Damage 1.0

Damage in Warframe can be broken down into many different damage types, the most commonly used ones include: Armor Piercing, Blade, Bullet, Electricity, Explosion, Fire, Freeze, Physics Impact, Poison and Serrated Blade (there are many more, most of which are listed bellow). Different factions and different enemy body parts may be resistant or vulnerable to a specific damage type. Moreover, four of these damage types regularly do not have enemy armor applied to them: Armor Piercing, Physics Impact, Poison and Serrated Blade.

Damage is displayed on the HUD as numbers that spawn near the point of impact on an enemy. Damage to health is shown in white, while damage to shields is shown in blue. Damage can also produce critical hits. Critical hit damage, melee damage dealt while using Stealth and damage done while undetected are displayed in yellow. Finally, melee critical hits while in stealth are shown in red. Additionally, some melee weapons can produce critical hits in red without its user being stealthed.

Each of the damage types will spawn a separate number indicator. Shotguns will also spawn separate indicators for each of their pellets. Damage that is reduced to zero, such as Bullet damage on a Corpus Crewman's head, will not spawn a number indicator.

Damage types
This list of damage types only regards their importance in defining incoming damage for the enemy target to determine how to calculate said damage. Some damage types also have alternate effects on the target (such as the slow on Freeze, being pinned to the wall by Physics Impact, and the ragdolling of Forcefield). Finally, some damage types have special death animations that are applied when an enemy dies from that specific damage type in the calculation chain.

Armor Piercing
This is one of the four elemental damage types that you can mod onto your weapons. Armor piercing is one of the four damage types that does not have armor applied to it. It deals additional damage to medium Grineer and reduced damage to Infested Walkers and Crawlers.

Blade
Often incorrectly referred to as "slashing damage". Damage of this type dismembers foes, and does additional damage to Infested Walkers and Crawlers. This damage type is used by normal attacks from bladed melee weapons (IE: Axes, Swords, Daggers, Scythes, etc.) and the Dread bow.

Bullet
Often incorrectly referred to as "normal damage." This damage type has a x1.5 multiplier for Grineer heads and Infested Ancient heads, but does no damage to Corpus Crewmen heads.

Electricity
This is one of the four elemental damage types that you can mod onto your weapons. It has a chance to stun enemies, and all corpus have a x2 damage multiplier for this damage type.

Explosion
Explosion damage is generally used on AoE weapons (such as the Ogris and the impact damage for the Torid). This damage type scales with distance between the impact and the target. Thunderbolt does explosion damage by default, but with the use of other elemental mods this can change (see Thunderbolt for details).

Fire
This is one of the four elemental damage types that you can mod onto your weapons. Fire has a x2 multiplier to all Infested and a x1.25 multiplier to medium Grineer.

Forcefield
Damage of this type will ragdoll enemies. This is the type of damage used by Corpus security lasers and the charge and slide attacks of the Kogake.

Freeze
This is one of the four elemental damage types that you can mod onto your weapons. Freeze damage does double damage to shields and will slow the target's timescale (anything and everything that it does). If the target dies to freeze damage, his death animation will be a shattering of ice.

Impact
This is the type of damage enemies take when being struck by bodies being pinned to the wall by bolt type weapons. The Sobek and Hek shotguns also do this type of damage.

Knockdown
This damage type is only dealt by certain melee slam attacks. It puts enemies in a knocked down state.

Laser
Laser damage was a new damage type added in U8 with the dojo and is currently only used by the Dera. It has armor applied to it and has no special damage type modifiers to it.

Physics Impact
This damage type is usually dealt by "bolt" weapons (e.g. Boltor, Bolto, Paris, Kunai, etc.) and blunt melee weapons (e.g. Hammers, Staffs, Gauntlets etc.). It is also one of the four damage types that does not have armor applied to it (exception for Grineer Commander, Seeker, and Roller).

Poison
This damage type is currently only done by the Acrid and the charge attack of the Mire, and applies a damage-over-time effect (see Acrid page for details). Torid clouds and poison from Toxic Ancients seem to be calculated differently. This damage type does not have armor applied to it. When enemies die due to poison damage, they have a disintegration death animation similar to Saryn's Miasma ability.

Serrated Blade
Serrated Blade damage is used by charged attacks for all bladed melee weapons (with the exception of Ether Daggers - possible bug), Hikou and the Lanka sniper rifle. Like Blade damage, this damage type has a chance to dismember enemies. It is one of the four damage types that does not have armor applied to it. Infested Walkers and Crawlers have an increased damage multiplier to this damage type.

