DEX as Accuracy - VISUAL Quality of Life

Recently saw a reddit post discussing how even the devs aren't sure about what DEX should give when its usually associated with Attack Speed or even sometimes Armor.

It made me realize how Accuracy is actually a good enough alternative that in the concept of DEX essentially being "I get to hit more" stat.
Its a good general translation of the concept considering this is a game where these attributes are shared with other classes and lots of mixing with builds and skills occur. I'll put the explanation further below but for now...

People have pointed out how it sometimes "doesn't feel good" when they hit the enemy and for some reason the damage wasn't dealt.

SOO--- I'm workshopping to propose a VISUAL mechanic to Accuracy atleast for Skills to have inherent Accuracy ratings with the low accuracy ones essentially being 'off-target' or even slightly deviated from your intended (mouse) aim point. Maybe even for normal weapon attacks too (idk how the animation for melee works tho). It would be a neat QoL type of visual indication of essentially 'missing' or needing more Accuracy. Maybe Spells should use some accuracy as well to balance out their big damage but maybe to a smaller degree on certain spells by some having like 50%+ accuracy rating while others would miss.

Maybe to balance it more as well is by adding more accuracy nodes to STR and INT to bypass DEX if they prefer to do so.

It would make more sense especially for beginners as well to be able to see the impact of the attribute and not just be a dump-stat compared to the obvious Red life of STR and Blue Mana of INT balls upfront in the UI.

That being said, I could see how it would be tricky to rebalance those especially for Skills and could cause some frustrations for players giving them a feels bad experience.


vvv I'll add down here on how DEX = Accuracy works for POE 2 vvv


If DEX was the classic attack speed or cast speed:

Spells/Skills would feel so much more sluggish in STR or INT and the range of values would be so slim considering it should only improve mere seconds to milliseconds.

INT classes usually have no use for attack speed and be an obvious dump stat

The idea of Atk spd being a different form of DPS compared to pure raw damage is essentially "I get to hit more" which actually translates well with Accuracy of how they hit (not miss) more shots than the other classes and yet the other classes can still improve the Quality of life gameplay by the SEPARATE modifiers of Attack Speed or Cast speed.

Lore wise, think about how realistic it is how sometimes sword swings and magician spells miss in medieval or fantasy shows or even in real-life combat. But these Hunters have pinpoint aim. It makes sense how younger/weaker warriors and mages don't specifically focus on improving their accuracy when they could focus on their raw strength or intelligence until they get more experience.

Dex should scale evasion like pretty much every other game does.

Accuracy as a stat is stupid and nobody likes having to spec or deal with it. Hit chance should be 100% in a game, why shouldn't it? Also removing one roll from the pool in the current balance would be a good thing that favours crafting, SSF and other ways this game could me more fun, streamlined and rewarding.

its game balance.

for starters, at the current state, melee weapons are largely unaffected by it unless enemies have high evasion (which can be rare or uncommon) and mostly affects high damage and aoe skills. And even then its pretty fair with the 'Entropy' system of diminishing returns so evade isn't really game breaking.

Its another balancing component so bosses and monsters dont just die from the powerful room clear skills/builds and they actually have a chance to hit back and create ENGAGING combat and not just another mindless speedrun endgame like POE 1 or Diablo III.

Have you ever swung an axe to someone? they would dodge it. It happens. If someone threw a fireball, a smart boss would dodge it. Its obviously difficult to adapt gameplay-wise considering this is a hack and slash type of action game. Imagine every f-ing enemy rolling around. What a mess.

You want evasion? Its already so much in the passive tree, Only DEX builds have access to most Evasion Armor, AND we get high chances of not missing damage vs. other classes. Thats like a major win already for DEX.

If DEX was Evasion then what replaces the Evasion Ratings in the nodes and armor? More Attack speed? how will that scale thru a hundred levels without having them end up as f-ing machine guns? Atk speeds affects quality of gameplay and balance too much and should be fairly open to all classes. Or Crit chance or crit damage maybe? Or maybe some other new mechanic? Maybe it could work but the fact is the current system already works and if it didn't more people would probably have dropped this game by then.