Which is the best element for one-shot AOE?

[Iceflame3029]

As title, which is the best element to one-shot a group of enemies with a high damage, high status chance but low fire rate weapon (e.g. Arca Plasmor or alt fire of Aeolak)?

 

edit: Since some people need more specification, I’ll provide more details.

Weapon: high base damage (>750), high status chance (>30%), ordinary crit chance (~20%), low fire rate (~1 shot/sec) and can hit multiple enemies in one shot.

Primer: Can use companion as primer (e.g. Verglas or Panzer Vulpaphyla).

Enemy: Better for steel path enemies but it’s okay if it only works for normal enemies. (Just specify what type and level of the enemy)

Scenario: Killing a group of enemies with only one shot from primary weapon. No matter killing with direct damage or DoT.

Edited September 5 by Iceflame3029

[Numerounius]

It really depends. Viral used to be the choice for the longest time. But corrosive and Radiation have crept into the mix with more faction introductions. Personally, all my stuff is corrosive now.

It is more about other stuff though. Warframe damage buffs will make any element make an enemy group go poof in one shot along with the base stats of the weapons, high status isn't going to be accomplishing much on its own with its first shot.

There are some people who swear by bane mods and element swapping but I'm not one of those people and you can still get by without them.

Edited September 3 by Numerounius

[4thBro]

The answer is Toxin. If you're shooting at slow rates, you want to be able to one-shot Corpus through their Shield Gating.

 

Against higher level armored enemies, though, slow fire rate weapons don't really work unless you either armor strip with abilities, utilize slash procs, or just overpower them (which means the enemies are just very low level so who cares).

[Joezone619]

Depends on many factors, fire rate mostly, but if your looking for a straight 1-shot, i'd say whatever element the faction your fighting is weak against. Aside from that, if you have a good status chance, i'd say either viral or blast. Viral will make your next shot stronger against health, while blast will make them take a DoT of 35% your weapon's base damage, and emit an AoE attack on death/10 stacks.

P.S. i'd recommend corrosive over viral against armored targets/factions.

Edited September 3 by Joezone619

[4thBro]

But he doesn't want there to be a "next shot." That defeats the whole purpose. Which is why Viral or Corrosive don't really make sense.

[Xzorn]

Electric maybe. Since it's the closest thing to original Gas which was the optimal choice for big hit weapons like Snipers.

Pure Physical Slash still holds up against most factions. Esp with the addition of the Elemental Damage mods.
Appropriate non-Melee Slash weight is rare though. Dread and a few other weapons.

Most anything else would be just pushing the new faction modifiers.

[Numerounius]

45 minutes ago, 4thBro said:

But he doesn't want there to be a "next shot." That defeats the whole purpose. Which is why Viral or Corrosive don't really make sense.

Viral and 'sive still have armor types that are weak to them? The factions that were the most tanky as well. And for the longest time didn't have any major weaknesses so they were hitting for neutral at worst.

Yes for a boss builder you always built radiation though.

[0_The_F00l]

It really depends on the faction.

Single status element would be heat in my opinion , as it does a good job of DoT and a bit of Armor reduction.

Electric is good if your attack can grab multiple enemies together

and toxin is ok if facing against corpus.

But you will need to mod suitably and may need additional supporting effects like grouping and headshots , 

This all assumes you get kills via DoT ,

If you don't want to have DoT and kill in a single shot with no other debuffs on the enemy then you should focus on specific elements the faction is weakest to.

[Zakkhar]

Stuff that double dips with grouping: Gas, Electric, Blast. To a lesser extent other Damage over Time statuses: Toxin and Heat.

[4thBro]

42 minutes ago, Numerounius said:

Viral and 'sive still have armor types that are weak to them? The factions that were the most tanky as well. And for the longest time didn't have any major weaknesses so they were hitting for neutral at worst.

Yes for a boss builder you always built radiation though.

Not really anymore, after the rework. Corrosive, I'm pretty sure, is strong vs Kuva Grineer, but they aren't the only ones with high armor. There's no longer such a thing as ferrite armor, and all that jazz.

Same for Radiation now; elemental typings are just miniature versions of faction damage now. (So Radi MAY still apply for some bosses, but it's faction based now, not health/shield/armor typings.)

[Tiltskillet]

The real answer is it depends, but just for fun...

Let's say it's got to be a combined element since then there are two maximized 90-120 element mods available.   That eliminates IPS and HCET.

Let's say it truly has to be all-round, regardless of faction, so nothing is resistant to it.  That eliminates Viral, Radiation, Corrosive, Magnetic, and Blast.

That leaves Gas.  Which if you can trigger its status, has the only meaningful effect for 1HK builds.

This could be fine tuned more, as some resistances are rare, some vulnerabilities are more valuable, and only Deimos Infested are vulnerable to Gas.  Kill more than your share of Grineer, but don't care about Sentients or Deimos?  Corrosive looks pretty good.  Don't care about Narmer but kill lots of Corpus, and like using shotguns?  Then Magnetic is in play.

