TL;DR: Corrosive, Viral and Slash are king because armour is absurd at higher levels. A lot of the other damage types have poor damage bonuses and/or procs, and are often not worth building for even against their intended targets.
Introduction
All damaging weapons and abilities deal one of 13 main damage types, and 2 special damage types. Each damage type has different effectiveness against different health, armour and shield types.For instance: Consider a weapon with 8 Impact and 8 Toxin damage. It hits an enemy with the "Flesh" health type once. Impact loses 25% damage against Flesh, while Toxin gains 50% damage. The enemy thus receives (8x0.75) = 6 damage from the Impact component, and (8x1.5) = 12 damage from the Toxin component, for a total of 18 damage.
Each damage type has an associated status effect, also known as "proc". When inflicting a status proc, the proc type is selected at random from all damage types that the weapon deals. Each potential proc is weighted by the relative amount of total damage that consists of the associated damage type. Physical Damage types are weighted four times in these calculations.
For instance: Consider a weapon with 5 Slash and 10 Viral damage. Since Slash is a Physical Damage, it gets quadruple weighting in proc likelihood. When this weapon inflicts a status proc, it has a (5x4)/(5x4+10) = 2/3 chance of inflicting a Slash proc, and a (10)/(10+5x4) = 1/3 chance of inflicting a Viral proc.
Physical Damage
Physical Damage is the base damage of the majority of weapons. Notably, Physical Damage cannot be added to a weapon that does not have the appropriate damage type already. For instance, the Heat-only Ignis cannot gain Physical Damage by any means. Physical Damage mods increase only what damage is already there, rather than scaling from the weapon's total base damage. For instance, a weapon with 5 Slash and 10 Impact damage, with a +120% Slash mod, will end up only with 11 Slash and 10 Impact. This makes Physical Damage mods far less useful and desirable than Elemental mods.Impact
Impact deals increased damage to shields (+50% vs Shields, +25% vs Proto Shields), as well as Grineer Machinery (+25%), but reduced damage to Corpus and Grineer organics (-25% vs Flesh, Cloned Flesh). An Impact proc causes the victim to be staggered for a moment, preventing them from doing anything. This stagger lasts for a set time, and is unaffected by +Status Duration. There are some enemies immune to the stagger, notably Ospreys and bosses.
Impact initially appears promising, as a decent Physical anti-Corpus damage type thanks to its shield bonuses. However, this is partly mitigated by its minor weakness against Flesh, which causes it to deal reduced damage to organic Corpus once shields are down. Compounding this problem is the fact that in general, shields are not difficult to deplete. They do not have massive damage reduction like armour does, and can be easily brute forced even with ineffective damage types.
The main complaints with Impact however regard its proc. Though the Impact proc does temporarily disable an enemy, the stagger lasts for a very short time and cannot be increased by any methods. The proc cannot be refreshed by inflicting it again, and will only work again once the enemy has finished their stagger animation. Furthermore, the stagger animation can make it difficult to land subsequent headshots on the enemy, which is especially important for crit weapons.
Puncture
Puncture deals increased damage to armour (+50% vs Ferrite, +15% vs Alloy), as well as Infested Sinew (+25%) and Robotic (+25%). It suffers significantly against shields (-20% vs Shields, -50% vs Proto Shields). A Puncture proc reduces the damage dealt by the afflicted enemy by 30%, lasting for 6 seconds at base. Subsequent Puncture procs do not stack.
Puncture is intended as the anti-armour Physical damage, but has multiple flaws that make it pretty poor overall. A 50% bonus against Ferrite is decent, but its 15% bonus against Alloy is very small, not significantly enhancing its effectiveness against Alloy armoured enemies. It's not majorly better than just a neutral damage type. Puncture being minorly effective against Corpus Robotics is not especially helpful because again, it is a small bonus and unarmoured robots are pretty easy to kill, and essentially all Corpus also have shields, which Puncture is weak against. The bonus against Infested Sinew applies only to two bosses in the game (Jordas Golem and Hemocyte).
