Am I Not Understanding Viral Damage?

[VerdisX]

I'm using a Latron Prime, with maxed out Split Chamber and a status chance of 62.1%. I just ran a lvl50 Void mission and i was barely getting any viral procs on the heavy gunners, even when mashing them in the head. Viral cuts the HP in half when it procs right, so it would be very noticeable. I was expecting that with my high crit damage/chance and the viral proc i'd be doing insane damage (for an un-forma'd Latron Prime anyway).

Also how do the numbers affect viral? My Infected Clip and Rime Rounds are giving me 567.2 viral, but what do those stats actually do if viral always removes a flat 50% health?

Edited November 21, 2016 by VerdisX

[Kalvorax]

afaik, the higher the damage of a certain type, the higher chance that type has to proc over the others....As for the damage, its just additional damage (iirc), what is your exact build at? (screenshot would help)

[Trichouette]

Viral cuts the max hp in half. You don't notice any change on the health bar but you do notice that your damage are choping more from their health bar after a viral proc.

[ashrah]

for void its best use corrosive+cold... viral is good wen entiree team have corrosive projection...

[BRad_Skirata]

the issue with viral damage is that it is not as effective against fully armored targets compared to corrosive damage (for ferrite armor) or radiation (for alloy armor).  So even if you proc the status of 50% hp, the viral damage itself is getting reduced by the enemies' armor still. Using corrosive or radiation (depending on enemy/armor type) usually out damages viral against armored targets, especially when corrosive procs and removes some (not all) of the armor.

[LSG501]

To be honest imo this is one of those things in damage 2.0 that could do with being looked at, along with allowing us to have other combinations of elemental damage than say viral + radiation.  The way it seems to work (according to wiki) is that its more of a temporary (extendable duration with more status hits) health reduction while the status is active rather than a permanent removal of half the health like corrosive does against armor.   Think of it as you catching a cold and the body's natural defences kicking in and fighting it off.

 

As to the numbers on each element, I'd guess that adds to 'total damage' being done when the weapon hits. 

 

Edited November 21, 2016 by LSG501

[Weidro]

this is easier to explain with an simple example:

1 Proc, 50 Viral Damage

1. Target's original health is 500/500.
2. Damage occurs : 450/500.
3. Viral proc occurs: 225/250.
4. Once the proc wears off, health returns to: 450/500.

2 Procs (within 6 seconds), 50 Viral Damage (each)

1. Target's original health is 500/500.
2. Damage occurs : 450/500.
3. Viral proc occurs: 225/250.
4. Second damage occurs, proc refreshes: 175/250.
5. Once the proc wears off, health becomes: 400/500.

 

if you are interested this is a good place to read more about damage and how everything works

[(PSN)lhbuch]

The difference you are noticing is probably because of armor. When Viral Procs, enemy HP is reduced to half for some seconds BUT the damage that viral does is mitigated by his armor, a level 50 void enemy should have around 2000 armor which is around 85% damage reduction so you till be dealing 15% of your nominal viral damage to that enemy.

Math may be off but this is the concept.

[bluepheonix13]

29 minutes ago, VerdisX said:

I'm using a Latron Prime, with maxed out Split Chamber and a status chance of 62.1%. I just ran a lvl50 Void mission and i was barely getting any viral procs on the heavy gunners, even when mashing them in the head. Viral cuts the HP in half when it procs right, so it would be very noticeable. I was expecting that with my high crit damage/chance and the viral proc i'd be doing insane damage (for an un-forma'd Latron Prime anyway).

Like others have said, Viral procs are only noticable by the little icon, the HP bar stays the same. Also, on weapons with physical weapon types, these weapon types are 4 times more probable.

29 minutes ago, VerdisX said:

Also how do the numbers affect viral? My Infected Clip and Rime Rounds are giving me 567.2 viral, but what do those stats actually do if viral always removes a flat 50% health?

Viral proc is not influenced by viral damage number (just removes flat 50% HP), having higher viral damage increases your chances of proc'ing viral though, because damage types with higher numbers get selected more often than those with low damage. A Dread modded with Viral for example, will proc Slash and Viral very often and Impact and Puncture very rarely. There is a difference between status procs and elemental damage though, having higher viral will make your Latron do more damage regardless of status procs.

[AEP8FlyBoy]

8 minutes ago, bluepheonix13 said:

Viral proc is not influenced by viral damage number (just removes flat 50% HP), having higher viral damage increases your chances of proc'ing viral though, because damage types with higher numbers get selected more often than those with low damage. A Dread modded with Viral for example, will proc Slash and Viral very often and Impact and Puncture very rarely. There is a difference between status procs and elemental damage though, having higher viral will make your Latron do more damage regardless of status procs.

More damage still when a target is affected by a Viral Proc.
It will make you feel like you're doing more damage, when in all actuality, the target just has half HP.

But yes, pure Elemental damage is different from a status proc. More Viral = More Damage (especially against unarmored cloned flesh), more Status chance = a higher chance of procin' Viral, which cuts an enemy's health in half for a bit. Thus making your job at killing a bit easier.

Edited November 21, 2016 by AEP8FlyBoy

[VerdisX]

Ok, thanks for the replies. It's making sense now. I was expecting to see the health bar cut in half. Is a viral Latron Prime a good build to focus on for "endgame"? I've not forma'd it at all yet because i wanted to see how it felt to use

[Weidro]

this could be a good build if you don't want to use crit

this could be another build if u want viral only but no crit

or this for viral and crit

(obviously replace Cryo Rounds in all builds with Primed Cryo Rounds)

Edited November 21, 2016 by Weidro

[DeckChairVonBananaCamel]

also dont forget that physical damage types (impact, puncture, slash) are weighted 4:1

example:

Impact    = 50
Puncture = 50
Slash      = 50
Viral        = 150
Status     = 100%

Even though the viral damage equals the combined total of the physical damage (so you'd assume viral would occur 50% of the time), viral would only proc 20% of the time as when calculating which effect to proc the physical damage types are worth 4 times more.

[Golmihr]

 

19 hours ago, VerdisX said:

I'm using a Latron Prime, with maxed out Split Chamber and a status chance of 62.1%. I just ran a lvl50 Void mission and i was barely getting any viral procs on the heavy gunners, even when mashing them in the head. Viral cuts the HP in half when it procs right, so it would be very noticeable. I was expecting that with my high crit damage/chance and the viral proc i'd be doing insane damage (for an un-forma'd Latron Prime anyway).

Also how do the numbers affect viral? My Infected Clip and Rime Rounds are giving me 567.2 viral, but what do those stats actually do if viral always removes a flat 50% health?

Even if you manage to get it to proc it's still not that good on its own against such a heavy armored target. This graph shows how the armor for a Grineer Heavy Gunner increases.

http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Armor

 

An armor around 2000 gives a damage reduction of about 87%

 

On top of that the other stats like health also scale based on the mob's level as you can read about here: http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Enemy_Level_Scaling

 

Ultimately you will benefit more from removing the armor on a heavy gunner before worrying about adding a viral proc. Take bombards as an example. Even if you build for pure radiation which they take 75% extra damage from you still kill them faster with a pure corrosive build with a good status chance. So while they are not the issue in this case, let's not forget to mention damage modifiers as well just for good measure: http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Damage_2.0

Edited November 22, 2016 by Golmihr