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Eye of the Storm: a Hybrid Inquisitor Build


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I'm doing a variation of this build I need a Niob Smith and I don't want to do melee so here is my plan.

 

Bargaining 75

AS Lore 150

Combat Discipline 75

Concentration 75

AS Focus 75

Armor Lore 1 (+ skills will boost enough to counteract the regen penalty)

Tactics Lore 75

NU Lore 75

Blacksmith 200

NU Focus 75

 

With both bargaining and smithing im hoping I can create equpment powerfull enough to copensate for the 2 utility picks, im still new to this game so any advice would be appreciated.

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MT, what level were you able to get the Maelstrom too. Were you using a CA boosting slot, or eating runes, or just having them socketed in your armor or coming all from native armor values?

 

As well, what kind of regen were you able to get on it, and how much was the listed damage with you "E" key?

 

:)

 

gogo

 

 

Well, I'm not sure I can remember exactly, but iirc by level 105 my maelstrom was at approximately level 35 (just a guess...I had around 30 points in AS focus at that level so whatever the max CA level was, I was generally within 5-10 ranks of that for my AS CAs). LA and RT were both a bit higher (I equalized the regen times of those 3). I used a few +all CA and +AS aspect items, but not really a whole lot of them; perhaps a total of 10-12 ranks. I used more of those earlier on, but regen really ceases to be a concern after some time, so I simply ate runes at that point. I certainly never socketed individual runes; in a hybrid build I use way too many different CAs to use a slot for a single one.

 

I tried not to boost the AS CAs above focus levels, but got as high as I could without getting the regens out of control. Generally I tried to keep the regen for the AS combo between 4.5 seconds and 8.0 seconds. The way I played involved a good deal of herding, so there was little point in having a spam-able combo, but anything north of 7-8 seconds and RM stopped reliably recharching the combo in one go (with regen on hit of about 1.4 seconds from the Ilgaard's gloves, I only needed 5 targets to instantly recharge 7 seconds. EDIT: and if there were fewer than 5-6 targets left after the 1st AS combo, I didn't feel the need to use a 2nd one, so in those cases I simply spammed the melee combo to mop up); that is if anything survived the initial AS combo, which I tried to ensure didn't happen by keeping CA levels high.

 

I'd be guessing if I gave you a value for the "on screen damage", but if you want a guess I'd say it was about 3K for CM at that point. I could be way off though. I didn't socket any damage smith arts, and didn't have hallow either though, so with either or both of those, it could be significantly higher, I think I had a +%damage ring or 2 though (with secondary effects). Most of my sockets were used for "+chance that enemy cannot evade", "+deathblow", "+evade/+block", and "+all skills", with a few "+all CA" and "+aspect: AS" thrown in.

 

 

 

@Keithtony:

 

That may work okay, but if you don't want to use melee at all, you should probably skip tactics lore (and if you want to mod GI CAs pick GI focus instead to keep PC leveled high). You may be better served to follow a pure caster guide though; this build was always intended to use melee to help on bosses and support the AS tree. Just as an example, you wouldn't be able to rely on "regen on hit" so you'd have to keep CA levels much lower than I did. Also, you may or may not be aware, but BS is non-functional on consoles. If you're on PC no worries though. Also, if you're not playing hardcore, no biggie, but that build is definitely going to get killed from time to time with a single defensive skill left at 1 rank.

Edited by MTCityHunter
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That a nice guide of inquisitor I read. I am following it to build my inquisitor. And I would like to ask the mod of SR, since u mentioned the mod should be duration, regen time, heal. But I didn't understand the bronze & silve mod in clearly. Would you pls explain which one is correct for your mod?

 

Bronze: Deathmagic / Zealot

Silver: Recreation / Source

Gold: Soul Imbiber

 

Many thanks~ ^ ^

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That a nice guide of inquisitor I read. I am following it to build my inquisitor. And I would like to ask the mod of SR, since u mentioned the mod should be duration, regen time, heal. But I didn't understand the bronze & silve mod in clearly. Would you pls explain which one is correct for your mod?

 

Bronze: Deathmagic / Zealot

Silver: Recreation / Source

Gold: Soul Imbiber

 

Many thanks~ ^ ^

 

 

Sure. I chose Zealot (which increases duration of the SR bonuses) for bronze, Source (which decreases regen times of all CAs while you've got a soul consumed) for silver, and Soul Imbiber (Heal) for Gold. If you prefer, I'm sure you could get away without using the heal gold mod if you prefer to boost the duration again with the second zealot mod; I simply prefered the heal and for my playstyle, extra duration was not necessary.

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Hello Hello,

 

I have a fledgeling inquisitor, and I wanted to run the build by you.

