Does blinding an enemy really blind them?
 

every time i blind an enemy they always act like they arn't blind. like when they are blind they can somehow still find me.

Can't answer your question, but its a good one. I would like to know as well.

There are several skills on various weapons like that ( ie burns an enemy for X amount of time; poisons an enemy for X amount of time; etc.) and I really dont know what, if any, affect they have other than any damage they do.

I have the smoke bombs which if you hit too close to yourself almost completely makes your screen go black, and yet when you hit the enemy with them they still head right for you and seem to hit you with normal rates no matter what. Same goes for tossing dirt. It could be that the 'miss' rate goes up and/or their percentage of damage is going down and I just haven't noticed it, but it really doesn't seem to have any kind of significant impact in any of the battles I've been in.

the spiraling shape will make you gooo insanneeee

Oh, never thought about that. The smoke bomb, fire and poison, etc. probably have a similar affect on pvp enemies (blinding them temporarily in some way or another). That would explain a lot.

At this point in time, Bane Shot and Curse are the only 2 staus effects that I have actually seen do much good other than a pretty pyrotechnics display.

well im glad you said this because i had second thoughts on wheather to buy smoke bombs or not.

I've been thrown dirt at in PVP. All it does is put a few black blotches on your screen. Easy to find the enemy though.

blinding really seems that it only affects other players. not npcs.

I fear that some skills are simply incomplete. I'd really like more of a preview of them before I invest my unredeemable skill points into them.

Not true, blindness reduces accuracy for enemy NPC's, I've done some tests on it myself. Accuracy in this game is just a little weird is all. For instance, the only time accuracy comes largely into play is when fighting against higher level enemies. You will find that you miss much more often, unless you have skills like sharpshooter. An enemy NPC will Miss much more often with the throw dirt effect activated, however there are a few things to remember about accuracy. Perhaps the biggest issue, is that it only has a chance to cause a miss on the FIRST attack of a skill. So enemy skills like Flourish, and Bayonet Rush, will either miss on every attack, or hit on every attack.

It would appear that the effect in PvP is perhaps different. It may still have an accuracy reduction, it may simply be that those who have experienced it were a higher level than those they continued attacking, effectively canceling out the accuracy reduction. Or maybe they just ditched the accuracy issue for pvp and added the splatter effect, though I truly doubt it.

I fully endorse putting at least 1 point into throw dirt, as it has a 10 second duration a relatively short cooldown (So short that I'm convinced that a few more points in the skill would allow for a constant cycling of the blind effect). At the very least it will allow the wielder and easier time leveling as it results in less downtime while waiting for health to regen.

~Capt. Morgan

i sometimes notice a small change in the attacks when it throw dirt but other than that most of the time it does nothing

not sure of the effectiveness against NPC's but it kicks my butt in PvP nothing worse then getten beat down cause you cant see where they are to fight back...

laters:skull:

I find it quite effective. I don't get hit quite as much.