What is considered "physical damage"?

I thought that physical damage was considered as attack from a sword, hammer, axe etc etc. However, I also thought that arrows were also considered physical damage. Am i wrong? (arrows, from a ranger's bow that is)

any damage, pretty much, that doesn't have to do with spells.

if you're damaged by an attack that used physical strength, like a sword slash, etc. then it's a physical attack.

Slashing, Blunt, Piercing etc. is physical. Icy, fire, earth, air is elemental damage

thanks guys. i just made a ranger. and i tried combining my bow attacks (piercing damage) with spells that weakened my target's armor. However, I did not notice any difference in the damage I dealt. So I just thoguht that perhaps I was mistaken. Thanks for the clarification.

Armor-reducing spells don't have much effect early on, because everything has very low armor. Try asking a high level R/ friend to switch to R/N and help you test on something with a high AL.

Elemental modded weapons (ie Fiery swords, Ebon Bows) are still counted as physical attacks though - they trigger IW and can be blocked by stances like Bonetti's or Gladiator's.

Has there been any testing on whether elemental mod weapons do less damage to rangers?

IW, Bonetti's, and Gladiator's work on elemental weapons because none of those skills care about whether an attack does physical damage or not...

Elemental upgrades most certainly change your damage to elemental. I think what nightrunner might have been thinking of is that elemental modded warrior weapons are still counted as melee attacks. As NatalieD pointed out, those skills are only concerned with melee attacks, not physical attacks. There's quite a big difference between melee attacks and physical attacks in this game. Melee attack pretty much means an attack with a warrior weapon (sword, axe, hammer), while phyiscal attack just means an attack that did a physical damage type (slashing, piercing, blunt).