Is perception the most important attribute again?

[wendigo211]

I started a couple of characters and fought a few battles on PotD. I haven't gotten too far yet, but it seems that just like in PoE, maxed perception is pretty much a given since having a high accuracy, to reduce the number of misses and grazes, is essential. Has anyone else noticed this, or am I missing something?

[Fenr]

Originally posted by wendigo211:

...or am I missing something?

Only if you have low perception.

On a serious note, I'm playing on PotD and using story companions. And so far I haven't had big issues killing stuff. There's a bug or oversight in the game when you have any sort of scaling on that difficulty indicator skulls disappear (I scaled up only), and sometimes when I ran into mobs that I am grazing a lot, I cast that Devotions spell from tier 3 that gives +20 accuracy to you and -20 to enemies in a fairly big area. That seems to negate the need to min/max your perception on character creation.

But I suspect they might tune PotD difficulty up at some point, I hope they do at least.

[Morgian]

Perception is still extremely important, as you need it for traps and hidden things, too, not just accuracy. There are passive abilities that change grazes to hits or hits to crits, which helps with the accuracy problem, too.

[Enfys Ellezard]

Might is still the strongest because accuracy goes up really fast once you start using empowered AoE attack (empower attack are 10 level stronger which is like 10 ACC and later, another 10 ACC with empower acc talent) with Devotion buff (Easy +40 acc). There were very little build that won't have all the points in Might with resolve getting dumped since PoE. Even on PotD in PoE 1, after you get that devotion and have Aloth blind/paralyze everything in front of the tank with Chill Fog or Gaze of Adragan, you end up critting all the time.

Perception is then the 2nd strongest. Another reason why Might is even more important because in the game, if you have way higher Armor Pen than enemy Armor, you can easily deal like +100 or even +150% on your AoE attacks, decimating them before they even act.

The only time you will still whiff tons is that you are fighting an enemy that is stronger against that attack type you like using, say, the Iron Construct will pretty much make you want to stop using deflect-based attack.

[Wilhelm_Richard_Wagner]

Originally posted by wendigo211:

I started a couple of characters and fought a few battles on PotD. I haven't gotten too far yet, but it seems that just like in PoE, maxed perception is pretty much a given since having a high accuracy, to reduce the number of misses and grazes, is essential. Has anyone else noticed this, or am I missing something?

Depends on a build, really. DEX still gives maximum DPS per attribute point, STR now is much less valuable due to reworked damage resistance and overnerfed 2handers. Also there are many abilities, items and spells either converting grazes to hits/hits to crits/etc or buffing accuracy, effectively moving PER into niche picks. INT is a must for any casting class to compensate loooooooooooooooooong casting times and short duration.

[Enfys Ellezard]

Originally posted by Wilhelm Richard Wagner:

Originally posted by wendigo211:

I started a couple of characters and fought a few battles on PotD. I haven't gotten too far yet, but it seems that just like in PoE, maxed perception is pretty much a given since having a high accuracy, to reduce the number of misses and grazes, is essential. Has anyone else noticed this, or am I missing something?

Depends on a build, really. DEX still gives maximum DPS per attribute point, STR now is much less valuable due to reworked damage resistance and overnerfed 2handers. Also there are many abilities, items and spells either converting grazes to hits/hits to crits/etc or buffing accuracy, effectively moving PER into niche picks. INT is a must for any casting class to compensate loooooooooooooooooong casting times and short duration.

Dex is way weaker in this one as the recovery time is massive on nearly everything so you won't be attacking people with minimal delay like PoE1 even with 0% to 10% recovery penalty from armor. You will have to find gears or use modal to take care of that. The bonus from Dex isn't that massive enough to warrant tons of points into it.

Instead, Dex seems best use on attacks with cast time as it will reduce how long it takes to cast those pesky 4-6 seconds cast time spell. Doesn't help they pretty much gutted Motion buff and make it +5 dex instead of 50% action speed so you will mainly use at the start to make the next 3-4 spells cast faster now.

[Wilhelm_Richard_Wagner]

Originally posted by Enfys Ellezard:

Dex is way weaker in this one

It is weaker for sure, but there are simply no alternatives left. STR is a must only for rogue 1shot builds (and mages of mass destruction), PER is unreliable (d100 roll will ♥♥♥♥ you up no matter what).

[Enfys Ellezard]

Originally posted by Wilhelm Richard Wagner:

Originally posted by Enfys Ellezard:

Dex is way weaker in this one

It is weaker for sure, but there are simply no alternatives left. STR is a must only for rogue 1shot builds (and mages of mass destruction), PER is unreliable (d100 roll will ♥♥♥♥ you up no matter what).

Outside tank or pure cc/buff char, Might is still the strongest as everyone but the tank has to deal damage. Even priest uses might for healing and spamming iconic projection also deal damage.

And with the new armor system, high might allow you to maximize the power on empowered attack even more than Dex. Any AoE attack like mages spell and barbarian "Hit everyting around me" can potentially one-shot or takes ton of hp especially if it crits.

Which is why Per is the 2nd most important because it has more influence on the damage than a bunch of hits thanks to the empowered system. You want that empowered strike to hit and even crit thanks to all the accuracy bonus. There isn't that much fight to really warrant using it as extra resource pool after level 7. The only one I have encountered so far is Berath temple skeleton fight.

Doesn't really help that there are tons of Perception check and most dex check from PoE 1 are replaced by Stealth check instead.

[mindmasher]

When you are on POTD (with lvl scaling "all" and "only up") and pushing the quests, every enemy you meet will have deflection values 20-30 higher than your own accuracy. PER is crucial to be able to dps them at all with anyone using weapons.

STR is actually one of the worst stats except for a couple types where it is key: evoker/nuker, healer, dps ranged and rogue (maybe a few others).

My second full game I followed some min max guides that suggested pumping STR for basically everyone except the chanter summoner (which i didn't have anyways), and this was definitely NOT ideal. Perception was way way more beneficial in the third play through. I truly think DEX is more important than STR...

Just my 2 cents anyways.