Why put elementals on the Tonkor?

[DEATHLOK]

I've seen one build without elementals:

• Critical Delay
• Hammer Shot
• Firestorm
• Vital Sense
• Point Strike
• Split Chamber
• Heavy Caliber
• Serration

Every other build I've seen has one or two elemental mods. With the fire rate so low, and the Status chance also low, why bother with elementals? They're just not going to happen very often, so why not pour everything possible into Critical chance and Critical Damage?

This build leads me to larger questions involving damage, because the wiki hasn't explained these issues well enough for me just yet:

Elemental damage is only done when the weapon procs, at which point RNG determines the specific type of damage to be added. You might mod for a huge amount of Corrosive damage, but still get Puncture (if it is available) from a given strike, correct? So why add more than one type of damage, when you can minimize the number of Status effects possible, and maximize a particular form of damage?

[ClinkzEastwood]

Tomkor itself is a blast weapon and 2 elemental mods boost weapon's dps with a flat 120% for every weapons anyway.

[ograzzt]

Elemental mods increase your damage always, no matter what status chance your weapon have. Elementals are basically mandatory in current damage system, you won't do much without at least one elemental combo. Elementals are good not only because of their procs, but also because of their modifiers against certain enemies (corrosive against ferrite armor, radiation against alloy armor, viral against flesh, etc).

Edited October 22, 2016 by ograzzt

[bluepheonix13]

4 minutes ago, DEATHLOK said:

 

Elemental damage is only done when the weapon procs, at which point RNG determines the specific type of damage to be added. You might mod for a huge amount of Corrosive damage, but still get Puncture (if it is available) from a given strike, correct?

Elemental damage is always done, not only when the proc happens. That is why elemental damage is always good (beside Elemental Resistance Sorties), if you can spare the mod slot.

[GinKenshin]

elements give dmg. what you're taking about is status, they're not the same thing 

[bluepheonix13]

3 minutes ago, ograzzt said:

Elemental mods increase your damage always, no matter what status chance your weapon have. Elementals are basically mandatory in current damage system, you won't do much without at least one elemental combo.

Not entirely true, on the right crit weapons you can play pretty good physical builds.

[ograzzt]

Just now, bluepheonix13 said:

Not entirely true, on the right crit weapons you can play pretty good physical builds.

Even slash based builds will benefit from viral combo greatly.

[FLSH_BNG]

That's a good question, why would we want to put mods on a weapon to increase its damage?...

Having a real hard time figuring that one out, can somebody help me out here?

[DEATHLOK]

14 minutes ago, FLSH_BNG said:

That's a good question, why would we want to put mods on a weapon to increase its damage?...

Having a real hard time figuring that one out, can somebody help me out here?

Cute, but on the surface, one might think the elemental damage only occurs when the weapon procs. With an 18% chance, that's one out of every five shots. Or less, considering that other types of Status damage could occur, instead. Why not boost Critical damage, instead, which is guaranteed to happen with every shot?—with the build above, anyway.

Does "Elementals increase ALL damage" mean that they increase BASE damage?

I'm sitting on a Tonkor with 5 Forma. To add elemental damage, I still need to add another Forma. Wondering if doing so makes the weapon more practical. Ultimately, I need to better understand how damage is applied to targets.

Edited October 22, 2016 by DEATHLOK

[ograzzt]

22 minutes ago, DEATHLOK said:

I need to better understand how damage is applied to targets.

Did you read this?

http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Damage_2.0

[DEATHLOK]

Yeah. Guess I'd like something of a summary.

Edited October 22, 2016 by DEATHLOK

[bluepheonix13]

1 hour ago, ograzzt said:

Even slash based builds will benefit from viral combo greatly.

They do, but there is the issue of mod capacity.

Base damage, fire rate, multishot, punch through, crit mods, not much left for elementals after that.

[Cryozar]

 As stated, elemental damage is applied regardless of whether a proc is there or not. The way elemental damage works is that it provides +90% of the total IPS damage of the weapon into the corresponding element (+60% in the case of the elemental+status chance mods) note that your mod DOES NOT say "damage on status effect" in the argument of damage, it's how damage 2.0 works. Corrosive damage allows bonus damage to heavy gunners because of their armor type and infested ancients because of what they're made of, Magnetic damage grants bonus damage vs shields (not to be confused with physical shielding), Radiation grants bonus damage vs bombards because of their armor. In the case of ancients they don't really have armor iirc, meaning the corrosive proc (reduce armor) doesn't really have a use, but their flesh type makes them vulnerable to said corrosive damage

Now let's take a look at the IPS mods. Those mods only add damage based on the IPS values of a weapon respectively, meaning a mod like say Buzz Kill, only gives extra slash damage based off of  the weapon's slash damage ONLY, meaning it's trash on something like War or Fragor Prime. Meanwhile Primed Heavy Trauma gives impact damage based off of a weapon's impact damage only, making it the perfect on something like War, to the point elements *could* be irrelevant for that specific case since there's so much of its total base damage in impact

 

Warframe builder, put in your beloved "no elements elements are useless" build, then in another tab, put it in with elements for thebproper faction. Click that button that says "details" to see how the weapons actually do vs each faction. There was a VERY good reason even Boltor Prime used elemental mods despite the trash status chance

[(PSN)Agent_CHAR]

1 hour ago, DEATHLOK said:

Every other build I've seen has one or two elemental mods. With the fire rate so low, and the Status chance also low, why bother with elementals? They're just not going to happen very often, so why not pour everything possible into Critical chance and Critical Damage?

That build has four questionable mods in it.

Firestorm - this one is personal preference obviously.  I just don't think the tonkor needs it and want more damage in a smaller AOE.  If I'm going to use a mod slot for a QoL mod it would probably be terminal velocity rather than firestorm.

Heavy caliber - another personal preference.  I hate HC on launchers and bows because it splits the multishot projectiles and you will never head shot with both.

Hammer shot - to me this mod can only be justified when you want BOTH crit damage and status.  I don't want status on the tonkor... I want dead mobs.

Critical delay - will always result in lower DPS.  The wiki describes using this mod really well:  http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Critical_Delay

 

As was mentioned you are confusing elemental damage with elemental status procs.  Elemental damage will always happen on every shot just like physical damage always happens.  It is multiplicative with base damage (serration) and multishot (split chamber) and you get very large faction damage bonuses (50% or 75%) for using the right ones matching the enemies you fight.

The scenarios where you don't want two or three or four element mods are very limited.  They do exist, but the tonkor isn't one of them.

[DEATHLOK]

Argon Scope appears to boost the frequency of Red Crits. By a lot. With the multipliers, can't Critical Damage eclipse an elemental combination, or are the elementals essential in all but the rarest of cases, and this is not one of those?

I had replaced Firestorm with Argon Scope. Argon Scope seemed to work better than Bladed Rounds.

With six Forma, I can go with a combo, if that's what makes the gun the most powerful it can be. Maybe the five-Forma build was "special" by virtue of being cheaper, not stronger?

Edited October 23, 2016 by DEATHLOK

[DEATHLOK]

OK, how about this:

Argon Scope seems nice when I can take a moment to aim, as explosives can count as head shots fairly often. I was also thinking of Critical Delay, as it doesn't slow me down much with the way I use Tonkor.