A few questions from a new player

[Edax Rerum]

Hello there.

I'm pretty new to the PoE2, 2 weeks ago ended my PoE playthrough. And now i have few questions about PoE2.

1) I've read a bit about how critical hits works, but want to sort it in my head. As far as i understand it's depending on the rolls against certain type of defence. So we need to stack accuracy to get more chances to crit and hit-to-crit conversion aswell. 
So questions about this:
Did accuracy works for spells aswell? Like if i'm using dual wield and have different accuracy for main and off-hand how it applys to the spells? Or spells have their own "hidden" accuracy?
I've read somewhere that hit-to-crit stacks(or don't even stack) a bit weird. Like passive for weapon in one hand(30%) won't stack additevly with, in example, Berserker's hit-to-crit from Frenzy, is it true and how it works?

2) I was lurking around and watching some builds and have a question why people prefer Street Fighter over Assasin? Just in game there are no numbers for bonuses of this subclasses  and for me it's seems harder to met conditions to proc bonuses for Street Figther.

 

I'm just looking for making build with high "crit chance" and since i fell in love with instant recovery on kill from Barbarian i'm thinking if Berserker sub class worth it or no. Because it seems i killing myself with this HP drain. I've seen that people suggest Shadowmanser as high dps build, but i'm really miss this instant recovery. Not sure if it worth in general tho, since this is not really useful on Boss fights.

[Bosmer]

Hey! 

To 1) in general the accuracy bonus from one weapon should not affect casting (or other weapons) (however there might be oversights if you look to the recent threat on crossbows). So one way to increase your overall "effective accuracy" is to decrease the enemies defense. For Barbarians decreasing fortitude has additional benefits due to the brute force passive. For example the morningstar modal decreases fortitude by 25.

hit-to-crit does stack, however not additively (e.g. 10%+10%=20% hit-to-crit). Instead it follows the probability formular, such that: (1-0.1)*(1-0.1)=0.81=19% hit-to-crit. So try to combine not too many but therefore larger hit-to-crit effects (e.g. ring of fortune or the berserker frenzy).

To 2) You can easily meet the streetfighter conditions by using the blunderbuss modal and the decrease in recovery time is a huge effect. If you ask me I think that the streetfighter benefits are balanced for a more .. challenging way to meet the conditions (such as getting flanked or hurt in melee combat). Assassin is also nice, since the drawback isn't too strong and sometimes you really want/need to get the 25 accuracy, extra penetration (and crit damage) from stealth attacks. Works also with spells btw!

Rangers have the highest accuracy bonus, so you might also look into these.. for melee the stalker subclass might be useful.

[Edax Rerum]

2 hours ago, Bosmer said:

Hey! 

To 1) in general the accuracy bonus from one weapon should not affect casting (or other weapons) (however there might be oversights if you look to the recent threat on crossbows). So one way to increase your overall "effective accuracy" is to decrease the enemies defense. For Barbarians decreasing fortitude has additional benefits due to the brute force passive. For example the morningstar modal decreases fortitude by 25.

hit-to-crit does stack, however not additively (e.g. 10%+10%=20% hit-to-crit). Instead it follows the probability formular, such that: (1-0.1)*(1-0.1)=0.81=19% hit-to-crit. So try to combine not too many but therefore larger hit-to-crit effects (e.g. ring of fortune or the berserker frenzy).

To 2) You can easily meet the streetfighter conditions by using the blunderbuss modal and the decrease in recovery time is a huge effect. If you ask me I think that the streetfighter benefits are balanced for a more .. challenging way to meet the conditions (such as getting flanked or hurt in melee combat). Assassin is also nice, since the drawback isn't too strong and sometimes you really want/need to get the 25 accuracy, extra penetration (and crit damage) from stealth attacks. Works also with spells btw!

Rangers have the highest accuracy bonus, so you might also look into these.. for melee the stalker subclass might be useful.

Thank for the answer. Now it's a bit more clear to me.

Btw about weapon modals, are they worth in general or only some? Like how their drowbacks works? In example 50% more recovery time. Is it 50% of current recovery, or from base one?
 

Oh well, now i see why people taking street fighter. I'm playing not at English version of the game an looks like translation of Assassin's bonus is incorrect since it tells that it benefits not for attack from stealth but for his sneak attack. 

[thelee]

6 hours ago, Edax Rerum said:

Did accuracy works for spells aswell? Like if i'm using dual wield and have different accuracy for main and off-hand how it applys to the spells? Or spells have their own "hidden" accuracy?
I've read somewhere that hit-to-crit stacks(or don't even stack) a bit weird. Like passive for weapon in one hand(30%) won't stack additevly with, in example, Berserker's hit-to-crit from Frenzy, is it true and how it works?

spells don't have a "hidden" accuracy - they are computed very similarly to weapon accuracy, you just don't get weapon-specific accuracy bonuses. if you hover over spells or abilities in your menus, or you right click on an ability and look at the description, you'll get a reasonably accurate spell/ability accuracy number. you don't have a general "spell/ability" accuracy like you do with weapons because it varies depending on ability tier and other things. [I say "reasonably accurate" because even the tooltips and right-click menus are a little bit wrong, though close; most accurate is simply looking at the combat log.]

things like "fine" "exceptional" or a club's +5 accuracy modal, or even most magical weapons +accuracies generally only affect weapons. weapon penalties like the pistol proficiency modal or blunderbuss acc penalty only affect weapons as well.

however, shield accuracy penalties (medium or large shield) affect both weapon and ability/spell accuracy. heavy-duty offensive casters should not hold heavy shields.

