Warframe Dmg Types
May 08, 2019 Creating damage types works kind of strangely in Warframe. To do so, you have to combine the four “primary” elemental damage types (Heat, Electricity, Cold, and Toxin) to create “secondary” elemental damage. To create Blast, you combine Heat and Cold. For Corrosive, it’s Electricity and Toxin. Oct 23, 2017 Cold is one of the 4 main Elemental damage types in Warframe, these can also be combined 1+1 to become a new type of damage that we will refer to as Elemental Combo damage and will discuss a bit later in this article. Cold damage status effect. Cold damage has a status effect of slowing enemies down when procced. Could be a useful way of crowd. Unique Damage Types. These are a few unique damage types in the game that are not offered by any typical weapon. True damage: True damage is a damage type that completely ignores armor and health. True damage can be only applied through slash procs, finishers and a few warframe abilities such as Ash’s Blade Storm.
Warframe have several types of damage. Most weapons deal physical damage, which is either Impact, Puncture or Slash damage.
However, some weapons deal elemental damage e.g. Radiation or Electricity.
Some weapons deal only one kind of damage, other weapons may deal a mix of different physical and/or elemental damage types.
You can use MODS to increase the damage of your weapons or add new elemental damage types.
See the Warframe Wiki for more information about damage types.
Critical Damage
All weapons have a chance of randomly hitting the enemy with a Critical hit, which cause increased damage. When a critical hit occurs, the normal damage is multiplied with the Critical Damage number.
The Critical Chance number defines how often you will get a Critical hit, e.g. a Critical Chance of 50% means for each two shots fired, one of them will likely be a Critical Hit (or crit for short). /windows-2000-full-iso-download.html. If your Critical Chance is 100% or more , every single hit will be a crit. As your Critical Chance gets higher than 100%, you will also have a chance of enhancing your normal yellow crit to a more powerful orange crit or a red crit, which is the most powerful.
Example of Critical Chance:
Critical Chance | Meaning |
---|---|
40% | There is a 40% chance that each hit will be a yellow crit and 60% chance the hit will just be a normal hit (no crit). |
100% | Every shot is a guaranteed yellow crit. |
130% | Every shot is a guaranteed crit with a 30% chance of an enhanced orange crit and a 70% chance of a normal yellow crit. |
200% | Every shot is a guaranteed orange crit. |
225% | 25% chance of a red crit, 75% chance of an orange crit. |
300% | Every shot is a guaranteed red crit. |
You can increase your Critical Chance and Critical Damage using mods; furthermore some warframe abilities can also boost the Critical Chance or Critical Damage. For example, firing through Volt's Electric Shield will multiply critical damage with 200% (this multiplier does not stack if you place more shields).
For more information see the Wiki.
Status Effects
A Status effect is a special effect that randomly occurs when you hit an enemy; this is also known as a 'proc' = Programmed Random Occurrence. Dx ball 2 free download. Some weapons have a higher status chance i.e. a higher probability for the status effect to proc. You can increase the status chance and duration with mods.
The different physical and elemental damage types cause different effects when the status effects procs, see below for details. Some will reduce shield, armor or health, others will temporarily disable the enemy using a stun, slow or knockback effect and some will case Damage-over-time or also damage nearby enemies. For low level content Status effects are not very useful as the enemies are usually easy to kill. However, for high level content / endgame the status procs are very useful when you need to kill stronger enemies as fast as possible.
Physical Damage
Most weapons have 1-3 Physical Damage stats but a few special weapons only have Elemental Damage. You can boost the physical damage of a weapon using MODS but in general it is better to boost other stats e.g. Critical Damage/Critical Chance or Status chance or add some elemental damage.
Damage | Strong against | Weak against | Status effect |
---|---|---|---|
Impact | Corpus shields | Corpus and Grineer Flesh* | Knockback: causes the enemy to be thrown back (bosses, Ospreys and other Tenno's being immune) |
Puncture | Grineer shields, Corpus robotics and Infested Sinew ** | Corpus shields | Weakened: the target will deal 30% less damage over 6 seconds (new status procs will refresh this period) |
Slash | Unshielded enemies (incl. infested) | Grineer and Corpus shields | Bleed: 6 second DoT |
* Flesh = unshielded body
** Infested Sinew = Jordas Golem and Hemocyte
Hint: If you are playing Nekros and using his Desecrate ability to gain extra loot, you should equip weapons with high Slash damage and mod for extra Slash damage! Enemies killed by slash damage will be dismembered and each body part has a chance to drop extra loot when Desecrate is active.
