Why is Gas damage still so awful?

[Valfaun]

Blast and Magnetic are mostly pointless elements in their own right, but I find Gas to be the most disappointing one. 

Gas is the only combined element that applies a DoT effect, but it's so incredibly weak compared to the other DoTs. And its damage effectiveness chart makes no sense to me.
Toxin damage is great against Corpus. It bypasses most shields and applies an uncapped DoT that is only limited by the speed at which you can apply it. 
Heat damage is good against Grineer and Infested. It applies a brief crowd control effect, strips some armor and applies an infinitely stackable DoT.
But Gas damage? It sucks against Corpus and it sucks even more against Grineer. Its status effect is a DoT that's limited to just 10 stacks. 

Gas is mostly just good against Light Infested units, plus a few rare mobs like Juggernauts. Why is Gas damage ineffective against Corpus and Grineer? They're more or less human and probably still breathe air. Choking them with (toxic) Gas should be pretty effective, no? You're pretty much directly attacking their internal organs. Realistically you'd be bypassing any shields and armor, but that would make Gas damage OP. Still, I do think that the effectiveness of Gas damage is all wrong. If anything I'd expect the Infested to be somewhat resistant to it. 

And why does Gas produce the only DoT with a limited stack size? Just because it has a small AoE effect? None of the other DoTs are technically limited and Bleeding from Slash damage even bypasses armor, the #1 source of defense in the late game. 

Please enlighten me if there's something crucial that I'm missing about Gas damage and Gas procs that makes them good, but as it stands I firmly believe that Gas damage's faction effectiveness should be switched around and its status proc uncapped and buffed with some kind of additional effect. A choking crowd control effect against humanoids maybe. Or a ramping ability to partially bypass defenses the higher you stack the proc. 

[Pizzarugi]

Isn't gas considered a good element to combat Infested due to how they tend to cluster tightly and allowing the gas's AoE aspect to be effective? I remember it was the go-to element back when people abused the Zenistar's energy disk, because there would be tons of gas clouds stacking a bunch of toxin on stuff.

EDIT:
I'm incorrect about the toxin stuff, but applying to multiple enemies still has some pretty strong results in tight groupings. Additionally, it deals bonus damage to 2/4 Infested health types, thus making it an anti-Infested element.

Edited September 14 by Pizzarugi

[(NSW)warfare3376]

Gas is actually very strong when your loadout is built entirely around it, but thats what kinda is what the problem is about it is you have to commit a full loadout to make it work (namely ensnare ivara). Another thing I dont think people realize is gas DoTs are actually significantly stronger than slash DoTs in fact all other DoTs are way stronger and scale way better than slash does , the only reason slash is considered meta despite being statistically the weakest DoT is because enemy armor is so strong that it makes all the other DoTs that dont bypass that armor not viable unless you go out of your way to add some way to fully strip enemy armor into your loadout which not a lot of people will want to do when slash just does that work for you in a much more convenient manor. If enemy armor didnt exist I guarantee gas or viral electric would dominate the meta, but since it does they are considered basically useless cuz the dr from enemy armor causes those DoTs to hit like a wet noodle.

All that said gas does have a pretty big problem currently and thats the 10 proc cap as mentioned that cap is even worse than you think. If you proc gas again after the cap has been reached it resets the timer for the DoT damage meaning if you continuously proc gas after the cap is reached the DoT will never actually happen resultig in a huge dps loss. What should happen at the least is remove the cap for the number of procs for the damage part but the keep the cap on the range when it hits 10 procs.

Edited September 14 by (NSW)warfare3376

[Tiltskillet]

1 hour ago, Valfaun said:

Please enlighten me if there's something crucial that I'm missing about Gas damage and Gas procs that makes them good

Armor strips are more available than they've ever been, and gas is decent once armor is removed.  Then it becomes amazing when enemies are grouped, since that's effectively a way of bypassing the stack limit

So like warfare said, it's very strong...with a dedicated setup.   That's not ideal, but hey,  at least it's not Blast.

42 minutes ago, (NSW)warfare3376 said:

All that said gas does have a pretty big problem currently and thats the 10 proc cap as mentioned that cap is even worse than you think. If you proc gas again after the cap has been reached it resets the timer for the DoT damage meaning if you continuously proc gas after the cap is reached the DoT will never actually happen resultig in a huge dps loss.