And of course individual weapon needs can tilt this in other directions.  For example, you have an innate element already, or only have one slot available for an element.  Or you mostly get 1HKs but occasionally don't, so you care a bit about what status you might inflict.

2 hours ago, 4thBro said:

The answer is Toxin. If you're shooting at slow rates, you want to be able to one-shot Corpus through their Shield Gating.

Pretty good choice for that reason, and since nothing is resistant to it.  Though offset to some degree by its issues against Infested due to Toxic Ancients.  Also no ranged primed Toxin mod.  Electric and Cold might also be worth consideration as one slot choices, as these also aren't resisted by anything.

 

[Iceflame3029]

Thank you guys for your reply.

My first instinctive thoughts are blast (produce AOE damage after just 1 proc), toxin (bypass shields and DoT) and slash (bypass armor and DoT but sometimes hard to mod depending on weapon).

[TennoPain]

Tho my fav is corrosive/viral still i must say it depends on faction so much you just cant go all around builds if u want to be TOP DMG

that being said i think BLAST is still not good and needs to be buffed. 

[SneakyErvin]

If the weapon has high damage aswell as decent status electric would be a good option, since no faction is resistant to it and the DoTs deal a good chunk of damage. Which means you either kill them outright or they die from the DoT right after. Or if you truely want a 1HK setup, any damage type that a faction is weak to (or simply Toxin versus corpus), since that gives you the highest straight up damage to make a true 1HK more probable.

Also to note, if you want to maximize damage and use a primary for your AoE then electric is a good option since it allows you to add even further large electric damage through shards if you dont need them for anyhting else.

[Lord_Drod]

16 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

But why are you even wasting slots for viral on your weapon when you have access to pets that will guarantee 99.99% uptime on viral? Especially now with access to Verglas Prime that can also access your bond for 1.2x extra crit damage if you have a riven for it (which isnt hard to get).

I am not sure it is quite that high.  I still use viral because I often will outpace my clones or kill faster than sentinel can prime.  It's kinda the same thing for nourish.  If I don't put viral on weapon, it's awful when nourish isn't up, which is annoying.  I don't use nourish anyway, that's another topic. 

I think I still use slash because it still seems to work fine for my gear.  I would not use corrosive, toxin or blast over viral unless they are immune or so low where it doesn't matter.  I don't see how gas will outpace with all the HP buffs either.  Won't you need stripping or viral spreading with that?

Edit: I haven't really tried some other gas/blast and rad.  Heat didn't seem as good when I switched, but it's probably more related to my gear.

Edited September 5 by Lord_Drod

[Lord_Drod]

8 hours ago, Venus-Venera said:

slash after health update? people!! alarm!!! test, test and test (simulation)! please don't be so clueless!

I'm sure it varies widely your entire kit.  I just did a casual 5 min mot SP test and was getting 150 KPM, but I'm also spreading mag, electric and heat (well and viral obviously).   

Edit: I guess I need to try blast/toxin gas/rad blast/rad with mag base and viral priming on companion, but it seems like many things could work.  I have not done much testing vs all the different factions, true.

Edited September 5 by Lord_Drod

[Xzorn]

3 hours ago, Venus-Venera said:

slash after health update? people!! alarm!!! test, test and test (simulation)! please don't be so clueless!

 

I personally specifically said pure physical Slash. Of which very few weapons meet the requirements for. Of course Rivens can help fix this.

OP didn't say they wanted an instant kill. They said they wanted a kill with one shot and I can kill any faction in one shot with Dread. My first suggestion was Electric since OP mentioned groups. Blast isn't great for one-shots. It needs to stack and Electric base radius it much larger than Gas for one proc.

Outside this, only faction modifiers will really help trying to one-shot something.

[Legatus_Rhino]

Are you looking for my primary weapon?

[dwqrf]

Il y a 4 heures, Xzorn a dit :

Blast isn't great for one-shots.

Inflicting Blast status with an AoE weapon will apply multiple AoE damage on enemies, that accumulate with damage taken, makes echo with adjacent targets, and explode then on death or at the end of the short status duration, affected by status damage. The more enemies hit in a tight place with a high aoe+high status chances and Blast makes a strong cascade effect, but from a one shot.

Don't try that with a AoE melee + Melee influence.

[Hayrack]

Past certain level, you are not one-shootting anything without various buffs, if enemy has 50% resistance to that damage type.

Moving on, you need elements that produce AoE and that enemies are weak to.

For slash, since you mentioned Aeolak, you actually need to use Hunter Munitions to dish out AoE slash, and preferably with multishot. From top of my head, the only weapon source that does AoE slash on it's own, is Astilla's bolt impact, but it also competes here with innate puncture and has lowish AoE.

Edited September 5 by Hayrack

[SneakyErvin]

17 hours ago, Lord_Drod said:

I am not sure it is quite that high.  I still use viral because I often will outpace my clones or kill faster than sentinel can prime.  It's kinda the same thing for nourish.  If I don't put viral on weapon, it's awful when nourish isn't up, which is annoying.  I don't use nourish anyway, that's another topic. 

