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I made a spell:

Weakness to fire 100% for 1 second.
Fire damage 25 for 1 second.

It killed all non dunmers in one hit. Logic dictates that it should overpower dunmer's 75% resistance to fire and instead give them 25% weakness to it. But it took 3 castings to kill one.
wtf is going on here?!

I think the game is scripted in a way so Dunmers will always have 25% resistance to fire, no matter how much weakness to fire you throw at them.

assuming normal difficulty and a 50 health enemy, so that a normal person is one-shotted as per example, then a Dunmer takes either 31. 25 damage per hit (so 2 hits) or 18.75 damage per hit (3 hits)

Therefore, it isn't working properly.

The programming for fire resistance for dark elves overrides any spells and/or enchantments you use. It does get annoying at times.

Well for starters combining Weakness and Damage effects into the same spell with 1 second durations doesn't work as one would think.

Spell Effects with durations are put on a waiting list in the order that they appear. That Weakness to Fire effect takes 1 second to be applied and immediately wears off before the Fire Damage takes it's 1 second to be applied.

Even if you adjusted the Weakness's duration to last longer, it won't immediately increase the power of the Fire Damage. What it will do is increase the power of any shots that come after it.

So a spell like this:
Weakness to Fire 100% for 10 seconds
Fire Damage 25 points for 1 second

Should do 25 points on the first hit, and 50 on any hits after so long as they're within the 10 second time limit.

If you want it to do more, add Weakness to Magic 100% for 10 seconds, and the damage will double with each subsequent hit.

First 25, then 50, then 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400 PALMS!

Ten seconds is a bit long/expensive. The elemental weakness just has to be long enough for the second shot to make contact in time, then the weakness is reset. Weaknesses have to come after their damage in a spell for them to carry over. I think they get turned off by the damage rather than simply running first. Let me know if I am wrong, but I don't think a 10 second fire weakness followed by fire damage would make you wait 10 seconds for the fire to hit.

Weakness to magicka is even more expensive (but as PJ pointed out, it stacks on itself instead of getting reset) -- 3 or 4 seconds is affordable and effective in most cases at default difficulty.

Try [soul trap 2 sec., drain health 100, fire 15]. If your armor level is high enough (94% spell efficiency), or you don't wear armor, it will kill most things up to about level 9 in one hit (made for zombies and lesser things). You may have to boost the fire damage if your spell efficiency is lower from a low armor skill.
As a touch spell, it is cheaper than the basic soul trap spell. Zombies have a 30% resistance to magic IIRC, so a 1 second soul trap does not work on them.

PJ...why does everyone keep calling me PJ?

DO I LOOK LIKE PAJAMAS TO YOU?

I know I'm warm and cuddly like pajamas. The soft fuzzy ones with the little feet and the hood that pulls up and makes you look like a little bear. So cute *squee*. And a little cotton tail buttflap. Can't forget the buttflap. Buttflaps are awesome.

...

What were we talking about?

'jammy buttflaps I thought. But this might be spam.

Nobody wants to type out PrinceJonathan. It's like two letters shorter than CaractacusPotts or Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.