Damage Type For Grineer Questions

[(PSN)B0XMAN517]

I'm familiar with how the different elements work, but my question is in regards to how much you should dump into radiation damage.

 

Last I looked (I could be wrong) every Grineer unit has armor, even the mainly flesh units have a little armor. This leaves me a little confused as to how the whole damage armor mechanics work. 

 

If every unit has armor are we ever actually hitting flesh? If not, it seems like viral damage would be wasted (other than for status procs) and just stacking 4 heat/electric mods for pure radiation would be the way to go.

 

If anyone could shed some light on this, I would appreciate it very much.

[Kai_Shiba]

Viral and Radiation for grineer is what I use

 

Pretty much because Viral hurts cloned flesh making light enemies not a threat.

 

And Radiation to deal with those pesky Bombards and Napalms.

Edited December 31, 2015 by KJRenz

[AdunSaveMe]

As far as I remember, as long as a target has armour, any damage it takes is under the effect of that resistance.

 

So, bonus damage to flesh won't have an effect on an enemy with a yellow health bar. I think.

[(PSN)CoolD2108]

Nonononono. Corrusion. Nothing else.

Radiation has bonus damage but corrusion actually IGNORES part of the armor while adding a dbuff as well, what results in much better damage. (This applys to armor in generall. Be it bombards or evrything else. Giving the smaller boni still the better impact on them.)

Viral is status aside pointless as your damage is fully migrated into the armor as long as they have armor at all (meaning no viral without 4x corossive projection or augumented banshee or ash)

Just going with corrosion is your best bet in random runs and viral for tactical runs.

Edited December 31, 2015 by (PS4)CoolD2108

[(PSN)B0XMAN517]

Nonononono. Corrusion. Nothing else.

Radiation has bonus damage but corrusion actually IGNORES part of the armor while adding a dbuff as well, what results in much better damage. (This applys to armor in generall. Be it bombards or evrything else. Giving the smaller boni still the better impact on them.)

Viral is status aside pointless as your damage is fully migrated into the armor as long as they have armor at all (meaning no viral without 4x corossive projection or augumented banshee or ash)

Just going with corrosion is your best bet in random runs and viral for tactical runs.

Corrosion bypassing part of armor is news to me.

[Kai_Shiba]

Nonononono. Corrusion. Nothing else.

Radiation has bonus damage but corrusion actually IGNORES part of the armor while adding a dbuff as well, what results in much better damage. (This applys to armor in generall. Be it bombards or evrything else. Giving the smaller boni still the better impact on them.)

Viral is status aside pointless as your damage is fully migrated into the armor as long as they have armor at all (meaning no viral without 4x corossive projection or augumented banshee or ash)

Just going with corrosion is your best bet in random runs and viral for tactical runs.

 

You've got it wrong. It's nothing BUT damage. There is no bonus to having corrosion. The proc is what gets rid of the armor.

 

 

Bombards and Napalms use Alloy armor, that's why I said Radiation. 

 

Viral is for the weak light enemies.

 

Everything else just dies.

 

There is no side thing of Corrosion ignoring armor. That's entirely false. 

Edited December 31, 2015 by KJRenz

[(PSN)CoolD2108]

Corrosion bypassing part of armor is news to me.

That's what i heard from multiple sources. And even if its only the status... armor reduction >>>>> confusion (if you wanna kill something below lvl 583 that is)

There was this guy a while ago that did heavy testing on thos theory that confirmed it as well. The CC just doesn't cut vs a percentual ripp of a scaling damage reduction.

Edited January 1, 2016 by (PS4)CoolD2108

[Azamagon]

*sigh*

 

Without 4x Corrosive Projection the best combo is either Radiation+Toxic (my best recommendation as "general purpose" for Grineer, but it's even good against Corpus), Radiation+VIral (less recommended though, unless your weapon has high status chance and RoF, Viral Procs are great then), or Corrosive+Cold (not highly recommended unless you know you mainly facing tough Ferrite Armor enemies). That and lots of Puncture in all cases, if you can.

Extra note: If you know you are facing ONLY Alloy Armor units, Radiation+Cold is highly recommended. ONLY Ferrite = Corrosive+Heat

 

With 4x Corrosive Projection you should always go Viral+Heat (and Slash if you can).

 

Question is: Why? Why mainly Radiation+Toxic? But everyone else recommends Radiation+Viral?

