Damage 1.0

Damage in Warframe can be broken down into many different damage types, the most commonly used ones including: 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 bodyparts 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 a white, while damage to shields is shown as a blue. Damage can also produce critical hits. Critical hit damage, melee damage dealt while using Stealth, or damage done while undetected are displayed as a yellow. Finally, melee critical hits while stealthed 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 Crewman's head, will not spawn a number indicator.

Damage types
(construction mostly complete, hopefully...)

Remember, this list of damage type only regards their importance in defining incoming damage for the enemy target to determine how to calculate said damage. Some damage types 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) that work off of the damage type as well, which may be the only factor that differenciates them from several other damage types.

Armor Piercing
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.

It is also one of the four elemental damage types that you can mod onto your weapons.

Blade
This is also known 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
Also known as normal damage, this is the standard damage type. This damage type has a x1.5 multiplier for Grineer heads and Infested Ancient heads, but does no damage to Corpus Crewmen heads.

Electricity
Electric damage is one of the core 4 elemental damages (ones that you can mod onto your weapon). 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.

Fire
Fire damage is one of the core 4 elemental damages (ones that you can mod onto your weapon). Fire has a x2 multiplier to all Infested and a x1.25 multiplier to medium Grineer.

Forcefield
Damage of this type ragdolls enemies. This is the type of damage used by Corpus security lasers and the charge and slide attacks for the Kogate.

Freeze
Freeze damage does double damage to shields and will slow the targets 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 stuck by bodys being pinned to the wall by bolt type weapons.

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 as of 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 and blunt melee weapons (IE: 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 types is currently only done by the Acrid, and applied an damage over time after affect (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 like Saryn's Miasma ability.

Serrated Blade
Serrated Blade damage is used by charged melee attacks. It is one of the 4 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.).

Supernatural
The supernatural damage type currently only makes an appearance in the Infested Ancients damage type multipliers, giving it a 0x multiplier (so basically they take no damage from it). Unfortunately there is no known way to apply this damage, so for practical purposes and application, it has no use.

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.: Boltor, Kunai, Paris)


 * Poison (i.e.: Torid, Acrid, Mire)


 * Serrated Blade (i.e.: Most (but not all) melee charge attacks aswell as Lanka and Hikou).

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, ancient 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) * (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.
 * "Base Damage"
 * 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.
 * 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 can critically hit for additional damage. 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.

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 resistance values. 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 or not, 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.