Pierce for strafezon

I am wondering about

Pierce. A lot of people are saying a good

Belt for a strafezon is

Razortail because it gives huge

Pierce. But is

Pierce really that important? I understand that it gives the arrow the chance to go through the current monster to the next, but there aren't too many monsters that cluster together in a big group, other than cows and maybe a few others. As for act bosses like Diablo, he appears by himself, there are no others monsters to

Pierce. It seems wasted.

Yes, it is extremely important. But you are right that there are situations where it is not as useful or not needed

One way to think about it--a major issue for melee builds is that they have very little or no area of effect--they have to kill one or a few close range monsters per use of a skill. That really slows you down vs. caster and ranged builds

If you are running a ranged build without

Pierce, you have the same problem. But ranged builds with

Pierce overcome this, because you (most of the time) have opportunities to kill more than one monster at a time, which is more efficient

Killing monsters more efficiently is the most important factor for dropping more items and finding rarer items more frequently. The best areas to find these items also tend to have high monster density and high monster health. Against both of these factors,

Pierce optimizes your kill speed

On an endgame build,

Razortail is best in slot because it allows you to hit 100%

Pierce with only a few skill points invested. It is also is useful because it gives you dex and +max damage, two of the most important off-weapon contributors to your overall damage

I have a

Double Throw Barbarian and a

Lightning Fury Amazon. I don't trade my

Razortail for nothing
And even thinking in trying Wisdom +

Razortail with the Barbarian to get the 100%

Pierce

I see. Thank you

I would also add that

Pierce in tandem with

Strafe has the benefit of sending not only the front line of foes into hit recovery, but caster- and archer-type enemies as well. This is important because

Strafe forces you to stand still, meaning you are an easy target for the ranged attacks of such monsters. In tandem with the knockback affix, this characteristic can be particularly potent, as it removes any need to meet a particular damage threshold as a precondition to forcing hit-recovery.

I know you're running a physical bowzon, but if you ever run a javazon or elemental bowzon, you'll get to visually see the effects of what 100%

Pierce can do.

Lightning Javazon example:

Lightning Fury will release its lightning

Bolts for EACH enemy your physically thrown

Javelin pierces.

Frost maiden example:

Freezing Arrow will release its freezing Ice cloud for each monster the arrow pierces.