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Single Aspect Caster Inquisitor


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Single Aspect Caster (+ Extra Buff) Inquisitor

A while back Dobri posted his caster inquisitor build update for his Ice and Blood and I mentioned that it was similar to a build that I had been planning to post, but figured was superfluous now. However, at the suggestion of him and gogo I decided that I would eventually post my build when I knew it would be successful while running around in niobium. I ran the toon up to level 95 or so in gold, mainly because everytime I tried to advance the campaign my game would crash and lose progress. However, with the generous help of Claudius I was able to advance the campaign all the way through gold and platinum and made it to niobium. I've been running around for a bit with the gear on he's had since level 80 and he's managing capably in various regions in niobium so far, including the swamps, the blood forest (especially the parts with the constructs and onwards to the areas with lots of eyes, harbingers and their summons) and in the jungle whilst trying to get a ship portal. So, since I was getting bored of playing only the same toon at the moment, here is my build for a caster inquisitor who relies only upon one aspect for damage and only uses the second aspect for a buff. This is more of an artificial restriction as every other build I saw relied upon two aspects for damage and I wanted this one to be different in some way other than skill choices/mods.

So firstly, thanks to Claudius for the run through gold and plat and to the other inquisitor guide creators out there for some inspiration. And, sorry for the large amount of writing, I didnt realise there was quite so much...

Skills:

Level 2:

Dual Wield.pngDual Wield – Only one point, this is simply so we can equip two weapons with the maximum number of sockets.

Level 3:

Astute Supremacy Lore.pngAstute Supremacy Lore – master 1st, damage, casting speed and critical hits, all needed for our spells. 5 points will be needed to go into this before the next 3 skills can be selected.

Level 5:

Concentration.pngConcentration – 1 point only until late game, taken mainly to unlock our second buff.

Level 8:

Astute Supremacy Focus.pngAstute Supremacy Focus – master 1st, main source of regen and CA levels for our damage dealing aspect.

Level 12:

Nefarious Netherworld Focus.pngNefarious Netherworld Focus – master 1st, main source of regen for our second aspect, lore would be a waste since we aren't using it to deal damage, only to raise the level of our buff.

Level 18:

Combat Discipline.pngCombat Discipline – 1 point until later in game, allows 3 Combat Arts in a combo and a 10% regen reduction, along with extra damage.

Level 25:

Armor Lore.pngArmor Lore – 5 points for now to unlock other defensive skills.

Level 35:

Spell Resistance.pngSpell Resistance /Ancient Magic.pngAncient Magic /Anything

Level 50:

Constitution.pngConstitution

Level 65:

Toughness.pngToughness

Ok, a few explanations now might help. First few choices are fairly obvious. Early in your toons life CA damage will be lowish and at higher regens than you would like unless you have to best setup through niobium blacksmithing and shopped gear. Because of this we will rely upon our weapons for the first few levels until we start to get a few points into the aspect focuses/lore. Dual wield gives us this option and aids us by giving us more sockets to fill later. By around level 15 your Combat Arts should have started to be more effective (more info on them later) and taking combat discipline next will allow for the most effective combo's to be made as the components start to become effective. Armour lore is a must, Inquisitor gear isn't exactly high in base armour and this, with an artamarks star or two if you have them will provide a helpful baseline, add in the flat armour values that toughness provides and armour lore multiplies and you have the beginnings of a sounds defence. Constitution is also a must, the only way to not get killed is to have more health and in combat regen at mastery will be excellent. The bit where it is up to you is the remaining skill choice. If you play in Ice and Blood and want to fight in the swamps or blood forest for the high monster density and experience then spell resistance is probably your best bet and I suggest picking it at level 35 and mastering it after your first 3 masteries. However, if you don't play Ice and Blood and only have the original game or feel that you can survive with the armour, mitigation and health provided by socketing and your other defensive skills, this is a free skill choice. Without Ice and Blood you cannot pick Ancient Magic and thus miss out on the extra damage it will provide, however you can choose to add bargaining and raise a shopper to high levels, add tactics lore for some extra melee damage and make this more of a hybrid or Nefarious netherworld lore and use the Combat Arts from that aspect as a source of damage.

Suggested mastery order:

1st: Astute Supremacy lore, Astute Supremacy Focus, Nefarious Netherworld Focus

2nd: Spell Resistance (If not taking this simply move everything up the list one place and I recommend mastering constitution as soon as possible after toughness, you're free skill can get thrown in anywhere afterwards)

3rd: Armour Lore

4th: Toughness

And then if you need more regen master concentration, more defence master constitution and more damage master combat discipline in whichever order you feel. Constitution will probably be more useful being mastered before the other two. Leave dual wield at 1 point.

