Theory: Raw Weapons might Ignore Armor

So I was fighting in Anor Londo with my +5 raw Zweihander, and I noticed something... It actually does more damage then my +14 Zweihander on that same character, despite having lower AR. I don't know why. I'm theory crafting what happened now.
Fund it?

What enemy are you hitting? Try going to the forest and killing the sorcerer, knight, bandit, thief, and cleric. See if there are any differences.

Fighting the large giants right before the fog gate. Just was waiting for my blue eye orb to proc (before remembering I don't have live so it never was going to). I just upgraded the +13 to +15... currently I got 507 AR for 291 damage and 415 AR for 289 damage. So it looks like Normal refinery still trumps all, but something is up there. Anyone willing to do more research and find out what is goin on?

Alright, so on my way to the forest, I noted I do substantially less damage with the raw weapon to tree's. Inside the forest, Raw did less damage to the sorcerer and thief, only like 5 less to the bandit, and 10 more to the cleric. But in contrast, when I went to go fight the iron boar, whom has very, very high physical defense raw did 100 damage and my +15 did closer to 250.

I don't understand. Someone test this, I wanna start streaming and I -don't- feel like wrapping my head around game mechanics right now.

I did a few raw vs normal tests long ago, but I only tried this in the burg. I was testing if different weapon buffs gave the same damage on the two upgrade paths. I upgraded a few basic weapons (battle axe, rapier, longsword) until they had almost the same ar. I can't remember any specific details, but I do remember that the test yielded no results, so I guess they had the same damage output.

I would suggest you upgrade the weapons so they have the same amount of AR. Then you can test it on the hollows in New Londo(no armor whatsoever presumably), Balder knights(Medium armor), and then the Iron knight in Sens Fortress or the Giant in Anor Londo.

I always did think that Raw must have had some other positive other than slightly higher AR at the cost of Scaling. But then again maybe it's only supposed to be a cheap replacement for Normal +10

Their has also been a theory about the anor londo giants causing something called royal damage. Not sure exactly what that is but its worth an investigaion as well.

Plus, Raw Weapons not needing a slab means they're very easy to crank up. It could just be a beginner level thing, I reckon From probably reasoned no-one would find Vamos very early on so Raw would do.

I just tried on two different builds, upgraded two shortswords on one and two scimitars on the other until their AR were as close as I could get it. The damage against the sentinels were just a few points apart, with the highest AR version hitting a few points more each time. I tried on two characters because one of them had 30 res, but that made no difference either.

I've no clue then.
Does Raw change a weapons damage type? Perhaps the enemies I tested on have lower defenses to a particular damage type. That would skew my results.

I've read this yesterday and it was interesting so I went ahead and tested it. I took my SL 100 and made a Raw Uchi +5. I've tried it on Hollows in Burg, on NPCs in Forest and I tried to PvP with it and it always dealt less damage than it's +15 counterpart (with 45 Dex).

I didn't bother with exact numbers, but I can do the test again tonight if you want.

I think that, to test this, the character should have the lowest stats possible that scale on the +15 weapon.

Perhaps the relationship is like Fire and Chaos, where Raw has a higher base damage and doesn't scale, and Standard has a higher maximum damage because of scaling?