Confusion spell: What does it actually do?

[Gregorovitch]

I haven't seen any beneficial effets at all from this spell so far (which is annoying since it's one of my goto AoE normally). It says it knocks 5 pts off intellect, well gee whiz, but it also says it causes enemies to (potentially) attack each other which is bascially the whole point of the spell. But I have not seen it do that once so far. If I drop confusion on a mob they just continue to attack me. never each other.

Is this bugged or by design? If by design what is the point of this spell?

[Aeiku]

From what I've seen it makes any aoe thats targetable only to the enemy also inflict damage on the ally. My Watcher was inflicted with confusion on Druid and Returning The Storm showed a red circle instead of yellow.

[Farsha]

It's not really much usefull debuff in Deadfire. It means the their FOE only abilites will dmg even their allies. If confused character would cast druid storm spell for example (which is foe only normally) that AOE would dmg and stun his allies as well.
So it's really situational and not tha usefull debuff anymore, it was much stronger in POE1.

[Cutlass Jack]

The way I understand it, Afflictions have Tiers now. Confusion is a Tier1 mind affliction, which means the affect is minor compared to a tier 3 affliction. This game is heavily about aflictions and countering them.

The main effect is really the int debuff, with the aoe change a bonus. Even more importantly, it makes them vulnerable to sneak attacks. Which helps out rogues and a few subclasses.

[Gregorovitch]

OK, so I've been conned by it and need to respec to change it I guess. It's bascially useless.

[Farsha]

Originally posted by Cutlass Jack:

The way I understand it, Afflictions have Tiers now. Confusion is a Tier1 mind affliction, which means the affect is minor compared to a tier 3 affliction. This game is heavily about aflictions and countering them.

The main effect is really the int debuff, with the aoe change a bonus. Even more importantly, it makes them vulnerable to sneak attacks. Which helps out rogues and a few subclasses.

Well in first POE it was also minor affliction compared to charmed/dominated. But it made effected character autoattack (only autoattack, no abilites) anyone who was near them uncontrolably.
Now it is really not even a minor set back to get confused, penalty is too low, and confuse spells are pretty much useless in most cases

[Drake]

Depends, the dominated version is very effective.

[Farsha]

Originally posted by Sajah:

Depends, the dominated version is very effective.

Yes charmed and dominated are great, but confuse is not usefull. And we are talking about confused. They are different abilites even though they are grouped in under same affliction stat.