deals +75% damage AND ignores 75% armour but only against some grineer types (some of which are less common in steel path)
  • Grants up to 80% armour reduction for all damage sources

So is the 325% increase in damage better than the 80% decrease in armour when tackling the steel path?
If the answer is different from earth to the kuva fortress, is there a specific point level-wise where one starts to outclass the other?
If there is a difference, is it super significant, or relatively minor?

 

I would love to hear your opinions, and reasoning! (the maths is welcome too!)
_{(also i know that viral+heat probably blows corrosive out of the water, but if you would like to show by how much, i am definitely curious about that too!)}

[-CdG-Zilchy]

5 minutes ago, Omega-ZX said:

what i mean... is this.

 

Ok watched that. Great n all to strip armour fast but in Steel Path it's just easier to ignore the armour completely by using slash procs. Viral then increases the bleed damage but by using lower rank mods for the elementals we increase the odds of a bleed proc while still gaining the viral damage multiplier. And Beserker has a max attack speed increase of 75%(attained in moments) compared to Primed Fury's flat 55%.
 

 

[-CdG-Zilchy]

2 hours ago, taiiat said:

both, ideally. they're Multiplicative together (Berserker with any other Attack Speed Mod, that is - and maybe some Abilities but never tested that).

Yeh agreed but specifically for his build it doesn't really have room for 2 attack speed mods therefore Beserker is the better option.

[Omega-ZX]

vor 3 Stunden schrieb DeckChairVonBananaCamel:

But i wonder if it makes Shattering Impact take longer to achieve a full strip?

It depends on the stance and weapon and att speed. Swirling tiger hits 6 times with a single tap. That is 36 points less basic armor, which is very noticeable on the dmg ouput because it also reduces the steel path bonus.

Example Ballista: Armor in SP is 3412,28 and after first strike with swirling tiger armor goes down to 2690. A Ballista needs 17 hits for complete armor reduction. A Heavy Gunner is with 83 hits. But it makes a difference.

[(XBOX)Apoll0 666]

1 minute ago, rapt0rman said:

hard-capped at 80% armor reduction, it's not terrible, but the last 81-99.9% is what really matters.

Ah I see, other dmgs are simply more effective now

[rapt0rman]

20 minutes ago, (XBOX)Apoll0 666 said:

Can someone explain what happened to Corrosive? I heard it was the go to/mandatory damage for most builds, what happened to it?

hard-capped at 80% armor reduction, it's not terrible, but the last 81-99.9% is what really matters.

[(XBOX)Apoll0 666]

Can someone explain what happened to Corrosive? I heard it was the go to/mandatory damage for most builds, what happened to it?

[taiiat]

to make this work, as a general rule across Weapons, i strongly recommend having 3 Elemental Mods. having just one or the other is going to have serious cons, just different ones.
Viral/Fire, Corro/Ice, Et Cetera. Viral/Elec is viable on certain Weapons Types, contrary to popular thinking.
Anti-Faction Mods are pretty important if you will be using any DoT's as a source of Damge rather than Status Effect.

some Weapons will be able to get away with say, Viral/Slash or take advantage of Hunter Memes, Et Cetera.
but if you're using something that's not very Hybrid and mostly just Crit, you're stuck with picking whatever their Health/Armor is weak to and making do with that.

 

ideally though, just don't rely on one Weapon. have both Melee and a Gun support each other. even it just to bring different Status Effects in. that makes a pretty huge difference.
or an Ability(ies), basically while you can make one thing work on its own, it's much easier to.... not.

5 hours ago, -CdG-Zilchy said:

fair enough. at least use Beserker over Primed Fury then, it stacks higher attack speed than Fury can manage.

both, ideally. they're Multiplicative together (Berserker with any other Attack Speed Mod, that is - and maybe some Abilities but never tested that).

[ShortCat]

@DeckChairVonBananaCamelin the specific case of Amprex in SP vs armor, I would run Serration, Split Chaimber, 2 crit mods, HM (so far pretty standard), last 3 mods would be 60/60mods combining into Viral + the appropriate P. Bane mod. Your main sourse of damage would be Slash procs and every mod on that build is ment to boosts them. Your upfront damage would be low, but DoTs are devastating and ramp up really fast. You also do not care about armor at all, enemies could have 1 000 000% more armor.
Depending on your Riven, you are likely to ditch Bane.

If you consider a pistol then you have to go Viral + Heat. However, if pistol has "enough" Slash, I also frequently use the new 60/60 Slash mod, to boost status and Slash weighting.