He's only 23 right now, and it's my first character, kicking ass in Bronze, FTW :-/

 

I wanted a hybrid build as well, focused on taking out weak mobs and converting the surviors to minions

 

L2. Concentration (at level - 23)

L3. Astute Supremacy Lore (9 ranks)

L5. Nefarious Netherworld Lore (9 ranks)

L8. Dual Wield (1rank)

L12. Armor Lore (5 ranks)

L18. Nefarious Netherworld Focus (5 ranks)

L25. Either Tactics Lore or Constitution

L35. The other (Either whichever I did not take at 25)

L50. Open - combat discipline? not sure

L65 Toughness

 

The issue is, I intend to run 3 buffs (The Dopple), and there is no current plan for Astute Supremacy Focus. I am wondering if my regen times will get out of control or I can mitigate with Concentration/Stamina and the AS spider?

I modded SR for regen times, and don't mind modding other CAs for regen times.

 

Right now my regen times are decent, under 2 seconds for all GI CAs, and under 4 seconds for AS CAs. NN CAs tend to have looong regen times which is why I took the focus there. I also wanted better Defense and Attack than Soul Reaver provides (not to mention the reg savings when accompanies by souls goes up when this CA goes up).

 

So will the AS spider be enough to keep the regen times down, or do I need to rethink the build? I'm ok with sinking more than 75 in Concentration More than a few points into Stamina/Int and leaving GI CA levels low. It is the damage/regen from AS I worry about (Levin Array and Clustering Maelstrom not scaling fast enough).

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Hello Hello,

 

I have a fledgeling inquisitor, and I wanted to run the build by you.

He's only 23 right now, and it's my first character, kicking ass in Bronze, FTW :-/

 

I wanted a hybrid build as well, focused on taking out weak mobs and converting the surviors to minions

 

L2. Concentration (at level - 23)

L3. Astute Supremacy Lore (9 ranks)

L5. Nefarious Netherworld Lore (9 ranks)

L8. Dual Wield (1rank)

L12. Armor Lore (5 ranks)

L18. Nefarious Netherworld Focus (5 ranks)

L25. Either Tactics Lore or Constitution

L35. The other (Either whichever I did not take at 25)

L50. Open - combat discipline? not sure

L65 Toughness

 

Howdy. Welcome to the dark side. First things first: that looks like a well rounded skill setup, although without AS Focus your RP and ZD will have to be at a lower level than would be optimal. That's not such a big deal for ZD if you want him as a buff because you'll wanna keep his regen penalty under control anyways, but IMO it provides more versatility to keep him as a spell because it lets you use SR as a 3rd buff. IMO RP and PC are mandatory for the 1st 2 buffs because w/o RP you won't survive as well and w/o PC (specifically the mystic, eradicate, and hallow mods; also inure for defense if you prefer that, but with toughness in place, I'd go with hallow instead) both AS and NN damage won't scale very well at higher levels. As for your open slot, CD is an awesome skill, I'd highly recommend it.

 

The issue is, I intend to run 3 buffs (The Dopple), and there is no current plan for Astute Supremacy Focus. I am wondering if my regen times will get out of control or I can mitigate with Concentration/Stamina and the AS spider?

I modded SR for regen times, and don't mind modding other CAs for regen times.

 

Right now my regen times are decent, under 2 seconds for all GI CAs, and under 4 seconds for AS CAs. NN CAs tend to have looong regen times which is why I took the focus there. I also wanted better Defense and Attack than Soul Reaver provides (not to mention the reg savings when accompanies by souls goes up when this CA goes up).

 

It's not really the regen times I'd be concerned with. As I've discussed a good deal throughout the thread, utilizing RM in conjunction with some regen on hit and a good hit rate works wonders at keeping your combos recharged. That's the beauty of the hybrid build really. GI CAs do great on single targets and bosses, which is a weakness of caster Inquisitor builds, but melee can also assist the spell combos like this, which allows you to keep much higher regen times for the non-melee combos.

 

The main problem I'd anticipate would be damage of the AS CAs. I ran them all fairly close to focus level w/o penalty and I'm not sure how effective they'd continue to be later on without keeping them at high levels. Using PC with the mods I mention above would help a lot though. Also, keeping deathblow as high as possible helps a great deal with AS and NN (I'd go no lower than 50%, more is better).

 

So will the AS spider be enough to keep the regen times down, or do I need to rethink the build? I'm ok with sinking more than 75 in Concentration More than a few points into Stamina/Int and leaving GI CA levels low. It is the damage/regen from AS I worry about (Levin Array and Clustering Maelstrom not scaling fast enough).

