Pierce

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FinalForm wrote:

When using this skill with Fireball, I am not entirely sure if the AoE explosion is registering on all targets as the projectile is passing through them.

this was already talked about on the fireball's page, piece prevents explosions from happening because the explosion is via on-hit expire of the projectile. hope i said that correctly...

I'm playing as a level 39 fireball templar with 52% increased AOE. Besides pierce, I've also got lesser multiple projectiles affecting the fireball.

I was very underwhelmed by pierce when I first tried it. It only has a 40% chance to pierce, and from what I've seen using it, the 40% rolls each time fireball hits and enemy. So it has a 40% chance to pierce the first enemy and if it does, then it has a 40% chance to pierce the second enemy. Am I getting this right?

I think pierce would be much more spectacular if at the time of casting fireball(or another projectile skill) there would be a pierce roll, and if it is succesful, then all the fireballs creating during that cast pierce all the targets they hit. I think that's how they did it in Titan Quest.

Right now when using fireball with pierce and lesser multiple projectiles, you fire 3 fireballs per cast, and on average one of them pierces. This increases your damage by a little bit and is consistent. If you would to change it to the way I suggest, more than half the time the fireballs wouldn't pierce at all. If you did roll pierce, your wolley of fireballs would deal much more damage. I think it would be more exciting that way and I'd enjoy that more.

I'm not quite sure how this would work with the projectile weakness curse, however...

Well that kind of sucks. I assumed that when fireball hits something, it explodes dealing AOE damage. I assumed that when you have two monsters one after the other, and a piercing fireball, the fireball would explode on the first monster dealing AOE damage to both, then pierce, then explode on the second monster, also dealing AOE damage to both. This is how exploding arrow works in D2. All my plans are now in shambles.

It did seem that multiple fireballs with pierce weren't as effective as I'd hoped. I thought it was the pierce chance, but I guess it's more the fireballs themselves not dealing AOE on pierce.

Do people use pierce mostly with the projectile weakness curse?

a good number of people use pierce support with projectile weakness curse to grant 100% piercing, thus turning projectiles into AoE by logic by not mechanics. extremely effective with sparks to point some say it is required.

Do projectiles explode when they expire, or do they explode when they hit?
For example, does a Fireball that hits and pierces it's initial target (A) and hits the target behind (B) explode on both A and B or only on B?
What about Fork and Chain?

fireball is the special case, it only explodes when it makes a final hit. think arctic breath follows same but no one reported and i cannot test. explosive arrow does not seem to apply a charge on every chain. everything else, they trigger on every hit.

That is so unintuitive... Oh well, thanks for clarifying at least.