What's up with piercing?

[thandril]

First off let me start with a disclaimer...

This is not a "LIEK OMG WHICH WEAPON SHOULD I USE!??!!11 !" type post, as I fully realize that all weapons are viable (some just take more work then others, etc. etc.).

Anyways my question was, why do so many people who go the non-cookie cutter (2he) route dual wield weapons with piercing? Nearly all dual-wielded combinations I see have piercing somehwere in there, I.E. 1hb/piercing, 1he/piercing, etc. I know you gain SA from 992's and what-not, but I don't understand why people choose piercing over such combo's as... 1hb/1he or something or other. You would gain SA from the 1he, gain a perkline (a craptastic one, but better then completely not having one, like piercing), as well as not having to dump all that IP into broken skills (parry, riposte). The only drawback I can see is that you would loose on like 5 min dmg and 15 max/crit and 0.2 inits... Am I missing something here, because it seems like going 1he would be much better then any piercing combo...

[Kyai]

There are reasons why 1hb/piercing are rated over 1hb/1he:

- Energy Rapiers will give higher sneak attacks than a typed axe in general, and higher regular hits.
- The piercing buff stacks with 1hb, whereas 1hb/1he/2hb/2he are all in the same line and don't stack.

[thandril]

Ahh.. never realized that about the buffs stacking..
But.. When you look at the numbers you get from perks, you can see that you can get +180 1he from the Edged Mastery Perkline VS the +120 Piercing from Vlad's Revenge - although you do have to sacrifice 10 points into a broken perkline VS a few NCU's for the Piercing buff, but still.. in some situations it might be worth the trade-off I guess..
Also, as for the higher SA - how is this calculated? I always thought SA's rolled damage regularly then applied the multiplier (unlike AS dmg)? If this is so, the 992's only have like a 5 higher min and 15 higher max/crit.. that wouldn't amount to much at all, even with multiplier and AR multiplier.. or am I missing something again?

[Kyai]

If I was going to go for a 1hb/1he combo, I'd probably gor brawler 6 and edged mastery 4, as well as BM10, Bio10 and FoT/CH10. But you can't run both buffs.

For 1hb/piercing, you get back four perks which you can put where you want, and because the buffs stack you'll get that benefit, at the loss of two highly insignificant perk attacks.

For 1he/piercing you would probably perk 10 into Edged mastery and 6 into brawler, leaving 14 perks to go elsewhere. You only get two gimpy perk attacks, and your AR will be lower than if you used 1hb, so....

Also rapiers have a much higher crit value, and as I understand it SA damage is based of crit and not regular damage, I might be wrong about that though.

[thandril]

So if I'm hearing you right..

1hb/1he Combo:
-Don't have to spend IP into parry/riposte
-Perkline (bad: waste perk points // good: AR)
-Unstackable buff with 1hb

1hb/Piercing Combo:
-Stackable buffs with 1hb
-No perkline (bad: No AR and No Specials // good: Don't have to waste perk points into a relatively crappy line)
-Slightly higher SA (crit) rating

That about it?

[shenik]

So if I'm hearing you right..

1hb/1he Combo:
-Don't have to spend IP into parry/riposte
-Perkline (bad: waste perk points // good: AR)
-Unstackable buff with 1hb

1hb/Piercing Combo:
-Stackable buffs with 1hb
-No perkline (bad: No AR and No Specials // good: Don't have to waste perk points into a relatively crappy line)
-Slightly higher SA (crit) rating

That about it?

If im not wrong (really not certain about this anymore) AR are calculated from main hand weapon? If that's the case you dont have any worser AR with piercing in the offhand then having a 1he in the offhand.

If not then well dont mind this post.

[Kyai]

SoW is RHand only, and so using one will hit your AR somewhat.

[Mamman]

Pretty sure weapons have AR independant from eachother even tho only the right hand AR shows in the stats window

[thandril]

SoW is RHand only, and so using one will hit your AR somewhat.

Which reminds me.. another Pro of 1hb/1he combo would be using SoW for RK/aliumz/whatnot.. so...

[Akarah]

Pretty sure weapons have AR independant from eachother even tho only the right hand AR shows in the stats window

i believe you are correct, although your perk AR will be calculated by the AR value that is visible in the window, not necessarily your highest skill AR, assuming the perk attack skill is attack rating and not something else, which is annoying..

[Mamman]

i believe you are correct, although your perk AR will be calculated by the AR value that is visible in the window, not necessarily your highest skill AR, assuming the perk attack skill is attack rating and not something else, which is annoying..

Yeah, this affects alien perks mostly since they are the same perks for different weapon lines they have to use AR instead of some skill specific skill, but atleast you get add all off counted twice that way
Pretty much all SL perks has a specific skill as attack rating so shouldn't affect those.

[kuznechik]

Melee energy sucks too much?
Just noone mentioned it...

[Polarbaer]

your perk AR will be calculated by the AR value that is visible in the window, not necessarily your highest skill AR, assuming the perk attack skill is attack rating and not something else, which is annoying..

That's why I wouldn't take weapons like SoW/1he or pe/pierc for the rHand, even if they inflict a little more damage. The highest AR obtainable will still be at 1hb. Leaves Kyr Axe / Kyr energy rapier for the lHand - and in my opinion energy rapier wins for sure.

*Edit regarding melee energy:
the weapons look nIce at first sight, but they would generally replace 1hb - but not having any perk line nor even boni of all 3 Symbs!