What is the best general-all purpose element

[PossessingSpirit09]

Too lazy to constantly switch for every mission, just wanted to know

[Alizarin]

Corr cold

[Enoch]

Slash + Viral

[Onza]

Corrosive , always go corrosive - toxic + electric .

[pavig]

Depends on play style. I quite like radiation - low level enemies will just die to it, the procs give you some crowd control so mid level enemies that don't die straight away will mow down anyone around them, and the toughest enemies tend to be weak to it.

[PossessingSpirit09]

I had heard that Gas was a go to element.

[Ghin]

Corrosive + Cold is probably your best choice that you can shove onto any weapon.

[dEAdOnE77]

...dont be lazy! Use your 3 Loadouts ABC for the 3 Factions and make the WIKI your bible:
https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Damage

There you see that Cold only is weak against some Infested, and Toxins only weakness is Machinery/Robotic. Or if you can proc Viral all your DMG is doubled; Gas or Electricity makes an AOE of 3m; and Blast an AOE of 5m. With Radiation you make them fight each other.

So one thing you could say is that Magnetic is the most useless Element..
oh and yea, Corrisive is a good choise becauze all Factions have some Armored Units but that realy only matters @highLvls.

And Lazy is a good Word for descriping what i think if i see tennos bringing CP to a normal Corpus/Infested Mission.

[massgunner32]

Corrosive and cold are the universal damage by default, even the hints section points this, effective agaisnt armor and shields without any weakness, be advised that certain enemies will require an extra punch to get killed swiftly so consider creating a B mod loadout for a different situation.

[Yuki]

Element wise there are several options. If you are too lazy to switch however there are more important things.
Like the weapon itself.

I personally take a Panthera or Boltor Prime for this. Their high base damage potential already ensures everything below 50 is one shot anyways no matter the setup, and thats with a full auto assault rifle, albeit with a comparably slow firerate. Single clicks to one shot single enemies, hold the trigger for a second to clear the whole room.

Then add some viral or rad. The key here is that both also got high physical damage, slash/puncture:

The biggest problem for a general purpose weapon will usually be a sortie with elemental or armor enhancement, and both of my general purpose weapons simply have more than enough of either to kill everything even a stage 3 sortie throws against me. For everything else the phys ele combination works wonders and also circumvents those "all enemies are weak to x, except for this special super duper <someone>". Those special snowflakes die at most just half as fast. So with two instead of one shots, again coming from a full auto weapon *shrugs*.

Currently only Eidolons come to my mind for requiring specialized builds. Or synergies with the frame, like the oh so favorite ignis prime for Saryn. (Personally i prefer a Supra here ;) )

There are more options for this, but i would suggest to pick something with some range and boom per shot. My two favs aint really the best thing for everyone. While they tent to be highly accurate their projectile travel speed is something to get used to and requiring actual aiming.
Depending on playstyle you may even ditch range, leaving you with a wide range of shotguns also able to become good general purpose weapons.

[Hexo Mia]

you can do what I do, you have three weapons no? just have elements for each weapon, like viral for primary, magnetic for secondary and explosive for melee, just to say something, be creative, there is not universal element, because you will be facing a bunch of different enemies, corrosive is useful against "heavy" greener, but does nothing against corpus shield and so on.

I highly recommend using explosive on melee because leave the enemy open to a ground finisher, servse as CC and is very effective against ancient infested, so a good slash weapon like the Gram prime is very useful to deal with them.

[massgunner32]

Originally posted by Roderick✪Legend:

you can do what I do, you have three weapons no? just have elements for each weapon, like viral for primary, magnetic for secondary and explosive for melee, just to say something, be creative, there is not universal element, because you will be facing a bunch of different enemies, corrosive is useful against "heavy" greener, but does nothing against corpus shield and so on.

I highly recommend using explosive on melee because leave the enemy open to a ground finisher, servse as CC and is very effective against ancient infested, so a good slash weapon like the Gram prime is very useful to deal with them.

Nothing agaisnt corpus shield? just because it doesn't have 2x damage multiplier to shields (you could use cold anyway) doesn't mean that enemies are inmune to corrosion damage, and there isn't an enemy who is strong agaisn't corrosive damage so the element is truely universal.

[Pakaku]

Cold and Toxin are both good on their own, Corrosive is better when you can afford two slots

Put that on a crit build and you should be set for the most part

[Wolf Echo]

I usualy go Viral as my general since a lot of my favored primary weapons are Slash based.

[Miro Laaksonen]

Usually Corrosive, sometimes Viral if the weapon is Slash based.

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Originally posted by dEAdOnE77:

...dont be lazy! :cozyteddymoo:

Meh, until devs add tools to autosort loadouts (like adding mission and faction tags to them) being lazy keeps your sanity intact :P

Originally posted by massgunner32:

there isn't an enemy who is strong agaisn't corrosive damage so the element is truely universal.

It's weak against proto shields, actually... but who cares about shields anyway? (except sortie modifier)