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Elemental Status + Elemental Damage Vs Elemental Damage


DovaahBear
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Hey guys,

So, you've got mods with status chance + damage and mods with pure elemental damage.

Now my question is, how do these two fare in terms of damage?

Lets take a popular weapon: The Boltor Prime.

In an average game in a T3S, what is the best to use? What are the advantages?

I know that status chance proc's the elemental effect of the element. But how important are these procs against enemies?
Do these proc's really make up for the loss of raw elemental damage?

Cheers!


EDIT:

With the information provided by several good people. I've made a compilation of the data that has been gathered in this post. This might make it easier.

This is a simple explanation by Darzk, credits to him for helping me out!
 

 

 

While weapon A will have all 5 procs, the chance of each one occurring isn't 20%. The chance for each proc is based on the % damage done by that damage type.

 

So lets look at a simple example, Boltor Prime with no mods. Its got a 10% proc chance, and a chance to proc only Impact and Puncture. It doesn't do any Slash damage so it can't proc Slash. This does not mean that it will proc Puncture 5% of the time and Impact 5% of the time; it will proc Puncture far more often. This is because it deals more Puncture damage than Impact.

 

So we look at the damage breakdown and see that it deals 90% Puncture damage and 10% Impact damage. This correlates to the proc chance - 90% of the procs will be Puncture, and 10% will be Impact. Combined with a 10% chance for a proc to happen, this means that we have a 9% chance for a Puncture proc, and a 1% chance of an Impact proc.

 

This 'simple' distribution works the same for elemental weapons with added elements. It also works if you add less than 100% total of all different elements to an IPS weapon.

 

If a weapon deals exclusively physical or elemental damage [or an IPS weapon with less than 100% elements added], the chance of a proc being that type is equal to the proportional amount of damage done by that type.

 

But when we add more than 100% elements to an I/P/S weapon, the Impact, Puncture, and Slash procs must add up to half of the total procs, and the added elements share the other half of the procs.

 

So say we add 180% Corrosive and 90% Cold to our 10% proc chance Boltor Prime. Now we're dealing 2.7% Impact, 24.32% Puncture and Cold, and 48.6% Corrosive. But this does NOT equal the chances for a proc to be those elements, because the IPS mods must proc half the time. So instead we see 10% Impact and 90% Puncture half the time, so 5% Impact and 45% Puncture, and we see 66.66% Corrosive and 33.33% Cold half the time, so 33.33% Corrosive and 16.66% Cold.

 

If a weapon deals both physical and more than +100% elemental damage, at least half of the time the proc must be physical. The type of physical or elemental proc is determined by the proportional amount of damage done by that type.


____________________________________________________________________________________________________


Proc'ing any of the secondary effects of any elemental come before the damage. This is according to the given information and can be different. This might also change in the coming updates.

Example:

Weapon A hits with corrosive proc

Hit > Corrosive armor reduction > Damage applied AFTER the reduction of armor

This is also true for Viral

Hit > Viral reduction of health > Damage AFTER reduction of health.

Keep in mind this may change.
 

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

TL;DR

Weapons proc is based on the damage of the element
Weapon proc comes before damage
Not all weapon have viable proc rate for elemental chance builds.



This post might not contain perfect information and is purely based on the given information below. I will try to adjust accordingly to the new information found by me.

Cheers.

Edited by DovaahBear
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Viral or Corrosion are both very powerful proc effects at higher levels as they can do thousands of points of damage just by going off, but for that to be viable you need a fairly high proc chance to begin with. Other effects are quite viable for CC; Electricity, Blast, Cold, Radiation all spring to mind. 

If you don't find yourself needing CC, or you aren't fighting enemies that are a high enough level to take advantage of Viral/Corrosive, then you are probably fine to stick to your higher damage mods. 

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Elements are not the only damage types that proc either. Slash, Impact and puncture all have different behaviors that result from successful proc'ing.

 

Which is best for which situation? Well that depends on the enemy, there level the situation to a lesser degree. Some damage types are weaknesses for some enemy types and therefore do additional dmg. For instance Viral damage does +75% more damage against Cloned Flesh, which include, for Grineer - all humanoid Grineers, including bosses and Corrupted Vor.

 

The damage mechanics are actually a bit more complex than they seem. All about it here....

http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Damage_2.0

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Proc'ing doesn't always do more damage. Proc'ing is an additional behavior that happens on a probability. Corrosive proc permanently cuts armor by 25% and it stacks with each proc.

 

Viral proc cuts health down by 50% but it doesn't stack anymore after a patch and it is no longer permanent.

 

Radiation proc causes confusion so enemies shoot each other.

 

Magnetic proc cuts down shields and is great for corpus.

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What wave is considered high enough for the utility of elements to be more important than the raw damage of elemental damage mods?

It really depends on where you start and the weapons you are using.

 

I would say in general whenever it takes more than about 6 bullets to kill from an automatic weapon, or 3 from a semi-auto weapon, or 1 from a bow.  Kinda a time vs ammo issue, the longer it takes you to kill enemies the more important the procs become.

 

For me personally the weapons I take with me around 35 minutes or 35 waves in T3 is where I start to notice a proc cutting down the time it takes to kill stuff.  Before that everything dies so fast it doesn't seem to matter.

IF I was geared differently or preferred different weapons that story might change.

BUT in general almost anything I do in the star chart (because I rarely go past about 20 minutes in survival and defense/interception rewards come before stuff gets too out of hand) then damage > procs.  But if you are going long, AND you have a high proc chance weapon, OR even a low damage high ROF weapon then the status boost mods become more powerful.

 

Sorry but there isn't a very good clear and concise answer since there are so many variables, like enemy type, level, weapon.  I personally think the weapon has more to do with it than enemy type.