This should be enough to complete every node on SP. If you plan to do endurance runs there, then you will have to reconsider again.

[crimsonspartan1]

If you run with either of the plague zaws, then you can easily run with both corrosive and viral since the weapons have viral on them already. All you’d need to do is build a zaw of your choosing and then mod it for corrosive and you can increase damage to health and reduce armour at the same time. 

My Plague Kripath is pretty powerful at least, with corrosive + heat, crit and condition overload (it does have a strong riven, but even without it a good built kripath is still great). There’s most likely melee weapons that are stronger than it, but it’s optional at least if you’d prefer having both viral and corrosive rather than one or the other. Plague keewar is also good since it offers about +4% more status chance than other zaws, but the plague kripath offers an additional +4% crit chance and +0.2x additional crit multiplier for a 2.2x crit multipler compared to other zaws that are stuck with a 2.0x crit multiplier base. Some guns can also easily run with both corrosive and viral if they have one or the other has a base damage type.

If you had to go for one or the other though, then i’d say viral, although if you were to run a steel path bounty on Deimos, then corrosive would be better since most enemies there are immune to viral. 

[DeckChairVonBananaCamel]

3 hours ago, Omega-ZX said:

Viral.

Fun-fact: (my point for melee) shattering reduce base armor and corrosive reduce armor after bonus.

Example Ballista: 100 base armor on lv 1. what we know... on SP this Ballista is Lv 101 and got armor up to 3412,28. So. Now we reduce this with a stack corrosive and we have 682,46 armor left. After this... The damage reduction is still over 69%.

Now to Viral. From the wiki:

So... Damage reduction is not a thing.

This got me thinking about how the bonus armour from steel path is weirdly applied, in the way that anything that applies scaling armour reduction sometimes doesn't apply in the way you'd expect.

For example Oberon's reckoning when synergised with hallowed ground, it is supposed to reduce the enemy's base armour by 30%, completely stripping all armour in 4 casts. However, the SP armour bonus messes with this, adding to base armour, but not being included in base armour stripping calculations. There was another player who built their Oberon to strip with 2 casts but was confused as to why it was taking 5 and it was because of the +150% armour needing to be stripped separately from the base armour...

We can assume that armour strips that work off of total armour (like corrosive) still work normally due to the fact that a 100% defence reduction psychic bolt still works in SP. But i wonder if it makes Shattering Impact take longer to achieve a full strip?

3 hours ago, ShortCat said:

What guns exactly?

If we are speaking in general terms, then viral+heat works better, if slash is not an option. Corr+heat builds plummet hard agaisnt alloy.

 

The weapon that made me think of asking this was my amprex! Amprex is genuinely my favourite primary weapon, though I am fully aware that it has fallen a bit behind the curve and as a result I tend to use it a little less now ^{*crosses fingers for amprex variant from corpus liches*}

I was taking my amprex into battle against the steel path grineer, and tooling around with a couple of builds, it does pretty well for itself (got a pretty good riven).
My build only really allows for one damage type at a time though (unless i want electric to not combine) but with steel path as it is at the moment that's ok because I can supplement it with the rest of my kit... BUT what about the future!? What if we end up getting steel path sorties and there is a "X weapon only" modifier? How would someone build an elemental-only weapon that can't use hunter munitions?!

Basically I'm asking my question not because i desperately need help, but purely for curiosity

3 hours ago, Traumtulpe said:

On a rapid fire weapon Viral, if you want to kill with few shots Corrosive.

Bombards (the ones where Corrosive isn't flat out better than Viral) aren't that common, so you'll be fine with Corrosive either way.

That's actually a really good way to look at it

56 minutes ago, (XBOX)Rez090 said:

Probably shouldn't even invest in this, since this is what was discussed in the devstream. Better to wait and see what happens with attack speed before truly committing to this.

I think the going plan was to group all the "attack speed" mods in the same family so they cant be equipped together. Plans do change, sure, but at least for the moment individual attack speed mods should be safe.

----------------

Thanks for all the responses everyone, I'm finding all of your input quite good to read! 

[-CdG-Zilchy]

31 minutes ago, (XBOX)Rez090 said:

Probably shouldn't even invest in this, since this is what was discussed in the devstream. Better to wait and see what happens with attack speed before truly committing to this.

Very true. Works for the moment however, enjoy it while it lasts I guess?

[(XBOX)Rez090]

1 hour ago, -CdG-Zilchy said:

fair enough. at least use Beserker over Primed Fury then, it stacks higher attack speed than Fury can manage.

