What are undead weak to?

[van the man]

I'm nightblade/occultist. Mostly getting nightblade abilities, using occultist for pets/soleal fire / probably doom bolt and posession later on. My main damage type is cold, off-damage pool is pierce, bleed, vitality, poison, and chaos but I'm level 35 and hardly have any chaos yet.

My damage pool doesn't seem to do much to undead. I come up out of steps of torment and I'm absolutely wrecking the harpies and beasts, so my numbers are more than sufficient elsewhere.

I think the solution is I need a second weapon/set of weapons, possibly even keep some spare gear to go with it. What are undead weak to? Fire? Aether? I mean all the undead, skeletons and the spirit things.

[Finnvbot]

That's exactly what I did on my bleed trickster (since undead are immune to bleed): I used elemental weapons to deal with them. In your case, your best bet would be chaos.

[Matthew]

It is more a question of what they are resistant to, which is bleed, cold, pierce, sometimes physical. The Nightblade mastery has an aura which cuts cold/pierce resists for this very reason.

It is not recommended to spread your damage types too far, so you will likely want to find ways to reduce resists on your current damage types as opposed to adding fire or aether on top of your pierce, bleed, vitality, poison, chaos, and physical o.O

[van the man]

I use the nightblade aura. Tho presently the resistance reduction part of the aura is only level 1. Hm hm, this must be my problem.

[StreamWhenGuy]

Aren't undead immune to poison also?

[Matthew]

Nah

[van the man]

Okay here's another question: nightblade ability blade barrier says "100% damage absorption". Does that mean I take 0 damage from everything for the 3 scond duration of it? If it is as it reads, it could probably help out my squishyness problem vs certain damage types.

[Finnvbot]

It's exactly what it says on the tin: a panic button so you don't get killed. You can't rely on it too much due to the long cooldown. However, it gives just enough time for Pneumatic Burst to recharge in most cases. I suggest getting some Attack Damage Converted to Health if you can (Hollowed Fang component comes to mind) but, most importantly, learn the attack patterns and react accordingly since Witch Hunters aren't designed to facetank. ;)

[Raviel]

Originally posted by van the man:

Okay here's another question: nightblade ability blade barrier says "100% damage absorption". Does that mean I take 0 damage from everything for the 3 scond duration of it? If it is as it reads, it could probably help out my squishyness problem vs certain damage types.

Yep. It negates all new instances of damage and gives you ~1200 hp regen per second when maxed. I use it as a potion oftentimes, especially early when it heals to full.
If you were bleeding or something like that before activating it. It won't nullify the damage but the massive heal should deal with it. Few bosses seem to be able to outdamage the heal with their DoTs but if you see that you just pop potion and run as soon as you regain control... wait for the DoTs to end and go in.

About undead. I use the ressistance reduction aura currently 10 points, on my char and it works ok in elite, most of the damage my char deals is cold.

[DeadByDefault]

Most of the undead are weak to elemental damage, though cold damage is least effective of the three element types. Special enemies may be exempt from this rule of thumb, though, so be careful. Video game logic demands that an enemy who uses damage type X is also highly resistant to damage type X -- which is by no means a logical conclusion.
Be that as it may, if you mostly focus on Nightblade skills, don't get possession -- unless, of course, you plan on focusing on poison/acid damage. Otherwise, you could spend one point in it to get the 100% skill disruption protection. Yet possession focuses on acid/poison, chaos, and vitality/vitality decay damage, not on physical, pierce, bleed, and cold damage.

[van the man]

Nightblade has some sources of acid, such as lethal assault (off of amarasta's burst), and Nidalla's hand converts some of the AA combo hits into acid. Posession also buffs vitality damage, which, Phantasmal blades do a lot of, and they do even more if I take frenetic throw...have to test frenetic throw out and maybe respec it, I'm really uncertain about the way the numbers look on it. I'm not sure if I'm building toward merciless repertoire, soleal's witchfire, anatomy of murder, posession, or just all of those. I'm also telling myself I'm going to make pets a thing. I've added up the skill points and if I want to hit all the bases I want to hit, I'll have a lot of medium leveled skills at the end.

I'm uncertain in general because I've been grinding bounties a little bit and it seems like I'm overleveled. I'm just destroying everything I see. Level 41, I'm around homestead, just cleared the insect lair.

Pierce is probably going to get moved off of my main damage table, even though nightblade has it on just about every single skill, there only % buff to pierce in the skills between both classes is twin blades. Physical will also become a thing that's there, but I don't think about much, I might consider using dual spell daggers later on.