Enemy Vulnerabilities

There are three game mechanics that determine enemy vulnerabilities. They are armor, body part multipliers, and damage type multipliers. The combined effect of these three game mechanics will determine the vulnerabilities of each faction and specific enemies within a faction. These different game mechanics will interact with each weapon differently based on their base damage type and the various elemental damage mods that have been applied. More information can be found on individual weapon pages (most accurate) or by referring to the weapon types page.

Shields
It should so be kept in mind that shields do not apply any of these armor caclulations or multipliers and take full damage from all damage types with the exception of frost damage, which does 200% damage to shields.

Ignored Damage Types
Commonly incorrectly referred to as "Armor Ignore", these are the damage types that are ignored when armor is applied to incoming damage. There are currently only four types of damage that make an appearance in this list: These four damage types show up on the Ignored Damage Types list for all enemies that have Protected Body Parts, the only exceptions being the absense of Physics Impact on the Grineer Commander, Seeker, and Roller.
 * Armor Piercing (i.e.: Snipetron, Despair,  Piercing Hit)
 * Physics Impact (i.e.: Boltor, Kunai, Paris)
 * Poison (i.e.: Torid, Acrid, Mire)
 * Serrated Blade (i.e.: Most (but not all) melee charge attacks, and the Lanka...).

Examples
While it is best to go to each of these mechanic pages for the most accurate information, here are a few examples of how enemy vulnerabilities will interact in the game.

Corpus Crew
These enemies have low armor values, protected body parts everywhere but their head, a x2 electricity multiplier (MP), a x0 MP for bullet damage to their head, and x2 MP for Armor Piercing damage to the head. In addition, corpus crew members have a x2 body part MP for their head. New players will often make the mistake of assuming that corpus crew heads have very high armor or are invincible because they typically have weapons with bullet damage. In reality, if you are wielding a weapon with a different base damage type or even a bullet damage weapon with electricity and armor piercing mods, the head is the best place to shoot them because this will take advantage of the complete lack of armor, a x2 head MP, and x2 damage MPs for armor piercing and electrical damage for devastating effects. Damage to Corpus also benefits from frost mods because they often protect themselves with shields.

Lesson: When armor is low, Damage MPs have a drastic effect on damage outcomes.

Medium Grineer
Medium Grineer have the highest armor values in the game other than Infested Ancients. In addition to this, every body part on their body is protected. This makes using a weapon with an ignored damage type extremely helpful. In particular, armor piercing has a x1.5 MP for Medium Grineer (not the case for Light and Heavy as some might think) making it the best damage type for this particular subgroup. Fire and Electricity also have a 1.25 damage type MP making these the best mod choices after armor pierce. As always, Medium Grineer also have a x2 head MP making this the best place to shoot them.

Lesson:  When armor values are high, using ignored damage types is extremely effective.

Infested Ancients
Infested Ancients have the highest armor values in the game. As with all enemies, they have a x2 head MP. Finally, they have a x2 MP for fire damage and a 1.5 MP for bullet damage to the head. Their lower legs and lower arms are unprotected body parts, typically making this the best place to shoot them. If you are using a bullet weapon, for example, you will gain more benefit from shooting them on an unprotected body part rather than using the head multipliers. However, if you are using a weapon that has an ignored damage type for base damage and have limited elemental mods, you gain no benefit from shooting an unprotected body part but could benefit from the x2 head MP, making the head the ideal target. As you load this weapon up with elemental mods that are not ignored damage types, the vulnerability will shift back to the lower leg or arm. The breaking point on this will largely be based on the base damage of the weapon in question.

Lesson:  When armor values are high, shooting unprotected body parts is often more effective than taking advantage of Body Part or Damage MPs.

For more accurate information
These tables show how vulnerable enemies are to various damage types. 100% is unmodified damage, 200% is double damage, and 0% means no damage. Most enemies become less vulnerable to damage as they increase in level, the difference in level is shown by "-XX%". A level 10 with "100% -1.5%" shown will take 100% - 10 x 1.5% = 85% damage. Most headshots simply deal 2x body shot damage, but not always.

In practise, each enemy type has a base armor which then increases non linearly as a power function of level. This armor value is then used in the same damage calculation as for player armor found here: Armor. As such the information on this page can only be used as a very rough approximation to the true function. See this spreadsheet for data collected for the infested charger compared with the existing wiki data and true derived function.

As a rule of thumb, Armor Pierce is best against Grineer and worst against Infested, Electrical is best against Corpus and worst against Infested and Fire is best against Infested and equally good/bad against the other two factions. Freeze is good against all types (slow) and especially against shields.

The Normal damage is only correct for Bullet based weapons. Check out Weapon Types for Bolt and Melee weapon research.