 

Quote

Instead it follows the probability formular, such that: (1-0.1)*(1-0.1)=0.81=19% hit-to-crit.

yes, for the non-probability savvy, what this intuitively means is "what is the chance that any of your hit to crit triggers" which is equal to (1 - "what is the chance that none of your hit to crit trigger"), hence all the 1-'s to "invert" your hit->crit odds from success to failure, and then one more flip to go from .81 to 19%.

 

6 hours ago, Edax Rerum said:

2) I was lurking around and watching some builds and have a question why people prefer Street Fighter over Assasin? Just in game there are no numbers for bonuses of this subclasses  and for me it's seems harder to met conditions to proc bonuses for Street Figther.

assassin only gets its bonuses from stealth, which--once you enter combat--is impossible to become re-stealthed like you normally can (unlike games like BG2/IWD where if you ran out of line of sight you could re-stealth). You have to rely on abilities like Smoke Veil or potions of invisibility to become re-stealthed, which is expensive and pretty limited. i and others tend to recommend multiclassing assassin with a caster so you can really get mileage out of those assassinate bonuses by using them on heavy-hitting spells instead of a few weapon attacks.

by contrast, streetfighter bonus is actually fairly easy to get really high uptime on... and the numbers involved are huge. -50% recovery time bonus is roughly equivalent to getting +33 dex through your recovery... on top of that you also get huge +50% sneak attack damage bonus. if you manage to get both bloodied and flanked, you also get massive crit bonuses.

the problem is that streetfighter bonuses--while they can be easy to get--also encourage extremely dangerous behavior. being flanked and bloodied is generally a bad situation to be in for a class as squishy as a rogue.

[Bosmer]

4 hours ago, Edax Rerum said:

Thank for the answer. Now it's a bit more clear to me.

Btw about weapon modals, are they worth in general or only some? Like how their drowbacks works? In example 50% more recovery time. Is it 50% of current recovery, or from base one?

It depends, some of them are more situational, for example all the +2 pen modals should obviously only be "on" when you're targeting enemies that you'd otherwise underpenetrate. Other modals can basically be on all the time, like hunting bow modal. (be cautious that they won't stack with similar effects). See also "The big post of Stacking rules" in this forum.

The formula behind recovery time is rather complicated.. when you're dual-wielding and stacking other recovery bonuses (like the streetfighter passive for example) than the 50 % recovery aren't that severe (see also the action speed / recovery time thread). I recommend that you look into thelee's guide.. you'll find answers to all the deadfire questions you never thought you'd have.. for me this research is part of the fun  

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599

[thelee]

54 minutes ago, Bosmer said:

It depends, some of them are more situational, for example all the +2 pen modals should obviously only be "on" when you're targeting enemies that you'd otherwise underpenetrate. Other modals can basically be on all the time, like hunting bow modal. (be cautious that they won't stack with similar effects). See also "The big post of Stacking rules" in this forum.

The formula behind recovery time is rather complicated.. when you're dual-wielding and stacking other recovery bonuses (like the streetfighter passive for example) than the 50 % recovery aren't that severe (see also the action speed / recovery time thread). I recommend that you look into thelee's guide.. you'll find answers to all the deadfire questions you never thought you'd have.. for me this research is part of the fun  

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599

spefically for weapon modals you probably want: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/weapons-and-proficiency-modals

 

the action speed stuff is hard: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/action-speed-recovery-time

if you're not interested in the math, the TL;DR i would say is to pay attention to the sign and type of modifier you're looking at. negative numbers are always much more powerful than positive numbers. so a -50% recovery time bonus is actually much much more powerful than a +50% recovery time penalty (in fact you need +100% total recovery time penalty to cancel it out), and a -50% recovery time bonus is very different from a +25% action speed bonus even though they both might affect the same thing at some point.

(this mathematical weirdness applies to almost all numbers you see, with the exception of defense/accuracy adjustments. so even things like +%/-% effect duration from resolve or +%/-% bonus/penalty to health from con or even negative reputation effects for paladin/priest are effected by this negative number/positive number weirdness. it's kind of, but not exactly, the same as multiplicative multipliers: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/inversions (lot of credit to @MaxQuest who I think was the first person to put this into an equation))

Edited March 22, 2021 by thelee

[Edax Rerum]

Thanks eveyone for the answers. Will take a look on all the info.