Precision vs. Power Attack

[karl_k0ch]

With the u14 change of Precision (granting +5% to-hit and 25% fortification bypass) and the whole combat system, a challenger of the Offensive Stance slot previously taken by the Power Attack feat did appear. I cannot provide detailed math to prove why one is better than the other (I have no agenda I'm trying to push here), but I'd like to have a discussion with fellow rogue players on their views on these two feats.

According to probably outdated info on the wiki, grazing hits apply only the base damage of the weapon and sneak attack damage (no Str bonus, nor PA bonus, nor weapon bonus, nor additional effects). According to a dev post, players graze on a 2+, i.e. you will not see actual misses against mobs, but having less to-hit will reduce your total damage. But even on a grazing hit a lot of damage is actually delivered via SA damage, if applicable.

Precision

• Can increase damage via critical hits and sneak attack damage if the fortification isn't reduced to 0% via other means (Opportunist 10%, Improved Sunder 10%, Destruction 4%, Improved Destruction 8%, Grim Precision 5%-15%, Armor-Piercing 10%, Insult 20%, Piercing Clarity 5% - 10%, Shield of Condemnation 10% - 50%; not all bonuses might apply at the same time)
• Can increase damage by raising the hit chance by 5%, essentially converting a grazing hit into a regular attack, if your AB isn't already greater than 1.4*AC - 10.5, where AC is the Armor Class of the Mob attacked.
• Can increase damage by lowering the fortification and thus allowing to apply the Sneak Attack to-hit bonus more often. Yes, a mobs fortification penalizes your SA to-hit.

Power Attack

• Will increase your damage on proper hits (i.e. no grazing hits)
• Can increase the chance of grazing hits, unless your AB is greater than 1.4*AC - 5.5

Thoughts?

[Dwarfo]

I think:

Power Attack: STR Builds
Precision: Dex Builds.

Precision is said to work very well on dex/intel based rogues. Don't see any fighters/barbs to be taking this feat.

[Miow]

I think:

Power Attack: STR Builds
Precision: Dex Builds.

Precision is said to work very well on dex/intel based rogues. Don't see any fighters/barbs to be taking this feat.

I use both on my human rogue.

[Uska]

I use both on my human rogue.

takes two feats and only one can be active at a time

[Nuryam]

Also depends on:

Two Weapon or Two Handed?
Powerattack is more effective on two Handed fighting.

Splash, hybrid or pure build?
If you rely on SA for most of your damage you need to land it first (and pass fort second).

How high is my to hit?
With the new AC/to hit system players hit monsters more often in the upper regions. In absolute perspective a 5% increase is much more than -5 penalty. What I want to say is that if you have a good attack bonus, you won't really need the 5% extra attack (I assume you can't go over 95% to hit) and turning on PA will result in a -1% to hit in exchange for 5 extra damage.

My thought would be to use PA against:
- mobs you can't SA even with reduced fortification.
- mobs you can't really miss.

And use precision:
- when the opponent is susceptible to SA.
- when you can't hit the opponent automatically.

And if you have to chose one you will have to figure out which type of opponent you will meet more often during leveling and endgame. Remember we do have a free featswap. I will go Precision on my next rogue Assassin (if I get around to building one again ).

Cheers Nuryam

[Miow]

takes two feats and only one can be active at a time

Clap clap yes thanks for pointing out the obvious both are useful thanks.

To the op
My take is if you need precision for to hit your having bigger issues, the fort reduction for a rogue(sneak attack) is where it's at, in raid end fights on higher than normal difficulty(n high fort morbs/portals) having precision will increase your dps by a lot. If I'm getting SA dmg every swing why would you not want to have PA available for the occasion especially if you can fit in the feat.

[karl_k0ch]

Precision is said to work very well on dex/intel based rogues. Don't see any fighters/barbs to be taking this feat.