Click to show/hide individual enemies and their pictures

Grineer - Light Armor



 * {| border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" class="article-table" style="font-size:12px; text-align:center;"

! !Normal !Armor Pierce !Electrical !Fire !Freeze !Laser !Head 200% !Body
 * -style="text-align:center;"
 * -style="text-align:center;"
 * 300%
 * 200%
 * 200%
 * 200%
 * 200%
 * -style="text-align:center;"
 * 100%
 * 100%
 * 100%
 * 100%
 * 100%
 * 100%
 * }

Grineer - Medium Armor



 * {| border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" class="article-table" style="font-size:12px; text-align:center;"

! !Normal !Armor Pierce !Electrical !Fire !Freeze !Laser !Head !Body
 * -style="text-align:center;"
 * -style="text-align:center;"
 * 100% -1.5%
 * 300%
 * 82% -1.2%
 * 82% -1.2%
 * 66% -1.0%
 * 66% -1.0%
 * -style="text-align:center;"
 * 33% -0.5%
 * 150%
 * 41% -0.6%
 * 41% -0.6%
 * 33% -0.5%
 * 33% -0.5%
 * }

Grineer - Heavy Armor



 * {| border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" class="article-table" style="font-size:12px; text-align:center;"

! !Normal !Armor Pierce !Electrical !Fire !Freeze !Laser !Head !Body
 * -style="text-align:center;"
 * -style="text-align:center;"
 * 200% -1.0%
 * 200%
 * 133% -0.9%
 * 133% -1.1%
 * 133% -1%
 * 133% -1%
 * -style="text-align:center;"
 * 66% -0.35%
 * 100%
 * 66% -0.45%
 * 66% -0.55%
 * 66% -0.5%
 * 66% -0.5%
 * }
 * Their reduced damage per level can vary (non-linear?); higher level Grineer recieve more reduction per level, I think. Hard to find all the types of heavies at various levels. Looks like they may start becoming more resistant to damage until level 10 or so, which would make defining them harder than any other group.

Corpus - Crewman



 * {| border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" class="article-table" style="font-size:12px; text-align:center;"

! !Normal !Armor Pierce !Electrical !Fire !Freeze !Laser !Head !Body
 * -style="text-align:center;"
 * -style="text-align:center;"
 * 0%
 * 400%
 * 400%
 * 100%
 * 200%
 * 200%
 * ~80% -0.5%
 * 100%
 * 160% -1.0%
 * 40% -0.3%
 * 80% -0.5%
 * 80% -0.5%
 * }

Corpus - MOA



 * {| border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" class="article-table" style="font-size:12px; text-align:center;"

! !Normal !Armor Pierce !Electrical !Fire !Freeze !Laser !Midsection (black) !Gun !Legs (Yellow/Green/Blue)
 * -style="text-align:center;"
 * -style="text-align:center;"
 * 200%
 * 200%
 * 400%
 * 100%
 * 200%
 * 200%
 * 50%
 * 50%
 * 100%
 * 25%
 * 50%
 * 50%
 * 100%
 * 100%
 * 200%
 * 50%
 * 100%
 * 100%
 * }

Corpus - Osprey



 * {| border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" class="article-table" style="font-size:12px; text-align:center;"

! !Normal !Armor Pierce !Electrical !Fire !Freeze !Laser !Body
 * -style="text-align:center;"
 * -style="text-align:center;"
 * 100%
 * 100%
 * 200%
 * 50%
 * 100%
 * 100%
 * }

Infested - Charger



 * {| border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" class="article-table" style="font-size:12px; text-align:center;"

! !Normal !Armor Pierce !Electrical !Fire !Freeze !Laser !Head !Body
 * -style="text-align:center;"
 * -style="text-align:center;"
 * 160% -1.0%
 * 50%
 * 80% -0.6%
 * 320% -2.0%
 * 150% -0.7%
 * 150% -0.7%
 * -style="text-align:center;"
 * 80% -0.5%
 * 50%
 * 40% -0.40%
 * 160% -1.0%
 * 75% -0.4%
 * 75% -0.4%
 * }

Infested - Walker



 * {| border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" class="article-table" style="font-size:12px; text-align:center;"

! !Normal !Armor Pierce !Electrical !Fire !Freeze !Laser !Head !Body
 * -style="text-align:center;"
 * -style="text-align:center;"
 * 200%
 * 100%
 * 100%
 * 400%
 * 200%
 * 200%
 * -style="text-align:center;"
 * 100%
 * 50%
 * 50%
 * 200%
 * 100%
 * 100%
 * }
 * Infested Leapers take 10x damage when leaping.

Infested - Ancient



 * {| border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" class="article-table" style="font-size:12px; text-align:center;"

! !Normal !Armor Pierce !Electrical !Fire !Freeze !Laser !Lower Leg/Arm !Head !Body
 * -style="text-align:center;"
 * 100%
 * 100%
 * 100%
 * 200%
 * 100%
 * 100%
 * 75% -1.1%
 * 200%
 * 100% -1.45%
 * 50% -0.75%
 * 50% -0.75%
 * 50% -0.75%
 * 25% -0.4%
 * 100%
 * 5%
 * 50% -0.7%
 * 25% -0.375%
 * 25% -0.375%
 * }

Note: Infested Walkers, Crawlers and Ancients have a vulnerable zone on top of their head. It takes 200% normal damage, I don't know other percentages. So, if you're targeting Ancient's back, or Ancients charges at you, try to hit this zone and Ancient will die much faster.

Other
Shields take 200% damage from Freeze and 100% from all other sources, including the otherwise identical Laser.