However the biggest flaw with Puncture is that its status proc is simply terrible. Warframe is very rarely played against a few enemies, and in almost no situation is a measly -30% damage enough to significantly alter survivability. At low levels, it is worthless because enemies deal minimal damage anyway. At high levels, a massive pile of damage reduced by 30% is still a massive pile of damage. Increasing it to -75% still wouldn't be a great help, because again, Warframe is mainly played against large groups, and proccing Puncture on just a few enemies is worthless. Furthermore, the preferable option is always simply killing the enemy - a 100% damage reduction.
Slash
Slash deals increased damage to all organic flesh (+25% vs Flesh, Cloned Flesh, Infested, +15% vs Fossilised, +50% vs Infested Flesh), but suffers against armour (-15% vs Ferrite, -50% vs Alloy) and Robotic (-25%). A Slash proc inflicts damage-over-time on the victim, ticking 7 times over 6 seconds at base. It deals 35% of the weapon's base Damage, boosted by base Damage mods, crits, and any general damage buff effects (e.g. Roar), as True damage. An enemy can be suffering from multiple Slash procs at the same time.
As a raw damage type, Slash is decent. It is effective against just about everything Infested, and is good against unshielded and unarmoured Corpus and Grineer. Appropriately, it deals less damage to armoured enemies and robots. Far more notable than its raw damage effectiveness though is its status proc.
Slash procs deal True damage, which bypasses both armour and shields and have no bonuses or detriments. This makes Slash uniquely effective against every enemy that can be afflicted with Slash procs, and is why Hunter Munitions is such a powerful mod. Compared to raw damage, Slash procs are not especially effective against unarmoured enemies, but against armoured targets, the ability to completely ignore armour is incredible. Also notable for Hunter Munitions is that it works with weapons that have no Slash, or even Physical damage at all.
Single Elemental Damage
Elemental damage is primarily installed using Elemental damage mods, though some weapons have Elemental damage innately. It can be added to any weapon, and scales off of the weapon's total base damage. Elements can be combined by having multiple different Elements on the same weapon, though this section is concerned only with singular Elements.For weapons with innate single Elemental damage, their Element is added in last. For instance, equipping the Heat-based Ignis with Toxin and Electric mods will result in Corrosive + Heat. Equipping an Ignis with just Toxin mods will result in Gas.
Cold
Cold deals increased damage to Infested Sinew (+25%), Alloy armour (+25%) and Shields (+50%). It suffers against Fossilised (-25%) and Infested Flesh (-50%). A Cold proc reduces the victim's move and attack speed by 50% for 6 seconds at base.
Cold is one of the more useful single Elements, notably combining with Corrosive for a fantastic general-purpose Elemental setup. Its minor effectiveness against Alloy armour is useful but still limited, as 25% is not a huge bonus. A bonus against Shields is appreciated, though the lack of bonus against Proto Shields is odd. Weakness against Infested is quite tolerable since Cold has bonuses against the other factions anyway.
Cold's proc is already more useful than Puncture's, halving enemy damage output instead of just 30% reduction. The reduced movespeed is also useful for lining up subsequent shots more easily. However, slowing down just one enemy is, again, not very useful since Warframe combat is generally against large groups.
Electricity
Electricity deals bonus damage against Machinery and Robotic (+50%), but suffers substantially against Alloy armour (-50%). The Electricity proc deals AoE damage in a 3 metre radius equal to (Base Damage x (Electricity Mod Multiplier / 2). The primary target is stunned for 3 seconds, with a few exceptions for stun-immune enemies. The proc can be applied repeatedly, though this will not refresh the stun timer.
