Piercing, Puncturing, and Bashing and AC zero foes

[Attika]

In Classic Diablo and Hellfire, doing Ironman runs with a Warrior. I'm going to be abbreviating "piercing, puncturing, & bashing" as pp&b.

In both Diablo and Hellfire, FTH is:

FTH = 50 + Dex/2 + ToHititems + clvl + bonusplayer - Acmonster - penaltyquarter damage (JG 6.2.1)

And according to Jarulf’s Guide: “In Diablo, ToHititems includes the effect of items with the "penetrate armor" effect” (Jarulf’s 6.2.1) and piercing, puncturing & bashing do 2-6, 4-12, and 8-24 (JG 3.4) respectively. (This is a percentage? Unclear)

Thus in the FTH formula in Classic Diablo

FTH = 50 + Dex/2 + ToHititems + clvl + bonusplayer - Acmonster

a “bashing” item might add up to 24% to hit versus a foe since the effect of piercing, puncturing & bashing (pp&b) is figured in the ToHititems portion of the formula.

But according to JG’s: “In Hellfire they reduce the AC of the target by a certain percentage shown in the table.” (JG 3.4) with pp&b reducing AC by 25%, 50%, and 75% respectively (again, JG 3.4). Is this then figured in the "-Acmonster" portion of the FTH formula?

If so, what about Mage types encountered in a Normal difficulty IM run? They ALL have AC zero! In Classic Diablo, would you still get up to the 24% to hit bonus that a bashing item might have since the extra to hit is figured in the ToHit(items) part of the formula? While in Hellfire you’d get absolutely no benefit whatsoever since reducing a foe’s AC by up to 75% when the foe’s AC is already zero still gives you a value of zero, which is then added to your cth?

So do pp&b items still help when striking at mage-type opponents in Normal Difficulty Classic Diablo? (Potentially adding up to 24% to your character’s to hit?)

And are they no better than “vanilla” items when striking against mage-types in Normal Difficulty Hellfire? (Always adding zero percent to your character’s to hit since they _subtract a percentage from_ a foe’s AC and these foes have AC zero?)

Just curious.

Attika