Duster Weapon Question

Hey, REALLY new to the site, but I've grown in love with RWBY, and I look forward to RP'ing with y'all.

That being said, I have two questions (one with several parts; sorry about that) about Dust and weapons. If my character uses a kind of focus for his dust (Like how Weiss does with her ice, or Cinder maybe kinda does with her...clothes (?), would I take the weapon's attack, then add the bonus of the dust? And since it would be solely a ranged, Dust based weapon, would it go off my spirit, or my brawn, since it is a weapon? Apologies if this was mentioned somewhere and I missed it.

question two (thanks for sticking with the thread this long, you da best! XD): I know that you allow AoE semblances, from the answer to another question, and that Buffing is a basic semblance, but could I have an AoE debuff semblance? Say... anyone within... 10 meters of Alex at the time of Semblance activation loses 2 Defense until they leave his area of control or something like that?

Thanks for your help!

If you are using dust in tandem with your weapon, the dust overrides the weapon. So if you use your weapon with dust, the damage is based on your SPT. if you then decide to use the weapon again, no dust, its based on STR. Semblance overrides Dust Overrides Weapon.

Anything buff can do, debuff can do, but AoE would drop it from losing 2 stat points to one, same with AoE buffs raising it.