What, like Carian Greatsword / Piercer / Flashsword, etc?
Well, there's a couple of things to consider:

1) They deal pure magic damage, no hybrid like your main weapon, so if your enemy happens to have weakness to magic damage and more resistant to physical - you will slap them real good. Also it counters shields, unless they are specifically anti-magic.
2) They tend to have high reach, comparable to that of actual ultra weapons - you just don't have to invest additional 10 strength and 20 endurance to equip them.

Pure magic mages generally don't spend too many stats into STR / DEX, so their actual physical weapons are usually not that strong and in the end these pure magic weapons will hit much harder on average.

it's when you are playing spellsword and not pure mage, so someone who doesn't upgrade staves and just fights in melee, and occasionally needs to shoot an enemy rather then hit it in melee

so in other words
if you level up int and mind, you go staves
if you level up dex, str and int equally, you go spellsword

Are you defining staffs as a weapons? In my current playthrough, I'm killing 80-90% of my enemies with magic/sorceries. Wing of Astel (or Moonlight Katana) is my main weapon and I'm always have a staff on my off hand to cast sorceries. I'm not always using the same staff; some are better for some tasks, some others for others.

The thing is, I'm not a pure mage. I always have a huge part of magic in my battles but quite often finishing my enemies with my sword which is way much faster than casting spells but do less damage.

BTW, high INT scaling is not everything. Your weapon may scale with other stats and what is good for you is not necessarily good for me even if my highest stat is INT.

1- Be Unga Bunga with big bonk stick
2- Have Lion's Claw on your big bonk stick
3- Have a simple dagger with 1,5 weight with Glintblade Phalanx on it which you can switch to while having zero stat increase in intelligence.
4- Use Glintblade Phalanx and then run towards the enemy and Lion's Claw his ass while the blades hit the enemy + interrupt + dealing good poise damage and then Lion's Claw hits
5- Enjoy big damage + Stance Break + crit & rinse and repeat.

Originally posted by Artek General:

What, like Carian Greatsword / Piercer / Flashsword, etc?
Well, there's a couple of things to consider:

1) They deal pure magic damage, no hybrid like your main weapon, so if your enemy happens to have weakness to magic damage and more resistant to physical - you will slap them real good. Also it counters shields, unless they are specifically anti-magic.
2) They tend to have high reach, comparable to that of actual ultra weapons - you just don't have to invest additional 10 strength and 20 endurance to equip them.

Pure magic mages generally don't spend too many stats into STR / DEX, so their actual physical weapons are usually not that strong and in the end these pure magic weapons will hit much harder on average.

yes those ones
its likely i didnt give enough information and clearly ask my question. it happens with me unfortunantly
still rather new, but ive learned enough to know i dont want to be pushing through multiple resistances. im mainly an intelligence/mind build and stumbled on the moonveil (which i later found out is apparently considered quite good. stuck with that crystal sword for way too long) which has solid intel scaling (i think? still learning and digging stuff up). so why would i opt for something like cairan greatsword when i can throw a glintstone cometshard when i have an opening on a boss? or is this just preference in playstyle at this point?

cometshard is 36 int, great sword is only 24. Also greatsword hits a big area around you, it has a different purpose from cometshard. For things that have the same purpose, yeah it's basically just preference.

Originally posted by 00yiggdrasill00:

so why would i opt for something like cairan greatsword when i can throw a glintstone cometshard when i have an opening on a boss? or is this just preference in playstyle at this point?

This is a general issue with mages honestly. Why even bother having a melee weapon when you can just shoot comet shards and moons at everything? It's like opting to fight with a knife when you have a Glock with ammo to spare. Ultimately it's about role-playing. Some enemies get the stick, some enemies get the Glock. Carian Swordsorceries have amazing visual presentation if nothing else.

I had an entire playthrough as a canonical Carian Knight and it honestly was the single most fun playthrough I had in this game so far: the sheer diversity of options while being completely aesthetically coherent.
Its just like Megamind said: "PRESENTATION!"

Originally posted by Artek General:

Originally posted by 00yiggdrasill00:

so why would i opt for something like cairan greatsword when i can throw a glintstone cometshard when i have an opening on a boss? or is this just preference in playstyle at this point?

This is a general issue with mages honestly. Why even bother having a melee weapon when you can just shoot comet shards and moons at everything? It's like opting to fight with a knife when you have a Glock with ammo to spare. Ultimately it's about role-playing. Some enemies get the stick, some enemies get the Glock. Carian Swordsorceries have amazing visual presentation if nothing else.

I had an entire playthrough as a canonical Carian Knight and it honestly was the single most fun playthrough I had in this game so far: the sheer diversity of options while being completely aesthetically coherent.
Its just like Megamind said: "PRESENTATION!"

so its all options than. i can happily get behind that. will have to give the magic weapons a try, but for now im happy throwing rocks, stars and shards.

thanks everyone for the answers.