[2023] How hard can I penetrate a monster?

Is there any cap for that?

I run a poison Lich. I have -25% res from Mark for Death, -15% res from passive nodes on Aura of Decay and -1% per Intelligence (and I have around 80 int), which results in total -120% poison res. Also, first 30 poison stacks (which I gain in less than 1 sec) aplly -5% res, which gives another -150%.

So, that's a total of -270% guaranteed poison res. And I also have 24% poison penetration from Passive Tree and around 15% penetration on gear, which brings me to around -310% poison res on enemies.

And I also have poison penetration for Plague exclusively - another 170% (Plaguebearer + nodes on Spirit Plague), which brings it up to -480% enemy poison res.

Numbers are really beautiful in game but I wonder if those numbers are capped somewhere? Maybe half of that doesn't even give effect and I can change it into something else.

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There is no cap on how hard you can penetrate a monster.

Monsters have 0% resistances unless they have a description like "Resists fire damage", which typically means they have around 40% resistance to that damage type. Penetration and resistance reduction effects, such as shred and mark for death, can make effective resistance go negative, resulting in more damage dealt.

There's no a limit to that, so if you have 270% penetration against a monster with no inherent resistance you will deal 270% more damage to it. If you have 270% penetration against a monster with 40% resistance to that damage type, its effective resistance will be lowered to 230%, causing you to deal 450% more damage to it than you would have dealt with 0% penetration (3.3/0.6 - 1 = 4.5).

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