Puncture/Impact damage mods vs Total damage mods

[enricofermi2]

Somethings I've noticed is that there are mods that increase Puncture damage by 5% base, when there are mods that increase all weapon damage by 15%, base, which includes puncture/inmpact and slash. Is there some advantage to just boosting the individual damage types, when the total damage mod is 3x as strong?

[CazadorDeLobo]

There is a bit of math to work out for every weapon, but the primary reason you'd want to avoid using one of these kinds of mods, is if a weapon spreads its damage evenly. If boosting Puncture damage 100% increases overall damage by only 33%, but adding elemental damage results in ~90% more total damage, then one is a clear winner over the other.

Additionally, boosted slash/impact/puncture damage values are calculated AFTER the elemental damage % is added, so boosting slash/impact/puncture will not increase the resulting elemental boost.

[Pakaku]

Physical-damage mods scale off of general damage mods, so you should *always* equip the base damage mod before your specific physical damage mods

There are niche reasons to use the physical damage mods. One reason is to boost the chance that it will proc, because it's based on the percent of the total damage it deals. A good example is to boost your chance of proccing Slash to go with Viral procs.

But I cannot think of any reason to equip the Impact or Puncture mods unless the weapon is heavily biased towards one of those two damage types. Even if it is, you're almost always better off running one of the elemental mods, because the damage it scales off of is much higher.