Talk:Damage/Corrosive Damage/@comment-214161-20191120153147/@comment-2001:1970:4D68:BD00:8D75:D243:1843:C61D-20191124031318

When viral procs, it’s essentially making the enemy take double damage, so long as the viral effect is sustained, as the health taken away from the proc is returned every time it falls off. Technically, since fossilized enemies don’t have resistance to viral, it would allow you to deal double damage after a proc, with ALL of your damage (IPS and elements, increased or reduced by weaknesses) making it more effective than corrosive.

The issue then becomes, as mentioned below, common fodder enemies like chargers take reduced viral damage, where even a viral proc on them only increases the penalty of -75% viral damage to -50%. The other concern is when dealing with high damage per shot weapons, where running corrosive would do enough damage to kill an enemy outright, versus having to proc viral first before being able to kill an enemy in the next shot.

I’m certain multishot extra bullets don’t deal the extra damage as if the target was inflicted with a viral effect if a pellet inflicts viral in the same shot, but I think this is described better or differently on the viral page.

Tl;dr corrosive is pretty good straight up without relying on procs and without having reduced damage to fodder enemies like chargers.