Modding for maximum damage (Armor vs health)

[Sapphir3Flame]

All this time I've been modding against the armor type of the enemies I've been fighting (referring to Grineer here), radiation when fighting Grineer and magnetic when fighting Corpus. It has generally worked for me, but I'd like to understand the interactions between armor and health types more. All I know is that armor reduces the damage dealt to health, but I'm not sure how the different multipliers are calculated relative to each other.

So generally is it more advantageous to mod versus the health type or the armor type of the enemy we're fighting? Like say against Grineer in general would specializing against heavy units with Radiation be better (if modding against armor gives more damage) versus specializing against all of them with Viral (if modding against health gives more damage)? Against Corpus is it better to strip shields faster with Magnetic or would using Toxin be more efficient across the board?

By the way I'm referring to "regular" non-endgame levels with a max of only around 40-50. Not the special cases where people fight level 100-200 enemies (which I'm guessing would be 4CP anyway, and still far beyond my reach).

[Cradicias]

In general, at late game? You want one weapon with Blast and Corrosive and another with Viral and Radiation. Hit those 4 types and you can handle most anything. Viral is good for just everything as it instantly halves health and Radiation on top will give you some friendly fire support. Blast will knock enemies down, giving you much needed crowd control and Corrosive will lower enemy armor permanently. Personally, I use Blast and Corrosive on my Ignis for a room sweeping crowd control.

[Riaxyron]

I will try to answer this to the best of my knowledge.

 

For the Grineer :

It is much better to mod against their armour more so than their health most of the time. Therefore, for the heavier units it is Radiation primarily and Toxin alongside to help with their health to a certain degree. Modding towards their health with Viral is not beneficial as you would only have Heat or Electric left as a secondary damage type of which their armour resists heavily. If modding for Viral, then you need a four CP setup to go with it.

For the Corpus :

Modding towards their health is fine with Toxin as the element and not Gas. Toxin innately ignores their shields which if you have the Mutalist Cernos can test with to prove, Gas on the other hand would require you to have a high status weapon to trigger its radial effect. Modding towards their shields is not wrong either in anyway. So if you cannot mod for Magnetic then mod for Toxin as it will help against most Corpus units the only ones not affected by toxin would be the robotic units such as Moas, Ospreys etc.

 

Viral would work well with a high damage status weapon same goes for Gas which would allow you to mod for health and some crowd-control. Critical damage weapons benefit from modding against their shields and armour; Toxin works here as well due to its interaction with shields.

Edited June 23, 2016 by Riaxyron
More information to aid persons

[Azrael]

37 minutes ago, Sapphir3Flame said:

So generally is it more advantageous to mod versus the health type or the armor type of the enemy we're fighting?

If there is an armor type, and that armor has not been completely stripped via corrosive procs or 4xCP, then it is always better to mod against the armor type. Viral and toxin and heat don't do well against armored grineer because the armor reduces the damage by a huge amount. Note that armor reduces ALL damage, but it reduces a damage type less if it does extra damage against that armor type.

This is actually really deceptive, because the wiki shows a "+75%" against grineer health from viral. To be clear: the ONLY time you will get all of this bonus is when the armor is completely gone.

Personally I use corrosive against grineer (I like status weapons though), and radiation does well against the heavy units.

[(PSN)EnormeMostro]

Don't waste time to try to understand the numbers or dmg type. With 30 000 dmg blast, you can kill lv100 enemy by one hit.

And if you have 100 dmg only, even if u use radiation dmg, you still take forever to kill this lv100 grineer.

 

I use 100% viral on all primary weapons, and no problem from MR0 to MR21. All "dmg type, what stance... to use" discussion is a waste of time.

[Azrael]

23 minutes ago, (PS4)EnormeMostro said:

30 000 dmg blast,

What weapon are you using?

Blast is rarely a good damage type to do. It's hard to imagine you are one-shotting level 100 bombards with blast damage.

[VKhaun]

For Grineer you want to mod vs armor. Typically Corrosive/Cold is ideal for the level range you specified. Corrosive getting a heavy bonus to ferrite and Cold against alloy.

Corpus are a bit of a puzzle. I'd love to hear what the math guru's have to say about anti-Corpus setups for shooting at two kinds of health, two kinds of shield, plus or minus ferrite on a few units PLUS all of those things in different proprotions of high/low health vs high/low shields. Then what's optimal is probably different based on what your weapon's base damage...

...but TBH I'm over thinking it. Corpus under lv60 are pansies. I'd probably just leave Corrosive/Cold on my weapon to make sure I could kill Oxcium Ospreys and Bursa (ferrite + robot + regular shields) very easily and not have to swap weapons for the boss. Corrosive/Cold would only struggle with proto shields but since techs are mostly health and nullifiers are made out of paper mache there are no dangerous enemies with a large amount of Proto Shield that I can think of. Capture targets maybe? Meh.

Edited June 23, 2016 by VKhaun

[PikeOrShield]

For regular stuff with armor, it will always be better to mod for bonus damage to an armor type.  For example: Corrosive damage deals +75% more damage to ferrite armored targets while viral has a +75% bonus to cloned flesh (basically all Grineer).  However, corrosive damage has the added bonus of ignoring 75% of ferrite armor in addition to its +75% bonus damage.  The same armor ignore property applies to radiation on alloy armor.

