20 seconds between 5:35 and 5:20 is HUGE. Moreover, this Infiltrator can do this on a regular basis, while my Trickster can do something like 5:35 once in a blue moon.
Again, I am not arguing that N&O + Elemental Harmony are broken, but that’s not the point here.
Point is that Infiltrator does everything Trickster does but much better despite lack of dedicated gear and non-support skills (Trickster has Savagery and Korba) with freaking Beronath Strikes and Rimetongue set.
That’s godlike levels of synergy then. Infiltrator does it with some random set and with a skill from weapon component. Trickster has a very strong auto-attack skill tree + two pieces of Korba but is slower and much less consistent.
I am not even mentioning Spellbreakers or god forbid Sabouters.
I love Inquisitor mastery for it’s huge power and sick synergy, but you can’t deny that it’s still much better than any other mastery for both melee and caster builds.
Are you honestly surprised Trickster is worse than Infiltrator on a cold build? Are you really? Shaman and Nightblade hardly have any synergy between each other when it comes to cold (a legendary set had to be made for it to be a thing), while Inquis and Nightblade are nearly perfect matches. So being surprised Infiltrator is better is baffling.
I see more of an issue of lack of actual synergy between certain masteries and nothing to do with Inquis being “overpowered”. Sounds more to me Inquis is doing its job like it should.
I mean…no? Claiming that three buffs meeting Nightblade’s shortcomings and amping up Nightblade’s strengths is overpowered seems rather negligent of what’s really going on.
Nightblade has no OA sources outside of % Cunning on AoM, which isn’t really a great way to get OA unless you’re already heavy on Cunning investment. Maybe that’ll be a possibility when Cunning gets flat health returns, but until then, Deadly Aim servers to solve this issue.
Nightblade gets no innate Global Crit Damage. There’s some on AQC and a few of its skills’ modifiers, but otherwise it needs to find some with another mastery combination. Again, Deadly Aim can solve that.
Nightblade also has no source of flat or % health to survive a burst from. Vigor has you covered for that. Likewise, its dearth of damage reduction is filled by Censure.
But Nightblade’s strengths? Great cold damage support with NC gets better with Censure. DA on Shadow Dance stacks higher with WoR. Between AoM and Steel Resolve, Tactician can get racial damage against two of the most common races in the game, being Humans and Chthonics.
So when you’re building a Cold Damage Nightblade, sure, Inquisitor seems like the most obvious choice. Trickster seems far worse because by default Shaman offers nothing more than Raging Tempest and a bit of % Damage on a fairly-lackluster exclusive. You can get Korba to enable Cold Savagery, or you could work with what you’ve already got in Cold Infil.
Synergy. Welcome to theorycrafting. If you wanted to do a Chaos Nightblade, though? Infiltrator isn’t looking terribly hot anymore (although Fang of Ch’thon could convert some of the Pierce on Conviction…). WH or Saboteur is looking stronger, I’d imagine.
TL;DR: The context of what you’re doing is important. A Cold Infil was always going to be better than a Cold Trickster. It’s not overpowered, it’s overlap.
Basically…see above.
Oh, I don’t disagree that this build’s broken. But I fail to see how one can rationally believe the issue to be with Inquisitor.
Edit: FWIW, don’t let this discussion distract from the thread. It’s an amazing build, John_Smith, and hopefully a moderator takes this conversation elsewhere that we can go without clogging up its post.
Looks to me a bit like the equivalent of what Occultist is to pet builds. You can try all you want to make builds that don’t use it, but the passive bonuses, both offensively and defensively, completely outclass everything else by so much it’s not fair. I don’t know if that equivalency is entirely accurate, but I personally hate the extreme dominance of Occultist for pet builds. It’d be good for diversity if the love was spread around a bit more.
This is even more off-topic but I don’t know how much can really be expected to change in this regard, being as we can only combine two masteries and yet there’s solidly three that offer much to do with pets. Think it boils down to a bit of the core issue between pet stats and player stats. Maybe if Briarthorn Warcry were a permanent aura and Primal Bond was actually competitive with MoD, the trifecta might be a little more dynamic. But I kinda doubt that we’d ever see pet balance where one mastery isn’t the clear winner.
I think they’re pointing out that the larger issue with the Inquisitor is that it provides far better bonuses than any other class, and that it fills every single one major need a build can ask for.
%Offensive Ability? Deadly Aim
%Crit Damage? Deadly Aim
Flat DA Shred? Rune of Hagarrad
Shotgun skill to use as main ability? Rune of Hagarrad (heck, it’s probably one of the best supporting skills in the game, a 16/16 Rune is still much better than something like a 16/16 Forcewave or 16/16 Grenado).
