intellect not working as intended for area of effect?

[clouseau64]

Intellect does not work in the same way as in POE1 when it comes to area of efffect. i did a couple of test and it looks like the x% percent bonus is no longer applied to the radius of the circular area of effect like in poe1 but directly to the surface (pi * r^2). If this is intended it is a very serious nerf of intelligence as impact is reduced from x% to Sqrt( x%). no point in maxing out intelligence, for my skald with 20 intelligence ( so alledged bonus of +60% the actual bonus is only 26% in radius. pretty ridiculous.

 

Is the change intended?

[unfriendly_cat]

See, the radius version is simply better.

 

 

Indeed, the radius version felt very satisfying in the original game, and things are much less fun in the beta. A couple of relevant points:

 

1. The (very reasonable) goal of the new system seems to be to scale the effectiveness of spells linearly with INT. However, effectiveness is (almost) never directly proportional to the area of effect. Instead, it is proportional to the number of enemies (or allies) that are affected by the spell. If enemies were spread out evenly all over the map, then the two would be roughly equivalent (and thus the new system would make perfect sense). However, spells are usually cast on a busy spot, with lots of enemies close to the center, and much fewer of them around the edges of the AoE. The marginal benefits of increasing the AoE therefore drop off fairly fast (at least until the AoE starts to clip into another enemy group, which doesn't happen too often with the new system).

 

2. In the original game one of the main benefits of having a large AoE was that it significantly increased the chance of actually landing a spell (as enemies would often move out of range otherwise). However, with retargeting this is no longer a concern, which again strongly decreases the relative value of having a high INT.

 

3. The most fun aspect (at least for me) of high-INT spellcasting was the tactical possibilities from playing with the positioning of the "foe only" band at the edge of the AoE, and I was really looking forward to try this with the wonderful new retargeting functionality. However, due to the new system, in the beta this foe-only region was almost negligbly small. If we do not revert to the radius-based approach (which would be a shame), then here is an alternative suggestion: For spells with friendly fire the INT score should simultaneously increase the total AoE (like now), and decrease the inside "friendly fire area", in effect widening the foe-only band more noticeably. This would make spell targeting fun and interesting again, and make high INT scores feel more rewarding without being overpowered.

 

(4. As a mathematician, I was ready to nitpick about exponential vs. polynomial growth; nice to see that MaxQuest already took care of it .)

Edited February 7, 2018 by unfriendly_cat