Example of an explosive elemental weapon
Explosive weapons' bullets have a chance to explode on impact, dealing bonus damage directly to its target and in an area around its blast radius.
Unlike other elemental attacks, explosive weapons never deal damage over time. All possible damage is inflicted immediately.
Borderlands
Effectiveness
Explosive weapons are equally effective against any and all enemy types: flesh, shielded, and armored (although armored targets will still receive damage reduction, just as they would against any regular attack).
Notes
- Rocket launchers use explosive damage as their default damage type for non-elemental launchers, rather than normal physical damage.
- Enemies that are killed by explosive weapons are blown to pieces. Sometimes accompanied by an overkill event where their body becomes a meat fountain that rises up high.
- Brick has skills and class mods that are specifically tuned to enhancing explosive damage and resistance to it.
- Explosive damage is particularly effective against enemy vehicles and turrets.
- No enemies are specifically resistant to explosive damage.
- No shield types offer resistance against explosive damage.
- All of the undead creatures in The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned are highly susceptible to explosive damage.
- The Torgue Cobra (see list of unique weapons below) is a particularly potent explosive weapon with devastating strikes concentrated in a tiny splash area.
Borderlands 2
Explosive weapons have been somewhat limited as an element, with most other manufacturers not producing explosive weapons as standard (save for certain Torgue-barreled weapons or any non-elemental rocket launcher), however, the majority of Torgue munitions will carry explosive elemental tech as standard.
Splash damage
A certain percentage of the weapon card damage is dealt in a small area around the impact point, depending on the weapon type:
- Assault rifles: 90%
- Pistols: 100%
- Shotguns: 100% (was 85% at game release)
A direct hit with an explosive round will inflict both impact damage and splash damage on the target. However, splash damage cannot score critical hits and is not boosted on one even if the weapon is capable of inflicting such hits.
Certain weapons, notably assault rifles with the Torgue barrel (Rocketeer/Torpedo/Rokets!/Cannon/KerBlaster/Peak Opener/Boom Puppy/Bearcat/Grenadier), only inflict splash damage.
Additional splash damage is usually not listed on their item card, so their potential damage cannot be taken at face value unless the weapon specifically does splash damage only.
Effectiveness
Explosive damage is fully effective against flesh and armor, but only inflict 80% damage to shields.
Splash explosive damage has the same effectiveness on flesh, shields and armor as the impact damage.
Splash Damage only (cannot crit):
- 100% total damage against flesh and armor
- 80% total damage against shields
Direct Hit Damage (Impact + Splash) in non-critical spot:
- 200% (pistols & shotguns) / 190% (assault rifles) - damage against flesh and armor
- 160% (pistols & shotguns) / 152% (assault rifles) - damage against shields
Critical Direct Hit Damage can be calculated as following:
Total Damage = ((impact damage * crit multiplier) + weapon-specific splash damage) * (1 - target specific damage reduction)
Example: An assault rifle listed as doing 200 damage will deal 200 explosive damage on impact and 180 explosive splash damage. If the round hits a critical location, only the 200 damage is multiplied. If the target is shielded, both the impact damage and splash damage are reduced to 80% effectiveness (160 and 144, respectively).
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel
Explosive damage remains unchanged from Borderlands 2, but has new synergies with the Cryo element:
- All frozen enemies take +200% explosive damage and +200% critical hit damage from non-cryo weapons.
- An explosive weapon will inflict effectively 500% of its normal critical damage on a critical hit to a frozen enemy directly, disregarding the splash which cannot receive the critical damage bonus (unless Tombstone activates on the Splash Damage instance).
Borderlands 3 and Subsequent Games
Beginning with Borderlands 3, explosive no longer counts as a separate element, and is replaced by splash damage, which can be any element, and non-elemental "kinetic" damage.
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