Dex caps out, Str and Int don't?

I'm new to POE, and I'm trying to find out what stats are good for what. As I chose to play a duellist first, it seemed like dexterity was a good attribute to focus on. However, after checking the wiki, it appears that one of dexterities primary contributions is in the form of accuracy, which caps out at 95%. I have already hit and exceeded this cap, and I am only level 30, and have very mediocre gear. It also appears that strength and intelligence do not have this artificial cap.

Is this an oversight in the attribute mechanic, or am I missing something?

Your chance to hit will decrease as you face higher-level enemies, unless you keep always putting your points into Dexterity or other accuracy boosts.

Chance to hit on your stat screen is estimated value of enemy at your level with average evasion. There are monsters that have much higher or much lower evasion than average. Also monsters with higher levels have more evasion, so this estimation will be wrong if you fight enemies that have higher levels than you. Later, on very high level characters, you will rarely have 95% accuracy even with a lot of dexterity.

As for focusing on attributes, it's rarely a good idea. You should invest in other statistics that give you direct bonuses like health, damage, attack speed, or whatever you want to focus on with your character. Take the attribute points that you are require to move between nodes on passive skill tree and to use your desired items and gems.

That said, high dexterity character is a viable option. You have very high evasion or take Iron Reflexes for very high armor. Less problem with accuracy is then just an added bonus.

Well there's a reason why duelists are the least played right now (and weakest imo)

As others have said your chance to hit is calculated against an average enemy of your own lvl, since higher lvl enemies will have more evasion, your chance to hit will decrease unless you spent more into dex and dex also gives you evasion, wich has no cap.

Also mind that evasion can be a very stong defense IF you have enough life!! So don't underestimate strenght because you will need it even if you play a more dex oriented character.

I understand what many of you are saying, but that raises another question. Is accuracy capped at 95% to hit the enemy I am attacking, or is it capped at 95% chance to hit an enemy the same level as me?

Lets say, for example, that I am up against an enemy with 1% chance to dodge, and that I am over-capped on accuracy and therefore have 95% showing up in my character sheet. Lets also say, for example, that if the cap on accuracy were to not exist, my character sheet would instead read 96% chance to hit (so I am 1% over the accuracy cap).

When fighting this enemy, what would be my miss chance? Would it be 6%, which would mean that even though my chance to hit in general is at 95%, my chance against this specific opponent would be further reduced by his evasion. Or would it be 5%, as my accuracy rating would simply make up the deficit with the amount I overcapped, effectively compensating for the enemies evasion, even though it isn't shown in the character sheet.

In the first case, this means that accuracy does indeed have a glaring hardcap, regardless of the opponent you are fighting, as the amount of accuracy you can utilise is hard set by your own character, and not your opponent.

In the second case, the character sheet display is very misleading, and the 95% chance to hit doesn't accurately convey the correct information to the player.

Even after all this, there will always be a point at which an amount of accuracy rating can potentially be absolutely useless. The simple example being, fighting an enemy of your own level who has absolutely no evasion. In such a case, any accuracy rating which takes you over and above the 95% cap is completely unused, and represents wasted stats. The same problem does not exist for strength and intelligence, as they scale upwards linearly for all values. Unless something truly is amiss in my assumptions about the game mechanics, this truly does seem like inconsistent stat design.

I don't think there's a single enemy with a chance to dodge.

However, they all have a certain degree of evasion (which is what accuracy goes against).

First don't mix dogde and evasion, they are 2 different stats - remember if 2 thinks in this game are called differently (even if they seem similar on the first look) they are different.

Your accuracy helps against evasion, not dodge (dodge is a roll done seperatly from the evasion roll and i think that the dodge chance is random, while eva is not truely random (please corect me if i'm wrong))

But yes, lets assume that you fight an enemy with over average evasion - in this case the tool tip is misleading if i understand it correctly - it would calculate your chance to hit as if you have 96% (the same goes for resists and armor - beeing overcapped helps you in some situations)

About the 'misleaing' tooltip - armor has the same 'problem', armor damage reduction depends on the amount of damage you actually receive (a single high damage blow will be reduced less, while smaller hits get reduced more)