Chain VS Pierce

IMO, pierce is better than chain any time pierce can reach 100%. Two quick examples...

#1 is when using quality lightning strike. Coupled with the support gem you can reach 100%.

#2 is when supporting any bow skill with quality pierce combined with the 35% passive pierce with bow attacks.

Both are cases where 100% pierce is achieved. At that point, your curse is free for any number of more useful curses (ele weakness over projectile weakness for instance). Combined with the lower multiplier, your skills can still be used to 100/70/50% (normal/LMP/GMP respectively) effect without taking the hit from chain's reduction. It also allows for further augmentation of said skills given their lower costs, which isn't very viable once pigeon-holed into a multi-projectiles + chain setup with their insane costs, which let's face it; chain isn't too impressive without added projectiles (minor exception in the case of skills that have on-hit AoE).

All that said, there are quite a few ways to make use of pierce over chain, and can be more powerful in those circumstances. I'd say if they were to buff anything, perhaps adding a small amount of crit chance per level would make it more useful overall, and would bring something to the table which other supports don't currently have. I'm sure its use would go up, then.

I'm not reading this whole thread, but I'll put my experience here...

As I stated in the wander thread made by Kripp... I seem to prefer to use Faster attacks, lmp, and PROJECTILE WEAKNESS(with another curse on top of that since I use the Dual Curse boots)... instead of LMP - Chain.... It does so much more damage... higher damage potential while doing single target(with LMP maxed) so you don't have to worry about having two power siphons... which means you can use a few extra skills that are not usually in the lineup... and you also get a huge damage boost from Projectile weakness stacked with whatever other curse you prefer.

I seem to be a bit biased when it comes to Projectile Weakness + x(curse) instead of using chain... I just don't think any build would do better with chain than the combo above.. Chain has such a negative damage side-effect that it's really useless if you think about it... Maybe if you had a higher quality chain? I would think that is about it...

Pierce support is probably not taken as often because:
1. There's a fairly reasonable positioned keystone with 35% free pierce chance.
2. Projectile Weakness saves you 2 supports (Pierce AND Knockback)

I personally like taking it with Fireball and Ice Spear, the potential AoE damage is huge and the AoE Freeze from Ice Spear is always helpful.

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nightguy1 wrote:

I'm not reading this whole thread, but I'll put my experience here...

As I stated in the wander thread made by Kripp... I seem to prefer to use Faster attacks, lmp, and PROJECTILE WEAKNESS(with another curse on top of that since I use the Dual Curse boots)... instead of LMP - Chain.... It does so much more damage... higher damage potential while doing single target(with LMP maxed) so you don't have to worry about having two power siphons... which means you can use a few extra skills that are not usually in the lineup... and you also get a huge damage boost from Projectile weakness stacked with whatever other curse you prefer.

I seem to be a bit biased when it comes to Projectile Weakness + x(curse) instead of using chain... I just don't think any build would do better with chain than the combo above.. Chain has such a negative damage side-effect that it's really useless if you think about it... Maybe if you had a higher quality chain? I would think that is about it...

If pierce is chosen over chain, I may pick addition curse in passive. Even if you have the Dual Curse boots, one more curse can help a lot. You can either use critical weakness for damage, or use temporal chains for survivability. But is that addition curse worth those skill points (8 point from static blows)? I have no idea whether I should drop some mana regen (from 220% to 160%) to get one more curse.