Do you think pure physical weapons are better than elemental/magic/faith weapons?

Despite its lower overall attack rating do you think that pure physical weapons are better than elemental/magic/faith weapons?

I don't think, I know. It can be demonstrated. We have numbers to prove it. The exceptions are the mlgs and mlbh.

Now the builds that use the weapons have varying abilities which may or may not compensate for the relative ineffectiveness of elemental weapons, but thats a different topic.

I have a lev 120 58STR character that uses normal weapons and buffs some of em. May not hit as hard, but it hits about the same of most everything PVE.

So I think of them as great all around equipment for non Magic/Faith types.

Weren't elementals nerfed In the last patch? And with a buff +15 easily out damages if your willing to put the stats into it

It all comes down to what resistances enemies have. Everything from physical, elemental, magic, strike, thrust, slash and others I can't remember do different levels of damage depending how weak or strong they are against them. However physical damage when scaled with stats is the most effective at damage on most enemies due to most having some high form of magic or elemental resistance. Overall there is no one weapon type that is supreme above all, which is what you want in a game like Dark Souls, excellent weapon balancing.

well the less AR dose add up but i wouldn't say they are worse, with an elemental weapon you can chip, put stats in other areas like VIT/INT/FTH. also, you don't look like a try-hard buffer.

raecor14 wrote:well the less AR dose add up but i wouldn't say they are worse, with an elemental weapon you can chip, put stats in other areas like VIT/INT/FTH. also, you don't look like a try-hard buffer.

Ha elementals do have there perks like you listed above. The obsidian gs does it better as it has single AR with low req. 20/16 and it is also buffable.
And bluffing is any more try hard then chain bs or dark bead/ Wog spam. Elemental weapon are just a perma buffed just don't require stat investment

Sir-flicker wrote:

raecor14 wrote:well the less AR dose add up but i wouldn't say they are worse, with an elemental weapon you can chip, put stats in other areas like VIT/INT/FTH. also, you don't look like a try-hard buffer.

Ha elementals do have there perks like you listed above. The obsidian gs does it better as it has single AR with low req. 20/16 and it is also buffable.
And bluffing is any more try hard then chain bs or dark bead/ Wog spam. Elemental weapon are just a perma buffed just don't require stat investment

point taken on the buffs, but what about if you HATE great swords? what if your like me and you like curved swords but also want to do a mage? are you ment to HAVE to do the 40 dex for the pure damage?

raecor14 wrote:

Sir-flicker wrote:

raecor14 wrote:well the less AR dose add up but i wouldn't say they are worse, with an elemental weapon you can chip, put stats in other areas like VIT/INT/FTH. also, you don't look like a try-hard buffer.

Ha elementals do have there perks like you listed above. The obsidian gs does it better as it has single AR with low req. 20/16 and it is also buffable.
And bluffing is any more try hard then chain bs or dark bead/ Wog spam. Elemental weapon are just a perma buffed just don't require stat investment

point taken on the buffs, but what about if you HATE great swords? what if your like me and you like curved swords but also want to do a mage? are you ment to HAVE to do the 40 dex for the pure damage?

You would do more damage specially if you CMW it and your casting speed would be quicker,
But it really upto player preference, if you don't want to have bother buffing or would rather spend the points elsewhere then elemental/magic/faith is the better option
When it all boils down to it it depends in your build.

I've got 2 characters, both with 45 Dex and one with 50 Int and the other with 50 Faith.

They have a +15 Uchigatana and Magic +10, Divine +10 and also Lightning +5 and Fire +10 Uchigatanas.

The +15 outdamages the other two in all cases, except for some PvE enemies that have a weakness to any of the elements, or magic, on those, the damage is on par with +15.

In PvP, +15 always had better results.

All that + you can buff +15 weapons, adding even more damage, which you can't do with the rest of the upgrade paths I've mentioned.

Sentiel wrote:I've got 2 characters, both with 45 Dex and one with 50 Int and the other with 50 Faith.

They have a +15 Uchigatana and Magic +10, Divine +10 and also Lightning +5 and Fire +10 Uchigatanas.

The +15 outdamages the other two in all cases, except for some PvE enemies that have a weakness to any of the elements, or magic, on those, the damage is on par with +15.

In PvP, +15 always had better results.

All that + you can buff +15 weapons, adding even more damage, which you can't do with the rest of the upgrade paths I've mentioned.

Is this just because of the split AR, because the of last patch nerfing them? I have always used +15 in pvp so I'm not sure how effective they used to be, prior to the patch

As I said, the question has nothing to do with builds. +15 is better. As sentinel said, +15 will almost always deal more damage unless an enemy has a specific and extreme weakness to an element

Now wether or not the increased effectiveness justifies the heavier investment is a different question and dependant on many things.

I decided to do some testing on the impact of pure damage vs split damage. My attack stats were 58/45/55/50. I tested these weapons on the treants by the gate towards the forest, I'm on NG+3.

Greatsword of Artorias with 673 Split pyhsical/magic AR = 364 dmg
Greatlord Greatsword with 542 pure pyhsical AR = 363 dmg
Moonlight Greatsword with 484 pure magic AR = 336 dmg
Obsidian Greatsword with 480 Pure physical AR = 304 dmg
Enchanted Claymore+1 with 485 Split AR = 203 dmg...
Claymore+10 with 409 pure physical Ar = 235 dmg

I also tested the Abyss Greatsword with different amounts of humanity so you could see the increasing returns relative to your opponent's resistances.

Abyss+0 with 472 Ar = 297dmg
Abyss+1 with 495 Ar = 320dmg
Abyss+2 with 507 Ar = 331dmg
Abyss+3 with 519 Ar = 342dmg
Abyss+4 with 526 Ar = 349dmg
Abyss+5 with 534 Ar = 356dmg
Abyss+6 with 541 Ar = 363dmg
Abyss+7 with 549 Ar = 370dmg
Abyss+8 with 556 Ar = 377dmg
Abyss+9 with 563 Ar = 383dmg
Abyss+10 with 571 Ar = 390dmg

As you can see: even though the Abyss Greatsword+10 humanity has a lower total AR than the Greatsword of Artorias(not cursed), the fact that it's Pure damage as apposed to Split damage means that it will generally deal more damage in total.

Pretty much: +15 > anything else, so long as you have the stats and your opponents don't have ridiculously low elemental resistances.

Pure weapons are the best if you don't want to exploit specific weaknesses, even the MGS is decent for somewhat high INT builds.

For the vast majority of weapons, with proper stats, +15 will outdamage any other upgrade path. And, it can be buffed.