Question about Damage- Earth,Fire,Ice,Lightning???

I'm a bit confused by these, i really can't tell the difference in the elemental damage on wepons. I mean whats better and what do they do what special atrribute do they do to wepons besides the fact that it says fire damage or earth or lightning.

I have tried different experements with this. for example i tried a normal sword 15-22 slashing dmg vs 15-22 firey dragon sword and felt no difference maybe the odd critical looks different but over all they seem to do the same dmg. Same with my Ebon Flamberge vs a normal Long sword.

Also tried it with bows, one bow with lightning and another with normal peircing. Didn't notice any difference

In which case what is the point of putting a firey hilt. or an icey bow string so on and so forth.

just wanted a clarification on the difference in damage and how are they delt to enemys.

I know it makes a difference on enemies because they have different environmental weaknesses, etc. In PvP it also makes a difference, I know that the elementalists get armor that reduce damage from different elements. So if a elementalist has high fire defense you will probably want to use a different damage.

Ok so that clears up some things but it also brings up other questions..
like how can u tell a monsters element. i can tell only of a few like the icey or rock elementals or lightning drake.. but for others i dunno really.. and how does element vs element work.. i mean its basic to know that use fire vs ice.. what about lightnining what is that weak against or earth or fire which is which?

Difference in dmg also relates to requirements and your skill lvl. Eg a sword (10-16 dmg) with req 6 and a sword (10-16 dmg) with req 9: if u have req 9 u will do more dmg with the lower req sword... I tested it myself yesterday (a fiery sword with req 9 dmg 12-19 or something and a spatha with 10-16 dmg, req 6).

Another question I have: what is the difference between light and lightning damage? Is light doing double dmg against undead?

It makes no difference if a ranger packs "Winter" on his skill bar. And if he wears "vs. cold" armor, he's practically negating 50% of any elemental damage directed at him. That includes elemental damage from weapons. Combine that with "Purge Condition" if he's a Ranger/Monk and "Whirling Defense." and you've got a pretty much invincible Ranger.

.................................................. .................................................. ..............................you know what?

I just came up with that defense combo. None of those are even on my skill bar.

The whole idea of different types of dmg (Fire, Cold, etc) is still pretty confusing...

1) Anyone know of a list which outlines the different damage types as well as the monsters which are susceptible to that damage type?

2) More importantly does anyone know if, for example, you deal Cold Damage to a cold-based enemy, is your attack actually less than it would be if just dealing regular blunt or slashing damage?

Appreciate any help with these.

Monster weakness lists might come out eventually, but right now the game's only been released for a while, so there hasn't been much time for stuff like that. Alot of places are still working on maps and trader locations, and skill locations.

For the second question, that's is very possible, but I am unsure since I haven't used an elementalist too much yet. Armor works where if you have 0 armor, you'll recieve about 2.8x damage, while if you have 60 armor you take full listed damage, and 40 points more or less than that give half or double damage respectively. (read the article A Treatise on combat mathematics at guildwarsguru) Since the monsters certainly have penalties to their armor versus certain elements, it's possible they have bonuses to another. Because of this, sometimes armor ignoring spells aren't always too great.

Answers to some other questions:
Light damage does not deal double to undead. It is certianly not the same as lightning damage. It does not ignore armor. It is not elemental damage (I don't think).
It exists only on holy rods and staves.

Shadow damage is it's counterpart, on necro weapons, not to be confused with dark damage. Same properties as light damage I believe

Chaos damage is like the other two but it's on mesmer weapons. I also heard, but dont' think it's likely too true, and don't think it matters ethier way, that all mesmer skills deal chaos damage when it says it deals damage to target enemy(ies).

Dark damage damage is what alot of (maybe all/most, I don't know, I don't read too much about necro) necro skills use. I believe it ignores armor. I'm not sure if it deals double damage to anything, but I don't think so.
I also noticed, it may be a bug, that at least one skill which deals dark damage ignoes the skill Protective Spirit, which is pretty interesting.

Holy damage is also armor ignoring, all monk skills which deal damage deal holy damage (except I don't remember about retribution/holy wrath) except for Zealot's Fire (which deals fire damage). It deals double damage to undead. I do not know if it can ignore protective spirit, but perhaps holy damage is the counter ability to the dark damage's ignoring Protection.

Elemental damage:
fire, earth, cold, lightning
I heard lightning has +25% armor penetration or something, but I don't think that applies for upgraded weapons, and maybe not even conjure lightning. I don't even know if that is true or if it is still in the game. If it is then it's probably only on the skills.

The rest are normal to my knowledge. The reason you might want or not want to upgrade a weapon with elemental damage( USUALLY doesn't matter which type, is because there are armor bonuses from items and armor which give bonuses to ethier elemental or physical damage. I'm not sure if this is true, if it was a bug, or what, but it seems, at least during the beta testing, that an enchanted weapon would deal BOTH elemental and physical damage, and BOTH modifiers would be accounted for if you dealt damage to them.

Some skills such as mantra of elements? or ward against elements or ward against physical (or is that one called ward against melee I think?) give bonus damage reduction or extra armor versus that type of damage
they also sometimes give a penalty, such as -x armor versus physical, which decreases the higher level you have in that skill/attribute.

Very informative post Xapti. Thx.

Element also helps in "Conjure" if youre a secondary elementalist.

Conjure Frost and youre hitting for 13 more a hit.

As far as Conjures and weapon upgrades go, it does just change the damage type, nothing more.
For example, a Shocking Sword wont inherently do 25% armor penetration, or an Icy Bow slow enemies, despite seeing many people argue this in ingame chat

Also remember that certain skills only work in combination with certain damage types. For example, I'm a Warrior/Necromancer who uses Mark of Pain a lot. It deals AOE damage only when you hit a foe with physical damage. So I need to make sure my weapon damage type is physical (slashing, blunt, piercing, etc.) for the spell to have any effect. There are several other skills like this (especially elementalist ones), but I don't have a list handy.