What is double-dipping in Warframe? Faction damage multiplier, explained

Mods in Warframe are arguably the most complex weapon-buffing platform in MMORPGs. The game has gone through numerous balance changes in its decade-long journey thus far, but the modding system has remained near-intact since the closed beta. As challenging as it is for beginners, the system allows almost any weapon to output significantly higher damage than its base stats.

Even a beginner weapon like Mk1-Braton can demolish end-game targets with the right help from mods, Arcanes, and Warframe abilities. For most weapons, however, mods can do the heavy lifting alone. This is primarily due to how the damage calculation works in this game.

In Warframe, different avenues of damage, such as base damage, multishot, critical damage, and so on, stack multiplicatively rather than additively. In a few niche cases, a mod bonus can apply twice in the damage calculation or 'double-dip' in the game math.

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Warframe double-dipping: Why Bane mods greatly improve damage

What are faction mods?

There are many more ways to make a weapon more effective than a simple per-bullet damage increment. A 1.5 multishot, for example, gives one pellet from the weapon a 50% chance to duplicate itself into two shots. Other indirect categories that impact overall damage output in Warframe include fire shot, critical damage, and even reload speed for sustained DPS.

A relatively underused category among them is faction-specific mods, known as 'Bane' mods or faction damage. As of this writing, it is the only consistent way to benefit from the double-dipping feature in Warframe.

Released in 2013 (update 9), this is still the 'newest' damage-boosting general category of mods to be included in the game. Each faction mod only works on a specific type of weapon and adds the damage buff for one specific faction of opponents: Corpus, Grineer, Infested, or Corrupted.

This immediately poses two problems: first, you need to switch them out before missions depending on your circumstances. Secondly, harnessing their power involves a huge collectathon. Split across mods for Melee, Pistols, Shotguns, and Rifles, there are 16 of these mods. This does not include the latest Railjack-specific faction mods, Granum's Nemesis and Worm's Torment.

Rhino's Roar ability is a universal faction damage buff, stacking additively with other sources of faction damage. Fortunately, you can get this ability on any Warframe thanks to the Helminth system.

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How damage can double-dip

Serration, the basic damage buff mod on a rifle in Warframe, grants +165% to base damage. Compared to this, even the expensive Primed version of Bane mods add a measly +55% on damage dealt to that faction. The seemingly under tuned numbers are, however, a balanced measure.

Faction damage is its own separate damage modifier distinct from +base damage. It stacks multiplicatively with both modded base damage and headshot multiplier.

Hypothetically, let's say you have a primary weapon modded only with a fully ranked Serration and Primed Bane of Grineer. The damage calculation upon landing a body shot on a Grineer unit will be the modded damage (100+165%) multiplied by faction damage (100+55%).

The real potential of faction damage multiplier only becomes apparent with damage-over-time effects or DoTs. In Warframe, five damage elements cause DoT:

• Heat
• Toxin
• Gas
• Electricity
• Slash

Upon successful status effect trigger, they all deal six extra ticks of damage over six seconds. The per-tick damage is 35% of the modded base damage for Slash and 50% for the rest. Interestingly, the DoT also multiplicatively stacks with a faction damage bonus.

When any DoTs occur from a weapon with a faction damage bonus equipped, this damage is applied twice. As previously explained, it applies as a multiplicative bonus on the initial hit. The DoTs are based on this initial tick, but the faction damage multiplier gets applied to it a second time.

This essentially makes it so that a Primed Bane mod alone can boost a weapon's effective tick damage more than twofold. The double-dipping, thus, makes ticks of these six elements vastly more potent, particularly Slash, due to its ability to bypass armor completely.