My piercing MA

[sparxx]

My piercing MA is now level 30:

I'm using Fear-Forged Blades with the combined MA attack (but not much MA attack rating.) Maxed runspeed and evades, hardly any nanoskills. I called myself Shadehonest as I'm basically emulating a shade at this point. I even put some RK tattoos in social tab for effect.

It is working quite well. At 71 I presume I will get toothpicker or the Hanzagerine? Claws (or both).

An example of the kind of setups I'm aiming for:

http://auno.org/ao/equip.php?saveid=193335" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://auno.org/ao/equip.php?saveid=193340" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Briandmg]

Heh I'm quite the big fan of FFBs. They worked really well on my MA from L20-50. The fact that they allowed MA special attacks and combined MA attacks really took the cake.

Past L50, however, the effectiveness really drops. I swapped over to parry sticks then because they allowed me to go full evade and take on 10 bloaters at once If you do decide to continue going piercing, be wary of your gradual drop in DPS. The toothpicker has an excellent crit damage but has mediocre normal damage output, annd is level locked to 71 (blehh). You should probably look to swap to x1 FFB and x1 Hazangerine claw ASAP, and swap to x2 Hazangerine claws when your martial arts skill is high enough to support combined martial arts attacks with QL100+ claws. The damage increase is not much, but it's better than nothing.

Other than that, your weapon upgrades will just be trying to increase the QL of your claws. Endgame, you probably wanna go for x2 Jagged Claws or x2 Mangler Claws (drops from Cerubin). They have verrryy slow attacks though, so I hope you're looking at making a full DPS, no evades MA

[sparxx]

Hi Brian, yes I'm going for full attack, basically a froob shade. You don't suggest Chicanery then?

[Briandmg]

I wouldn't suggest anything that is 100% AR dependent on piercing and/or does not have combined MA attacks (you are a MA anyway). I would never give up my MA special attacks for a Chicanery

Traders and doctors will probably have a better use for pure piercing weapons. You could get improved tango dirks on too if you decide to go 100% piercing.

[Matammyr]

Keep in mind pure piercing weapons use melee init and MA/piercing ones use phys.