3.13 Inquisitor Rework or "Look how they massacred my boy"

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sidtherat wrote:

Flame Dash (.7)
any Curse (.5) - maybe the useless curse cast speed nodes have a value after all?
brand (.75)
frost bomb/wave of conviction (.5)
winter orb (if applicable)
..ancestral totem (?)

these are unbuffed values. most likely you cast at least one or two of these before dps window so it is literally free damage

All good suggestions. Except that ignore enemy res means no need for most curses or exposure. Oh well, it’ll have to just be the spammiest spell I can find regardless of its effect.

I might try to give Cold Snap another try (power charge version) with the aoe buff from 3 attacks beforehand. It has 140% added damage bonus and we should be able to get it at least close to 100% crit chance with the stat boosts.

But the other way around, spells before attacks, I don't really have a good idea. Flame Dashing depletes it's charges for when you need them and may lead to desync since you do it in rapid succession, maybe somewhat randomly around a small area before a boss. Frost Bomb has a cooldown and it's resistance lowering effect is wasted. But maybe this brings a new style of not taking the crit resistance ignoring and just the massive crit chance boost. Then you could indeed load a boss encounter up with Frost Bomb, Curse, Cold Snap/Creeping Frost + increased Duration.

Main issue with inquis is squishiness.

I think he's now one of the best ascendancies to play in SC as a starter self-caster for spells that need to be re-cast, but in the endgame unless you find some hybrid setup that regenerates all of your ES in a second, he will be squishy.

And in endgame when your gear gets better, necro (probably even with nerfs), trickster, archmage, miners etc will be tankier AND will start outscaling damage.


As a starter in SC though, inquis is quite fantastic just because cheap damage everywhere and more cast speed

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trollkind1 wrote:

three recent events in SSF and did well. Got two Demis out of it (lost interest in Endless Delve) despite Inquisitor being very popular.

Inquisitor was only a race for Delve TBH, I took #1 for PSN SSF for the Mayhem and Flashback (only played FB for 1 week too). 3rd for Delve and 3rd HCSSF delve (rip to lag, oh well), all as the Inquisitor. Likely could have gotten more, but once you have 5... what's the point? (5th was my Zerker for Mayhem, took 3rd. And on PSN there are plenty of players with more than myself)

Though, Inquisitor is not my main, don't really have one of those. The events were the first time I ever tried an Inquisitor TBH. PSN was really dead on SSF for the 'race' tho. HCSSF had some prizes never be claimed, reeep.

I'm really just thankful that got to try him before, and now I'll likely try the new one to see what new changes there are. Like you pointed out tho, that 0.13% of players needed to be boosted up. Big changes like this is how you do it. I haven't read enough about the actual changes to freak out or get excited yet, so perhaps I'll be agreeing with you more once I'm able to dig through it all. But if they did ruin him as you're saying, then I'll be grateful that I was able to try him before that.

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grepman wrote:

Main issue with inquis is squishiness.

I think he's now one of the best ascendancies to play in SC as a starter self-caster for spells that need to be re-cast, but in the endgame unless you find some hybrid setup that regenerates all of your ES in a second, he will be squishy.

And in endgame when your gear gets better, necro (probably even with nerfs), trickster, archmage, miners etc will be tankier AND will start outscaling damage.


As a starter in SC though, inquis is quite fantastic just because cheap damage everywhere and more cast speed

new Inquisitor - maybe, old one? nope

200ES/second == very strong EB/MOM setup on the cheap. The Pious Path 4 pointer + 8% less damage taken formed a pretty damn tanky setup if you wanted to ignore the damaging options

sadly, new version of Inquisitor drops all that..

Hmm, I'm optimistic about the changes.

It seems to give a LOT of raw power that you can free skill points to use to get more defenses.

I mean, those seem like strong buffs overall which was needed because hybrid characters need all the power they can get.

Or maybe I'm being too naive, but those seem like good buffs to me...

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Matt_AsA_Hatter wrote:

Like you pointed out tho, that 0.13% of players needed to be boosted up. Big changes like this is how you do it.

Simply deleting 45% crit multi and 20% attack and cast speed and some quality of life from the most popular nodes isn't bringing much enthusiasm though.
<edit> Forgot the loss of 20% non-damaging-ailment effect which I thought fitted the Inquisitor's identity very well.</edit>

I do appreciate opening up new builds with the massive crit chance, ES regen for people who invest in hybrid pools and the new combo nodes but did it really needed killing the old nice stuff? Sorry, I'm repeating myself.

