I've noticed as I've been playing recently that I have yet to see a high-level Warrior weapon with a meaningful dedication to Piercing attacks. Compare this to the three or four Chop axes at Uncommon and the similar number of Bash hammers at the same rareness and the hole seems both surprising and odd. Penetrating attacks are, as now, not terribly powerful; for all practical purposes, armor caps out at four, which makes Mighty Hack/Bludgeon solidly better than Impaling Stab in any situation except when the defender has multiple armor cards, which is unusual. The main advantage Piercing builds have is mobility and reach--and there really isn't anything out there that functions like the Chop/Bash weapons. Heck, there isn't even a Penetrate booster like there is for Chop and Bash (Strong Chop and Bash, respectively). It's sad, but Trogsbane, a level 8 Epic drop, is one of the better weapons for a Penetrate build simply because it can muster Penetrate reliably. I'm not asking for much here, but a weapon running Impaling Stab/Penetrating Stab/Penetrating Lunge/Penetrating Lunge/and two other cards as a level 18 weapon doesn't seem unreasonable. Maybe even something at a higher rarity, comparable to the Sword of the Lion or such if you're really feeling generous. More, it'd be a useful option for Elf Warrior PVP teams, which excel at mobility and hard attacks, but wither against the higher HP totals of a Dwarf warrior. A little reach in a Penetrating build would make for an attractive option in this case.
Well there is a Penetrating booster Impaler and there are weapons like Double-edged Sword and Flashing Longspear..... edit: I see you want a double up boost like bash.....hmm I don't know.....
I hadn't seen Flashing Longspear before, and that's a good chunk of the way toward what I'm looking for. Double-Edged Sword really isn't; there's only the one thing on there that matters in a Penetrating build. Still, you'd think that here's be more than one weapon, or that the combat style would be better-suported. Oh, well. Mighty Hack ho.
Wait, there's 2 penetrating cards in Double-Edged Sword, not 1 , that 1/3 of the item. And they are the highest damaging penetrating attack available. The reason you see a lot of high damage vanilla attack is simply because penetrating is already too powerful. Ignoring armor completely often come with the trade off of doing less damage, or the trade off that you cannot stack too many penetrating attacks on 1 single item. Bash is powerful though starts with low base damage and requires you to preposition after every attack. Chop requires you to reach optimal position to outperform traditional attack. Penetrating requires nothing else of you, just attack and you get the bonus effect. Impaler(the trait) has been nerfed from giving bonus 2 damage to bonus 1 damage. If you want to to build a pure penetrating warrior, you can try stacking Frenzy Aura and all your attacks then become penetrating. This won't stack with Impaler, however.
Not sure what you meant by that, programmer. I was under the impression you will recieve the 1 damage from impaler and the 3 damage from the aura, no? also on a side note flashfyre5, Vicious thrust used to have penetrating in the beta but they removed it, something about it being too vicious that way...
Yep, it won't receive the +1 bonus from Impaler, still penetrate and add 3 dmg though. I remember Phaselock tested this. The custom games make testing so much easier.
I find the penetrating weapons a good trade of to ignoring armor so far. have lvl 10 characters. I use them a lot in conjunction with damage boosters for my Fighter. Multiple boosts make his piercing attacks awesome compared to having to either do constant massive damage, which is rare, or go nuts over the enemies armor more so as the quests get tougher. Since I am not further yet I may not know if this request is a good idea so I am basically stating my experiences.
