Piercing -> X conversion often inefficient

In recent update, % Armor Piercing has been reworked, and all Pierce weapons have 100% Armor Piercing. I think this is a great change, but here is still some problems about Piercing damage.

One is mentioned by RektbyProtoss in this topic. Phsyical → X conversion will reduce Piercing damage. Pierce builds must avoid all gears which have Physical to other conversion. That is terrible.

Another is that Piercing → X conversion is sometimes inefficient. In this game, original Piercing damage is relatively rare, and most Piercing damage is converted from Physical. The latter can not be converted by Piercing → X conversion. Only original Piercing can be convered.
For example, Covenant of Ch’thon (Berserker skill) gives Onslaught 100% Piercing → Chaos. However, none of Onslaught, Open Wounds or Endless Rage deals original Piercing damage. Even Berserker uses a Pierce weapon, like Reaver’s Claw, only a small part of the Weapon Damage (29-32 Piercing Damage in green box) can be converted to Chaos, but a larger part of the Weapon Damage (87-112 Physical Damage in red box, and global Physical damage) can not be converted.


2025-01-31_004452

Suggestion:
I have an idea to solve these two problems. Make % Armor Piercing works before skill conversion and global conversion, and allow Piercing damage converted from Physical damage to be converted once more.
If we have to keep the principle that damage can only be conveted once, we can also use a different way. Add Physical → X conversion to Covenant of Ch’thon, as well as so many gears providing global Piercing → X conversion.

In the first problem, Physical → Piercing works earlier, therefore Physical → X conversion no longer reduces Piercing damage.
In the second problem, all Piercing damage, original Piercing and those converted from Physical, can be correctly converted.

3 Likes

why do you wish to convert this weapon into chaos? it’s not a chaos weapon, it has nothing suggesting it :thinking:

stuff intended for conversion usually can, no? eg an actual chaos/phys weapon would have phys chaos conversion and pierce would be flavour or direct skill converted to take of skills (wps/shadow strike etc)
guess i’m wondering where is the loss, when doing “intended” itemization ?(ie not trying to convert non-X/“reavers claw” but an actual X/chaos skill weap)

*again applying it example specific
keep in mind chaos is usually the easier one to phys convert because of Abomination devotion 50% conversion buff

**basically kinda me suggesting to use a different example where the pierce or phys drawback is actually pronounced, simply because it seems so out of place here with the 2 chosen objects

1 Like

You are right, Reaver’s Claw is a piercing weapon, not a chaos weapon. Heres some reasons:

  1. I admit that we dont have a Piercing and Chaos Double Damage weapon now. All of 9 classes now only support either of Piercing or Chaos. Perhaps Inquisitor can be considered as half an exception. Inquisitor has lots of Piercing damage and he also has Chaos RR, but he has no other chaos skills except the RR.
    Berserker is different and has strongly support to both Piercing and Chaos. So we might have a Piercing and Chaos Double Damage weapon in the coming dlc.

  2. Vitality Primal Strike Ritualist uses Vortex of Souls (an Aether weapon) to get 100% penetration.
    Voidsoul Aegis Sentinel uses Undenbog Repeater (a Physical weapon) to ruduce cooldown.
    If the modifier is strong enough, we have a chance to use Piercing weapon in Chaos builds.

  3. To begin with, what I wanted to complain is not Covenant of Ch’thon, but some gears with Piercing → X modifiers, like M. Wrath of Tenebris. But I thought Covenant of Ch’thon to be a simple and easy to understand example, so I used it. Lets go back to those gears.

Wrath of Tenebris
Idono why it gives Inquisitor/Word of Renewal Piercing → Chaos.

Ranged Expertise: require ranged weapons.
WPS: require ranged weapons.
Aura of Conviction: Deceiver/Occulist must use Possession. Paladin/Oathkeeper may use it, but Divine Mandate (crit damage and slow res.) and Path to the Three (cdr) are competitive.
Arcane Empowerment: it has only 18 Piercing damage at rank 12.
Rune of Hagarrad: this weapon has no support on it.

So, only Paladin may gain benefit from the Piercing → Chaos conversion under the condition that builds use Aura of Conviction rather than Divine Mandate or Path to the Three. But Steel Resolve and Rebuke offer higher Physical damage than Piercing damage of Aura of Conviction. Physical → Chaos conversion is more useful, but this weapon doesnt have global Physical → Chaos conversion. Besides, Elemental conversion is even more important.

Gulgazor’s Heart
This necklace give Inquisitor ~70% Piercing → Acid conversion.
Inquisitor has compelely no support on Acid, worse than Chaos. And there was barely gears supporting Acid Inquisitor.