I can't tell if you're just talking about the limit of 10 simultaneous gas dots on a target or some new problem it has? 

Edited September 14 by Tiltskillet

[PollexMessier]

1 hour ago, Pizzarugi said:

Isn't gas considered a good element to combat Infested due to how they tend to cluster tightly and allowing the gas's AoE aspect to be effective? I remember it was the go-to element back when people abused the Zenistar's energy disk, because there would be tons of gas clouds stacking a bunch of toxin on stuff.

EDIT:
I'm incorrect about the toxin stuff, but applying to multiple enemies still has some pretty strong results in tight groupings. Additionally, it deals bonus damage to 2/4 Infested health types, thus making it an anti-Infested element.

Not incorrect exactly just outdated information. Gas's ability to inflict toxin damage was removed in... update 27.2 I think?
Hilariously the same time Viral was buffed even tho it was already a meta element.
It used to be really good for Condition overload builds cus it was 2 status effects in one.
It still baffles me that they nerfed gas and corrosive so hard while buffing what was already the most powerful element.
If they didn't do that you might still see non-viral builds occasionally.

Edited September 14 by PollexMessier

[(NSW)warfare3376]

4 minutes ago, Tiltskillet said:

I can't tell if you're just talking about the limit of 10 simultaneous gas dots on a target or some new problem it has? 

I remember it being a problem but maybe it has been fixed and I just wasnt aware of it.

 

42 minutes ago, Tiltskillet said:

Armor strips are more available than they've ever been, and gas is decent once armor is removed.  Then it becomes amazing when enemies are grouped, since that's effectively a way of bypassing the stack limit

Oh, and to add to this its not so much that grouped enemies bypasses the stack limit its the quadratic scaling due to overlapping gas clouds, each enemy effected by gas will damage all other enemies in the group effectively multiplying the damage of the DoT for each enemy.

Additionally, gas can also headshot so any headshot multipliers like primary/secondary deadhead will double dip for gas DoTs similarly to bane mods.

[Traumtulpe]

Gas is capped at 10 stacks because DE originally reworked Gas clouds to be tiny, and upon complaints they made it so that they increase in size with stacks - apparently DE lacks the technical capability to make them increase in size up to 10 stacks, but not beyond 10 (without capping the stacks at 10 altogether).

Gas also deals less damage than any other elemental DoT because it is bugged to not scale with it's elemental mods - Heat and Toxin scale with their respective mods, but if you put both on the weapon, the resulting gas DoT ceases to scale with either of them. This is why modding for Gas actually reduces your damage at the cost of an extra mod slot.

Originally Infested were actually functionally immune to Gas damage because of their Toxic Ancients and their aura - any Gas damage would literally deal 1 damage per tic due to the overlapping 90% resistances. However, DE had stated multiple times how Gas is the "anti-Infested" element despite it being completely non-functional against Infested (proving that they have no clue whatsoever and don't play their own game), and after being informed about this many times they eventually changed Toxic Ancients to no longer provide functional Gas immunity.

Edited September 14 by Traumtulpe

[(NSW)warfare3376]

24 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

Gas also deals less damage than any other elemental DoT because it is bugged to not scale with it's elemental mods - Heat and Toxin scale with their respective mods, but if you put both on the weapon, the resulting gas DoT ceases to scale with either of them. This is why modding for Gas actually reduces your damage at the cost of an extra mod slot.

Thats not entirely true, it is for a single enemy but for groups of enemies gas can easily pull ahead due to overlapping gas clouds. For example, if your gas tick deals 1k damage against one enemy it will do that 1k per tick but say if theres 3 enemies close enough then that 1k damage suddenly is happing 3 times as often tripling the dps and the more enemies there are the stronger this effect becomes. That said its much more situational and more of a hassle to get to work but when it does it can get quite insane.

[SpiritTeA]

Well gas would be pretty useless in sci-fi setting, as helmets should have filters, plus grineer lungs can have cybernetic augmentations that negates gas effect!..

