Viral Damage Vs Radiation Damage

[(PSN)Sweno4028]

Is viral damage as effective as radiation damage against grineer heavy units? According to the codex most grineer heavy cloned flesh rating is about the same as the alloy n ferrite armor rating n in sum cases cloned flesh is higher

[Darzk]

To K.I.S.S.:

Viral damage gets+75% damage against all Grineer units that have flesh.

 

Radiation damage gets +75% damage against all Grineer units with Alloy armor AND ignores 75% of that armor when calculating reductions.

 

Because the armor reduction is the largest component of a high level Grineer's effective health, Radiation deals much more than Viral against Alloy Armored units. Against Ferrite armor, it deals around 60% of what Viral does, but much less than Corrosive, which gets the 75% damage bonus and 75% armor ignore against Ferrite armor.

 

Edit:

Example: Damage dealt against a level 50 Bombard (~2500 Alloy armor)

1000 Viral damage = 187.5 damage

1000 Rad damage = 567.6 damage (more than 3x the damage of Viral)

 

Edit2:

Corrosive is actually pretty good on a weapon with a decent proc rate (meaning either decent status high RoF or high status/shot). Using the example above, 1000 Corrosive damage

With no procs = 107 dmg 

After 1 proc = 146 dmg

After 2 procs = 196.7 dmg

So it only takes 2 procs before you're hitting harder than Viral would. Rad will still be better purely against Alloy enemies (it would take around 6+ procs to equal Rad's damage) but it will be much better against Ferrite, and both Grineer and Void has some Ferrite armored enemies mixed in, even if they're not as common as Rad at higher levels.

Edited September 18, 2015 by Darzk

[taiiat]

against a Lv60, say, Bombard:

Radiation Damage is 425% more effective than a Damage Type that has no Positive or Negative.

the problem here, is that Armor reduces Damage. Damage Types that have a bonus against Armor, also face less Armor.

Radiation deals 75% more Damage to Alloy Armor, and also recieves 1/4 the Damage Reduction of a neutral Damage Type.

what this means, is that Viral Damage, for Damage, is actually complete garbage. the Status is always nice ofcourse, but the actual Damage you'll get is very poor.

- - - - -

when facing Armored Enemies, the Damage Type with the highest bonus to it's Armor is the only Damage Type to use. period.

any other Damage you add on after that is for dealing with other Enemies or for Status.

for Grineer, the usually recommended Damage Types to use are Radiation/Toxin. most of the higher Level Grineer are all using Alloy Armor, only a couple use Ferrite Armor.

however, Corrosive Ice is also good, just the other way round, focusing on Ferrite primarily, with a secondary for Alloy Armor.

if your Weapon has good Status, then creating Viral instead of leaving Toxin can be beneficial for the Health cut.

Edit:

d'aww, Darzk beat me to it.

Edited September 18, 2015 by taiiat

[LifeNine]

I'm not exactly sure of the math, but as far as I know radiation damage will be better against Grineer with alloy armour, but not as good as viral against Grineer with ferrite armour because there is no bonuses there.

 

The reason it's like that is because the bonus damage done to armour (radiation for alloy and corrosive for ferrite) lowers the armour value in the calculation if I remember correctly. Armour reduces the damage you do by a lot, so reducing the armour value in the calculation will make you do more damage than just doing more damage to health.

 

For more information check the wiki page: http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Armor

[X5934-078FR1]

Viral is all about the proc. If an enemy has 100 000 health, viral proc on first hit can effectively hit for 50 000 damage on proc. No other damage type can come close to that.

Radiation on high level enemies serves as crowd control, viral as the damage dealer, but viral works better in team play where other Tenno have different damage types.

Edited September 18, 2015 by X5934-078FR1

[Naftal]

Viral is all about the proc. If an enemy has 100 000 health, viral proc on first hit can effectively hit for 50 000 damage on proc. No other damage type can come close to that.

Radiation on high level enemies serves as crowd control, viral as the damage dealer.

But they regain the hp if the buff ends. That's why it's much better to think of viral proc as a double damage buff against that target instead of it dealing half of their hp as damage.

[X5934-078FR1]

But they regain the hp if the buff ends. That's why it's much better to think of viral proc as a double damage buff against that target instead of it dealing half of their hp as damage.

 

No they regain their maximum HP allowed back, not the current HP.

 

Example:

 

Enemy HP:100000 / 100000

After viral: 50000 / 50000

Viral wears off: 50000 / 100000

 

Well, that is how it used to work. It changed ?

Edited September 18, 2015 by X5934-078FR1

[Naftal]

No they regain their maximum HP allowed back, not the current HP.

 

Example:

 

Enemy HP:100000 / 100000

After viral: 50000 / 50000

Viral wears off: 50000 / 100000

 

Well, that is how it used to work. It changed ?

No, their hp percentage stays the same.

After viral: 50000/50000

Viral wears off: 100000/100000

After viral: 45000/50000

Viral wears off: 90000/100000

After viral: 25000/50000

Viral wears off: 50000/100000

[X5934-078FR1]

No, their hp percentage stays the same.

After viral: 50000/50000

Viral wears off: 100000/100000

After viral: 45000/50000

Viral wears off: 90000/100000

After viral: 25000/50000

Viral wears off: 50000/100000

So sad

 

Update 17.2 changed Virus's mechanics.  It now restores health to enemies after its proc expires.  However, it now reduces based on the enemy's current health rather than its max, making it effective even when the enemy's health is below 50% of its maximum.

 

That said, if it takes you longer than 6 seconds to kill an enemy, Its going to be a long day. and every new proc should refresh the timer I guess

Edited September 18, 2015 by X5934-078FR1

[Naftal]

So sad

 

Update 17.2 changed Virus's mechanics.  It now restores health to enemies after its proc expires.  However, it now reduces based on the enemy's current health rather than its max, making it effective even when the enemy's health is below 50% of its maximum.

I don't think it has worked the way you described after the stacking viral procs was nerfed shortly after damage 2.0 was introduced.

[X5934-078FR1]

I don't think it has worked the way you described after the stacking viral procs was nerfed shortly after damage 2.0 was introduced.

Well, that post got nothing to do with stacking

[Naftal]

Well, that post got nothing to do with stacking

No it doesn't but I don't remember seeing enemy hp bars dropping after viral proc ends in a long, long time. It was presumably changed with the stacking.

[X5934-078FR1]

No it doesn't but I don't remember seeing enemy hp bars dropping after viral proc ends in a long, long time. It was presumably changed with the stacking.

As my post says, it restores back, where you read dropping?

[Naftal]

As my post says, it restores back, where you read dropping?

Your post says 17.2 changed it.

[X5934-078FR1]

Your post says 17.2 changed it.

 

It did change, check the update and build notes.

 

"Fixed an issue causing targets hit with Viral procs to have permanent incorrect health values in Missions."

[Naftal]

It did change, check the update and build notes.

 

"Fixed an issue causing targets hit with Viral procs to have permanent incorrect health values in Missions."

Ah, right. I've missed that. I have to test how it works after that change.

[(PSN)Sweno4028]

Thank you to everyone that replied it helped a lot

[(PSN)Gravewar347]

4 corrosive projections and viral damage. If you're doing something g where it actually matters then you need to take out armor completely.