Borderlands 4 General Damage Formula

What is a damage formula?

A damage formula, in this context, is a visual representation of the calculations done in-game to accurately display your damage dealt.

In Borderlands 4, damage is divided broadly into the 2 main categories shown below:

ON SHOT x ON HIT = Final Damage

ON SHOT

These boosts are checked at the time you fire your gun. Some mechanics will snapshot this value as part of an effect.

• An example are underbarrel drones: at the time of deployment, for instance, they will inherit the on-shot boosts for their full duration.

• Card damage refers to the damage value displayed on the guns item card.
• Harlowe’s Group Study is also added to the enhancements category.
• Vex's Blood Shot and Harlowe's Gamma Ray Burst also snapshot their values at this time, but it's best to check specific vault hunter resources for depth on mechanics like that.

ON HIT

These are damage boosts checked at the time you deal damage. This is useful to know for effects such as Bullet Train, where you can shoot then start moving when using slower projectiles.

• Specializations include both the basic stat increases and the perks that increase damage.
• Debuff effects can be anything from the Knife Amp part to debuff underbarrels like Vial Launcher.

Resistance is only relevant to foes above player level and is 10% per level:

• Resistance = 1 - ( 0.1 x (Enemy level - Player level) )
• Mostly relevant for major bosses who are 2 levels above player level and “Experienced” foes who are 1 level above.

On-hit boosts are prime candidates for what's called 'double dipping'. Check AncientRune's What is Double Dipping guide for more information.

CRITICAL MODIFIER

Anything inside { } only happens during a critical hit.

• This formula will be displayed as "Critical Modifier" in any further formulas you see.

On fake crits via % Crit Chance effects (Forced Crit), you will only get {1 + (2 x Crit Skills)} and not benefit from any gear-based crit bonuses.

• Except for cases where your damage instance cannot naturally crit, but you hit a crit spot and crit via a forced crit effect. Then you will receive the full formula.

Gear Crit is all sources of critical damage gained from gear.

• There are 2 Crit Skills (Vex's Infernal Sum and the Specialization A Honed Mind) that are also placed with Gear Crit, but everything else in VH Skill Trees or Specialization is a Crit Skill and benefits from that 2x boost to the listed value.

FULL FORMULA

Combining the previous information, we can then reach a full and condensed written formula in the form of:

• Soup is our current designated name to the greater pool of modifiers that add to each other.

What are bonus elements?

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. Some examples for each Vault Hunter are:

Blood Is PowerNuclear WinterEl Catrin Bolt Action

Vex Harlowe Rafa Amon

Borderlands 4 has many sources of Bonus Elements. Each character has in-skill tree sources and then there is gear, like Watts 4 Dinner and Protean Cell.

We will not be covering the formula for Bonus Elements as there is a lot of inconsistency even for the same Vault Hunter. There are however things to be aware of:

• Certain bonus elements can positively impact proc/trigger chance effects, giving you 2 or more chances to benefit from effects such as Undead Eye's chance for Blood Shot, or Critical Funding's ammo return on Harlowe.
• Wording for bonus elements can also be deceptive. For instance, the entangle damage bonus from Decoherence is a Bonus Element, as is Latent Charge. Each matches the element of the damage that proc'd them. Whereas the Jakobs Enhancement Sequencer (A stacking 5% bonus damage) is added to the Enhancement section of the formula despite using the 'bonus damage' wording.

For more information on how each Bonus Element works, check specific Vault Hunter resources.

Ultimate Vault Hunter - Elemental Matching

In Borderlands 4, using elemental damage against specific types of health bars will result in a Penalty or Increase to your damage, as follows on this cheat sheet:

Translating this into numbers we can input in the Elemental Match portion of our formulas, we'll then have:

This simple table shows you the values you can input in formula calculations for elemental matchups on UVH modes. Those matchups being either Penalties or Increases to your damage depending on the matchup.

Do notice Cryo and Radiation have penalties and increases too, just not as severe or beneficial as the others.

• Enemies can spawn with affixes that increase their resistance to an element. That damage reduction is a value of 25%.

Character Specific

Amon's Damage Formulas

Vex's Damage Formulas

General

Borderlands 4 Damage Formula video, by LazyData

• This one also shows good practices on how to go about increasing your damage/DPS.

What is Double Dipping, by AncientRune

How Critical Hits and Crit Chance Work in BL4, by Ratore