 

Attributes:

 

As we won't be taking constitution until later in levels I recommend putting all points into vitality until you get to around levels 50-60 and you have constitution learnt and raised by your gear. After that I put all points into Intelligence to raise CA damage. You could however put points into any of vitality, stamina or intelligence if you require more health, regen or damage or any mix of the three.

Combat Arts:

Well, combat arts for a caster inquisitor are pretty much the same for each build, for damage we will use Clustering Maelstrom, Levin Array and Raving Thrust with two buffs.

Clustering Maelstrom.pngClustering Maelstrom

 

  • Bronze Mod: Chaos – While extra damage is nice, we will be casting this on as large a mob as possible and will therefore see a greater damage bonus through this choice.
  • Silver Mod: Vortex – Range is a must, this CA doesn't affect a large area initially and can leave the stragglers or outer enemies in a mob if we don't increase tha range somehow.
  • Gold mod: Vortex – Same as above.

 

Levin Array.pngLevin Array

 

  • Bronze Mod: Disperse – The range increase is rather small, and this mod will provide us with the greatest increase in effective damage area.
  • Silver Mod: Either is good. Lowered attack speed means they hit you less, lowered movement speed means that any survivors can't run away from you very fast.
  • Gold Mod: Dynamic – Fixed value lifeleech will not provide as great an overall increase in damage as more crits, and since crit bonus' from gear don't increase spell chance to crit this is a must. Also, we will get extra health regen elsewhere.

 

Raving Thrust.pngRaving Thrust

 

  • Bronze Mod: Bedaze – The range increases with CA level and if it gets too large you can find it thrusting opponents too far away from you which can be annoying. Stun means they stand there whilst you Combat Arts hit them all.
  • Silver Mod: Relay – The more opponents you knock around means the more that will collide which means more damage.
  • Gold Mod: Lesion – Lowered health means they will all die faster.

 

 

Reverse Polarity.pngReverse Polarity

 

  • Bronze Mod: Rebound – Reflect Combat Arts as well (which is what it does, not magic damage), always helpful.
  • Silver Mod: Counterblow – Means we have a chance (which gets very high) to reflect all sources of damage, Combat Arts, melee and ranged.
  • Gold Mod: Evade – Ok, this choice is different to the usual pick, normally people feel that the mitigation provided by exploit and followers is great, however hirelings simply get in the way and distract enemy attention when you are trying to round up a mod. Also, while evade only provides an increase in your flat defence value there is a wonderful synergy between this and our other buff, and also blacksmith defence sockets.

 

Zealous Doppelganger.pngZealous Doppelganger

 

I don't use this except to chuck in a %Life leech shuriken and to summon if I happen to kill a boss. He also appears to get increased %LL values to what you summon him with which is useful. Mod as you will, I would suggest Incentive, your choice of aspect and duration since using him as a buff means he is in the way more often.

 

 

Soul Reaver.pngSoul Reaver

 

  • Bronze Mod: Zealot – Longer lasting souls = longer lasting effects. Also, no lore means the damage they provide will be negligible if the other mod is chosen.
  • Silver Mod: Recreation – Faster health regen rate is better than relying upon this CA to reduce your regens from massive number every time you join a server, get debuffed or lose your souls.
  • Gold Mod: Soul Imbiber – Extra defence. Kill something that leaves a corpse and get healed by 10% of your maximum health. As we will be continuously killing, we don't need any longer soul duration, also, duration increases with CA level meaning picking this mod twice is unnecessary.

 

Importantly, this buff works wonders with Reverse polarity's Evade mod. Reverse polarity adds to your base defence. For every enemy you kill that leaves a corpse (thus providing a soul) Soul Reaver multiplies your defence. Attack and defence values of >50,000 are not uncommon at early levels and at over level 100 you can easily reach attack and defence values in excess of several hundred thousand. What this means is that if you are ever forced to melee in between casts you will most likely have close to or >100% chance to hit and your chance to be hit can drop to 0%.

So, we have skills, attributes and combat arts covered; now we get to…

 

Equipment:

Firstly, there are a few unique armour pieces that are rarer than the sets but are probably better than most of them, for everything else set items or gear bought with maximum sockets will be best.

