Please help me understand weapon imbuments.

[OZA]

I've always been a fan of pure damage. But then I had some trouble with the The Rotten. I see (or at least read in a message on the ground), that he is weak to fire. I had just given McDuf the ember and had a +7 Halberg just laying around that I did not use (I prefer my+8 Zweihander).

So I figured, hey, why not? So I imbued it with fire. Now it is 220 normal damage, and 220 fire, for a total of 440 damage.

Now my problems that that the Halberg barely seems to do even near this, often only doing about half the damage it should, almost alwas hitting 200-300. Only the heavier strikes do upwards of 400.

My Zweihander +8 at 315 + 102 (my strength) just puts the Fire Halberg +8 to shame, even though it should do less damage. It still t the Fire Halberg to shame even when it was only +6, as I only recently brought it up 2 levels.

So why do imbumed weapons, at least this one, seem to always hit for less than they should? Even against enemies with no fire resistance or even fire weakness?

Also, am I just better off making my weapons raw? Also from the tables in the wikis I am only seeing weapon stats listed to +5 raw. Can raw not go to +10? Is making a weapon that is +6 and above to raw wasting all the stuff I used to upgrade it? Or should I upgrade to +10 before imbuing with raw?

Thank you very much.

~The noob in Havel's gear with a giant sword doing horrible against you in PvP.

[Funpire]

My understanding is that when you imbue, unless you are A) buffing the weapon with a magic/fai/dark buff or B) unless the weapon has an element already associated with it... it is mostly bad to imbue.

Reason for this is because you now have physical + elemental resists that go into effect. As opposed to just physical. There is more information on this elsewhere that I have read... but I have been going back and forth on whether or not it is worth it.

My build is largely INT based, so most of my weapons are magic, but for some of them, it just hurts their overall damage. So I went back to uninfused on those.

I think RAW drops the overall scaling of STR/DEX making for a higher base damage, but less scaling damage. So if you have stats invested to make the weapon better, that would negetively effect the overall damage as scaling would be terrible.

[Piszczel]

Infusions are only really useful in pvp, though most enemies seem to be weak to lighting.

[Evertrill]

I don't find imbued weapons to be very good. I just keep it normal and slap some resin on it when I fight a boss. Raw drops the scaling quite a bit and gives it more base damage so I would only use raw on weapons with weak (E or D) to no scaling. The wikis only show +5 on weapons that can only go up to +5 or if they have a lack of information. You can upgrade weapons after imbuing them.

[Cake for Mumm-Ra]

Weapon infusion will make your weapons stronger IF you choose the correct path. Elemental damage scales off of int and faith. OP, post your ability scores for better help.

[OZA]

Originally posted by Mandroid:

Weapon infusion will make your weapons stronger IF you choose the correct path. Elemental damage scales off of int and faith. OP, post your ability scores for better help.

My ability scores? Sorry, do you mean my stats... or? I did not finish Dark Souls 1, nor did I do any PvP and this is my first play through of Dark Souls 2 so I don't know all the lingo.

These are my stats: http://i.imgur.com/ozjkJZD.jpg

I just did my first respec to increase my equuipment load to use Havel's set. I think it is stupid that strength does not increase load at all, it does in every other game I have every played just about.

I took some points out of dex and into strength as well because I was still using weapons that either had better scalling in strength, or the same.

Still trying to figure out if it was a wise choice or not.

[Overjoyed PumpkinPie]

I heard imbuing weapons with good scaling isn't recommended since majority of damage of such weapons often comes from scaling, and imbuing downgrades the scaling pretty hard.

On a side note, the Rotten isn't weak to fire. And if you think about it, the area he lurks in is covered in fire pits.

[Cake for Mumm-Ra]

Yea that's what I meant. You have no faith or intellect, so avoid fire, lightning, dark. Poison and Bleed are good for dex builds, but that's not you either. WIth such a high strength I would stick to pure physical damage, or, if you have a weapon with low scaling (D or less) use Raw. Mundane scales off your lowest score, so avoid that too. If you don't use weapon infusion, you can use the resins, so this would be the best option for you I think

You can use a Palestone to remove your current weapon infusion without losing your titanite upgrade.

Edit: Are you still dumping your levels into strength? I think you start getting diminishing returns (see here: http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/693331-dark-souls-ii/68745726 ) after 40 or 50, so you might consider investing into other stats like Vit, End, Vgr. Unless of course you're trying to powerstance while dual wielding. Let me know if that's not clear. This stuff is kind of confusing.

