Borderlands 4: Elemental Affinities cheat sheet

Elemental Affinities in Borderlands 4 are the most important mechanic to know about as you progress into the game. There are five Elements or status effect types in the game (leaving aside the regular i.e. Kinetic Damage), and all of them are either good or bad against specific enemy types. This effect is muted on lower difficulties, but intensified further with higher difficulty levels, including UVHM modifiers.

In this guide, we'll give you a full cheat sheet for Elemental Affinity in Borderlands 4 to explain the best use cases for each of these status types.

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The best Elements to use against each enemy type in Borderlands 4

Enemies in BL4 often have more than one health type (Image via 2K)

If you're not much of a chart person, here's the gist of where Elemental damage type shines in Borderlands 4:

• Kinetic Damage, i.e. physical/regular damage deals full damage to every health type, and does not get bonuses and penalties against anything.
• Incendriary (Fire) Damage is good against Flesh, and gets a damage penalty against everything else
• Shock (Electricity) Damage is good against Shields, and gets a damage penalty against everything else
• Radiation Damage is good against Shields, and gets a penalty against Armor
• Corrosive Damage is good against Armor, and gets a damage penalty against everything else
• Cryo (Ice) Damage is good against Armor, and gets a penalty against Shields
• Cryo and Radiation deal regular damage to Flesh

The health types are represented by the following colors in-game:

• Raw Health is a red bar
• Shields are represented by a blue bar
• Armor is a lime yellow bar

Moreover, the damage bonus (and penalty) scales differently based on difficulty modes. The difference is more stark in Hard and UVHM modes, and doesn't matter much in Easy mode.

• Easy: +20% for bonuses against favorable types, -10% for penalties towards resistant types
• Normal: +50% for bonuses against favorable types, -25% for penalties towards resistant types
• Hard/UVHM+: +75% for bonuses against favorable types, -50% for penalties towards resistant types

In other words, it matters way more to match status types when you're playing Borderlands 4 in UVHM modes (or on Hard during campaign). If you don't want to bother with the statuses, though, you can always just go with a Kinetic Damage build.

To put things together, here's a full cheat sheet for Elemental affinities towards enemy health types in BL4:

Damage Type	Against Flesh/Raw Health			Against Shield			Against Armor
	Easy	Normal	Hard/UVHM	Easy	Normal	Hard/UVHM	Easy	Normal	Hard/UVHM
Kinetic	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%
Incendiary	120%	150%	175%	90%	75%	50%	90%	75%	50%
Shock	90%	75%	50%	120%	150%	175%	90%	75%	50%
Corrosive	90%	75%	50%	90%	75%	50%	120%	150%	175%
Cryo	100%	100%	100%	90%	75%	50%	120%	150%	175%
Radiation	100%	100%	100%	120%	150%	175%	90%	75%	50%

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Check out our other guides on the game:

• All Boss drop tables in Borderlands 4
• Borderlands 4 Vault Hunters tier list
• All working Borderlands 4 Golden Key Shift Codes