Are slash and elemental effects supposed to be small on secondaries?

[reznho]

When I'm building secondary guns, it sometimes gets hard for me to decide whether I should build corrosive or viral+slash. I noticed that most secondary guns will have a low IPS number unlike primary guns, specifically for slash. For example, the aksomati prime has a base slash of 10.0. I can do some modding and get that slash rating to approximately 32 or higher. Is a slash rating of 10, or even 32 or above considered a high rating of slash for secondaries? If not, what number is considered so? 

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

8 hours ago, -CdG-Zilchy said:

mod with rank 0 viral status elementals,

Is this worth doing? using unranked 60/60 mods, reduces the proportion of viral, but it also means lowering status chance Overall

So there's a trade of

less status procs in total, but more of them are slash

vs

more status procs in total, but more of them are viral

I guess the determining factor would be, even if the latter case has more 'wasted' viral procs, how many total slash procs per second occur, vs the former case?

probably varies per weapon I guess, how much base slash it has vs other IPS...

[MqToasty]

4 hours ago, reznho said:

So regardless of the damage number of any given IPS stat, I could technically consider (in my case for aksomati prime) the new 32 damage rating as high? Even if it's high, I still wouldn't build viral along with slash since the number is pretty low, and building viral where slash bias doesn't exist isn't suitable for higher level enemies and scaling in general (say viral is approx. 29.3 and slash is 33).

Okay, I think some clarification on why people mod a certain way is in order.  First of all, I see that you've started on the Steel Path.  Am I correct to assume you are finding the (Grineer) enemies there incredibly tough to kill?  And so you are now looking to further optimize your build so you can kill them faster?  If so, then it helps to first understand why they are hard to kill, and as a result, why people mod a certain way to deal with them.

The Grineer on the Steel Path are incredibly hard to kill because they have incredibly high armor, negating most of your damage.  That is it.  Neither the Corpus nor the Infested get this much armor, so they are only a little bit tougher than their low-level counterparts.  So most of the modding strategies are based around either removing (doesn't work too well) or skipping (works very well) Grineer armor.  For Melee weapons, there's also abusing the Combo Multiplier mods to drive up Crit and Status, but you are asking about a Secondary.

So having said that, the most effective modding strategies typically involve a few things:

1. Apply some Viral (and possibly Heat or Corrosive) Status stacks.
2. Apply Slash/Bleed Status stacks with a weapon with really high Critical Damage, and possibly Smite Grineer.

The first part should be obvious.  Viral increases damage to Health, Corrosive and Heat remove armor.  But why Bleed and why with high Critical Damage?  Because Bleed deals True Damage skipping all Armor, yet only Critical Damage (along with Base Damage and Faction Damage) is taken into account:

https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Damage/Slash_Damage

So having said all of this, you might notice that it is not easy to fulfill both #1 and #2 on the same weapon.  #1 requires a very high Status Chance as well as the highest damage type being the one you want to proc (probably Viral); and #2 requires really high damage when only taking Base Damage, Critical Damage and Faction Damage into account, with a decent Status Chance.  So many people go with 2 weapons: a ranged primer to apply the status for #1, and a melee weapon for the Bleed procs for #2.

Finally, let's get back to your question specifically: Is 32 Slash high?  Well, that depends on what are you trying to use your Aksomati Prime for:

1. As a Viral/Heat/Corrosive status primer: Slash doesn't matter here, so you should be modding for the other elements instead.  What you should worry about is how high you can pump your Status Chance and the damage distribution.
2. As a Slash bleeder: Well, how did you get to 32 Slash?  Did you use mods like Carnis Stinger or Razor Shot?  As those do not count for bleed damage, they are useless for this role.  How high is your Critical Chance and Critical Multiplier?  Status Chance?  Do you have Smite Grineer on your Aksomati Prime?  Although no matter how you look at it, my guess is that you will find this gun's performance rather disappointing in this role.

