Different weapons in Destiny use different elements to inflict different damage on your enemies. There’s 4 different types of weapon damage: Arc, Solar, Void, and Kinetic.
- Arc Damage – This elemental damage type is related to electricity and has an area of effect. Blue shields are weak to Arc.
- Solar Damage – This elemental damage type is fire damage and has a chance to ignite enemies. Orange shields are weak to Solar.
- Void Damage – This elemental damage type is related to gravity and dark energy.
- Kinetic Damage – This is the default (physical) damage type of most weapons and does not correspond to an element.
Elemental weapon damage didn’t play a massive role in the beta, but it was definitely helpful if you knew how to use it. Thankfully DattoDoesDestiny has some insight into how these affect your weapons and enemies, and has a synopsis of them in this video: