Greater Malison, Doom, and Lower Resistance had no saving throw and long durations for a reason

[PugPug]

 

If you are having trouble hitting it, a spell to make it easier to hit will probably miss.

 

In theory, spells like Arkemyr's Dazzling Lights, which targets one defense and lowers another, are a good idea. In practice, strong enemies tend to have very high defenses all around. For normal enemies, you can simply use a spell they don't have a strong defense against in the first place. You could even cast it twice, rather than casting a debuff and another spell once.

 

Other spells, like Miasma of Dull-Mindedness, which primarily serves to lower the same defense it targets, aren't even good ideas in theory. If you need to reduce their perception (reflex) intellect (will) and resolve (will), they've probably got pretty high will defense.

 

Many of the durations are short; 10 or 12 seconds. You are better off casting the spell you want twice and hoping one of them lands:

 

• Say you have a 20 percent chance of hitting. You cast twice. There is a 36% chance it will hit once.

 

• Say you have a 20 percent chance of hitting. You cast a debuff to reduce a defense by 20 (such as by inflicting Sickened or Hobbled) with a 50 percent chance of hitting. There is seldom or never a 30-point spread in defenses in POE1, but let's be generous.
• The chance of both spells landing is 20%.
• The chance of only the debuff landing is 30%.
• The chance of only the spell landing is 10%.
• The chance of both spells missing is 40%.
• Overall, the chance of your spell landing is 30%.

 

Obviously there are other factors in your strategy, like using a low-level debuff to prime for a higher level spell, or one caster debuffing and another casting the spell, or even multiple casters benefiting from a single debuff.

 

But given that these are situational spells to begin with and that a party can do very little against a high-defense enemy without them, I think it's reasonable to say that in POE2, their use should not be objectively detrimental so commonly.

 

 

In case you aren't familiar, the spells mentioned in the subject line are from Baldur's Gate.

Edited September 26, 2017 by PugPug

[Wormerine]

This... seems like a very logical argument. I didn't dive into game mechanics nearly as thoughtfully to figure out whenever my debuffs as effective as I am thinking they are. With limited amount of spells spellcasters will be able to cast in one battle making debuffs more reliable might be a way to go. 

[morhilane]

The op seems clueless that spells in POE1 will graze a lot more than they will miss. In fact, to have more misses than graze/hits you need a ~40+ different in accuracy vs defense which either mean your character is naked (no items, no potions), under a major debuff that affect accuracy or there is significant level difference between you and the target.

 

The way debuff graze works is that only the duration is halved, the effectiveness is not changed. Miasma of Dull-Mindedness would apply full negative effect for 6 seconds instead of 12 (with Int at 10). That's long enough to get a stronger spells that attack Will through from the same caster. Although, you should probably setup one or two other character to target Will if you are to use that spell.

 

For bosses, the issues isn't the accuracy vs defense cause debuff to miss (they will rarely do so), the issue is that bosses are immune to a lots of afflictions applied by those debuff.

Edited September 26, 2017 by morhilane

[Boeroer]

You forget that you can buff the accuracy of one single CC guy into the sky for a short moment - so he can land a debuff on anything. This makes it easier for the rest of the party to then hit the enemy.

 

That's why Coordinated Attacks and Marking are so useful - as well as to know which ACC bonuses stack and which not.

 

For me it's very easy to hit or crit any enemy in PoE with one or more CC effects and then get the party started.

 

But the problem is that you have to find this out all by yourself, or read a ton of info in the forums.

 

If the description of abilities would be better (also in terms of stacking!) this would become accessible for every player - not just he ones that play this game for the 100th time...

 

And then you need no abilities that circumvent defenses (like Minor Missiles now do in Deadfire or like Retaliation once did in PoE). I don't like that approach because it will get abused. Build a char with abysmal accuracy but a ton of MIG and INT and he will still hit with mighty force... weird...

[injurai]

Any Pokemon fans in here? This is exact thing a very very common aspect of those games. Right down to the accuracy as hit chance is the bread and butter of those games. Priority too. Often better doing something twice than using the mitigation or utility moves. Of course it depends, sometimes you have no choice to use them to get through defenses and such. But there is a wide zone in between defended and undefended where most things lie that encourages you to just chip away instead. Especially if your pokemon is attack oriented.

 

I assume much of the same applies to Pillars. I have literally never thought about this conundrum outside of Pokemon. Pokemon is the most bewildering rock paper scissors game devised.

[morhilane]

Lots of games use accuracy/to-hit chance systems, but no POE1 isn't that much rock/paper/scissors. Disables and debuff will rarely actually miss like I explained and there is plenty of potions, scrolls and buff to make sure you get a hit or crit anyway. The only reasons not to use a disable in POE1 is if you want to keep some cast-per-rest for after the fight or the character is DPS oriented instead of CC/support.