Elemental Damage
In general the elemental damage mods are stronger than the physical damage mods and should be preferred when modding.
There are four primary elemental damage types: Cold, Electricity, Heat and Toxin. These primary elemental damage types can be combined into six secondary elemental damage types.
The order of the mods define which secondary elemental damage type they combine to. For example, If you place a Cold, Heat,Toxin mod the result will be Blast and Toxin damage, however if you change the order to Toxin,Cold,Heat the result would be Viral and Heat damage.
Damage | Strong against | Weak against | Status effect |
---|---|---|---|
Cold | Corpus shields and Grineer Alloy shields | most Infested enemies | Freeze : cause the enemies to move and attack slower |
Electricity | Corpus Robotic and Grineer Machinery | Grineer Alloy armor | Tesla Chain: 3m AoE damage from chain lightning. Also stun main target. |
Heat | Grineer Flesh, Infested and Infested Flesh | Corpus Proto Shield | Ignite: 6 sec. DoT; also cause the target to panic and run around for 2-4 seconds depending on enemy type |
Toxin | Corpus Flesh and Grineer Ferrite Armor | Machinery, Robotics and Fossilized Infested | Poison: 8 sec. DoT |
Blast = Cold + Heat | Grineer Machinery and Infested Fossilized | Grineer Ferrite Armor | Knockdown: 5m AoE Crowd Control (Ospreys, bosses and Tenno are immune). |
Corrosive = Electric + Toxin | Grineer Ferrite Armor and Infested Fossilized | Corpus Proto Shield | Corrosion: permanently reduces the targets current armor by 25% and may stack with multiple status procs; it is however is always calculated as 25% reduction of current armor, not base armor. |
Gas = Heat + Toxin | light Infested | Corpus and Grineer Flesh | Toxin Cloud: 3m AoE Toxin DoT (8 seconds) |
Magnetic = Cold + Electric | Corpus armor | Grineer armor | Disrupt: reduces the targets current and maximum shield by 75% for a duration of 4 seconds. |
Radiation = Electric + Heat | Corpus Robotic and Grineer Alloy Armor | Corpus Shield, Infested and Infested Fossilized | Confusion: causes enemies to fire on each other for 12 seconds. |
Viral = Cold + Toxin | Corpus Flesh and Grineer Flesh | Grineer Machinery and Infested | Virus: reduces the targets current and max health to 50% for 6 seconds. Multiple procs will refresh the duration but the health reduction do not stack. |
Know Your Enemy!
In general, each enemy is vulnerable to specific types of damage but may be resistant to other types of damage.
- Grineer: Use Puncture, Radiation and Toxin damage mods.
- Corpos: Use Impact, Magnetic and Toxin damage mods.
- Infested: Use Slash, Corrosive and Heat damage mods.
- Corrupted: Use Corrosive and Cold damage mods.
Notice that each weapon and warframe has three different MOD configurations; you can use these to optimize your damage against different enemies:
This article is to explain and give insight to all that the Damage system in Warframe entails, such as Puncture, Slash and Impact base damage, as well as Elemental damage (Heat, Cold, Electricity and Toxin) and Elemental Combo damage (Blast, Corrosive, Radiation, Viral, Magnetic and Gas) – and Finisher damage (bypass shields and armor and goes straight onto health), yellow, orangeand redcrits.
The Damage system in Warframe can be thought of as quite intricate and very complex, I will try to explain the most commonly mentioned attributes as best as I can.
All damage types in Warframe has a so called “status effect” that can be procced based on specific weapons and their stats for status chance. You can consider the status effect like a possible effect of using a certain damage type – it will proc based on the amount of status chance you have – and different damage types have different effects.
Let me break it all down for you :)
Puncture damage is a highly effective base damage type vs. Ferrite armor (+50% physical damage) as well as Alloy armor (+15% physical damage). So then what is Ferrite armor and Alloy armor?
Ferrite armor is mostly used by grineers, same as Alloy armor – which makes Puncture damage most effective against these types of enemies.
Puncture damage status effect
The status effect that can be procced with Puncture damage is negative/reduced damage for the enemies(!) being battled with puncture damage.
