Damage Type

A damage type is an attribute of a weapon or ability that has potential to do bonus damage depending on an enemy's shield or whether or not a Burn modifier is active.

The color of an enemy's shield represents which damage type it is vulnerable to. Using a damage type against the corresponding shield will do 200% damage. Using a damage type against a non-corresponding shield will do 100% damage.

In Destiny, burn modifiers increase the damage of weapons and abilities, depending on their damage types, up to 200% for Guardians and 300% for enemies.

In Destiny 2, enemy shields are much more volatile as breaking them with the matching damage type will result in an elemental explosion, dealing significant area-of-effect damage to all others in close proximity. Because the damage type of these explosions is the same as the enemy's shield, this can cause a chain reaction of explosions when nearby enemies with matching shield types are caught in the blast radius.