Effective + Weaken. Whats the weakness

By this, i mean, what map affixes counter this? I havent figured it out, but usually, this combo eats things with ease, but occasionally, it doesnt do much at all, and the monsters are real tough. I read the guide and few other threads, but no one seems to have revealed exactly when, why, what affixes make it not so good.What affixes are causing this? Im sure i will figure out the culprits soon. Ty.

Starting to lean towards +enemy resists as the main cause. Hmm.

It is 2 affixes instead of the one “Ignore Resist”, and you also have a slight chance not to proc Weaken with a 90% affix. Also it doesn’t affect Crushing Blows, so it may not be needed at all with some builds.
On the other hand, the combo is very powerful.

120% weaken is easy. 90% + 30%. Also weaken gives almost ×2 more DMG than without from what I’ve tested and even on the strongest of enemies, it makes sure your DMG doesn’t get divided by below 1 from resisting enemies. When weaken is above 100%, it will always proc and it’s a Debuff that could be applied universally to hirling Like the ascendant Debuff. Weaken + ascendant is OP after all.

Ignore resist is fine because it makes all enemies not divide your DMG below 1 but you won’t have the benefit of dealing ×2 nominal DMG that weaken does. Weaken is vastly better and even kills immunity enemies easily by nullifying it.

I remember when Ignore resist was the Go to affix but those days are not as relevant anymore since you have weaken way over 100% with ease , ascendant Debuff, the weaken probably applies universally like ascendant + wrath talent.

Before weaken crystal affix was 90% and cap was 200%, weaken used to be 60% cap and 45% crystal affix so at that time it wasn’t worth it, even though ascendant did help. However when weaken got vastly buffed to 200% cap, 90% weaken + 30% epic affix, weaken suddenly becomes relevant since it kept pricing so much , the insane DMG gains , etc.

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This is an amazing guide to get the big picture of how weaken is useful.

But I definitely did personal testing and it seems that Weaken is so much more powerful especially when it happens 100%+ of the time and it practically makes enemies defenseless against the build elements. Weaken high enough with ascendant as another option and exponential DMG like Frozen or so is a huge deal after all. Exponential buff in DMG but on almost Ă—2 the scale.

Without any ignore resist, weaken nor effective, having Frozen explosions from Frozen set would lose DMG instead of gain due to enemy resists and immunities but they get rendered basically useless after such high weaken.

My hypothesis of enemies having -% resist from weaken was correct.

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I understand all that, but thats not really what i was asking about. Just curious which affixes negate, or reduce effective + weaken combo, because clearly, some mobs arent affected much. Anyways ty.

Oh sorry.

Probably immunes or greatly resists but they don’t negate it per say. Although weaken reduces the resists so much that potentially if you use effective with weaken, instead of any benefits gained from effective, you actually get negative effects as it seems.

I did notice a tremendous DMG increase when removing effective on some enemies but keeping weaken higher than 90%.

What it means is that greatly resists and immunes would reduce your DMG so much but thanks to having weaken, your DMG won’t be reduced to below 1 nominal DMG where your DMG gets decreased every attack instead of increased per attack .

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Hmm, interesting. I think you solved my curiousity. Ty

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You’re welcome :smile:

Yeah, ok, throw in a +30% weaken from the pet and you are done for that, still 2½ affixes used though so very expensive as slot-usage, I agree totally with you but my remarks still hold (I said it is very effective indeed in my post!). In my main build I have no space for so many affixes and I just make sure to deal true damage with IR (also I deal a lot of % damage so it’s not a big deal).

Fair enough. In my opinion it’s worth the effort for weaken but it’s totally optional anyway. You don’t have to use weaken and you can still be satisfied without being super overkill like I was. Weaken is for overkill purposes basically and ignore resist is the cheaper but still effective solution. Better than effective mythic at places.

Well the numbers that I calculated using weaken does seem to be accurate almost every time on screen dealing ×2 the normal DMG but not every build needs weaken, especially if it can’t afford the crystal affix slot for it or if you do PvP because weaken isn’t necessary in PvP.

Because enemy resist actually means enemy damage Reduction rather than the resist players are familiar with so when they have low resist, you deal a lot of DMG. Ignore resist is good because it ignores their damage Reduction defense.

If weakened, you end up making them have -% DMG reduction or exposed to more DMG. For greatly resists, instead of resisting , it ends up exposing even more DMG or it reduces DMG but not enough and immunes end up becoming either 0 or 10%. but immunes aren’t super common to worry too much about their reduction of DMG even when weakened.

Anyway thanks for your posts.

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