Stun
Presumably the type of damage added to weapons when a stun mod is applied (IE: Staggering Force, Stopping Power etc.). Is applied despite the actual damage added being zero in this particular case. This damage type is also used by the jump attack for some blunt and heavy weapons that stagger enemies.

Calculating Base Damage
Note: There is now a Damage Calculator for your convenience.

The first thing to remember is that damage types do not do anything themselves except for define the damage type, which also defines effects such as knockdown, and Mods do nothing except for create a new base-damage for that damage type to be applied. Past that point, any other calculations are entirely dependent on the target.

The second thing to remember, and the first thing to figure out when calculating base damage, is that there is no such thing as "Armor Ignoring" damage. In reality, each target has a list of damage types that it will not apply armor to. Generally, these damage types include:


 * Armor Piercing (i.e.: Snipetron, Despair, Piercing Hit)
 * Physics Impact (i.e.: Blunt melee weapons, Boltor, Kunai, Paris)
 * Poison (i.e.: Acrid, Mire charge attack)
 * Serrated Blade (i.e.: Most (but not all) charge attacks by bladed melee weapons as well as Lanka and Hikou).

Currently, Armor Piercing, Poison and Serrated Blade damage does not have the armor calculation applied for any enemy in the game. Physics Impact is not applied for any enemy with the exception of the Grineer Commander, Seeker and Roller.

The last thing to find out before calculating damage is whether or not your targets body part that you are hitting is "protected" or not, meaning, "Will armor be applied to hits on this body part or not?", and what your Special Body Part Multipliers are. While grineer heads are still protected, ancients limbs are not, which explains why their damage scales the way it does. See the Enemy Body Parts page for more details.

Now that we know this information, we can start throwing around some numbers. Remember, if the target does not apply armor to your damage type, then do not include the "(100 / (target armor + 100)" section to your calculations.

The formula: Damage done = (weapon damage) * (1 + mod value) * (1 + faction mod value) * (armor mitigation) * (damage type mp) * (special spot mp)


 * Weapon Damage: Determined by the equipped weapon. There is no range of damage in Warframe; all weapons will always deal a set amount equal to what is listed on their tooltip.
 * Mod Value: Determined by the rank of the equipped "damage" mod (any modifications made by Serration, Hornet Strike, Point Blank, or Pressure Point/Killing Blow), if any.
 * Note:  Multiple mods effecting base damage will be additively applied.  For example, using Point Blank and Blaze together would be calculated as: (1+Point Blank+Blaze) in the calculation above.


 * Faction Mod Value: Determined by the rank of any mod that alters damage to a particular faction (IE: Bane, Smite, Cleanse, or Expel mods).  Note that these are multiplicatively applied while stacking base damage mods are additively applied in the calculation above.
 * Armor Mitigation: This is the % that the targets armor will reduce the damage by. Remember: only apply this number if the target applies armor to your damage type and body part.
 * To calculate Armor Mitigaion: 100 / (target armor + 100), where target armor is an actual value that scales with level.
 * See the Armor page for more details.
 * Damage Type MP(Multiplier): This is the value that the target has to multiply any incoming damage of this type (ie: corpus heads - 0x bullet to the head, 2x electric to anywhere).
 * See the Enemy Damage Type Multipliers page for more details.
 * Special Spot MP(Multiplier): This is the value that the target has to multiply any incoming damage to this body part (ie: head, moa fannypack).
 * See the Enemy Body Parts page for more details.

The mods that alter base damage are as follows:

 * Rifles: Bane of Corpus, Bane of Grineer, Bane of Infested, and Serration
 * Shotguns: Blaze, Cleanse Corpus, Cleanse Grineer, Cleanse Infested, and Point Blank
 * Pistols: Expel Corpus, Expel Grineer, Expel Infested, and Hornet Strike
 * Melee: Killing Blow, Pressure Point, Rending Strike, Smite Corpus, Smite Grineer, and Smite Infested

Critical Hits
Most sources of damage have a chance to critically hit for additional damage. The additional damage dealt by a critical hit is deterimed by each weapon's critical multiplier. Melee weapons and ranged weapons with different attacks (IE: bows, miter, etc.) will have a different chance to crit and critical multiplier for each attack type. Each weapon attack, or each pellet in the case shotguns, has a separate chance to critically hit. Elemental mods will only critically hit when the weapon itself does, however they will be multiplied by the same amount.

