Brutish cudgel not working / damage scale issue?

I feel like something is wrong with the damage scaling right now. I have kind of only used one weapon most of the game, which is why I am just noticing this but I hit for over 140 with my corpse smear blade that has a base damage of 36 w/ scale does like 58 so it says on the stats page. I got to the point where I can equip this new weapon the brutish cudgel and I am thinking wow I am going to do serious damage with a base stat of 58 damage w/ scale supposed to do 83 and each time I only hitting for 66? Not only that I have noticed that my attack stat does not go up when I equip rings that are supposed to alter it, where as my armor stat does reflect the percent change. Am I missing something? Brutish cudgel feels so much weaker even though on paper it supposed to hit harder.