It's not about Str/Dex. As my OP shows, it's about how high your to-hit is going to be compared to the mob's armor class.
It looks like a high-dex build with 13 Str might end up with a comparable to-hit as a high-str build with 17 Dex (no, I am not going to start the old finesse discussion again: I know that there are more items which boost your Str than those which boost your dex, but it's a question of availability). So a well-geared Dex rogue might benefit more from PA, whereas a freshly capped Str rogue will probably be happy to use precision.

I took it on my Str-based 18 Pally/2 Monk, because I was noticing grazing hits, but I'd like to restrict this discussion to rogues, as rogues are quite special: No other class is so heavily dependent on a low fortification, but also no other class deals this amount of damage on a grazing hit.,

Two Weapon or Two Handed?
Powerattack is more effective on two Handed fighting.

I was implicitly assuming TWF, but the damage difference is not that great:
With a THF weapon, PA adds +10 damage. With TWF, PA adds 5 damage on the main weapon, and 5 damage on the off-hand weapon (which procs at 80%). This means TWF gets +9 damage per main hand swing. I am deliberately ignoring attack speed animations, Glancing Blows and Doublestrike chances which will all allow THF to pull ahead a bit more, but still, the damage bonus is comparable.

I use both on my human rogue.

Great point. I think I will end up taking PA over Hamstring on my level 24 feat - just to have some extra dps if needed. It's another micromanagement demant, but worth the cost I guess.

[Bolo_Grubb]

I have been using hamstring and precision (no power attack at the moment) and I like it a lot. I may consider giving up hamstring for power attack, but not sure yet.

My rogue is a str based twf

[Aerendil]

PA has amazing synergy with TWF builds, particularly high str-based ones where the -5 to hit isn't a huge penalty, as has already been pointed out.

However, for Rogues, it's a bit trickier.

Precision helps to remove grazing hits to ensure sneak attack damage applies; boosts your to-hit from what is a low BAB (3/4) to ensure you hit more (as opposed to PA, which will simply make you hit less); and with sneak attack damage comprising the vast majority of a Rogue's typical damage? Yeah, Precision seems to be the way to go.



On any other class, though? I'd probably stick with PA.

[WanderingGrump]

On my current 3rd life rogue this time I took Precision rather than Power Attack and find that it is getting me Sneak Attack damage on mobs I used to not get it on, namely Constructs and Undead. Currently I am running a crit build and the damage it's getting me on those mobs with high fort is absolutely great.

Now if I was a THF Barb, Power Attack would be the way to go but for a rogue Precision is definitely the better choice.

[shadereaper33]

Personally, I am fond of precision for my rogues now. The 25% fort bypass from that, 10% from opportunist, 10% from armor-piercing, 15%? from shadow dancer. sneak attack all the things!!!

[Diyon]

I'd say precision for most rogues. Exception: Splashed acrobats going the cleave-fiend dreadnought route. In which case PA is a must.


Most other's I think I'd still use PA, although on my SA focused wolf druid shadow dancer, I took precision.

[Qezuzu]

25% fort bypass is a lot. Against fortified foes it outperforms PA by so much it isn't even funny.

It doesn't help at all against trash mobs, but rogues are already ridiculously effective against them.

[Xalir]

I also have PA and Precision on my Drow Rogue. PA for trash fights and orange bosses and Precision for red bosses, Constructs and Undeads. Works like a charm.

[destiny4405]

took precision without any second thoughts. it's awesome feat that every rogue should have.

[wax_on_wax_off]

Amazing how many people are misinformed about the topic and how many people are posting about non-rogues taking the feat when this topic is quite clearly rogue only.

If you rely on SA for most of your damage you need to land it first (and pass fort second).

All attacks except natural 1's produce sneak attack damage.

Power Attack

• Can increase the chance of grazing hits, unless your AB is greater than 1.4*AC - 5.5

Amazing how many people don't grasp this. Mob AC in this game goes up to 60 or 70 as far as I know, that means that to not miss on a 2 you need up to 1.4*70-5.5=92.5 Attack Bonus. Do you have that? I didn't think so. Even 60 AC (which is much more common, I think only EE LoB has 70) will see almost all characters missing on a 2 as 78.5 AB is needed.