Weapons: Your best bet here are two

Officer's Saber, 6 gold sockets will give you heaps of socketing possibilities. Alternatively, Ancrid's Blade, Flashing Glaive of Atherton or Flaying Glaive of Atherton all have 3 sockets too, Ancrids one of each type, the glaives 3 gold. However, if you don't have access to these any unqiue weapons that you find, or weapons that you find with 2 sockets and built in bonuses to something you would have socketed can be used too (eg buy a weapon with 2 gold sockets, gold preferably, and a bonus to experience or Combat Arts).

In sockets, a mix of + All skills, + all Combat Arts, blacksmith arts (niobium if possible, damage and armour ones), +HP, +experience per kill (fill all remaining sockets with this and watch your experience meter fly. Also, if you have any artamarks stars, tanits collar and darworgans circlet one or two of each can be of use for the extra armour/mitigation.

Note that the three piece set bonus for Deylen's Power is +x% Chance to fear opponents away something that is counterproductive to killing, so if possible try to only use 2 pieces of this set, especially if you aren't quite killing things in one cast of your combo yet. Often, I find it procs on champions which survive the combo and run off meaning you either chase them or leave them, your call.

 

Mount:

 

 

Well, the obvious choice is the Astute Supremacy Mount here, you arent going to be using Combat Arts from other aspects, and even if you choose to, the majority will be from this aspect.

 

Game play:

For the first few levels, having picked dual wield early means you can run around with two weapons, find enough runes, cash and gear for the early levels to get all your Combat Arts learnt and first dozen or so levels done. Even without access to all the suggested gear at low levels, if you have a shopper that can buy gear with maximum sockets and fill them with goodies it won't be an issue. After learning combat discipline you want to run around with the one combo:

Clustering Maelstrom + Raving Thrust + Levin Array

You want to cast this on an enemy that's behind the main mob of enemies if possible as this usually results in Levin Array being cast over a large area hitting everything, not just a few enemies in front of you. Try to keep the regen at whatever feels comfortable; you can have it at a tad higher than you may normally keep regens on other toons as you will be running around between casts looking for more enemies and to find the best position to cast from. I try to keep mine somewhere around 2 seconds, maybe a little more. It will take some getting used to casting/aiming the combo, but once you play around with it a few times you will learn the best places to aim.

By level 30 you should have all your skills you are mastering first at or very near to your level and will really start to see your levels fly by with enough +experience. Running through the cursed forest main quest up til Diaanja's Refuge is a great source of experience and sets and travelling from their onto the next few towns will give you access to the resurrection monolith in the area where all the constructs are.

Early level socketing can mostly be done by filling most sockets with niobium level Whets and Anneals. 3 or 4 sockets with anneal, 10 or so with whets and the remainder with +experience will provide you with all the damage and experience you will need at a low level, no need to raise your CA levels until later, less whets and more experience can work too.

Use a buff suit, or buff weapons to cast your buffs. Two weapons with 3 sockets each filled with runes from the highest difficulty you can equip will be enough to cast your buffs at above penalty. Gold runes will add +2 to a combat art but require you to be level 20 to equip the weapons they are socketed in, plat runes +4 and level 35, niob runes +6 and level 50, so by level 39 you can equip level 50 weapons, 6 sockets will give +36 to your buff, any gear you put this in will mean you cast your buffs at a high level, but they only impose a regen penalty of the level they are at when you equip your main damage weapons. Once you get past level 50 or so you will want to start socketing +Combat Arts to raise your damage and not rely so much on blacksmith arts.

Ideally, you want as much +experience in your gear as possible, however don't do so at the expense of too much damage. For example, I had a little over +100% experience at level 100 and was running around with mentor potions almost all the time. I could probably have had more +experience, but doing so would have meant killing a bit too slow to be as efficient. Socketing a fair amount of +All skills will increase everything, offensive and defensive meaning that provided you have enough + All Combat Arts, + All Skills you can get your experience pretty high at the expense of the other item mods I mentioned.

The best areas I found to kill in are the following (in platinum and niobium having mastered spell resistance will make levelling here much easier, however in certain areas it isn't an issue):

Southern Swamps – High spider density, werewolves and turtles in the east, spiders and olms in the west. The spiders can be a real doozy if you don't have high poison armour and spell resistance, although socketing enough –damage over time will make this area easy enough to level in as every kill here will provide a soul healing you and making you harder to hit.

