MOB vulnerabilities

Is there a list somewhere, hopefully near complete, of which damage types each MOB are resistant & vulnerable to?

Not been able to find such a thing and don't care to buy the inaccurate Prime guide.

I doubt you're going to find mob vulnerabilities. Resistances, yes. Vulnerabilities, no. The point is that in Guild Wars there is no armor with a "weak against" side to it. The single exception is Necromancer's Necrotic armor and Undead type enemies, which are both weak to holy type damage (smiting). On the other hand, though, many armors have elemental resistance belonging to the Elementalists and Rangers. Since everything else the MOBs use is the same as what players use, I'd be willing to bet the armor archetypes are as well. I haven't tested it, but I'd be willing to put a lot of gold on it.

The basic idea is if a monster is in a frozen area and throwing up Winter, it's probably safe to bet Water won't be as effective. Similarly, if you're in a volcano and an enemy boss is using Greater Conflagration, you probably don't want to be dealing in Fire damage yourself. Similarly, expect your elemental damage to do better against a warrior than physical would, and vice verse for a ranger.

Conclusion: learning and knowing your surroundings will be far more telling than finding a list somewhere.

I'd disagree. Try a fire weapon on plants, for example; does far more damage than, say, piercing.

I stand corrected. Fire type damage indeed does exactly double the damage of piercing on plant based enemies when other factors remain constant.

You learn something new every day.

With the ele skills, I have found this out
Fire is best against ice and bone type monsters (such as necrid horseman)
Lightning is best against anything, since it does have amor penetration
Water is best against fire
As for geo, I have no idea, as it is usually defensive, and knockdown

Wrong on many accounts.

e.g.
smiting vs., undead
fire vs. ice golems
fire vs. plants
ice vs. titans
physical vs. casters

See, that's what I was talking about. Casters don't give you a specific attack bonus for using physical damage in comparison to other damage types. Casters just have bad armor in general, and thus all damage types will do more to them. However, elementalists might have armor bonuses versus elements... which makes it seem as though you get an attack boost for doing physicals. There's a fine, but vital, line between the two.

In any case, I've been spending the time since my last post testing some things and here's what I've come up with:

Holy vs. undead = double damage
Fire vs. plants = double damage
Fire vs. undead = approximately +20% bonus to damage

I've been testing fire and holy against various other enemies as well. Thus far it's turned up nothing. I do intend to test cold vs. titans, since it's a widely held belief that they are weak to cold. From casual observation, however, it seemed more likely that they have a strength against fire and not a weakness to cold. That's what lead to my initial (and flawed) conclusion. Once I test it, I'll post what I learn... but that will take more time than I'm willing to put into it tonight.

Well he did admit as much, mark of maturity; no sense rubbing it in.

The titan info is useful, thanks for that; but the rest is fairly obvious. Where it gets interesting is for say slasing vs. piercing. Off the top of my head I can't recall what, but there are a few things out there which slash is rather weak against. One good way to test would be an axe warrior with one of each elemental haft, a standard and a battle pick; Wild Blow would yield a critical for max damage for easy comparison...this would be rather tedious though. Perhaps better still would be very low damage (though all the same range) weapons and lower level versions of mobs to make things a bit easier; not as if elemental mods are that pricy anyway, and it'd be an excuse to break out your stylish Sickles.

Something tickles about holy damage; doesn't it treat everything as a flat 60AL? At least I think that's the case for dark, light and chaos damage; not sure if holy and light are equivelant though. In any case, if the above is true, it'd squew (I can't spell, it's a known fact) the numbers on those; although, in light of the fact that those damage type are available only to casters, it's fairly irrelevant...just like their attack damage.

Efforts appreciated!

Make sure you're testing it on enemies of a similar level. Naturally a level 15 enemy will be taking more damage if you're level 20.

I'd tend to agree with Jenosavel. While water elementalists may experience higher damage with their cold spells relative to fire nukers with their fire spells vs Burning Titans in the Ring of Fire, I'd tend to believe that that is the case because the Titan enemies are wearing the equivalent of Pyromancer's or Drakescale armor, with extra armor vs fire damage. This would indicate a resistance to a certain type of damage, but not a weakness to any one type. I would bet that an air elementalist and a water elementalist of equal level using equivalent damage spells against a Burning Titan would experience equal effectiveness. But hey, I could be wrong. If I am, I would love to learn more.

they are vulnerable to damage. Give it to them quickly and often and it doesn't matter.

