dark weapon vs resonant weapon

[Nameless Traitor]

^

[Chinese Blin]

uhhh, what do you wanna know exactly? the diference? resonant deals more damage but costs you 2k souls per use, while dark doesn't cost any souls but doesn't add that much damage by comparison.

[Tax evasion]

Dark weapon (Adds 50 damage to weapon and increases overall dark damage by 30%)

ex. Weapon has 250 dark damage. Dark weapon adds 50 dark damage (300) then increases all dark damage by 30% for a grand total of 390 dark damage.


Resonant Weapon (adds 50 dark damage and inceases overall dark damage by 50%)

ex. Weapon deals 250 dark damage. Resonant weapon increases by 50 dmg (300) then increases overall dark damage by 50%, for a grand total of 450 dark damage.


In the end, resonant weapon is an upgrade, but takes two attunement slots and 2000 souls to get worthwhile use out of. If thats not a problem, use it.,

source : https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/693331-dark-souls-ii/68853745

[blaine]

This post is 4 years old. Now resonant weapon gives you 5% more damage increase but it has less spell uses, takes 1 more spell slot and requires you 2000 souls for every use to get maximum damage. Its better to use dark weapon

[Tax evasion]

Originally posted by blaine:

This post is 4 years old. Now resonant weapon gives you 5% more damage increase but it has less spell uses, takes 1 more spell slot and requires you 2000 souls for every use to get maximum damage. Its better to use dark weapon

Whoops, didn't know they adjusted it.

[TrueArchery]

Actually the exact formula (that also works for weapons with scaling) is unknown. There are general ideas though and blaine's conclusion is still correct.
What matters is the (base) AR. Scaling seems to matter less. It doesn't matter whether the infusion/buff elements match or not, even though there's a bonus for matching elements the difference is literally single sigit damage in most cases. Weapons with innate elemental infusions are different, they do gain a noticable damage boost from matching elements.
The damage increase tiers are:
1) Resonant Weapon
2) Dark Weapon, Sunlightblade, Crystal Magic Weapon
3) Great Magic Weapon
4) Flame Weapon
5) Magic Weapon
The latter two being swapped in case of fire-infused weapons, at least in case of former pure physical weapons. Not 100% sure about innate fire weapons.

However Resonant Weapon does not increase the damage by a lot more. Due to the higher slot requirement, less spell uses and the soul consumption aswell as needing more levels for a longer duration it's arguably worse than Dark Weapon.
The actual stat requirements for even casting it don't really matter even if they're higher because you can just spice them down, but I suppose it's another factor that makes it worse for playing PvE (with a new character of course).
At high levels Resonant Weapon is pretty damn awesome and doesn't really have drawbacks since souls and levels don't really matter as much.