Damage type for Corpus is really personal preference.

[CrudShuzKong]

This is what i found to be best:

• Grineer, corrupted:
  • If you have 4x corrosive projection: viral+radiation damage (status for super high level)
  • No 4x CP:
    • Lower levels: corrosive + blast damage or viral+radiation damage (not much difference)
    • Higher levels: corrosive + blast status (to strip amror)
• Infested: corrosive + blast damage (good vs all taky enemies)
• Corpus:
  • With 4x CP: Magnetic+gas status or electric + gas status (depending if you want to decimate shields or electric CC)
  • No 4x CP: one weapon magnetic + gas status, one weapons corrosive + blast status

[Sapphir3Flame]

Thanks for the info guys, so the consensus is that modding for armour gives much better damage than modding for health.

 

2 hours ago, VKhaun said:

For Grineer you want to mod vs armor. Typically Corrosive/Cold is ideal for the level range you specified. Corrosive getting a heavy bonus to ferrite and Cold against alloy.

That's interesting. I thought Radiation as the main element would be better as heavy Grineer at that level get pretty tough. I've been running Radiation/Toxin for Grineer with Radiation for heavies and Toxin for the smaller bonus against ferrite (I 1-shot ferrite Grineer anyway). Is it because of the potential to proc Corrosive or simply because a majority still have ferrite instead of alloy? My main primary is the Hek by the way.

 

1 hour ago, CrudShuzKong said:

• Corpus:
  • With 4x CP: Magnetic+gas status or electric + gas status (depending if you want to decimate shields or electric CC)
  • No 4x CP: one weapon magnetic + gas status, one weapons corrosive + blast status

Just wondering, I thought none of the Corpus have armour that CP would work on (except bosses)?

[VKhaun]

1 hour ago, Sapphir3Flame said:

That's interesting. I thought Radiation as the main element would be better as heavy Grineer at that level get pretty tough. I've been running Radiation/Toxin for Grineer with Radiation for heavies and Toxin for the smaller bonus against ferrite (I 1-shot ferrite Grineer anyway). Is it because of the potential to proc Corrosive or simply because a majority still have ferrite instead of alloy? My main primary is the Hek by the way.

Nope. I prefer cold procs but it's mostly arbitrary at that level range. Since you're using a shotgun I would also go Rad+Toxic so Blaze would fit, but I imagine you're ahead of me on that one.

Armor removal has little effect at low %'s like single corrosive procs because armor damage reduction scales very harshly. You have to remove most of their armor before it becomes really meaningful. Even something the community would call a "proc weapon" I would not build for procs until after raw damage started to fall behind, which I don't think is happening yet at lv50. Very close though. For Lv60's I'd start to build a "proc weapon" for procs. Maybe even 55. Definitely for Sortie#1.

I took Hek to the sim just now. Full Rad+Tox including Blaze and the augment mod can kill a lv60 Heavy Gunner in two shots if you aim for their (massive, basketballesque) head even using just regular Point Blank and giving away one slot for Seeking Fury. The top of your range, Lv50's, go down in 1 most of the time, but sometimes take a follow up shot.

 

Edited June 23, 2016 by VKhaun

[Azrael]

2 hours ago, Sapphir3Flame said:

Is it because of the potential to proc Corrosive or simply because a majority still have ferrite instead of alloy?

Despite what some naysayers say, corrosive procs are really very powerul. Just a couple of them greatly increase your damage output against armored targets. After 3 corrosive procs a target has 42% of his original armor remaining, so a status shotgun or high fire-rate weapon with even moderate status chance will strip armor down to a small percentage almost immediately. Stripping armor past that point takes much longer, since each successive proc is less effective than the one before it (basically it follows an exponential decay model).

That being said, below level 60 it doesn't really matter for a well-modded weapon. Their armor will be low enough that corrosive procs aren't needed to get quick kills. So radiation is perfectly reasonable at that level. At higher levels a corrosive weapon with a decent proc rate (meaning it can proc a reasonable number of times in a short span of time) will outperform a weapon modded for radiation, even against alloy armor.

I usually run corrosive at low levels because that's what I do at high levels, and I don't want to change my configs. Also I hate getting into a mission and realizing I'm running the wrong element because I made a temporary change and then forgot.

[(PSN)Cwellann]

I'd just like to add that corrosive/cold and radiation/toxin are kinda two sides of the same coin. Corrosive and cold will work better against ferrite, while performing decently against alloy and shields, while radiation and toxin will perform better against alloy, and partially (toxin) ignore shields. Kinda comes down to which heavy you want to die faster for a lot of people - gunners or bombards/napalms. 

Personally, I mod corr/heat or rad/toxin usually, because all you have to do is swap mod order, those two combos are decent against all factions, and I really like the hard cc of heat vs cold's slow effect. 

[CrudShuzKong]

3 hours ago, Sapphir3Flame said:

Just wondering, I thought none of the Corpus have armour that CP would work on (except bosses)?

both the tech and oxium ospreys are armored.

Edited June 23, 2016 by CrudShuzKong

[S0V3REiGN]

For late game definitely mod for their armor as corrosive will out pace radiation in damage.