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A good portion of the epic weapons in borderlands have added elemental damage. If they have this perk, it will either be a x1, x2, x3, or x4 of the element.

But what does that mean?

Is it x4 (example with x4 shown) of the overall damage? Is it the times the elemental damage stacks per hit or is it the chance elemental damage can occur? Or something else ?

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An elemental weapon actually usually shoots normal bullets, that are exactly the same as that of a normal gun. However, sometimes they trigger an elemental effect, or "proc" (short for "programmed random occurrence" or "procedure"). When this happens in addition to the bullet damage, the elemental effect and damage is added. These procs can trigger with varying intensities, from x1 to x4, as seen on weapon infocards. Different weapons have different proc chances for each of these elemental multipliers.

Whenever a weapon procs, a certain amount of elemental damage is added based on the current element's damage multiplier:

Element Damage Multiplier

Incendiary 60%

Shock 100%

Explosive 150%

Corrosive 40%

For example:

  • if a 100 damage x1 incendiary repeater procs x1, this will add a 1x incendiary damage multiplier (60%), dealing an extra 60 damage.
  • If a 100 damage x3 explosive sniper rifle procs x3, this will add a 1.5x explosive damage multiplier (150%) dealing an extra 225 damage.

Taken from here and is also worth looking at for more information regarding specific weapons and their elemental effect.

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    I know this is an old answer, but I just bought borderlands and I've read this description from the wiki multiple times and it just doesn't make sense to me. How does 100 with a x3 explosive (150%) proc === 225 damage? wouldn't that be 337.5? (((100 * 1.5) * 1.5) * 1.5) = 337.5
    – SgtPooki
    Nov 9, 2014 at 6:03
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    @SgtPooki I know this is a late addition, but for anyone exploring Borderlands now, this is because explosive does 150% weapon damage when it procs. Fire does 60% weapon damage when it procs. This is separate from the weapon's proc multiplier. Example, x3 explosive is a 1.5 multiplier. So you multiply both of these multipliers to get the final damage: 1.5 * 1.5 * Weapon = 2.25 * Weapon
    – Randomorph
    Mar 3, 2017 at 14:06
  • Thanks for the input Randomorph.. In that equation I feel like we're missing one definition. We have x3ExplosiveProc = 1.5, and we have weaponDamage, but what is the other 1.5?
    – SgtPooki
    Mar 4, 2017 at 6:45

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