Precise Technique - Path of Exile

Precise Technique Keystone

Precise Technique(often referred to as PT) is a new Keystone Passive in Path of Exile: Siege of the Atlas!.

  • 40% More Attack Damage if Accuracy Rating is higher than Maximum Life
  • Never deal Critical Strikes

Flavour Text: Fear not the warrior that has practiced ten thousand techniques once. Fear the warrior that has practiced one technique ten thousand times.

Precise Technique PoE

40% More Attack Damage if Accuracy Rating is higher than Maximum Life

Attack is one of four damage sources(Attack, Spell, Secondary, and Damage over time), which deals damage to targets based on the damage values from weapons or unarmed. It can also be based on the defensive values from shields like with Shield Charge Shield Charge or Spectral Shield Throw Spectral Shield Throw.

  • Skills that deal attack damage have the Attack gem tag.
  • Damage over Time and Ailments are never considered Attack Damage.

Accuracy is a rating that measures a character’s chance to hit with melee and ranged weapons. Accuracy is opposed by the defender’s evasion. Players can gain accuracy through skills, equipping items or dexterity, which gives 2 additional base accuracy per point. Characters also gain 2 base accuracy rating when leveling up.

Click “C”, in the Offence tab, you can see the value of Accuracy Rating:

The value of Accuracy Rating

With this keystone, if Accuracy Rating is higher than Maximum Life, You can deal 40% more attack damage.

Never deal Critical Strikes

A critical strike is a skill or default attack dealing increased damage and possibly inflicting elemental ailments. Whenever the player or a monster uses a skill, they have a chance to deal a critical strike by default.

Similar to the Resolute Technique keystone, it also has “Never deal Critical Strikes” stat. With this keystone:

  • Elemental damage will no longer critically strike.
  • Most elemental status ailments will not apply unless another source adds chance. Skills such as Glacial Hammer Glacial Hammer and Burning Arrow Burning Arrow have a built-in chance to inflict elemental status ailments, and for example, targets cursed with Conductivity Conductivity have a chance to be shocked when hit with any lightning damage.
  • It takes precedent over sources of guaranteed Critical Strikes. Sources of guaranteed critical strikes, such as Trypanon Trypanon and the Diamond Shrine, have no effect on a character with the Precise Technique.

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Precise Technique Build Guide

Precise Technique is best allocated on characters that either have very little life (e.g Chaos Inoculation builds), can get large amounts of accuracy with minor investment (e.g. Hollow Palm Technique Dexterity stacking builds), and/or have limited passives to invest into critical strike chance and multiplier. Juggernaut can also use this; however, Juggernauts typically prefer to go the crit route due to preferring to use Oskarm.

Modifiers to critical strike chance and multiplier no longer have any effect and can be ignored when assessing equipment.

Life-based builds will typically need to invest somewhat into accuracy, such as getting it on Weapons, Helmets, Gloves, Shields, Rings, or Amulets. the Accuracy Mastery "Dexterity's Accuracy Bonus instead grants +3 to Accuracy Rating per Dexterity" can be useful on right-side tree builds, and incredibly strong on Hollow Palm builds.

CI builds (due to have only 1 Maximum Life) will not need to invest any further into accuracy, having already exceeded the requirement due to the baseline accuracy obtained from Dexterity on all characters.

Additional Accuracy Support is not considered part of your character's default Accuracy Rating and will not be included to meet the threshold.

Precise Technique vs Elemental Overload vs Critical Strikes

Precise Technique Elemental Overload Critical Strikes

Precise Technique provides a more consistent damage bonus, but may be harder to reach for characters built in the Strenght or Intelligence areas of the tree. Non-CI builds may require some additional investment to meet the requirement Accuracy Rating. It also will not apply to Ignite or Damage over Time, but will apply to Physical or Chaos damage attacks.

Elemental Overload provides a more generic damage bonus, applying to damage over time and Ignites, but only affects Elemental Damage (Poison dealt via Elemental Damage included), and requires the character to crit within the past 8 seconds with the damaging skill. This requires at least a certain amount of attack/cast speed, hit rate, and/or crit chance. This can be difficult to achieve for skills with long wind-ups or slow speeds (e.g. Doryani's Fist, Assailum).

Regular critical builds have a much higher ceiling of damage, not being capped only by the 40% More multiplier, but requires additional investment in gear and passives. However, it also has other perks that are not (easily) accessible on the other two playstyles, such as easy access to Elusive or Tailwind, as well as consistent Freezes.

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