Lower Resist used to reduce magic resistances prior to 1.10 (so 1.00 to 1.09), with the addition of the magic Sunder charms I think it would be a good time to bring this function back.
It would be a nice buff to PvM bone necros (and Berserk barbs if you want to use LR charged wands), especially with the new Sunder charms. Magic sunder charms will be basically useless if you can’t reduce the 95% resistance, so this change to LR would help rectify that issue.
This would also provide an easy workaround for PvPers (bone necros are one of the top PvP builds, they don’t need more buffs in that regard) since they can ban people from using Lower Resist in their rules, thus keeping PvPs delicate balance preserved.
IMPORTANT NOTE: This would also have the detrimental side effect of buffing hammerdins, which is why hammers would also need changed to only take a monsters base (unreduced) magic resistance into account.
I did a quick build mockup on Maxroll’s D2R Planner to compare the numbers if Lower Resist did reduce magic resistance:
Against a monster with 0% magic resistance the “decent” bone necro’s (again just a quick mockup, I didn’t put a ton of thought into it) Bone Spear does about 4800 damage and his Bone Spirit does about 5100 damage.
Against a 0% resist monster affected by level 17 Lower Resist (-61% magic resist), they would do 7728 and 8211 damage respectively.
Against a Sundered monster (95% resistance) they would do 240 and 255 damage.
Against a Sundered monster affected by level 17 LR (95 - 61 = 34% magic resist) they would deal 3168 and 3366 damage.
That’s some pretty good damage, but it’s also fairly good gear and it takes a ton of skill point investment too.
I’d do the math for the “perfect” bone necro (far from perfect I’m sure 
) but it’s 2 AM and I gotta sleep. I think I got the idea across though. Nice buff for PvM bone necros (and Berserk barbs I suppose), improves the usefulness of the magic Sunder charms, hammerdin is ideally unaffected.