Assuming your Aksomati's Critical Chance is less than 100% and Critical Multiplier is 6.3x (maxed Primed Target Cracker), the most each Bleed Proc can tick for on a target with 10 stacks of Viral and a Headshot that caused the slash proc is:

0.35 x (32) x (1 x 6.3) x 2 x 4.25 = 600 health damage.  A Grineer Heavy Gunner at level 101 with 31,000 health will need more than 50 ticks to bleed to death from your Aksomati.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

@MqToasty rather than quote your entire excellent post, don't forget also that you want Viral procs on a slash/bleed weapon build because it multiplies the bleed tick amount and therefore will deal more damage per tick and kill them faster. This is why many people mod with rank 0 viral status elementals, because we want to proc viral but we want to MORE OFTEN proc bleed status. The actual viral damage amount doesn't matter, it's only purpose is to increase the DoTs and it has a base percentage to do that dependent on how many stacks you have applied.

[RazerXPrime]

22 minutes ago, -CdG-Zilchy said:

@MqToasty rather than quote your entire excellent post, don't forget also that you want Viral procs on a slash/bleed weapon build because it multiplies the bleed tick amount and therefore will deal more damage per tick and kill them faster. This is why many people mod with rank 0 viral status elementals, because we want to proc viral but we want to MORE OFTEN proc bleed status. The actual viral damage amount doesn't matter, it's only purpose is to increase the DoTs and it has a base percentage to do that dependent on how many stacks you have applied.

This is why I was happy to get the primed heated charge for secondaries. Always + on the proc order. but yea generally want to focus on getting your main damage dealing status at the top of the proc list and the bigger the difference the better as these things work with % chance when a status proc is chosen on the weapon. So if you want to deal more slash or heat damage then adding another element is actually not beneficial even though the numbers on the weapon are higher. It will in actuallity deal less damage.

One of the best bleeders in the game is the hillarious Convectrix. It's a clunky weapon to use, but if it's slash procs you're after then this thing does just that.

[MqToasty]

43 minutes ago, -CdG-Zilchy said:

@MqToasty rather than quote your entire excellent post, don't forget also that you want Viral procs on a slash/bleed weapon build because it multiplies the bleed tick amount and therefore will deal more damage per tick and kill them faster. This is why many people mod with rank 0 viral status elementals, because we want to proc viral but we want to MORE OFTEN proc bleed status. The actual viral damage amount doesn't matter, it's only purpose is to increase the DoTs and it has a base percentage to do that dependent on how many stacks you have applied.

Thanks for the heads-up!  Yep, it is highly unlikely / too unwieldy to wait for maxed Viral procs from the primer alone, so a weaker Viral on the melee bleeder will definitely speed up the culling!

[-CdG-Zilchy]

2 minutes ago, MqToasty said:

Thanks for the heads-up!  Yep, it is highly unlikely / too unwieldy to wait for maxed Viral procs from the primer alone, so a weaker Viral on the melee bleeder will definitely speed up the culling!

Pretty much and you're welcome 🙂

[RazerXPrime]

Here's a nice vid from Leyzar showcasing how stock 60/60 mods and no hunter munitions can actually kill a target faster on some weapons

 

[reznho]

@MqToasty@-CdG-ZilchyThis is the build I made that I planned on using once I forma the gun enough:

https://imgur.com/73IFhm2

I want to prioritize slash above all else IF I can build good amounts of slash damage and pair it with viral (so the slash number has to be bigger than the viral number). The reason I'm building corrosive is because there's not enough slash, albeit putting something like carnis stinger might work but I'd have to take out hydraulic crosshairs.

So if I really wanted to build viral+slash I'd make this instead: 

https://imgur.com/a6Ug55q

As Zilchy said, I want to proc slash more often than viral, however I think that this weapon specifically doesn't have a lot of slash to begin with unless I add mods that put more slash (I'd have to sacrifice a lot of crit for that). 