But regarding theme, gas is one of strongest damage source in right condition as people said earlier. Just try something like Hildryn with helminthed Larvae + knife from New War(yes I forgot it’s name) buikt for gas and with finisher damage mods. Yeah when gas cloud procs on finisher you can just kill around 10 grouped SP grineers in a second. And that’s counting that my builds are suck. I have Aeolak with big riven, also modded for gas, 1-2 headshots in lvl 160 SP heavy gunner and it immediately dies from gas and bleed procs.

 

Now to problem about gas damage, when there is armor, its damage falls from billion group DPS to actually starting healing enemies (joke). And while we have a lot of armor strip abilities, not all of us using them constantly. Gas is just very niche damage for club of perverts who knows. But it’s far better than cold, blast, magnetic, puncture and impact(arguably, but it’s still the best status among those underdog statuses).

[Traumtulpe]

44 minutes ago, (NSW)warfare3376 said:

Thats not entirely true, it is for a single enemy but for groups of enemies gas can easily pull ahead due to overlapping gas clouds. For example, if your gas tick deals 1k damage against one enemy it will do that 1k per tick but say if theres 3 enemies close enough then that 1k damage suddenly is happing 3 times as often tripling the dps and the more enemies there are the stronger this effect becomes.

No.

Gas does nothing unless you remove enemies armor, so lets look at the scenario of a couple of Grineer with their armor removed.

Gas has a 0.5 multiplier against them, Heat has 1.25. Gas doesn't scale with elemental mods, Heat gets up to a 2.65 multiplier from Primed Heated Charge. Gas needs one extra mod, so that mod can be used to incease Heat's damage instead, resulting in another 1.5 multiplier.

In summary, before even considering how the two DoT's differ in functionality, Heat deals 10 times the damage of Gas. Then when you factor in Heat's infinite stacking and infinite duration, while Gas is capped at a pathetic 10 procs, and that any enemy in the game dies instantly if they have no armor and are proced with Heat, and there's just no reason to ever use Gas ever.

Edited September 14 by Traumtulpe

[(NSW)warfare3376]

1 hour ago, Traumtulpe said:

No.

Gas does nothing unless you remove enemies armor, so lets look at the scenario of a couple of Grineer with their armor removed.

Gas has a 0.5 multiplier against them, Heat has 1.25. Gas doesn't scale with elemental mods, Heat gets up to a 2.65 multiplier from Primed Heated Charge. Gas needs one extra mod, so that mod can be used to incease Heat's damage instead, resulting in another 1.5 multiplier.

In summary, before even considering how the two DoT's differ in functionality, Heat deals 10 times the damage of Gas. Then when you factor in Heat's infinite stacking and infinite duration, while Gas is capped at a pathetic 10 procs, and that any enemy in the game dies instantly if they have no armor and are proced with Heat, and there's just no reason to ever use Gas ever.

You didnt take into account multiple enemies again. I just use the example formulas that are on the wiki for each to make things easy, they use serration, elements (hellfire specifically for heat) and a nonprimed bane.

For heat its this 

Modded Damage = 100 × (1 + 1.65) × (1 + 0.3) = 344.5

Heat Mod Multiplier = (1 + 0.9) × (1 + 0.3) = 2.47x

Tick Damage = 0.5 × 344.5 × 2.47 = 425.4575

And for gas its this

Modded Damage = 100 × (1 + 1.65) × (1 + 0.3) = 344.5

Tick Damage = 0.5 × 344.5 × (1 + 0.3) = 223.925

So yea for a single enemy yes the gas tick is about the damage of the heat tick but if you factor in a second enemy that is within the gas cloud also has that same gas proc well its now hitting twice for a total damage 447.85, if theres a 3rd enemy it becomes 671.775 which is 2015.325 total damage for those 3 gas ticks while in a similar situation 3 heat procs on 3 separate enemies is only 1276.3725 total damage. Gas ramps up faster in groups while heat ramps up faster on a single target thats why heat appears to have higher damage output, however in the ideal situation for both gas can easily come out on top its just gas is much more impactical and much more of a hassle to use which is what holds it back.

Gas clouds can also headshot so any headshot multipliers like primary/secondary headshot or target acquired and work like an additional bane mod where it double dips the bonus which can boost its damage output further.  

