Damage

[HaloJ]

There is quite a complex damage system within Warframe.

Damage is broken down into Impact, Puncture, Slash and Elemental.

• Impact destroys shields
• Puncture penetrates armour
• Slash cuts squishies
• Elemental makes it pretty

Elemental
Elemental damage is calculated off a weapon's total damage (impact + puncture + slash) making it more cost efficient than increasing the damage of the 3 base damage types when applying mods to weapons. There are four main elemental damage types : cold, electric, heat and toxin. These four types can be combined to produce 6 more sub elemental types:

• blast ( heat + cold )
• corrosive ( electric + toxin )
• gas ( heat + toxin )
• magnetic ( cold + electric )
• radiation ( heat + electric )
• viral ( cold + toxin )

When placing elemental damage mods on a weapon they are read top left to bottom right with weapon specific elemental types always last.

1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8
weapon​

So if you add heat to a weapon that deals electric damage you will get radiation as the elemental damage type but if you add heat & cold to that same weapon you'd get a weapon that does blast and electrical elemental damage.

Status effects
All damage types have a small chance of causing a status effect. For instance for electric causes a short electrocution/stun effect. All weapons have a varying status chance which can be increased through the application of mods.

• Impact will stagger
• Puncture weakens causing the target to output less damage
• Slash bleeds the victim regardless of shields
• Cold freezes and slows
• Electric shocks and stuns with a potential to ark to others
• Heat ignites and causes panic
• Toxin causes direct health loss regardless of shields
• Blast causes an knockdown area of effect
• Corrosive permanently reduces armour
• Gas causes a toxic area of effect
• Magnetic permanently reduces max shields
• Radiation impairs the victim's accuracy and may turn on their allies for a short time
• Viral causes a permanent reduction in max health

Source : analysis of the Warframe wiki's Damage 2.0 and other posts

Abs

P.S. I'll do a follow up post with what I feel is the best general load out types for each fighting each faction.

 

[HERMAN_JELMET]

I use blast as much as I can, Watching dead bodies being catapulted around the screen Is always fun and cold is also good against shields and heat causes burning over time.
With regards to Puncture/impact/slash, I just try to improve on the highest stat for that weapon

 

[Acegadgets]

I found this piccie that shows what combinations of cards do good against the various enemies.
I am going to try to make 3 different loadouts for the 3 opponents with one of my warframes.

 

[HaloJ]

I found this piccie that shows what combinations of cards do good against the various enemies.
I am going to try to make 3 different loadouts for the 3 opponents with one of my warframes.

Nice find Ace although I note some discrepancies probably due to the listed version number.

The main one is the do not use Puncture on infested -50% damage which is most certainly not true. Whilst Puncture doesn't give any bonuses against the hordes it does on the ones you really want to take down quickly. Puncture does +25 damage to Infested Sinew which includes Ancient Healer and Phorid.

I checked the charts from the wiki against @Martok 's codex which confirms their accuracy.

 

[Acegadgets]

I found something even betterer
http://warframe-builder.com/
just playing with it now

 

[Martok]

I found something even betterer
http://warframe-builder.com/
just playing with it now

Do note that this is kept up-to-date with the PC version (currently 13) whereas the PS4 is slightly behind (currently 12). So it'll be more reliable than older stuff but there may be a few things that are different.

 

[Acegadgets]

Its rather good to play with.
I just installed an Orikin Catylist on my already brilliant sticky bomb Castanas which i got all those head shots with last night.

http://warframe-builder.com/Secondary_Weapons/Builder/Castanas/t_30_22000000_193-0-4-195-3-4-199-1-0-202-5-4-204-4-5-220-2-0_193-5-199-2-220-2-195-10-204-9-202-10-f-f-f-f/en/3-0-40/0

At the moment I can have 38 mod points to play with. The interesting thing with the builder app is that I can go to the link above and see what the effects of putting new mod cards is compared with increasing the power with fusion cards of the existing cards. You pull the cards into the slots and or add power to the cards and see on the right how the total damage changes.
Pretty awesome for us addicts i'd say.

 

[Acegadgets]

@halo , I am finding this info very helpful in the building of my weapons, as I dont have a brilliant memory and keep coming back to see how i mix cards to produce the elemental damage that I am looking for. Is theinfo the same in update 13, and do you think I should photoshop the cheatsheet picture to be more relevent to update 13 on the PS3?
I think i need to find some info on how the picture needs updating.

 

[HaloJ]

I've got it book marked also. I've not yet finished analysing best generalised load outs but your use of corrosive is one of the better elemental damage types. Damage 2.0 is accurate in both u12 & u13. U11 was still largely damage 1.0.

Abs

edit: the info is in the charts on this page:
http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Damage_2.0

 

[Jkrohn1]

This game is very in depth when you look at in a whole and to me it will only add to the fantastic gameplay all we need now is the above picture updated to 2.0