Decrepify

Curses a group of enemies to make them slow, weak and take amplified damage.

Decrepify is a level 24 Necromancer curse (Curses tree, requires Terror; it unlocks Lower Resist with Life Tap). One number does everything: Param5 is −50, and the curse applies it to four stats on every monster in its 4-yard circle at once: movement speed, attack rate, physical attack damage and physical damage resistance. None of the four grows with level; the level only buys duration, 4 seconds at level 1 and 15.4 at level 20, the shortest of the curses. Mana is a flat 11.

The numbers

• The four −50% effects are the aura stats velocitypercent, damagepercent, damageresist and attackrate, each set to par5, which is −50 at every level ("Slow % / Damage Dealt % / Damage Resistance %" in skills.txt). They are left out of the table because they never change.
• Duration is Param3 100 frames plus Param4 15 a level, at 25 frames a second: 4 seconds at level 1, +0.6 a level, 15.4 at level 20 and 21.4 at level 30. It reads the full skill level, so +skills count.
• Radius is Param1 6 with Param2 0 a level: 4 yards at every level.

How it works

Decrepify is a cast curse: no attack roll, no damage of its own. It puts the decrepify state on every monster in the radius around the targeted point, and that state carries the four stats. The Basin's rules for each:

• Slow. The attack-rate and movement-speed reductions add to those from cold length, Slows Target and Holy Freeze (and in Resurrected to Impale's), but no unit can be taken below 15% attack rate or 25% velocity.
• −50% damage. A monster with no +% damage deals half its physical attack damage; one with +% damage has 50 subtracted from that bonus. Physical cast damage is not reduced: a Bone Fetish's or Suicide Minion's death explosion, a Fire Enchanted's explosion, Nihlathak's corpse explosion.
• −50% physical resistance. Read in the defender's chain at Taking Damage like Amplify Damage's −100%, at half the size. Against a monster immune to physical it is cut to a fifth, −10%, applied to the undead before Sanctuary; in Resurrected it works at its full −50% on a sundered monster.

Oblivion Knights cast it on you at melee range; the Basin notes the monster version has no effect when cast from long range. The slow cap means a target already at 25% velocity from cold gets no slower.

As a curse it takes the monster's single slot: Amplify Damage replaces it and loses the slow, Decrepify replaces Amplify Damage and halves the resistance bonus.

Synergies and +skills

No synergies: Decrepify has no synergy lines in skilldesc.txt and feeds none. Only the duration grows, and it reads lvl, so a +1 from items is worth one hard point: +0.6 seconds. The four −50% figures never move for either.

Against players

A player's hit on another player is cut to 17% of its value (difficultylevels.txt PlayerDamagePercentVSPlayer) before anything else; a decrepified player's physical resistance is then read 50 points lower, and the slow and the damage reduction apply as above. The Basin's page records no other player-versus-player rule for this curse. See Player versus Player.

Build notes

• One hard point gives all four effects. Every further point is 0.6 seconds: level 20 lasts 15.4 seconds, level 1 lasts 4, both in a 4-yard circle for 11 mana.
• Against a physical-damage build it trades half of Amplify Damage's resistance bonus for a 50% slow and half the incoming melee damage; against a sundered physical immune its −50% works in full.
• Short and small: it is a boss curse, recast often, not a pack curse.