Borderlands 2 Game of the Year Guide Marcus' Munitions Monthly

Elemental Effects

Guns from each manufacturer except Jakobs (those Luddites!) can also come equipped to deal elemental damage. Maliwan does one better, making every single one of its guns output elemental rounds. Fire rounds scorch and burn, making them ideal against unarmored, fleshy targets. Corrosive rounds eat away at hard, fire-resistant surfaces, making them effective against robots and armor. And Electric rounds quickly overpower personal shield modules, disengaging shield protection and allowing free access to the sensitive, squishy areas of the would-be shield user.

On weapons of white, commonplace rarity, you’ll never see an elemental property unless the weapon is from Maliwan. On items of green or better rarity, you’ll start seeing elemental effects once you’re above a minimum level. If you happen to get incredibly lucky and receive a unique elemental drop before the minimum level for that effect to show up on drops, you’ll still get it.

Minimum character level for elements on non-Maliwan, non-Jakobs weapons to show up*

Element	Level
Fire	7
Shock	11
Corrosive	13
Slag	15

*Maliwan is always elemental, Jakobs never is

Elemental Damage Multipliers—First Playthrough

Damage Type	Impact Flesh	Impact Armor	Impact Shield	Slag Bonus
None (regular ammo)	1	1	1	2
Explosive	1	1	0.8	2
Fire	1.5	0.75	0.75	2
Shock	1	1	2	2
Corrosive	0.9	1.5	0.75	2
Slag	1	1	1	1

Elemental Damage Multipliers—True Vault Hunter Mode (Second Playthrough)

Damage Type	Impact Flesh	Impact Armor	Impact Shield	Slag Bonus
None (regular ammo)	1	1	1	2
Explosive	1	1	0.8	2
Fire	1.75	0.4	0.4	2
Shock	1	1	2.5	2
Corrosive	0.6	1.75	0.4	2
Slag	1	1	1	1

Elemental weapons come equipped with a chance to inflict the target with a horrific temporary effect. Just like with impact damage, if a creature is vulnerable to a particular type of damage (like flesh creatures to fire), then they’ll be more vulnerable to the possible damage-over-time effect. It will also be more likely to go off in the first place, and they’ll resist less of the potential damage once their life is ticking away. Precious few enemies (thankfully) are entirely immune to damage-over-time effects, but watch especially for Constructor Bots, which you will learn to fear for that reason, among many others.

You Gotta Accessorize

An accessory (if it does come equipped on a weapon) will enhance something about performance, usually while altering the name of the weapon. The name change will be a prefix title that gives a clue as to the nature of the accessory. You can change several aspects of gun performance with accessories:

Stability: Stability affects the sway of the weapon. Foregrip attachments help keep sway under control.

Melee Damage: A bayonet greatly increases melee damage when the weapon is equipped and in hand.

Bullet Damage: The damage of the bullets themselves may be increased directly, which is tough to argue with as a bonus.

Wild Bullets: A Bandit accessory if ever there was one, bullets may be designed to have wide, unpredictable spread. If you wonder how a wild, inaccurate gun could ever be useful, that just means you haven’t yet fought rakk swarms or Rabid Stalkers.

Bullet Speed: Hotter ammunition leads to a faster projectile, making the weapon easier to aim across longer ranges.

Magazine Size: It’s hard to say no to more rounds than usual in a magazine, and you just might get it.

Accuracy: The likelihood that the barrel will put the projectile right where you’re pointing can be improved with attachments like laser sights that improve accuracy.

Slag or be Slagged

Note that all of these elemental effects can happen to YOU, too. Your screen will be partially obscured by the effect seeping into view. For elemental effects, you’ll take shield damage over time until the shield is depleted, at which point your health gets chipped away until the effect expires. If the effect happens to be Shock-related, then your shield won’t hold up for very long, if at all. You’ll learn to hate surveyors for this reason. For Slag, you’ll take double damage from everything as long as Slag is active. None of these things is appealing, so dodge elemental attacks, use Anshin adaptive shields or items with immunity to particular damage types, or use skills possessed by certain characters that diminish the duration of these debilitating effects.

A Balanced Attack

Eventually, you’re probably going to want to carry at least one reliable weapon per element. This helps you cover any elemental strength or weakness. Insect-like creatures, fleshy foes, and people are common enough adversaries to always be glad you’re spitting hot fire. While they’re not commonplace for the first third of the game, robotic loaders and other armored targets eventually become so ubiquitous that you’ll barely want to equip anything but Corrosive in places. The only nut tougher to crack than a Badass enemy is a Badass enemy with a shield, so having Shock damage on hand is always appealing. And Slag makes a lovely pair with anything else, drastically increasing the damage of non-Slag damage sources. Slag is also practically a requirement during True Vault Hunter Mode, where enemies have much larger health pools, and the weaknesses and resistances to various damage types are amplified.

Fire

Fire rounds may light the target on fire, causing them to burn and continue taking damage. Naturally, most living things have a deep distaste of being on fire, so this may also change their behavior. At the very least, you’ll hear more screaming. Armored targets are Fire resistant. They’ll take less impact damage from Fire rounds, they’re less likely to catch on fire, and they’ll take less damage from the fire when they do. Fire, like Corrosive, is also pretty bad at whittling down sophisticated shield technology.

Shock

Shock weapons chew through shields extremely fast, meaningfully quicker than other weapons. They may also electrocute the target for a few moments, dealing damage over time and potentially interrupting their actions, what with the electrocution they’re undergoing and all. Besides the obvious usefulness of knocking out enemy shields so you can damage them more efficiently when they’re unprotected, some enemies who are capable of cloaking depend on an active shield to draw energy from. No shield? No cloak.

Corrosive

Corrosive weapons sizzle through even the best synthetic material, making short work of loaders and armor plating. Caustic rounds have a chance to leave their goop on the target, corroding further over several seconds. The doubling up of Corrosive impacts with ongoing Corrosion can help you melt through loaders as though they don’t represent billions of dollars of research in robotics and artificial intelligence. Corrosive rounds deal diminished damage to shielded targets.

Slag

Since that last Vault opened, this purple goop is just everywhere, isn’t it? Eridium approaches abundance now on Pandora, and although this resource can potentially power a lot of wonderful things, it can also ruin entire regions and unnaturally afflict people and wildlife. Some monsters have lived long enough exposed to Eridium to have transformed into Slagged mutations of themselves, almost new creatures entirely. Normal Pandoran creatures exposed to Slag are only slightly better off—briefly Slagged creatures take double damage from all non-Slag damage sources!

Explosive

Explosive rounds also come equipped on some guns, and they are obviously the norm on rocket launchers. (Every Torgue weapon uses Explosive rounds, although their gyrojet rocket projectiles work a little differently.) Explosive damage differs from regular, non-elemental kinetic ammunition in its blast radius, as well as on the sheer force transferred. Explosive rounds explode on impact, unsurprisingly, damaging anything they hit and also anything in the impact blast radius. The actual damage dealt with an on-target Explosive hit is slightly higher than what you’d expect based strictly on the damage value on an Explosive weapon’s stat card. The raw explosive oomph is something the card doesn’t completely account for.