Enemy resistance stats

[Barbarian]

Can someone please explain to me how to interpret the enemy resistance numbers? In battle one can right click on an enemy and get stats. Lets say that you want to use fire spells and see that the fire number for the enemy is 100%. What does it mean? And let us say that the number is 150% in red. What does this mean?

Are higher numbers equal to better damage or are it the lower numbers which determine successful damage?

[FrauBlake]

Negative Resistances (below 0%) mean increased vulnerability to a damage type. (e.g. -20% will result in an attack doing 120% damage instead of the full 100% the damage would do)

No resistance (== 0%) means that all damage gets through unmitigated (100%).

Resistances below 100% mean the amount of damage reduction against a certain element.

At 100%, an enemy is immune to the type of damage, and above 100%, the enemy will heal from that damage type.

There are 9 different damage types which one can have resistances against:
- fire
- water
- air
- earth
- poison
- shadow (Tenebrium)
- crushing
- piercing
- slashing

(The latter three are "physical" damage types inflicted by most weapon types, e.g. swords and axes usually do slashing damage, daggers and bows do piercing damage, clubs do crushing damage ...)

Player's resistances through gear are capped at 100% but can go above 100% with certain talents (e.g. the Demon talent brings the fire resist cap to 110% but decreases the water cap to 90%).
Player resistances can temporarily be increased above the cap with consumables (e.g. fire resistance potion) or spells (e.g. Avatar of Fire, Absorb the Elements, ...).

[Barbarian]

Originally posted by FrauBlake:

Negative Resistances (below 0%) mean increased vulnerability to a damage type. (e.g. -20% will result in an attack doing 120% damage instead of the full 100% the damage would do)

No resistance (== 0%) means that all damage gets through unmitigated (100%).

Resistances below 100% mean the amount of damage reduction against a certain element.

At 100%, an enemy is immune to the type of damage, and above 100%, the enemy will heal from that damage type.

There are 9 different damage types which one can have resistances against:
- fire
- water
- air
- earth
- poison
- shadow (Tenebrium)
- crushing
- piercing
- slashing

(The latter three are "physical" damage types inflicted by most weapon types, e.g. swords and axes usually do slashing damage, daggers and bows do piercing damage, clubs do crushing damage ...)

Player's resistances through gear are capped at 100% but can go above 100% with certain talents (e.g. the Demon talent brings the fire resist cap to 110% but decreases the water cap to 90%).
Player resistances can temporarily be increased above the cap with consumables (e.g. fire resistance potion) or spells (e.g. Avatar of Fire, Absorb the Elements, ...).

Thank you for a thorough explanation. Does it mean that enemy stats in red are good for me?

[THE_RaBiD_CanuK]

That's a good explanation.

You can also lower enemy resistances down using certain spells from the witchcraft school of magic. But some enemies have 150% or even 200% resistance so you can't lower their resistances below 100% and be able to hurt them.

If an opponent only has 100% resistance, then it's possible to lower their resistance enough to hurt them with that damage type.

You can also use spells to lower their resistances below 0%, making them weak against something they were otherwise not effected by.

[FrauBlake]

The color does not matter, only the actual value.

As said, 100% = immunity, above 100% means "will heal from that damage type", below 100% means "will mitigate a percentage of the raw damage", and below 0% means will take more than the actual raw damage.
(It's interesting that when you take the Zombie talent, your poison resistance is set to a fixed 200% and can no longer be changed into any direction.)

It's been quite a while since I played, so I don't remember what a red font means but usually - in a lot of games - it means "lower than the normal value".

To view an enemy's resistance in (and before) combat, you can examine the enemy by right-clicking it and choosing the examine option from the popup menu which opens the enemy stats dialog window.
The examining character will see more information with higher values of the "Loremaster" ability, without any Loremaster, there is hardly any info.
(Enemy examination is the *main* purpose of the Loremaster ability, identifying items is only a "by-product".)

[v0]

yeah it's literally hp = hp - dmg * (100% - res%) . so res < 0 increases dmg and res > 100 makes it go negative (ie heal).