How does damage and elemental damage affinity work?

[Cyber Diver]

Does it mean the total damage I deal is physical damage + Elemental damage?
Or
Whichever is highest.

Sometimes I just feel like I'm doing the the damage that matches with whichever is the highest in the damage power category.
I've tried searching it but I've never seen people talk about it.

[RainyCats]

So it kinda works like this. Lets say you have a sword that does 100 Physical and 100 Fire damage. The damage an enemy takes is your weapon damage minus their resistances.

So if an enemy has 20% physical damage reduction and 20% Fire damage reduction you will do (100 - 20) Physical + (100 - 20) Fire = 80 + 80 = 160.

[Cyber Diver]

Originally posted by RainyCats:

So it kinda works like this. Lets say you have a sword that does 100 Physical and 100 Fire damage. The damage an enemy takes is your weapon damage minus their resistances.

So if an enemy has 20% physical damage reduction and 20% Fire damage reduction you will do (100 - 20) Physical + (100 - 20) Fire = 80 + 80 = 160.

So does should I just add affinity away? I mean what's even the point of not adding it when the damage stacks? Is there a reason not to?

[Lynfinity]

Originally posted by Cyber Diver:

Originally posted by RainyCats:

So it kinda works like this. Lets say you have a sword that does 100 Physical and 100 Fire damage. The damage an enemy takes is your weapon damage minus their resistances.

So if an enemy has 20% physical damage reduction and 20% Fire damage reduction you will do (100 - 20) Physical + (100 - 20) Fire = 80 + 80 = 160.

So does should I just add affinity away? I mean what's even the point of not adding it when the damage stacks? Is there a reason not to?

Yes, you should. The question is what affinity you want. Depending on the scaling, the weapon can end up doing much more elemental damage rather than physical. Which is obviously bad for bosses that have high resistances to particular elements.

"Flame Art" affinity, for example, nukes all scaling in favor of Faith scaling, making Fire your weapon's primary damage type. Some bosses have up to 80% Fire resistance, so Flame Art weapons will tickle them at best.