Probably shouldn't even invest in this, since this is what was discussed in the devstream. Better to wait and see what happens with attack speed before truly committing to this.

[Omega-ZX]

vor 1 Stunde schrieb -CdG-Zilchy:

fair enough. at least use Beserker over Primed Fury then, it stacks higher attack speed than Fury can manage.

what i mean... is this.

 

[-CdG-Zilchy]

Just now, Omega-ZX said:

I tested it. Nope. Not for me.

fair enough. at least use Beserker over Primed Fury then, it stacks higher attack speed than Fury can manage.

[Omega-ZX]

vor 8 Minuten schrieb -CdG-Zilchy:

If you got rid of shattering impact, increased your crit with organ shatter and made your Virulent scourge and Vicious frost rank zero instead of max, you might kill quicker with slash bleed procs with that attack speed.

I tested it. Nope. Not for me.

[(PSN)Silver1593]

For steel path my favourite weapon in kuva nukor with bonus  cold  damage .  It has radiation and cold for alloy armor and corrosive damage for ferrite

[-CdG-Zilchy]

1 hour ago, Omega-ZX said:

I use this build:

  Hide contents

A Viral+Heat. Corrosive is trash. It looks dumb but it works.

Edit: Shattering Impact for reducing armor. You know how armor works right? SI reduce the base armor and without armor Viral+Heat cuts even harder.

If you got rid of shattering impact, increased your crit with Sacrificial Steel and made your Virulent scourge and Vicious frost rank zero instead of max, you might kill quicker with slash bleed procs with that attack speed. Just a suggestion however.

[Omega-ZX]

Viral.

Fun-fact: (my point for melee) shattering reduce base armor and corrosive reduce armor after bonus.

Example Ballista: 100 base armor on lv 1. what we know... on SP this Ballista is Lv 101 and got armor up to 3412,28. So. Now we reduce this with a stack corrosive and we have 682,46 armor left. After this... The damage reduction is still over 69%.

Now to Viral. From the wiki:

Zitat

The status effect of  Viral damage is Virus. It amplifies damage to the health of the afflicted target by 100% for 6 seconds. Subsequent procs add 25% increased damage to health up to 325% in total after 10 stacks, with each proc having their own duration. This effect will work even when the health is protected by armor ("yellow health"). Only the shield is not affected.

So... Damage reduction is not a thing.

[(XBOX)CaptainSeth5423]

I usually go for corrosive melee and viral heat condition overload spreader. Even though viral sounds better than corrosive it isn't on a lot of melees due to corrosive dealing extra damage to Armour and viral with health. Now the argument comes, how is it better? With many tests you will realise that corrosive will do better with a condition overload "procer" with viral due to viral being powerful for its status rather than its damage. While Corrosive has better damage but doesn't really have a competition to viral in terms of status. Though when you use a slash-based melee you are better off using raw damage or in some cases toxin. But doesn't mean you can't use viral with it as viral can boost slash damage logically so it usually goes with heavy attack weapons like reaper prime and pennant. In the end of the day, you should go for what you prefer like I prefer Corrosive based builds.

[Traumtulpe]

6 minutes ago, DeckChairVonBananaCamel said:

opinion on just viral versus corrosive?

On a rapid fire weapon Viral, if you want to kill with few shots Corrosive.

Bombards (the ones where Corrosive isn't flat out better than Viral) aren't that common, so you'll be fine with Corrosive either way.

[ShortCat]

4 minutes ago, DeckChairVonBananaCamel said:

i was thinking more about my guns though

What guns exactly?

5 minutes ago, DeckChairVonBananaCamel said:

what's your opinion on just viral versus corrosive? still viral?

If we are speaking in general terms, then viral+heat works better, if slash is not an option. Corr+heat builds plummet hard agaisnt alloy.

 

[DeckChairVonBananaCamel]

27 minutes ago, Omega-ZX said:

I use this build:

  Reveal hidden contents

A Viral+Heat. Corrosive is trash. It looks dumb but it works.

Edit: Shattering Impact for reducing armor. You know how armor works right? SI reduce the base armor and without armor Viral+Heat cuts even harder.

oh i definitely know how shattering impact works, i was thinking more about my guns though.

what's your opinion on just viral versus corrosive? still viral?

[Omega-ZX]

I use this build:

Spoiler

A Viral+Heat. Corrosive is trash. It looks dumb but it works.

Edit: Shattering Impact for reducing armor. You know how armor works right? SI reduce the base armor and without armor Viral+Heat cuts even harder.