I think I still use slash because it still seems to work fine for my gear.  I would not use corrosive, toxin or blast over viral unless they are immune or so low where it doesn't matter.  I don't see how gas will outpace with all the HP buffs either.  Won't you need stripping or viral spreading with that?

Edit: I haven't really tried some other gas/blast and rad.  Heat didn't seem as good when I switched, but it's probably more related to my gear.

It's mostly that you dont need viral for trash, so having it on the weapon eats up a more useful element that combines with viral on mobs where you benefit from viral. On ranged weapons with high crit and status blast + hunter muntions + elementalist is really strong and on melee blast + electric + elementalist or electric + elementalist is really strong. And on bosses where you might want viral, blast is extremely strong since it forces the explosion on every 4 hits due to the status cap on some of those bosses.

Then if you run mostly melee like I do, bringing Epitaph with viral covers all priming needs, since all it requires is a quick tap on LMB followed by chopping away with E on the keyboard.

Gas is decent, the two main issues is you need a weapon that hits hard naturally since it has wonky interaction with modded gas damage and the status wont stack beyond 10x and the stacks dont increase the damage of the ticks, just the area it deals damage to, so only works well in very dense missions, where blast is still better since it works versus single targets aswell due to how it detonates and restacks.

[GEN-Son_17]

On 2024-09-02 at 5:23 PM, Iceflame3029 said:

As title, which is the best element to one-shot a group of enemies with a high damage, high status chance but low fire rate weapon (e.g. Arca Plasmor or alt fire of Aeolak)?

 

edit: Since some people need more specification, I’ll provide more details.

Weapon: high base damage (>750), high status chance (>30%), ordinary crit chance (~20%), low fire rate (~1 shot/sec) and can hit multiple enemies in one shot.

Primer: Can use companion as primer (e.g. Verglas or Panzer Vulpaphyla).

Enemy: Better for steel path enemies but it’s okay if it only works for normal enemies. (Just specify what type and level of the enemy)

Scenario: Killing a group of enemies with only one shot from primary weapon. No matter killing with direct damage or DoT.

Gas is still king for this, especially with sniper rifles and bows. Proboscis Cernos is a great option, if modded correctly. Epitaph Prime's charged shot is almost too good with a gas element added. 

[Iceflame3029]

8小时前 , GEN-Son_17 说:

Gas is still king for this, especially with sniper rifles and bows. Proboscis Cernos is a great option, if modded correctly. Epitaph Prime's charged shot is almost too good with a gas element added. 

After some research, it seems gas is better than blast for my purposes. It has larger range and higher damage. Also it sticks around and deals damage even after enemies died.

[Lord_Drod]

On 2024-09-05 at 10:10 AM, SneakyErvin said:

It's mostly that you dont need viral for trash, so having it on the weapon eats up a more useful element that combines with viral on mobs where you benefit from viral. On ranged weapons with high crit and status blast + hunter muntions + elementalist is really strong and on melee blast + electric + elementalist or electric + elementalist is really strong. And on bosses where you might want viral, blast is extremely strong since it forces the explosion on every 4 hits due to the status cap on some of those bosses.

Then if you run mostly melee like I do, bringing Epitaph with viral covers all priming needs, since all it requires is a quick tap on LMB followed by chopping away with E on the keyboard.

Gas is decent, the two main issues is you need a weapon that hits hard naturally since it has wonky interaction with modded gas damage and the status wont stack beyond 10x and the stacks dont increase the damage of the ticks, just the area it deals damage to, so only works well in very dense missions, where blast is still better since it works versus single targets aswell due to how it detonates and restacks.

Yeah, I noticed blast was clearing corrupted faster than viral on mot SP.  I didn't even have a viral source.  I enjoyed your response, thanks!  Blast munitions is fun, but its hard to notice anything in exterms I guess which is why I was lazy getting to those other combos.  I do like epitaph for priming, but need to swap melee more...

Edited September 8 by Lord_Drod

[SneakyErvin]

16 hours ago, Lord_Drod said:

Yeah, I noticed blast was clearing corrupted faster than viral on mot SP.  I didn't even have a viral source.  I enjoyed your response, thanks!  Blast munitions is fun, but its hard to notice anything in exterms I guess which is why I was lazy getting to those other combos.  I do like epitaph for priming, but need to swap melee more...

Yeah anything works in exterms. For the other stuff, not only does something like a sentinel bring utility, but it is also a standalone AoE clearing machine with verglas and the bond that spreads statuses. It wrecks total havoc in places like survival/conjunction, and is a guarateed viral+heat primer for disruption.

Viral + Fired Up + Heat + Bond that adds 120% elemental on eximus kill + status spread = bonkers.

Oh and one massive bonus with Epitaph, it adds cold status even if you are modded for viral. So free extra crit damage aswell and an additional element for condition overload mechanics.