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

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sidtherat wrote:

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..

We're getting off topic now, but I can second everything Sid says here. Glacial Hammer is a solid skill you can build from nothing and take it all the way to endgame if you continue to invest in it. It's definitely not in the "unusable" melee category with Cleave and Heavy Strike. But, Ice Crash is just better in every single way, partly because of slam synergy with warcries but also because there just isn't a strike melee support comparable to Concentrated Effect.

Ice Crash + Conc Effect hits a LARGER area than Glacial Hammer + Melee Splash + Ancestral Call, for one less support gem, for far more damage (280% x 154% x 70% attack speed) versus (200% x 100% x 100%). We're already at about 50% more damage on a 2-linked Ice Crash, and the gap only widens from there as we add in other supports like Pulverize and Fist of War which GH also can't use.

I wonder how does the Battlemage buff works?

Does it add the physical dmg of your weapon to the spell or is it added as lightning/cold/fire depending on the spell?

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Gordyne wrote:

I wonder how does the Battlemage buff works?

Does it add the physical dmg of your weapon to the spell or is it added as lightning/cold/fire depending on the spell?

Askin the real questions.

Because it would actually be a pretty terrible node if it meant your Arc Inquisitor could no longer run phys reflect maps...

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sidtherat wrote:

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.

Thank you for the detailed suggestions. I indeed already forgot about the warcry. Their rework still feels somewhat new to me and as I already had enough buttons to press and am bad at keeping up buffs, I usually avoid them but that rework made them so powerful that they are kind of mandatory now. :/

I will definitely level a Vaal Ground Slam alongside the Heavy Strike anyway if it doesn't work out. Vaal Ground Slam is just such a nice button to press to shut down the whole screen. I'm ok with playing suboptimal skills as long as they feel good but I'm fully prepared to it being another pipe dream.

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sidtherat wrote:

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.

Not even end-end-game, the Conquerors too. Big freezes are still good for nasty rares that are tougher than the map boss or Syndicate encounters.
Usually, I use my Bonechill with a low level CWDT + Cold Snap to also get Frenzy charges.

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sidtherat wrote:

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.

Using a staff is what makes the build so nice. It's inherent strike area is better than any other weapon type and the clusters provide a ton of crit stats and some interesting bonus things like passive Power and Endurance charge generation.And the 30% block and 10% spell block ain't bad either (I tried it with max block Glancing Blows in hopes for better Power Charge on block generation but it didn't seem to improve). I also want to stick with two-handers to get two 6L because the Warchief totem and it's Vaal cousin are a big part of damage in tough encounters. I use them with Phys to Lightning to provide decent stuns and they more than double my damage when it counts. And I have a whole Multistrike vs Ancestral Call paragraph in my build guide on why I think AC is superior in a few ways. At some point I want to make some illustrations to better show the difference in coverage.

But I may still give Ice Crash another try, maybe even Frostbreath but I feel that you'd need a ton of added damage to make the hits comparable.

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ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate wrote:

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Gordyne wrote:

I wonder how does the Battlemage buff works?

Does it add the physical dmg of your weapon to the spell or is it added as lightning/cold/fire depending on the spell?

Askin the real questions.

Because it would actually be a pretty terrible node if it meant your Arc Inquisitor could no longer run phys reflect maps...

Q&A said that the battlemage and spellslinger bonuses stack, which probably means they work the same way, as we assumed they do. So, you're getting a percentage of the final numbers for all damage types you see on the weapon. Physical damage on a wand is pretty paltry and not much higher on a sceptre, maybe it won't be able to kill you.

I felt some of your pain. The thing that irked me the most was the loss of flat mana regen. As an Incinerate Inquisitor, I've got to jump through a few more wonky hoops to sustain the ideal cast speed. I can understand trying to make a hybrid class, and trying to firmly implement class identity. That mana regen removal though.. There MUST have been a god-forsaken heretical mana potion advocate involved.

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TownsendX wrote:

I felt some of your pain. The thing that irked me the most was the loss of flat mana regen. As an Incinerate Inquisitor, I've got to jump through a few more wonky hoops to sustain the ideal cast speed. I can understand trying to make a hybrid class, and trying to firmly implement class identity. That mana regen removal though.. There MUST have been a god-forsaken heretical mana potion advocate involved.