Electricity at first appears as a good anti-crowd element, as its proc deals AoE damage. This is unfortunately held back by its relatively poor actual effectiveness. Electricity deals bonus damage to Machinery (which is used by no enemies of importance) and Robotic (which is roughly half of all Corpus), and suffers against Alloy armour (which is roughly half of Grineer, and a few Corpus). Its stun also only applies to the primary target, which in a horde-shooter game, is rather unimpressive. Additionally, due to the weighting that Physical damage types get, Electric procs are often far less frequent than necessary for it to be an effective AoE effect. As a single Element, it is more difficult and less flexible to build for pure Electricity than other Elements.
Electricity is alright against Corpus, but I feel there are better Elements to use against them (e.g. Viral, Toxin, Gas depending on weapon). Against non-Corpus, it has no bonuses and suffers in effectiveness. The stun also lasts only for a short time, cannot be refreshed, and only applies to the primary target.
Heat
Heat deals increased damage to Cloned Flesh (+25%), Infested (+25%) and Infested Flesh (+50%), while suffering against Proto Shields (-50%). A Heat proc deals (Base Damage x (Heat Mod Multiplier / 2)) per tick for 7 ticks over 6 seconds. Heat proc'd enemies will also be panicked for a few seconds, depending on enemy type.
Heat initially seems useful as an anti-Infested or anti-unarmoured-Grineer element. It however suffers a number of drawbacks that make it arguably the worst of the four singular elements. Firstly, although it is effective against light Infested units, those units are some of the weakest enemies in the game, and can be killed by just about anything even without effective Elements. Although effective against Grineer once armour has been removed, Viral is far more effective. Furthermore, if slotted in to a Corrosive + Heat build for armour stripping, the Heat damage will reduce the number of Corrosive procs inflicted, thus often actually increasing the time taken to kill an armoured enemy. It is poor against Corpus, with no bonuses and suffering significantly against Proto Shields.
The Heat proc, while it seems useful initially, also suffers from a number of issues. The panicking animation causes the enemy to flail about, making it incredibly difficult to land subsequent headshots. Although the Heat proc deals damage over time, they cannot be stacked like Slash or Toxin procs, thus greatly limiting its damage potential. While the enemy will panic again, as mentioned previously this can actually just make them more difficult to kill.
Toxin
Toxin deals increased damage to Corpus Flesh (+50%) and Ferrite armour (+25%), but is ineffective against Fossilised (-50%), Machinery and Robotic (-25%). Notably, Toxin bypasses shields entirely, dealing damage directly to health. A Toxin proc deals (Base Damage x (Toxin Mod Multiplier / 2)) per tick for 9 ticks over 8 seconds, and bypasses shields. An enemy can be suffering from multiple Toxin procs at once.
Toxin is arguably the best single Element. It is brutally effective against Corpus, completely bypassing shields to deal damage directly to their health. This easily makes up for its reduced damage against Robotic. Toxin is thus also perfect for Augmented Shield sorties. Furthermore, the ability to stack its proc allows Toxin-based status weapons to deal significant damage over time, far more than Electric and Heat, despite the same calculations. Its bonus to Ferrite armour is nice, but as with the other small bonuses against armour, not enough to make it properly effective against armour.
Combined Elements
The four basic Elements can be combined into six different combined Elements, each with different procs and effectiveness. In mod loadouts, the elements are combined left-to-right, top-to-bottom. Weapons with innate Combined Elements only combine their damage if the added Elements match its innate damage. For instance for the Radiation-based Arca Plasmor, adding Electricity mods will result in Radiation + Electricity, despite Electricity being part of Radiation. However, adding Electricity and Heat mods will combine into pure Radiation damage.Blast (Cold + Heat)
Blast deals bonus damage to Machinery (+75%) and Fossilised (+50%), suffering against Infested Sinew (-50%) and Ferrite armour (-25%). A Blast proc causes all enemies in a 5 metre radius of the victim to be knocked to the ground, with a few stun-immune enemy exceptions. This can be applied again on enemies attempting to get up again, knocking them back down.
