Amon Guide & Damage Formula

Amon WELCOME TO AMON 101! Amon

What does this guide cover?

• General gun damage mechanics and formulas
• Everything you need to create a big damage build on your own
• Skills that apply in ways beyond a simple value increase such as bonus damage or ricochets
• Augments and Action Skill use, nuances, and values
• Skills that interact with each other in ways that aren't immediately obvious
• This guide is a WIP and will be updated over time
• • This is a link to my Discord server should you need to contact me with questions or concerns

Updated as of November 4th, 2025

• "Damage Formula"
• • "A damage formula, in this context, is a visual representation of the calculations done in-game to accurately display your damage dealt." - General Damage Guide

• "Critical Hit" or "Crit"
• • Usually defined simply as a headshot - Borderlands 4 takes that a step further and allows for chance-based crits as well, thus any damage can become a crit with a proper build.

• "TRUE Crit"
• • A hit that lands on the weak spot of the enemy, usually a headshot. All critical bonuses are applied normally. Sometimes also defined as a "weak point crit".

• "FAKE Crit"
• • A crit achieved through use of a crit chance skill or passive. These crits DO NOT RECEIVE GEAR CRIT BONUSES.

• "Gear Crit"
• • This refers to crit bonuses you get on your weapon, class mod, enhancements, and some firmware. These bonuses do not apply on "Fake Crits"

• "Skill Crit"
• • This refers to the crit bonuses from your skill tree. These bonuses get used TWICE. So in the simplified formula we simply place them in parenthesis with a 2X next to them. 15% Skill Crit = 30% crit damage in the formula.

• "Damage Over Time or DOT" aka STATUS EFFECT
• • DOT refers to the (usually) elemental effect you apply that will tick away on the enemy for an extended period of time. Lighting an enemy on fire or irradiating them would be an example of a DOT or Status Effect.

• "Double Dip"
• • Double Dip refers to when a damage instance uses something in your formula TWICE. The phrasing will almost always be something along the lines of "XX% of Damage Dealt" An example of a Double Dip would be Tail of the Comet.
  • The value gets used twice since a 2nd instance of damage is being created with a base damage derived from "Damage Dealt"
  • Ancient Rune's Double Dipping Guide

• "Damage Dealt"
• • A simple term in concept - this term is used to define the damage you deal to an enemy AFTER your entire formula has been accounted for. Damage Dealt will take the place of Card on a double dip.

• "Double Dippable"
• • This describes any passive that can be used in a Double Dipping formula. This simply means that passive can be used twice in a row - effectively squaring its value.
  • 30% "Double Dippable" damage is actually a 69% increase to the Damage instance that is doing the Double Dipping.

• "Debuff"
• • This term describes the effect when you increase the damage enemy takes. At it simplest it can be described as reducing their defenses. Debuffs are Soup.

GENERAL FORMULA

^ link to Ratore's write up ^

Thank You Ratore, LazyData, Prismatic, Iserrot, & CZ47 for the tireless work for the General Gun Damage Formula.

Thank You CZ47 for Amon testing.

Thank You to anyone else who contributed any small test to this effort. Every little bit helps.

The Damage Formula at its simplest can be broken into 2 sections:

"ON SHOT" & "ON HIT"

[Card Damage x (1 + On Shot Bonuses) x (1 + Amp)] X [(1 + Soup) + Critical Modifier]

ON SHOT

• • Covers: [ (Card Damage) x (On Shot Bonuses) x (Amp) ]

Card is simply the listed damage on the item card. This can be modified by Daedalus alt fire modes.

On Shot Bonuses include Enhancement Gun and Gun Type Damage passives, most Enhancement Effects, most Legendary Damage increase effects, some Firmware, and some skills from the VH's trees. Specifics will be called out as needed. It is ALWAYS worth clarifying if something falls into this section.

Amp covers both amp from shields and amp from repkits. Amon's Dragon's Breath adds with this section.

• Amon's Firewall / Ring of Frostfire will go into this on shot section of the formula
• • This is a unique part of his formula and not present in the General Formula.
  • Firewall and Ring of Frostfire act as a 1.25 and 1.5 multiplier respectively.
  • This mult applies ANY time a projectile passes through it.

ON HIT

• • Covers: [ (1 + Soup) + Critical Modifier ]

Soup is what will be used to refer to bonuses that add together. In previous titles different bonuses would often multiply. This time around MOST of them go into one bucket. Gun Damage, Elemental Damage, All Damage Dealt, Skill Damage, Melee Damage, and Debuff, and specific damage types all add together in the Soup.

Critical Modifier is the combination of both gear and skill crit. Both values add together but all crit damage from Amon's skill tree get doubled. This behavior holds across MOST skills across the other VH's.

