Thinking about taking the dive...

[Fragbait]

Physical Immunity can be broken by AD or decrepify, but only to a point. AD and decrep affect PI's at 20% efficiency. So as long as the monster has less than 120% physical resistance, amp will break it and allow at least a very small percantage of physical damage.

The same principle controls lower resistance and elemental immunities, as well.

gekko

Hi,


I was under the impression that that's only true for the skill Lower Resist:

This curse, when breaking an immunity, will function at 1/5 effectiveness.

- from the Arreat Summit, about Lower Resist

Amplify Damage lowers monster Physical Resistances by 100%. It will also remove the Immune to Physical on Monsters.

- from the Arreat Summit, about Amplify Damage


I'm pretty sure that AD works well against PIs. It's my necro's main source of damage (apart from BS) against those foes (my mighty merc fighting them, that is), and I tested it countless times versus a Fire Golem with Lower Resist on the wraiths. My merc just kills 'em faster than my goly, which I think he couldn't if these wraiths only took 1/5th of the damage he dishes out!

Also, I don't think a necro wand with charges of AD on it would be such a viable option for melee characters on the switch as a solution for PIs, if it worked like LR and would only function at 20% efficiency against immune monsters. Feel free to correct me, though.


Greetings, Fragbait

[EDIT]
Alright, could be that you are right about AD. I found this:

For Physical Immunes, both work at 1/5 effectiveness. In other words, against a PI monster, Amp will reduce their physical resistance by 20%, and Decrep 10%. If that is enough to bring their resist below 100%, then the immunity is broken. Obviously, Amp is better at this.

- Teodomiro of the Amazon Basin in this thread, which basically seconds your statement, gekko.

I do think however that there are no monsters that are more than 100% physical resistant (like wraiths are).
[EDIT2]I forgot the unique monster bonus stoneskin. Now that one really cries for a different curse than AD if combined with a highly physical resistant monster.[/EDIT2]
That means, with AD, your merc / your skellies will at least do 20% of their damage with AD. Now that would shed some new light on the debate AD/LR with CE... Obviously then, LR is superior to AD when the foe is physical immune (=100% resistant), but not fire immune.

Why did I feel like AD was still better? It was probably due to my fire golem dishing out far less damage far slower. Also, leeching of 20% damage dealt is still better than leeching of 0% damage dealt, so that may be why AD worked better for me (and my hireling).
I'm going to test it out nevertheless.
CU
[/EDIT]

[EDIT3]
Ok, I tested it.
My Merc does a damage of 809-2884 (1846.5 avg).
A standard wraith (specter) has hitpoints of 2677-4942 (3809.5 avg).

He needed 7,9,8,10,6,9,8,7,9,11,8,9,7,8 attacks to kill the first fourteen specters with AD. That's an average of 8.29 attacks.
On these 8.29 attacks, he should have done about 8.29*1846.5=15307 damage.

Now, that means that he did to the specters at least about 3809.5/15307=24.89% damage. The percentage is rather a bit higher, since he didn't deal them the exactly lethal damage, but a bit more. So probably only about 14800-15200 were enough to kill the specters. Now 3809.5/15000=25.40%, So I would say that 25% of the damage got through.
Because I know that only 1/5 of the damage should get through, I probably got lucky on the side of his damage, or on the side of low hitpoints of the wraiths.

It is however now assured that AD works at diminished efficiency when breaking immunes.

Greetings
[/EDIT3]