Physical Vs Elemental Damage Mods

[Wabafet]

Is there a reason that the elemental damage mods seem much better than the physical damage ones?

 

Piercing Hit gives a 30% boost to puncture damage for 9 drain, this only boosts existing puncture damage on the weapon.

 

Infected Clip gives a 90% boost to toxin damage for 9 drain, this gives an additional 90% of the weapon's combined damage as toxin damage.  At the same drain it gives 60% toxin damage.

 

Not only does the elemental mod give twice the bonus for the same drain it also applies to the weapon's full damage opposed to just a specific damage type.

Edited February 13, 2015 by Wabafet

[NobleParadox96]

well impact works against corpus shields, puncture for armor and slash for infested... element boosts the dmg but its useless without the physical dmg

[Hypernaut1]

I do wish they would balance mods and physical damage in a way where I may even WANT a pure physical damage weapon.

IMO, physical damage mods should add a higher % than elemental mods. Elemental still have 2 advantages in that they can be used on any weapon and their proc effects.

The least they could do is not make elemental damage stack, but leave the stacking for physical damage.

Edited February 13, 2015 by Hypernaut1

[NobleParadox96]

so for example if you proc a radiation effect on a corpus which attracts the other corpus to shoot that one corpus, that one has the shields which is enough for him to survive so like i said apply impact dmg and it dmg his shields enough for his allies to kill him

 

edit: can i delete this? i havent used the forums in a loong time

Edited February 13, 2015 by NobleParadox96

[Sygnano]

well impact works against corpus shields, puncture for armor and slash for infested... element boosts the dmg but its useless without the physical dmg

 

elemental dmg get a boost against specific units too

[Sixty5]

IPS mods are a lot more common than elemental ones, meaning that early on they have a niche.

Elemental mods are the real stars of the damage system though. They have a fancy combo system as well as rather interesting proc effects.

Furthermore elemental damage is much more specialised, hitting certain things much harder than IPS.

Basically, you aren't meant to use IPS mods late game anyway, so they've been balanced for early game.

On the other hand them event IPS mods are pretty nasty on the right weapons.

[Halser]

I hope IPS mods are rebalanced like the ice/shock mods were last update.

 

Even the +120% aren't really better than an elemental combination most of the times. They may show higher numbers, but when you account for weaknesses the elemental damage beats it.

[LisRestall]

The problem too with physical damage mods is that they only boost that specific damage type. Example, Fang Fussilade on Soma Prime is terrible because Soma Prime's slash damage is only 50% of it's overall base damage. While elemental mod will take the overall base damage and boost it accordingly.

 

Example, if Soma Prime only has 50% as slash damage, then Fang Fussilade effectiveness is halved (120% * .5) which is equal to 60% boost only.

Meanwhile, a 90% elemental mod will take the overall base damage so there's no reduction to it's effectiveness.

 

Just to be more clear, since Boltor Prime is 90% made of puncture damage, it makes Piercing Caliber 90% effective too thus we get 120% * .9 = 108% boost to the overall damage. Making Piercing Caliber viable to use unlike Fang Fussilade on Soma Prime.

[JakeRobber]

Even the +120% aren't really better than an elemental combination most of the times. They may show higher numbers, but when you account for weaknesses the elemental damage beats it.

 

I don't know.  Puncture is my personal favorite damage type (not proc) for Grineer.  It provides bonus damage to both armor types, with the bigger bonus against Ferrite (which is good, cause gunners are the toughest to take down).  I really only use the 120% Puncture mod on one-shot weapons, though (ex: Paris Prime and Opticor).

[Halser]

I don't know.  Puncture is my personal favorite damage type (not proc) for Grineer.  It provides bonus damage to both armor types, with the bigger bonus against Ferrite (which is good, cause gunners are the toughest to take down).  I really only use the 120% Puncture mod on one-shot weapons, though (ex: Paris Prime and Opticor).

that's the thing, though. Puncture only has a 25% bonus against alloy, 50% against ferrite.

 

Rad has 75% against alloy, corrosive has 75% against ferrite. it's a pretty substantial difference.

[Wabafet]

So unless there are some game mechanics that I just don't understand then elemental damage mods are far more effective than physical.

 

 

IPS mods are a lot more common than elemental ones, meaning that early on they have a niche.
...
Basically, you aren't meant to use IPS mods late game anyway, so they've been balanced for early game.

Hmm... That makes sense I suppose but it feels like a short-sighted design.  Even if they were the same percent damage boost as the elemental ones they still wouldn't be as useful.  Also, even at the beginning of the game those IPS mods are a bad investment to increase a portion of one's damage by 5% per fusion.  

 

I was more just wondering if I was missing something that made these mods more equal but it seems not.

[Darzk]

Honestly, the basic +30% Piercing mod and the like are holdovers from the Damage 1.0 system, where absolutely every build ever used Piercing Hit regardless of it being only 30%, because the damage added was armor-ignoring (and it was 30% of a whole back then, no I/P/S division on weapons).

 

For some reason they never got upgraded with the new system, and were simply replaced with the event mods. Likely something to do with DE trying to promote trading, which feels just like shoddy caretaking, imo.

[(PSN)Mazda_07_]

I believe they want you to mix and match

[DoomFruit]

IPS mods were utterly worthless when Damage 2.0 came out... with one exception. Accelerated Blast (fire rate + puncture damage) for shotguns worked the same way it did under Damage 1.0 in that the added puncture damage was a function of the weapon's base damage (like elemental mods).

This mod was then deliberately broken to be like the other IPS mods. Don't expect them to ever become useful.

Edited February 13, 2015 by DoomFruit