Stealthing does not appear to affect critical hit chances, but does provide a 50% damage bonus to all melee attacks, which may cause players to assume that a critical hit has occurred.

Calculating Mod Damage
Note: There is now a Damage Calculator for your convenience.

Each Mod damage bonus on a weapon will add a separately calculated bonus hit to an attack. Different mod damages will not interfere with each other or with a weapon's normal damage. Includes: armor piercing, electrical, fire, freeze, and poison.

As far as calculation of final damage dealt by the mod, there are three steps.


 * 1) Calculate base damage (apply your base damage mod).  Round down.
 * 2) Multiply result by mod percentage.  Round to nearest integer.
 * 3) Put that result through damage calculation again (applying armor, body part MP, and damage type MP as appropriate). Round down again. The final mod damage cannot be lower than 1 unless the corresponding damage type multiplier is 0.

Multi-target Melee Attacks, Falloff Damage, and Slam Damage
Numerous melee weapons have the ability to attack multiple targets with one swing. These types of attacks experience damage falloff. Currently, this damage falloff multipliers (falloff MP) is 75% of the base damage for both normal and charged attacks except for the Kogake, which has a 50% falloff MP for its normal attacks. Sliding, jump, and wall attacks all have a 100% falloff MP for all melee weapons currently in game (effectively meaning that you cannot hit multiple targets with these attacks).

Each subsequent target in the multi-target attack will have the falloff MP applied to the damage done to the last enemy hit. Therefore, target 1 will take full damage, target 2 will take 75% of full damage, target 3 will take 75% of the damage done to target 2, and so on.

Critical strikes in multi-target attacks
Only the initial attack has a chance to critical hit and all falloff damage is calculated from that initial attack. In other words, you cannot hit target 1 normally and then critically hit target 2. Furthermore, even though subsequent target damage will be based off the initial critical, they will not also register as critical hits - only the initial attack will do so.

Slam Damage
As stated above, the impact damage from jump attacks have 100% falloff and do not actually hit multiple targets. However, all jump attacks have a secondary damage effect called slam damage which does AOE damage to enemies in the surrounding area. Slam Damage has its own damage type separate from that of the impact damage from a jump attack, its own base damage value, and a radius that is specific to each weapon. Slam damage has no falloff MP and will do the same damage to all enemies in the area.

Multishot
Multishot is a feature that weapons do not normally possess, but can be added through weapon type specific mods (Split Chamber, Hell's Chamber and Barrel Diffusion). Multishot can add one or more additional projectiles to each shot fired, depending on the rank of the mod and the type of weapon. These additional projectiles do not consume any extra ammunition.

Stealth Attacks
Melee attacks while stealthed deal 150% of the total damage they would normally do. Stealth attacks generate yellow hit indicators, the same color as critical hits, even though they are not actual critical hits. True melee critical hits while stealthed can by identified by their red hit indicators.

As long as players on a mission remain undetected through the use of stealth, they can perform melee attacks that deal increased damage to their enemies. Non-melee weapons are not eligible for a stealth damage increase. Even after a mission's enemies go on alert, temporary stealth can also be achieved through the use Loki's Invisibility and Ash's Smoke Screen. Shade's Ghost is disrupted if owner attacks, therefore it does not grant any stealth attack bonuses.

Damaging Shields
While an enemy is protected from shields, any damage they take will not be affected by armor or damage type multipliers. Moreover, damage to the weak points will not result in additional damage. Shields take 100% damage from all damage types except Freeze, which will deal 2x damage. Shielded enemies are also immune to critical hits and additional damage caused by stealth attacks until shields are broken.

After the shields of an enemy are depleted, any remaining damage amount is reduced by a value of one and run through the regular damage formulas to calculate damage taken as it normally would have occurred after taking into account critical hits, resistances, and weak points.

Warframe Powers
Damaging warframe powers determine their damage, critical rate and critical damage through the equipped power mod. The power's damage type will determine whether or not an enemy will apply armor to it, just like damage from other sources. Similarly, enemy elemental damage type multipliers affect power damage. Lastly, Warframe Powers that are AoE or have no manual targeting will hit the torso of the enemy (fanny pack on corpus moa's) and follow the body part multipliers for that body part (explaining the 3x damage to corpus moa's).

See the individual warframe articles for information on how each power handles its damage.