 

POE2 though, is going to be rock/paper/scissors, because they are introducing a counter system for afflictions and other things (like water tagged spells countering fire effects).

Edited September 27, 2017 by morhilane

[MaxQuest]

@OP, agreed on the points made, but after witnessing the power of Isaac's Greater Missile Storm from NWN2 which has no save, I am very reluctant when it comes to making a spell that ignores defenses/saving throws.

 

There is a middle ground though: spells that lower enemy def, fort, reflex or will, but do not deal damage by themselves, can have a hefty bonus to accuracy.

Edited September 27, 2017 by MaxQuest

[Fluffle]

Say you have a 20 percent chance of hitting. You cast twice. There is a 36% chance it will hit once.

 

How did you calculate that? I may be mistaken but I would say it's a 32% chance that you hit once, when you try twice each time with a probability of success of 20%.

[MaxQuest]

How did you calculate that? I may be mistaken but I would say it's a 32% chance that you hit once, when you try twice each time with a probability of success of 20%.

He is computing the chance to not hit at all first, which is (1 - 0.2) * (1 - 0.2) = 0.64

Thus chance to hit is 1 - 0.64 = 0.36

 

Tehe, that was the very first problem, on the very first lecture in Uni. Strange, 12 yeas have passed, but I still remember it)

[Fluffle]

 

How did you calculate that? I may be mistaken but I would say it's a 32% chance that you hit once, when you try twice each time with a probability of success of 20%.

He is computing the chance to not hit at all first, which is (1 - 0.2) * (1 - 0.2) = 0.64

Thus chance to hit is 1 - 0.64 = 0.36

 

Tehe, that was the very first problem, on the very first lecture in Uni. Strange, 12 yeas have passed, but I still remember it)

 

 

I would model this as a binomial experiment.

 

chance of success: p = 0.2

chance of failure: q = 0.8

trials: n = 2

number of successes: k = 1

 

then as per binomial pmf: (n choose k) * p^k * q^(n-k) = (2 choose 1) * 0.2^1 * 0.8^1 = 2*0.2*0.8 = 0.32 = 32%

 

0.64 is the chance to fail both times, that is correct, however when yo calculate 1-0.64, what exactly are you doing there?

You try to get the probability for the complementary event.

 

But what is the complementary event of not hitting at all? It is not just hitting once. The complementary event of not hitting at all is

hitting at least once, so it's hitting once or twice.

 

So what does 0.36 mean? You have a 36% chance to hit twice OR once. So with a chance of 36% you hit at least once.

If you want the probability to hit exactly once, that's 32%.

 

The chance to hit twice is 0.04 = 4%. If you add that to the 32% then you get the 36%.

 

This all was caused because I thought it was about the probability of hitting exactly once. Which doesn't make much sense, I admit

It's about the probability of hitting AT LEAST once. It's a difference and I should have guessed so

[JerekKruger]

I would model this as a binomial experiment.

 

A little heavy handed, but it works

[PugPug]

 

 

How did you calculate that? I may be mistaken but I would say it's a 32% chance that you hit once, when you try twice each time with a probability of success of 20%.

 

He is computing the chance to not hit at all first, which is (1 - 0.2) * (1 - 0.2) = 0.64

Thus chance to hit is 1 - 0.64 = 0.36Tehe, that was the very first problem, on the very first lecture in Uni. Strange, 12 yeas have passed, but I still remember it)

 

I would model this as a binomial experiment.

 

chance of success: p = 0.2

chance of failure: q = 0.8

trials: n = 2

number of successes: k = 1

 

then as per binomial pmf: (n choose k) * p^k * q^(n-k) = (2 choose 1) * 0.2^1 * 0.8^1 = 2*0.2*0.8 = 0.32 = 32%

0.64 is the chance to fail both times, that is correct, however when yo calculate 1-0.64, what exactly are you doing there?

You try to get the probability for the complementary event.

 

But what is the complementary event of not hitting at all? It is not just hitting once. The complementary event of not hitting at all is

hitting at least once, so it's hitting once or twice.

 

So what does 0.36 mean? You have a 36% chance to hit twice OR once. So with a chance of 36% you hit at least once.

If you want the probability to hit exactly once, that's 32%.

 

The chance to hit twice is 0.04 = 4%. If you add that to the 32% then you get the 36%.

 

This all was caused because I thought it was about the probability of hitting exactly once. Which doesn't make much sense, I admit

It's about the probability of hitting AT LEAST once. It's a difference and I should have guessed so

You are correct, though in my thinking if you hit on the first cast the experiment is over. I should have phrased it more accurately. (“at least once”)