Edit: Actually, holy crap dude check your equipment load. Get a royal soldiers ring, up your vitality, and get your equipment load under 70% (lower right on stat screen). You've been fat rolling in that armor and probably cant dodge anything. When you load is under 70% you can roll faster/further and recover stamina faster. Not to say that you can't play the game with a high load, but I would recommend dropping some of your str into vit.

[OZA]

Originally posted by Mandroid:

Yea that's what I meant. You have no faith or intellect, so avoid fire, lightning, dark. Poison and Bleed are good for dex builds, but that's not you either. WIth such a high strength I would stick to pure physical damage, or, if you have a weapon with low scaling (D or less) use Raw. Mundane scales off your lowest score, so avoid that too. If you don't use weapon infusion, you can use the resins, so this would be the best option for you I think

You can use a Palestone to remove your current weapon infusion without losing your titanite upgrade.

Edit: Are you still dumping your levels into strength? I think you start getting diminishing returns (see here: http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/693331-dark-souls-ii/68745726 ) after 40 or 50, so you might consider investing into other stats like Vit, End, Vgr. Unless of course you're trying to powerstance while dual wielding. Let me know if that's not clear. This stuff is kind of confusing.

Edit: Actually, holy crap dude check your equipment load. Get a royal soldiers ring, up your vitality, and get your equipment load under 70% (lower right on stat screen). You've been fat rolling in that armor and probably cant dodge anything. When you load is under 70% you can roll faster/further and recover stamina faster. Not to say that you can't play the game with a high load, but I would recommend dropping some of your str into vit.

I usually have the soldier's ring on, I just didn't at the moment. I always use it for bosses which brings me to 88% load. Then if I drop my bow I get to about 83%.

I see people always talking about 70%, 70%, 70%! Does my stamina recovery and rolls get better the closer I get to 70% or does something "click" when I get there? Or is that just where the advantages of a light load stop, at 70%?

I was thinking of switching back to Drangleic set, but I've had that since sooooo early in the game it makes my mind scream "THERE HAS TO BE BETTER!". I may try it out for a while, or even better yet, finish finding the Vengarl set. I've been using the head for a while before I get Havel's because I never found the Drangleic head, and it was better anyways.

[Cake for Mumm-Ra]

I don't know much about heavy armor, I try to keep a light load so that I'm more agile. No need for good defense if you don't get hit, right? (lol, I get hit a lot) You'll find Vengarl's as you progress. You literally can't miss it. The Drangeleic helm is a little harder to find... But it's lategame stuff so don't hold out for it.

Anyway, 25% and 70% are weight plateaus. <25% you run faster, regen stamina faster, and can roll the furthest. 25-70% you're at normal. Over 70% and you fat roll and recover stamina slower. 71% and 99.9% are exactly the same.

[x4sp3r]

Originally posted by SHAMEFUR DISPRAY!:

I usually have the soldier's ring on, I just didn't at the moment. I always use it for bosses which brings me to 88% load. Then if I drop my bow I get to about 83%.

I see people always talking about 70%, 70%, 70%! Does my stamina recovery and rolls get better the closer I get to 70% or does something "click" when I get there? Or is that just where the advantages of a light load stop, at 70%?

I was thinking of switching back to Drangleic set, but I've had that since sooooo early in the game it makes my mind scream "THERE HAS TO BE BETTER!". I may try it out for a while, or even better yet, finish finding the Vengarl set. I've been using the head for a while before I get Havel's because I never found the Drangleic head, and it was better anyways.

In general, having completed this game twice, >70% load is very very bad. It also affects stamina recovery. There are subtle differences such as at <40% you can dash after rolling. Most armours are just esthetics if you play PvP.

[realdead_man]

I usually have the soldier's ring on, I just didn't at the moment. I always use it for bosses which brings me to 88% load. Then if I drop my bow I get to about 83%."

Jeepers. DO NOT GO ABOVE 70% weight!!!

I wish I could help with infusions, but I don't understand them much either.
Use the preview at the blacksmith to get an idea of what changes.
Also, all weapons do not react the same to infusions.
There is a good post somewhere on this board about it.

DO NOT GO ABOVE 70% weight!!!

[realdead_man]

READ THIS PAGE >http://darksouls2.wiki.fextralife.com/Upgrades

Then, before upgrade, read that weapons wiki page.
EXAMPLE, some weapons should NEVER be infused, like the SUN sword.
(Because it loses A A scaling)
Some weapons get much better buffs with certain infusions

[Basilard]

Some of this has probably been said, I don't wanna read through everybody's comments, so...