 

Well I'd hope ya don't mind spending 75 points there or 3 buffs'll be tricky :) j/k, anyways, I think it should still be fine with regards to regens, and damage could be okay too if you go with the appropriate PC mods. I'm not sure which 3 buffs you really intend to use, but I'd strongly consider PC/RP/SR and using ZD as a spell. You can mod him early (perhaps right after RP and CM) for duration and he'll be able to stay out most of the time at later levels. He'll never become chain cast-able (I don't think...due to DR), but as a spell, he can also be MUCH higher level and has no regen penalty associated, while allowing you to still use all 3 other buffs, so IMO its just more powerful and versatile to go that route.

 

Happy hunting!

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both AS and NN damage won't scale very well at higher levels.

CMs' damage is weapon based, and stays useful over time. At level 120 and NO astute lore it still deals with trash mobs with one cast, all I have to do is to CE the remaining champs. Main reason why I don't get the idea of caster builds (please don't reply with "caster is challenging" and this sort of c..p)

I'm not sure which 3 buffs you really intend to use, but I'd strongly consider PC/RP/SR and using ZD as a spell.

Same here. At higher levels it is possible to keep him on most of the time anyway.

Edited by Zonc1
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both AS and NN damage won't scale very well at higher levels.

CMs' damage is weapon based, and stays useful over time. At level 120 and NO astute lore it still deals with trash mobs with one cast, all I have to do is to CE the remaining champs. Main reason why I don't get the idea of caster builds (please don't reply with "caster is challenging" and this sort of c..p)

I'm not sure which 3 buffs you really intend to use, but I'd strongly consider PC/RP/SR and using ZD as a spell.

Same here. At higher levels it is possible to keep him on most of the time anyway.

 

 

But...caster IS challenging. Hehe. AS also deals with trash mobs far more effectively than melee for the way I prefer to play (herding and killing everything in a single combo). I'll never argue Inquisitor spells scale as well as the melee arts for pure damage, but with the appropriate mod and gear choices, the spell CAs can more than hold their own, and can inherently target far more targets simultaneously than the melee arts. For me, that's a big advantage for grinding.

 

Are you sure CM is related to weapon damage? In my experience, I don't think that's true. Did you mean RM? edit: At any rate, you're taking that comment out of context. CM (and RT and LA) can absolutely continue to do good damage capable of wiping out anything you face with a single AS combo cast. Yes, RM continues to be viable and powerful as you level, but the spells can too; they simply require more careful consideration with regards to mods and usage to stay that way. :end edit

 

Anyways, you aren't required to play caster or hybrid builds. No one's forcing you to, but its been shown time and again that it can work, and very efficiently at that. Time and again, you come in and contend that its pointless because melee is "better". Maybe so for the way you play the class. Most decidedly not true for the way myself and others chose to play it. Some people find pure melee mind numbingly boring, and want to incorporate other aspects. Its that simple.

Edited by MTCityHunter
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I'm surprised, but I checked and CM doesn't scale with weapons. I thought so becouse it works very well... now another reason against caster build :) (I don't have AS lore, just to remind)

 

 

Cool, I didn't think so. It does scale with number of targets obviously (as does RT), which is why the caster CAs dovetail very nicely for my "herding" playstyle. No doubt someone who preferred to fight mobs "as they come" in those groups of ~3 every few meters would prefer another approach, such as melee.

 

There's plenty of things that stop certain builds like caster/hybrid inquisitors from being "optimal" by some definitions. I can assure you though that this build performs quite optimally for Area of Effect grinding; it kills faster and more effortlessly in that role than any other build of any other class I've tried, and I've tried plenty. For small groups and bosses, its definitely NOT optimized, and I would never contend it is; GI specialization will always outperform it and other caster builds there. What I will say is that it performed plenty "well enough" in those situations. I never really had problems with kill speed on bosses after about level 12 :P

 

I expect the "non-utility variant" of this build I'm currently planning will perform even better once I get his bargaining supporting toon established (although I may just jump in early...the whole bfg seraphim thing is boring me to tears). Anyways, I'm not trying to start a battle of words or anything here, just trying to make it clear that there are always viable alternative approaches for players looking for a different twist. Peace!

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Wow! thanks for the advice :-)

 

I am going to run with SR+RP as my offensive and defensive buffs. I want the Dopple as a distraction vs mobs and as a good damage source vs bosses (so GI aspect, and gear suited for melee as I summon him). With Armor Lore AND Toughness, I should be pretty hard to kill. Especially when melee is only used to bat cleanup.

 

The real issue is that you cannot bump the two buffs without focus or the regen times get out of control.

However, based on your advice, looks like I effed up by taking NN Lore. I guess I could restart? Bummer.

 

 

 

Grrrr.

Or, I could dump combat discipline or toughness.

