Here's why everyone cept casters should dumpt INT to 3.

[aweigh0101]

assuming that when creating the unit you have the attributes all set to 10's then this means fighters, paladins and monks, the 3 best martial classes can all dump INT down to allowed minimum of 3, freeing up a godly amount of 25 extra stat points to distribute. 25 extra points would allow these 3 classes, who don't need int for ANYTHING, (come at me bro! i'll argue this to the death with tons of reasons!), to have 18's in 3 attributes and 1 point left over lol. just as an example, you may distribute as you like sir 

priests, druids, wizards and ciphers can't dump to 3 ANY state, unfortunately, so they're stuck with the normal 18 points to spend on char creation, assuming 10's are on the board. please note that 18 includes the extra 3 pts you get from race/background/geography. if that detail "bugs" you, then it's 15 pts to spend on char creation, BEFORE picking the extra stuff, and dumping INT to 3 allows you to spend 22 points.

this is the most important detail of the martial classes, and the biggest reason fighters and monks especially are indisputably the best classes to pick when creating a character whose job is to hit and take hits during melee. barbarians can't dump int as that would completely disable their ONLY special feature, so they're in the same boat as the caster classes.

(paladins can safely dump int as well since an int 3 aura still reaches 2.5 meters, and can be further boosted with boots of zealous command, ring of overseeing to reach 3.1 meters, which is enough to cover him and two others fighting in melee side by side)

EDIT: for the skeptics in here, please by all means go right now and create a 3 INT pally and look at the aura size. it's still usable. VERY usable. and besides all the aura one should need is 0 meters long, i.e. all i care about is my pally having either +6 acc or +3 dr, heh.

as a side-note, i experimented with 3 INT builds of caster classes as well and from what i saw basically dumping int will completely destroy effectiveness of: ciphers, priests, wizards and druids. HOWEVER interestingly enough Rangers AND Chanters CAN and SHOULD dump INT to 3 because even with 3 int the ranger's DoT ability lasts for 3-5 seconds, and that's enough for me. i'd much rather have 7 extra pts to spend on the ranger and max out his dex, might and per for ultimate ranged DPS.

the chanter was quite fun to build with 3 int because he basically becomes a pseudo-paladin then, with +5 more base deflection but with less end/health. the chanter with 3 int's chant-zone is still quite big, twice the size of the 3 int paladin's aura size. you'd think it would impact him more but it doesn't. the 3 int chant zone is bigger than an 18 int barbarian's carnage zone! so if you're planning on making a melee chanter, with melee-oriented phrases, go ahead and dump his int to 3 and watch him kick ass in melee. 

3 int melee chanter singing come winds of death, boosting his fort and his will +10 w/ lvl 1 phrase, and summong dragon fire later on and enhancing his own weapon with fire damage phrase and his front-line buddy's as well if they're back to back. as with paladin you can also increase the 3 int chanter zone w/ voice of the mountain top item and with ring of overseeing.

note that the second reason dumping int on these "martial" classes is a good idea is because both paladins and chanters, (won't even bother mentioning reasons for fighter/monks) do not rely on DURATIONS. chanter summons as of recent patches EXPIRE ON PRE-SET TIMER and also chanter phrases' linger have preset durations. only their weakest invocations are affected, the ones that can stun or paralyze, those have miniscule durations then with 3 int. buuut... just summon ogres brah, gg.

The caster classes can't dump ANY stat and be truly effective, but they don't need to really since their best use comes from their spells, obviously, and that trumps EVERYTHING.

 

Edited November 5, 2015 by aweigh0101

[rheingold]

So if I'm reading correctly - your entire argument comes down to stat dumping, not actually you know taking into account utility, abilities or anything else....

[aweigh0101]

sorry, i perhaps should have specified intent of thread. i will re-title it.

i talk about classes/abilities a lot on other threads. thank you for pointing this out.

[rheingold]

No worries - that clarifies it - as  a role player who doesn't drop any stat below 10 I was on the verge of having a stroke.

[Heijoushin]

Well... it's not really a huge discovery... If you want to create a dump stat for the purposes of min-maxing, then I agree int is the way to go for the martial classes. They have a few duration based abilities, but nothing critical.

[mosspit]

Just wondering... Have OP done a playthrough using a Monk with dumped int? Cause I have. And when I compared that with other Monks with average int on my other playthroughs, I decided that int-dumped Monks sacrificed a little too much for those extra stats.

