Isn’t this sanctuary aura from item suppose to break physical immunity in undead? I see my barb kissing close with undead and i can barely do damage still.
Does this take like 10secs to activate or something?
Sanctuary does damage and knockbacks undead. It also adds Damage +X% per level to undead and the kicker is that it ignores the 50% damage resistance nearly all undead monsters have in Hell difficulty. It also makes life/mana leach work against undead if they have positive drain effectiveness, but many undead do not. Level 10 (Azurewrath min) gives 420% damage against undead and lvl 16 (Lawbringer min) gives 600% damage against undead. Other sources like Fant would be effected by the 50% damage resistance, so lvl 20 Fant is 373% but divided by 2 is 186.5%, so against undead Sanc gives significantly more damage (this is the example Arreat Summit uses).
It does NOT break physical immunity. It also ONLY benefits the user/wearer unlike something like Might/Conc/Fant.
To break Physical Immune you need something like Decrepify (available on Law Bringer (LB) and Reaper’s Toll) or Amp damage to reduce physical resistance. Law Bringer has both CTC decrep AND Sanct, making it quite useful as off hand for Frenzy. But CTC doesn’t work with WW, so if you’re using WW a LB will never proc decrepify.
The damage to undead is so potent that my Frenzy barb (Grief PB with LB PB off hand) shreds PI undead like ghosts before decrep even procs. Non-undead PIs like the succubi I need to wait for the decrep proc or use Zerk. Zerk with a PB and Frenzy IAS stacks is quite fast at dispatching them though!
If you are using an Act 5 merc with Law Bringer or Azurewrath for the Sanct aura, the bonuses will only apply to the merc, not you. My Zealot has an Act 5 merc with full Sazabi and Law Bringer PB in off hand, and he shreds undead PIs for me, but I have to wait for the decrep to proc from LB before I can effectively hurt the PIs, because sanct by itself doesn’t break the immunity and the damage bonus to undead doesn’t apply to my Zealot, since he’s not using/getting Sanct himself.
I believe at one point (maybe still) in legacy D2 it was bugged to not work properly, or at least rumored to be so, but it seems very effective against undead in the current version of D2R.
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thanks. i thought sact aura is shared that’s why i thought it was bugged.
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Yeah unfortunately if you’re not the one running the aura, you don’t get the benefits. I could see it being pretty OP if you did though, so I can understand the decision.
but why does it say the aura affects wielder and allies according to diablo fandom.
also says it completely removes immunity.
Yeah I can’t speak to that site but it might just be incorrect info about effecting the whole party, unless it considers the knock back and (very small) damage tick to be a party boost.
It works similar to holy fire/shock/freeze in terms of the originator getting a damage buff and the enemies getting the damage tick.
It’s possible it does break PI for undead is you are the originator, since as I said my frenzy barb doesn’t need to edit for decrep for them to be killed, but you have to have the aura on yourself for that.
life leech always work against undead if they have positive drain effectiveness, not sure what you mean by that.
that’s what positive drain effectiveness is.
but everything else you said is indeed accurate
you need to be the one weilding the wep to get the effect, if your merc has it your merc gets the effect, not you
Basically I was just paraphrasing what Arreat Summit had in the Sanctuary skill description. I agree with you though, things like zombies leach always works on regardless. I didn’t know if there was possibly some enemy types that couldn’t be leached without being under the influence of Sanct, so I stuck to published Arreat Summit info. Thanks for the clarification!