What Is The Most Underrated Stat In Path Of Exile 3.22? – Blind Effect

Here, I am going to talk about a stat that I think is vastly underrated right now, and that’s Blind effect in Path of Exile.

Blind

Prior to the rework of Blind in patch 3.16, the Blind debuff used to make enemies have a 50% reduced hit chance, which made it extremely strong on any build that wasn’t taking Unwavering Stance even builds that didn’t use Evasion at all.

Then, in 3.16, Blind was reworked to be more thematically appropriate. So, it now interacts with Evasion and Accuracy, which makes sense. If you’re blinded, you’re gonna have a hard time hitting enemies and the hard time avoiding their attacks.

So, the Blind debuff now applies 20% less Evasion Rating and 20% less Accuracy Rating to the affected entity and lasts 4 seconds, which means that Blind is now defensively useless if you’re not using Evasion. But it might still help you a hit chance a bit if you’re lacking Accuracy.

Now, this article is not suggesting that the Blind debuff itself is underrated as most of the right side passive tree, builds that rely on Evasion defensively will have access to some form of Blind on Hit chance or another mechanic to be able to Blind enemies as this effect will largely improve the efficiency of their Evasion Rating. Because mobs affected will have less Accuracy and therefore the hit chance calculation will provide a higher chance to evade.

Blind Effect

This article is specifically about the Blind Effect, though, which can be obtained in huge amounts from the passive skill tree and with only a small amount of passive points spent.

The Silent Steps wheel on the passive tree is located just below Wind Dancer. This wheel provides a total of 70% increased Blind Effect and 56% increased Evasion Rating for four passive points spent or five if you’re not parting through here. But you’re already allocating Wind Dancer or the Forces of Nature wheel just above it.

Then, for an extra passive point, you can gain another 40% increased Blind Effect from the Blind Mastery itself. That’s a total of 110% increased Blind Effect and 56% increased Evasion Rating. And this is going to make Blind that you inflict on enemies apply 42% less Accuracy Rating and 42% less Evasion Rating.

Examples

We’ll discuss some of the ways to fit Blind into a build in a moment. But, first, let’s see how impactful Blind is with 110% increased effect.

In a Tier 16 map, the average monster has 538 Accuracy Rating. When debuffed with a basic Blind, this Accuracy is lowered to 430. Let’s say the character has 20,000 Evasion Rating. The character would have a 75% chance to evade attacks from this monster.

Let’s not factor in the increased Evasion Rating from the Silent Steps wheel, but just take a look at the Blind Effect instead. With 110 increased Blind Effect, the monster’s Accuracy is reduced from 538 down to 312. The same character with 20,000 Evasion Rating will now have an 81% chance.

To evade attacks from this monster, to achieve the same 81% chance to evade on the character with basic Blind and 20,000 Evasion Rating, they would need an additional 9,000 Evasion Rating. So, you can see just how effective Blind can be. And we’re not even taking into account the impact that it may have on your hit chance if you’re using an attack build as well.

Wind Dancer

The use of increased Blind Effect in combination with the Wind Dancer keystone can make it so that you can reach the evade cap.

But, by combining these mechanics together, you can reach the 95% chance to Evade Attacks cap with relatively low investment into Evasion.

Let’s say a character is inflicting Blind or monsters with 110% increased effects and let’s say they have 32,500 Evasion Rating and they’re on a Tier 16 map. The Blind brings the monsters’ Accuracy Rating down to 312. So, the character has an 87% chance to Evade Attacks from these monsters.

If this character also had Wind Dancer allocated, when they get hit by an attack, this Evade Chance will be increased directly by Wind Dancer’s 10% more chance to Evade Attacks if you have been hit by an attack recently modifier, which means they’ll have a 95% chance to Evade Attacks from these monsters.

To put into comparison, the level of investment required to reach 95% Evade Chance in a Tier 16 map. A character with basic Blind and Wind Dancer would need an extra 14,000 Evasion to reach the 87% Evade Chance so that Wind Dancer’s modifier would hit the evade cap.

