v1.10beta 100+ immunities acting as psuedo absorb:

[Crystalion]

From another thread (Great Race) Ruvanal quotes me and points to an interesting AB thread...

Venom much improved (e.g. fast high damage, doesn't compete with fade/BoS auras; possibly slightly bugged in apparent partial conversion of physical to poison)

This was an error in interpetation of the earlier testers due to their choice of a 'test subject' (act 5 doors with 1,000 poison resistance). There is no conversion of physical to poison being done. See page 2 of this thread.
http://www.theamazonbasin.com/d2/forums/...56&t=31001

Might be something for one of your threads on "hidden" things in the game.

He has a point. I'm inclined to look on it as an unanticapted consequence of v1.10 beta's new immunity system--perhaps if Blizz comes out and says it is indeed intentional I'll consider it "hidden" and not a possible bug.

To recap, for those too lazy to read the whole AB thread, here is Ruvanal's clever insight...

Damage is calculated in stages. In an early stage damage is calculated separately for each fundamental type of damage (physical, fire, cold, lightning, poison, magic), including taking resist factors into account. In a latter stage, these "typed" damages are all added together, and the net result used (after further manipulation it will eventually alter the target's HPs).

As a sanity (which didn't exist in Hellfire, btw, as enabling the dual wielding class and equiping two "useless" weapons could allow you to heal monsters) this damage is set to a minimum of zero. The *total* damage is so corrected, but *not* the individual types. So when a resistance is over 100%, the individual type damage can come out *negative*. These negatives effectively subtract from the total damage when they are added together.

Since trying to break immunities is very hard, any resist approaching 200 is basically unassailable. But for some reason, Blizz gave some objects (barricaded doors, etc.) 1000 (one thousand) percent poison resist. As a result, some players with a lot of poison (read Venom assassins) ended up noticing that they could not break down these barriers (when Venom was up).

However--and this is why I'm posting--what Ruvanal says seems likely to be affecting far more cases than just this extremely odd one. For example, anything significantly immune to fire (i.e. more than 100) might be getting a discount on the physical damage dealt by corpse explosion. Paladins not cracking immunities with Conviction might be losing ground a bit with Vengence. Paladins using Holy Shocking on Lightning Immunes (more than 100) might be making the kill much harder on themselves. Players beating on Physical immunes (100+) with excessive force might be negating some of their elemental damage. Etc., etc.

Iron Golems made with diamond paly resist automod shields might be even sturdier than just immune. Assassin Shadows with Fade up, ditto.

So a bit of testing might be in order to determine whether this "problem" upsets the play balance (and perhaps Blizz should tweak the damage calc routine) or whether it is, rather, an unannounced new "feature".

(Hard to say, sometimes... I'm presently still testing a fantastic bug/feature with some of the new uber runewords that I intend to report on in a day or two--it's quite a boon to players, but I can't see any way to not consider it a bug).