I agree - I generally like the changes but mana regen removal hurts a lot. It’s not easy to get elemental mana leech at the top-left of the tree (and it’s silly to assume every build has to travel all the way over to Shadow or Duelist or use cluster jewels). Idk why that change was necessary at all, and the conc path nodes are a bit less attractive as a result.

Yeah IDK man, as a player who used to love Cold Conversion scourge arrow i completely understand how horrible it feels to have your favorite build entirely gutted...

In all fairness though, Inquisidorks have always felt kinda inflexible in terms of their build potential and I would assume with confidence that there will wind up being a ritual item that winds up synergizing with them nicely that just absolutely shatters the ceiling on the damage and flexibility.

I always hurts to lose something you love, but GGG typically puts something cool and fun in the game to take the place of what they removed.

I used to think nothing would ever be stronger than Dex Stacking Cold Conversion SA... but then Warcrys got reworked and with very little in terms of weapon potency I found a Berserker build that was doing basically the same damage (one tapping the universe) and although it required an entirely different playstyle... it wound up being more fun because it required a lot more consideration.

Stick with it man, youll fall in love again... I promise

I don't get how anyone can see this as anything other than a massive buff outside of more niche/high-end builds, of which yours does not seem to be. This is -incredible- for melee & hybrid/life. I think this only harms low life/CI, and then, 200 ES/sec isn't that much.

Here are things you're missing: It's free Zealot's Oath with no downside. You do not gain % regen bonuses based on your ES, it has always converted the numeric value of your life regen. If you're life/armour based, you're probably going to see 2k ES regen per second, in addition to keeping your life regen. That's a lot better than 200.

Fanaticism is "one charge per second, if you melee'd in the last second" - this sounds as if it is either permanent or has 80% uptime (at worst 4 up / 1 down) depending on how exactly it is calculated if you're melee. 75% More Attack Speed is incredible. If you're meleeing it should be basically permanent. It will be harder to utilize this as a self-caster due to the 1/sec limitation unless you're Shield Charging for instance, then it will likely still be spotty.

IMO outside of some weird shenanigans Battlemage is very underwhelming and this does not promote a hybrid playstyle in any way, especially since they're changing a few weapons to go with it. If you mix in a few spells here or there it's a great buff to melee damage, purely for the % more damage, but probably not a great pick for a caster - you're probably better off using an item that grants it anyway. I'm envisioning it being used for spellslinger or Abberath's hooves, where you want a weapon (wand/sword) that can't have Battlemage, like Martyr of Innocence will. If you're gonna use Martyr of Innocence to buff self-casting, this node is useless, and it seems like a good choice since it actually looks like it's getting a buff rather than the nerf Disintegrator is getting.

HOWEVER - as good as Instruments of Zeal is, the current state feels like old Elementalist in that there are good nodes you must path to, limiting your options, with the pathing nodes feeling a little lackluster in some cases. You can't get Instruments of Zeal, Pious Path AND Righteous Providence. However, you CAN get Instruments of Virtue, Pious Path and Righteous Providence. Is it worth losing ignore RES? Probably, if you're debuffing it.

It sounds pretty strong to me. We'll have to see.

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ribaldron wrote:

Here are things you're missing: It's free Zealot's Oath with no downside. You do not gain % regen bonuses based on your ES, it has always converted the numeric value of your life regen. If you're life/armour based, you're probably going to see 2k ES regen per second, in addition to keeping your life regen. That's a lot better than 200.

2000? how did you get to that number?

if you are life/AR based (AR is worthless btw) you wont have more than 2.5-3k ES (unless shaper touch tricks etc - but then, Guardian low-life is just better) then, with your typical 5-10% life regen that equals to ~200ES/s not 2000ES/s

show me a life based build - that has damage and is not an aurastacker - that has these numbers..

big value of that 200 flat was EB/MOM, in fact it was so good that i kinda understand why it went away. that flat mana regen tho - that hurts