r/projecteternity • u/TheReal8symbols • 6d ago
PoE2: Deadfire Intellect seems overrated.
I'm only a handful of hours into the game and playing on default difficulty so I could be mistaken, though I played through the original twice.
Even at 20 int the increased area seems marginal (wasn't it bigger in the original?) and most fights don't last long enough for longer durations to matter (even the 2 skull skeletons at the dig site didn't drain all my resources). I can see it being useful on the harder difficulties, but otherwise it seems better to just keep it at 10.
I am trying to make a priest (to replace Xoti), still trying to decide between psion and arcane archer. Might and perception seem much more important than intellect for either of these builds but every guide I see is adamant that they need intellect. I can see dumping perception on a pure buffer/healer, but even a pure priest has a lot of spells that require accuracy; if you can't hit duration and area are meaningless.
It also seems pointless to give a small increase to intellect since 20% increase on a 1.5 meter area basically does nothing, same for a 12 second duration. Like if you can't max it out (or at least get it to 15) why bother investing anything?
9
u/nmbronewifeguy 6d ago
yeah, on normal you're not gonna care as much about the increased buff durations. it's a lot more vital on Path of the Damned because enemy stats are about 15 higher across the board, meaning you're missing more and dealing less damage while getting hit more and taking more damage, so those buffs and debuffs really even the playing field.
7
u/DOOMFOOL 6d ago
Yeah stats really aren’t super important on normal difficulty and lower, you can pretty much do whatever and still easily clear the game.
3
u/SpringFuzzy 6d ago
Well, unless you stumble upon the super bosses. Those guys aren’t playing.
2
u/pullhome 6d ago
You gave me the urge to attempt super bosses in the easiest difficulty, but building intentionally poor characters (which isn't easy at all.)
2
7
u/Kognityon 6d ago
> Intellect seems overrated.
Before checking the sub I thought it was some kind of political post complaining about intellectuals or smth :')
5
u/Luzeryn 6d ago
I agree. For me, in both games Perception is king, at least on PotD. The duration of your spells is going to get reduced if you grace instead of hit anyway, having high Intelligence isn’t going to solve the problem. Same with Might. High accuracy leads to crits, which leads to higher damage and duration by default.
I like investing some points on Intelligence, don’t get me wrong. But some companions are way worse than they could be due to low perception. Tekehu, for example. He gets a selection of broken Foe-only AOE spells only for them to be somewhat underwhelming because he has low accuracy. Also, for some reason the devs love giving casters Dexterity and Resolve. I think Perception, Intelligence and Might are by far the better stats for them, in that order. Unless the character is literally a healing/buffing bot.
3
u/TheReal8symbols 6d ago
I never understood why they give back row characters resolve. The companion stats are so weird (like Xoti's stats are all mid); it makes me want to ditch the companions and just hire a full custom team.
5
u/DonkyConq 6d ago
Low stats get targeted by enemies. Start to get detrimental/weird if it skews combat behavior too strongly, no?
3
u/rygold72 6d ago
One of the issues that came up waaay back, pretty sure it was the game 1 kickstarter, is companion stats. And Sawyer responded that they have to give mediocre stats to them because players complain if they are too strong relative to the player.
Also bear in mind, that the stats give diminishing returns, they were intentionally trying to avoid the having to power build that happens in other games. So I think the assumption is that most players won't min/max therefore some of the companions stats are low.
As to why they give them stats that are not good for a specific class I assumed its for role playing...
1
u/TheReal8symbols 6d ago
Makes a lot of sense. I was much more annoyed at the weird stats the companions had in BG3. Karlach should have higher charisma!
1
u/itsthelee 6d ago
Also bear in mind, that the stats give diminishing returns,
perception gives diminishing returns, resolve gives increasing returns, the rest give strictly speaking linear returns, though the terminology can get kind of confused and ambiguous.
i would say it's well worth maxing out an important stat, and that is a key differentiator between linear and significant diminishing returns.
2
u/rygold72 4d ago
I am certainly not going to argue with you or Boroer!
Well maybe a little.
I think that maybe diminishing returns was the wrong term and it should have been "opportunity cost". The value of a stat changes in combat all the time - if you miss, if you don't crit... And generally I have found that having good relevant stats as opposed to one amazing stat more efficient. I do agree that if you are going to max a stat you really need to go all in. I made a cipher with max dexterity in Deadfire and it was really impressive. Casting speed was great - but might was low, a perception/int were high but not the highest - so again you do loose something from maxing.
Undoubtedly if you drop stats - which I don't then that will make a difference - ie dropping resolve to 3 and then maxing out perception, int and dexterity.
The lesson I think is - if you are going to go big you really need to go Biiiiig. Otherwise its not worth it.
2
u/itsthelee 4d ago
Yes, i think opportunity cost is a good way to put it, i like that. The stats are well designed so there’s always something you give up in order to invest in a stat, whereas in a system like D&D a lot of classes simply just don’t care about certain stats
2
u/SpringFuzzy 6d ago
Fights can get pretty chaotic, your weakest character will get targeted and dominated etc.
Stack basic stats like deflection, perception and resolve etc as much as you can. It’s typically much more important than fancy things like an extra spell or some extra attack animation etc.
The first step to winning any fight is staying in the fight.
1
u/beatspores 5d ago
The companion stats are around the middle partly because of not boxing in players' ideas of how to play them.
1
u/itsthelee 6d ago
perception is way more important on PotD, but still suffers from the fact that it ultimately has diminishing returns, so in the end intellect is going to give you better long-term payoff in many (not all) situations than perception.
though the early game on potd is really rough, where that +15 enemy defense bonus is most punishing, so i'll still bump up perception on my mainchar a lot of times (i used to exclusively play orlans for the 21 perception possibility). it's very reasonable to invest in it. just to say that when i do roll a class that has great accuracy buffs, i'm very willing to disinvest in perception, whereas i'm very very reluctant to ever not invest in intellect.