Puncture damage weakness
Puncture falls short vs. all manner of shield enemy units – such that can be found within corpus enemy faction – only thing in corpus that puncture is remotely effective against is the Robotic enemy units where it deals +25% physical damage.
Looking closer at the infested faction we can see that Puncture has neither boost or lack of damage except for vs. “Sinew” enemy which there only is one of, a boss called Jordas Golem, besides this exception – Puncture is “neutral” and normal vs. all infested units.
So to summarize: Puncture is effective vs. Ferrite armor (+50%), Alloy armor (+15%) and Robotics (+25%), and falls short vs. Shield (-20%) and Proto Shields (-50%). Conclusion: Best to use against the Grineer enemy faction.
Impact damage deals +50% physical damage to Shield enemy units and +15% physical damage to Proto-shield enemy units – which makes it the most effective option vs. the Corpus enemy faction who have most enemy units of these two types.
Impact damage status effect
The status effect that can be procced with Impact damage is to make enemies “stagger” – which is a form of Crowd Control (CC) and can help you when fighting tougher enemies especially.
Impact damage weakness
Impact damage is least effective against so called “cloned flesh enemy units” which exist mostly within grineer (the less armored units) – it does -25% physical damage against these units. It does however deal +25% physical damage to Machinery type enemy units which can also be found within the grineer.
Slash damage is most effective againstflesh enemy units which can be found in the Infested enemy faction. It deals +25% vs. Infested enemy units, +50% vs. Infested Flesh enemy units and +15% vs. Fossilized Flesh enemy units (ancients for example). It is also quite effective vs. the grineer“cloned flesh” (lesser armored) enemy units.
Slash damage status effect
The status effect of Slash damage is to proc a “bleed effect” which deals damage over time (DoT) consisting of Finisher damage (which as you read above bypasses both shields AND armor to go directly onto health!).
Slash damage weakness
Even if Slash damage is quite effective vs. the grineer enemy factions lesser armored units – the “cloned flesh” units- it is still not very effective against the overall enemy faction because the grineer have a lot of heavily armored units as well – probably more than it has “cloned flesh” units. And vs. heavily armored units the Slash damage gets reduced physical damage by -15% vs. Ferrite armored enemy units, and -50% vs. Alloy armored (more heavily armored) enemy units.
This damage type as explained above Ignores all kinds of armor and shields(!) and goes directly onto pure health. Which makes this damage type especially effective against both shielded as well as armored enemy units(Grineer and corpus), which normally have a lot of defenses to bypass before succeeding in killing them(!).
Corrupted enemy units is what you will be battling at The Void for example and these units consist of a mix of all enemy factions – it’s hard to say what damage type is most effective against these, but many people simply goes Corrosive to melt the armor, coupled with Cold to make a dent into the massive shields The Void faction tend to have because of their Corpus Drone enemy units etc. More about cold in the next section below and corrosive later in this article under Elemental Combo damage.
Cold damage in Warframe
Cold is one of the 4 main Elemental damage types in Warframe, these can also be combined 1+1 to become a new type of damage that we will refer to as Elemental Combo damage and will discuss a bit later in this article.
Cold damage status effect
Cold damage has a status effect of slowing enemies down when procced. Could be a useful way of crowd control :)
Super-effectiveness of Cold damage in Warframe
It is quite effective vs. heavily armored(Alloy armor) enemy units that can be found within the Grineer faction, as well super effective vs. Shield units (+50% damage) – which makes Cold damage probably most effective vs. corpus but can be quite nice vs. Grineer enemies as well.
Electricity damage in Warframe
Electricity is another one of Warframes 4 main Elemental damage types.
Electricity damage status effect
It’s status effect is a “Chain-attack stun” which basically means AoE (Area of Effect) stun effect(!).
Super-effectiveness of Electricity damage in Warframe
Electricity is super effective vs. Machinery enemy units that can be found within the Grineer(+50% damage), as well as Roboticsenemy units found within the Corpus (+50% damage also).
Weakness of Electricity damage
It does however deal -50% damage to Alloy enemy units which makes it a bit impractical to use vs. Grineer since they have a lot of these units compared to the amount of Alloy armored enemy units and the fact that Electricity doesn’t seem to have a downside vs. Corpus in comparison.
Heat damage in Warframe
Super-effectiveness of Heat damage in Warframe
Warframe Dmg Types 2
Heat damage is very effective vs. all manner of Flesh units (+25% damage vs. grineer cloned flesh units, +25% vs. infested and +50% vs. infested flesh).
