Warframe: All Damage Types Explained (2024)

Unlike most third-person shooters, Warframe's weapons have unique damage types with powerful status effects and multipliers. Learning each element's usefulness and status effects are key to making your weapons as powerful as possible. If you take full advantage of Warframe's damage system, you can turn your enemies into ash, bypass their defenses, or make hostiles fight their allies.

In this guide, we will briefly examine all 15 damage types present in Warframe, how to create certain elemental combinations like Blast and Viral, and explain what each damage type does. Before we explain what each damage type does, it's important to understand where these damage types come from and why they're important.

Updated August 22, 2024, by Charles Burgar: Digital Extremes has overhauled how damage multipliers work in Warframe in 2024, greatly streamlining damage types across the board. We've updated this guide to include these new damage multipliers and status ailment changes.

Damage Types In Warframe

There are 15 unique damage types in Warframe, each providing a unique effect and damage multipliers versus certain enemy factions.

Damage types are divided into certain categories:

Most weapons in Warframe use Impact, Puncture, and Slash as their default damage types, although some weapon types (Lich and Tenet weapons, the Phage, etc.) might have an elemental damage type that coincides with or even replaces Impact, Puncture, and Slash.

Elemental damage types can be applied to your weapon using certain mods, granting elemental damage based on a percentage of your base damage.

Combined elements are created by applying two or more simple elements onto a weapon. These elements tend to have unique damage modifiers and status ailments.

Special damage types like True and Void damage are usually reserved for Warframe abilities or Operators.

Adding Elemental Damage To Weapons

Certain mods in Warframe allow you to add elemental effects to your weapons. An elemental mod adds one simple element to your weapon—Cold, Electricity, Heat, or Toxin. The amount of damage the element does depends on the mod's strength and your weapon's base damage. For example, applying a 90% Toxin Mod to the MK-1 Braton will grant 90% of the Braton's base damage as extra Toxin damage.

Combining two elemental mods will create a combined element, complete with new damage modifiers and status ailments. A combined element's damage value is based on the sum of both simple elemental mods used to create the element. For example, applying a 90% Electricity mod and 90% Toxin mod onto a Braton makes Corrosive damage, which will deal 180% of the weapon's base damage as extra Corrosive damage.

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What Is The Best Damage Type?

In general, Viral is the strongest damage type. It has the strongest status effect in the game, multiplying all damage dealt to the target's HP. Most players pair Viral with Heat to deal even more damage against flesh and even strip a portion of the target's armor through Heat status.

If you're a new player, we recommend Corrosive and Heat. Corrosive will destroy most Grineer targets you come across, and Heat will shred through Infested targets. Corpus will resist this combo, but you can simply use Toxin or Magnetic to deal with them. Exact explanations of how each damage type works can be found below.

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IPS - Impact, Puncture, And Slash

IPS—short for Impact, Puncture, and Slash—is the backbone of most weapons in Warframe. These are the most common damage types.

Impact

Impact's main use is to stunlock targets and ramp up their Parazon threshold, a sort of instant-kill finisher you can perform on most non-boss units. This can be incredibly helpful for newer players who need help killing armored targets like Heavy Gunners or Nox units.

In high-level content like Steel Path, Impact's main use is to trigger mods like Internal Bleeding and Hemorrhage, inflicting a Slash status on the target whenever you apply an Impact stagger.

Puncture

Puncture reduces enemy damage output and, more importantly, grants additive critical chance against the target. You get a solid 25% additive critical chance against the target at maximum stacks. The target's damage output is also significantly reduced, up to -80%.

Slash

Slash is the best IPS damage type. It has solid damage multipliers against the Corpus and Orokin, and its status effect makes Slash an excellent option for killing highly-armored targets across all content.

Many endgame loadouts will use mods like Hunter Munitions to inflict as many Slash effects as possible, killing the target with a barrage of damage-over-time effects. Slash-focused loadouts tend to pair this damage type with Viral to increase Slash's bleed damage.

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Elemental Damage

There are four standard Elemental Damage types in Warframe: Cold, Electricity, Heat, and Toxin.

Cold

Cold is a powerful damage type for status weapons. Each stack reduces the target's action speed and increases all critical damage they receive. Action speed includes movement speed, fire rate, and the enemy's ability to cast abilities.

If the target reaches ten Cold stacks, they are frozen solid for three seconds. This allows you to land some easy headshots, perform a safe Parazon finisher, or reposition to a safer location.

Electricity

If you're struggling to fight the Corpus in the early game, equip an Electricity mod. It is fantastic against the Corpus but horrible against heavily armored Grineer. Its status effect, while powerful on paper, deals insignificant damage on its own. You'll need to build your loadout around Electricity procs and damage multipliers to make the status effect worth using.

