Talk:Faction Damage Mods/@comment-20272201-20130916123002

There seems to be a small amount of confusion concerning how exactly Bane mods work; very succinctly they add to the base damage of a weapon. Mods such as serration (rifle), pressure point (melee), hornet strike (pistol), etc will stack their values with these bane mods.

 As an example, if I have Dual Ethers, which have a base damage of 30, and I equip Pressure Point my new damage with Dual Ethers will be 66, a 120% increase from the base value. If I then further equip Smite Grineer, Dual Ethers will now have a base damage of 75, a 150% increase, or a 120%+30+ increase from both of the mods.

 As to whether or not bane mods are worth it you need to consider exactly how many elemental mods you can equip onto your weapon. Using Dual Ethers again, we know that we can do either 66 damage without Smite Grineer, or 75 damage with Smite Grineer. So to compare we simply figure out what elemental mods we have available to us, multiply their added damage by each of the base values, and then observe how much extra damage we do with Smite Grineer or whatever your bane/weapon combination happens to be when compared to what the base damage of your weapon would be if you had chosen some other damage increasing mod.

 For example, let’s say I have Dual Ethers with Molten Impact and Pressure Point equipped. I’m deciding between Smite Grineer or Sundering Strike for my next mod slot. Molten Impact fully ranked does 90% of my base damage. Sundering Strike fully ranked also does 90% of my base damage, so this should be pretty easy to figure out.

 Dual Ethers + Molten Strike + Sundering Strike + Pressure Point = 66 + 2(66 * (0.9)) = 184.8 damage

 Dual Ethers + Molten Strike + Smite Grineer + Pressure Point = 75 + (75*(0.9)) = 142.5 damage

 As you can see in this scenario Dual Ethers will receive more benefit from utilizing Sundering Strike than they would using Smite Grineer. However, this is a fairly unmodded scenario; perhaps before you get an orokin item doubled your mod capacity. Let’s look at Smite Grineer again when Dual Ether is significantly more modded. Now our Dual Ethers are equipped with Pressure Point(120 base), Molten Strike(90), Sundering Strike(90), Northern Wind(60), Focus Energy(60), and Sundering Strike(60), and Reach (which doesn’t add to damage). For our last mod spot we are debating between Shocking Touch(60) or Smite Grineer(30 Base).

 Shocking Touch: 66 + 2(66*(0.9) + 3(66*0.6) =  303.6 damage

 Smite Grineer: 75 + 2(75*(0.9)+2(75*0.6) = 300 damage

 As you can probably see, the damage is much closer now, but still only just barely beyond Smite Grineer’s favor. So for Dual Ethers it probably isn’t *ever* worth using Bane mods over normal damage mods. However, you might be saying “Okay that’s nice, but I don’t use Dual Ethers, I use a real man’s weapon. Let’s say you’re using an Orthos Prime which boasts an impressive base damage of 60. Influenced by Pressure Point Orthos Prime has a base damage of 132, and a base damage of 150 when equipped with Smite Grineer. Let’s use the same mod load out and compare.

 Shocking Touch: 132 + 2(132*0.9) + 3(132*0.6) = 607.2 damage

 Smite Grineer: 150 + 2(150*0.9) + 2(150*0.6) = 600 damage

 You might notice that we could have just taken the results from Dual Ether and multiplied it by 2. You might want to keep that in mind the next time you do a calculation like this, but the point I seek to demonstrate is that having a higher base damage does not mean that Smite Grineer is going to pull ahead like it seems like it should and in fact Shocking Touch gets a little more mileage as a result.

 Final synopsis is this: The Bane series of mods are simply not worth using. While your performance won’t be significantly less from using them over another 60% damage mod, and you still probably won’t notice a major difference between them and a 90% damage mod (unless you are parsing), they ultimately aren’t giving you any actual benefit over using a normal elemental damage mod. Since they require you to swap them out every mission dependent upon the enemy type they become a hassle on top of being slightly less efficient. I wouldn’t recommend them, but now that you know exactly HOW they operate you can decide to not use them for yourself :D

 I hope this was informative.