can someone explain resistance penalty

I read in the patch notes that their is now a resistances penalty at merciless, can someone explain to me how this works?

Say I have +75 for cold/fire/lightning and +10% chaos resistances as soon as I enter merciless...


Does the resistances I gain through passives and gear immediately receive the penalty, reducing my actual number in my character sheet?

Or does my resistances stay at what they were in my character sheet, but now an invisible penalty is added to them?

In Cruel areas: -20% to all resists
In Merciless areas: -60% to all resists

The penalty is additive.
The penalty applies as soon as you enter a zone. It simply makes the resistance "floor" -20% or -60%. Resistances can still be reduced further than this (there is no cap to negative resistance), but all it does is require you have +95% to all resistances or +135% to all resistances, to reach cap.

If you are cursed, this behaves in the same manner. It simply reduces your resistances by a flat amount. It isn't multiplicative or interact in any bizarre way.

Your character sheet updates immediately when you enter a zone.

So if I'm in merciless difficulty and my character sheet still says +75 to lightning/fire/cold then I actually have the higher value but since their is a penalty the reduced value is updated to reflect the change on my character sheet?

What I'm basically asking is that I want to have the +75 to all which I currently have when I'm in merciless. If it currently says that while I'm in merciless, that means the penalty has been applied and I still have the required soft cap.

Can we get some vicious moderation in here, or a general Passive Tree Discussion/Questions forum if this keeps up?

I wanna make a long rambly post about tax nodes and zone transition costs, and it kind of terrifies me that it'll get bumped off by a basic systems question.