Maybe I could make a combo with Paralysing Dread (Despair, lower resistance values) + Clustering MaelStrom (Gash - bleeding damage) + Levin Array (Mod'd for damage?)

 

This would lower resistances first, then dump the damagers on the enemies...

 

I'd really like to think the build could work. *sigh*

 

Thanks again, dude.

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PD has cooldown of 60 secs and will never go below that value, so it would be terrible to link it with some "fighting CAs" in a combo. It's best to keep CAs with similar regen times in a combo, like CM + RM and PD + doppleganger which can be used in tough battles.

Now I do understand a reason of AS lore but NN lore seems so... I just can't find any use for this. And I believe Inqusitor needs every skill to be fully utilized, so even one skill wasted might do things much harder (unlike high elf lets say). Just think about it, level 23 can be made within hours from zero, and the longer you play the harder it'll be to start over.

But don't worry, I took my first Inquisitor to level 93 just to learn how things work with him (btw all I can say is: "you never can be too deffensive")

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Yeah, you'll want to use combos of CAs with similar regen times. For example, FF-PD work well together. Another trick I like to use if possible, is to keep attack combos on separate timers. For example, my AS combos that include RT/CM/LA are unaffected by any of my other combos because those other combos contain no AS CAs. My GI combo of RM/CE wasn't delayed by the AS combo either, so thy could be fired off one after another quite easily. This isn't as big a deal once you get enough regen on hit, but its still nice.

 

As for the buffs, I understand the desire to have doppel out all the time, but I just don't think its worth losing the benefits of PC to do so. With the extended duration mod (non-buff) you can keep him out the majority of the time anyway, and with no regen penalty so you can make him way higher level and therefore more dangerous to your enemies. Not to mention that during normal travel, he's less than effective because he glitches out and falls behind constantly. He behaves better when you summon him to an established battleground (I.e. a boss fight or big normal fight) rather than trying to travel with him all the time. Plus if you want to use SR, he will steal souls from you, which rather sucks. In my experience, the only boss encounter I couldn't keep him up for all of with time to spare was the nameless guardians, and even then, he could be up for 2 or 3 of the 4 no problem (and you could always lockdown with IS to stall and wait on the regen if you wanted to). I'm not saying you can't make ZD work as a buff, but if you try out the other buffs together I think you'll see what I mean: they're hard to let go of once you see what they can do. Anyways, Zonc1 has more experience than I do regarding the doppelganger so feel free to offer insights I'm missing. :D

 

I can't say one way or another whether you messed up by taking NN Lore. I've never used that skill or built a pure caster Inquisitor, so I'll refrain from judgment. What I will say, is that in my impression, NN Lore is tough to justify unless you're making NN your primary tree, specifically, unless you're making IS your primary attack, in which case you'll need all the damage boosts you can get.

 

You can use IS as a primary attack, and can safely lock down single targets/bosses with it indefinitely until you kill them, but don't expect to get a boss down in less than 5 or 10 seconds like you could with GI CAs. Realistically you're looking at times measured in minutes for that style. To me, this would fall more under the pure caster umbrella since GI will simply get the job done faster than NN, even with little to no support (I.e. - 1 skill point in DW and either GIF or tactics is more than enough to make GI quite powerful...obviously you can make it very powerful with more focused investment).

 

Sure, this hybrid build can lock down bosses with IS as well if you care to, but it would take literally forever to kill the boss (no NN Lore, no hallow...both of which are necessary IMO to make IS a viable damage dealer; even then its simply viable, still slower than other options), so I used GI + spell ZD for that instead. Bottom line, if you need NN to do decent damage, NN Lore is mandatory, but IMO a hybrid build uses NN purely for support; at least mine did :crazy:

 

Okay...that tuned into a novel. Sorry, I do that lol. Good luck!

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Yeah, you'll want to use combos of CAs with similar regen times. For example, FF-PD work well together. Another trick I like to use if possible, is to keep attack combos on separate timers. For example, my AS combos that include RT/CM/LA are unaffected by any of my other combos because those other combos contain no AS CAs. My GI combo of RM/CE wasn't delayed by the AS combo either, so thy could be fired off one after another quite easily. This isn't as big a deal once you get enough regen on hit, but its still nice.

 

Got it - I did not see that hard limit with PD. BUmmer.

 

As for the buffs, I understand the desire to have doppel out all the time, but I just don't think its worth losing the benefits of PC to do so.

 

ARP: I don't get it - why is PC good? I have to be hurt, and between armor lore, and toughness, how banged up am I going to get, really? As it is I have over 300 lt healing potions.

 

With the extended duration mod (non-buff) you can keep him out the majority of the time anyway, and with no regen penalty so you can make him way higher level and therefore more dangerous to your enemies.

