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

[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.

[TashaGodspell]

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

[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)

[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]

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

[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]

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)

[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]

KillianQ Yeah. That's what I said XD.

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

[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

[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]

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

[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

[TashaGodspell]

why passive toughness remains blank ?

[WolfLover]

Since it's mainly either one removes toughness to gain more damage or to add toughness to reduce damage. (Also, it's essential to remove only if you are planning to get a cure relic build or full dps build due to its big SP requirement of 10

If one adds in toughness then the SP needed for other skills will be tightened and it will become very difficult to manage as well

Well like what I like to tell myself:

Who needs toughness if you don't get hit :u

(Well first aid is an exceptional cuz of gey heal)

[TashaGodspell]

Jovion WolfLover

4 jade 95 unique m attack% is better now ?

[WolfLover]

After calculation - yes

[TashaGodspell]

beside hp which is better

17k
m attack
crit

17k
m attack
crit dmg

??

[WolfLover]

Sorry for late reply

crit dmg for sure considering the amount given - Also because Inquisitor AGI:Crit is 1:7

[dhendhen008]

Hi can I ask about Inquis? I like them but Are they hard to build up? like do I need to buy cash Item to improve their damge? sorry for my noob question. I like your guide btw got full detail

~Cheers~

[xanster]

Why do you max the skills? Is it needed for the awakening?

[Jovion]

All maxed or near maxed skills are key DPS skills. Only Chain Lightning is really considered optional as it does the lowest damage per CD and it is not as a critical part of the rotation as others (i.e. you will use CL less than everything else).

Deto, LB and Consec are the only ones needed for Awakening but there is really no reason to gimp your DPS elsewhere, MindBreaker is the highest priority skill (due to debuff + 10% light buff) and does respectable damage with Wand hit (around 2.2k, same as Chain Lightning but on a 8-10 second CD which you spam). GC and HB have decent damage on the normal versions and turn into two nukes with Consecration. Charge Bolt can potentially deal as much as Enhanced Holy Burst.

If you are going by the stay at 11/16 etc. logic, only Holy Burst really qualifies and that 2 SP isn't going to help much, and that skill loses ~100% board on normal and ~200% board on enhanced, it may appear insignificant but keep in mind Inqui DPS is based on multipliers which may make the actual gap wider.

Don't even think of dropping Lightning Bolt or Detonate Awakening. They are incredible nukes with a short CD after the boost. Consec is also a powerful skill still which provides significant self-buffs with Awakening.

There is also no reason to spend the SP elsewhere, the most utility heavy build only needs to drop Chain Lightning.

[xanster]

So you need to max the skills(lightning bolt, detonate?) to get the awakening? I was thinking of getting the relics so that's why I asked if i need to max the skills.

[Jovion]

Yes, either way they are both powerful skills post-boost so you should really get them.

I provided a build that takes up to Cure Relic, only dropping Chain Lightning which is now one of the weakest skills for single-target. For everything else you really should max all of them.

[Jovion]

Notes on the Inqui Nerf in KDN June:
Already I see panic over a CDN list which was based off player opinion and released just 1 day after the patch arrive which drops Inqui to the other support cleric's levels of DPS. Stop and think for a bit.

The biggest nerf is the CM II attack power drop from 25% to 15%, a 10% attack power nerf hurts but not THAT much.
Similarly, look at the skills which were nerfed, most of them are negligible.

Spear: 1.7k to 1.6k
Storm: 1k to 958%

Detonate is the only one that is hit harder than the others, but it is also a 10% nerf from 5k% to 4.5k%.

Lightning Bolt, I remind you, is untouched, which is still one of our most powerful spells today since its 2.4k% base is double improved from its EX (50% damage) and Awakening (Another 50% damage). It is basically similar damage to Detonate (especially with +1 from cash weapon) but with an 8 sec cd.

Also untouched is Consecration, Grand Cross, Holy Burst. All of which are only affected by the CMII Drop.

I will say that the nerf hurts for sure, but it shouldn't drop us all the way down to Guardian/Saint levels. Another sign is that the list I am referencing is problematic is that Flurry drops down from the highest T0 to T1 after what was basically an extremely small nerf. Yeah right. (And really, 1 day after the patch release to suddenly declare anything but SS and maybe RM is down is a bit too soon)

Considering DPS levels are currently measured in orders of magnitude cause #crapbarancingbyED, you can tell something is off with that player's opinion.


That said, if you want to play a class that will avoid all reasonable balancing, play ML. It seems like no matter what every cap they end up as the developer's pet. They gets buffs even when they are already amongst the highest DPS in the game *eyeroll* The last time I remember they were not anywhere near the top was in 60 cap.

[Khlight]

Recommended Skill Plates post-Inqui boost?

[Jovion]

Similar to before just swapping Holy Burst for Detonate, it should be

Lightning Bolt CD, Consec CD, Deto DMG and Grand Cross DMG

+1 plate should be Detonate.

[Khlight]

Thank you!
Been using the mentioned plates.
Glad I was right