Now granted there wont always be enemies close enough to each other to overlap the clouds and those clouds dont always land headshots but whenever everything does work out it can get insanely strong but like I said its situational and you have to build your whole loadout around it to take full advantage of it. 

Edited September 14 by (NSW)warfare3376

[Traumtulpe]

Why do you add completely irrelevant stuff (Bane, Serration) that makes no difference either way, but ignore important differences like an extra mod slot (easily +50% damage) and double damage from health type ?

Also why do you assume only 90% elemental damage, we do have a primed Heat mod, we also have the option of adding more Heat damage via Rivens or certain shotgun mods while Gas damage completely lacks this multiplier.

Why do you ignore Gas capping out at 10 stacks, which is pathetic and a huge reason not to ever use it?

[Tsoe]

i remember old blast..... it was cool

[(NSW)warfare3376]

1 hour ago, Traumtulpe said:

Why do you add completely irrelevant stuff (Bane, Serration) that makes no difference either way, but ignore important differences like an extra mod slot (easily +50% damage) and double damage from health type ?

All right since you so insist on this double damage from health type fine lets see what it looks like with that bonus, the gas tick is now 111.9625 per tick and heat is now 531.822 per tick. Gas will now need 5 enemies to out damage the heat ticks with 5 enemies with one gas proc per is 2799.062 total damage were heat is at 2659.11 with one proc per enemy, with 6 enemies gas total damage becomes 4030.65 and heat is 3190.932, with 7 enemies gas total damage is 5486.162 and heat is 3722.754. In gases Ideal situation it will easily out damage by a large amount heat no matter what and vise versa with heats ideal situation, the major difference is that heat does not need as much effort to get decent number which gas does need a lot that was my point, the op asked if there was anything crucial they were missing with gas and this is what that crucial thing is.

16 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

Also why do you assume only 90% elemental damage, we do have a primed Heat mod, we also have the option of adding more Heat damage via Rivens or certain shotgun mods while Gas damage completely lacks this multiplier.

We have one primed heat hod and its only for pistols or blaze as you mentioned for shotguns and if you want to get more heat via riven you not only have to get lucky and get a decent roll with heat on it but you also have to give up another potentially better stat. Also again, gas benefits from headshot multipliers which applies the same way a bane would in which heat lacks that multiplier.

50 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

Why do you ignore Gas capping out at 10 stacks, which is pathetic and a huge reason not to ever use it?

And why do you ignore that its an AoE DoT that has quadratic scaling. Yea theres a cap of 10 but if theres 2 enemies close together all of a sudden that cap is 20 or if theres 3 the caps now 30 ect ect... and not only that since the damage isnt solely based on pumping lots of procs into a single enemy enemy but rather pumping a few procs into multiple enemies it ends up resulting in faster kill times due to reaching the necessary amount of procs to kill due to being able to hit multiple enemies at the same time.

Also, gas does not even need to reach the cap to kill effectively due to the way it works, if you if you are using heat you will need a ton of heat to ramp it up to get decent damage out of it where as gas needs a bunch of grouped up enemies and some pseudo AoE like punch through to ramp up to decent damage. Gas isnt used because of its damage the damage is fine, it isnt used because in order to reach that damage you have to jump through hoops to get it, you need grouping and armor strip and maybe some form of AoE on the weapon.

 

[Mazifet]

2 things:

Lavos

Sickening Pulse

[Traumtulpe]

2 hours ago, (NSW)warfare3376 said:

you need grouping and armor strip and maybe some form of AoE on the weapon

If you have grouping and AoE and armor strip you can use an unmodded weapon, no need for Gas. And if you ever run into a lone enemy (say a demolyst) you're doing 10% the damage of Heat - and if you need more than 10 procs to kill the enemy you deal less than 0.5% the damage (good status weapons literally proc 200+ Heat procs per second).

[Birdframe_Prime]

@Traumtulpe? Settle down, dude.

What they're saying is to illustrate the earlier point; you have to spec into the Gas build. If you don't, other things are better. If you do, then Gas will out-kill (not necessarily out-damage, but out-kill) most, other setups you have.

Arguing that Heat is better at damage doesn't change the point, and coming up with situations where it shines doesn't change that point either. You may need a specific setup for something like Demolysts, which is one mission type on the whole star chart.

