Best PvE damage type?

[EleventhStar]

Been reading around abit on what the best weapon buff might be. A lot of people say many bosses are weak to dark damage, but then i found http://darksouls2.wikidot.com/resistance which seems quite robust and well done.

So in the base game it would be like this for bosses:

Magic damage: 5 vulnerable, 5 resistant
Fire damage: 7 vulnerable, 8 resistant (2 very resistant)
lightning damage: 13 vulnerable, 4 resistant
dark damage: 3 vulnerable, 9 resistant
His limited DLC testing suggest all bosses have high resistance to everything. and lightning standing out seems to be mostly due to bosses in water/rain, which still counts ofc.

Havent tested it myself yet, but water lowering lightning resist and bosses with connections to Dark in lore having high dark resistance make sens to me. So why do i read people talking about dark damage everywhere oO? seems sunlight blade would be better, with the only drawback being that it requires more attunement slots?

[Blind]

Blunt, by far. For magic, dark.

[Hurricane]

bandix axe and dark. bandit axe has armor pen like the mace but does 100 more dps and has more reach

magic damage is kinda meh due to bosses having high res

[EleventhStar]

well the guy is/was working on blunt/slash/trust too here http://darksouls2.wikidot.com/weakness, where blunt seems to have the least resistant enemies.

But still, according to this guy there are 3x as many bosses resistant to dark then there are vulnerable. most notably persuer which is quite common now.

[Blind]

Originally posted by Hurricane:

bandix axe and dark. bandit axe has armor pen like the mace but does 100 more dps and has more reach

Armour pen?

[eech1]

Physical. Never infuse your weapons for pve.

[Blind]

Exception: Stuff like Santiers Spear should be RAW

[eddyak, Lord of Scrubs]

Physical resistance: 99%.

Chance of withstanding the Mastodon greatsword: ZERO PERCENT.

[Hurricane]

Armor pen is blunt damage it bypasses armor, the bandit axe gets this also, maybe all axes get it, never tested it.

Mastodon greatsword sucks, heavy and slow, mayaswell go UGS...

[Duodecimus]

Lightning isn't the best pve element because all the lightning spells are really, really slow and have very few casts/slot. You use faith for its buff spells.

Dark has fast, incredibly damaging spells that simply power through whatever resistances the target might have, and tend to have a decent number of shots per slot. Chime hexes are the really disgusting ones. You can easily hit for 1k/hit with Great Resonant Soul at the speed a longbow fires.

Magic is the best AoE element. Staff spells, both hexes and sorceries, tend to have tons of casts; I often break my staff before running out of spells.

[Grad]

Originally posted by BBX:

Originally posted by Hurricane:

bandix axe and dark. bandit axe has armor pen like the mace but does 100 more dps and has more reach

Armour pen?

It ignores armor like a mace does. Attack a turtle knight with a sword, now do it with a mace/axe.
You see a significant difference moreso at low lvl because at high lvl you are one shotting them most times so it's hard to tell the difference.