What does "elemental" even mean??

[AshyGreen]

If there's anything missing in the tutorial, it's explanations of elemental effects. Do weapon uprades with "enhance elemental" property enhance the effects of elemental upgrades? What's the point of that? Why can't I just stack a bunch of elemental uprades instead? How do they even work? It's very confusing :(

[Catfish Montana]

Not sure whats so confusing.. If you have a weapon that does Fire damage and you add an upgrade to it that enchances said Fire damage by a certain percentage thats exactly what it does.

[doordash me some dopamine]

You don't want to stack just elemental gems cause you won't get the benefits of the gun gems. Like elemental gems usually comes with the 3 benefits; Extra damage as said element, vulnerability to said element, % damage converted to said element. So if you just stack those you will only get those benefits. The gun gems that have "enhance elemental effect" can come with many different stats like "increase damage against elite and superior enemies" or "increase critical damage by said %" and so on. That's why it's good to combine the two instead of restricting yourself to just elemental alone.

And just to further explain more about it. Say you have a elemental gem that converts damage to fire by 30%. When you combine that with a enhance elemental by 20% then it'll convert damage to fire by 50% if that wasn't already obvious.

[Necromancin]

Best way to play this game is to have every elemental weapon Ice / fire / toxic / electric / and cycle through them dependiong on enemy weakness

[DirtyButCAT]

Originally posted by NeCrOmAnCiN =NuD=:

Best way to play this game is to have every elemental weapon Ice / fire / toxic / electric / and cycle through them dependiong on enemy weakness

The problem im having is trying to read said weaknesses/immunities while in a massive fire fight.Its pretty much impossible without getting tossed around like a ragdoll. I wish it only listed weakness period instead of both mixed.

[skin2yard]

Originally posted by Tuxedo Mask:

You don't want to stack just elemental gems cause you won't get the benefits of the gun gems. Like elemental gems usually comes with the 3 benefits; Extra damage as said element, vulnerability to said element, % damage converted to said element. So if you just stack those you will only get those benefits. The gun gems that have "enhance elemental effect" can come with many different stats like "increase damage against elite and superior enemies" or "increase critical damage by said %" and so on. That's why it's good to combine the two instead of restricting yourself to just elemental alone.

And just to further explain more about it. Say you have a elemental gem that converts damage to fire by 30%. When you combine that with a enhance elemental by 20% then it'll convert damage to fire by 50% if that wasn't already obvious.

are you sure it is 50%? doesnt it mean you enhanced it by 20% of the 30%? it would be then 36%, that sounds kinda more reasonable

[skin2yard]

Originally posted by DirtyButCAT:

Originally posted by NeCrOmAnCiN =NuD=:

Best way to play this game is to have every elemental weapon Ice / fire / toxic / electric / and cycle through them dependiong on enemy weakness

The problem im having is trying to read said weaknesses/immunities while in a massive fire fight.Its pretty much impossible without getting tossed around like a ragdoll. I wish it only listed weakness period instead of both mixed.

you can find out easy if you have damage numbers enabled, just cycle through weapons and pick the one that does most damage

[DirtyButCAT]

Originally posted by skin2yard:

Originally posted by DirtyButCAT:

The problem im having is trying to read said weaknesses/immunities while in a massive fire fight.Its pretty much impossible without getting tossed around like a ragdoll. I wish it only listed weakness period instead of both mixed.

you can find out easy if you have damage numbers enabled, just cycle through weapons and pick the one that does most damage

Ahh i admit i turned off as much of the hud onscreen bling so i could see better, i will give that a whirl though. Thanks for the info.

[doordash me some dopamine]

When you add an elemental gem it'll show you the % of element damage you'll do under the dps of the weapon. So I went ahead and tested it out a bit.

I added an ice gem that'll convert my weapon damage into ice damage by 28%. It shows 29% under the dps of my weapon(I dunno where the 1% comes from). Then added a 24% damage converted to elemental gem to the weapon. The 29% under the weapon dps is now 53% ice damage. So as far as I can tell it literally adds the percentage on top of whatever % your fire, ice, shock, or toxic is.

1. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=781791218
2. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=781791227

There's the screenshots for you.

[Zourin]

What I've figured out so far:

For a high ROF weapon like the Sidekick, you need at least 50%+ of your damage converted into elemental damage for it to begin to register elemental effects. This is less for heavy hitters like bows, shotguns, and revolvers/handcannons. The effect itself is largely based on the amount of elemental damage inflicted, so using a full auto weapon to inflict Burn status will make them light up nicely, but it won't do as much damage as a Revolvers' burn effect.

%damage conversion only converts damage to an elemental type, but doesn't increase your damage overall at all.

Bonus damage is just that, it adds a lil' extra elemental damage on top of what you have already.

Effect Vulnerability improves the odds of an elemental effect like 'shocked' or 'burning' happening , assuming you're capable of dealing enough damage to enable the effect.


So.. while, say, a Yuri can get away with one fire gem to sometimes see enemies light on fire, the Sidekick needs a near total elemental conversion. I've had some surprisingly good results electrifying an Einhorn. Once it crossed the 50% threshold with Conversion/Bonus upgrades, it started actually doing work and was good enough to tackle Bunny Lords with surprising safety.

I also believe being on Hard or higher difficulties has a diablo-esque effect on how often elemental effects will trigger.

This tends to make Elemental upgrades a LOT better overall than the stock gun upgrades, since they don't ever come with drawbacks, and usually come with singificantly better damage gains as long as you don't 1-in-4 yourself into shooting the wrong guy with the wrong gun.