• The crit section of the formula is written as {1+ Gear Crit + (2 x Skill Crit)}. To visualize imagine you have 50% Gear Crit and 30% Skill Crit. This will simplify to: ( 1 + .5 + .6 ) then gets added onto Soup.

Weaknesses and Resistances

• • These will be assumed on ALL of Amon's damage instances unless otherwise stated.

Elemental Match remains a constant mechanic across all Vault Hunters. Refer to Ratore's guide for information on how this works in the formula.

Resistances are based on the enemy and independent of your formula.

Elemental Match Chart

Amon's Gun Formula

Using the above definitions you can figure out exactly how hard your weapon will hit by filling in the spots in this formula with the value of the buff you have applied.

• • Dragon's Breath changes the formula slightly and adds "Skill Damage" to the Soup. Rather than muddy the waters it will be included in a simplified version below the main formula.
  • COM and Repkit damage buffs are the same Soup and add together. They are interchangeable - to avoid unnecessary complexity Repkit will be excluded.

[ Gun Card 

× 

(1 + Enhancement Gun Damage + Enhancement Gun Type Damage + Most Red Text Legendary Damage Increases)

× 

Firewall 

× 

(1 + Shield Amp + Repkit Amp) ]

× 

[(1 + COM Gun Damage + COM Gun Type Damage + COM Splash + COM Elemental + Enhancement Gun Splash + Enhancement Gun Type Splash + The Best Defense + Riddle You This + Compounding Afflictions + In The Zone Gun + Bullet Train + Battle Born + Ancient Ways + Icy Rage + Age of Ice + Gathering Storm + Endless War + Herald's Call + Bellows + Blast Furnace + Freezer Burn + What Burns Within + Weakness + Bullet Storm + Into the Fray) + {1 + Gear Crit + Enhancement Crit + COM Crit + (2×( Executioner + Thunderous Rage + Catastrophe + Killer + In The Zone Crit ))}]

×

Elemental Match

× 

Resistances

• When firing a 5/5 Dragon's Breath shot your bullet is Amped by 100% and converted to fire. This Amp adds with Repkit & Shield Amp.
• Dragon's Breath shots also become skill damage but NOT action skill damage.
• Dragon's Breath Amp is divided by projectile count.
• Both A Honed Mind and I Am A Gun are worded wrong and actually apply to BOTH skill and action skill damage.
• Full Spectrum Arsenal and I Am A Gun apply to DB rockets as well.
• Meaning your gun damage can funneled into the Soup TWICE by using both Specializations
• The conversion adopts the DOT ratio of that weapon in fire. You cannot abuse Electrical Fire with Dragon's Breath. Since shock DOTs are so much higher than fire DOTs at their base you will actually lower your base card DOT by converting to Fire rather than adopting the MASSIVE value you get from Shock.

The simplified formula showing the addition of Dragon's Breath:

The simplified formula showing the addition of Dragon's Breath on HEAVY ORDNANCE:

• Frag Payload cause some wackiness in the formula and Honed Mind may be mislabeled. As it stands this works but is a mess. Frag Payload multiplies Skill Crit and adds to crit as double gear crit cuz Gearbongles.
• TY again CZ
• • Jump scare:

Bonus Elements are like having additional instances of Card damage. Due to a lot of the damage boosts of BL4 being in a massive pool of additives, Bonus Elements stand out as one of the few ways to effectively multiply our damage.

• Not all Bonus Elements behave the same. They each have their own designated tags.
• Bolt action can both True Crit and Fake crit
• Onslaughter, Cryonic Thrum, and Berserk can only crit through skill or general crit chance.
• There Is Only Red adds 600% to the base of Berserk giving a total of 210% Bonus Damage

"On shot damage total" refers to your Gun Card × Firewall × On shot × Amp

Onslaughter

25% of Gun Card as Incendiary Action Skill damage

Berserk

30% of Gun or Melee Card as Cryo Skill Damage

Bolt Action

30% of Gun Card as Shock Gun/Skill damage

Cryonic Thrum

35% of Gun Card as Cryo Action Skill damage

D.O.T. Guide

(by me)

Amon has 3 double dip DOTs in tree - Tail of the Comet, Raging Inferno, and Blackout.

Electrical Fire is not a double dip but can proc off of them - making it extremely potent on Blackout.

• DOT values are based on damage dealt over 1 second. This translates to 3 ticks per second. 
• • Corrosive lasts 8 seconds
  • Cryo, Radiation, and Fire last 4 seconds
  • Shock lasts 2 seconds
• This means that DOT TICKS = 33% of your Status Effect formula total

Tail of the Comet

60% of Ordnance Damage Dealt over 1 second as Cryo Status Effect Damage at 5/5 spec

Blackout

75%~ of Critical Ordnance Damage Dealt over 1 second as Shock Status Effect Damage

Is not skill damage!!!!