[-CdG-Zilchy]

49 minutes ago, reznho said:

@MqToasty@-CdG-ZilchyThis is the build I made that I planned on using once I forma the gun enough:

https://imgur.com/73IFhm2

I want to prioritize slash above all else IF I can build good amounts of slash damage and pair it with viral (so the slash number has to be bigger than the viral number). The reason I'm building corrosive is because there's not enough slash, albeit putting something like carnis stinger might work but I'd have to take out hydraulic crosshairs.

So if I really wanted to build viral+slash I'd make this instead: 

https://imgur.com/a6Ug55q

As Zilchy said, I want to proc slash more often than viral, however I think that this weapon specifically doesn't have a lot of slash to begin with unless I add mods that put more slash (I'd have to sacrifice a lot of crit for that). 

Judging from the stats, the weapon in question is better built as a pure crit weapon, ignore the slash and the status and concentrate on improving the crit multiplier and crit chance. To this end we want to stack multishot and crit mods which you've done on the top example(which is better) but remove the status elementals and go with pure 90% ones instead, your crits will benefit far more. Next remove Hydraulic crosshairs, it looks great on paper but Warframe is a game of movement and defeating hordes, sitting still holding down aim doesn't work in theory for most of the content.

In it's place you have 3 choices to go for. The 1st is Primed Heated Charge, the massive elemental damage added will offset not wanting to mod for heat by just adding raw base damage that your crits will multiply. The 2nd option is Anemic agility which will be ammo hungry but will mean that you crit more often as you become a bullet hose. The 3rd option goes the other way of this by using Creeping Bullseye. Seeing as you already have decent firerate on the weapon the increased crit chance means you might be able to red crit(4x crit dmg multiplier) with the multishot mods helping to make this happen. All 3 of these options will end up giving you higher DPS than the current build you are aiming for, hope this helps. The base slash damage on the weapon is way too low to consider modding it that way. If you want to see what a high slash dmg secondary that's worth modding for looks like, go check out the Pyrana Prime's base stats.

[taiiat]

it's about the weighting of one Damage Type versus all the rest, and the total Physical/Elemental Damage, not a specific number.

39 minutes ago, (PSN)haphazardlynamed said:

Just can't stand it, being locked up in animations and whatnot.

sounds like a Gunblade with lots of Attack Speed is for you.

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

potato forum, duplicate post

[-CdG-Zilchy]

3 hours ago, (PSN)haphazardlynamed said:

Is this worth doing? using unranked 60/60 mods, reduces the proportion of viral, but it also means lowering status chance Overall

So there's a trade of

less status procs in total, but more of them are slash

vs

more status procs in total, but more of them are viral

I guess the determining factor would be, even if the latter case has more 'wasted' viral procs, how many total slash procs per second occur, vs the former case?

probably varies per weapon I guess, how much base slash it has vs other IPS...

It depends on how good the weapon is. For example on a melee it is definitely worth doing because the bleed proc damage is so high that you'll actually increase your DPS by proccing slash more than you proc viral. The thing to remember is that you're not worried about the damage from viral, you just want the flat multiplier bonus for the bleed proc so when a melee is hitting 10 targets at once multiple times per second, you want as many slash procs as possible and to just gain that multiplier.  On a gun however, no you want max rank because you're not proccing as often.

[MqToasty]

1 hour ago, reznho said:

@MqToasty@-CdG-ZilchyThis is the build I made that I planned on using once I forma the gun enough:

https://imgur.com/73IFhm2

I want to prioritize slash above all else IF I can build good amounts of slash damage and pair it with viral (so the slash number has to be bigger than the viral number). The reason I'm building corrosive is because there's not enough slash, albeit putting something like carnis stinger might work but I'd have to take out hydraulic crosshairs.

So if I really wanted to build viral+slash I'd make this instead: 

https://imgur.com/a6Ug55q

As Zilchy said, I want to proc slash more often than viral, however I think that this weapon specifically doesn't have a lot of slash to begin with unless I add mods that put more slash (I'd have to sacrifice a lot of crit for that). 

