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TL:DR: If my slag weapon procs its slag effect, should I switch to another non-slag weapon or will my majority of non-proc-bullets be sufficient to make use of the slag.

If a weapon is of the Slag element, does this make every bullet it fires of said element, or just the shots that proc the effect?

In field concept, say I'm using this here rifle:

Slag Weapon

If I shoot a critter with the above weapon, and I shoot a burst of say 10 rounds, (ignore the mag size you see above) assuming round #4 procs the slag effect and is the only round to proc the effect, will the other rounds fired after round #4 do extra damage due to their not being slag, or will they count as alternate sources of slag despite not proc-ing the weapons effect.

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  • You can probably simplify your title to "Do elemental weapons always fire elemental shots/ammo?" Bullet is an exclusive class of projectile (and I'm not sure you mean to be exclusive), "it's" is grammatically incorrect, and you don't define "charged with it's parent element". Granted, my rephrasing may still beg definition of "elemental shots/ammo".
    – NiteCyper
    Aug 22, 2014 at 5:21
  • At the time of this questions inception, I was unaware of the firing range area's availability in the game for repeated use. Forgive the question's 'lack of research'
    – Ender
    Aug 22, 2014 at 5:51
  • Ceci n'est pas un fusil! X) Also, if you did do the research, there probably would have been less of a question.
    – NiteCyper
    Aug 22, 2014 at 5:58
  • Which would have been bad, because your question has value, so diminishing the question would have diminished Arqade. In this ironic way, I'm asserting that your lack of research contributed to Arqade.
    – NiteCyper
    Aug 22, 2014 at 15:21

2 Answers 2

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If a weapon is of the Slag element, does this make every bullet it fires of said element, or just the shots that proc the effect?

Judging from the damage-numbers colour, if a weapon is of the Slag element, this makes every bullet that it fires of said element. The same goes for the other elements, except for explosive, which always procs. 
 

If I shoot a critter with the above weapon, and I shoot a burst of say 10 rounds, (ignore the mag size you see above) assuming round #4 procs the slag effect and is the only round to proc the effect, will the other rounds fired after round #4 do extra damage due to their not being slag, or will they count as alternate sources of slag despite not proc-ing the weapons effect?

If you shoot a critter with your illegitimate weapon, and you shoot a burst of say 10 rounds, (ignoring the mag size I see above) assuming round #4 procs the slag effect and is the only round to proc the effect, the other rounds fired after round #4 will not do extra damage due to their not being slag. I'm not sure what you mean by "count as alternate sources of slag".

Exception:

In Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode, [...] [s]lag on slag damage is also increased by 50%.

http://borderlands.wikia.com/wiki/Slag#Effectiveness
"By" is probably supposed to be "to", because 0% * 150% is still 0%.
 

TL:DR: If my slag weapon procs its slag effect, should I switch to another non-slag weapon or will my majority of non-proc-bullets be sufficient to make use of the slag.

If your slag weapon procs its slag effect, you should switch to another non-slag weapon. Your majority of non-proc-bullets will not be sufficient to make use of the slag.
 

Thanks to galacticninja for the extra information. ;)

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Elemental weapons deal damage on hit and also have a chance of triggering a status effect per hit (this is a damage-over-time effect for non-slag weapons). An exception are Explosive weapons, which don't have DoT and always trigger their Explosive splash damage - more info here).

A slag weapon like in your example will always deal slag damage on hit, and will also have a chance to trigger the slag status effect on the enemy (or "slag" an enemy) per hit.

In Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode (UVHM), slag on slag will deal a 50% damage bonus. In your example, if "round #4 procs the slag effect and is the only round to proc the effect", rounds 5-10 will gain a 50% damage bonus while the enemy is still under the slag status effect. This makes slag weapons more useful in UVHM. However, this is not the case in non-UVHM playthroughs (slag on slag will deal no bonus damage).

It is preferable to switch to any non-slag weapon once your slag weapon has slagged (procs the slag effect on) an enemy, as the bonus damages for hitting a slagged enemy with non-slag damage are 100% for non-UVHM, and 200% for UVHM.

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  • (1) If something "always procs", 'proc' is not an appropriate word (programmed RANDOM occurrence). (2) Ooh yeah, explosive. (3) 'Didn't know about the different playthrough stuff.</jealousy>
    – NiteCyper
    Aug 23, 2014 at 14:22
  • @NiteCyper I thought 'proc' was short for 'process'. Anyway, I removed that phrase to avoid misunderstanding. Aug 23, 2014 at 15:11
  • Nice, although I was teasing. The etymology of 'proc' is not well-established, so my parenthetical expansion may not be correct. The WoWWiki states, "Proc was originally short for "spec_proc" (spec_proc is short for "special process")".
    – NiteCyper
    Aug 23, 2014 at 15:23

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