And a character with basic Blind without Wind Dancer would need a staggering 146,000 Evasion Rating to have a 95% Evade Chance against the average blinded monster in a Tier 16 map.

Monster Modifiers

But one of the strongest parts about Blind with increased effect is its ability to massively cut down the Accuracy Rating of monsters that have modifiers, which increase their Accuracy Rating. These can be particularly dangerous to characters, which rely on Evasion as a defensive stat.

There are monsters, which have the of Precision modifier. This modifier grants them a Precision Aura, which increases Accuracy Rating and Critical Strike Chance of this monster and nearby Monsters by 100%.

And there’s also another monster modifier, which increases the Global Accuracy Rating of that monster by 100%. In both cases the Accuracy of these monsters is increased, which means that the less Accuracy Rating modifier from Blind will multiply against the total Accuracy Rating, lowering it by a large amount of actual Accuracy Rating.

For example, let’s say a group of monsters are affected by a monster’s Precision aura in a Tier 16 map. Their Accuracy is increased from 538 to 1076. A basic Blind would bring this Accuracy down to 861, but a Blind with 110% increased effects would lower it down to 624.

A character with 20,000 evasion rating and basic Blind would have a 58% chance to Evade Attacks from these monsters while the same character with 110% increased Blind Effect would have a 67% chance to Evade Attacks from these monsters.

For characters that are heavily relying on Evasion for defenses while mapping, increased Blind Effect is a great option, especially in regards to these monsters with dangerous modifiers.

Blinding Monsters

But what options do you have for blinding monsters?

Born in the Shadows didn’t get nerfed as part of the Saboteur rework and it remained as one of the strongest ascendancy notables in the game, providing a Blind aura around you and 100% chance to Blind Enemies on Hit with a strong reduced damage taken modifier to boot.

There’s even 15% increased Blind Effect on the small passive leading to it as well. But, unfortunately, this is a Saboteur notable. Still, if you’re playing Saboteur or a Shadow ascendancy that’s looking for a Forbidden Jewel notable for your build, don’t sleep on this one. However, one thing you need to pay attention to is that making any build requires the support of a certain POE Currency. This can help you solve a lot of unnecessary troubles.

If you’re playing Ascendant, you can get 25% chance of Blind Enemies on Hit with attacks on the Gladiator notable and 25% on any hit on the Saboteur notable while the Gladiator’s Blood in the Eyes notable has a 25% chance to Blind on Hit against Bleeding Enemies.

But you’re probably not playing either of these ascendancies. Maybe in POE 3.22 if not now. I’m telling you now those ascendancy reworks are coming surely.

There’s also Flesh and Stone, which blinds nearby enemies while in Sand Stance. And there’s a bunch of modifiers that can be found on craftable gear, such as weapons, gloves, and quivers that provide a chance to Blind Enemies on Hit.

On the passive tree, you could make use of the Mark Mastery, which blinds enemies near your Mark’s target and there’s the Curse Mastery as well, which is great with curse on hit, which will blind any non-cursed enemies that you curse with non-aura curses.

And the Dazzling Strikes wheel is the second of only two blind wheels on the passive tree. The first is the Silent Steps wheel that we talked about earlier.

Dazzling Strikes is located in a bit more of an awkward place for a lot of POE 3.22 builds, occupying this space between Ranger and Duelist.

But it’s a great wheel if you’re making use of Evasion and Blind whilst also being a crit attack build as it provides a total of 75% increased Critical Strike Chance against Blinded Enemies and 30% chance the Blind Enemies on Hit with Attacks and a further 20% increased Blind Effect. The Mastery on this wheel could be used to gain an additional 60% increased Critical Strike Chance against Blinded Enemies.

And I think the overall increased Blind Effect is a quite underrated stat just due to the sheer amount of this stat that you can acquire with low investment from the passive tree alone. It’s going to be great to improve the efficiency of your Evasion Rating and make it so that you need less Evasion to reach the evade cap.

There’s also the point that we didn’t touch. And that’s the on an attack build, you’ll require less Accuracy to be hit chance capped since the improved blind will work to drastically lower enemy Evasion Rating, too.

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