Raging Inferno

60% of Critical Action Skill Damage Dealt over 1 second as Fire Status Effect Damage

Is not skill damage!!!!

Electrical Fire

• Electrical Fire will simply apply a DOT at 50% the base of the one that triggers it.
• Unlike its cursed cousin Prismatic Ichor, Electrical Fire DOTs adopt no funniness through duration scaling. If you apply a LARGE shock DOT, you get exactly half of that as a Fire DOT. That Fire DOT will have a normal 4 second duration.
• Gun DOTs are buffed by On Shot Bonuses and Amp

Force of Nature

FORCE OF NATURE

• A full damage detonation requires Forgeskill damage or a kill. Melee can set off half damage detonations. Slippy does not set these off. 
• Force of Nature detonations can crit via Raging Inferno and trigger a triple dipped Fire DOT.
•  Each Prime Stack is on its own timer.
•  Accounts for last 10 strongest instances of Gun Damage
• Since some types of bonus damage counts as a stack you can reach 10 Prime stacks without reaching that weapon's maximum Detonation Damage
• Berserk does not contribute or apply to FON in any way beyond freezing for Age of Ice.
• Bonus damage that receives gun damage will build Prime Stacks.
• Watts 4 DinnerBolt ActionProtean Cell
• • These are examples of bonus damage that builds Prime Stacks
• This means you can build 3 Prime Stacks per bullet after reloading with a bonus damage shield and Bolt Action. Prime Stack Count serves as nothing more than a visual indicator telling you how many instances of gun damage you've dealt. It is not a mult of anything in of itself despite its INTENDED purpose of being a sign that more or less reads: "10× your gun's damage! Explode this guy!" - it fails at that. 
• The bonus damage amount is accounted for in the detonation calcs and will use the exact amount applied. So for example say you have 100 weapon damage, +25% shock from Watts 4 Dinner + 30% shock from Bolt Action vs a flesh target

100 + (25/2)+(30/2)

100 + 12.5 + 15 in 3 hits from 1 shot.

You now have 127.5 damage as your Force of Nature base damage BUT YOURE NOW AT 3 PRIME STACKS DISPLAYED. This is easily negated by actually firing 10 shots.  

• Force of Nature will store up to 10 individual stacks until either:
• • 10 seconds pass since that stack was made
  • A stronger stack takes its place

Molten Roil

MOLTEN ROIL

Coming Soon

Lightning Rod

LIGHTNING ROD

• Lightning Rod requires a critical hit to proc
• There is roughly a 1 second delay to the damage
• It does not adopt traits such as Primed Potency
• The skill High Voltage from Vengeance Tree applies to it.
• High Voltage reads incorrectly. It will DOUBLE the damage of your bolt.

Strike the Anvil

STRIKE THE ANVIL

• Can proc off of any action skill damage
• High Voltage doubles bolt damage

Bullet Hail

BULLET HAIL

• Can proc off of any gun damage

Caroming Shard

CAROMING SHARD

• Can ricochet more than once for a quad dip
• Can proc from any shard
• Is splash even if it comes from Bullet Hail

Winter's Kiss

WINTER'S KISS

• Is splash even if source ordnance isn't

Endless War

• Endless war acts as a debuff on whatever target you stick with the axes.
• Each Axe in a target will add 1 Prime Stack giving 20% Gun Damage to any bullets that hit them.
• The max count to Endless War stacks is 3 for a total of 60% Gun Damage.
• You can make the visual count higher but the debuff will not increase.
• • It is unclear if this is intentional or a bug.
• If an enemy dies with an Axe stuck in them that Axe will shoot off to another enemy.

Amon has the unique ability of using Forgeskills in conjunction with his Action Skills. These allow him to use additional abilities separate of your Action Skill. These skills are supported by Amon's capstones which act as additional augments to the Forgeskills themselves.

Double Edge

• Double Edge is Action Skill Damage and Melee Damage
• Is Splash
• Can Trigger Raging Inferno DOTs

Molten Slam

• Molten Slam is also Action Skill and melee damage
• Is Splash
• Can Trigger Raging Inferno DOTs

FIrewall

• Firewall will increase the damage any projectile that passes through it by 25%
• • Ring of Frostfire ups that to 50%
  • The projectile must pass through the edge of the ring to get the buff.
• This bonus will fall into the "On Shot section of the formula"

• This bonus can be double dipped if something that passes through it CREATES A NEW PROJECTILE. The same projectile cannot double dip Firewall. Firepot stickies can double dip it if you throw the grenade through it then the sticky comes back through it a 2nd time. Chaumurky can only get it once despite bouncing through it repeatedly.