 

I am beginning to understand, now that I see the way the game works.

 

I can't say one way or another whether you messed up by taking NN Lore. I've never used that skill or built a pure caster Inquisitor, so I'll refrain from judgment. What I will say, is that in my impression, NN Lore is tough to justify unless you're making NN your primary tree, specifically, unless you're making IS your primary attack, in which case you'll need all the damage boosts you can get.

 

I originally took lore with the following plan

1) have ZD up all the time.

2) snipe enemies with IS

3) for trash mobs drop a CM+Levin to thin the herd+ gather souls.

 

Anyway, I was noticing that IS's damage was not great, AND it locks YOU down until the opponent dies or the duration runs out. So I took Lore to shore up the damage while not killing my regen times.

 

For boss fights I figured I'd use the spirit thigie to rip some attributes from and hit heavy with ice, then follow up with CE.

 

Okay...that tuned into a novel. Sorry, I do that lol. Good luck!

 

no worries, thanks for the help. Still on the fence as to considering the deletion

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As for the buffs, I understand the desire to have doppel out all the time, but I just don't think its worth losing the benefits of PC to do so.

 

ARP: I don't get it - why is PC good? I have to be hurt, and between armor lore, and toughness, how banged up am I going to get, really? As it is I have over 300 lt healing potions.

 

Okay, here's the thing: ignore for a second that you do more damage as you get hurt because of PC. That's just a bonus; free damage if you will, for when you DO take damage (make no mistake, you're still gonna take some damage regardless of defenses). What makes PC powerful are its mods. None of the mods require that you're hurt to function at their full effect (except merciless, but lets ignore that for now...eradicate is usually better anyway); they'll work as well at full health as they do at 1 hp.

 

The mystic mod adds 18% plus 2% magic (or fire for smolder...only useful for RM melee builds) damage per CA level. I know the wiki lists a flat value; its wrong as it is a percent bonus which scales nicely as you do more damage and as you increase PC level. For example, at PC level 50, which is quite easy to achieve, you're looking at +118% magic damage, which applies to LA and IS. In other words, that's 218% of normal damage. At PC level 100, you're looking at +218% magic damage.

 

The eradicate mod provides 9.9% + 0.1% per CA level chance to crit. That's 14.9% chance to crit at PC level 50, and 19.9% chance at PC level 100.

 

The Hallow mod provides the same scaling bonus to damage as mystic/smolder, except it applies to ALL damage you do, regardless of type. It also stacks with mystic with regards to IS/LA damage. So at CA level 50 with mystic and hallow, you'll do +236% damage with LA and IS, and +118% with everything else. At CA level 100, that goes to +436% magic damage and +218% damage with everything else.

 

If you choose Inure instead of hallow for more defense, it provides all channel damage mitigation in the same percentages granted by eradicate above (14.9% mitigation at PC level 50 and 19.9% mitigation at PC level 100). This stacks with toughness if you choose to use both. Remember, none of these requires you to be hurt at all to function, and you still have the normal enraged player bonus PC ordinarily provides on top of all this.

 

 

I originally took lore with the following plan

1) have ZD up all the time.

2) snipe enemies with IS

3) for trash mobs drop a CM+Levin to thin the herd+ gather souls.

 

Anyway, I was noticing that IS's damage was not great, AND it locks YOU down until the opponent dies or the duration runs out. So I took Lore to shore up the damage while not killing my regen times.

 

For boss fights I figured I'd use the spirit thigie to rip some attributes from and hit heavy with ice, then follow up with CE.

 

Yeah IS does lock you down as well (It'd be pretty OP if it didn't IMO...its still very powerful as is). As for starting over, you simply need to decide if you want IS for damage. If so, you could probably stick with NN Lore, and make do with lower level AS CAs. If you're content to use IS to simply kill normal mobs, or give yourself a breather on boss fights, or to freeze champs/bosses while you debuff them (as I did, in a combo with DS and MP), you won't need NN Lore. Also bear in mind ED benefits from NN Lore if you like that CA. I don't, but its damage will be pretty good with support fro the lore so you could work it in if ya like.

 

Have fun!

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The Hallow mod provides the same scaling bonus to damage as mystic/smolder, except it applies to ALL damage you do, regardless of type. It also stacks with mystic with regards to IS/LA damage. So at CA level 50 with mystic and hallow, you'll do +236% damage with LA and IS, and +118% with everything else. At CA level 100, that goes to +436% magic damage and +218% damage with everything else.

