Does Confident Aim Work ?

[Elric Galad]

As far as I know graze to hit part has always worked.

 

But it has been said many times that the +20% min damages did not. Some says it is from 3.0 that it is not working anymore. Some say it's only a graphic bug.

 

Finally, what does it do exactly ? Some say it works only on damages stated as min (Edit: when DR eats 80% of your damages), but by looking at old tests, it seem that it work as expected, giving +20% to min range of base damages (which is great).

 

So, does anyone have a clear view ?

Edited April 8, 2016 by Elric Galad

[Braven]

Maybe the "minimum damage" doesn't mean what you think it means.  Instead of increasing the minimum damage range of all attacks, it increases the MIN damage that happens when 80%+ of your damage is eaten up by enemy DR.  Pillars refers to that as "Minimum Damage" (you can see when it happens because it will display MIN in the combat log).  

 

I am not sure which of those two "minimum damages" confident aim is referring to, but that is one possibility of why you think it isn't doing anything.  If it is that type of Minimum Damage, than Confident aim is only good if you are going against high DR enemies and using low base attack weapons (like daggers, hachets, etc), or if you have terrible accuracy and graze a lot (which also would trigger MIN damage).  The toughest enemies have both high defense and high DR, so I imagine confident aim would be very good against those enemies.  It would also be really good for low Perception fighters (like the infamous 3 PER fighter build)

Edited April 8, 2016 by Braven

[Elric Galad]

Yes this is what I meant by "damages stated as MIN". But I've seen different things written down here, so...

[Braven]

Yeah, I have heard conflicting answers too.  Sorry, I missed reading the second part of your post and didn't see that you also suggested the DR possibility.  My gut feeling is that it is the DR-inflicted min damage.  That makes more sense because it seems the purpose of the ability is to mitigate bad hits... not to make, say, a critical hit even better by increasing the damage range. 

 

I didn't notice much of any impact when trying it out, so I think it is easily skippable (at least if you have good perception and unlikely to graze).  Fighters have lots of good alternatives, particularly if your fighter has high INT.  My "glass tsunami" build doesn't take it for that reason.

 

It would be nice to have a definitive answer, if someone wants to do the testing.

Edited April 8, 2016 by Braven

[Kaylon]

It's not the min damage from the DR reduction, it's the min damage of the weapon - you just don't see it on character sheet, nor it's specified in the logs. It can be verified only if you pay attention to the damage in the logs which doesn't go under the new min. Confident Aim coupled with Comtessa Gage gloves will make fighter's damage nearly constant.

[Elric Galad]

Then it's a really good ability.

 

20% Min damage is about 8%* Base damages.

 

Base damages get multiplied by about anything, especially bonus damage. If you end up with around 100% bonus damages (It can be a bit more), it means it worth around 16% Bonus damage.

It is unconditional, Passive (so it stacks with everything), works on spells and ranged weapons, and you'll also get Graze to Hit.

 

 

* Formula :

Old Average Damage = (MIN + MAX) /2

New Average Damage = (1.2xMIN + MAX) /2

 

Assuming MAX = 1.5 x MIN (depends on weapons, but it is not vvery far from it)

Old Average Damage = 1,25 MIN

New Average Damage = 1,35 MIN

New Average Damage / Old Average Damage = 1.08 (So +8%)

Edited April 8, 2016 by Elric Galad

[Kaylon]

It increases the base min damage, so it's an effective 10% increase to your average base damage which is further multiplied by the other damage bonuses.

Edited April 8, 2016 by Kaylon

[Elric Galad]

Please check the formula above. It's around 8%, not 10%.

It looks intuitive and most people believe it is 10%, but it is not.

 

I AM NOT CRAZY     

 

It doesn't change much, it's still an excellent ability, and again, thank you for your clarifications.

[JerekKruger]

That is a really nice ability. I had assumed it was minimum damage getting through DR as well, since it doesn't show up on the character sheet. It being actual minimum damage is really good.

[Braven]

With that formula, it is strictly better than weapon specialization for average damage in the late game (even not factoring in the Graze-to-hit bonus is). The key is that it is multicative instead of additive.

 

Though I guess it might be hard getting the 100% bonus without specialization/mastery.

Edited April 9, 2016 by Braven

[Elric Galad]

Even with 75% (superb weapon + 20 might) it still worth 14% more damages +20% graze to hit. So I really think it is stricly better.

 

But I doubt I would skip Weapon Specialisation by the way.