Monster's Actual Elemental Resist vs Elemental Weakness Curse

According in POE wiki, the description of elemental penetration:

"

" The enemy has +150% Fire resistance, but is capped at their maximum fire resistance of 75%. The enemy is cursed with Flammability before being attacked, which causes them to lose 30% Fire Resistance.

The enemy first loses 30% resistance, bringing them down to +120% fire resistance. They are still well above their maximum, and their resistance value remains at 75%. The 50% penetration then results in an effective 25% fire resistance. The enemy will take 75 fire damage"

It means monster's default maximum resist is same as players (75%).

BUT some monsters can have more than 75% actual resist such could be 150% in wiki's example

so if it is possible to be futile for ur elemental weakness curse on a high resist monster such as Frost guide or Sea witch
(which with extreme high cold resist, and here we only consider their cold resist)

Because I don't know their actual resist, just in case if they got 140% cold resist and ur curse let them drop 59% resist which makes their actual resist become 81%.
But they are still above the maximum resist (75%), so in this situation, ur curse is futile for them.


Also in the case of Map affix: +75% Monster Fire/Cold/Lightning resist, it makes every monster in the map + 75% actual resist, even if a monster with 140% default resist become 215% resist! So it's impossible to reduce their resist to under 75% by curse.

And it seems even in normal map, elemental weakness doesn't work well on specific monsters.


So, The question is:

If It's True To Be More Effective, With Other Curses Instead Of Elemental Weakness When You Against To High Resist Monsters?

I don't know if monsters by default have higher than 75% resist, but I do know that the elemental penetration support gems reduce from the final number (75% max).
My Fireball Witch's damage increased significantly even though it doesn't show on the took tip.
When you do the math, those supports can massively boost your damage. The more resistant, the more the relative increase.

damn u son are u blind or what , read the wiki carefuly , that was an example :D

To answer your question:

Yes. It is possible for a monster to have 200+ resistances, rendering 1 curse useless while penetration still has the same effect.

However, the game doesnt limit you to one curse. If high elemental maps are an issue, you either should look into double hex builds (chest rare, ring rare or +1 curse passive) or change your damage output to e.g. physical (not too hard for most caster to switch to EK for such maps/enemies).

double hex:
Using elemental weakness + element specific weakness (flammability, etc), you can reduce up to 98 resist of one element. Using elemental equilibrium correctly, you can reduce it by another 50.

Reducing by 148 AND having penetration (which reduces the effective resistance) means you can lower a resistance by a total of 183.

Also remember you still get the other bonuses from element specific weakness curse.

Elemental reduction is strong vs all mobs unless they have double resist against your damage type. In which case, elemental weakness is completely countered while your penetration remains the same.

"

n00bi wrote:

damn u son are u blind or what , read the wiki carefuly , that was an example :D

I know its an example

but no one knows what is the actual resist of monster, who knows if they got 100+ actual or what?

and u really need to talk that way?

As a double spark totem witch, this is what I do 99% of time:

Conductivity + lighting penetration


If in higher maps mobs do get this mad 200% lighting resist, then I would:
1) use my existing bear traps
2) wear Windscream boots for 1 extra curse, and slap elemental weakness curse on mobs

Problem solved.