 

Well, all damagetypes that has bonusdamage versus a certain armortype not only deals bonus damage to the specific armortype in question, it also ignores that armor by the same amount. Yes, they doubledip in effectiveness!

 

* Radiation deals 75% bonus versus Alloy Armor, meaning it deals 75% bonus damage AND ignores 75% of the armor.

* Cold deals 25% bonus versus Alloy Armor, meaning it deals 25% bonus damage AND ignores 25% of the armor.

* Corrosive deals 75% bonus versus Ferrite Armor, meaning it deals 75% bonus damage AND ignores 75% of the armor. Corrosive status procs also furthermore permanently reduces the amount of armor on the target (both Alloy and Ferrite).

* Toxic deals 25% bonus versus Ferrite Armor, meaning it deals 25% bonus damage AND ignores 25% of the armor.

* Puncture deals 25% bonus versus Ferrite Armor, meaning it deals 25% bonus damage AND ignores 25% of the armor. Puncture does likewise for Alloy Armor, but only 15%.

 

Viral, unless the enemy is unarmored due to 4xCP, only deals 50% bonus against all Grineer, but ignores NO armor at all. This is far less valuable than even Puncture, Cold and Toxic damage, at least on higher levels where armor start to get really annoying.

 

And since the biggest and tankiest threats tend to wear Alloy Armor, Radiation is the #1 element to get on your weapon against Grineer. Just make sure you have at least one other element that is good against Ferrite armor (Puncture or Toxic), otherwise cannonfodder might get a slight bit too annoying.

 

So, that's why you should probably generally mod for Radiation+Toxic+Puncture against Grineer (in particular when playing with randoms, since then Corrosive Projection is far less likely to be used). That simply grants the best raw damage.

 

EDIT: This is at least from my own testing, I've always had better results with Toxic compared to Viral. If someone can truly prove me wrong on this, please explain :)

 

EDIT 2: Oh yeah, if you don't mind swapping weapons, you can also mod them like this (Note, I don't mention Puncture, since it should preferably be in there passively as the main base damagetype, unless you have an elemental weapon of course):

 

Setup 1:

Weapon 1 = All out on Radiation, + some Cold if you have spare room for it. Alloy Armor killer.

Weapon 2 = All out on Corrosive + some Heat if you have spare room for it. Ferrite Armor killer.

 

Setup 2:

Weapon 1 = Radiation+Toxic. Mainly the Alloy Armor killer, but can still do SOMETHING against Ferrite Armor

Weapon 1 = Corrosive+Cold. Mainly the Ferrite Armor killer, but can still do SOMETHING against Alloy Armor

 

Also please note that if you have a very high status chance weapon with very high RoF (like Prisma Grakata), modding in Corrosive and/or Viral in your combos is still a good idea, since both of those procs are VERY good against ALL Grineer.

 

My final tip: Experiment! :D

Edited January 1, 2016 by Azamagon

[Swailwort]

It all depends on what weapon you are using.

If you are using a normal straight damage weapon, use Radiation+Viral

If you are using a crit one, you would normally be able to have one combo (radiation)

If you have a high status weapon, Corrosive is the best thing possible to use.

[jonnin]

my most common setup is corrosive & cold.   Cold is "pretty good" on flesh and can also poke at shields and oddly works on alloy armor to boot.    Corrosive does ok against common armor.   Its a good middle of the road combo that works in void and grineer maps well, and is ok on all but the toughest corpus maps,  but its too general purpose for some top tier content.   You can go a long, long way with this setup.  

 

one thing to keep in mind is your weapon's damage type.   If your gun has loads of puncture, you can use puncture mods and get some more armor chewing from that.   If it has loads of slash, you can do that instead of or alongside the cold.  

 

There are lots of ways to approach it.  You can make an anti-allow secondary weapon and run the above for everything else.  You can make an anti-alloy primary and be sub-par against more common but much weaker targets.    There is no right answer --- several strategies work well.

[Yazeth]

That's what i heard from multiple sources. And even if its only the status... armor reduction >>>>> confusion (if you wanna kill something below lvl 583 that is)

There was this guy a while ago that did heavy testing on thos theory that confirmed it as well. The CC just doesn't cut vs a percentual ripp of a scaling damage reduction.

The armour reduction is not viable on weapons with low status chances, and even then the weapon may have other damage types that can interfere with the procs. Plus, high status weapons that can dish tons of damage are rare.

For Grineer, you should go for Radiation first and Viral second. If you are using a crit weapon then just go full Radiation then. If your team is running 4x CP then go full Viral instead.