[Teioh_White]

A good reason not to dump Int on a Pld is so you don't have to use the Boots, or especially the Ring. The ring is generously +2 Int, when instead you could put a +3 stat ring there that also gives saves, or a Deflection/Protection ring. Boots aren't quite as bad...unless you've actually found enough Boots of Speed, in which case, definitely don't want to waste a boot slot for 3~ Int. Also, not caring about Pld buffing anyone else with their Aura shows....questionable reasoning.

 

Rangers of course should dump Int, as should Fighters. Rogues as well, a big boon of all 3 of those classes is the ability dump Int. Monk's can get away with as well, as pretty much only Swift Strikes wants it, and it's a judgement call if 3.5 seconds of Swift Strikes is worth +7 acc. (Not really an open-shut case like the first 3).

 

I can't see dumping it on a Chanter at all, and same issues apply to the ring and neck for them; i.e., instead of wearing ring, take 2 points from some other stat, and get +2 int, and you'll have better results than wearing the ring. In addition to removing the ability to hit the entire team with buffs, or enemy with debuffs, also would reduce the chanter to just one full time chant, or having a gap with a buff down, which is a bit of loss. (it'll drop Flame Lash song from 14.5sec to 11 sec in length).

 

No clue what you mean by Chants not needing Int duration; it directly increases Chant linger length. And sure, the summons have set duration, but the very nice para is a standard debuff, and will be one of the 4 invocations used in the game, knocking it from 8.7m+16sec to 3.7m+6sec duration. (Actually was one of more used one, as invocations come slower as you go higher, making it by the time I reach 5-6, the fight is too close to over to be worth a summon, so it's better to just 16 sec CC the remaining at 4 stacks. The 3 stack Phantom is my second most used, basically a long term dot+cc on a single mob, but generally too many mobs for single target stuff to be useful later on in a normal fight).

 

But casters not being able to dump stats? I dump Resolve on every single ranged character, works out great. The only thing it matters a smidge on is ranged attacks, and the only time I ever noticed that being an issue was in the Skaen Temple, oddly enough. Really, casters can also dump Con more, as Health isn't as big a concern, as unlike the front-liners, they won't get much wear and tear in the course of a normal battle, only taking damage when stuff goes wrong.

[aweigh0101]

the chanter was an experiment, believe i agree with you about dumping int on chanters... partly. from what i play-tested int 3 chanter has the following advantages:

the chanter has BASE deflection of 25 and BASE accuracy of 25. since pally's got their base def nerfed in 2.03 down to 20, chanters are now the only class with 25/25. what keeps them from being known as melee/martial archetype is they have caster-tier endurance and health progression. they can talk the talk, but when focused can't walk the walk.

dump the chanter's int to 3, make him whatever that has +1 to con so you can max it to 19, and you still have 16 points to spend. put resolve on 18, that leaves 8... how about then put 3 in might, 3 in dex, and 2 in perception. (remember, base 25 acc).

level 1 chanter then has: 13 might / 19 constitution / 13 dex / 12 perception / 3 int / 18 resolve

25 deflection + 8 from resolve = 33 deflection as base
25 base acc + the 2 perc points makes = 27 base acc

the 19 con bumps his end/health a very great deal, and yes since con is percentage based and proportional to their multiplier believe me i know full well that some argue it is not intuitive to pump con on classes with small end. multipliers. however after playing this build and many others i now do in fact say that it is ALWAYS useful, very VERY useful to have a large endurance pool. for any build. but obviously this 19 con example is only for this chanter example i'm giving.

ok, anyway, the retard chanter chant aura once you check it for yourself in-game is still good, so decide right then if he'll be melee or ranged. why? cos if melee, pick all phrases that either buff the chanter and also phrases that debuff the enemy, so he'll whack 'em in melee while having +10 fort, +10 ref, +will, DoT'ing his engaged enemy (and maybe 1 or 2 more) with winds of death (the hit/crit ACC of winds of death is determined his perception modifier, by the way, just FYI. it's damage is also affected by his might); also debuffing by 10% slash/pierce enemy damage, and when he gets an invocation he can either summon or debuff their DR, or use the terrifying invocation, or whatever. really, anything is good. the point is that he will have EXCELLENT stats for either melee'ing or ranged shooting and as a chanter, almost complete 100% freedom in talent choices since all chanter picks are complete garbage. 