I definitely remember reading your name though. One of the few "serious" people in PS4 SSF. I feel like a celebrity noticed me. :D

<edit>
I'll go back to playing normal softcore in the new league though and see if the access to Winter Burial jewels from early on can soften the blow to the build. Hopefully Harvest crafts can help with getting a nice Warstaff too. Yes, I'll still make it my league starter and try to work around the losses. Then try out my Heavy Strike idea. I just can't quit heavy slow attacks with crowd control. They are my jam.

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trollkind1 wrote:

Yesm I'll still make it my league starter and try to work around the losses. Then try out my Heavy Strike idea. I just can't quit heavy slow attacks with crowd control. They are my jam.

i might suggest:

Glacial Hammer -> Ice Crash + Blast-Freeze cluster jewel notable for INSANE full screen freezes. and it is a slam, so you can scale it via warcries..

Heavy Strike -> Ground Slam. STRICTLY higher damage, the same stun, no niusance of making 'strike' skills work. and it is a slam, so you can scale it via warcries..


GH and HS are (currently) simply strictly worse than their alternatives.. sure, they can work, but try these alternatives out, youll get the same slow, crowd control but better

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sidtherat wrote:

i might suggest:

Thanks for the suggestions. I played a bunch of Ground Slammers already, even two tries at a Warden's Brand Flicker Striker before Flicker strike generated Frenzies. I mean I also played Heavy Strike builds but that was 5 years ago. Now we have the "Strike skills target an additional enemy" node and Ancestral Cry and two handed weapons hit a bunch of enemies even without splash so I don't even need to give up a support to get decent clear. What got me to give this another go is the reworked Punishment curse which has "10% of your Overkill damage is reflected to nearby enemies". With huge hits, this might actually be enough to work as an explosion/splash equivalent without hurting the single target. We'll see. If it doesn't work well, the same build can use Ground Slam anyway.
Plus I doubt that Ground Slam gets more damage against Heavy Strike's 40+% to deal double damage from threshold jewels alone.

It's been indeed a few years that I played Ice Crash but since the aoe changes I thought it wasn't trivial (just put some passive points into aoe) to get a decent coverage and I generally got tired fast of blinding full srcreen effects, although GH isn't much better when I get 20 white Splash circles propagating around.

And the every third strike freezes super hard is really awesome. I can hit something and go make coffee and it will still be frozen when I come back. Ok, hyperbole but it's seconds, multiples, I sometimes forget an enemy is technically still alive. And if it lines up with ruthless, I can theoretically reach the 1 million cold damage single hit to freeze Shaper. Without expensive items, anything super rare or buff flasks (I never played flask piano and I and my wrist never want to).

<edit>
Huh, I forgot about the Blast Freeze jewel. That's pretty cool. My GH already freezes everything "nearby" it would be a waste but I might use this on more focused cold skills.

Back in the early days I remember a Glacial Hammer witch (after the introduction of the Elemental damage with maces cluster up there I think and using Cameria's Mall) that used the old Freeze Mine to great effect when Proliferation could hit the whole screen and then I just went around slowly killing all the ice statues in safety. Damn, I love freezes and shattering.

give it a try, Ground Slam is really very comparable to Heavy Strike in numbers (GS gets ~49% more damage to nearby targets.. + can be supported with Conc Effect + can use 2 life+double crit multi jewels instead of HS thresholds) and is free of mandatory Ancestral Call + Melee Splash. you WILL NOT be able to complete any kind of dynamic encounter without Melee Splash. the innate splash is worthless, same with Punishment effect (this one is great for summoners as it equals to 10% less damage taken for them)

and slams.. oh gee how much damage you get from Seismic Cry, not even trying. youll be shocked just HOW MUCH more damage slams do compared to 'strike' skills, esp these two.

oh and that GH freeze.. some bad news for you. end-end-game bosses 'cannot be fully slowed down' so in short - it is worthless vs them. you get chill effect that you can apply with Vortex+Bonechill and get the same result

have tried both Glacial Hammer:


and 1h+shield Ice Crash


both on inquis, with very similar passives and equivalent gear levels. Ice Crash - solely because of being a slam - is strictly, in every way imaginable, better, easier to scale. the visuals are gross but.. as youve noted yourself, AC+splash+GH isnt easy on the eyes

ps. people are no longer sleeping on Blast-Freeze but you still can find megalomaniacs with Towering Threat + Blast Freeze for 10c in standard..