Some endgame builds pair Electricity with Gas to double as a crowd control effect and extra source of damage. Electricity will keep enemies stuck in the Gas cloud and deal constant damage over time. Consider using buffs like Rhino's Roar or play Gyre to get the most out of Electricity in difficult activities.

Heat

Many consider heat the best simple element in Warframe. Armor strip and DoT damage make Heat excellent for all factions.

Just about every endgame build in Warframe uses Heat. It's an excellent damage type to pair with Viral or Corrosive. Viral will multiply the damage of your Heat procs, while Corrosive will help Heat strip as much armor as possible.

Toxin

Toxin is the best standalone element for combating Corpus shields, as Toxin damage completely bypasses enemy shields. Toxin is also a solid choice for fighting unarmored units Just be wary of using it against the Infested, as Toxic Ancients make nearby Infested completely immune to Toxin.

Endgame builds sometimes use this element in Corpus missions to completely bypass their shields. That said, never use Toxin against the Infested at higher levels due to how common Toxic Ancients are.

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Combined Damage Types

Warframe has six combined elemental damage types: Blast, Corrosive, Gas, Magnetic, Radiation, and Viral.

Blast

Blast is created by combining Heat and Cold. It gives every weapon a pseudo-AoE property. Debuffing a target with Blast will prime their body to explode after a short delay. If you keep applying Blast procs, this explosion strengthens and covers a larger radius. Once you hit ten stacks, the enemy will detonate for 300% of your base damage over a five-meter radius.

Corrosive

Corrosive is created by combining Toxin and Electricity. Enemies debuffed by Corrosive have a portion of their armor removed. Corrosive can't remove more than 80% of a target's armor by default, but if you install two Emerald Archon Shards with +Corrosive cap, you can make Corrosive fully strip armor.

While Corrosive doesn't see much use in endgame builds, Corrosive is a solid choice if you're fighting the Grineer. The armor strip makes the Grineer's tougher units much easier to kill, and the global 50% damage bonus against them certainly helps Corrosive shine in Steel Path content.

Gas

Gas is created by combining Heat and Toxin. Gas clouds require Faction Mods and high base damage to deal respectable damage. However, Gas' great AoE coverage makes it excellent against the Infested and even the Corpus if you build around Gas' status effect.

Most players avoid using Gas in endgame content since its status effect caps at ten stacks, the only DoT effect in Warframe with a stack limit. If you can find a way to inflict incredibly powerful Gas DoTs on targets (such as with Baruuks' Serene Storm), it can be a useful AoE effect. Otherwise, Gas is best used on status primers to scale Condition Overload and similar mods.

Magnetic

Magnetic can be created by combining Cold and Toxin. This is a fantastic element for fighting the Corpus, amplifying the damage their shields take tremendously. If an enemy is too heavily armored for Toxin's shield-bypassing damage to be effective, Magnetic is a great substitute.

Most endgame builds use Toxin over Magnetic since Toxin completely bypasses Corpus shields. Only use this if you're playing an activity with tons of Eximus targets, as Magnetic makes short work of Overguard.

Radiation

Radiation is the result of combining Heat and Electricity. Its damage modifiers make Radiation a fantastic choice against the Murmur faction, although it struggles against Corrupted units in the Void. Radiation's status effect is especially useful for pacifying Ancient Healers and Eximus targets, preventing their auras from buffing their allies.

You rarely see Radiation used in high-level content except for status primers and niche builds. Some Nyx players will use Radiation to ramp up a target's damage before casting Mind Control, substantially increasing the target's damage output for the ability's duration.

Viral

Viral is the result of combining Toxin and Cold. This element is fantastic for all situations, causing all targets to receive more damage from all sources. Its damage multipliers aren't the best, but the status ailment more than makes up for this. It's tough to top Viral in the current meta.

Just about every endgame build uses Viral. Bring some form of armor strip to maximize Viral's damage output.

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Void And True Damage

Void and True damage are two unique damage types that are fairly rare. Let's go over how they work.

Void

Void damage is reserved for Operator Amps and the Xaku Warframe. This damage type causes bullets to magnetize to a certain location, making it much easier to land headshots or hit a target multiple times with a punch-through projectile. Void damage strips Sentient resistances, although only Operator Amps can damage Eidolon shields.

Eximus targets are also highly vulnerable to Void damage since they have Overguard, a third health pool that protects a target's HP and shields. Use an Operator Amp or certain Warframe abilities to quickly strip an Eximus target's Overguard.

True Damage

True damage is an unlisted damage type that some Warframe abilities possess. It has no damage modifiers or unique status effects. Instead, True damage ignores all armor that an enemy possesses. Some examples of true damage include melee finishers (not Parazon finishers), Slash's bleed status effect, and Ash's Blade Storm ability.

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