Accuracy Rating, Distance Penalty, and Hit Chance in Path of Exile 2

Four ideas sit at the heart of whether your damage connects. Accuracy Rating is your offensive roll for attacks; Evasion Rating is the defensive roll enemies use to avoid being hit by attacks. Chance to Hit is the resulting percentage that decides if an individual attack lands. Distance is how far your character stands from the target, and it matters specifically for ranged attacks.

Spells are a separate category: in Path of Exile 2 most spells do not perform an Accuracy check at all, so their connection is governed by other rules rather than the Accuracy versus Evasion contest.

• Accuracy Rating: the stat your attacks use to try to beat a target's Evasion.
• Evasion Rating: the defensive stat that lets a target avoid incoming attacks.
• Chance to Hit: the displayed percentage that an attack will connect.
• Distance: how far you are from the target; it applies a penalty to ranged accuracy.

Your displayed Chance to Hit for an attack is produced by comparing your Accuracy Rating to the target's Evasion Rating. The relationship has a diminishing-return shape: raising Accuracy when you are already far above the target's Evasion yields smaller gains, while raising Accuracy when you are far below it yields large gains.

The exact numerical curve uses coefficients that are version-sensitive in Path of Exile 2 Early Access and should be confirmed inside the current client rather than trusted from a fixed formula. Treat the structure as 'Accuracy versus Evasion decides a percentage that climbs toward a high cap as your Accuracy outgrows their Evasion' and confirm precise numbers in-game.

Separately from that curve, ranged attacks apply a distance factor that reduces effective accuracy as the target moves farther away. That distance factor is what makes the panel readout optimistic at long range.

• Higher Accuracy relative to Evasion means a higher hit chance.
• The gain per point of Accuracy shrinks as you already out-scale the target's Evasion.
• A distance factor reduces effective accuracy for ranged attacks specifically.
• Exact coefficients are version-sensitive; confirm them in the current client.

Ranged attacks in Path of Exile 2 suffer a distance penalty: the farther your target, the lower your effective accuracy becomes. This is why a sniper or bow character can show a high panel hit chance up close yet start missing once enemies are far across the screen.

The penalty is a ranged-attack mechanic. Melee attacks, which connect at point-blank range, are not subject to the same range-based accuracy loss. The exact point at which the penalty begins and how steeply it falls off are version-sensitive, so confirm them in-game rather than memorising a fixed number.

A practical consequence: even a panel readout near 100% is not a guarantee at extreme range. The distance factor can pull the real chance below the displayed value, so positioning matters for ranged builds.

• Ranged attacks lose effective accuracy as distance grows.
• Melee attacks are not subject to the same range penalty.
• A near-100% panel chance can still miss at long range.
• Exact start distance and falloff rate are version-sensitive.

A critical strike can only happen on a hit that lands. If the attack misses the accuracy versus evasion check, it cannot deal a critical hit — the crit never rolls. This means your effective critical-hit rate is gated by your hit chance, not just by your listed Critical Hit Chance.

For a crit-focused build, raising Accuracy is therefore double-valued: it both lands more hits and unlocks more of the crits those hits could have carried. Conversely, a very high Critical Hit Chance with poor Accuracy wastes most of that potential on misses.

• A miss cannot crit — the hit must land first.
• Effective crit rate equals hit chance multiplied by listed crit chance.
• Accuracy investment pays off twice on crit builds.
• Low hit chance silently wastes Critical Hit Chance.