But when you're going to the upper-levels that the game can reach and not playing that mode? Like Survival, for example? Gas is viable when you set up your build for it.

Then again, there's a build that's viable for long survivals where you exploit the increased damage and invulnerability of the Downed state with Oberon's augments that extend the downed state to silly amounts of time, called the Mecha Couch Oberon. So having builds that make Gas viable is not in the least bit surprising.

So, again, settle down. Getting into a verbal slap fight to say which is better doesn't change, invalidate or even slightly counter the other person's actual point, and therefore it's not an argument that you can 'win'.

[Traumtulpe]

10 minutes ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

So, again, settle down. Getting into a verbal slap fight to say which is better doesn't change, invalidate or even slightly counter the other person's actual point, and therefore it's not an argument that you can 'win'.

This isn't about winning an argument, this is about DE breaking a damage type and then refusing to fix it for ever.

Gas did in fact scale with Toxin elemental mods in the past (as every other elemental DoT scales with it's modded damage) - it no longer does because DE broke it.

Gas did in fact not have a 10 proc cap in the past - now it does, and it's really just stupid.

Gas did in fact have decent matchups versus health types in the past (because it did Toxin damage) - it no longer does, now -50% damage against cloned flesh.

It doesn't have to suck, but it does because DE can't admit to their mistakes.

[(PSN)jaggerwanderer]

The problem with Gas is that it needs to be at 10 stacks for effectiveness. Below 5 stack against one single enemy on the entire map isn't going to kill the enemy any faster than watching paint dry. Doesn't it surprise anyone there isn't any weapon with innate Gas damage?

[Tiltskillet]

3 hours ago, (PSN)jaggerwanderer said:

Doesn't it surprise anyone there isn't any weapon with innate Gas damage?

Zakti and Cyanex:

 

No 100% Gas damage weapons though.  (Yet...)

[(PSN)rexis12]

The issue with gas is the main issue with most things that aren't just Viral + Insert Damage Type here or Corrosive, or hell even Radiation.

The fact that they don't stand on their own and need even more set up just to match having the previous elements I mentioned.

I see people say "Oh use Hildryn with Larva to get Gas procs and it'll be just as if not better" and I hear "If you want to match just slotting in Two or Three mods into a weapon you need a armor strip frame ability with a grouping ability to do so."

And I get it, it can be fun to do things that aren't the Meta. I have a Nekros Build with Terrify Subsumed out just so I can have Soul Punch to get Thrax Enemies. But I don't think trying to convince that Gas is fine when you need like a ten step plan to match even the basic of other Element Types.

 

[SpiritTeA]

2 hours ago, (PSN)rexis12 said:

The issue with gas is the main issue with most things that aren't just Viral + Insert Damage Type here or Corrosive, or hell even Radiation.

The fact that they don't stand on their own and need even more set up just to match having the previous elements I mentioned.

I see people say "Oh use Hildryn with Larva to get Gas procs and it'll be just as if not better" and I hear "If you want to match just slotting in Two or Three mods into a weapon you need a armor strip frame ability with a grouping ability to do so."

And I get it, it can be fun to do things that aren't the Meta. I have a Nekros Build with Terrify Subsumed out just so I can have Soul Punch to get Thrax Enemies. But I don't think trying to convince that Gas is fine when you need like a ten step plan to match even the basic of other Element Types.

 

The issue for me is that you not having even a 100 step plan to make magnetic, blast, puncture and cold viable and solid statuses! Your basic of other elements are Viral, Heat, Slash. Radiation, Poison are very niche statuses, which you aren’t even using that often or specifically build for them. So it kinda not fair. Corrosion is just pointless, it can’t strip whole armor, on very high lvls full corrosion stacks won’t even increase your damage significantly, heat-viral will outdamage heat-corrosion by a huge margin. So corrosion is even more underdog status than gas imo.

Yes gas is very “not great” to say at least, but it just has its “AoE nuke build” when you pair Gas with Electricity. Yes you need armor strip and group ability and those are extra steps you don’t need in even low bracket SP missions, but in the long run, those two will be important steps to do even lvl 600+ SP enemies, so gas and electricity scales very well on higher lvl territory. Besides my inner maniac just adores looking at mt enemies choking while also being electrocuted (joke).

