Hello,
I’ve just leveled my pierce BM and what I had learned while playing it was that there is vast lack of pierce damage gear or good one in that matter.
I find melees overall punished way more than rangeds. You are way more gear dependant in my opinion since you kinda need to be able to take a hit or two in order to put out decent damage. Pierce bm is especially based on good gearing yet there is almost none to come by. Blues that support Nightblade either don’t have or always have the same resistances so you overcap on like bleed and pierce but lack others, soldier gear is more physical damage based and also requires tons of physique, didn’t find a single useful legendary yet.
Not to mention a third of pierce gear synergizes with either rifles or dual pistols rather than dual melee, which is also frustrating since there is no mastery or build which would really put them in an effective use. All of this results in me running around with Sharpshooter’s Glass Eye instead of Mask of Delirium because the mask doesn’t provide any reliable defenses what so ever imo, it doesnt defend me from exploding enemies which are tons of in game (very frustrating) or reflective enemies.
While playing BM I basically managed to gear up both of my alts, who have gear with like +100% burn / poison modifiers and double resistances on top of it while I’m happy for 30% pierce with 15% vitality resistance on my BM. Also, the game feels too heavily based on DoT damage, my alt is BWC sorc and I can easily kill upscaled enemies but just DoTing them and running away. My friend has poison DoT burst build, instead of direct damage one (???) and correct me if I’m wrong but DoT doesn’t get reflected, so you are even more punished for running direct damage builds, you also aren’t effected by exploding mobs really since you just DoT them all at once watch them explode from distance. Also I have around 3 buttons + blast shield is my life savers on my Sorc, ranged DoTer… while having next to none to even pick from (blade barrier is a joke) on melee direct.
Sorry about this long, salty post but I needed to give my opinion out there. I understand part of the problem is “get good” but that doesn’t change the fact there is so little gear for pierce and the game is too rewarding for ranged dot builds, it is not like I didn’t play them.
I think perhaps you are being misled by some bad gear luck. Pierce and BMs are in fact so supported and powerful that they’ve gotten multiple nerfs. I would suggest checking out how other people geared and skilled their pierce characters, and using those for inspiration. There’s a build compendium to reference here in the forums that will point you to those builds.
I have two of those slicers. But that isn’s really my point. If I compare the gear I get for my ranged DoTer with gear for my direct damage melee, while leveling, it is kinda sad that the doter has better modifiers and resistances, iunno. Might be a really horrible RNG, but it feels consistant.
You are showing me end game gear, but I’m really talking about gear you farm the end game gear with, gear you get while leveling or finishing ultimate story, it is horrible.
Whenever I level any character, I find myself using mostly green items instead of epics. (Lower level) epics mostly have very few resists and usually characters will be most resistant to their own damage type because of itemization.
I guess people are spoiled by rarity colors because they believe epic or legendary items should be better than magic or rare items in EVERY aspect.
I like the fact that it’s not a bad idea to at least look at a rare item that just dropped. If a very good defensive rare item enables you to equip that all out offensive epic/leg item I consider this actually good design.
There are some damage types that are not well supported, but piercing is not one of them.
No, he’s right, partially. Deathmarked set doesnt focus on pierce damage only, it uses pierce and cold damage, and you cant use both effectively. There is no pure pierce-based Nightblade set. And pierce BM lacks flat pierce damage desperately, that’s a fact. Pierce gameplay was nerfed far too much in previous patches, even though it was strong only with BiS gear in every slot.