See MI necklace for other classes:
Bolvar - Oathkeeper - Vitality and Bleed, right damage type.
Death-Watcher - Necromancer - Vitality and Aether, right.
Ellena - Nightblade - Cold, right.
Gaze of Ungoliax - Arcanist - Cold and Vitality, partially right.
Mogara - Soldier - Physical and Piercing, right.
Putrid Necklace - Occultist - Acid, right.
Vilgazor - Demolitionist - Fire, right.
Zaria - Shaman - Pet.

Other MI necklaces all have right damage type. Only Gulgazor is wrong and useless.

Namadea’s Eye
100% Piercing → Vitality to Inquisitor/Ranged Expertise
Similarly, Inquisitor has no Vitality Skills, and barely gears support Vitality Inquisitor.

Balegor’s Crusher
100% Piercing → Acid to Occultist/Blood of Dreeg.
For Witch Hunter, this weapon already gives Ring of Steel 100% conversion. So the global conversion only works on Phantasmal Blades and Shadow Strike. It has some value, but not much. Occultist prefers Chaos → Acid and Vitality → Acid more.
For other class, this Piercing → Acid is useless.

Sunherald’s Claymore
100% Piercing → Fire to Soldier/Menhir’s Bulwark
Soidler doesnt have original Piercing damage.
Two Piercing class Nightblade and Inquisitor, the former needs dual-wield for most skills, and the latter needs ranged for most skills.
Perhaps, the Piercing → Fire conversion only works on Canister Bomb. Mythical Mask of Infernal Truth can do the same thing.

A good thing is that this weapon also has 100% Physical → Fire for Soldier (with Fire affix). This is geart. Much better than above gears.

The Piercing → X conversions listed above are mostly of little use.

  1. More classes and skills have original Physical damage than original Piercing damage, and Piercing weapons has higher original Physical damage. Therefore, Piercing → X conversion is valuable in relatively rare cases, but Physical → X conversion is much important.
1 Like

Skills can be granted by components, gear and (to some extent) devotions. I think you are forgetting those exist.
Some of those have Piercing damage. Like Seal of Shadows, Seal of the Night.
The proc on Venomspine Greaves (and other Venomspine procs), Spines of Ice proc etc.

I really don’t see why having pierce->X conversion on items that also have physical->X is controversial. It’s objectively just a nice thing to have at minimum, and sometimes very crucial.

2 Likes

edit, sry for long post, kept adding :sweat_smile: :pray: :man_bowing:

i personally think that’s a bit of an overreach/simplification
is some of it a bit meme, sure, is it useless, absolutely not
Gulgazor is dope if for ranged pew pew Deceiver etc - you’re completely wrong when you say inquis has no acid support; there is a difference between native support, and item support, and inquis has acid item support (even if a bit meme)
Sunherald is dope for Blademaster
Baelgor, Witch Hunter, blade spirit etc
Namadea works on Apostate, Paladin, Vindicator etc
Tenebris lets you convert horn of gandar and whatever

the point is, the Pierce conversion is neither wasted nor useless,
Just because there isn’t always a ton of pierce to convert doesn’t mean it’s bad, it can be flavour conversion or niche/meme

If you start changing so AP comes first you will detract from builds that rely on phys conversion first, while those builds gain basically nothing since the pierce converting builds usually still get basic phys conversion, and the global or direct pierce conversion takes care of the rest

this is an issue of Pasthrough being “mandatory” for ranged meta

and 100% or 0 conversion has 0 impact on that as aegis doesn’t use MH dmg

which would be 0 issue because it can still high convert phys to chaos either direct or globally, just like all current chaos builds do fine
And stuff like Nightblade as chaos is also a thing, which manages to get around with current form of pierce vs phys conversion

Chaos is one of the few that gets easy high conversion because abomnation so base phys dmg is basically rarely an issue, and any pierce->chaos builds that need pierce conversion in some substatial form gets it, without loss

If you start changing AP order it will not benefit anything really, other than demand a full rebalancing on al a lot of base phys dmg weapons
but more importantly you impact builds that rely on phys->X conversion that don’t get a ton of pierce->X conversion, because a bunch of Pierce->X conversion is actually sparse, pierce to acid pierce to cold etc

“TLDR” there is 0 drawback in your listed examples (imo), only an over judgment/underestimation of their use or utility, if that makes sense?

