It does not. Arcane only scales up bleed buildup in this game. For spells, the spell-type's scaled stat may increase status buildup, but I'm uncertain. I.E., I think the frost buildup on frost spells is static, and the same for poison/rot. Bleed definitely scales with arcane, though.

Imo it scales with int

Status effects only scale if that weapon has a letter grade in arcane scaling. Currently there are no cold weapons that can get arcane scaling so frostbite will not scale.

Okay, I know this is kind of old, but I did some testing and found your answer. To test this I used the Flame of the Redmanes, which is a Fire affinity by default, meaning it has only Strength and a little bit of Dex scaling, and no faith scaling. So, I tested the damage for the flame on one of the soldiers by the gatefront site of grace, with a default Fire, Heavy, and Flame Art affinity. What I found was that it always scales with strength. Whenever I used the Heavy affinity, which has no fire damage on the weapon but higher Strength scaling, the fire damage of the weapon art increased because of the higher Strength Scaling. Then, I switched it to Flame Art, which also adds fire damage to a weapon but makes it so that said damage scales with Faith. I used the weapon art, and it did less damage than the Fire and Heavy affinities because of Flame Art's lower Strength scaling, and I tested boosting my Faith with some talismans and the damage remained unchanged.

I also tried a similar thing with the Sacred Blade, which deals pure holy damage with a base Sacred affinity. When I switched to a purely Heavy affinity, the damage increased bc the Faith Scaling was removed, but the damage was still quite high, less than a 10% decrease. Then, I tested Keen which has higher Dex scaling and lower Strenght, because my character has lower Dex so I wanted to see if they affected the damage, and if they did it would have decreased, but it remained the same. Then, I equipped the Faith boosting talismans with the Keen affinity, so there was no Faith scaling, but damage STILL increased.

TLDR: Elemental ashes of war will always scale with one stat regardless of a basic affinity being used. Sacred ashes' Holy damage will always scale with Faith, even without any Faith scaling. Fire damage from Fire affinities will always scale with Strength, Flame Art fire damage will always scale with Faith, magic damage will always scale with Int. The one exception I haven't tested is blood projectiles, like Bloody Slash which normally scale with Arc but deal physical damage.

That's fantastic info thank you

The Other answer seems definitely wrong, In Majority of Scenarios you want to stick to the affinity your Ash of war gives you by default, and the stat which affects said Affinity. Exceptions exist but it's simply untrue that your affinity does not affect Ash Damage, it does.

Not 100% but I'm fairly sure it's to indicate you're doing a dmg type other than physical. e.g. DMGS will have little blue sparks for the magic dmg

it's just to show that the damage effect from that affinity is being applied. Happens with other weapons that have unique effects like Dragon Halberd having a blue lightning effect on hit or Cipher Pata giving a glimmer of sparky effects when hitting. Anything with fire/magic/lightning/holy/frost/bleed/poison/sleep/rot/madness/deathblight will give this effect on hit most of the time. Some weapons have unique applications of this such as Gargoyle's Blackblade having a black/red effect when hitting that is actually caused by it's holy dam

This page is missing information. The fire affinity scales with strength similarly to how lightning does with dexterity.

Strength / Fire Affinity and Guts' Greatsword is a pretty hefty build.

It depends on the Ash of War. Eg, a magic ash can't have bleed or a flame art ash can't deal lightning damage. Standard, Heavy, Keen, and Quality can be placed with any ash, but you can only group magic and cold, fire and flame art, lightning and sacred, and the last group being poison, blood, and occult. Physical ashes can be applied with any affinity as well.

It depends on what specific ash of war you're equipping. It sounds like you're equipping a Fire ash of war. The only other affinities you can get for that are the Iron Whetblade affinities and Flame Art (through the Red-Hot Whetblade). For Sacred to be usable, the ash of war needs to be Heavy, Keen, Quality, or Lightning.

Just put that in above, but only Standard, Heavy, Keen, and Quality can be buffed. Everything else can not be buffed.

No, but that crescent halbert the Albinaurics drop scale with Arcane only and can have greases applied

No but the crescent halbert the albinaurics drop scale with arcane and can use grease

It does have a faith equivalent which is the sacred affinity

"It does have a faith equivalent which is the sacred affinity" -
i believe OP means that there are options for a fire dmg type that scales with str, AND a fire dmg type that scales with fth. LIGHTNING dmg can only scale with dex. the sacred affinity does scale with fth but is HOLY dmg, not lighting.