he's the jack of all trades master of none, and now being the only class with 25/25 acc/def, AND complete freedom in talent picks, he's the no-brainer class choice for a generic "anything" build. the phrases/invocations are just a nice bonus.

unfortunately regardless of how high you pump a chanters stats or whatever he will always be just that, the jack of all trades. yes, it is true his inocations don't rely on INT for anything except one or two of them, and their durations expire on a timer, but the class itself is just blah.

footnote: the melee variant of this chanter would benefit most using the dragon thrashes phrase and the fire lashing phrase, to pump his damage, while the ranged variant suffers because a regular chanter, with pumped int, would be a GREAT ranged unit as he would buff your backline with il-nocked phrase, but this retard chanter can only buff his own personal reload speed, which is still great mind you. the only other class that can buff their ranged reload/speed is the ranger! and he can't extend it to others either! so it's not that big of a loss.

tldr obs should implement storyline affectations with your stats, like fallouts et all. in fo1 and fo2 and f: nv dumping int means you can barely form words and it changes how they talk to you in dialogues, and even a lot of quests are changed and it's a complete different experience playing as low-INT in fo1/2/nv.

stuff like that would help prevent this admittedly asinine mathematical exercises in min/maxing.

[mosspit]

... Monk's can get away with as well, as pretty much only Swift Strikes wants it, and it's a judgement call if 3.5 seconds of Swift Strikes is worth +7 acc. (Not really an open-shut case like the first 3). ...

It is more than that.

• Torment Reach range is determined by int. This post has a decent summary of the poster's findings - https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/74521-monk-build-int-as-a-dump-stat/?p=1654783. This post is kinda old (around 1.06?) but as far as Int goes, I think it is still okay for reference. The thread contains some findings on range of Rooting Pain vs int too but meh. 
• Wounds duration is affected by Int. That was one of the things I noticed without referencing external sources on my int-dumped Monk - Wounds expire faster. And this is a subtle factor since Wound Duration is not as well documented as other duration skills. This will utlimately affect how you spent your skills and effectiveness of Turning Wheel. Iron Wheel too but meh.
• Then there are the duration skills like Clarity of Agony, Crucible of Suffering and ofc Swift/Lightning Strikes etc.

The shortcomings of a int-dumped Monk is the sum of all its parts above. And it is difficult to analyse in a controlled environment. Eg. how do you determine the effectiveness loss of missing out on a hypothetical 3 wounds because you were paralyzed (due to low Will) and therefore causing the Wounds (again low int duration) to expire before you recover? There are so many scenarios. So I prefer just to comment on the overall feel of the different playthroughs. Edited November 5, 2015 by mosspit

[Vorad]

It depends also on party composition, I run 4 caster and 2 melee(paladin + chanter) having max int on paladin really helps with party management and deployment. In a full melee party maybe you could get away with dumping int but the statement cannot be generalized for each party. All in all the only one who might actually get away with 3 int is the meatbag... fighter I meant(and even that is dubious because some of his buffs are semi decent to have them last a bit longer than minimum) .

Edited November 5, 2015 by Vorad

[Raven Darkholme]

Your title is all wrong.

It's not, that you SHOULD dump IN, its, that you CAN dump it.

Back, when I did my 3 chicks vs. PotD I dumped IN on my pally, but not on the fighter and whenever I solo I dump IN.

If I would use a full party I wouldn't dump IN, true I could but I don't see why I should, like your title suggests.

[Njall]

It depends also on party composition, I run 4 caster and 2 melee(paladin + chanter) having max int on paladin really helps with party management and deployment. In a full melee party maybe you could get away with dumping int but the statement cannot be generalized for each party. All in all the only one who might actually get away with 3 int is the meatbag... fighter I meant(and even that is dubious because some of his buffs are semi decent to have them last a bit longer than minimum) .

It depends on how you build the aforementioned meatbag. Intellect affects Constant Recovery, Unbroken's buff duration, Unbending, Knockdown, Vigorous Defense, Disciplined Barrage, Clear Out's duration, aside from any debuffs you might get from MC feats and/or items. It's actually a pretty decent stat for a defensively-oriented fighter (if I were building a pure tank, I'd dump dexterity instead. Might affects healing, perception helps landing those knockdowns and hitting with your draining weapon,  so you at the very least want to avoid a penalty, constitution increases your endurance, resolve boosts your deflection and intellect affects pretty much all of your battlefield control abilities and the duration of your defensive and offensive buffs).

