It boils down to.

+3 Nova (orb skill)
Level 6 Conviction Aura When Equipped (-55% Resists)
+20 to Hurricane (OSKILL)
Resist All +50%

vs

-25% to Enemy Fire Resistance
-25% to Enemy Cold Resistance
-61% to Enemy Lightning Resistance (3x Uber Topaz)
+25% to Fire Skill Damage
+25% to Lightning Skill Damage
+25% to Cold Skill Damage
Increased Maximum Mana 50%

Is it situational? Or does fathom really out-do knowledge?

fathom can't break resists - conviction can. That is a big difference between them.

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People who live in cinder block houses can throw whatever they want.

It's really just a matter of preference then?
Since Dream only breaks so many light immunes, it's either infinity goes on your merc or you use knowledge.

I like how my merc is setup though, so I'll probably end up going knowledge and a +2 shield.

someone here gave me a really fancy idea that i put to use on my cold sorc... boneshade wand (unique high level wand) has horadrim reanimates, which have conviction aura. i used that on my sorc switch to kill a few beginning monsters, gather a few conviction auras and then rocked out t he fathom. fathom outdoes knowledge damage by a lot if you have everything else equal. another thing i tried was having an act3 holy freeze merc, putting boneshade on him, and then having medusas gaze shield on for the lower resist. was a bit fragile, but you can always teleport him out of danger. that provided me with conviction, lower resist, AND holy freeze... i broke pretty much every cold immune i faced (save some uniques/bosses).

I'm a little more lucky in terms of breaking light resists cuz I we have the dream helm for holy shock.

I'll probably end up putting knowledge on switch and keeping my cta in my cube, we'll see.

I lose like 1.2k mana when I swap out too.

moving this over to the strategy forum - seems more appropriate there.

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People who live in cinder block houses can throw whatever they want.

fathom is better by a long way.

both give -55 enemy res (3 uber gems in fathom) however both apply it differently. The conviction aura can break immunes while the -res on fathom cant.
However, If you break the immune another way (mercs lower res/holy shock/mercs conviction) the conviction aura from knowledge will only work at the 1/5 potency (as if breaking the immune with conviction). If you break the immune with a merc or lower res curse then the full -55 res from fathom kicks in. That means you can get things alot lower overall. The level 6 conviction will only break 1-2% more immunes than infinity on a merc. Infinity will break trash immunes mostly up until hell ancients way (a4 damneds etc wont be broken even by a maxed conviction paladin). Once you get into WSK the immunes there cant be broken by conviction or lower res alone so you will need help.

Overall fathom is better as any monsters you could break with a knowledge, you can break with an infinity merc.

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rage i think you are forgetting that now uber gems give 12 pierce instead of 10 in weapons.... so its even 61 pierce on fathom

but yea, fathom is a better weapon unless you are looking to break some really strong immunities, and there are better ways of doing it

knowledge will remove 2 more % from an immune monster than infinity will. Its that small against immunes because its broken at 1/5 the power.

Yeh forgot they were 12% now. even better

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kay, gotcha.

That means my zod and cham runes are FT now.