Velka's rapier (help me understand this...)

Okay so recently I started trying out this weapon and I have found it to be far more effective than looking at it on paper would lead me to believe.
and I was hoping I could glean some clarification from you guys.


The first thing that this weapon seems to be more effective than it should be is magic damage scaling as i understand it the magical damage is determined by the INT portion of the scaling and the physical by the STR and DEX portions. with an INT of 36 It is delivering 155 +115 magical damage with a "B" grade scaling.
whereas my enchanted +5 shotel delivers 153 +99 with "A" grade scaling.

The second thing that has confused me slightly is critical damage. I noticed that on a riposte it was delivering over 1000 damage with a critical stat of 100 I then tested this compared to my moonlight greatsword which while giving an extra 50% over it in normal attacks fell short of it in criticals. I also tried with a pure physical damage weapon in case magical damage did not critical well but the results of that were even more lackluster (half damage when delivering about equal on a normal strike)

Finally I was wondering if there are any enemies I need to watch out for being resistant to occult damage.

Any help with my understanding of these 3 things would be much appreciated. (just when I thought I understood this games mechanics )

I love that weapon!

Well, yes, the combination of base damage and scaling make it quite strong. I believe the physical aspect scales much better with Dexterity.

I believe Rapiers do particularly good critical damage, although it doesn't show on stats page (kind of dumb, I know. some one correct me if I'm wrong)

And I believe undead things like Skeletons are probably strong against occult seeing how they're weak from divine.

Wait for second opinions as I'm not 100% on everything I said.

Yup, that's all pretty much right!

I don't know about the skeletons being resistant to it, though. Theory was that divine is strong vs the undead, and occult vs the living. But I don't think that's entirely true across the board. Then I also heard that occult may be strong against bosses, but I don't know if that's true either.

I can't really comment on the occult thing, because most of what I've used my Velka's for is PvP. And in that, I can confirm that its damage is good for a scaling weapon and that its critical is way stronger than its crit rating would lead one to expect.

its probably because of the damage type, velka's does thrust damage which is good against heavy armor (possibly even armor piercing...)etc, shotel does slash damage which is good against light or no armor, what did you test this on?

Thank you both for your help
Incase anybody reads this thread on a later date.
It appears the abnormally high critical damage is a feature of rapiers as ricards deals in approximately the same ratio.
Occult damage does not appear to impede my ability to damage skeletons noticeably. although I did not test this extensively and it is unlikely but possible that the giant ones work differently to the normal sized.
The scaling of the magic damage is still a source of confusion for me however.
-sparkly I did not test it with the shotel I simply read off the numbers from the weapons menu. and i was under the impression that magic damage did not retain the physical subtypes (strike thrust ect)

doesn't, its possible the multiplier is higher so both damage types "crack" the defense. that would definitely explain the damage

From what I know, skelies are resistant to thrusting attacks like spears. Also a Enchanted Balder Side Sword +5 does more damage, has more range, and in my opinion, has better moveset.

Yes, thrusting attacks are fairly ineffective on skeletons. but i tested it VS an enchanted ricards rapier. which assuming you bear in mind it will be doing slightly lower damage to begin with leaves pretty much all other factors the same.
as for balder side sword It is a very nice weapon which I had overlooked thank you! however I am unsure about the damage as all enchanted weapons are really underperforming for me. I guess ill find out next time I head to crystal caves.

Mmmm... If you are interested in enchanted and divine weapons I can tell you that I have a dibine bastard sword + 10. The base damage at 50 faith is 552.
For the critical hits like ripost does like 1059 in some enemies. And others like a silver knights a ripost does like 869.
I never thought velka's was that great. To bad it scales on Int and not Faith.