Cursed Forest – Run the first few stages of the quest, boss killing becomes difficult unless you want to summon your doppelganger with a %LL shuriken, so going any further than the first town where you get attacked by waves of enemies is pointless, the quest is good for sets and experience. Also in the cursed forest, in A Destroyed Village, the region is filled with hundreds of constructs, easy one hit kills. Round them up, blast them with your combo and watch them explode. Worth lots of experience this area is a great source of unique relics, rings and amulets. However, they do not leave souls when they die, kill the floating heads and flag poles for souls. Finally, the region that follows this in the cursed forest, leading up to and around the Abishai's stronghold is another great source of experience. Harbingers will summon 4 (or 5…I can't remember) little demons when they see you, so round up as many of them as possible, pop a mentors, fire your combo and watch the damage and experience fly. Also, the floating eyes here are the type to reset your Combat Art regens, not the dangerous leeching type (there are one or two here or there, but never more than that) meaning you can level in this part of the cursed forest and the construct plain without spell resistance and free up a skill slot.

In effect, any area with high enemy density is a good place to level, jungle, swamps, cursed forest, anywhere, run through one, then the next while your first preference respawns and head back again.

And now a few pictures showing how many souls you can suck in at once and just how many numbers will fly up on the screen, they aren't the best pictures, but they give a good idea of what you will see. Excuse the damage, having gear that was 20-25 levels too low and freshly into niobium…not the best mix…I even had something on that was level 30…don't know how I missed that…although it is proof of survivability and damage.

 

Swamps:

post-583-0-12631200-1291538766_thumb.jpg

 

Souls:

post-583-0-73810800-1291538718_thumb.jpg

 

Experience and Damage (this isnt to show you how much damage one hit does, but how many hits and experience numbers show up, note how the experience goes out the top of the screen once it has fully expanded):

post-583-0-31420900-1291538683_thumb.jpgpost-583-0-06015700-1291538647_thumb.jpgpost-583-0-45976100-1291538608_thumb.jpg

 

Last notes:

 

Obviously there are a few simple changes that can be made, my restrictions to one aspect were self imposed, I have Nefarious Netherworld Focus at mastery and have 6 spare mod points for the aspect. These could be easily used to mod for extra damage (Eruptive Desecration and add to the damage combo in 4th place when combat discipline hits mastery) and extra defence (Paralyzing Dread) if you so desired. Also, swapping out spell resistance for NN lore will increase this damage and allow more modification. Like I mentioned earlier, spell resistance can be replaced if you don't have Ice and Blood or if you feel comfortable without it, if I played this toon again I would replace it. Make a bargainer, add Ancient Magic, the choice is up to you. If there is anything you feel is missing, let me know and I shall try to remedy it.

Hope you enjoy the build guide :)

Edited by Dragon Brother
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Awesome job DB!

 

there is just something evil about that Clustering Combo devil.gif

 

Andy I find myself wanting to do it over and over and.... somebody find me another mob!

 

lol

 

 

great fun DB and nicely done on the guide.

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Good work on the build DB ! :thumbsup:

 

Other good weapon for this build is Nlovae's Mystery, combat art range bonus have a good synergy with the Supremacy Aspect. :)

Edited by Woody
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Good work on the build DB ! :thumbsup:

 

Other good weapon for this build is Nlovae's Mystery, combat art range bonus have a good synergy with the Supremacy Aspect. :)

 

Thats true, I sometimes get so suckererd into to 3 socket weapons I dont look so much at what else is out there :S

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  • 8 months later...
  • 11 months later...

Dragon Brother :bow: :bow: :bow: :bow: This is incredible character, second best build for experience, just after the Dryad.

 

I experience 110 - 111lvl 20 minutes, in red forest (best location for experience)

 

But only one question: How kill bosses?

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Iwould guess this toon cannot easily handle bosses solo. Mastering NN Focus gives you options for modding Paralyzing Dread to help, but otherwise this toon unlocks difficulties by gaining levels and not defeating Guardians.

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Hey Legosp, Im glad to see you like the build. Like ess said, this build doesn't really have many boss killing options. The best I had was to kill as many normal mobs to raise attack and defense as high as possible and then summon the doppelganger whilst using a life leech shuriken. The doppelganger spawns with increased %LL from memory so adds some extra kick and also can give the boss someone else to target.

 

I can't say I ever did chattius, never played him in the cm patch. I Imagine dual wielding Nlovae's Mystery like Woody said would definitely work wonders though along with any extra stuff you find.

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