Perception and Resolve

[Hynkel]

What do you guys think of these two attributes ? What bugs me is how they give you a flat bonus instead of something level or percent-based. +5 to accuracy or deviation seems pretty much unconsequential at high level and definitely not worth sacrificing 5 might.

 

Then there's the other bonuses. How relevant are concentration and interrupt ?

[Boeroer]

Concentration is important if you get attacked a lot. Getting interrupted all the time sucks. Especially casters who want to cast self buffs but get interrupted constantly will suffer. It's more important when you play solo though. There are some items and spells which raise concentration. Once you have those and don't care about deflection you can retrain and drop RES.

 

Interrupt is great if you are a fast hitter. For example a fast hitting barbarian can interrupt whole groups with carnage. It's a nice side effect. For builds which focus in single target damage it's not that superuseful in my opinion, but still nice to have. There are talents, abilitites and items which raise the interrupt chance. If you pile up those things it gets interesting.

 

It's right: the flat bonus for deflection and accuracy is great in the early game but doesn't matter a lot later on. But since the early game is the hardest part of PoE it somewhat fits.

Edited March 8, 2017 by Boeroer

[Torm51]

Concentration is important if you get attacked a lot. Getting interrupted all the time sucks. Especially casters who want to cast self buffs but get interrupted constantly will suffer. It's more important when you play solo though. There are some items and spells which raise concentration. Once you have those and don't care about deflection you can retrain and drop RES.

 

Interrupt is great if you are a fast hitter. For example a fast hitting barbarian can interrupt whole groups with carnage. It's a nice side effect. For builds which focus in single target damage it's not that superuseful in my opinion, but still nice to have. There are talents, abilitites and items which raise the interrupt chance. If you pile up those things it gets interesting.

 

It's right: the flat bonus for deflection and accuracy is great in the early game but doesn't matter a lot later on. But since the early game is the hardest part of PoE it somewhat fits.

Agree with my old friend Boeroer.  Since Act I and II are the hardest its most important then anyway.  

 

PS Boer help me out with my MASSIVE CON paladin Dwarf!

[Kaylon]

Let's imagine you have 100% chance to hit...

+1might means you'll do, at best, 100x3%=300% more dmg over 100hits.

+1perception means you'll do, on average, a critical hit instead of a graze every 100hits - that's 100-230% more dmg over 100hits (depending on your critical damage bonuses)

 

Now, in a slightly worse scenario you can also miss a few hits...

+1might means you'll do less than 300% dmg - ie 250-300% more dmg every 100hits

+1perception means you'll do, on average, a critical hit instead of a miss every 100hits - ie 200-500% more dmg ever 100hits (depending on classes and bonuses)

 

The conclusion is, depending on the situations (especially vs high defense enemies), the perception can be even better than might.

 

The deflection is one of the best defenses for a melee character because probably 90% of the attacks will target it. The trick with all defenses is that every point you invest in them is better than the previous. If you want to build a tank then the best way to mitigate damage is to stack defenses (more than DR) and in such situations +1res could be worth much more than +1mig.

Edited March 8, 2017 by Kaylon

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

I find Perception a lot more valuable on PotD, personally.

 

When I've seen people calculate out the math, there's definitely a "break point" past which additional points of Perception are worth less than other stats -- from memory without looking up old posts it was something like +15 over opponent's Deflection, either when you stop converting Misses to Grazes and start converting Grazes to Hits instead, or the other  later break point where you're hitting all the time and additional points only convert Hits to Crits. But on PotD you will rarely hit that, and on boss fights you never will (even on low difficulties Thaos has very high defenses). So Perception always helps when it matters.

 

edit: tactically, I also like high Per builds because they're *reliable* -- I know my spells are going to hit, etc. 

 

2nd: edit: basically Pillars has three damage stats: Might, Dex, and Per. Might gives the most damage *up front*, per-hit, which matters vs. armor or against weak enemies you can instakill. Dex gives the most damage *over time*, which matters strategically over the course of the game or over very long fights. Per gives the most damage when you're fighting enemies that are otherwise too tough for you (bosses, enemies over your level, or enemies on PotD).

Edited March 8, 2017 by Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

[Livegood118]

Yeah, throw me in with the folks that say Perception gives you the bigger bonus when it actually matters (tough foes).

 

Outside of weird circumstances where crits/grazes don't really matter much, like a monk hitting with their fists or something like that, I always like to have high perception.

 

Something that should also be taken in to account is how crits interact with crowd-control spells. For damage, all you'll get from a crit is a % of the base damage of whatever attack/ability you're using, which for one handed weapons is around an extra five damage or thereabouts.

 

But, for crowd control spells, a crit multiplies the total amount of time you CC the foe by 1.5.

