Clvl: 30
Prerequisites: Critical Strike, Penetrate.
Effect: A chance that your missile will continue through its victim.
Properties: Works with all missile attacks except for Guided Arrow.
Synergy from: None.
Synergy to: None.
Pierce gives a chance that a projectile will pass through its target and hit another target in a straight line behind it. This has a profound impact on all bow/crossbow skills, making it the bowazon's most useful and powerful passive skill: for every target an arrow pierces though, its effect is repeated, meaning that a single arrow can unleash elemental and non-elemental effects multiple times. There can be multiple piercings in a crowd; combined with high-damage area effect skills, this can be devastating due to overlapping damage.
For example, let's take Freezing Arrow. Say we have an amazon with a 2,216~2,420 cold damage FA (we'll ignore the freezing effect for now) and an 80% chance to pierce her first target. The arrow strikes its target #1, damaging everything in a 3.3 yard radius with 2,300 cold damage, then the program checks to see if the arrow can pass a check for piercing. If the piercing check clears, the arrow then strikes target #2 for another 2,450 cold damage within a 3.3 yard radius, then it makes another piercing check to hit target #3 for another 2,500 cold damage within a 3.3 yard radius, and so on and so forth until the arrow hits a wall for its last detonation or simply stops piercing. Now these FA blasts have taken place in close proximity, so anything unlucky enough to be caught between blast #1 and blast #2 has taken somewhere along the lines of 4,700 cold damage; if they're really screwed, they were caught within all three blast radii for over 7,000 cold damage…and that was just one arrow. It's more likely that an amazon would fire a volley of five to twenty FAs into a tightly-packed crowd, but depending on how the piercing goes and how many targets are remaining after each volley, every shot would have the effect of anywhere from one to five arrows. Not only does this save your bowazon arrows, mana, and time, but it's also a very significant tactical advantage, as anything that your bowazon has within her line of sight (and beyond) has a chance of becoming a target.
The only practical limitation to this skill is getting targets to line up. Once you get monsters to behave (re: herding), there's no limit to the amount of damage your bowazon can do to a crowd. The following chart shows the chances for multiple piercings (vertical column) as points are added to Pierce.
| slvl | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 26 | 28 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 23% | 34% | 42% | 49% | 55% | 59% | 63% | 65% | 69% | 71% | 73% | 75% | 77% | 79% | 80% | 82% | 83% | 84% | 85% | 86% | 87% | 88% | 89% | 90% | 91% |
| 2 | 05% | 12% | 18% | 24% | 30% | 35% | 40% | 42% | 48% | 50% | 53% | 56% | 59% | 62% | 64% | 67% | 69% | 71% | 72% | 74% | 76% | 77% | 79% | 81% | 83% |
| 3 | 01% | 04% | 07% | 12% | 17% | 21% | 25% | 27% | 33% | 36% | 39% | 42% | 46% | 49% | 51% | 55% | 57% | 59% | 61% | 64% | 66% | 68% | 70% | 73% | 75% |
| 4 | — | 01% | 03% | 06% | 09% | 12% | 16% | 18% | 23% | 25% | 28% | 32% | 35% | 39% | 41% | 45% | 47% | 50% | 52% | 55% | 57% | 60% | 63% | 66% | 69% |
As you can see, a slvl-19 Pierce would give a 50% chance of piercing around four monsters in a row, if not more. For this reason, Pierce isn't the "diminishing returns" skill that it appears to be. (Thanks to bolshoitoo for the chart.)
Items with piercing — Doomslinger repeating crossbow (35%), Ichorsting crossbow (50%), Stormstrike short battle bow (25%), Buriza-Do Kyanon ballista (100%), Demon Machine chu-ko-nu (66%), Kuko Shukaku cedar bow (50%), Razortail sharkskin belt (33%), Gut Siphon demon crossbow (33%) — add their percentages to your bowazon's pierce skill, so it's possible to exceed the absolute cap of 100% — there's just no reason to do so.
Because Pierce radically enhances the bowazon's ranged crowd capability, it's an excellent investment. However, as of v1.09, a projectile can only pierce up to four times (i.e., hit up to five targets with a single arrow); thus, there is a definite danger of investing too many points into this skill. My personal recommendation is between 3~10 points.
last updated: Monday, September 24, 2007
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