[(PSN)jaggerwanderer]

16 hours ago, Tiltskillet said:

Zakti and Cyanex:

 

No 100% Gas damage weapons though.  (Yet...)

I know those weapons exist. What I mean is Gas is the ONLY innate damage on a weapon. I still find it odd we don't have lich/sister progenitors for Gas. A Kuva Nukor with base Gas sounds nice.

[Fred_Avant_2019]

Gas does decent... on whatever has neither shields nor armor nor external damage resistance calculations.

A Gas DoT cloud's scaling calculation is such that even with all the stripping in the world, it's not gonna do as much damage as any other DoT.

Its limit to 10 stacks is most likely tied to its size growth when you get multiple stacks, which is pretty dumb, because we could just have something like "past X stacks, the gas clouds are at their largest but they can still get increased scaling DoT damage".

 

Also let's not forget one thing :

If you mod for Gas on your weapon, you can't mod for Viral, you can't mod for Corrosive, you can't mod for Heat and you can't mod for Toxin.  Funny how that's the 4 best elemental types in the game for their status effect/damage type/DoT.

And not only Gas can never be justified on its own without grouping & stripping, it also has awful damage type chart effectiveness.

Magnetic is never used on grineer, as they don't have shields nor have weakness to the damage type, it's just that extra status to boost your galvanized status mod / condition overload. It's never really used on Corpus either, as shields can be easily broken with raw damage, even with ineffective damage types, or just outright bypassed with Toxin, so it's just more C.O. option there, even on the one faction it's meant to be used against. Now if it did apply extra damage to Overguard, it could be justified... nah probably not lol.

Blast is even more sad. The status is pointless and it lost its one gimmick of deal a wee tiny bit of extra damage every time you hit. It was bad, but, it wasn't "let's make this accuracy loss" levels of bad. You only ever see the damage type on explosive weapons. Because no one, and I really mean NO ONE would ever intentionally mod for Blast. Why go Corrosive Blast when you can just use Corrosive Heat instead? Blast and Toxin maybe? Nope, even Rad + Toxin is better from a damage type point of view.

 

But hey, maybe not all hope is lost, we've seen recent adjustments to Cold and Puncture. Maybe they can look into Gas, Magnetic and Blast eventually ?

[Birdframe_Prime]

23 hours ago, Traumtulpe said:

It doesn't have to suck, but it does because DE can't admit to their mistakes.

Yeah, but that's the thing, the other guy is explaining to you that it doesn't have to suck. That what it does, when you set up the build for it, actually does work.

As nerfed as it is, it still has quadratic scaling on groups, meaning that for a style of play that is widely used (group and nuke), Gas is as viable as any other damage and status type.

That isn't something that pointing out all the nerfs will change.

Could it be better? Sure.

Does that negate anything the other player said? No.

Let's just move on.

Speaking of which:

20 hours ago, (PSN)jaggerwanderer said:

Doesn't it surprise anyone there isn't any weapon with innate Gas damage?

You discard both the Zakti and Cyanex because (checks notes) they don't only have Gas damage on them? When your statement was 'any weapon with innate Gas damage'?

I mean, the Cyanex has 50 base Impact on the projectile itself, but the explosion (the AoE damage on the AoE damage weapon) is pure Gas as an innate damage type. Meanwhile the exact same is true of the Zakti, where the AoE of this AoE weapon is pure, innate Gas damage. Both of which specifically play into the concept that Gas Damage has this whole thing with grouped-up enemies where the damage of the Gas procs themselves has quadratic scaling (or, to be clear, every single enemy is also damaging every single other enemy at once, making the AoE proc exponentially more damaging).

There is also every weapon that you can have the Truth effect on from the Arbiters of Hexis, such as the Telos Akbolto, the Telos Boltor, the Silva and Aegis, the Jaw Sword (great for stat-sticking), the Burston (especially now that it's an Incarnon) and the Vipers. All of which will add to the chaos caused by having decent Gas Status procs on grouped enemies, as well as recovering your Health if you're lacking some, and triggers passively just for gaining Affinity. Which is kind of neat.

I mean... as the guy I was talking about in the earlier half of my reply was saying: you have to build for Gas if you want to use it. But when you do, it works.