Blast as a damage type is fairly poor. Machinery and Infested Sinew are both ignorable, and the bonus to Fossilised is outclassed by Corrosive, which is a much better general-purpose Combined Element. The weakness to Ferrite armour is also not ideal. The Blast proc is great when you need to keep enemies at bay, but rubbish when you want to actually kill things.
Generally speaking, damage types and procs are preferred to help kill enemies, rather than make them less threatening but still leave them alive. This is partly due to the plethora of Warframe abilities that can neutralise enemies far more effectively, but also because the best form of CC is death - a stunned or knocked down enemy can get back up and attack, but a dead enemy can't. Blast is not very good at killing enemies, and its proc makes it harder for weapons to kill affected enemies. Furthermore, due to the way elements combine, a status shotgun that wants Corrosive, will be forced to install Blast as well, knocking down the enemies you want to armour strip and kill.. As such, it is often considered the worst Combined Element.
Corrosive (Electric + Toxin)
Corrosive deals massively increased damage to Fossilised and Ferrite armour (+75%), but suffers heavily against Proto Shields (-50%). A Corrosive proc permanently reduces the victim's current armour by 25%, and can be stacked until the victim is left armourless.
Corrosive is often considered to be the best damage type in the game, and for good reason. It deals massive bonus damage to the Infested's toughest and most dangerous units, as well as half of the Grineer. Its proc is effective only against about a third of all units in the game, but this includes the toughest and most powerful enemies, such as Bursas, Heavy Gunners and Bombards. Corrosive's unique ability to permanently reduce enemy armour is such a massive advantage that, even if it didn't have any big damage bonuses, it would likely still see significant use.
Gas (Heat + Toxin)
Gas deals massively increased damage against Infested (+75%) and Infested Flesh (+50%). It suffers against the regular organics, Corpus Flesh (-25%) and Grineer Cloned Flesh (-50%). A Gas proc inflicts all enemies within range with a Toxin proc. This Toxin proc deals (Base Damage x (Toxin Mod Multiplier / 2) ^ 2) per tick for 9 ticks over 8 seconds, significantly more than a regular Toxin proc.
Gas is a damage type with some great uses, but also some significant drawbacks. The first major problem with Gas is its rubbish damage multipliers. As mentioned previously, light Infested units are among the squishiest in the game, and dealing double damage on an enemy that already dies in one or two hits is not significant. On the other hand, it does reduced direct damage to organic Corpus, and just about all Grineer enemies, who are much tougher. Notably, despite Infested being seemingly the primary target of Gas, Toxic Ancients and Ancient Healers completely nullify its strengths. The second main issue is how (in)frequently Gas procs on a regular weapon with base Physical damage. Because Physical damages get a quadruple weighting when determining proc type, Gas does not proc anywhere near as often as ideal. This is an issue because of Gas' poor damage multipliers.
On the other hand, the Gas proc is absolutely fantastic. It inflicts Toxin damage and proc on all enemies within a reasonable range, with the proc having further increased damage compared to a regular Toxin proc with the same Toxin mods. This proc is highly effective against crowds, and is the only Element with effective AoE. Gas procs are notably also utterly brutal against Corpus, since Toxin damage and procs completely ignore shields (note that the Gas damage itself does not).
Magnetic (Cold + Electric)
Magnetic deals massively increased damage against both Shields and Proto Shields (+75%), but fares poorly against Alloy armour (-50%). A Magnetic proc reduces the victim's maximum shields by 75% for 4 seconds. It can be refreshed, but does not stack. Against Warframes, it also drains 250 energy over 4 seconds.
