Are Elemental Weakness type curses a newb trap?

I'm doing some frenetic googling, and one of the recurring themes is that map bosses typically have overcapped resists along with -60% curse effectiveness. Meaning that unless you invest heavily in +curse effect and multi-cursing, your curses won't get their resists below 75% (at least not by much). Combine that with some very appealing alternatives for curses such as Enfeeble and TC, which even with the reduced effect do at least something, and I find it increasingly hard to justify to myself why I should use these in endgame.

Yes, they're very good at lower levels and against trash mobs, but so is everything else. Yes, there's also the increased chance of an elemental status ailment, but without the bonus damage from a crit and with the high HP of a boss, that's not going to be very effective either.

This is something I'm starting to observe on my Flameblast witch, who's just started doing low level maps. The most egregious example so far was Blood Progenitor (Tropical Island map boss), who I'm guessing has a particularly high fire res due to his base creature type. My Flammability barely did anything to him, though to be fair it was only a single curse with no +effect bonuses.


So, are these curses one of those features that are awesome through low-mid level and then become utterly useless at endgame? Can they compete with other curses?

They are certainly a lot worse than they might initially appear, yes. That said, I don't believe any bosses have naturally overcapped resists (although it's certainly possible for any monster with high initial resists to obtain them through mods), although I may be wrong. Also, they are the only real option for a lot of noncrit elemental builds wanting a damage curse, although Assassin's Mark will be superior for any crit build.

So yes and no. I would personally think Flameblast is one of those builds where resistance reduction would generally shine, to be honest.

You still curse the boss because it increases your damage by a lot.

Let's just say that Progenitor has 90 fire resist before the curse and 80 fire resist after. That might not seem like a lot to you but if you curse him you will essentially do DOUBLE the damage compared to if you didn't curse.

i personally think that the ele curses are useless against bosses because they have over capped res and reduced curse effectiveness.
when you curse a normal or a rare mob you can see a new mod on them ..vulnerable to (fire/cold/light) but not bosses.
i think the penetration is the only good option against boss and utility curses like temp chains and crit weakness / vulnerability.

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elitedesolator wrote:

You still curse the boss because it increases your damage by a lot.

Let's just say that Progenitor has 90 fire resist before the curse and 80 fire resist after. That might not seem like a lot to you but if you curse him you will essentially do DOUBLE the damage compared to if you didn't curse.

Monsters have the same resist capping rules as players. 90 raw fire res would be capped at 75, and removing 10 would not change the actual value.

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viperesque wrote:

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elitedesolator wrote:

You still curse the boss because it increases your damage by a lot.

Let's just say that Progenitor has 90 fire resist before the curse and 80 fire resist after. That might not seem like a lot to you but if you curse him you will essentially do DOUBLE the damage compared to if you didn't curse.

Monsters have the same resist capping rules as players. 90 raw fire res would be capped at 75, and removing 10 would not change the actual value.

Ok but my point still stands. Just plug in 75 to 65. That's still a 40% increase in damage.

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elitedesolator wrote:

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viperesque wrote:

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elitedesolator wrote:

You still curse the boss because it increases your damage by a lot.

Let's just say that Progenitor has 90 fire resist before the curse and 80 fire resist after. That might not seem like a lot to you but if you curse him you will essentially do DOUBLE the damage compared to if you didn't curse.

Monsters have the same resist capping rules as players. 90 raw fire res would be capped at 75, and removing 10 would not change the actual value.

Ok but my point still stands. Just plug in 75 to 65. That's still a 40% increase in damage.

Yes, in general it does.

I might take a look through poedb later actually. See how common very high resists on map bosses really are.

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elitedesolator wrote:

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viperesque wrote:

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elitedesolator wrote:

You still curse the boss because it increases your damage by a lot.

Let's just say that Progenitor has 90 fire resist before the curse and 80 fire resist after. That might not seem like a lot to you but if you curse him you will essentially do DOUBLE the damage compared to if you didn't curse.

Monsters have the same resist capping rules as players. 90 raw fire res would be capped at 75, and removing 10 would not change the actual value.

Ok but my point still stands. Just plug in 75 to 65. That's still a 40% increase in damage.

Except the curses reduce resists before they are capped. So instead of 90 resist getting capped to 75, you reduce it to 80... which gets capped to 75. So your curse didn't do anything.

A level 20 Flammability knocks off 44% fire resist. Even with a - 60% curse effectiveness you still knock off 17.6% fire resist. And that's not including any increase to curse effectiveness you get on the tree or items.

TLDR curses are fucking amazing.

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suszterpatt wrote:

Except the curses reduce resists before they are capped. So instead of 90 resist getting capped to 75, you reduce it to 80... which gets capped to 75. So your curse didn't do anything.

And which monster in the game has 90 fire resist?