So I crunched the numbers a little bit, and @-CdG-Zilchyis absolutely right.  Here's roughly what you can expect from each build:

For the first build, you can probably expect to reach the max 10 stacks of Corrosive in about a second of continuous shooting.  After that, you will be dealing max damage against your target at 80% armor reduction.  Unfortunately, at Level 101, Heavy Gunners have 6,500 Armor, granting them 95.6% damage reduction.  20% of that is still 1,300 Armor, granting them 81.3% damage reduction.  So taking each IPS + Corrosive Damage type, multishot and crits into account, each additional pull of the trigger will have an average damage of:
[(6.4 x 0.75) + (25.6 x 1.5) + (32.0 x 1.1) + (96.0 x 1.75)] x 2.8 x 0.187 x (0.689 x 6.3 + 0.311) = 600.1, double for Head Shots.
@ 21.33 pulls/second, your dps would be around: 12,800, double for Head Shots.
Basically, this means your first build should be able to kill a Level 101 Grineer Heavy Gunner in less than 3 seconds of sustained fire (it should drop before you need to reload).

For the second build, you can probably expect to reach the max 10 stacks of Viral and a few more than 10 stacks of Bleed also in about an entire second of continuous shooting.  After this point, each additional pull of the trigger will have an average damage of:
[(6.4 x 0.75) + (25.6 x 1.5) + (60.8 x 1.1) + (57.6 x 1.75)] x 2.8 x 0.044 x 3.25 x (0.689 x 6.3 + 0.311) = 392.8, double for Head Shots.
@ 21.33 pulls/second, your shooting dps would be around: 8,378.4, double for Head Shots.
But you should also have 10+ stacks of Bleed on it now, dealing:
0.35 x (20 x 2.2) x 3.25 x (0.689 x 6.3 + 0.311) = 232.8 per stack per second, or about 2328 per second.  Again, double for Head Shots.
Adding these up gives us a total DPS after maxing Viral of around: 8378 + 2328 = 10,706, double for Head Shots.
The bleed damage will inch up as you continue to apply even more stacks (there is no max, AFAIK), but overall I would expect this build to fare a bit worse as the Bleed only ticks once per second and the DPS does not ramp up to the first build's until an entire second of shooting later, at around 20 stacks.  So you might actually find that you cannot kill a Heavy Gunner with a single clip, or that it might bleed to death while you are reloading.

Of course, the caveat here is that if you are dealing with even higher level Grinner, like Level 200+, the second build might become better than the first because the second build's DPS will exceed the first's after about 20 bleed stacks.  But if it's taking that long to kill a single enemy, chances are you will not be able to survive or finish the mission.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

22 minutes ago, MqToasty said:

So I crunched the numbers a little bit, and @-CdG-Zilchyis absolutely right.  Here's roughly what you can expect from each build:

For the first build, you can probably expect to reach the max 10 stacks of Corrosive in about a second of continuous shooting.  After that, you will be dealing max damage against your target at 80% armor reduction.  Unfortunately, at Level 101, Heavy Gunners have 6,500 Armor, granting them 95.6% damage reduction.  20% of that is still 1,300 Armor, granting them 81.3% damage reduction.  So taking each IPS + Corrosive Damage type, multishot and crits into account, each additional pull of the trigger will have an average damage of:
[(6.4 x 0.75) + (25.6 x 1.5) + (32.0 x 1.1) + (96.0 x 1.75)] x 2.8 x 0.187 x (0.689 x 6.3 + 0.311) = 600.1, double for Head Shots.
@ 21.33 pulls/second, your dps would be around: 12,800, double for Head Shots.
Basically, this means your first build should be able to kill a Level 101 Grineer Heavy Gunner in less than 3 seconds of sustained fire (it should drop before you need to reload).