But if you're building an auto-attacking dps machine, sure, dump away.

Edited November 5, 2015 by Njall

[brindle88]

This is probably one of the most stupid op's I have ever read.

 

Everyone dump intelligence!

 

It's good

 

Seriously, I don't dump my rogues int as I try to get the most out of sneak attacks and the length of afflictions landed with certain weapons.

 

A ranger with stormcaller probably wouldn't want int dumped

Edited November 5, 2015 by brindle88

[PugPug]

chanter summons as of recent patches EXPIRE ON PRE-SET TIMER and also chanter phrases' linger have preset durations.

 

No clue what you mean by Chants not needing Int duration; it directly increases Chant linger length. And sure, the summons have set duration,

 

 

Controversy!

 

I remember reading long ago on the wiki that having Intellect affect linger duration was something they thought about, but it doesn't. Currently the page has been edited by someone to remove the part about the devs deciding against it.

 

You guys also disagree about summon duration, but a look at the update notes should settle that one way or the other.

[aweigh0101]

above: my 3 int pally's zealous endurance aura. whoever says that isn't good enough to cover the pally, and his melee-buddies is just plain being contrarian. obviously it is smaller than a 10 int, or a huge 18 int one. but do you NEED that? i prefer THAT aura size, yes please, and 7 extra stat points. 

btw, 3 int fighter KD prone is 3 secs, 18 int kd prone is 7 secs. plenty enough for me. he's gonna need to pump per regardless in order to land them vs fort kd's on potd. a 3 int fighter KD that crits due to now able to max out per will last 5 seconds, and it will crit a lot cos with all those extra points, hey, time to pump everything else. the balanced-stat fighter will have a much lower per/much lower chance to land the KD, and much less have it CRIT, so it evens out. and i'd MUCH rather have a 3 sec prone and high per (for example) that also boosts his ACC hugely than a regular-amount INT fighter with average 10-13 PER, who will hit less in any scenario.

INT does not affect chanter abilities. go ahead and tweet sawyer about it if necessary. phrases have preset durations and linger, their summons have a hardcoded expiration timer since i believe patcch 2.0 onwards that is not modified by ANY stat, and to put the icing on the cake their chant aura is still huge with 3 int. i'm actually gonna go record some footage of two 3 INT chars:

3 int paladin and 3 int chanter - the point being to demonstrate briefly how int simply does not impact those two classes most key abilities: their aura ranges. (in terms of the context of INT, i mean, not saying that's all they're good for). i was quite surprised really myself, i expected 3 int to produce ridiculously small auras, but nope. btw, my 3 INT fighter i'm using right now has knockdowns that last for 2.5-6 whole seconds if hit (2.5-3.0 secs) or it crits (6 secs) and you know he hits a lot, and crits as well, cos i pumped dat per cos i dumped dat INT!!

i noticed another erronous thing someone said as well about int nerfing constant recovery and such. mate, simply put: no. the amount of healing the fighter's const. recov. does to him is determined solely by might, and gear/talents. its duration with 3 INT is 60 seconds, and with 18 int it is 135 seconds. so yeah, that is one thing that is absolutely true. but remember, a few patches ago that thing was unlimited lol. in any case, do you think ppl who dump int on their fighter care about how long his recovery lasts? be honest now! as with all healing abilities, if might is pumped, precisely why the person dumped int probably, to pump might on their character, as an example; well in this fighter's case the might solely determines how MUCH endurance is gained per 3 second "tick", even if the duration of the ability itself has shortened. with 18 might and 3 int, he will heal roughly 15% less in total at the end of the ability than a 3 might, 18 int fighter. just checked. 15% difference in amount of healing, different durations. confusing but the idea behind these percentage mechanics is to balance abilities; easier to modify percentages and multiply additives than to modify decimals and integers with division and add/sub. laziness on part of the developers. 

paladin healing is also determined almoste entirely by might. lay on hands has a very short duration and you can verify for yourself that 3 int doesn't nerf lay on hands at all. let me explain:

durations are modified by int. the resulting duration is a percentage of the original. 

