Accuracy just doesn't feel right.

[Odd Hermit]

Most abilities have about the same accuracy.

 

Spells are +10-15, while melee classes tend to have higher accuracy base for weapons and their special abilities.

 

A major problem that I am seeing is that few abilities are balanced around accuracy. Pick the most powerful thing that targets the enemies weakest defense and that tends to be the end of it. There are a ton of abilities that aren't spectacular effect wise, that have about the same chance to affect a target, so why use them?

 

I think accuracy bonuses need to vary much more. Debuffs that are 100% disables definitely should be lower. Debuffs that are less powerful should be higher. And variation based on AoE and range and so on.

 

Let's take two level 2 Cipher abilties for example. Mental Binding and Psychovampiric Shield. If you can successfully land the former, the latter doesn't matter too much, really. But they have the same chance to hit, target the same defense, and cost the same amount of the Cipher's resources. This is just one example of many, and not even the worst of them.

 

There are situations where I'd use the latter if only because of the longer duration, but overall my point is that many more subtle debuffs feel pointless when they have the same chance to apply to a target as something more powerful.

 

There's also the issue of per-encounter/limited resource abilities where if you miss you've used 50-100% of your active ability options. A fighter misses knockdown, a paladin misses flames of devotion, etc. and they don't have many options after that. This is only part of why most of my melee are relegated to tanking - they can't do the buff/dispel/debuff dance to ensure their abilities land. I could do it for them with my casters, but casters have more powerful debuffs to apply anyway so a 2/encounter knock down or flames of devotion feels extremely trivial.

 

Another thing that could help is accuracy bonuses to different components of a spell or ability. It's already partially in place since some things attack deflection and a defense, but having higher accuracy on a weaker part of an ability could lessen the "whiff" spam a bit. We've all learned how fun it is spam missing targets from the shades in the temple of Eothas already I imagine.

 

Overall having abilities like that just do flat-out nothing feels bad. I think accuracy needs to be dramatically boosted for certain staple abilities assuming they're not too powerful, and perhaps toned down on those "save or die" kind of spells for casters.

 

 

[gkathellar]

 

A major problem that I am seeing is that few abilities are balanced around accuracy. Pick the most powerful thing that targets the enemies weakest defense and that tends to be the end of it. There are a ton of abilities that aren't spectacular effect wise, that have about the same chance to affect a target, so why use them?

 

Yes, I agree. Pokemon proved that this works decently as a balancing mechanic a long time ago - given the way PoE's Accuracy works, it could make sense to take a similar approach.

 

/loses all credibility

[Climhazzard]

Don't forget your team members when you factor in the value of a debuff.  If you land that debuff then it means 5 other party members are going to have an easier time landing their own spells.  In general I agree with what you're saying though.

[MadDemiurg]

Agreed. Spell/ability accuracy also needs to increase with spell/ability level. Pretty much like DC in d&d. it's quite ridiculous how lower level stuff remains OP throughout the whole game imo (It shouldn't become obsolete either but it's weird when level 4 spell is worse than a level 2 one)

[Odd Hermit]

Don't forget your team members when you factor in the value of a debuff.  If you land that debuff then it means 5 other party members are going to have an easier time landing their own spells.  In general I agree with what you're saying though.

 

I am aware of this, I'm saying some debuffs are better than others to the point that it's a waste of an action to use them if they aren't any more/less reliable than stronger ones.