Magnetic is another damage type that is great in theory, but is lacking in actual performance. It tears through shields incredibly fast, as intended, however falls flat once the target is unshielded. Unarmoured Corpus enemies take only neutral damage from Magnetic, while armoured Corpus typically have Alloy armour, which resists Magnetic. I've found that typically, a Viral, Gas or Toxin build (depending on the weapon), will kill most Corpus units faster than building for Magnetic. Furthermore, outside of Corpus enemies, both Magnetic damage and proc are completely useless. In contrast, the energy drain from Magnetic procs on players is also absolutely insane, and can just about ruin anyone without Zenurik/Energise/Energy Restores/etc.
Radiation (Electric + Heat)
Radiation is an odd damage type, with some major strengths, but also some large downsides. It hits very hard against Alloy armour, which is used by some of the toughest enemies in the game (e.g. Bombards), and has a minor bonus damage against Robotic, which is especially useful against Alloy armoured robots (e.g. Bursas). On the other hand, it fares very poorly against the Infested, especially their heavier units against which it deals only a quarter of its regular damage. This is especially unfortunate given how useful the Radiation proc is against Infested.
The Radiation proc enables enemies to target and damage other enemies, which has a number of uses. Again it is a proc that does not improve your ability to kill enemies directly, but it has some useful interactions. Firstly, enabling friendly fire allows not only the proc'd enemies to damage their allies instead of attacking you, but the allies they attack will likely also attack them back. A single Rad proc'd enemy can distract a whole group of enemies from attacking you, instead causing them to fight each other.
Furthermore, Rad proc'd enemies cannot be buffed by auras from Eximus units, or more notably, Ancients. The auras from Ancients can make Infested enemies incredibly annoying to deal with - Disruptors greatly reduce the effectiveness of abilities, Healers give all nearby allies 90% damage reduction and redirects all procs to itself, and Toxics nullify all Toxin-based damage. A Rad proc prevents enemies from benefitting from these auras, and a Rad proc on the Ancient prevents them from buffing their allies with their aura. In particular, Rad proccing an enemy who is protected by an Ancient Healer will redirect the Rad proc to the Healer itself, immediately nullifying its aura.
Radiation damage has an unfortunate effectiveness crisis against the Infested. Its proc is most effective against them, but its raw damage is terrible against them. It is notable for being super effective against Alloy armour, but otherwise has no way to reduce or bypass armour, making it a worse anti-armour element than Corrosive.
Viral (Cold + Toxin)
Viral is a solid damage type with an excellent proc. It deals massive bonus damage to both Corpus and Grineer organics once shields are depleted, and benefits greatly from the reduction or removal of armour. It however deals less damage to some light Infested enemies (who as I've mentioned several times now, are so squishy that this hardly matters). Notably, the Viral proc is one of the most useful in the game, as it immediately halves the health of its victim. This pairs especially well with Slash and Toxin procs, which bypass armour and shields respectively to deal damage directly to the victim's reduced health. Even against enemies that are not weak to Viral damage, the proc gives Viral an advantage over the majority of other damage types.
Special Damage
There are two more damage types that are dealt only with specific weapons and abilities: True and Void.True
Void
Void damage is already limited thanks to Amps being unmoddable, yet it has no bonuses and several weaknesses. If anything, Void damage deserves a major buff. There is essentially no reason to use it in regular combat, as regular weapons far outclass it.
On the other hand, the Void proc is actually pretty decent. It draws all fire towards the victim's head, ensuring headshots and thus maximum damage. It also attracts enemy fire, including potentially the victim's own attacks, potentially preventing them from shooting you, and actually just damaging themselves.
Problems
There are a number of problems with the Damage system as it is currently. I will be discussing the ones that I feel are most relevant/important.There are 13 main damage types in Warframe, yet when modding weapons, you rarely see more than 3-6 of them recommended. Corrosive, Viral and Slash all see high praise, as they are damage types that have significant effects against dangerous enemies. Corrosive of course is amazing against armour, especially Ferrite, and also hits heavy Infested units very hard. Viral hits most organics very hard, and its proc is universally effective. Either Slash damage or proc is effective against just about every status-vulnerable enemy in the game.