Heat damage status effect
It can proc a Fire DoT effect together with “Panic” which is a form of CC (crowd control) on enemies.
Weakness of Heat damage
It does fall short against Proto shield enemy units however with a reduction in damage dealt by -50%.
So in conclusion most effective to use against Infested enemy units, or lower level grineer enemy units.
Toxin damage in Warframe
Super-effectiveness of Toxin damage in Warframe
Toxin damage deals +25% damage vs. Ferrite armored units, but and deals +50% damage vs. Flesh units within Corpus
Toxin damage has a status effect of Health DoT effect which means it can bypass shields and some forms of armor.
Weakness of Toxin damage
It falls short vs. Machinery enemy units in the Grineer faction, as well as -25% damage vs. their Robotic units and -50% damage vs. Fossilized enemy units such as the infested ancients.
Toxin damage status effect

So it’s hard to say exactly where it would be most effective, since the status effect is Health DoT.
Perhaps with modding to proc Status effect as much as possible it could be effective against Corpus.
How to get Elemental combo damage? Basically when modding your weapons you want to place 2 mods with respective elemental damage – such as Heat + Cold next to each other (modding order goes from Top-left corner to the right, to move onto lower row from left->right). Check out below image:
As you can see in the above image, Hellfire which is a Heat mod is placed next to Cryo rounds, which will give us Blast damage. And it wouldn’t matter if Hellfire was where Cryo rounds currently are and vice versa – as long as they are the adjacent next to each other elemental mods. If however we would place Hellfire where Cryo rounds are and Malignant Force (toxin mod) where Split chamber currently is at – then we would get Heat + Toxin = Gas damage – this is because after the first row – the mod-order continues on the bottom row from Left->Right same as on the first row. This example would however require us NOT to have Cryo rounds anywhere on the first row because first row has order priority over the second row!
Blast damage in Warframe
How to get Blast damage
Blast is the culmination of Heat damage + Cold damage.
Status effect of Blast damage
Blast damage gives the Status effect of a Knockdown – which can be useful Crowd control vs. tough enemy units.
Effectiveness of Blast damage
Blast damage is +75% effective vs. Machinery units within the Grineer and it is +50% effective vs. Fossilized enemy units such as Ancients.
Weakness of Blast damage
It fall short vs. Ferrite armored units which can be found within the Grineer enemy faction.
Hard to say where it’s most effective but either higher-level grineer enemy units or infested.
Corrosive damage in Warframe
How to get Corrosive damage
Corrosive is the culmination of Electricity + Toxin damage.
Status effect of Corrosive damage
This is one of the popular Elemental combo damage types in Warframe due to it’s Status effect being reduction of Armor(!).
Effectiveness of Corrosive damage
Corrosive damage melts Ancients and the like Fossilized enemy units within Infested, as well as deal +75% damage to the Grineer Ferrite armored enemy units.
Weakness of Corrosive damage
Corrosive damage does fall short by -50% against Proto Shield enemy units within the Corpus.
I’d probably say it’s most effective vs. High-level Infested enemy units as well as Grineer in general since they have a lot of Armored enemy units.
Gas damage in Warframe
How to get Gas damage
Gas damage is created from combining Heat + Toxin.
Status effect of Gas damage
Gas damage gives a Toxin AoE Status effect if procced.
Weakness of Gas damage
Gas damage deals -50% to Grineer’s cloned flesh units.
Effectiveness of Gas damage

Gas damage deals +75% damage to both Shield as well as Proto Shield units(!) as well as +75% damage to Infested and +50% to Infested Flesh enemy units.
Which makes it highly effective against the Corpus enemy faction, as well as Infested.
Magnetic damage in Warframe
How to get Magnetic damage
Magnetic damage is the culmination of Cold + Electricity.
Status effect of Magnetic damage
Magnetic damage has a Status effect of reducing Max shields(!).
Weakness of Magnetic damage
It falls short by -50% against Grineer Alloy enemy units.
Effectiveness of Magnetic damage
Magnetic damage is highly effective (+75%) vs. Corpus Shield as well as Proto Shield units.
Best used vs. Corpus I would say due to its massive effectiveness vs. Shielded units as well as the reduction of Max shields status effect(!).
