by Dellusions Sun Mar 18, 2012 2:54 pm
Ok, please allow me a minute here to explain.
If you are at 40 dex, the +14 or +15 Estoc will ALWAYS be the best option.
I know you're looking at the damage the weapon says it does, and you'll see that the Chaos +5 does 422 damage, and the +15 normal only does 342, but you need to realize something important here. When you run chaos/fire/lightning, or any other elem, you are going against 2 different resistances.
So for example, I have 400 phys def, and 300 lightning, and you attack me with a phys weapon, you are going through 400 defense, and will have about 180 damage removed from your attack, but then you attack me with a lightning weapon, and you face 700 resists (400+300) and will have 300 damage removed from your attack. You gained 80 damage, but lost 120.
The same holds true against monsters in PVE, and it gets even more extreme towards the end of the game, and in NG+ ++ and so on.
You do NOT need to buff a normal +15 weapon to have it be better than elemental, if you have 40 in the damage stat that it comes from, in almost every single situation, the normal will be better. Only 2-3 weapons differ from this.
Go test it if you'd like, It's already been done for many many weapons.