For the second build, you can probably expect to reach the max 10 stacks of Viral and a few more than 10 stacks of Bleed also in about an entire second of continuous shooting.  After this point, each additional pull of the trigger will have an average damage of:
[(6.4 x 0.75) + (25.6 x 1.5) + (60.8 x 1.1) + (57.6 x 1.75)] x 2.8 x 0.044 x 3.25 x (0.689 x 6.3 + 0.311) = 392.8, double for Head Shots.
@ 21.33 pulls/second, your shooting dps would be around: 8,378.4, double for Head Shots.
But you should also have 10+ stacks of Bleed on it now, dealing:
0.35 x (20 x 2.2) x 3.25 x (0.689 x 6.3 + 0.311) = 232.8 per stack per second, or about 2328 per second.  Again, double for Head Shots.
Adding these up gives us a total DPS after maxing Viral of around: 8378 + 2328 = 10,706, double for Head Shots.
The bleed damage will inch up as you continue to apply even more stacks (there is no max, AFAIK), but overall I would expect this build to fare a bit worse as the Bleed only ticks once per second and the DPS does not ramp up to the first build's until an entire second of shooting later, at around 20 stacks.  So you might actually find that you cannot kill a Heavy Gunner with a single clip, or that it might bleed to death while you are reloading.

Of course, the caveat here is that if you are dealing with even higher level Grinner, like Level 200+, the second build might become better than the first because the second build's DPS will exceed the first's after about 20 bleed stacks.  But if it's taking that long to kill a single enemy, chances are you will not be able to survive or finish the mission.

Damn man, bowing down. I can never do the math I just know what works from experience with the game. The bad part is I can never do the numbers game to prove it like you just have 😄

[reznho]

I've reworked each build.

W/o viral+slash:

https://imgur.com/864OKHU

With viral+slash:

https://imgur.com/R7ngE85

 

12 hours ago, MqToasty said:

So I crunched the numbers a little bit, and @-CdG-Zilchyis absolutely right.  Here's roughly what you can expect from each build:

For the first build, you can probably expect to reach the max 10 stacks of Corrosive in about a second of continuous shooting.  After that, you will be dealing max damage against your target at 80% armor reduction.  Unfortunately, at Level 101, Heavy Gunners have 6,500 Armor, granting them 95.6% damage reduction.  20% of that is still 1,300 Armor, granting them 81.3% damage reduction.  So taking each IPS + Corrosive Damage type, multishot and crits into account, each additional pull of the trigger will have an average damage of:
[(6.4 x 0.75) + (25.6 x 1.5) + (32.0 x 1.1) + (96.0 x 1.75)] x 2.8 x 0.187 x (0.689 x 6.3 + 0.311) = 600.1, double for Head Shots.
@ 21.33 pulls/second, your dps would be around: 12,800, double for Head Shots.
Basically, this means your first build should be able to kill a Level 101 Grineer Heavy Gunner in less than 3 seconds of sustained fire (it should drop before you need to reload).

For the second build, you can probably expect to reach the max 10 stacks of Viral and a few more than 10 stacks of Bleed also in about an entire second of continuous shooting.  After this point, each additional pull of the trigger will have an average damage of:
[(6.4 x 0.75) + (25.6 x 1.5) + (60.8 x 1.1) + (57.6 x 1.75)] x 2.8 x 0.044 x 3.25 x (0.689 x 6.3 + 0.311) = 392.8, double for Head Shots.
@ 21.33 pulls/second, your shooting dps would be around: 8,378.4, double for Head Shots.
But you should also have 10+ stacks of Bleed on it now, dealing:
0.35 x (20 x 2.2) x 3.25 x (0.689 x 6.3 + 0.311) = 232.8 per stack per second, or about 2328 per second.  Again, double for Head Shots.
Adding these up gives us a total DPS after maxing Viral of around: 8378 + 2328 = 10,706, double for Head Shots.
The bleed damage will inch up as you continue to apply even more stacks (there is no max, AFAIK), but overall I would expect this build to fare a bit worse as the Bleed only ticks once per second and the DPS does not ramp up to the first build's until an entire second of shooting later, at around 20 stacks.  So you might actually find that you cannot kill a Heavy Gunner with a single clip, or that it might bleed to death while you are reloading.

