About elemental affinities and spells/incantations

[Lucyfar]

I already know they don't stack, so for example if you using a Sacred Affinity in your weapon you cannot use the incantation that enchant your weapon with holy element.

The question is, which one is best? Which one gives you the best possible damage output/combination.

Does the affinity gives better damage and scaling, or using another affinity + spell/incantation that enchant with element gives you more damage?

I don't know how to test that and i also don't have many spells and incantations.

[diji]

From my limited testing, if you have the spell slots and don't mind maintaining the buff then a physical affinity weapon with a spell cast on it does more damage than a weapon with an elemental affinity since the base damage of the weapon isn't being split between physical. Of course, this depends on what enemy you're fighting. The more resistant to physical damage the enemy, the closer the two choices are in damage. Presumably at some point the extra damage you get from your spellcasting attribute will outpace the physical damage you lose, but at only 45 faith I haven't reached that point yet.

It's perhaps also worth considering the flexibility you get by using buffs, since you can have two or three spells ready to enchant your weapon with for different enemies. For now I'm sticking with weapon buffs.

Edit: Another thing to consider is skill damage scaling. Elemental skills seem to scale based on one attribute - my testing points to intelligence for magic and cold skills, faith for holy skills, and strength of all things for fire skills. These elemental skills are unaffected by your weapon damage (including adding elemental damage to the weapon via spell or incantation) but are still scaled by the relevant scaling factor. So if you're using a holy skill then adding the sacred affinity will increase the skill's damage since the affinity improves the faith scaling factor on the weapon.