[Guide+Theorycrafting][95 Cap]Pve Inquisitor 3.5 - Get Charged!

[Jovion]

As X1989 mentioned, cancelling storm at the moment will cause subsequent "ticks" to hit once instead of twice, effectively halving your damage. You will go from a max of 16 hits to 8 hits if you immediately cancel Storm.

That is not to say it shouldn't be done, in nests like the old Red Dragon Nest where you have very limited time to actually damage bosses with long downtime in between (upwards of 30 sec+ between DPS windows) you should just cancel Storm and proceed with your rotation to squeeze out as much burst damage as possible.

More modern nests allows you to damage boss more consistently so long as you position yourself correctly and know approximately when to cast what. So very rarely you'll find yourself in a situation where cancelling Storm is worth it.

The beauty of the future boost is not just that you can cancel it for no penalty, the skill is completely changed to no longer require channelling at all (i.e. the game forcibly ends the animation after you place the cloud) which allows you enjoy the full 16 hits and still continue with your rotation. You can see this in action here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkZ5J6iTy40#t=2m36s

[Jovion]

Hey, thanks for pointing it out, I'll try to investigate this sometime.

I suspect that there is something with attack speed buffs/debuffs that affects channelled skills like HJ and Storm, when you are slowed or sped up, it feels like the duration of the skill remains constant but the individual attacks comes out slower/faster. Speeding up a few frames may result in an additional hit or two while slowing down may result in losing a hit or two.

For now this is conjecture but I'll investigate this when I'm free.

[vjdarktm]

KillianQ Yeah. That's what I said XD.

Can it reach to 4 after the Lightning Bolt changes are applied?

[KillianQ]

thanks...i didn't actually try it out on BTG and was just planning to...but i guess this answers my question

[KillianQ]

he meant that you can stack the spears but the cooldown of the skills prevent you in doing so...which means you can have more than 3 spears if you have a buff that reduces cooldown (ex. Loli's vending machine, the CDR potion in Combo Practice)

[vjdarktm]

How is it that there's no limit to stacking it? Did you mean that we can just keep casting it to stack but the duration of the Afterimage and cooldown of skills limits it to 3 as of now? (Then there's still a limit to how many we can stack unless we don't include the Afterimage duration and skill cooldowns hahahaha)

[X1989]

You can, but lightning storm will only deal half of the damage when compare to full casting
The latest boost will allow you to full cast lightning storm even when you cancel it afterward, resulting more damage

[KillianQ]

question about lightning storm...isn't it already possible to cancel the casting animation and just "summon" the storm? i usually do it in this manner:

MB > Charge Bolt + Consec > Lightning Storm > Tumble > Enhanced GC > Enhanced HB

i noticed that spamming tumble while Lightning Storm is being cast leaves the storm in place dealing damage and all while you can do other stuff

[WolfLover]

Judgement Spears can only be stacked up to three times right?

No limit in stacking - Just that currently the cooldowns limit us to 3 stacks lel

[vjdarktm]

Judgement Spears can only be stacked up to three times right?

[WolfLover]

I was doing some random tests on consecration when I decided to try using storm without consecration hit count , for some reason not that I know why - storm is able to deal 17~18 hits under it instead of the usaul 16 - 15-16 without it (most of the time 16, not sure why it wasn't at 15 hits) - Tested without and with willpower fragment. You may want to check this out. The hit rate was also consistent (same as normal storm hit rate as well)

[TashaGodspell]

i like how they combine the light buff + magic attack demn nice no need to cast twice !

[Jovion]

DN Korea Jan 2018 Inqui Changes:

Lightning Bolt:
Damage increased from 1120% to 2427%.

Cooldown reduced from 13s to 10s.


Detonate:
Damage increased from 1911% to 5036%.


Blessing of Light:
Skill has been removed.


Striking:
Physical damage increase has been removed.
Increases Light Attack by 25%.

Magic Damage decreased from 27% to 25%.

Cooldown reduced from 10s to 5s.
Duration increased from 180s to 900s.


Class Mastery 2:
Damage increased from 13% to 25%.


Lightning Storm:
Change to deal full damage without having to fully channel it.

You can move once the lightning cloud is summoned, but it retains its hit count and maximum damage.

