Corrosive vs Viral

[Phoenix]

I may be just stupid

But regarding the wiki, shouldn't Viral > Corrosive?

Viral recieves bonus damage towards most basic enemy types (exception being Infested Infantry, some of the most fragile enemies you can fight) and it's proc halfs the health of enemies by 50% for 8 seconds

While corrosive has a damage bonus towards Ferrite armor and reduces armor by 25% permanently on proc.

Are there any people that can exemplify why Corrosive is preffered over Viral?

[[Meyo]Frakura]

Viral is best on weapons with High Slash and Corrosive is best on other weapons that doesn't have that high slash. Thats what I think in my opinion.

[Phoenix]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von MeyoFrakura:

Viral is best on weapons with High Slash and Corrosive is best on other weapons that doesn't have that high slash. Thats what I think in my opinion.

Why.

[AnonumusSoldier]

Because armour mitigates damage to health and scales at a ridiculous rate. While virals description says it halves enemy hp per proc, that doesn't actually happen in-game due to armour mitigation. When you are facing level 100+ enemies or elite level 50+ enemies like the ones on plains it is far better/easier to strip enemy armour and thus thier resistance to damage.

If you do run a viral build it is best to run in conjunction with radiation, which gains bonus damage against armour

[Nolo Contendere]

because enemies don't have that much HP. they DO have a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of armor though.

[[Meyo]Frakura]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Spectre_Phoenix:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von MeyoFrakura:

Viral is best on weapons with High Slash and Corrosive is best on other weapons that doesn't have that high slash. Thats what I think in my opinion.

Why.

Viral will reduce enemy health by half, then if Slash proc kick in as well, it will most likely finish off the enemy if it does enough damage.

Corrosive will reduce enemy armor to eventually reveal their red health bar, the orange-ish health bar indicate that they have armor, to which you can unload everything you can on them to nearly full damage.

[Spook]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Spectre_Phoenix:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von MeyoFrakura:

Viral is best on weapons with High Slash and Corrosive is best on other weapons that doesn't have that high slash. Thats what I think in my opinion.

Why.

At higher levels, the damage reduction of enemy armor is immensely more than doubling their effective health. With enemies that DON'T have armor, or at lower levels, at this point most people optimizing will have the raw damage to brute force through enemies even with damage types that are less than ideal.

edit: for reference, 300 armor is 50% damage reduction. A level 50 Elite Lancer has 703 armor.

...Armor value gets a LOT messier when you start accounting for the fact that effective armor is multiplied or decreased when you use an element that is weak or strong against the armor type, in addition to the element's damage being modified.