Is fork and chain overshadowed by pierce?

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1453R wrote:

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dudiobugtron wrote:

The curse would see more use if the support gem wasn't so good :P
And the Jewel is only 'meh' because you can't stack them, so it's basically only 10% pierce chance if you are trying for 100%.

PS: There is also the pierce chance from scion Deadeye node, Essence of Misery, and a corrupted weapon implicit.
Infractem also gives 100% pierce chance, and there are a number of 'always pierce' skills.
(Also there is slivertongue, and some talismans, but they don't really count.)

There's also the new Voidwalker boots from the Shaper - "Projectiles Pierce while you have Phasing".

Good spotting. :)

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EXCEPT THE GEM IS STILL NEARLY MANDATORY BECAUSE OF THE 'MORE' MODIFIER.

Ugh. T'hell with the Pierce gem.

That's because of poison double-dipping on projectile damage mods. Perhaps if it Pierce Support was given the Trap Support treatment so it applied to hits only?

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Bars wrote:

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Nephalim wrote:

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Bars wrote:

Chain is amazing for clearspeed if you have enough damage. IMO it's underappreciated because people stare too much at their tooltip instead of actually trying how things work for themselves. Regardless, you do need an extremely high damage output, an alternative single target skill or gem swapping. Also, the Deadeye has an in-built chain so most players just get that.

Fork, I don't know. Never used the gem, seems clunky and pointless to me.

This was true for a while but the reason pierce won it even w/o the more dmg was the FW interaction which is now gone.


I would still use pierce now even if chain had zero dmg penalty.

This only tells me you haven't played a nice chain build :3

I have used LA chain longer than anyone else on these boards currently. Back when maps took 7 minutes to clear instead of 2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIP7TjCt_Q4


I disregarded it once pierce got 30% more damage and I have not looked back but its easy enough to test chain again.

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Nephalim wrote:

I have used LA chain longer than anyone else on these boards currently. Back when maps took 7 minutes to clear instead of 2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIP7TjCt_Q4


I disregarded it once pierce got 30% more damage and I have not looked back but its easy enough to test chain again.

All right, fair enough. I forgot about your signature, sorry about that. However, it goes without saying you were using LA pierce, especially during the frostwall period. It was simply too good to pass.

I've played quite a few barrage - coc - chain - EK (+ other stuff) builds and I loved it. Great clear and coverage, autotargeting, it was - at least for me - much better than the pierce route. It was so great, I was sorely tempted to roll an EK crit deadeye this league now that CoC died. For reference, I've only played a ranger once, to level 70-ish. I dislike the starting area, voice, quest rewards, portrait, basically everything about the class.

The problem is with chain support's damage penalty. If you have enough overkill damage to not care about it, an alternative single target skill or deadeye's chain, it's IMO an amazing mechanic, one of my favorite ranged mechanics in fact.

On that front, I completely agree with the others in this thread. It makes no sense for the other ranged AOE support gems to have damage penalties and pierce to have a multiplier.

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Bars wrote:

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Nephalim wrote:

I have used LA chain longer than anyone else on these boards currently. Back when maps took 7 minutes to clear instead of 2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIP7TjCt_Q4


I disregarded it once pierce got 30% more damage and I have not looked back but its easy enough to test chain again.

All right, fair enough. However, it goes without saying you were using LA pierce, especially during the frostwall period.

I've played quite a few barrage - coc - chain - EK (+ other stuff) builds and I loved it. Great clear and coverage, autotargeting, it was - at least for me - much better than the pierce route. It was so great, I was sorely tempted to roll an EK crit deadeye this league now that CoC died. For reference, I've only played a ranger once, to level 70-ish. I dislike the starting area, voice, quest rewards, portrait, basically everything about the class.

The problem is with chain support's damage penalty. If you have enough overkill damage to not care about it, an alternative single target skill or deadeye's chain, it's IMO an amazing mechanic, one of my favorite ranged mechanics in fact.

On that front, I completely agree with the others in this thread. It makes no sense for the other ranged AOE support gems to have damage penalties and pierce to have a multiplier.

I tried it in t16 maps and without damage dampening mods it was a bit better than pierce and slightly worse with damage dampening mods. Using chain also means you save a few points which can be put into movespeed or dps to up for the loss. It is definitely not as bad as it used to be during the FW era but I imagine it would be hard for most players to reach the damage threshold where chain would outperform pierce on super high tier maps.

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Nephalim wrote:

I tried it in t16 maps and without damage dampening mods it was a bit better than pierce and slightly worse with damage dampening mods. Using chain also means you save a few points which can be put into movespeed or dps to up for the loss. It is definitely not as bad as it used to be during the FW era but I imagine it would be hard for most players to reach the damage threshold where chain would outperform pierce on super high tier maps.

I imagine so too. Chain could use some love, no doubt about that. Regardless, I still think it's underappreciated at the moment.

love the +1 chain from deadeye. its amazing. you get one chain instead of two, but no negative to damage and no wasted socket.

Revert Pierce change, Buff Chain a little and HELP Fork.

One nice thingy it could do, would be that projectiles that Forked actually AIM instead of randomly bursting into walls. The angle of fire is still forward only, so it cannot bounce back like Chain, but to compensate for that you could get more hits/damage... Dunno. Fork itself isn't a bad idea, but it simply is too hard to use reliably in most situations. Less multiplier simply seals the deal of it being useless.