Potency vs Status Effects

[CopperBack]

Whats the difference? now that i see theirs upgrades to both i'm confused.

[Kelson]

If I understand correctly, potency determines the number of stacks of a given effect that a weapon applies (ergo how long the effect lasts on a target), while status effect damage is a percentage increase to the base damage of that effect.

Furthermore, SE damage only applies to fire, acid and lightning whereas potency also applies to cryo, increasing the length of freeze time.

[Tombstone]

To add to this, Potency is being added as a base value that is then decreased by the status effect. For example, Potency of 100 and Status effect of 10 results in 10 ticks of effect. A status effect of 20 results in 5 ticks. The exception appears to be Cryo which is reduced by the enemies native resistance where native resistance is determined by haz difficulty, player level, mob level, and map level.

[Wheredoyoukeepthechocolate?]

With respect Tombstone, your explanation is not entirely correct. Potency indicates how many stacks will be applied to an enemy for each instance of damage the weapon deals. For projectile based weapons, this will be each time a bullet hits. For other weapons, it will be based on how frequently that weapon ticks.

Every half second, fire, acid, and electric effects will tick down and deal damage. Each time they tick down, the target will lose 1/5th of their stacks and will lose all of them if it's below a certain threshold. The base damage per stack is 3 for fire and 2 for acid and electric. To make up for the lower base damage, acid boosts all direct damage to the target by 1% per stack and electricity boosts crit chance by .5% per stack.

The base damage of DOT (damage over time) is modified by upgrades to status effect damage and general damage upgrades. Critically (and confusingly), weapon specific and tag based upgrades don't effect DOT. Also, DOT can't crit.

Thus, status effect upgrades don't effect how many damage ticks take place, only how much damage each tick deals.

Potency on cold effects how much slowing affect is applied and how quickly enemies will freeze.

It's a bit of a confusing system. Hopefully, the devs will eventually add more of an in-game explanation of these systems.