animated armor mob unaffected by various spells

[Therrias]

Can anyone tell me why the Animated Armor construct mobs in Extraplanar Palace challenges are completely unaffected by Wall of Fire, Acid Rain, and Black Dragon Bolt?

Please not that there is no "Immune" floaty text or yellow zeroes or spell resistance shield animation. In fact there is no feedback in the combat log or on screen at all.

[sirgog]

Odd, they've always been susceptible to those spells for me (although Firewall doesn't usually hurt them except on crit ticks due to elemental resistance).

[ZeebaNeighba]

I would normally say wall of fire or acid rain might be some type of aoe range bug, though black dragon bolt is quite puzzling too...

There are some "immune" animations that do not actually have the word "immune" float over the enemy's head. For example, I believe many immunities that are granted by the specific quest, and not the monster type, will have a different animation (a common one I notice a lot is a death ward animation). Like devils with the crucible of shavarath granting immunity to mind affecting spells.

[Drekisen]

I find the best way to deal with them is to bring along a nice smiter or greater construct bane......because your damage spells will take forever to kill them....you may as well supplement it with some melee damage......they are not to hard to hit.

Ice Storm is a nice spell to use on them too as they take the full bludgeon damage tho the ice damage is minimal.

[Rauven]

I find the best way to deal with them is to bring along a nice smiter or greater construct bane......because your damage spells will take forever to kill them....you may as well supplement it with some melee damage......they are not to hard to hit.

Ice Storm is a nice spell to use on them too as they take the full bludgeon damage tho the ice damage is minimal.

My cleric just runs around in circles screaming like a little child. Eventually they fall over dead. I'm not sure if it's from laughter or the blade barrier, but what ever.

[bigolbear]

Animated armour is a construct, there are 3 basic kinds of constructs in DDO - living constructs(warforge and iron defenders and other homunculi), Golems (iron, clay, flesh, animated armour), non animate constructs (training dummy, magefire cannons)

animated armour is a form of golem(in ddo any ways, in pen and paper it is its own thing) - a special type of construct.

Golems have special properties regarding elemental magic damage in both pen and paper and ddo. The specifces are different for each type, and sub type - and in ddo change with dificulty and scaling.

Eg standard Iron golems are healed by fire damage, and hasted by electric damage. on the easier settigns with minimal scaling they take up to 50% damage from ice and acid, but on harder settings with a fuller party can take 0 damage from ice and acid. They are always totaly imune to all spells that allow spell resistance.

In the case of animated armour, there are several different kinds that appear in different quests. their advantages are dependant upon the quest, the dificulty lvl, dungeon scaling and the sub type.

Thankfully none of them gain beneficial advantages from taking elemental damage, but they are generaly immune to elemental damage on higher dificulty settings/scaling and resistant on lower settings.

The best way I find to consider golems resistances in DDO is this:
They are SUPPOSED to be imune to magic damage, however turbine is a nice dm and when they see that the party consists of characters that probly wont be capable of significant mele damage they allow some elemental damage to be done to golems after some experimentation.

None the less your best bet as a caster when fighting golems is to use force, untyped, bludgeon pierce or slashing damage spells - these will all work to full extent.
So for a wizard/sorc: ice storm(bludgeon component), disintergrate, cyclonic blast, magic missile, force missiles.
web is excelent CC for golems as it is not subject to spell res.
for a cleric: blade barrier, comet fall - damage and cc for golems.
for a druid: wild shape and pummel it to death.

Ultimately speaking Golems are supposed to be THE nasty enemy for casters - they force casters to use a small array of their spells, often ones that do poor damage or are limited to single target.

The reason your not getting the 'immune' messgage is because a golems imunity is handled differently, they are for all intents and purposes immune to the spell - rather than simply being imune to the damage the spell is dealing. Its a very subtel difference but can be seen in the feedback the game gives - instead of getting a 0 damage result you are indstead seeing a small blue flare similar but not quite the same as a spell pen failure.

my wizard carries a dagger of smiting. Its an important peice of backup gear.

[Drekisen]

I could have sworn that Golem classified constructs do not take full damage from Force spells.

Another tactic is to charm a bunch of non construct stuff and let them beat on 'em......if it's available to do so.

That's one of may favorite ways to take down the named Golems in Shavarath.

[Kinerd]

Animated Armors definitely take full force damage.

The trick when using elemental damage against a resistant type is to try and get all your damage in one tick. Consider a toy problem where Wall of Fire, Black Dragon Bolt, and Polar Ray all do the same total 450 damage. Wall of Fire has 15 ticks, BDB 3, and Polar Ray 1.

Against 0 resistance, we have...
Wall of Fire: (30 - 0) * 15 = 450
Black Dragon Bolt: (150 - 0) * 3 = 450
Polar Ray: (450 - 0) * 1 = 450

Against 30 resistance, we have...
Wall of Fire: (30 - 30) * 15 = 0 [apparent immunity]
Black Dragon Bolt: (150 - 30) * 3 = 360
Polar Ray: (450 - 30) * 1 = 420

Against 100 resistance, we have...
Wall of Fire: 0
BDB: (150 - 100) * 3 = 150
Polar Ray: (450 - 100) * 1 = 350

.

I don't know how you managed to get 0 damage out of BDB, though. Do you have anything in Acid, enhancement/item wise?

[t0r012]

I could have sworn that Golem classified constructs do not take full damage from Force spells.

Another tactic is to charm a bunch of non construct stuff and let them beat on 'em......if it's available to do so.

That's one of may favorite ways to take down the named Golems in Shavarath.

You are correct golems have a force damage resistance. It seems to be a much lower resistance than for elements but anything force does get yellow numbers.

Untyped or physical do not get yellow reduced damage.

[Therrias]

Since I was running a non-epic enchantment specced archmage, I suppose it is possible that the damage was low enough to be reduced to zero assuming I forgot to turn on my metas...

But in that case there should be floaty yellow zeroes if energy resistance is reducing those spells damage to zero.