In Borderlands 3, you can add elemental buffs to your weapons so that they get more creative in the way they cause damage to foes. Your health and armor have their own set of strengths and weaknesses but so does your enemy’s. Hitting them with a simple projectile can be cool but you can make things much easier if you add the effects of the elements to your damage.
- Anointed Weapons
- Unique Weapons
- Best Early Game Weapons
- Legendary Weapons
- Weapon Elemental Damage Types
Borderlands 3 Elemental Damage
Different enemies have different weaknesses so particular elemental effects do more damage to them than to others. This Borderlands 3 Guide covers the six different types of damage you can do with your weapon.
Physical/Kinetic Damage
This is just the normal amount of damage your projectile will do when hitting a target. This is what you’ll start with until you unlock the rest of the elemental buffs and it’s not as creative but it’s still good for holding out against foes.
Cryo Damage
A good strategy is to freeze one enemy in a solid block of ice and then start attacking him when he’s helpless or take advantage of his disability to focus your efforts onto the enemies who are still coming at you.
Your melee strikes do 3x the damage on frozen foes that they normally do on regular enemies. It’s particularly effective against yellow (Armored) foes.
Incendiary Damage
Like Cryo, this fire damage deals damage over time to foes. Enemies receive burn damage for about 5 seconds and needless to say: this works wonders against foes with flesh.
It’s not effective against strongly armored types like robots but you can make some nicely cooked raider steak with this.
Shock Damage
This damage is a bit of a trade-off. It does the most damage against shields but in turn: does less damage to both armor and flesh.
It’s also great for stunning enemies while you focus on others but its duration is far shorter than Cryo. It does offer you two seconds of increased damage though.
Corrosive Damage
Erosion is the worst thing that can happen to armored foes so it’s particularly useful against them. However, flesh and shields aren’t nearly as easy targets for it so mostly use it on robots. It lasts for about 5 seconds.
Radiation Damage
This adds a sort of Area-Of-Effect damage buff to your weapon. Enemies affected by radiation might spread it nearby to other foes.
If he dies, the ensuing explosion will spread it to all surrounding foes and maybe they’ll explode too. This is less effective against armored foes.
You can increase elemental damage by spending skill points so be sure to make use of them in order cause more suffering to your foes.
