Once Human Status damage explained

There are quite a few flavors of damage in Once Human, which can make things a bit confusing at a glance. Very confusing, actually, because the game lists Elemental Damage and Status Damage as distinct values, even though they’re quite similar.

In this post, we’ll go over everything you need to know about Status damage in Once Human.

Status Damage explained

To understand Status damage in Once Human, you’ll first need to get a basic grasp of the different kinds of builds that are available. We have builds that focus on weapon damage and builds that focus on Elemental damage. The elemental builds utilize both Elemental and Status damage to varying degrees.

Status damage applies particularly to the Burn and Frost elements, where continuous Status damage can be triggered as a weapon effect. This deals direct Status damage to the targets affected by or within the trigger effect’s range.

But the popular Unstable Bomber and Power Surge builds also utilize Status damage.

So what’s the difference between the two?

The difference between Status and Elemental damage in Once Human

In a nutshell, Elemental Damage is a special kind of damage like Blaze, Blast, Shock, or Frost. Status Damage is a damage-over-time effect such as Burn or Frost Vortex. Status Damage sometimes has an Elemental, er, element, but they’re essentially different concepts.

• Elemental Damage: A specific type of damage that some enemies may be strong/weak against.
• Status Damage: Status effects damage over time.

Almost all of the Elemental builds in Once Human require a combination of Elemental and Status damage to be more effective damage dealers. This is even true of builds like Power Surge, which makes no mention of Elemental damage in the description, but yet relies on Elemental damage within damage calculations.

However, Status Damage doesn’t have to have an elemental attribute. If you have a weapon that causes vulnerability, then that will simply make the enemy take more damage for a length of time.

When you’re buffing your character, you’ll want a combination of both. If you’re focusing on frost damage, you’ll want to build the Frost DMG stat. However, if you’re using a weapon that causes Frost Vortex, then you’ll also want to build up Status Damage to increase how long an enemy takes damage from its effect. You’ll benefit by giving a bit of love to both categories.