Help me understand Plague Weapon stats

[Wendek]

I'm not that far into the game (just beat the first named boss) but I'm getting quite confused by Plague Weapons. For instance, the Axe one says: "Slash deals 250% Attack Damage + 250% Amount of Wounds", but when I use it on anything other than a basic goon (like those armored spear-wielders in the Sea of Trees) it seems to deal absolutely nothing. Like, it barely makes a dent in the white healthbar, but if I have already done some wounds it also doesn't "close" them like a claw attack would.

I'm even more confused because I thought "amount of wounds" was the amount of green health that the attack will remove, but then I got the Knife weapon which states "Deal 100% Attack Damage + 150% Claw Damage" so maybe that's the one that deals damage to the green health?
For now I'm using the Halberd which actually seems to be doing pretty decent damage, unlike the Axe.

Also, do Reaved weapons get your upgrades or are they always basic? In the super early game it seemed to deal a lot of damage but now that I have access to my own Plague weapons, the Reaved version seems to always deal less damage so I'm wondering what's the point? I get that it's free in terms of energy but the animation is so slow I often get hit in the middle of it so if 3 sword slashes end up doing more damage, why take that risk?

Thanks for your help.

[paladin181]

Damage is how much real health you take off. Wounds is how much green damage you cause. So 250% of damage means it does 2.5 times what your sabre does in real damage, which isn't a lot. It also does 2.5 times your sabre's wound damage, causing a fairly moderate size chunk of green to appear. You still need to use claw attacks to take that health away permanently.