Your gear causes Elemental Effects in Anthem, and come in the form of Fire, Ice, Electric, and Acid. They should not be confused with primers and detonators that are part of the combo system, as this is a different layer of Anthem’s damage system. In this guide, we will run through the different effects that element damage can have in the game.
How Fire, Ice, Electric and Acid Damage Work
Many of your gear options in the game will not only do damage but can also apply an elemental effect to the target. These take the form of debuffs, and can often be more effective against some targets than others. As such, it helps to consider the nature of the target you are attacking when deciding what gear to use.
Each elemental damage type will cause a small icon to pop up over the afflicted enemy, so you can easily tell which enemies are currently affected by which elements.
Fire Elemental Effects
Fire will cause damage over time to a target, slowly chipping away at the targets health bar. It is strong against physical health and armor but is weak when used on energy shields. If the enemy you are attacking has a blue portion as part of its health bar, you will want to get rid of that shield before using fire to damage it further.
Ice Elemental Effects
Ice will slow and freeze enemies. Smaller enemies tend to get frozen with a single attack, but you will need to stack attacks on tougher enemies to freeze them. Ice has a strong impact on energy shields but will do less damage to physical health and armor.
Electric Elemental Effects
Electrical attacks will cause area-of-effect damage to groups of enemies, chaining between them. They do more significant damage to enemy shields and are less useful against physical ones.
Acid Elemental Attacks
Acid elemental attacks will reduce the armor of affected enemies i.e. they take more damage. They are very effective against physical armor, but do less damage to energy shields.
Impact and Explosive Attacks
These attacks do not apply any effect, and at the moment can just be considered as standard damage. They are still worth mentioning here though, as you will see them mentioned in gear descriptions. As far as I can currently tell, anything that does not do elemental damage is considered as Impact or Explosive, so keep this mind when examining the perks on your gear!
Once more, I want to say that elemental damage is not involved in the combo system, but it can be used in conjunction with it. For example, to maximize single target damage, you want to affect something with fire and acid, the use a Ranger combo on it, as this should give you maximum single target damage. If you need help with the combo system, be sure to check out our useful guide.
