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Weapons

Damage: Essential Stats

Identify the best synergies for your weapons and stack multipliers.

base damage formula

base damage X elemental damage X crit chance X crit damage

Remember to hover your cursor over the different stats on the left to understand their details, especially status stats corresponding to infused status.

  • base damage: increases all weapon damage (Serrated, Barrel, Pressure Points), stat that will be multiplied by many other mods. Mandatory.
  • elemental damage
    • multiplies base damage
    • putting two status together merges them to give a combined status
    • the game reads mod slots from left to right and top to bottom like a book: arrange mods in this order to get desired combinations
      • example 1: "toxin + electricity + fire" will give "corrosive (tox + elec) + fire"
      • example 2: "fire + toxin + electricity" will give "gas (fire + tox) + electricity"
    • enemies have different positive/negative resistances to damage, ex:
      • corrosive (toxin + electricity) deals +50% damage to Grineer
      • toxin ignores shields and attacks health directly. Very effective against Corpus which have little health and lots of shields.
    • gives access to elements sometimes having important effects for damage:
      • viral (toxin + cold): increases damage to health by 100 to 325% (10 stacks max per target for max effect)
      • magnetic (cold + electricity): increases damage to shields and overguard (Eximus, Thrax) by 100 to 325%, 10 stacks
      • corrosive (toxin + electricity): reduces enemy armor by 26 to 80% at 10 stacks. Possibility to increase stacks later via archon shards
      • heat: deals damage over time per stack + reduces armor by 15 to 50% (max effect after 5s of burn). No max stacks, increases as long as it's applied
  • crit chance
    • increases chances of critical hit multiplying base and elemental damage
    • can exceed 100% for big crits (orange) or even super crits (red+). We talk about "crit tiers".
    • mods increase the weapon's base crit stats. A weapon with low crit (<20% or so) benefits little from crit mods
  • crit damage: multiplier applied to crits to make them even more massive

status choice

Sometimes weapons have high status chance and/or low crits, you can then focus on another stat:

  • status chance
    • increases status chance. Can exceed 100% (gives additional procs)
    • different types of status effects:
    • debuff:
      • damage received debuff: viral, magnetic
      • stat debuff (armor, other): corrosive, heat, cold, puncture
      • CC debuff (crowd control): cold, radiation, heat, electricity, impact, blast
    • damage over time (DoT): heat, electricity, toxin, gas, blast, slash

Primary & Secondary Weapons

Some stats are exclusive to primary/secondary weapons:

CO: Condition Overload, GunCO

Big damage boost potential

We talk about CO for all mechanics similar to Condition Overload mod: mods giving a damage bonus based on the amount of different status present on a target.

Affected mods: Condition Overload, Galvanized Aptitude, Galvanized Shot, Galvanized Savvy + some weapon passives (Incarnon mainly).

  • by default the damage bonus from these mods is additive with your base damage
  • in some cases the bonus from these mods is multiplicative with your base damage

Outside of the classic use with a primer which works well with the default functionality, very high damage can be achieved when the weapon works multiplicatively with this mod.

If you don't have the faith to test each weapon to see which category it falls into, consult the community GunCO sheet.

Melee Weapons

The same base logic applies: "base damage X elemental damage X crit chance X crit damage".

Melee Stats Synergy

base damage X elemental damage X attack speed/range X crit chance X crit damage

  • melee scaling mods:
  • check if the weapon already has high base status % or crit % and mod accordingly (boosting a low value is not interesting)
  • stance:
    • adds capacity like frame auras
    • allows varying attacks and combos as well as damage dealt by combos (some stances are more enjoyable to play and/or hit harder, for example Sovereign Outcast which dominates tonfas)
  • attack speed: Fury, Quickening & Berserker Fury are affordable
  • range: (Primed) Reach, allows hitting enemies from further / more enemies at once

Glaive Weapons

Glaives are very special melee weapons. You throw them with a heavy attack and can make them explode at distance with a heavy/secondary attack.

From Mastery Rank 4 you can obtain a Xoris which is an excellent glaive.

Mods used on them are quite particular:

  • gain combo via Corrupt Charge to increase explosion damage
  • specific mods for explosion:
    • Volatile Quick Return for a single explosion with great range (very common)
    • Volatile Rebound for an explosion on each bounce (especially for Falcor glaive)
    • mods that do NOT affect explosion: range, attack speed

Weapon Mods: Survival

Uncommon, survival sources in weapons can complement a setup/loadout too fragile otherwise (ex: frame completely oriented towards damage buff)

  • Arcane Secondary Fortifier:
    • allows secondary weapons to steal up to 15,000 overguard from enemies for your frame
    • lots of Eximus with overguard in Steel Path = ideal situation for this arcane
    • very good synergy with status DoT weapons (damage over time) and/or AoE weapons (area of effect), ex: Furis Incarnon, Akarius Prime, Kuva Nukor, Dual Toxocyst incarnon
  • Rakta Dark Dagger: generates shields when attacking irradiated enemies (weapon has base radiation). Good in pure electric influence, elec/blast, elec/gas builds. Passive doesn't work at 0 shields, sometimes need to generate some by choosing from the following solutions:
  • Energizing Shot + secondary weapon + shoot an energy orb + Equilibrium / purple shard = instant self-revive
  • if needed add Protea specter / Kuva Zarr crewmate to generate orbs
  • if needed equip Undying Will
  • Arcane Reaper:
    • max rank: +660 armor / +24 hp/sec for 10s. Can stack multiple times
    • niche: requires a healthtank build + a weapon that already overkills without arcane (ex: Valkyr claws). Will prefer influence or arcane exposure most of the time