a 3 sec. lay on hands from 10 int will be decreased to 1 second, maybe a tiny bit more, because the range from 3 seconds to 0 is SMALL. dumping int only wrecks LONG durations, because the percentage amount is drawn from a much bigger pool. in the pally's case the ability in question is affected even LESS than the fighter, as the duration is SO SHORT ANYWAY the loss of int decreases it by a PROPORTIONATELY small amount. and since once again, it is might that determines how much healing the lay on hands DOES, and the point of dumping int is basically to pump the other stats, probably including i dunno maybe MIGHT then it evens out. in fact, unlike the fighter the pally with 3 int but 18 might heals a tiny bit more than a pally with 3 might and 18 int. it's not that one cancels the other out, it's BALANCING. very few ways to "nerf" anything in PoE. sawyer gonna sawyer.

this is how the game works. this is also the same reason that, for example, everyone already knows now that damage modifiers from talents/etc are best served by using big weapons, with a larger range of min-max dmg. same thing with durations. it's like a 20 % dmg modifier on a hatchet, versus the same 20 % dmg mod on an estoc. they produce DRASTICALLY DIFFERENT NUMBERS even though it's the SAME modifier on both weapons. the gains on the hatchet are almost laughably small, about 0.5-1.1 extra dmg per swing, but on the estoc it's like 3-6 extra dmg.

simply put because of the way stats affect abilities and the way the game handles percentages: out of ALL the stats int is the one that LEAST affects the core functions of the main martial classes in the game. their stuff has short durations, and 100% of the time whatever the martial unit ability is we talk about it is also affected by a second stat, usually might (i.e. healing).

on the flip side casters rely on LONG durations and their best abilities/spells need int and benefit LINEARLY the more int the caster has because on top of that those spells are USUALLY not affected by a second stat in an IMPORTANT WAY. ONLY duration is significant, and of course the SIZE of the spell-area. VERY important. and again, only affected by int. a fighter doesn't need 18 int 7 second knockdown to be a good fighter, he can do fine with a 3 int 3 second knockdown. why? because knock down != fighter. casters however were designed from ground up to be specialized in one thing: casting spells. and to cast spells good u need dat int. when aloth runs out of spells... what's the backup awesome thing you can have him do? that's right. a big load of auto-attack, after spamming arc. assault (which only wizards have). caster classes are much more narrow in scope, and this is not a bad thing, i'm just pointing these facts out. fighters/monks/chanters/paladins don't NEED high int and can comfortably dump it without a serious drawback in real gameplay. (as pictured in top of post)

 

Edited November 5, 2015 by aweigh0101

[Vorad]

 

It depends also on party composition, I run 4 caster and 2 melee(paladin + chanter) having max int on paladin really helps with party management and deployment. In a full melee party maybe you could get away with dumping int but the statement cannot be generalized for each party. All in all the only one who might actually get away with 3 int is the meatbag... fighter I meant(and even that is dubious because some of his buffs are semi decent to have them last a bit longer than minimum) .

It depends on how you build the aforementioned meatbag. Intellect affects Constant Recovery, Unbroken's buff duration, Unbending, Knockdown, Vigorous Defense, Disciplined Barrage, Clear Out's duration, aside from any debuffs you might get from MC feats and/or items. It's actually a pretty decent stat for a defensively-oriented fighter (if I were building a pure tank, I'd dump dexterity instead. Might affects healing, perception helps landing those knockdowns and hitting with your draining weapon,  so you at the very least want to avoid a penalty, constitution increases your endurance, resolve boosts your deflection and intellect affects pretty much all of your battlefield control abilities and the duration of your defensive and offensive buffs).

But if you're building an auto-attacking dps machine, sure, dump away.

 

Hence the sentence in the brackets.