ALL WRONG. WRONG WRONG WRONG.

FIRE is STRONG AGAINST EARTH. While smite is best elementalists! And if you use a knife, you can easily kill a monk boss in one hit! Come on now! And if you use a sword against a hammer person, you will ALWAYS win. ALWAYS. And if you pour cold water on hot metal, the metal will rust.


(only true thing here, is that last sentence.)

I just use common sense. Not always works, but close enough. Not so sure about the whole armor on enemies thing sometimes. Armor penetration?? I know that each enemy has a certain armor to it, but would be useful to know which as which. That might help on what damage to do on which monster as well.

Actually, I'm suggesting testing it against the same enemy for each given type; hence the idea of using low damage weapons...the MOB will live longer, hopefully long enough to get in a wild blow with each weapon type. Barring that, all MOBs in a given area are the same level if they are the same type; you'd be hard pressed to botch your data.

I also think some MOBs are vulnerable to specific damage.
Anybody noticed Plague Devourers take double damage from cold spells?
My necro's Death Swarm does exactly double damage to them compared to what it says in the spell description. "Normal" monsters take the exact amount, ice golems take less, etc.

As promised, I spent today testing elemental vulnerabilities and defenses. However, it's getting cut short now that the update is out. My first love, my beastmastery ranger, has seen some very kind changes, and I have to go play her. I will let you in on what I found out though.

For reference, on all the creatures I tested, I used Wild Blow with 5 different identical axes bought from the weapon crafter guy in LA for convenience. The only difference between the axes was the haft. I had one axe that was plain, and then one each of the 4 elements (fire, water, earth, air). I used Bane Signet and Banish to test holy damage.

Titans, as it was widely believed, are weaker against cold attacks than others. For Burning Titans, Ashen Hulks, Fist of the Titans, Hand of the Titans, and Spark of the Titans you'll get about a +40% boost to your damage when using cold. Fire damage will take a -50% hit against them. Against the warrior titans (Burning Titans, Fist of the Titans, and Hand of the Titans), slashing damage will see an approximate 25% decrease in damage. The caster titans have no such resistance.

Devourers seem to have weaknesses based on which part of the game you are at. In Old Ascalon, all devourers (Carrior Devourers, Plague Devourers, and Whiptail Devourers) have an approximate 40% weakness to cold damage, but no other apparent weaknesses or strengths. In the Druid's Overlook area, devourers (Thorn Devourers and Fevered Devourers) had no weaknesses or strengths that I could detect. This means if they have anything it would have to be of a damage type I wasn't testing (dark, blunt, piercing, chaos). The Devourers in the desert (Rockshot Devourers) had an approximate 50% weakness to slashing damage, but no other strengths or weaknesses.

Plants, as I said in an earlier post, take exactly double damage from fire.

Undead, again as I mentioned earlier, take double damage from holy. However, I didn't yet get around to double checking my earlier number for their weakness to fire. Given the results I was getting today, I'd be willing to bet it's closer to the 40% weakness other creatures seem to display rather than the 20% bonus I came up with previously. I've refined my technique for testing, so my numbers were more accurate today than yesterday... too bad I didn't get the time to double check this one.

Yeah, it does. Holy-type spells deal exactly their listed damage reqardless of the enemy's armor level, unless the enemy has a weakness to holy. I think there are a couple of holy spells (Zealot's Fire) that say in the description their damage type is fire, and for those this might not hold.

I did all my testing on a relative basis, taking into account percentage differences between damage types.

Good testing!

When I get around to it my own plan is to use collectors axes from pre-searing (5-10 unreq'd), a 6-10 hammer, and an x-10 piercing axe; and head out with axe & hammer at equal levels. Having dificulty with the piercing axe, but that's to be expected; since I have to find a dropped one that meets the criteria.

I skim forums, I don't read forums line by line

And that excuses you because...?