Damage types and status effects explained

Every hit in Warframe has one or more damage types. Each enemy faction takes more damage from some types and less from others. On top of that, every hit can trigger a status effect that weakens, slows or further hurts the enemy. Once you understand this, the same mods deal a lot more damage.

The most important terms in short:

Physical damage

Impact, Punch Through and Slash. The weapon brings these itself. You can boost them, but not add new ones.

Elemental damage

Heat, Cold, Electricity and Toxin. You add them with mods, for example Hellfire.

Combined element

Two primary elements on one weapon merge into a new element, like Cold and Toxin into Viral.

Status effect

An extra effect that triggers randomly on a hit. Which one depends on the damage type.

Status chance

The chance that a hit triggers a status effect.

Critical hit

A hit with bonus damage. Critical chance sets how often it happens, critical multiplier how strong it is.

Faction

The enemy group, for example Grineer, Corpus or Infested. Each has its own weaknesses.

Almost every weapon starts with a mix of the three physical types. The weapon stats show how much of it is Impact, Puncture or Slash. Mods like Piercing Hit only boost the matching type. If the weapon has little Puncture, such a mod does little.

Elemental mods are more flexible. They always add a fixed share of the base damage as a new element, even if the weapon had no element before. That is why almost every weapon build has at least one elemental mod. General damage mods like Serration raise all damage types at once.

Primary element	Example mod (rifle)
Heat	Hellfire
Cold	Cryo Rounds
Electricity	Stormbringer
Toxin	Infected Clip

If you have two different primary elements on a weapon, they merge into a combined element. The two primary elements disappear. They no longer deal their own damage and no longer trigger their own status effect.

Combined element	Made from
Blast	Heat + Cold
Radiation	Heat + Electricity
Gas	Heat + Toxin
Magnetic	Cold + Electricity
Viral	Cold + Toxin
Corrosive	Electricity + Toxin

The order of your mods decides what combines. The game reads the mod slots from top left to bottom right. The first two primary elements form a pair, the next two form the next pair. An element left over stays on its own.

1. 01

   Cold, then Toxin

   Cryo Rounds in slot 1 and Infected Clip in slot 2 give Viral.

2. 02

   Add Heat

   If Hellfire comes next, Heat stays on its own. Result: Viral + Heat.

3. 03

   Different order

   Put Heat first and Cold right after it, and you get Blast instead, with Toxin left over.

Every damage type has its own status effect. Many of them stack: several hits make the effect stronger, and each stack runs out on its own.

Damage type	What the status effect does
Impact	Staggers the enemy. It also becomes ready for a Parazon mercy kill sooner.
Punch Through	The enemy deals 40% less damage (up to 80%) and is easier to crit.
Slash	Bleed: damage over 6 seconds that ignores armor.
Heat	Burns over 6 seconds, makes the enemy panic and strips up to 50% of its armor.
Cold	Slows movement and attacks. At 10 stacks the enemy freezes solid for a moment.
Electricity	Stuns the target and damages enemies nearby.
Toxin	Damage over time that skips shields and goes straight to health.
Blast	A delayed small explosion. At 10 stacks or when the target dies, everything goes off at once and hits enemies around it too.
Radiation	The enemy gets confused and attacks its own allies.
Gas	A gas cloud that damages every enemy inside it.
Magnetic	More damage to shields (up to +325%), shields do not recharge.
Viral	More damage to health: +100%, up to +325% at 10 stacks.
Corrosive	Lowers armor by 26%, up to 80% at 10 stacks.

• Status chance is how likely a hit is to trigger a status effect. Mods like Rifle Aptitude raise it.
• Which effect you get depends on the share of each damage type. If Viral is half your damage, about every second effect is Viral.
• Above 100% status chance, a single hit can trigger several effects at once.
• Multishot (for example Split Chamber) does not change the chance per bullet, but gives you more bullets and so more tries.

Enemies have up to three layers of protection. Shields (blue bar) absorb damage first, only Toxin goes through. Armor turns the health bar yellow and lowers damage to health, by up to 90% for enemies. All Grineer wear armor, while normal Corpus and Infested do not. Health is the red bar underneath.

Since Update 36, weaknesses and resistances only depend on the faction. A weakness gives +50% damage, a resistance −50%. The Star Chart shows you the recommended types for every node.

Faction	Weak to (+50%)	Resistant to (−50%)
Grineer	Impact, Corrosive	none
Kuva Grineer	Impact, Corrosive	Heat
Corpus	Punch Through, Magnetic	none
Corpus Amalgam	Electricity, Magnetic	Blast
Infested	Slash, Heat	none
Infested on Deimos	Blast, Gas	Viral
Orokin	Punch Through, Viral	Radiation
Sentient	Cold, Radiation	Corrosive
Narmer	Slash, Toxin	Magnetic
The Murmur	Electricity, Radiation	Viral
Zariman	Void	none
Scaldra	Impact, Corrosive	Gas
Techrot	Gas, Magnetic	Cold
Anarchs	Impact, Electricity	Radiation

Critical chance sets how often a critical hit happens. The critical multiplier sets how strong it is. Critical chance can go above 100%. Then critical hits get stronger and change color.

Each further tier adds the crit bonus once more. Mods like Point Strike raise the chance, Vital Sense the multiplier. Puncture and Cold status also make enemies more vulnerable to critical hits.

• Against Grineer: Corrosive hits their weakness and strips armor at the same time. Heat lowers armor even more.
• Against Corpus: Magnetic hits their weakness and tears down shields. Toxin ignores shields completely.
• Against Infested: Heat and Slash are both weaknesses. Normal Infested have no armor.
• For everything: Viral + Heat is a versatile choice. Viral boosts all damage to health, Heat deals damage over time and lowers armor.
• At high enemy levels, like in How to unlock and master the Steel Path, Viral and Corrosive pay off the most. They work in percent, so they stay strong even against huge health and armor values.

How to equip mods and get enough capacity is explained in Modding basics: capacity, Endo, Forma and more.