[aweigh0101]

i keep forgetting to rebut the "casters can dump res" idea, so i'll do it quick now while it's on my mind.

unlike martial classes and their ambivalent relationship with the intellect attribute and how it affects their core class functions the PoE casters have to rely on at least a moderate amount of CONCENTRATION to not have INTERRUPTED that super-duper important AoE heal that if you don't get it off it means you're gonna get party-wiped!

obs wasn't on drugs when they gave durance 19 resolve people. sure maybe a 19 isn't optimal, but their reasoning was and is that the priest needed high concentration because casual players would probably rely on the priests healing and buffing and, being literally the only priest npc to recruit in the game aside from inn-adventurers (most ppl don't use those, atleast definitely not when the game came out) they needed to make sure their NPC priest didn't need baby-sitting from the new players who probably didn't understand all the systems. poe is very convoluted, and i don't think anyone here would deny that. they gave him all that RES so the uber-important-for-first-time-players-who-are-casual-and-also-not-Priest NPC would be able to TAKE HITS, and NOT GET INTERRUPTED.

that line of reasoning is 100% solid and applies to all casters. obviously good players use their amazing MICRO POWERZ and actually control their units properly so their priest doesn't NEED high RES to avoid interrupted spells because these players KNOW how to utilize the units. Etc. but the REASONING behind having at least 10 res on a caster stands STRONG still, especially on PotD where the huge amount of trash mobs swarm over you randomly at times and you reeeeally don't want that 3 RES priest getting hit just when he's about to cast crown of the faithful or whatever.

tldr res on casters is more useful and less dump-able than int on martials. 

[KDubya]

You are overly generalizing and lumping all the Martial classes together. Some can dump intellect and some should not.

 

1.) Everyone - dumping Intellect needs to have the points replaced into Resolve to keep the effect on your Will defense neutral. Dumping Intellect and leaving Resolve at 10 will get you a really bad Will defense which will cause big problems.

 

2.) Monks - You don't have the stat points to pump it but leaving it at 10 is a good idea. As stated above the area of Tormen't Reach and the duration of wounds are reason enough not to dump it to 3. A Monk's defenses are one of his strong points so you'd need to put the points into Resolve to keep your Will defense up. Extra Resolve doesn't help a Monk very much.

 

3.) Paladins - A ten intellect is much better than a three. The three will severely reduce your aura, heals, and buffs. A melee team can get by with a ten intellect aura, a three will miss half of your frontline. Not to mention the huge decrease to LoH, sure enough a 10/10 Might intellect will heal similar to a 17/3 but going with a 17/10 would heal much more.

 

4.) Chanter - You want the chant linger to be long enough that you can tuck a shorter chant inside the linger of a longer one.

 

5.)Rogue - This guy you can dump intellect. I'd keep it at four so that you can wear a +2 item and eat food to buff it to eight which is enough with a high dex to keep someone prone forever. Again you'd want to place whatever you dump into Resolve to keep your Will defense neutral.

 

6.) Fighter - This guy can dump intellect.

[Teioh_White]

So...if I play well and keep my QB (caster) in the pocket (back line) and the O-line(melee's) don't let any DE/T(mobs) sack(hit) the QB, that Res will be doing literally nothing outside of Will saves, letting it basically be free points? Cuz that's how it tends to go in my games. (Will saves is legit though, Fampyr can mess Res tanking up bad....but that applies to Int as well).

 

Seriously though, Res still has a function for backline, it's just it's generally going to give less value than any other stat due to rarely coming up, so it's a worse decision. I also pretty rarely just let a caster try to cast through hits, so the concentration isn't very useful. If a caster has come under fire, I just fix the situation, not stand there with stuff wailing on him.

 

I'd agree if you're not really sure how to play the game, having some resolve and dropping Plate Mail on everyone and putting it on a non-PotD isn't a bad idea. I wouldn't argue it's an optimal way to play though.

[aweigh0101]

i agree with your general conclusion regarding RES and its relationship with core class function of casters; i.e. unlike the multiple examples i provided concerning the game's martial classes and their questionable relationship with the INT stat from a reductionist approach to the mechanics, the RES scenario i began to debate isn't the same thing at all; the type of correllation i'm referring to doesn't exist with casters, and most definitely not with RES stat.

obviously it is INT the one and only stat casters need, but I stand by my original statement concerning stat-dumping with non-martial classes: "casters can't dump ANY stat". there is a very valid reasoning behind dumping RES with a caster, and also CON; i agree wholeheartedly that those two stats do not serve the caster classes core design and application.

casters are in a much more interesting situation stat-wise in regards to specific "player-builds", or "player goals" if you will, since they operate entirely on the strength of one single stat, INT, but also draw varying benefits and modifications to their presence as a game unit acting and reacting. it's a much more complicated and convoluted thought exercise this attempt of finding stats to dump for casters because the honest truth is they can can use them all for one thing or another, or for one PLAY STYLE or another.