Radiation gets some mention, particularly against Corpus bosses due to their Alloy armour, and Gas and Toxin are great on certain weapons, or with certain modifiers, primarily against most Corpus.
What about the others? What about Impact, Puncture, Cold, Electricity, Heat, Blast and Magnetic?
Armour Disparity
Much of this bias is due to the power of armour scaling, which I've covered previously. Armour scaling makes armoured units tougher than unarmoured units to an absurd degree at higher levels. As such, it is often not worth even modding for unarmoured units, as they will usually die quickly to any decent anti-armour build anyway. On the other hand, a build designed for use against unarmoured units will struggle massively against heavily armoured enemies. Especially in situations where you may encounter both (Corpus Bursas, Vallis mini-bosses, Grineer, Corrupted, ESO), building for anti-armour is far more important than building against anything else.General Effectiveness
There are a few elements with great potential, but fall flat because their in-combat effectiveness is limited. Electricity and Gas both have good potential as AoE elements, but both are mediocre at best when it comes to direct damage. Electricity is only good against Robotics and suffers against Alloy armour, while Gas is only good against light Infested, and suffers against other organics. Admittedly, this is less of a problem for Gas as its proc deals Toxin damage instead, but it is still very much non-ideal, especially when Toxin alone is such a good option as well.On the other hand, there are damage types with just poor multipliers, which often makes them simply obsolete. Heat for instance is vastly outclassed by Viral and Gas, which also have less significant weaknesses. Puncture is badly outclassed by Corrosive and Radiation as an anti-armour damage type, with the former notably also being the only damage type capable of armour stripping. Impact pales in comparison to Magnetic as an anti-shield, while Cold is also a decent anti-shield and has a lot more uses otherwise. Blast is just worse than Corrosive in the majority of cases.
Proc Frequency
Gas has one of the best procs in the game, yet it performs mediocre at best on a lot of weapons. The quadruple weighting of physical damage types when determining status proc means that on a typical weapon with entirely physical base damage, even with two 90% elemental mods, only (180/(400+180)) = 31% of your status procs will be elemental. This gives weapons with elemental base damage a massive advantage, since the same build will proc (180/(100+180)) = 64% of the elements from mods.This significantly impacts all elements that gain effectiveness from proccing frequently or reliably...which is just about all of them. Those that rely on their proc to be even worth using are impacted even moreso, Gas being probably the best example of this. The elements that cannot stack can still appreciate the proc being reapplied, to refresh the duration of the proc. The quadruple weighting of Physical damage types is one of the reasons why having negative Physical damage on Rivens can be so beneficial.
Ineffective or Undesirable Procs
On the other hand, some of the status effects are worthless, or even detrimental. Impact, Heat, Blast and Radiation procs can all make it more difficult to kill affected enemies, while the effects from Puncture, Cold, Electricity are rather weak. The majority, if not entirety of them could do with a proc overhaul to make them more useful. For most status shotguns, fitting on Corrosive often also requires adding Blast.Conclusion
Of the 13 main damage types in Warframe currently, only about half, if that, see regular use.The extreme degree to which armour scaling strengthens armoured enemies, and the relative lack of alternatives or reason to mod otherwise means that the majority of weapons get built for use against armour. There are weapons that perform exceptionally well with other builds, but they are relatively more niche and uncommon. There are also a number of damage types that simply do not get used, because they are mediocre at best, and terrible at worst.
I feel that this could be significantly improved however. Changes to the damage bonuses/detriments and procs of many of the damage types could make more of them useful and relevant. Any changes that make armour weaker (and potentially shields stronger) would also shift the balance of the damage types.