 

So, let's say you cast an 8 second CC spell with 25 INT and score a hit:

 

8 * 1.75 = 14 seconds

 

Now, if you do the same with a crit, you get:

 

8 * 1.75 * 1.5 = 21 seconds

 

Which is a huge difference and is like getting an extra free cast of the base spell again. The effects get more and more ridiculous with longer durations (a 12 second CC spell crit would = 12 * 1.75 * 1.5 = 31.5)

 

As others have said, resolve is pretty great too and its effects on DPS – especially for characters that are on the front lines – shouldn't be discounted. A character that walks the line between being a tank/damage dealer that stays alive longer and doesn't get interrupted will do more damage than a char with an extra 15% base damage from might. 

 

I suppose the concentration aspect of resolve becomes less important as deflection increases though. 

[JerekKruger]

Outside of weird circumstances where crits/grazes don't really matter much, like a monk hitting with their fists or something like that, I always like to have high perception. 

 

I thought it was only Novice's Suffering that suffered from crits/grazes being almost irrelevant and that the bonus damage from Transcendent Suffering counted as base damage and thus benefited a lot from % modifiers.

[limaxophobiacq]

I agree with other here that perception is very usefull, especially for any character that does AoE damage with interrupts like a barb or wizard, but Resolve IMO really is just a bad stat, with the exception of solo play where it can be important, due to the wealth of spells available to parties that make base resolve fairly meaningless. Deflection is only stopping damage attacks and having a party go down to just damage is really hard with all the AoE heals and defensive buff you get in this game. When you have Moonwell and Crowns for the Faithful down who cares what your base resolve was?

Edited March 9, 2017 by limaxophobiacq

[Livegood118]

 

Outside of weird circumstances where crits/grazes don't really matter much, like a monk hitting with their fists or something like that, I always like to have high perception. 

 

I thought it was only Novice's Suffering that suffered from crits/grazes being almost irrelevant and that the bonus damage from Transcendent Suffering counted as base damage and thus benefited a lot from % modifiers.

 

 

I don't think this is right sorry – last time I remember asking about this I think Loren Tyr said that it had changed and that transcendant suffering doesn't count as +base damage and is only affected by might.

 

Long Pain still increases with base damage per level.

 

Edit: found Loren's post - https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/88596-barbarian-novice-suffering/?p=1834589

Edited March 8, 2017 by Livegood118

[JerekKruger]

I don't think this is right sorry – last time I remember asking about this I think Loren Tyr said that it had changed and that transcendant suffering doesn't count as +base damage and is only affected by might.

 

Yep, just tested it myself. Created a Monk, used the console to level him to 16 and give him 100 Perception, killed the Caravan in the prologue. In somewhere between 20 and 30 crits I never exceeded the maximum that one would expect if the crit bonus only applied to the base damage.

 

Unless I am mistake, Might usually only applies to the base damage of a weapon attack, so this fact is rather weird.

 

EDIT: actually this kind of makes sense. The crit bonus only applies to the base damage of normal weapons, so a Rogue with a legendary sabre and all the +X% damage mods he can stack still only gets +5.5-8 damage from a crit, which is basically the same as what a Monk gets from a crit with his fists (+5-7.5). Making the crit multiplier apply to the full Transcendent Suffering attack would have been a lot more powerful. Of course once Durganification gets factored in the fists fall behind, but they get more from Might so it's not all that bad.

Edited March 8, 2017 by JerekKruger

[indika_tates]

Resolve is all about concentration. If you have a barbarian with dumped RES you'll be constantly interrupted without (ab)using potions/spells. The flat increase to deflection is negligible mid-late game when you have superior deflection talent + superb tower shield + inherent level bonus. The trick is that specialized deflection characters (like fighters) can get to the point where the enemies have to pray to even graze you. So outside of a fighter build I find that 10Res is just enough to avoid negative concentration, specially if you have 2handed weapons where you get perma-interrupted if your char is surrounded by 2-3 mobs. There are builds of low-res characters that fight on the frontline, but you have to use permanently items/potions/spells that fix your lack of concentration.

 

On the other side, perception is very important specially for casters. You can have 50 might but if you miss it's worth nothing.

[Boeroer]

It's right that PER is a lot more beneficial to DPS early on. But later on it doesn't matter that much anymore:

 

You might use debuffs and buffs to raise accuracy, your weapons will have ACC bonuses. In the early game you really *feel* a difference, later not so much (if we're only talking about 5 points or so).

The thing is: in a scenario where you crit a lot anyway because enemies' defenses got debuffed like hell and your ACC got boosted into the sky some points of PER will not do anything for you while MIG will add some damage on top of every crit. This is especially true with wounding and fists + both Sufferings' bonuses because MIG will work with them.

 

MIG will not only raise your damage (a bit), but also your healing. This can be good with things like Veteran's Recovery and Shod-in-Faith and such. And it's also better (in some way) for defenses: PER bolsters reflex (which can be raised with a shield and also some self buffs) while MIG is good for your fortitude.

 

If you use wounding weapons or want to heal I would recommend MIG over PER. If you want to use on-crit weapons or weapons with annihilation I would favor PER.

 

Of course it's best to have both maxed, along with DEX.

Edited March 9, 2017 by Boeroer