Is the piercing enchantment worth it in Minecraft?
It’s worth it to use a piercing enchantment as long as you don’t have the Thorns or Blast Protection enchantment.
The piercing enchant deals damage that scales with the defense level of your target so are very beneficial for taking down those high-defense targets but only if you can get past their armor and stay relatively safe from harm when shooting at them first. What this means is, in general, a Piercing enchant will increase your damage output by more than 50% against any enemy skinned using leather or plant fiber armor because they each only possess 1 defense point, while an enchanted bow – like Blaze Rods – which deals 5 fire damage will inflict 8 points of damage total meaning 49.5% is lost before even reaching the default armor of leather armor, which is 2 defense points on the “head” and chest pieces.
If you’re using diamond or iron armor then it’s a different story though because they inherently possess an additional 3 defense points (totaling 4 and 5 respectively). So while a Blaze Rods enchanted with Looting III can deal up to 10 fire damage (5 for the blaze rod, 5 for Looting) it would only inflict 12 damage total – 2 of which is lost to your opponent’s default armor rating. However if you had a bow enchanted with Piercing IV you’d get the full 10 points of damage because the 6 remaining defense points on diamond or iron armor can’t block out any more damage.