 

ok, that (+436% magic damage) convinced me. That's serious damage. Damage mitigation does not suck either though

 

Yeah IS does lock you down as well (It'd be pretty OP if it didn't IMO...its still very powerful as is). As for starting over, you simply need to decide if you want IS for damage. If so, you could probably stick with NN Lore, and make do with lower level AS CAs. If you're content to use IS to simply kill normal mobs, or give yourself a breather on boss fights, or to freeze champs/bosses while you debuff them (as I did, in a combo with DS and MP), you won't need NN Lore. Also bear in mind ED benefits from NN Lore if you like that CA. I don't, but its damage will be pretty good with support fro the lore so you could work it in if ya like.

 

Very valuable feedback. I mean part of me knows it would be smarter to dump NN Lore. *sigh* The other part wants to make a Inquisitor that works with NN and plays the concentration/combo regen game.

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I'm with the "dump NN lore" part of you :)

And as MTC said, ignore the engraged players bonus from PC and don't think about lowering your defence so you could use it all the time. Think of it just as a extra bonus, not something to rely on (I think that part of PC should be designed some other way, it's not cool to take damage)

Edited by Zonc1
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I'm with the "dump NN lore" part of you :)

 

You know...something else just occurred to me, but I'm not sure how it works one way or another. While NN Lore certainly boosts the damage of the IS beam itself, you could say that a good chunk of IS' damage comes from the damage inflicted by the minion(s) you create.

 

I'd like to know if NN Lore boosts the damage of these minions. I'm not sure about that; I've not tested it personally, and the rules seem to vary with respect to minion type CAs from various classes (for example, I'm pretty sure astral lord lore doesn't affect either rallied souls damage or skeleton damage, but AS Lore seems to affect ZD damage to a small degree for us inquisitors).

 

NN Lore pros: If it does impact minion damage in a significant way, that's a huge boon for NN Lore for someone that wants to raise small armies although it'd still be situational vs. bosses (they'd need to have minions nearby). Still, it could provide a significant damage boost (and defensive boost since they'd be getting attacked some) to bring an army to a boss fight, if possible. ED can do very nice damage with NN Lore (and other damage boosting modifiers, like hallow), and could perform well in a combo following CM, but it may also be superfluous (and it gets on my nerves since it'll fire even if no targets are left alive which slows you down). DS damage would also be boosted, and I've heard some people getting some very impressive Area of Effect damage from the wildfire mod, although again this isn't all that useful on bosses. If one were to choose the deathmagic mod on SR, its damage boosted by NN Lore as well. With NN lore (and mystic, and hallow, and maybe even enraged bonus), channeling IS on bosses could potentially start doing enough damage to take bosses out in a reasonable timeframe, but I suspect it'd still be slow enough to drive me crazy.

 

NN Lore cons: If minion damage is unaffected or boosted to a trivial degree, raising an army doesn't get much quicker than without the skill. In my experience, once you get the 1st ghost, it helps out in quickly dispatching the target of the subsequent IS. As you get more and more, you create a chain reaction where you're basically spamming IS instantly creating new ghosts if you have a low enough regen time to do so. As for bringing that army to a boss fight, if NN Lore doesn't affect their damage, it won't help in that strategy anyway. Second, it just doesn't seem that the NN tree was designed with damage in mind, so scaling %based bonuses like lore provides don't provide the same impact they do for AS or GI. In other words, even if NN starts doing viable damage, it'll be slower than other alternatives. If you don't want to use GI, that's fine, but if you're willing to use the melee CAs, they'll almost certainly perform better without much support than NN for single target damage with a lot of support.

 

Just some stuff to chew on as you decide. The choice is yours! ;)

Edited by MTCityHunter
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I'm with the "dump NN lore" part of you :P

 

You know...something else just occurred to me, but I'm not sure how it works one way or another. While NN Lore certainly boosts the damage of the IS beam itself, you could say that a good chunk of IS' damage comes from the damage inflicted by the minion(s) you create.

 

I'd like to know if NN Lore boosts the damage of these minions. I'm not sure about that; I've not tested it personally, and the rules seem to vary with respect to minion type CAs from various classes (for example, I'm pretty sure astral lord lore doesn't affect either rallied souls damage or skeleton damage, but AS Lore seems to affect ZD damage to a small degree for us inquisitors).

 

NN Lore pros: If it does impact minion damage in a significant way, that's a huge boon for NN Lore for someone that wants to raise small armies although it'd still be situational vs. bosses (they'd need to have minions nearby). Still, it could provide a significant damage boost (and defensive boost since they'd be getting attacked some) to bring an army to a boss fight, if possible. ED can do very nice damage with NN Lore (and other damage boosting modifiers, like hallow), and could perform well in a combo following CM, but it may also be superfluous (and it gets on my nerves since it'll fire even if no targets are left alive which slows you down). DS damage would also be boosted, and I've heard some people getting some very impressive Area of Effect damage from the wildfire mod, although again this isn't all that useful on bosses. If one were to choose the deathmagic mod on SR, its damage boosted by NN Lore as well. With NN lore (and mystic, and hallow, and maybe even enraged bonus), channeling IS on bosses could potentially start doing enough damage to take bosses out in a reasonable timeframe, but I suspect it'd still be slow enough to drive me crazy.

