Elemental Damage & You | What to maim enemies with.

Have you ever wondered about all the flavors of mayhem?
Plasma, Flame, Shock, oh and even Cryo for you to choose from.

What to use and why? I'm here to answer that question for you.
You can find a quick Tl;Dr on what and why to use, or you can do a deep dive with me on my journey to find out about elemental damage!

Contents & Tl;Dr

So you want to learn about elements huh?

So, I know you are most likely in a hurry to get those screws or a Scorchbeast Queen is about to start and you want to be in tiptop shape to fight, so I'll start with the Tl;Dr explanation of the four elements tested, and I will offer a more comprehensive guide after it.

Elemental damage explained quickly

#1 Plasma Damage
Pros: Least resisted damage type which deals great damage across the board across all enemy types
Cons: Plasma puddles make cannibalism impossible and loot harder to find

#2 Fire Damage
Pros: Good damage, just shy of Plasma with more enemies resisting it, but it has a possibility to heal your teammates if need be
Cons: Broken (Not working, not the good kind of broken) elemental effect, inconsistent resistances among enemies

#3 Cryo Damage
Pros: Good CC effect that can be extremely useful depending on weapon utilized, a Cryolator can shut down a Scorch Beast Queen completely
Cons: Utility damage, not that good for actual killing.

#4 Electrical Damage
Pros: Good against against humans (Blood Eagle Daily Ops)
Cons: Bad damage type because it is so resisted by all kinds of enemies, useless elemental effect if there even is any

If you're wondering about generic energy damage I won't list it here as it's an alternative to kinetic damage and does not fit in the elemental category.

Going over my experiment, where and what benchmark.

The next question is "Who are you to talk, show us proof!"

And I get it, so here I am with evidence on how I did my experiment and what was used for it!

So first the test was made with a set of lvl50 non-legendary War Glaives


Not just a flex to show my favorite weapons in the game, but the War Glaive has an equal split of damage on the elements and I can test all weapons with my full health slugger build easily, so all throws in damage are coming from the elemental resistances.

"Listen here, showing your gear is alright, but what about the testing environment!

Yes, a neutral testing environment is crucial for """scientific""" study, so I tested all weapons against 3 enemy types in 3 different locations with each weapon having their own run in all 3.

Versus Scorched test was done in "The Glassed Cavern"


This is overall my favorite testing area for weapons in the game, a good gauntlet with an end boss that's usually bugged for a nice neutral targeting dummy.

Versus Robots test was done in 98 NAR Regional


There's a good variety of Eyebots, Mr. Gutsy models and an ending boss of a fairly decent Sentry Bot, so overall a great testing ground, but lacking in Protectrons, but those can be killed in two shots by destroying their arms and letting the self destruct do the rest!

Versus Super Mutants test was done in Sunnytop Ski Lanes


There are many places to go against Super Mutants, but I just prefer Sunnytop, less sight lines so doing a 1v1 test with any weapon is easier, also a good amount of Super Doggos too.

#1 Plasma Explained

Plasma, the best damage for a janky tradeoff for Cannibals

So, Plasma is easily the best damage type in the game just for it's rare resistance among enemies, even without a Junkie's effect the Plasma War Glaive can instantly kill all kinds of enemies with a running headshot power attack, with the damage coming only second to a running power attack against a Blood Eagle from the Electrified version, but it ends up losing to both Plasma and Flame due to more resistances and less utility.

Plasma and Flame Glaives came close in damage, but one enemy type made a huge difference.
Super Mutants
In all kinds of attakcs, light to torso, light to head, power to torso, power to head etc. the Plasma Glaive did a consistent 100 more damage than the Flame version to Super Mutants.

And when you're being targeted by a couple of miniguns you really want reliable instant kills to boost your survivability, so Plasma over Flame here.

But the negative aspect of Plasma, for all the damage it does is in its effect, the goo puddles.


These can be a weird at times and can spawn wildly depending on player, so looting is a bit harder.

Also this effect can be horrible for a Cannibal since Cannibal is a full heal during firefights and getting a quick snack is key for survival in some cases, so you might need to use a bit more stimpacks as a Cannibal with Plasma.

But still even then my Ghoul Slugger build is enjoying the damage of Plasma as a main weapon even when taking a snack is harder.

#2 Flame Explained

So I ended up spoiling this section in the Plasma one quite a bit.

Overall Flame is a great damage type too, but has just that little bit of resistances in it's way.
but there is a great blessing and a curse on the flame element!

The blessing comes in form of healing your team with "Friendly Fire"


Not that useful in the end game I'd say, but let's not dump on dedicated healers in the community, or Carebears for new players. You can take out your Flamer, Shishkebab or Flaming War Glaive to keep your friends topped up, great!

The curse though is in classic Bugthesda fashion a broken elemental effect...
Seriously though this is a moodkiller of sorts...


As you can see here is a flaming Ghoul that the Flaming Glaive didn't kill instantly, but doesn't kill over time either, it seems to do one small tick of damage and then leave a flaming effect on the enemy.

And as we all know, or should know the Asbestos Lining mod for chest armor makes flamer enemies non-problems, so we players take huge burn damage, but the enemies do not, quite sad. If it did do good damage it might've even overtaken Plasma damage.

#3 Cold Explained

Cryo, the great utility but lacking lethality one

Cold should have a spot in the limelight as it can shutdown a Scorch Beast Queen.

And there lies the secret of cold, if you're one of those people running the Cryolator in SBQ fights to slow her down to a snail pace, I think I can say from everyone in the community "We love you"

Might not deal much damage, but in teamplay Cold can be a crucial part in keeping enemies from killing teammates and giving time for even more DPS.


But sadly not even a Cryogenic Grenade and whacking with a Cold Glaive can keep a normal one frozen, so Cryolator is the way to go with this element.

#4 Shock Explained

As a great Gangstar once said "Muda muda"

Useless, useless, useless. As an element that is.

Granted a Tesla Rifle can go to town on multiple opponents, it isn't because of Shock damage that's for sure.

An Electrified War Glaive is just bad compared to it's siblings.
Does nothing really or even literally.


ZZZZZZzzzzzzzap, and then nothing

The Electrified Glaive is the coolest looking of the bunch, beautiful dual crescent concept with a lot of VFX, but it just does not perform.

Outside against human opponents that is, it's able to go over the 1000, 1k, ten hundred damage mark against Blood Eagles, though lvl50 with 3 base level sluggers so that's just 10% + 10% + 10% base damage without a legendary effect, might be something to remember for Daily Ops.

[Rat Lord]

Great guide!