Penetrate

Passive. Increases your attack rating.

Penetrate is a level 18 Amazon passive (Passive and Magic tree, requires Critical Strike; it unlocks Pierce). It adds a percentage to the Amazon's attack rating on every attack she makes, and it is always on. The one number that decides it is the bonus: +225% attack rating at level 20, with no ceiling.

The numbers

• Attack Rating is the tooltip's ln12: Param1 is the baseline of 35 and Param2 adds 10 a level, so +35% at level 1, +75% at 5, +125% at 10, +175% at 15, +225% at 20, +275% at 25 and +325% at 30. The table's comments call the two columns "% Chance baseline" and "% Chance per level"; what they feed is attack rating. The Basin's page writes the same line as 10 × slvl + 25 and lists it out to level 60 (+625%).
• There is no mana (passive 1, mana 0) and no duration.

The calc reads lvl, so +skills from items raise the bonus; the passive is applied through passivestat1, item_tohit_percent, the same stat as the Bonus to Attack Rating affix on items.

How it works

Penetrate is a passive state (penetrate) with no cast and no radius. Its percentage joins the other +% attack rating bonuses the Amazon has (from Dexterity, items and auras) in the Chance to Hit formula; the Basin's page says it improves the chance to hit of all attacks, melee, thrown and bow alike. It does nothing against a target whose defense is ignored, and it adds no damage.

The Basin's page records that in the 1.10–1.13 game Blessed Aim used the same passive state as Penetrate and overwrote it regardless of level: a level 1 Blessed Aim (+75%) on an Amazon with level 20 Penetrate (+225%) left her with +75% from the pair. The same page says this is fixed in Diablo II: Resurrected, citing the ladder season three patch, so the two now stack.

Synergies and +skills

No synergies: the row has no SymPerCalc column and the skilldesc row has no dsc3 line. Penetrate's hard points feed one skill: Valkyrie, whose summon reads Penetrate's base level. Its own line reads lvl, so +skills from items count in full here.

Against players

A player's hit on another player is cut to 17% of its value (difficultylevels.txt PlayerDamagePercentVSPlayer) before anything else, see Player versus Player; Penetrate adds no damage, so that rule touches nothing of its own. Its bonus goes into the chance-to-hit roll against the other player's defense in full. The Basin's page says nothing more about this skill against players.

Build notes

• Level 20: +225% attack rating for no mana, always on, on every attack.
• Every point buys the same +10%: there is no curve and no cap, so the value of a hard point here is set only by how much the build misses. A +skill from an item buys exactly what a hard point does.
• A hard point here also counts for the Valkyrie; that is the only place +skills do not reach.
• A Blessed Aim aura on a Paladin in the party now adds to this bonus instead of replacing it.