Magic damage on weapons not working?

[Monk]

Hi, so, first off this is my first souls game so of I am missing something obvious, my bad.

My issue is I wanted to try a magic swordsman hybrid build, so I went with prisoner (after not getting on with pure melee vagabond) and I have a bunch of weapons with int scaling and magic damage as well as physical damage on them, however, despite the physical + magic adding up notably higher than pure physical versions if the weapons, they seem to do much less damage, this us problematic as I have more int than dex (25 vs 19 and 15 str).

However, when I buff a non 'magic damage' weapon with magic, it does extra damage, but no where near the 150 it lists.

I've tested vs humans, undead, animals, plants etc. The results are always the same, so, are most enemies really resistant to magic damage on weapons or something? Spells seem to do OK damage though.

I'm lvl 54 right now and about 40 hours in on the character, cleared stormveil Castle, uncovered the majority of the map and have been wandering all over the place in general.

So, is this normal, do upgraded weapons get a boost beyond what is shown? Should I just stick to straight dex / str weapons without magic damage and just buff the weapons as needed?

Any help would be appreciated as I'm on the verge of starting over as it seems the respec is a while off and this isn't playing how I was hoping it would (faith seems far close to what I wanted).

[Monk]

as a note, this ios an example of what i mean.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2769478217

the uchi is +4 but its the same issue with a pair of base long swords, one of which i converted to magic, the base sword, despite showing lower dmg out damages the magic version

[Xenos]

Split damage is actually usually a trap, thats why.

When you hit an enemy, your attack is reduced by their defense. However, it INDIVIDUALLY calculates defense for every element on the weapon. Which means for a magic/melee weapon, the enemy reduces the raw damage, then also reduces the element based on their resistance to it.

Say you have an enemy with a flat 50% resistance to everything. If you hit them with a physical 200 weapon, it does 100 damage. But if you hit them with a physical 100 and magic 100, it still only does 100, since it reduced both.

Since infusing weapons destroys physical scaling and reduces its phys damage by usually 20% or more, usually a higher phys weapon just wins out.

[Monk]

Cheers, I guess stuff just has high magic resistance overall.

I just did another test vs a giant, lords worn long sword base vs magic. The magic version did 6 less damage (despite showing a good 50 higher total) while testing on the uchi with and without magic resulted in the magic version doing 4 more damage, but, not bring able to buff it gir 120 magic meant it lost out overall, which, makes the whole thing even more confusing and I am unsure what to level up lol

[Tim]

If you're feeling regret over your build, try switching over from the Meteoric Ore Blade to the Moonveil. Its unique skill is insanely useful; you get hella range on the R1 slice and can make almost all enemies fall to their knees in 2-3 hits through the overhead R2 strike.

[Monk]

Originally posted by Tim:

If you're feeling regret over your build, try switching over from the Meteoric Ore Blade to the Moonveil. Its unique skill is insanely useful; you get hella range on the R1 slice and can make almost all enemies fall to their knees in 2-3 hits through the overhead R2 strike.

Cheers, I've not actually been using it because it's out damaged by the other one, I'd like to try the moonveil, I just cannot kill the damn wyrm!