 

NN Lore cons: If minion damage is unaffected or boosted to a trivial degree, raising an army doesn't get much quicker than without the skill. In my experience, once you get the 1st ghost, it helps out in quickly dispatching the target of the subsequent IS. As you get more and more, you create a chain reaction where you're basically spamming IS instantly creating new ghosts if you have a low enough regen time to do so. As for bringing that army to a boss fight, if NN Lore doesn't affect their damage, it won't help in that strategy anyway. Second, it just doesn't seem that the NN tree was designed with damage in mind, so scaling %based bonuses like lore provides don't provide the same impact they do for AS or GI. In other words, even if NN starts doing viable damage, it'll be slower than other alternati for pves. If you don't want to use GI, that's fine, but if you're willing to use the melee CAs, they'll almost certainly perform better without much support than NN for single target damage with a lot of support.

 

Just some stuff to chew on as you decide. The choice is yours! :thumbsup:

 

 

Here's a better question for you: It you chose the Hallow gold mod for purifying chastisement, is it better to choose GI focus - giving you access to higher levels PC (instead of Ancestral Focus?) Is it better to take GI focus instead of tactics lore? Don't forget that melee damage is boosted by weapons, and so not boosting it (and taking Lore) could be a good tradeoff (if it means boosting PC)

 

Seems like once you add PC's hallow into the mix, coupled with level 75 concentration, all the Skills that seemed under damaging, can now become useful.

As far as IS goes, the main reason to crank the damage is to avoid lockdowns where you are waiting 2-3 seconds before IS kills the subject to make a ghost.

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Here's a better question for you: It you chose the Hallow gold mod for purifying chastisement, is it better to choose GI focus - giving you access to higher levels PC (instead of Ancestral Focus?) Is it better to take GI focus instead of tactics lore? Don't forget that melee damage is boosted by weapons, and so not boosting it (and taking Lore) could be a good tradeoff (if it means boosting PC)

 

No doubt that once you mod PC, GI Focus becomes a pretty amazing skill. It'll boost the damage and crit rate for all attacks at a rate comparable to having the appropriate lore for the attack in question. If you also have the lore for the attack, it'll stack, doing even more damage. Plus it'll let you boost the CA levels of your GI attacks to get better and more reliable secondary effects, something that's often overlooked by many.

 

I'm not sure what ya mean by ancestral focus? If you mean ancient magic, sadly that's not an option for Inquisitor. If you mean astute supremacy focus, I'd trade out tactics lore instead provided you want more of a hybrid build; if you wanted to rely more on melee, skipping ASF would probably be fine (but it would be better to skip AS Lore instead). With eradicate and hallow, you'd be getting the same damage and crit tactics provided plus the -regen; of course you'll have to keep PC leveled up for that to be true but that's trivial. If you wanted to focus more on melee, you could always grab tactics also and your melee arts would do truly outstanding damage.

 

I'm starting a new build soon based on my original one (but with modifications) that will use this setup to (hopefully) great effect. "Eye of the Storm v2.0" will be supported by another bargainer, so that frees up a skill choice, allowing me to pick toughness instead. Since toughness is roughly equivalent to Inure (really toughness is a bit superior considering the armor bonus and synergy with armor lore), I can than choose hallow instead of inure and keep similar defensive capabilities. Last time I chose merciless instead of eradicate because I didn't know better, but with that setup, I'll be getting free lores from all trees so long as I'm running PC (without the execution speed boosts, but that's irrelevant because I exclusively use combos where that doesn't function anyway). So I'll have GIF instead of tactics, but melee damage should stay about the same (or slightly better due to secondary effects I'll have a boost to this time around). I'll keep AS Lore so all my AS CAs will do more damage than they did before, and this'll ensure that the Area of Effect combo is the best it can be and that it will hold up damage wise to the end. I'll also swap a few modifications here and there to keep it fresh and try some things out.

 

Your build (if you keep NN Lore) could still be very similar to this, but I suspect that ED will evolve into your heavy hitter. With Lore+PC, it'll do great damage. Put it a slot or 2 after CM in a combo and it'll work well. Who knows, I may even use it this time around. Last time, I didn't have support for ED's damage so it scaled pathetically, but that'll probably change with this PC setup. I suspect it's targeting will still bug me though.

