The Teacher sucks at teaching you how to mod your guns. Hopefully this guide can do better.
While the teacher has a good story, it absolutely sucks at teaching new players how to mod for different damage types. It fails to explain things like status damage vs status effects, faction weaknesses, and even things as basic as what all the different damage types are. It covers exactly 3 (technically 2 bc you don't use cold on its own), and then says "figure out the rest yourself idiot". Hopefully this guide will help to fill in the blanks for any new players still confused, and maybe more experienced players might learn something new.
Basics
To start, you should know the kinds of things you need to deal damage to:
- Health: Exactly what it sounds like. Its represented by a red health bar, and is affected by Armor
- Armor: Armor reduces damage to health, and is represented by a yellow bar and a small shield next to the health bar.
- Shield: Represented by a blue healthbar, shields will regenerate when not damaged for a little while at a steady rate. If an enemy has shields, they are damaged first.
- Overshield: Represented by a purple healthbar, Overshields are an excess of shields above the normal threshold. Once they are damaged, they do not regenerate.
- Overguard: Represented by a white outline around the healthbar, Overguard takes priorty damage above shields. It also prevents enemies with it from being affected by crowd controling effects, including certain status effects.
Any enemy can have a combination of the above, and its up to you to decide based on the faction which one is best.
- Grineer/Scaldra: Almost always has Armor, and always has Health.
- Corpus: Always has Health and Shields, and certain subfactions/units may have Armor.
- Infested/Techrot: Always has health.
- Sentients: Always has Health and Armor.
- Orokin/Narmer: Combines units from the previous factions.
- Murmur: Some units have Health and Armor, others have Health and Shields.
Take these factors into consideration when choosing your damage types while modding.
Status Damage vs Status Chance
One of the most easily misunderstood things about modding in warframe is status chance vs status damage. Lets use my current setup on my Pangolin Prime for reference.
First, the Status stat at the top is not a chance to deal status damage. It is a chance to apply a status effect when the respective damage is dealt. The status damage itself is chosed via the numbers on the individual damage types. All you need to know is that higher number=more likely to do that damage. On this setup, I'm most likely to deal Slash damage, then Viral, then Puncture, then Impact.
Status Damage and Faction Vulnerabilities/Resistances
Certain status damages affects certain factions differently. A green + sign on this table represents a vulnerability, meaning that damage type is multiplied by x1.5 on that faction. A red - sign represents a resistance, meaning that damage type is multiplied by x0.5 on that faction. In short, use a damage type that is effective against the faction you're about to fight.
(this is also shown in game by hovering over a status in the arsenal or upgrade windows)
Available Damage Types and Status Effects
Next, we're going to cover the different types of damage and their effects when a status is applied.
Physical Damages
Physical Damage encompasses Impact, Puncture, and Slash. At least one is found on most weapons in the game, and a decent chunk of weapons have all three. Lets use the latron for example:
The Latron deals primarily puncture damage when unmodded. However, each of the three physical damage types are present and able to be applied.
- Impact: Impact status effects do two things: First, they apply a stagger to an enemy that is not an Osprey or a boss. Second, on enemys that can be mercy killed (such as eximus units) it increases the threshold to do these mercy kills by 8% per stack, up to 80% at 10 stacks.
- Slash: Slash applies a damage over time effect that bypasses armor. Slash is also unique in that there is no upper limit to the amount of status stacks that can be applied to one enemy. A slash proc will be expended once every second, dealing around half your initial hit's damage, and repeating until the enemy dies or has no stacks left to spend.
- Puncture: Puncture has two effects: First, it reduces damage that enemy can deal by 40%, up to 80% at 10 stacks. It also increases the critical chance from weapon damage on that enemy by 5%, up to 25% at 10 stacks.
Elemental Damage
However, if we were to apply mods to the latron, we could change these damage types, and add new Elemental damage types to the weapon.
Elemental damage is less common to be found on weapons naturally. If a weapon has an intrinsic elemental damage, it will then combine with added elemental damage when modded (we'll cover that in a bit).
The 4 base Elemental statuses are as follows:
- Heat: Heat damage has three effects: First, it ignites a target, causing them to flail around (similar to the stagger from Impact). Next, it applies a damage over time effect (similar to slash, but it does not go through armor). Finally, it reduces armor by up to 50% over the course of 2 seconds. Heat stacks to not have a cap.
