Damage

Damage is the amount of health an enemy loses when you successfully hit them with a shot, or conversely how much health you lose when hit.

= Observations = The following points have been observed about how much damage one does. Though based on many experimental shots, they are often speculative and may not be accurate.

Enemy level

 * Elemental effects aside, you do 100% of a weapon's listed Damage against enemies of your level.
 * You do less than 100% damage against enemies that are of an higher level than you.
 * You can do 0 damage to an enemy if the level difference is high enough.
 * You seem to do 60% your normal damage against ennemies two levels over you, and 40% damage against enemies three levels over you. This suggests that for +1/+2/+3/+4/+5 difference between an enemy's level and yours, your inflict 80%/60%/40%/20%/0% your normal damage.
 * You do more than 100% damage against enemies that are of an higher level than you.
 * The amount of damage against lower enemies seems capped at just under 200%, or else is infinitely approching that limit.
 * You do the same amount of damage on badass enemies as you do on regular ones. They, however, have much more health and will need more shots.

Distance

 * Distance does not affect the damage one does, but does render hits less likely, hence reducing total damage done to an enemy.

Players

 * You always do 100% of a weapon's listed Damage against players.
 * You cannot critically hit a player, nor can you be critically hit by enemies.

Armor

 * Armored enemies of the same level seem to take 100% damage from normal shots that hit their armor, but some hits do an extra amount of damage. Likely, these shots are those that hit parts that weren't protected by armor. Unarmored enemies do not exhibit these extra-damaging hits.

Fire
Fire is said many times to be best against flesh enemies and to be able to light enemies on fire.


 * Fire seems to do 50% damage versus shielded enemies.
 * Fire does additional damage against unshielded enemies on a normal hit, even if the enemy doesn't light on fire.
 * The amount of additional damage done is apparently a fraction of the weapon's normal damage, taking into account the level difference.
 * Multiple effects seem to occur randomly and may be related to the fire multiplier. Has been noted: extra damage, lighting on fire, bursting into flames (and splashing on nearby ones).
 * The amount of damage a burning enemy takes seems to be, again, a fraction of the weapon's normal damage.

Critical hits

 * Critical hits normally inflict 150% additional damage, for a total of 250% of the weapon's Damage rating.

Other weapon bonuses

 * "+X% damage" effects seem to already be included in the weapons' listed Damage ratings.