Have perception changes affected enemies in any way?

[Dinky Dino]

Are early game enemies any harder to hit like say in raedric's castle on PotD?

 

For my wizard/druid builds I'm thinking about trading in 9% action speed (3 Dex)  or 9% more damage (3 Might) for 3 points more accuracy (3 Perception) in the early game if that is the case. Would that be worth it?

Edited September 5, 2015 by Dinky Dino

[KDubya]

I think that raising perception is worth it.

 

For me the biggest issue on PotD is hitting the enemies since their defenses are all much higher than on hard or lower difficulties. For melee you could try and act faster but miss more and come out OK. Spells are limited in resource so you really want to hit. A graze does 50% less damage, approximately worth 16 stat points in Might.

 

In trash encounters accuracy is not as important but in the toughest fights it makes all the difference. If you miss or graze with your 'gaze of the Adragon' spell in a dragon fight it might be game over. Better to hit it with 20% less base duration than to graze it for 40% less duration (1.2 duration X 50% on a graze)  

 

There is probably some buffer healer type priest build that only targets friendlies and can dump perception to 3, but anyone who has to hit the enemy is going to want as much accuracy as they can get. Unless everyone is perma-paralyzed or petrified.

[Dinky Dino]

I see that does make sense. I was leaning towards removing more might for perception as 9 percent damage might be worth 3 points of accuracy which can make the difference between a hit or not/a huge amount of damage. And dex is just plain good in pumping out spells faster and lowering the recovery time in doing so. I suppose a bonus is higher interrupt since spell casters are AOE and a higher chance to crit on a good roll. I'm too attached to INT to leave it as I tend to like longer buffs/debuffs.  

[KDubya]

I'd lower dex before I'd lower might.

 

You only have a few spells to cast so you want them to hit and you want them to hurt. An archer can just fire more arrows faster and come out with the win but you can't fire off more and more spells. (per encounter and resting more frequently might change the dynamics on this)

 

For CC duration is big and at 5% per intellect point it is worth more than +1 accuracy. I'm probably mistaken in the CC analysis above.

[Dinky Dino]

True dex is less useful for early to late mid before you start getting per encounter spells which now go up to level 3 but the game is pretty much over at level 14 until we get more expansions. Though you do get the level 9 pre ecounter late mid game which can be useful if you do the endless paths. Reason I like dex is because I like going to town with the wizard minor blights spell followed by the spirit lance later. I use fire brand on druid as well as that corrosive skull at level 6. Though since they have paper thin defense I usually send them with fire brand/spirit lance to enemies already being engaged or prone/stunned/paralyzed so I like getting things off quick. I also go for the wizard rings as soon as I finish up with maerwald so I have 6 casts for the first 3 tiers and 5 for the fourth which can go on for a while considering I also use the per encounter raw damage spell. Druid is a bit trickier since they don't have any rings and I tend to restrict fire brand since it doesn't have the range that the spirit lance has or the aoe effect until they get that corrosive skull weapon spell.

Edited September 5, 2015 by Dinky Dino

[Wolken3156]

For Wizard you can safely dump Resolve with no penalties. You have Arcane Veil to offset the Defection penalty and Spirit Shield (Also in Potion form) to offset the Concentration penalty. I'd take points off that before deciding to lower anything else.

 

As for stat priority, IMO for a Wizard in PotD it should be:

Intelligence > Might > Perception > Dexterity > Constitution > Resolve

 

Druid on the other hand is much trickier, since they probably don't want to dump Resolve since they lack Arcane Veil and most of their better spells require them to be a little closer to the enemies, so the Deflection loss might hurt a bit. If you're using a Druid and Wizard in the same party though, you can probably leave Perception at base value of 10 for the Druid and have the Wizard pick spells that lower defense values to assist the Druid in landing their spells.

Edited September 5, 2015 by Wolken3156

[Ymarsakar]

The nice thing about arcane veil is that it is almost instant, even if you are paralyzed, so long as you aren't recovering from an attack, you can cast it. So the wizard has a lot of useful abilities to make up for their poorer accuracy, deflection, and stat issues. On the other hand, all of this takes time to cast in combat. Generally dexterity helps a lot more on the normal and slow speed spells. On the fast speed spells, it's still pretty fast at 10 dex and thus the recovery is lower.

 

Once the druid gets the wave crush stun spell, it's pretty much all over for enemies in corridors or open field fights where you aren't surrounded. So they got pretty good close in powers and good fight pulling spells at long range as well.

 

In fact I read the stats and I realized this was maybe true before, but the lightning and other direct line attacks have 45m range, as in they cross that distance until they are stopped by a terrain block.

Edited September 5, 2015 by Ymarsakar

[Nobear]

Are early game enemies any harder to hit like say in raedric's castle on PotD?

 

Seems like you've received some good advice, but to go back to your original question, if anything enemies would tend to be easier to hit than before. Enemy and NPC stat spreads have not been adjusted AFAIK. That means anyone with over 10 Per is going to have less Deflection (be easier to hit) and more Accuracy (be better at hitting). These effects can compound. For instance, if you have more than 10 Per and you're attacking an enemy with more than 10 Per, your Accuracy will be higher and his Deflection will be lower, making him easier to hit than before.

 

The reverse is true: these compounding effects (in addition to other Deflection nerfs from items and abilities/talents), make your characters squishier than before, if you and the enemy both have at least 10 Per.

 

If anything, this makes Per less "needed" since most enemies will be easier to hit even if you only have 10 Per. However, on PoTD, there are certainly enemies that you'll want to stack all the Accuracy you can against.