Amplify Damage

Curses a group of enemies, increasing the non-magic damage they receive.

Amplify Damage is the Necromancer's level 1 curse (Curses tree, no prerequisite; it unlocks Weaken and Iron Maiden). Everything cursed inside its radius loses 100% of its physical damage resistance for the duration, so physical hits land for double what the monster's own resistance would otherwise leave. The 100% is fixed; levels only buy radius and duration, and the mana cost is a flat 4.

The numbers

• Damage resistance −100% at every level: the aura stat is damageresist set to −par5, and Param5 is 100 (skills.txt, "Damage Resistance %"). No level changes it, so the tooltip's "Damage Taken: +100%" line is the same from level 1 to level 30.
• Duration is Param3 200 frames at level 1 plus Param4 75 frames a level, at 25 frames a second: 8 seconds at level 1, +3 a level, 65 seconds at level 20 and 95 at level 30. The Basin writes the same rule as 5 + 3 × level.
• Radius is Param1 3 plus Param2 1 a level, in units that the tooltip converts to yards at ×2 ÷ 3: 2 yards at level 1, 14.67 at level 20, 21.33 at level 30.

Both the duration (ln34) and the radius (ln12) read the skill's full level, so +skills from items count toward them. Nothing on the page reads hard points only.

How it works

Amplify Damage is a cast curse: it does not roll against attack rating, it simply applies the amplifydamage state to every eligible monster in the radius around the targeted point. A monster can carry one curse at a time, so a later curse of any kind replaces it. While the state is on, the target's physical damage resistance is read 100 points lower in the defender's chain described at Taking Damage and Dealing Physical Damage: a monster at 0% resistance takes physical damage at 200% of normal, a monster at 50% is pushed to −50% and takes 150%.

Against a monster that is immune to physical the −100% is cut to a fifth, −20%, which is not enough to break a 100% immunity on its own. The Basin notes that this reduction is applied to the undead before Sanctuary's effect. In Diablo II: Resurrected the curse works at its full −100% on a monster whose immunity has been sundered.

The curse only touches physical ("non-magic") damage. Fire, cold, lightning, poison and magic damage are not changed; that is Lower Resist's job. Because the curse works on the monster's resistance, it raises every source of physical damage at once: your own melee, a mercenary's, summons', and Corpse Explosion's physical half.

Synergies and +skills

No synergies: Amplify Damage has no synergy lines in skilldesc.txt and feeds none. Its only scaling is the level itself, and since both lines read lvl, a +1 to all skills or to Curses is worth exactly one hard point: +3 seconds and +0.67 yards. A hard point past 1 buys nothing that an item cannot.

Against players

A player's hit on another player is cut to 17% of its value (difficultylevels.txt PlayerDamagePercentVSPlayer) before anything else, and that happens before the cursed player's resistance is read, so the −100% applies to the reduced hit. The Basin's page records no other player-versus-player rule for this curse. See Player versus Player.

Build notes

• One hard point gives the whole effect. The 100% does not grow, so a point here is for the radius and the duration only; +skills from gear do the same job.
• At level 20 the curse lasts 65 seconds over a 14.67-yard circle for 4 mana; at level 1 it is 8 seconds over 2 yards. The level matters for how often you recast, not for how hard the target is hit.
• It is the curse to use with physical damage of any kind, and the one that stays useful against a sundered physical immune.