High levels enemies: Corrosion or virus?

[Wolfwaffe]

What's better for facing high-level enemies, corrosive damage or viral damage? Viral is nice since it has a chance to cut enemy health in half (i think it sometimes causes instakill if enemy had less than half HP left, correct me if i'm wrong on that), but that ain't much help if you only deal 1 damage from red headshot crits because enemy has armor value of near infinity.

[Stratego89]

If you're against armored enemies and don't have 4xCP in your squad, corrosive. If you're against armored enemies and DO, viral.

If you're against un-armored enemies, always viral.

Also viral doesn't instakill ever. When it procs it halves the max amount of health an enemy has. If they were at full health, you proc'd viral, and did half their current health's worth of damage and let it run out, they'd have half their max health remaining when the proc ends. If they're at half health and you proc viral- the current amount of health they'll have is equal to half of what they had remaining when viral proc'd (so 1/4 of their total health in this case).

[torint_man]

Against void, go corrosive due to heavy gunners and ancients being the main health tanks. Also consider: if a damage type does extra damage to an armor type, it will ignore a percent of armor equivalent to its damage bonus. Corrosive damage will do +75% against ferrite, and will ignore 75% of the armor involved in the armor damage reduction calculation. 

Against grineer, corrosive is going to be better than radiation, as significantly more units have ferrite armor than alloy. Also on any sort of reliable status weapon, corrosive will be king due to armor reduction against any bombards or napalms.

Viral is only going to be better if you have at least three corrosive projections in the team.

[Caobie]

To my knowledge viral has no chance to instakill. My thoughts on topic are use a good status sidearm to corrode them then switch to a viral primary to finish once their armor is gone but that's only if it's a tough individual. On groups though I prefer corrosive over all else unless infestation or corpus only missions

Edited May 20, 2016 by Caobie

[ranks21]

you have to understand viral at high levels>> yes corrosive strips armor but viral kills  big difference. in Rathuum endurance where the enemies were all armor gas was on my secondary and viral/toxin  on my melee. and even at level 500+ after an initial slam attack to get the viral/toxin on the enemy going that armor meant nothing as the enemies had no health to support that armor and most of the time it was 5-6 hits at most standing and quick melee or ohk with a slide attack.

while quick melee-ing I clearly seen the red(health) diminishing under the armor (yellow) and most of the time the enemies are dead with half their armor still intact. you can catch a rhythm in killing with quick melee where each hit is a ohk but it will  require a frame that sets up finishers like excal.

my weapon of choice  is Orthos Prime  + shimmering blight>> jump slam for viral spread and downward finisher = dead level 500 enemies. takes practice but highly doable and effective.

Edited May 20, 2016 by ranks21

[ashrah]

for high lvl grineer corrosive projection is more important than u gear.... all 4 player must have it than u use viral .....if u play solo corrosive is better