Of course, the caveat here is that if you are dealing with even higher level Grinner, like Level 200+, the second build might become better than the first because the second build's DPS will exceed the first's after about 20 bleed stacks.  But if it's taking that long to kill a single enemy, chances are you will not be able to survive or finish the mission.

I know for a fact that i'm not going to be able to laser lvl 200+ heavy grineer units in a single clip. I think it's just that this gun doesn't perform as well as other secondaries even if I build them exactly the same. Nevertheless I'm very amazed how you also worked out the math, it definitely gave me a new perspective on this.  

[MqToasty]

Haha, just got too much time on my hands these days...

Well, your new build does hit a lot harder, but as you probably noticed, will take longer (about 2 seconds) to reach max stacks of Corrosive.  But it will also add stacks of Heat, which will further chew away at the armor and deal ticking damage, which will help.

To be honest, for a Secondary the Aksomati Prime is already pretty good.  It's just that at really high enemy levels, it becomes harder to kill enemies with just a Secondary weapon, especially one that is Crit-focused and single-targeted.  So if you really do not want to mix in melee weapons, then you might have to start thinking about tweaking your Warframe to carry damage buffing abilities, aura mods, and arcanes to specifically help boost Secondary damage.  I'm pretty sure you can create a Secondary-only build that will carry you through all of Steel Path, but it will require a bit of work.

[reznho]

18 hours ago, MqToasty said:

Haha, just got too much time on my hands these days...

Well, your new build does hit a lot harder, but as you probably noticed, will take longer (about 2 seconds) to reach max stacks of Corrosive.  But it will also add stacks of Heat, which will further chew away at the armor and deal ticking damage, which will help.

To be honest, for a Secondary the Aksomati Prime is already pretty good.  It's just that at really high enemy levels, it becomes harder to kill enemies with just a Secondary weapon, especially one that is Crit-focused and single-targeted.  So if you really do not want to mix in melee weapons, then you might have to start thinking about tweaking your Warframe to carry damage buffing abilities, aura mods, and arcanes to specifically help boost Secondary damage.  I'm pretty sure you can create a Secondary-only build that will carry you through all of Steel Path, but it will require a bit of work.

Yeah you're definitely right. I think I might just use the aksomati as mr fodder and maybe build akjagara prime cause I heard a lot of good thing from it. Regardless, I'm just trying to get a good secondary to mix with my melee and primary, so it's not like I'm going to be going secondary only on certain missions. Do you have any other secondaries I should probably get and build? Right now I'm interested in pyrana prime, akjagara prime, and some kitguns.

[smashedwookie]

If you don't mind the grind for it, kuva nukor is pretty strong

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

1 minute ago, -CdG-Zilchy said:

which ones pray tell do you think matter?

I'm not religious, so I'm not familiar with the meaning of "pray tell"

but whatever it is, religion probably isn't a relevant topic for warframe.

[Jemmies]

6 minutes ago, reznho said:

When I'm building secondary guns, it sometimes gets hard for me to decide whether I should build corrosive or viral+slash. I noticed that most secondary guns will have a low IPS number unlike primary guns, specifically for slash. For example, the aksomati prime has a base slash of 10.0. I can do some modding and get that slash rating to approximately 32 or higher. Is a slash rating of 10, or even 32 or above considered a high rating of slash for secondaries? If not, what number is considered so? 

Generally, you want to use some basic mods before considering elements. Damage, multishot, crit chance + crit damage (provided the base crit chance of the weapon is high-ish).

The numbers beside the regular IPS and the elements are actual damage numbers instead of ratings. For example, the Furis has 3 impact, 14 puncture, and 3 slash. So when one Furis bullet hit an enemy, the enemy gets 20 damage. However, if the enemy is weak against slash, then the 3 points of damage that came from slash would increase. Mods that increase damage would increase all these numbers.

