Armour Piercing Rounds in PoE 2: What Does It Mean?

Armour Piercing Rounds is a crossbow ammunition skill gem in Path of Exile 2. It loads your crossbow with a clip of bolts that you fire rapidly, and each hit breaks the enemy's armour. It does not ignore armour. It strips armour away until the target's armour is fully broken.

How It Works

Ammunition skills in PoE2 do not shoot anything themselves. Using Armour Piercing Rounds loads the clip, and your crossbow's basic attack then fires those bolts until the clip runs out. Using the skill again reloads. At gem level 1 the clip holds 12 bolts, and the number rises as the gem levels up, reaching 21 at the top of the gem's level range.

• Gem details. It is a tier 1 gem with Attack, Ammunition, Projectile and Physical tags, split evenly between Strength and Dexterity. It requires a crossbow.
• Flexible use. You can load it while moving, and the bolts knock enemies back when they hit.
• Quality. Quality increases the amount of armour each hit breaks. Patch 0.3.0 lowered that quality bonus.

What Armour Break Does

Armour in PoE2 reduces physical damage from hits, and it works best against small hits. Armour Break lowers a target's armour by a set amount. When armour reaches zero, the target has Fully Broken Armour for 12 seconds (4 seconds if the target is a player). A monster with fully broken armour gets no benefit from armour and also takes 20% increased physical damage from hits. Players break three times as much armour against normal monsters and twice as much against magic monsters, so packs strip quickly while rares and bosses take longer.

Where You'll Use It

• Boss and rare fights. Breaking armour first makes your follow-up physical hits land harder.
• Physical crossbow builds. The 20% increased physical damage taken matters most when most of your damage is physical.
• Team play. Fully broken armour helps allies who also deal physical damage.

Common Mistakes

• Expecting instant damage. The bolts themselves are light hits. Their job is to remove armour so that your heavier follow-up attacks deal more damage.
• Swapping away too early. Fully broken armour only appears once armour reaches zero, so stopping halfway gives you a much smaller benefit.
• Forgetting to reload. When the clip is empty, your basic attack no longer fires these bolts until you use the skill again.
• Using it against players the same way. On players, fully broken armour lasts only 4 seconds and the 20% extra physical damage applies to non-player targets.

Tips

• Pair it with support gems that boost armour break, such as Armour Demolisher, to reach fully broken armour faster.
• Multishot, Chain and Ricochet spread bolts across packs, while Nimble Reload and Rapid Attacks help sustained fire. All of these appear in the game's recommended support list for this skill.
• With a crossbow, several projectiles from one skill can all hit the same target, so extra projectiles also help against single bosses.
• Keep a heavier crossbow skill ready to fire once the armour is broken. That is where the payoff comes from.
• If your build is mostly elemental, armour break helps less, because armour only reduces physical damage by default.

FAQ

Does Armour Piercing Rounds give armour penetration?

No. It breaks armour, lowering the target's armour value until it is fully broken. That is a different mechanic from ignoring armour on a single hit.

Which class uses Armour Piercing Rounds?

Any character with a crossbow can use it. In practice it suits Strength and Dexterity builds such as the Mercenary, which starts with crossbows.

How long does fully broken armour last?

12 seconds on monsters and 4 seconds on players, according to the in-game tooltip quoted on the Path of Exile 2 community wiki.