Pierce = cheese? Tell me more
first of all resistance pierce builds aren't cheap at all, secondly what's the point of improving the gear if you are stopped with an artificial wall? You play this game in order to improve your character and to make it more and more powerful and I would never say that they are cheap; BMR, Endless Light umos, Dementia - were those items ever cheap? You see them in nearly every elemental build. Okay, maybe endless lights aren't mandatory but they also provide nice damage boost and you need lots of them for their effect to be considered useful. Summing up, every game that you grind items and skills in is supposed to make your character powerful, otherwise there's no point in playing, that's my 2 cents.