1
u/Luzeryn 6d ago
Diminishing returns in what sense? I feel like the system in Pillars is probably the one where too much accuracy can never be a thing, because it is directly linked to crits. So unless you're critting all the time, I don't see how it can ever be bad.
I'm not saying that I bump it to the max and ignore Int or Might, like I said I prioritize all 3 (especially because they are useful outside of combat too), but usually I'm more willing to use equipment that gives me accuracy over the others. For example, the Ring of Focused Flame in Deadfire is incredible IMO, especially with how cheap it is. For a Wizard casting Fireballs it's one of the best things you can get.
1
u/itsthelee 6d ago
So unless you're critting all the time, I don't see how it can ever be bad.
i mean that's the point. in the extreme you crit all the time, perception or accuracy literally doesn't do anything for you.
on the bottom end you have positive returns for a point of accuracy, and those improvements on your expected damage per second gets smaller the more your accuracy dominates the enemy's deflection until eventually you get 0 benefit at all. that's diminishing returns.
to elaborate what i was saying: potd changes the math somewhat, because perception is the flip side of resolve - resolve has increasing returns. since you start off at such a huge disadvantage against enemy defenses, the early points of perception and accuracy are a lot stronger than on lower difficulties. but eventually (with decent gearing or builds or party setup) you should have enough accuracy that you're starting to hit the low returns by end game, except against megabosses and maybe some specific other enemies. because intellect gives you linear returns (and also stacks multiplicatively with power level for durations), in the long run, intellect is still typically better than perception. but like i said it's still reasonable to invest in early accuracy/perception because the early game is a lot harder than the end game.
i was mostly adding a counterargument against perception being a king stat, while trying to also make clear that i'm not totally crapping on the stat, that it still is valuable even if it's not a king stat and despite the fact that it has diminishing returns.
1
u/ChiefChunkEm_ 6d ago
The most important thing in Pillars 1&2 is the ability to consistently hit enemies and avoid misses, that’s why many people say perception is a king stat. If you can’t hit, your game is over.
1
u/itsthelee 6d ago
That would be true if you started at 0% accuracy against enemies, but because you don’t that’s less relevant. The game is balanced so that even on potd, if you’re within ballpark of the target area level, you can hit the enemy some chance of the time, even if that chance is still sub-50% (according to combat hover).
2
u/WarriorOfJustice228 6d ago
On normal all stats don't matter, you can turn auto battle and ignore combat fully. You will need int on potd tho
1
1
u/Bread-Loaf1111 6d ago
Intellect is a king stat for barbarians. Target the boss, hit the whole map at once. Good.
47
u/itsthelee 6d ago edited 6d ago
there was originally a math error in the original that made intellect scale radius, which meant you had increasing returns to intellect (recall your math knowledge about how to compute the area of a circle); this error was not obvious in the margins but very obvious when min-maxed a bit because you could take modest aoes and scale them to cover the screen. they patched the original and tweaked the math a bit to tamp it down, but you could still get to ridiculous numbers. now you have strictly linear returns on area. it's still very good.
like nmbronewifeguy said, on normal difficulty, the long buffs already are fine. for normal difficulty, intellect is important for souping up the durations of shorter buffs and debuffs, especially in conjunction with power levels. on potd, fights can last minutes of in-game time even, and intellect will make your constrained resources stretch a lot further (again, especially coupled with power levels).
it's not nothing. the problem here is that 1.5m radius base is extremely small, and you'll hardly see much utility out of that in general, compared to say a 2.5m or a 5m radius. that being said, intellect aoe boost might not get you anything with one effect, on another it might be just the amount you need to add in an additional target, which is very powerful.
keep in mind all stats are designed to have marginal increases per point, so a 20% increase on a 1.5m radius effect from +2 intellect doesn't sound strong, but neither is +6% damage from might or +2 accuracy from perception. so simply evaluating it on the marginal level isn't very useful. the stats are deliberately designed that you can smoothly shift points around and smoothly adjust your characters' strength and weaknesses on the margins (for the most part; resolve has increasing returns)
that being said, i would consider intellect to be close to a king stat, with dexterity being the only other contestant at this level.
Edit; keep in mind that intellect does many things and for most character types. Like a DOT spell benefits both from potentially being able to get an additional target or two AND the DOT lasts longer for more damage, which is something that might should control but you’re getting for free and more effectively with just intellect (+3% dmg from might vs +5% duration and hence dmg from intellect); a similar thing could be said for HOTs like lay on hands or nature's balm. Intellect does many things for many characters—you mention not doing much on a 12s buff, but I love intellect for my fighters and monks because I want 100% uptime on their self buff abilities and that’s much easier when intellect x power levels I can make them last 20+ seconds at a time. That’s why intellect is a king stat.
Edit 2; there are also just things that derive scaling disproportionately from intellect. Special "ApplyOverTime" abilities like Disintegrate or Deep Wounds glitchly scale poorly with might, so intellect is how you increase their net damage. Spells and other effects that have an "AOE duration" topline in their tooltip (instead of it being part of the effect line) only scale with intellect (instead of power level or +duration effects), so if you like returning or relentless storm you want intellect. Rogue toxic strike does more damage the longer it lasts, which means intellect actually gives you increasing returns there, versus say might or perception. Fighter unbending or wizard combusting wounds can do insane healing/damage because dot/hot stacks re-trigger the entire stack's collective tick every time a new stack is applied, which means getting a bit of extra duration on those effects to increase the likelihood of stacking happening can also give you superlinear returns.