Are Status-effect only weapons worthwhile or effective?

[Dion_Starfire]

Are weapons that only do status effect damage  (e.g. Quanta, Simulor, Atomos) worth the armory space and materials? Reading the wikia on status effects they all sound rather slow (shoot an enemy, then dodge it's attacks until it dies), which isn't acceptable when dealing with swarms of enemies (and swarming seems to be the standard enemy strategy on most worlds).

[Chroia]

2 things:

1) Continuous weapons can't really be considered 'status weapons', because of how status works on them.
Status, like damage, is chunked. Per-ammo*firerate, and applied at intervals. (100ms and then every 300ms, iirc.)
100% status per second doesn't actually mean that you're guaranteed a status proc when firing for a second.
(Also, Quanta, Synoid Simulor and Atomos all wreck stuff. Quanta needs punchthrough and Atomos needs punchthrough and +range.)

2) The best status effect is 'dead', because

43 minutes ago, Dion_Starfire said:

 they all sound rather slow (shoot an enemy, then dodge it's attacks until it dies), which isn't acceptable when dealing with swarms of enemies (and swarming seems to be the standard enemy strategy on most worlds).

so no, not really.
The only times status is imo good is:
* Corrosive for ridiculously high level armored enemies, (in which case you're better off bringing Corrosive Projection auras.)
* Radiation to isolate Healers (and gl killing any Infested with Radiation damage after that.),
* Gas/Shock for AoE to pop Spores with a Saryn, or with punchthrough and a Magnetize Mag.

You could argue that Magnetic procs are good against Corpus, but imo you're better off just using Toxin and a Bane mod.

 

Edit: On reflection, TheScytale's post is probably more relevant as an answer.

Edited July 19, 2016 by Chroia

[TheScytale]

Elemental damage =/= status "damage".

There is elemental damage, which is dealt to enemies the way any damage is dealt, with resistances etc. 

And then there's the status damage, or a more correct term, status effects. While some effects do damage or something similar, not all of them do. For example, toxin and slash procs (or status effects) do damage over time, or viral halves enemies' health for a duration, which could be considered damage to a certain extent. However, some others don't do damage, like radiation that turns enemies against each other or impact that staggers them.

So for example, a weapon has 100 base toxin damage, then after modding deals 500 toxin damage with 50% status chance. When you shoot an enemy that has flesh health (+50% toxin damage), you deal 750 damage to them, with a 50% chance to deal DoT effect, dealing 50 toxin damage per tick (50% base damage), 9 ticks in 8 seconds. So the overall damage you deal, is 750+(50*9)=1200. 

To answer your specific question, Quanta, Simulor, and Atomos are totally worth it, because they do tremendous amounts of damage on top of the status effects.

Edited July 19, 2016 by TheScytale

[Praxxor]

Depends on what you use in particular, there are some good status weapons, like Boar Prime, Strun Wraith, Akstiletto Prime etc. that can deal both good damage and status (Akstiletto prime can even be built for crits+status). But there are low-damage status weapons like the Glaxion, that are CC only at high levels basically

[VKhaun]

Not really.

Usually it's about dealing with armor above lv50 when you need a frame for the mission type that can't deal with armor on it's own. A few weapons can apply corrosive fast enough to be very worthwhile when shooting at fully armored enemies above lv50 or so. Crit-built melee slash weapons with good proc rates can be VERY worthwhile, optimal in fact, vs very high level fully armored enemies (bleed bypasses armor, elemental and physical damage don't help the bleed but crit does). That's a short list though and totally irrelevant if you can strip or significantly (65%+?) debuff armor in another way and use a better damage weapon instead.

In some cases viral can help bring things down but it's the same story. A better weapon and a team or frame that puts viral on them is better than a viral status weapon. I've heard of people using blast and radiation for CC but tbh I never really found that to be all that effective except with Sonicor and, again, irrelivant if you or your team has CC.

[Aekhon]

Status can be good.  I like the Karyst dagger since its base toxic damage can easily be turned into corrosive damage, and that does okay against everything.  Without relying on Covert Lethality specifically (sometimes there are a ton of mobs up close and it's just faster to hack them all to death), I find it hits harder than, say, the Ceramic Dagger.

That said, I recommend avoiding the Simulor at all costs, not because of its magnetic damage (magnetic damage can be great), but because of the weapon's many disadvantages.