A set of interesting changes. In terms of straight damage boosts, Lightning Bolt and Detonate are very significant once you account for our EXs+Awakenings. Lightning Bolt's damage is doubled by its EX and Awakening, Giving it a total board of 4.8k%. Detonate's board with just its EX is 6.5k % (not going to calc the lightning bolts). If the Awakening procs an additional enhanced Detonate it will deal 9.8k% for a total of 16367 %.... which is on par with Lightning Storm.

Basically, Lightning Bolt is Old Enhanced GC with a 10 sec (8 sec with plate) cooldown, while Detonate is at worse an Enhanced Holy Burst and at best a Lightning Storm with a 12 second CD.

Also, since LB CD is reduced, get ready to throw even more Judgement Spears...

The biggest game changer however, is the Lightning Storm change. It means that Lightning Storm is changed from a channeled skill (ala Heavenly Judgement) to a placed skill like Consec. In other words, you only need to cast it and leave it there in order for it to do its full damage. In addition, the devs seem to have cut the channelling part entirely, "ending" the skill cast once the lightning cloud is summoned, leaving it to damage the boss while we proceed with the rest of our skills.

This has very important ramifications for our gameplay. Summarily, this changes Lightning Storm to essentially becoming "free" damage that you simply place and continue your rotation, rather than being something you have to actively channel and stop doing all other damage skills. It is potentially a big DPS increase as we will be able to fire off far more spells in a given timeframe. On top of that it is likely we will be able to do our entire rotation within Consec, dramatically increasing our "semi-burst" damage (semi-burst in that it will likely take a whole of 10 seconds still, but it is far better than the ~20 sec timeframe we have currently). This is very interesting and potentially a gamebreaker (in a good way).

The icing on the cake is that we get +10% attack power and +5% light attack in the new Striking + CM II. CM II is increased by 12% while Striking has 25% light attack (up from BoL's 20%) and 25% magic attack (down from old Striking's 27%). The sum of changes are 12% - 2% = 10% increase in attack power and 5% increase in Light attack.

[Jovion]

I was pretty worried about the Inqui "changes" in case it was a nerf.

Well, it was a buff.

This testing is primarily to test the multipliers applied to the skills, so I only ensured my damage range's min damage - max damage was the same (using broken weapons). I also cut as much of my gear as I can to make it easier to compute the numbers.

The Normal versions were tested by simply throwing them at the boss. The Enhanced versions were tested by activating Consec far away from the golem and running out, using the split second that the enhanced skill "lingers" outside of Consec before casting it in order to eliminate the extra light attack buff from Consec. I then took the damage numbers as they appeared.

Results:

Normal GC:



GCv2:



Normal HB:



Enhanced HB:



Okay, time for the math:

GC Multiplier:
3,990,988/1,596,432 = 2.499942371488419. I assume there might be rounding errors within the game code or something (maybe 3990988 being actually 3990989.4 etc) so for the sake of ease of use I'm just going to call it a 2.5x multiplier under Consec.

HB increase:
3,240,125/1,080,045 = 2.999990741126527. Again, assume rounding errors, so I'm just going to call it a 3x multiplier

Hence, the theoretical board of the enhanced skills are:

Enhanced GC: 3033% * 2.5 = 7582.5%

Enhanced HB: 2052 * 3 = 6156%

So GC went from 5k% to 7.6k% while HBN remains at 6.2k%. Collectively, the changes were a buff to the enhanced skills.

In addition, Normal GC and HB are now serviceable as damage skills, rather than being the complete joke they were last time. So if you ever get down to that part of the rotation it actually hurts rather than tickles the boss.

Overall not too bad a buff. It is a straight damage boost so there is not much in terms of gameplay changes. The only major difference is you probably want to change that HB plate for a GC plate and also swap GC and HB's positions in your rotation.

On another note, as I've previously mentioned I have scaled back my time in DN. Summary is I don't think I'm likely to raid in 95 cap content, not having to spend or invest excessive time into the game in order to keep up with costumes, heraldries, talismans and other gear has actually been fairly liberating in real life, having more time to do my own stuff and having more money in general for spending on non-DN games and actual real life stuff.

This guide will continue to be updated as it doesn't take much time to log in, do a few math tests and figure out stuff. However, I might not be able to comment on the practicality of future revamps or our DPS ranking or other nonsense as I'm no longer going to go out of my way to remain relevant. Already my talismans and heraldries have fallen behind as they are largely stuck at Level 93 rather than being upgraded to 95.

[TashaGodspell]

thx for the info wolf