My group recently asked when faced with the option of Surge Pierce1 or Surge +1 dmg:

"Why would you use pierce if you can do straight damage?" What's the point of it?"

I wasn't really sure about the nuances of it. Can anyone please fill me in on Pierce's benefits?

Thanks all.

You often get bigger pierce values more easily than plus damage. Plus damage is always better, but is often just either more expensive or harder to get.

Each surge ability can be used only once per timing instance (i.e. once per each attack).

You may use Pierce if you have already used a surge for all of the +dmg abilities, don't have enough damage and the defense pool has blocks.

(But sometimes a hero would want to spend a surge to recover 1 strain instead of maximum damage.)

Also, just in case you have the rules wrong: ~: +1dmg is not literally straight damage. It adds the +1dmg to the attack pool. It can be blocked by the defense.

Don't forget, multiple instances of Pierce also add onto each other. For example: if you have Pierce 1 on your weapon, an ability that adds Pierce 2, and an attachment that adds Pierce 1, you can ignore 4 blocks from the enemy's defense roll. That is major because you can straight up negate his chance to even defend. Plus nickle and dimeing units/heroes is a consistent resource drain that has to be managed. I have a really nasty deck and unit build for campaign using the Precision Training deck and building everything off of pierce attacks to negate the heroes defenses.