And altering the entire sequence of conversion would not benefit those much either, because they all already get their XY amounts/is set around obtaining (eg Tenebris being base chaos dmg not phys, so there is no loss etc)
*again, the reason chaos is, imo, a poor example is it’s the dmg type that gets about the most/highest phys conversion easiest, because of abom devotion
other builds gets less, thus rely on the phys conversion,
bu if AP swallows that up first, they get less conversion because they dont’ have as easy access to pierce conversion as they do phys

i think perhaps you see Pierce->X conversion, and then look for something to “fit in”,
but because it’s either not widely available(2 pierce masteries) or not immediately apparent(XY pierce skills not there) you deem the pierce conversion on ex Sunherald “not so good”,
but you don’t lose anything from it being there, nor that it has phys->fire conversion coming first.

i’m willing to bet you 20bucks/whatever FoA costs, that chaos conversion will not be an issue for Berzerker in general, nor be an issue for Covenant of Ch’thon
I’m not just basing that on Zantai always granting direct conversion where/when needed, but on the current standard of phys conversion amount available that “all”/most builds get atm,
(just like how most cold/acid/vit/X builds get around 50% global phys conversion etc avg, (2x15% 1h base/prefix or 40%2h, +1-2x10% components, give or take an amulet with 10% conversion too))

lmao, took a couple hours but i think i found a way to say it more brief :sweat_smile:

Perhaps you’re underestimating both the impact and availability of phys->X conversion (specially for chaos example)

You’re overestimating the current availability of pierce-> conversion “should the conversion formula be changed”

And you’re judging the value/worthiness? of current Pierce->X conversion items too harshly, (“flavour” conversion or not)

Thank you for taking the time to write so much content. I can understand your opinion, but it hard for me to explain all my thoughts in my poor English.

Seems I’m doing this, and I found Chaos/Acid/Vitality are not fit for Inquisitor. So I feel the conversion not significant.
Acid Inquisitor as an example, I knew there is a gun for acid Inquisitor, but one gun with one necklace/Gulgazor are still poor imo. Radaggan Sets do better for acid/vitality Inquisitor, but Radaggan has its own necklace.
And for other listed gears, things are similar. I know they are used in some builds, I just suspect the value of Piercing → X. I find it has only a small improvement/uses only a small amout of Piercing damage but remain a larger amout of Physical/Elemental/other damage unchanged. So I think the conversion is bad/low value, or to change the conversion to Physical/Elemental/others → X is better.

Maybe not. I know pierce-> conversions are fewer and Physical → conversions are a lot. I guess, I just underestimating the value/impact of Pierce-> conversion. As you said, I

and find only a few things can fit in.

Piercing and Physical → Chaos is special. I think I used the wrong example at first. Abomination offers 50% Physical → Chaos, so it is easy for Chaos build to have high conversion. But other damage type dont have such a devotion.
Some 2-hand weapons can reach 50% conversion. One hand weapons with components can reach same level. But some weapons dont offer global Physical conversion, like Wrath of Tenebris, it has 40%-60% Lightning conversion but 0% global Physical conversion. Bane of the Winter King, a non-chaos example, it doesnt have Physcial conversion, either. For these kind of weapons, high Physical conversion is hard.
*Sorry for going to another topic, not about Piercing conversion. But high Physical conversion is not a natural result.

1 Like

perhaps, and because Berzerk is then “maining” pierce conversion the idea maybe goes from novel/niche/flavour to feeling it should be completely applicable

Current examples that could be used is, if you make, Zerker+Occ, you get 100% phys conversion ez, and the pierce conversion on Covenant becomes slightly novel because you dont’ have many pierce sources
But if you do a zerker+nightblade, the pierce conversion has big meaning; but is there then a huge need for phys conversion? Reaver, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.3) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator - because you can take weapons with base chaos dmg or even base fire dmg to easy convert to full chaos. Or can “settle” for the same 50% base global conversion + abom Reaver, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.3) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator

those don’t have base physical damage tho, so the need for phys conversion also becomes less? (and AP conversion would be meaningless)

absolutely not, totally correct,
my point is it’s high for the builds that need it, eg where the base weapon dmg is phys(/where AP could even play in to that context), because Zantai always provides it where necessary/if a build struggles to convert phys and has a lot of phys in it

a lot (all?) non green 2h magical dmg oriented weapons got changed from base phys to base magical i think? so it’s mainly only 1h swords/axes/maces that still have base phys while supporting non phys dmg types; and all those then have appropriate amount of conversion so you get 50% global on avg (assuming 2 components)
Stuff like green 2handers still offers affixes, and the rest usually have modifiers or such Shar'Zul's Worldeater - Items - Grim Dawn Item Database Alkamos' Scythe - Items - Grim Dawn Item Database