Also, when considering elements, you could just stick with viral + slash and it would work on most factions. If not, you'll have to look at which faction you are fighting against and the type of armor that they are wearing, then mod your element accordingly.

You can check out Leyzar's youtube videos on modding weapons. I find it to be quite easy to follow and understand.

[reznho]

25 minutes ago, Jemmies said:

Generally, you want to use some basic mods before considering elements. Damage, multishot, crit chance + crit damage (provided the base crit chance of the weapon is high-ish).

The numbers beside the regular IPS and the elements are actual damage numbers instead of ratings. For example, the Furis has 3 impact, 14 puncture, and 3 slash. So when one Furis bullet hit an enemy, the enemy gets 20 damage. However, if the enemy is weak against slash, then the 3 points of damage that came from slash would increase. Mods that increase damage would increase all these numbers.

Also, when considering elements, you could just stick with viral + slash and it would work on most factions. If not, you'll have to look at which faction you are fighting against and the type of armor that they are wearing, then mod your element accordingly.

You can check out Leyzar's youtube videos on modding weapons. I find it to be quite easy to follow and understand.

I know that I need multishot and other mods like damage and critical, but that's besides the point. So regardless of the damage number of any given IPS stat, I could technically consider (in my case for aksomati prime) the new 32 damage rating as high? Even if it's high, I still wouldn't build viral along with slash since the number is pretty low, and building viral where slash bias doesn't exist isn't suitable for higher level enemies and scaling in general (say viral is approx. 29.3 and slash is 33). I'm not too sure if secondary modding works the same way as primary gun modding, so I just build for criticals since most secondaries already have pretty good base crit chance anyways. 

[Jemmies]

It really depends on how you would like to play the game though. There are some who likes to play melee might mod their weapon to be high status effect chance and as many elements as possible so that they can maximise condition overload effect.

How would you like to play your game? Maybe that would be a better question to ask before considering the mods and the numbers.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

The damage rating for the IPS only increases the damage done, it doesn't determine how you should build the weapon. It merely means higher bonus damage if the enemy is weak to that type of IPS. If you're going to build for Slash you want to focus on weapons with a high crit chance and crit dmg multiplier because that's when it's actually going to be effective to build for. Similarly you want to build for Viral on a high slash, high crit dmg weapon because the Viral proc will multiply the bleed tick number. Whereas with high status chance weapons you have the choice of building for either viral procs for the bonus of halving enemies health or for Corrosive + heat to strip enemies of armour and make them more vulnerable to your following shots. There are also other factors involved in whether to go for crit or status build like the fire rate of the weapon(higher fire rate requires less crit chance on the weapon) and things like that.

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

47 minutes ago, reznho said:

When I'm building secondary guns, it sometimes gets hard for me to decide whether I should build corrosive or viral+slash.

Neither

build for Viral + Heat.

 

Corrosive, will remove up to 80% Armor if you stack it 10 times.

Yet Heat, will instantly remove 50% Armor with just 1 status proc.

Meanwhile, Viral Triples damage taken at 10 stacks.

 

Seeing as how Viral and Corrosive are mutually exclusive on most weapons.

Viral + Heat is the better choice over Corrosive.

It's also more reliable than Viral + Slash, since your Elementals are going to usually have heavier weightings than the IPS.

Tho Viral+Heat + Slash is nice if you can manage to fit it. but Slash should be a lower priority vs the former two.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

7 minutes ago, (PSN)haphazardlynamed said:

Seeing as how Viral and Corrosive are mutually exclusive on most weapons.

Viral + Heat is the better choice over Corrosive.

It's also more reliable than Viral + Slash, since your Elementals are going to usually have heavier weightings than the IPS.

Tho Viral+Heat + Slash is nice if you can manage to fit it. but Slash should be a lower priority vs the former two.

Depends on the enemy it's not automatically better.