Does elemental damage cause any extra effects?

Is there any extra benefit to added elemental damage on weapon attacks? Are certain creatures vulnerable to certain types or do certain types have certain effects (such as shock damage stunning)?

Solution 1:

Yes, here are the damage types in the game and their effects. From IGN's game guide:

(The grey parts are from IGN)

Arcane

This is the type of damage which is inflicted by Death in his Reaper form. There are also attack combos that will allow Death to inflict extra Arcane damage by briefly unleashing his Reaper Form.

Any Wrath abilities used from the Necromancer Tree are more powerful the more Arcane stat you have as well. Strength affects Harbinger Tree attacks.

Fire

This damage type will set enemies ablaze, dealing extra damage and steady, continuous damage over time.

Frost [my edit, originally they had "Ice" here]

This damage type will inflict freezing damage and will slow them down, making it easier to avoid their attacks and land counterattacks.

Lightning

This damage type will inflict extra damage and may stun enemies, leaving them very vulnerable for a few seconds.

Piercing

This damage type can go through enemy defenses and deal significant damage. This is particularly effective against heavily-armored targets.

I have done testing in game and have seen these effects myself.

Then there is Inferno, Ice, and Shock damage. These are upgraded versions of their fire/frost/lightning counterparts.

Inferno does the same thing as Fire except the DoT can spread to other enemies in close proximity to the original burning target.

Ice doesn't just slow enemies down like Frost, it has a chance to freeze them in Ice for a short time as well.

Shock has a greater chance to stun than Lightning.

There is also another stat that deals damage called Thorns, which many of us know as gamers, reflects damage back to enemies that attack you.

Solution 2:

Ooooook. The list is like this:

• Frost -> Ice
• Fire -> Inferno
• Shock -> Lightning

The first ones are the first to encounter and weaker versions, having small effects:

• Frost slows enemies down
• Fire lights them on fire, adding a DoT
• Shock leaves a condition effect that has a chance to ministun enemies affected by it

Now as for the upgraded versions, they all carry the same effects of the juvenile versions, but add a few extra effects and goes as it follows:

• Ice adds the chance to encase enemies in an ice cube [ like those skeletons at the start and in Deposed King's lair ] and works on any type of enemy, except bosses.
• Inferno, ontop of having the burn effect on the target you struck, spreads to adjacent enemies and also has a small splash damage effect on hit, like Teleport Slash`s mini-AoE.
• Lightning adds to the 1 second "twich" effect of Shock, a paralyze effect that lasts 2 or 3 seconds [ I can't remember exactly the exact duration ], kind of like the Ice element's effect, but you'll still be able to target it if you`re in focus mode [ a lot of people complained about that downside of Ice, so Lightning is an alternative to it, but with its own drawbacks -- no slow ]

Also, since someone mentioned Arcane and .... got it wrong ... even if it doesn't directly answers your question, I`ll cover that aswell here: It only affects the damage of the skills in the Necromancer tree and Strength is what affects the Harbinger skills -- you can test that easily by equipping and unequipping a str or arcane item and hovering the skills in the menu to check what changed and by how much.