Can someone explain Standard/Keen/../Sacred Ashes of War?

[VersataMeridian]

I have a longsword + 8 that is showing this:
Physical 161+ 91 ---> 161+ 91

I want to apply SACRED BLADE Ashes of War and its showing stats like this:
Physical 161+ 91 ---> 119+ 14
Holy 0 ---> 119+ 16

1) What does 161+ 91 mean on both sides of the arrow?
2) IF I apply the ashes of war at the Blacksmith, is the Physical blade stats reduces to 119+ 14 and Holy addition of 119+ 16 immediately - or are these changes applied when I ACTUALLY USE the ashes of war but UNTIL then my base stats remain the same?

[Kashra Fall]

161 is the base value, the + is what you get from scaling. So if a weapon is str/dex/faith, you should look at what it's rating is S-E to see what you want to level to use it effectively. Take my spear for instance. Str is D, Arcane/Dex is C, so I have 40 on all three and the damage jumps from 300 base to 742 when I get it to +10.

[Mr.Hmm]

Also affinity on ashes of war counts quite a bit cause it changes the scaling of the weapon.

[Oku]

You take all the numbers listed for damage and add them up to get total Attack Power.

The left numbers are the weapon's base damage and the right numbers are the bonus damage you get from your stat scaling.

If you have a weapon that just deals physical damage and it says something like:
140 + 60
then the weapon has 200 total attack power, with the 140 being the weapon's base, and the + 60 being the bonus damage you're getting based on the weapon's stat scaling.

If you have a weapon that deals split physical and holy then you'll have something like:
100 + 20
50 + 30
for a total of 200 damage, with 100 being the base physical, +20 being the bonus physical from stat scaling, 50 being the base holy damage, and +30 being the bonus holy from Faith scaling.

However in that case you're not dealing 200 damage, you're dealing 120 physical damage and 80 holy damage, so if something has holy immunity, you're dealing 120, whereas if something has 50% physical immunity, then you're doing 60 physical and 80 holy for a total of 140 damage.

What Ashes of War do is allow you to change the affinities of your weapons. Affinities add different damage types as well as change the scaling values. So a Heavy weapon scales better with strength, but a Keen weapon scales better with dexterity. Meanwhile a blood weapon does less overall damage by having worse scaling, but adds a bleed status effect on each hit, Sacred adds Faith scaling and holy damage, etc etc

You pick the scaling you want based on what stats you've leveled the most.