All the weapons I use are infused, and it's a huge benefit, but it's reliant on your stats, or stat really, and using the proper infusement for it. My main damaging stat is FTH, which boosts my Lightning ATK; so I infuse Lightning on weapons because it adds Lightining ATK scaling, and lightning damage, which will make use of that.

Magic would work similarly, with INT in place of FTH. ***In the case of fire, I'm not sure how much of a benefit you'd get from that, since you'd need to level both INT and FTH to get enough Fire ATK boost, and if you were going that route, you'd most likely have hexes in mind, and be infusing dark instead.***

The info between the *** is speculation on my part. I'm not certain.

[Merkava]

There seems to be a lot of misinformation going around in regards to infusion. I don't blame people for this but I think it would be best to clear up the details for you, this post will be pretty long so bear with it if you want to be understand how infusion works and its benefits. Let us cut our explanation into parts...

1) Why is your Fire Halberd weaker than your Zwei even tho the total damage is higher? The explanation has been offered by a poster already but; basically, when you infuse you will deal TWO types of damage (usually physical and your desired element, in this case fire) and the weapon will contend against TWO types of defense of the enemy. That means that the Physical part of the damage will be up against the enemies physical defense while the fire part will be up against the enemies fire defense. After they are BOTH reduced by the enemies stat then the total damage is added and is what you get, more or less. So your fire halberd might be stronger against enemies who have a weakness to fire (MIGHT) but; overall, it will never reach the same raw heights of a zwei, which has a higher base physical damage.

Does this make infusion sucky? Not necesarily, it just means that it will be more efficient against certain enemies and less efficient against others. If you want to know whats the "best" element for PvE (Players vs Enviornment, or anything that isnt against other players) then it would have to be lightning. Lightning is not an all powerfull element (there are enemies who resist it) but its easily the best overall element for the main story. When is it worth it? well lets go to the next point...

2) There are two results "general results" when you infuse a weapon with an element. Let us say that you decide to infuse your Zwei with Lightning, the Zwei has NO natural element, it just does pure physical damage when its not infused. This sort of infusions tend to KILL the scaling on the weapon (the bonus damage you get from raising your stats). It doesn't matter if it says S or C, it will be BAD. The benefit of this is that you can just use the weapon with minimum stats and save yourself stat points as it will NOT get better. Don't listen to people telling you that you have to bump up your stats, it wont give you much in the way of extra damage.

Bottom Line? If the weapon has no element BEFORE you infuse it then your stats dont matter, just get enough to wield it and it should be ENOUGH. The weapon won't get much better than that after raising your stats. Don't bother pumping faith/int/str/dex for it, thats mostly as good as it gets. Ignore the letter bonus as well, it will be crap (Chaos Blade retains an S rank in dex, the actual scaling is crap as well). I did, however mention that there are two "general results", whats the other result? well...

3) If the weapon already has an element BEFORE you infuse it, an example? The Heide Knight Sword ( http://darksouls2.wikidot.com/heide-knight-sword ) it has natural lightning damage WITHOUT infusion. If you then decide to infuse the weapon with the SAME element it already has (lightning in this case) the lightning scaling will get MUCH stronger. This means that in this sort of case its MUCH better to gain the minimum str/dex requirement for the weapon and invest the rest of your points in faith/int (depending on the infusion you use). A lightning heide knight sword will, for instance, gain a huge bonus if you boost your faith. Unlike the previous example its WELL worth investing in your stats in this case.

Let me give you an example that better explains points 2 and 3...

We have a lightning Zwei +10 and a Lightning Heide Knight Sword, in both cases their scaling will be C/D/B (Str/Dex/Faith) but (this stats are real and taken from ingame with a char with 99 on all 3 stats) the weapons will get different bonuses...

The Lightning Zwei + 10 will gain a bonus of 60 on both Physical and Lightning scaling bonus.

The Lightning Heide Knight Sword +10 gains a bonus of 78 on Physical Scaling and 146 on Lightning.

As you can see the Lightning Zwei gets a MUCH lower bonus than a Lightning Heide Knight Sword, to the point that getting stat points for the zwei isnt worth it (the +60 is at 99 stats) while its DEFINETLY worth it for the Heide Sword (at least the faith part). Why? Because the Light Zwei falls under the rule presented on example # 2 and the lightning heide falls on example # 3. Understand it a bit better?

4) As for your question on RAW its simple, raw gives a +15% bonus to base damage but it obliterates your scaling bonuses so its only a good idea to use RAW if a weapon has INCREDIBLY bad scaling or no scaling at all (like crossbows).

Hope this wall o text helps.

[Applay]

Yeah, the game usually crashes when you press ALT+F4...