- Cold: Cold damage applies a slowing effect to enemies. While it is capped at 10 stacks, stacks 1-9 deal a slightly different effect than stack 10. Stacks 1-9 slow enemy movement, firing speed, and melee attack speed by 50%, up to 90% at 9 stacks. Stacks 1-9 also increase the critical damage multiplier (not critical chance) by x0.05 up to x0.45 at 9 stacks. At 10 stacks, the target becomes frozen for 3 secods, preventing them from moving, attacking, regenerating Shields, and gain +1.0 to the critical damage multiplier against them.
- Toxin: Toxin applies a damage over time effect that goes through shields, but not overguard. Like heat, it has no upper limit on its status stacks.
- Electricity: Electricty damage has two effects. First, it applies a damage over time effect, but it does not affect Shields, Armor, or Overguard like how Heat reduces Armor or Toxin ignores Shields. Second, it creates a chain lightning effect, stunning the initial target for 3 seconds, and chaining to other enemies within 3 meters of the initial target, making it a good option for crowd control.
Combination Damage
However, if you attempt to mod two different elemental status damages onto one weapon, you may notice that they will instead combine into a new damage type.
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These are Combination Elemental damages, of which there are 6.
- Corrosive: Corrosive status stacks strip armor by 26%, up to 80% at 10 stacks. It is made by combining Toxin and Electricity.
- Gas: Gas status stacks will cause a gas cloud to eminate from the target, dealing Gas damage to enemies within 3 meters, up to 6 meters at 10 stacks. If the target dies while the cloud is active, it will persist for the remaining duration. Gas is created by combining Heat and Toxin.
- Viral: Viral damage increases the damage done to Health on a target by 100%, up to 325% at 10 stacks. Viral is created by combining Cold and Toxin.
- Magnetic: Contrary to what Teshin tells you, Magnetic damage is not the only thing that can damage Corpus Shields. Rather, in a fashion similar to Viral, it amplifies damage to Overguard and Shields by 100%, up to 325% at 10 stacks. It also prevents shield regeneration for 6 seconds. If the magnetic damage breaks the enemy's shields or Overguard, they get a forced Electricity proc that deals a total of 3% of the target's maximum Shields/Overguard per Magnetic stack, to a maximum of 30% at 10 stacks, over a period of 6 seconds. It is created by combining Cold and Electricity.
- Blast: Blast damage triggers a secondary explosion on a target, after 1.5s, dealing 30% weapon base damage to the target. Upon reaching 10 blast stacks, all stacks to detonate early, dealing a total of 300% base damage to the target and all other targets within 5m. If a target dies to blast damage, the 300% base damage explosion will also occur. Blast is made by combining Heat and Cold.
- Radiation: Radiation damage is the most complex Combination damage type. When affected by Radation damage, enemies start attacking indiscriminately, prioritizing their own allies over you. When an enemy attacks another while affected by Radiation, they deal 100% more damage, up to 550% more damage at 10 stacks. While enemies are affected by Radiation, Auras (such as eximus units or ancient healers) stop affecting their allies, and they can not take advantage of other allies' auras.
Secret Damage Types
The final few damage types are few and far between, and should not be your primary focus.
- Void: Void damage primarily comes from the Operator, and Xata's Whisper, Xaku's subsumable ability. It has two effects: First, it applies a bullet attractor effect, causing shots that pass within 2.5 meters of the target to be redirected to the point where the Void damage struck them (i.e. if shot in the head, bullets will be attracted to the head, if shot in the leg, bullets will be attracted to the leg, etc.). Second, it strips damage resistance from Sentient enemies.
- Tau: Tau damage only comes from Caliban's abilities and the Venato Prime. Its effect is it makes a target 10% more likely to have status effects applied to them, up to 100% at 10 stacks.
- True: True damage is only available through Finisher attacks, certain abilities, and the Basmu's reload pulse. It ignores shields, armor, and Sentient enemies can not adapt to it. It will deal the raw damage to the target, unless that target has Damage Attenuation or Damage Reduction that doesn't come from armor.
Miscelaneous
This section will contain a few extra bits of info that didn't really fit anywhere else.
Mod Priority:
When modding damages onto your weapons, the game will calculate from left to right, top to bottom.
For example, this setup will deal Blast and Toxin.
And this setup will deal Viral and Heat.
The mods at play are the same, but the order makes the difference. This also counts for having elemental mods spaced out.
Faction Mods:
Faction Mods multiply both base damage and damage done by a status effect with Damage over Time effects.
However, this does not effect statuses without a DoT.
Combination Priority:
When making a combination damage, the order doesn't matter as long as the priority shown above is the same
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Both of these will produce Corrosive and Heat damage.
Conclusion
That's everything you need to know for the basics of modding your weapons in Warframe. Hopefully you found this guide helpful, or at the very least you learned something new.
Posted Oct 22, 2025, 5:12 PM UTC