Radiation damage in Warframe
How to get Radiation damage
Radiation is the culmination of Heat + Electricity damage in Warframe.
Status effect of Radiation damage
Radiation damage has the Status effect of Reduced Accuracy as well as Friendly fire which can be good crowd control!
Effectiveness of Radiation damage
Radiation is Highly effective (+75%) vs. Grineer Heavily armored (Alloy) units and +25% vs. Corpus Robotic units.
Weakness of Radiation damage
Radiation damage falls short -25% vs. Shielded Corpus units as well as -50% vs. Infested and -75% vs. Fossilized enemy units.
Which makes it least effective vs. Infested and most effective vs. Grineer.
Viral damage in Warframe
How to get Viral damage
You get Viral damage from combining Cold + Toxin damage.
Status effect of Viral damage
Viral damage status effect is Reduction of Max health(!).
Effectiveness of Viral damage
It deals +75% damage to Grineer cloned Flesh and +50% damage vs. Corpus Flesh.
Weakness of Viral damage
Viral damage falls short by -25% vs. Grineer Machinery, and -50% vs. Infested units.
Which probably makes for the argument that its best suited vs. Grineer.
Popular Elemental Combo damage pairs in Warframe
Usually Blast + Corrosive is one Elemental Combo pair in Warframe that utilized all the elements – very effective vs. Armored units as well as Infested.
Another one is Magnetic + Gas which is most effective vs. Corpus enemy units.
Radiation + Viral is supposedly most effective vs. Grineer – but Blast + Corrosive is also very good here too.
Rarer in-complete Elemental Combo damages in Warframe
Sometimes People simply go Corrosive + Cold for example vs. Shielded units and/or The Void enemy faction or Corrosive + Heat vs. armored/infested units.
Vs. Grineer you probably want to go Puncture damage as well as Blast + Corrosive – OR if you want to try it out, Radiation + Viral :)
Vs. Corpus you probably want to go Impact damage as well as Gas + Magnetic.
Vs. Infested you probably want to go Slash damage and Blast + Corrosive (or corrosive + heat).
Vs. Corrupted you can try going Corrosive + Cold damage to reduce armor as well as Shields – opt for Status chance perhaps? It’s hard to say really.
Warframe Elemental Types
There are mods such as “Expel”, “Bane”, “Cleanse” and “Smite” Corpus/Grineer/Corrupted/Infested that gives an increase in damage vs. these specific types of Enemy factions by +30%. Could be strong to use in your mod-setup to boost damage vs. specific enemies.
Punch through is a mechanic added to weapons through mods and can make the weapon fire through enemies, cover and objects. Might be cool/effective to try with a Bow for example to shoot 1 arrow through a few enemies xD
Stealth attacks bypassshields and armor due to its damage being Finisher damage. The damage is affected by weapon damage and mods (critical damage and critical chance). And it deals 3x Weapon damage for Daggers, Dual Daggers, Polearms and Staves while dealing 6x Weapon damage for Hammers and 4x weapon damage for all other types of weapons.
To calculate Stealth attack damage bonus the formula is Weapon Damage * Stealth multiplier (8x) * Weapon multiplier (6x for hammers).
You can access this type of damage if enemies are unaware of your presence when you walk up to them you get the option to press X to deal a stealth attack to the enemy executing in special animation.
If the Critical hit chance of a weapon Exceeds 100%every strike will be a critical hit, but there will also be a chance of an Orange crit which is displayed in orange color compared to the Regular crits which are displayed as Yellow color.
If the Weapons Critical chance Exceeds 200% however – you get a chance to Red Crit with every attack and at 300% every attack will be a guaranteed red crit.
Obviously Orange crits deal more damage than yellow crits and Red crits is the mother of all crits in damage but by how much you may wonder?
Orange crits deal 2*(crit multiplier -1) +1 <- the 2 comes from 200% and the crit multiplier can be seen on the weapons – you subtract with 1 because weapons damage is that 1.
For 300% crit you take 3*(crit multiplier -1)+1 (for minimum red crit) if you got 400% you do the same formula but 4 instead of 3 in the beginning :)
And as you can imagine, Red crits can lead to very impressive damage numbers :)
If you are interested in critical damage, take a look at warframe.wikia.com.
Shooting enemies in the head usually increases damage dealt by 2 times (doubles the damage)!
Warframe Damage Types Chart
1 - Share