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I would say in general whenever it takes more than about 6 bullets to kill from an automatic weapon, or 3 from a semi-auto weapon, or 1 from a bow.  Kinda a time vs ammo issue, the longer it takes you to kill enemies the more important the procs become.

^^ This!

 

Pair this with modding weapons with damage types that are weaknesses for the enemies you are about to face and you will do very well at higher levels. Remember know your weapons and know your enemies. 

 

Viral+heat or Corrosive+heat does a collective 100% additional dmg to Grineer. 

 

Viral and Radiation does a collective 125% more damage to Void Corrupted.

 

Gas and Heat does similar added dmg to Infested. 

 

Put those damage types on weapons that have been modded for high proc chances when you face the appropriate enemy type.

Edited by RawGritz
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Depends on the weapon, the elementals you've added, and the intended duration of the mission.

 

Using the example you provided, pure damage is WAAAAY more important than proc rate.

 

First off, Boltor Prime doesn't have the greatest proc rate. It's also an I/P/S weapon, meaning that 50% of any procs will be Impact (stagger), Puncture (-30% damage) or Slash (bleed). The I/P/S weighting means that the majority of those procs will be Puncture, which is by far the worst proc of all the elements. 

 

Second, you stated 'an average game' which implies not lasting too long. In which case, enemies are going to die in a few hits, so the procs wont matter that much. Surprisingly, if we were going endless, we would want to build Viral instead of Corrosive (and use 4x CP auras), and then the procs will matter more (although I still wouldn't waste damage for it because of all the wasted IPS procs).

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Thanks guys!

This will help not only me but others that will google this aswell :P.

My last question is,

Lets say we use Paris Prime, with corrosive. I'll shoot one arrow and it will proc, will the damage calculator first take off the diminished armor and then give me a number? Or will it first do damage, then take armor off and then with my second shot I will do increased damage..

So:

Hit > Armor reduction > Damage calculated

or 

Hit > Damage calculated > Armor reduction



EDIT: Isn't every gun I/P/S? with an exception of a few? I am talking about primary now.

 

EDIT 2: If the above is true, doesn't this mean that almost all weapons are kinda useless with proc builds? Because of the fact that it is using IPS too? Meaning that, raw elemental damage is more reliant?

Edited by DovaahBear
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Hit > Armor reduction > Damage calculated

or 

Hit > Damage calculated > Armor reduction

I'm not totally sure. They keep changing it. It's particularly noticable on Viral. It used to be that the proc came after the damage, so some times you wouldn't even see an enemy's health drop, if you did less damage than the proc removed. 

 

Now, the proc happens first, and you deal damage to the halved health pool. I would assume Corrosive works the same way, so I would guess the first option.

 

EDIT 2: If the above is true, doesn't this mean that almost all weapons are kinda useless with proc builds? Because of the fact that it is using IPS too? Meaning that, raw elemental damage is more reliant?

 

Well, yes and no. For example Latron Prime and Grinlok seem to have a good proc rate, and seem to be good candidates for a proc build. But really at most they would only have a 50% chance of getting an elemental proc per shot, so its really only effective when those procs are devestating, such as building Gas/Electric against Corpus.

 

However it's not as big a deal on weapons like the Grakata, which might be limited to 67% proc per bullet, thus 33.5% elemental, but it spits out bullets fast enough that you can still get something stupid like 25 procs in a second, so 12.5 elemental procs, which is more than enough to justify building for them, and doing something like Rad for CC or Viral to drop health before an ability/weapon swap or Corrosive to strip armor away.

 

And then there's weapons like the AkBronco Prime which will theoretically spit out 16.5 procs in a single shot, so ~8 elemental procs. Which seems just incredibly overpowered.

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The concept is right but the actual proc distribution is wrong.

 

While weapon A will have all 5 procs, the chance of each one occurring isn't 20%. The chance for each proc is based on the % damage done by that damage type.

 

So lets look at a simple example, Boltor Prime with no mods. Its got a 10% proc chance, and a chance to proc only Impact and Puncture. It doesn't do any Slash damage so it can't proc Slash. This does not mean that it will proc Puncture 5% of the time and Impact 5% of the time; it will proc Puncture far more often. This is because it deals more Puncture damage than Impact.

 

So we look at the damage breakdown and see that it deals 90% Puncture damage and 10% Impact damage. This correlates to the proc chance - 90% of the procs will be Puncture, and 10% will be Impact. Combined with a 10% chance for a proc to happen, this means that we have a 9% chance for a Puncture proc, and a 1% chance of an Impact proc.

 

This 'simple' distribution works the same for elemental weapons with added elements. It also works if you add less than 100% total of all different elements to an IPS weapon.

 

If a weapon deals exclusively physical or elemental damage [or an IPS weapon with less than 100% elements added], the chance of a proc being that type is equal to the proportional amount of damage done by that type.

 

But when we add more than 100% elements to an I/P/S weapon, the Impact, Puncture, and Slash procs must add up to half of the total procs, and the added elements share the other half of the procs.

 

So say we add 180% Corrosive and 90% Cold to our 10% proc chance Boltor Prime. Now we're dealing 2.7% Impact, 24.32% Puncture and Cold, and 48.6% Corrosive. But this does NOT equal the chances for a proc to be those elements, because the IPS mods must proc half the time. So instead we see 10% Impact and 90% Puncture half the time, so 5% Impact and 45% Puncture, and we see 66.66% Corrosive and 33.33% Cold half the time, so 33.33% Corrosive and 16.66% Cold.

 

If a weapon deals both physical and more than +100% elemental damage, at least half of the time the proc must be physical. The type of physical or elemental proc is determined by the proportional amount of damage done by that type.

Edited by Darzk
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