 

The great thing about the melee arts is how well they scale with weapon damage, etc. They require very little in terms of specific optimization to retain very good damage long term, so they'll always be there to fall back on when you need them. Bear in mind the one thing that tactics lore has over GIF for melee damage scaling though: normal attacks. GIF doesn't help those at all, while tactics certainly does, so if you don't keep regens to the point where you can spam melee CAs, you could well do more melee damage with tactics. IMO that's trivially easy to do though, especially considering you would after all have the focus to keep the regens down. Coupled with regen on hit, you can spam melee CAs pretty early on in a character's life and never use a normal attack.

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Normal attack will never outdamage CE. Even with 170% attack speed it's still worse, and against targets with high armor it's its biggest weakness. Plus you lose bleeding/stun/crit from CE. I also find holding LPM all the time hurt my finger :P

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Normal attack will never outdamage CE. Even with 170% attack speed it's still worse, and against targets with high armor it's its biggest weakness. Plus you lose bleeding/stun/crit from CE. I also find holding LPM all the time hurt my finger :P

 

 

No of course it won't. Sorry if I implied it could. I was simply saying that if your CA regen times were too high, you could be forced to use normal attacks while you wait on regens. In such a case where you were using normal attacks, tactics lore would benefit those attacks while GI Focus would not, leading to more overall damage due to tactics. Realistically, that's pretty easy to avoid though; its fairly easy to never use a single left click attack, and having GIF actually facilitates the ability to make sure that happens early.

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I'm not sure what ya mean by ancestral focus? If you mean ancient magic, sadly that's not an option for Inquisitor. If you mean astute supremacy focus, I'd trade out tactics lore instead provided you want more of a hybrid build; if you wanted to rely more on melee, skipping ASF would probably be fine (but it would be better to skip AS Lore instead).

 

I meant astute supremacy focus. buffs increase regen times for all CAs. I would not want to invest 3 skills in Focus, when 2 would do. So what's my deal? which do I want the highest? If it's PC, then I want GI focus. If is it AS, then I want that focus.

 

Sounds like I want PC to be the highest buff, so I want GI Focus.

 

And before we go crazy dropping Inure, consider it takes 82 skill points, and a skill (toughness) to = one gold mod on one skill. That's pretty sobering. I'm not saying what is a good tradeoff and what isn't, but you could still get a great damage boost for maqic damage from PC, and ++ crit rate, skip toughness, and use the saved skill points to pump whatever you wanted.

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And before we go crazy dropping Inure, consider it takes 82 skill points, and a skill (toughness) to = one gold mod on one skill. That's pretty sobering. I'm not saying what is a good tradeoff and what isn't, but you could still get a great damage boost for maqic damage from PC, and ++ crit rate, skip toughness, and use the saved skill points to pump whatever you wanted.

 

Yes, that's definitely an option. Inure is very very powerful. Toughness is as well, but like you say it'll take longer to get appreciable effect from it. You could always take both. At any rate, I'd recommend Inure to anyone not intricately familiar with the Inquisitor; they're harder to keep alive than most classes, especially early, and Inure helps with that a lot.

 

My new Inquisitor will be using hallow instead to add some different twists (I don't want to re-build an identical character). Before he gets toughness to a decent level, the missing "mitigation" will come from the exploit RP gold mod (each party member receives 4.9% + 0.1% per CA level of damage intended for me). Later on, you should be able to realistically cap the mitigation (at 25%) with only the doppelganger and a single ghost out. The only issue I have with this is that its largely theoretical. Its not real mitigation, meaning it doesn't show up on my sigma stat sheet. It should work the same way, and will certainly fluctuate a good deal if your ZD and ghosts get killed, but I wish I could be more confident in how precisely it works. I don't really have an easy way to test this either, but I'll provide feedback as I go if I can. Of course if anyone could confirm one way or another that the exploit mod does or does not work like the wiki says, I'd be much obliged!

 

At much higher levels, I think it ought to be easier to replace the mitigation you'd gain from Inure than to replace the sheer amount of damage you'd gain from hallow, although IMO inure starts off MUCH more powerful. That said, a good deal of that extra damage is bound to be superfluous while more mitigation is never bad, but armor lore mastery should provide some nice options for gear with sockets and built in mitigation. I simply want to ensure that its easy to keep my spell damage high enough to get the job done at the highest levels. It comes down to preference though; I'll never say "don't pick inure". I love that mod, and it saved my Inquisitor's life a number of times the last go round, I just feel pretty confident that I can keep myself alive this time until I get toughness caught up (especially if exploit really works like it should).

 

Man, I love this class...so many options!

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hi all...I'm new in this forum...I'm italian...

 

I need to know one thing on this character... I try to use zeaulous doppelganger but my copy doesn't create another inquisitor...why:) I think that I've done any mistakes...can you help me?

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