i will concede that out of all the stats, the one i would dump on a caster if forced to at gun-point would be constitution. i would dump con on a wizard because of arcane veil, and his many defensie spells, and on the druid for similar reasons albeit knowing full well that he lacks a hard-counter to deflection malus like arcane veil.

it is the priest where i would struggle most as he really can make use of every single stat, and of the 3 core caster classes it is absolutely no coincidence that his starting deflection of 15 and starting acc of 20 (5 less ACC than the druid, but 5 more than the wizard, and 5 more acc than the wizard and equal acc with the druid) and the design decision to implement deity abilities/traits that can completely shape the priest's play style and choice of stat distribution among all the other things. nowadays i almost exclusively roll with a posse of all martial classes and 1 priest, cos he's the ONLY caster class i find truly fun and interesting to use in the game.

i.e. i love spamming shining beacon keke

[Vorad]

Chanter - You want the chant linger to be long enough that you can tuck a shorter chant inside the linger of a longer one.

 

 

I second that, with a 20 base intellect from race + background your linger on 1st level  chants is almost equal the duration so you can permanently keep the effects from 2 buffing chants up all the time non-stop. The problem that I see here with chanter is that the "linger" doesn't provide anything on the debuffing chants dull the edge blunt the sword will have a duration of 4 and a linger of ~4 with high intellect but that linger counts for nothing in this case which is sad. So overall having high int with chanter is good when it comes to buffing your party.

 

Cuz that's how it tends to go in my games. (Will saves is legit though, Fampyr can mess Res tanking up bad....but that applies to Int as well).

One of the reasons why I have switched to Goldpact instead of Darcozzi paladin is the early access to counter charm/dominate especially in the early levels it can ruin your party apart from the Fampyrs those spores are nasty as well.

 

In the end as mentioned already it boils down to what's the party composition and what's the goal. If one wants to make use of buffs then int is essential. However even when it comes down to a full melee party personally I don't really like to cramp them up in a tight position 2.5 meters is really confiding, for example if you want to flank a dragon you are not able to provide the aura to your flankers.

[aweigh0101]

interesting points. afflictions and mental assaults are indeed legit. in my first two full potd playthroughs the second i got wiped by some dank spores at the bottom of stormwell gorge something snapped in me, something PRIMAL, so i made every single party member in that playthrough AND the following potd playthrough aftewards take the 2 talents body control AND mental fortress. 

i also for the first time since playing the game on normal, and then hard, and now on potd i actually stopped and ready bestiary entries and started planning ahead my defenses to certain afflictions. it was the "magic moment" i realized potd is how the game is truly meant to be played; all of the game mechanics either shine nova-bright or implode, everything's out in the open for the player to digest and assimilated. normal and hard barely require the player to pay attention to what dmg type their sword does!

so yeah, dat playthrough i was ready for the endless paths fampyrs very well: every unit had body control andmental fortress, PC had Murrica Arret for the +12 will and serel's ring of 2 resolve, plus orlan's bramble ring of freedom, the belt of sturdiness from prone and the boots of fenwalking. earlier the paths you also fine a kick ass breastplate unique that has +20 versus charm and dominate.however if the unit you equip it one dumped RES... there is no point then. 

i like RES as a stat very very much. it might a psychological thing lol but i like figuring out what is MOST important, taking a reductioninst breakdown of the systems and their correlatinos, and in PoE deflection is the most important stant. there's no real valid way to argue that it is not. even nerfed post-2.0, it is STILL 100% viable to build deflection tanks or deflection tank hybrids. ni fact, THOSE are the most mathematically "optimized" units anyway! although not necessarily the best at specializing or doing a specific thing. 

[Parasol_Syndicate]

Interesting that there's been no discussion of barbarians, thus far. 

 

That said, I personally wouldn't want a paladin who couldn't aura the entire party. 

[mosspit]

Well perhaps most have gotten the memo that int is useful for a barb since it augments its class defining skill.

 

That or to avoid having another deja vu that results in mods coming in to lock the thread.

Edited November 9, 2015 by mosspit

[Ineth]

For Fighter, Paladin, and Monk you can safely dump INT.

 

But not for the Barbarian. He needs INT to develop his full potential.