Potential Changes
For the changes I'll be discussing, I will be using Slash, and to a lesser extent, Corrosive and Viral as the benchmarks for how good a damage type should be. Slash and Viral are great general purpose damage types, while Corrosive is by far the best anti-armour damage type, and excels at this role. The idea for these changes is to bring the other damage types up-to-par, or at least closer to, these aforementioned three damage types, in overall effectiveness.Armour
- Weakening armour will innately make other damage types more attractive. As is, the go-to builds are primarily optimised for anti-armour or armour bypassing purposes. Reducing the severity and strength of armoured enemies will make other damage types more overall effective and useful.
- Weakening armour would also reduce the need for anti-armour damage bonuses or procs.
Damage Bonus/Detriment Changes
- Impact should have a larger bonus to Proto Shields, considering it is the only damage type besides Magnetic to have a bonus against them. Alternatively, make other elements effective against Proto Shields. An additional bonus, say against Robotic to emphasise the anti-Corpus role, would make Impact a little more useful than it is currently.
- Puncture should have a bigger bonus than just 15% against Alloy armour. It is meant to be the anti-armour Physical damage, but is only really notably effective against Ferrite. Minimum 25%, ideally closer to perhaps 50%.
- Electricity should have more bonuses, as it currently has only one relevant bonus. A bonus against Proto Shields would give it a much stronger anti-Corpus role, and would give Proto Shields a notable weakness besides Magnetic.
- Blast has only one relevant bonus (vs Fossilised), for which it is outclassed by Corrosive anyway. Additional bonuses, perhaps against Robotic or some of the flesh types, would make it much more useful. Bonuses against Infested/Infested Flesh would give it a much stronger anti-Infested role, though such enemies already die very quickly.
- Corrosive could perhaps do with another weakness, maybe to regular Shields as well, or maybe to something like Robotic. It currently has only one weakness, Proto Shields, which are already rather uncommon.
- Gas has bonuses only against light Infested, who are already really weak, and also have access to units that nullify Gas damage and proc (Toxic Ancients). On the other hand, it is weak against the other organics, against whom it would otherwise be a lot more effective. I would completely change Gas' effectiveness, and perhaps make it similar to Toxin. Make it poor against things like Robotic and Fossilised, maybe Infested/Infested Flesh, and make it more effective against Flesh/Cloned Flesh. This would make Gas a much better direct damage type for crowd killing, while still making some sense relative to the other damage types.
- Magnetic I feel could do with more bonuses, but the only one that makes any sense is a bonus against Robotic. Unfortunately, Robotics are all Corpus, which have shields and thus are already vulnerable to Magnetic. I'm not sure doubling down on anti-Corpus this much would be appropriate.
- Radiation's proc is amazing against Infested, but its direct damage is terrible against them, especially heavy Infested. No other damage type deals only one-quarter damage to any health type. I would reduce its weakness to Fossilised (to -50% or smaller), perhaps adding additional weaknesses to compensate (maybe Infested Flesh for consistency, or [Corpus] Flesh).
- Viral could probably do with more weaknesses given its massive strength against non-Infested organics, perhaps make it weak against Infested Flesh for consistency, or Robotic.
- Void should not have any weaknesses, considering it is already unmoddable. If anything, making it partially/completely ignore armour would make it more useful against armoured enemies.
Status Effect Changes
- Impact procs should be changed from a set-duration stagger to a scaling duration, refreshable stun. This would serve the same CC purpose as Impact currently, but would make follow-up shots much easier. Duration scaling with damage dealt would make Impact procs from high power weapons more effective, while being refreshable would keep fast-firing weapons useful.
- Puncture procs should be completely changed to something that helps especially against armour. One suggestion I like is that a Puncture proc will inflict a Sonar-like spot on the enemy, which amplifies damage as well as causing all hits in that spot to ignore a portion of armour. This should scale (probably logarithmically for balance) with damage dealt by the shot. Like Sonar, the effects from these spots should stack if they overlap.
- Cold procs should perhaps be scalable with damage dealt. A stacking mechanic (for instance scaling with damage dealt over a short period) would keep fast firing weapons relevant for Cold procs. Alternatively, an AoE scaling in range with damage dealt could also make Cold more useful.
