Elemental damage mods

[Qua3st0r]

Any reason to prefer one elemental damage mod (flaming, freezing, electrified) for weapons over another? Do hits change the target's temperature in addition to damage? Would be cool if you could slowly freeze, or set on fire, an opponent.

[Stardrinker]

You can freeze or set fire to enemies through temperature change via elemental damage mods.

[MusicalAuraFox]

Electrified can go through armor (except when they resist it.)

[Luke]

Electric is often best for crowd control vs snails or mirthworms.

Fire may(?) do more damage overall

Cold is best for not hurting allies or neutrals, and also may freeze slow or immobilize targets.

Different monsters have resistances...

[Aquillion]

Originally posted by Specter Butt:

Electrified can go through armor (except when they resist it.)

All elemental damage ignores armor.

Anyway, regarding the damage types...

Electric spreads to nearby enemies and is mostly useful for dealing with swarms of weak stuff.

Fire tends to have higher damage and does damage over time; however, it raises the temperature, which can make other stuff ignite (including you) and can destroy your loot. It also produces steam in water, which is horrifically dangerous and doesn't award you XP if it kills enemies.

Ice is the best, fullstop. It tends to have lower damage, but it slows or entirely immobilizes enemies, and lowers the temperature so it will tend to freeze others as well. You might get frozen, but this is much less dangerous than fire, since it will tend to freeze everyone else around you at the same time; any cold resistance at all will generally turn this into an advantage. I've made entire builds based around stacking lots of cold effects to reduce the temperature of entire areas to freezing. It's very effective. Not incidentally, cold resistance is the most common on equipment.

Also, because of temperature effects, cold is more effective if you use a lot of it - someone with freezing hands and / or a freeze ray benefits from also wielding a freezing weapon (and wearing cold-resistance equipment.)

Fire is more dangerous if you use a lot of it, but as mentioned, this is not necessarily a good thing (although I've managed to melt levels into lava before.)