I'm not fully informed about all the mechanics but the idea that AB doesn't matter is just so U13.

I'm struggling between Precision and Power Attack but I've got a bit of a special case as my weapon of choice is handwraps.

Precision does not help you get sneak attacks against most undead as they are immune anyway. If you have Shadowdancer then you can remove that immunity on a vorpal in which case Precision greatly increases in usefulness. I'm not sure if you can benefit from another person having SD.

Of the fortified mobs we have:
Raid Bosses - more SA with precision
Warforged - more SA with precision
Inanimate Constructs (like portals and training dummy) - more SA with precision
Animate Constructs (golems etc) - immune to SA
Most Undead - immune to SA
Oozes - immune to SA (I think)
Plants - ?

Against fortified mobs that you can sneak attack precision is great as every 4 points of SA damage you do will give 1 point when Precision is active and applicable, for a rogue that can easily be up to +25 SA damage/hit.

For a Shadowdancer Precision is an absolute no-brainer. However, even then, there are plenty of low AC, no fortification enemies against which precision will have 0 effect.

Having 1 or the other is certainly a trade off but in general the place that DPS matters most is when Precision will be better - raid fights - and getting fort to 0 reliably is almost impossible on elite due to 80% fort (not impossible to do it, just not generally reliable).

[Arkenvis]

Of the fortified mobs we have:
Raid Bosses - more SA with precision
Warforged - more SA with precision
Inanimate Constructs (like portals and training dummy) - more SA with precision
Animate Constructs (golems etc) - immune to SA
Most Undead - immune to SA
Oozes - immune to SA (I think)
Plants - ?

Oozes and plants are both immune to sneak attack. Oddly, Will 'o wisps (at least the ones in the Fens explorer area) aren't immune, they just have 100% fortification. Also, you missed: Most Elementals (I think mephits are the exceptions) - Immune to sneak attack.

[sephiroth1084]

I'd say it comes down to what you run more often, what kind of rogue you are, and what you feel your weaknesses are.

If you're a high-DC Assassin, trash is less of an issue than Fortification is generally, especially if you raid at all. If you're in Shadowdancer this becomes even more true, as you gain more tools for taking care of trash, and a great emphasis on wanting to land your sneak attacks.


If you don't raid, and don't hit much of the content with WF, non-SA immune constructs, etc...then PA is probably more important for you. I believe Precision is still helping even against monsters immune to SA by giving you some crits on them, but I'm not positive.


Power Attack on a rogue feels lackluster against anything you can SA, and shores up a weakness against stuff you can't. Precision covers largely the same territory, except that it's more likely to help you in a bigger way against both groups (in the former, if you are missing on anything but a 1, you gain more from hitting more often; in the latter, you gain more, I think, from getting some/more sneak attacks, and are probably close to breaking even by getting crits when you weren't previously).

[Arkenvis]

...I believe Precision is still helping even against monsters immune to SA by giving you some crits on them, but I'm not positive...

As far as I can tell, that is the case. It seems like immune to sneak attack is an additional flag on enemies, where immune to critical hits is just handled with 100% fortification.

[wax_on_wax_off]

I was considering the damage that Precision adds to a pure kensei here and it's pretty clear to me that any build that doesn't have significant class/race enhancements to power attack is much better off with precision in raids as long as they have access to decent SA gear (+13 available from easy to access gear).

In the end, Precision scales with gear, power attack doesn't really. Once you add +10 Seeker, exceptional seeker, sneak attack gear, PL: SoS etc etc Precision is just going to look better and better in a raid setting.

If it's just a question of Precision or Power Attack then Precision would seem to win as raid DPS is more important than quest DPS in most situations. However, many builds have other concerns (cleave etc) so it's fine if Precision can't be fit in as long as it's realised that you're losing DPS overall.