- Electricity procs should stun all affected enemies, with further away enemies being stunned for a shorter time. Perhaps also make the AoE range scale with damage dealt. Electricity procs should also be refreshable.
- Heat procs should be stackable like Slash and Toxin procs to deal greater damage-over-time. An additional effect that may be useful as well would be to inflict Heat procs in an AoE, scaling with damage dealt. A different "panic" animation that leaves enemy weakspots easier to hit would also be appreciated.
- I would like to see Corrosive procs scale with damage dealt, to make it more effective on slower firing weapons.
- Magnetic procs should not drain so much energy from Warframes, 250 energy over 4 seconds is absolutely absurd. Something like 50-100 energy (or none at all! No other status effect has special effects against Warframes) seems more fair.
- I wouldn't mind seeing Viral procs scale with damage dealt, perhaps inflicting it in an AoE.
- Impact damage/procs dealing True damage scaling with the amount of armour (with the idea that an armoured enemy gets knocked around in their suit of armour by Impact)
- Cold procs temporarily reduce the armour of enemies (the armour being made weaker/more fragile by being cooled down drastically)
- Heat procs temporarily reduce the armour of enemies (armour being made more malleable and thus weaker by the heat)
- Magnetic procs stripping an amount of armour scaling with damage (ala Mag's Polarise)
A lot of these proc changes are probably too extreme or different to be actually implemented, but I feel that a lot of change is needed to make other damage types more popular and useful.
Determining Status Proc
Physical damage types are weighted four times when determining what status proc a particular hit will inflict. On weapons with base Physical damage, this makes Elemental procs much harder to use, especially ones for damage types that deal poor direct damage. This also gives base Elemental weapons a massive advantage when it comes to proccing Elemental status.We see the value of damage types like Gas especially with majority or pure Elemental weapons like Pox, Ocucur, Amprex, Atomos, even Battacor. Its proc occurs much more frequently, making it much more effective and helping to offset its poor damage multipliers.
I wouldn't mind seeing Physical damage weighting be reduced, perhaps to only double or triple. I can understand some of the use of the weighting; given how Physical damage mods work, they need all the help they can get. As is however, only one of the three Physical procs are actually worth proccing, which greatly diminishes this system's value. Improving the damage types and procs, and reducing (but not removing) Physical damage weighting I feel would provide a much more effective, versatile and fun damage system.
A potential method to counter-balance this reduction is to introduce 60/60 Physical Damage mods.
Weapon Swapping
And now for something completely different. One of the arguments against making more elements effective against more things is that in regular missions, we have access to three different weapons, and potentially more depending on the Warframe. Naturally, each of these can be equipped with different elements to combat different enemies. While this is definitely true and is something I do (one of Primary and Secondary gets Viral, the other Corrosive), in combat this is rarely worth doing. A big part of this is due to weapon swap times.In a game about magic space ninjas capable of obliterating planets worth of enemies, it still takes over a second to switch weapons. In Warframe's fast paced combat, this is simply too slow. This can be shortened with mods, but the majority are not worth slotting in. Mods that go on the weapons themselves use up mod slots that are already in high demand, and often only work on one particular weapon transition, rather than all of them. Warframes can get universal weapon swap mods, but again these slots are also in high demand. The Aura slot has many good contenders like of course Corrosive Projection, as well as Enemy/Loot Radar and Energy Siphon. The Exilus slot has its own good mods, like Handspring, Drift mods, and notably also the mobility mods like Lightning Dash. The utility offered by these sorts of mods often surpasses the extra utility from being able to switch weapons faster.
My opinion is that weapon swap times should be reduced or almost completely eliminated across the board, like say Quake-style weapon swaps. There are already so many things that are completely unrealistic about Warframe, making weapon swaps almost instantaneous like many other shooter games is nothing compared to these, and would greatly improve the flow of combat.
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