Flat Damage Absorption? Seal
Flat Damage + Crit Damage? Seal (Arcane Empowerment)
Healing? Word of Renewal
Flat DA? Word of Renewal
Racial Bonuses? Word of Renewal (+Steel Resolve)
Secondary Resistances? Word of Renewal (Vigor)
Aether and Chaos Resistance? Word of Renewal (+Steel Resolve)
Stackable RR? Word of Pain + Aura of Censure
Reduced Enemy Damage? Aura of Censure
Even better, Aura of Censure is a passive, so you don’t have to constantly recast it like Necromancer’s RE + Decay. You get so many goodies just by using a few universally amazing abilities that you can focus your equipment and devotions on maximizing your offensive potential and not have to worry about your defenses at all (assuming your other class has other skills that provide defensive bonuses as well).
The issue is that Inquisitor has so many abilities with sorely needed stats that it can synergize with every class, and what other classes have in strengths can be easily surpassed by Inquisitor. Demo has Flashbang? Rune of Hagarrad is far better than it. Flame Touched + Temper? Nothing compared to Deadly Aim + Aura of Censure. Arcanist has Crit Damage and Devastation? Inquisitor has Deadly Aim and Hagarrad can easily compete with Devastation. Soldier has good defenses and Oleron’s Rage for offense? Seal and Censure say hi for defense and Deadly Aim for offense.
It makes it so that a far too high percentage of the time, you’re wondering, “why should I pick this class when I can probably just do it better with Inquisitor?” The amount of synergy it has trivializes so much of the game - if FG is going to have its difficulty increased to make up for the player power-creep, the other classes better have numerous buffs to make sure they’re not completely in the dust.
Shaman and Nightblade ARE great matches. Best auto-attack in-game + best wps pool in-game? Check. OA/DA + very important for melee slow res? Check. Huge elemental RR? Check. Attack speed on both masteries? Check. Huge HP boost to compensate for NB’s lack of hp bonuses? Check. Pretty strong exclusive that supports both Cold and Lightning and adds hefty crit damage bonus? Check.
On top of that you have Korba that converts Lightning to Cold and even adds some cold over the top.
Shaman and Nightblade have a lot of synergy, you are kind forgetting that Trickster did it in 5:35 - which is a ridiculous never before seen result for a melee build. And Deathmarked Trickster also smashed it with 6:10 - another epic time.
I am not saying that Tricksters are weak, they are pretty effing strong, they have THREE absolute monstrous builds right now: Korba+N/O, double Bloodsong Bleedster and Deathmarked.
But Infiltrator with a beronath shard and no attack speed and less flat damage is better. As you said, with just “3 support skills”.
Things you have listed is something that Shaman offers too. But with Inquisitor it’s so much better. Trickster is the only one who comes close to Infiltrator, every other Nightblade class can’t even touch him.
Seriously John Smith, what’s happening in this build?
Auto attack use measly beronath’s fury, only 20k weapon damage sheet, only 2.1k% cold damage, low phys res and armor and no seal. Good things about the build is only huge OA and crit damage + racial damage, also 139 cold RR. I believe we have concluded that big OA investment is not that good anymore, even with huge crit damage.
It’s like, the build is only made on procs. But how can Valinov N&O beronath doesn’t yield the same performances?
Seriously, where’s all that power came from? Is that because huge OA+crit damage + vanguard banner makes the build killer? Then how’s the performance without banner? So many questions.
Didn’t you build godly N&O Infiltrator yourself not so long ago? Damage comes from the swords + ring combo supported by insanely strong devotion setup, great wps pool and obviously Inquisitor mastery. Rimetongue converts some of the flat/procs to cold, huge OA scales absurdly well with N/O proc + Ultos proc + blizzard all being triggered on crit.
Great racial bonus that is also enabled by Inquisitor mastery, instant double RR and damage reduction that allows build to go full offensive with attributes (like with little physical resist/armor and ridiculously low DA by today’s standards).
John Smith did a pretty great job of putting it all that together and polishing it in tests (I was witnessing his progress live, lol).
In his case he had SS, so there’s still a major damage source. I think it all comes down to being less clunky than the trickster. Inq doesn’t have Wind devil, and John Smith removed Seal so all you do is really just hit people. Also procs are stronger on infiltrator because Rimetongue conversion. This is where AoE wins on the aoe vs single target debate. I’m quite positive Trickster can do better on dummy. Maybe Trickster can do better on cruci with Rimetongue too?
No, it’s not about clunkiness. John Smith actually tested Trickster in same gear before that. And even I tested that Trickster (he sent me his save folder). I liked it a lot, that’s how I had an idea to fuse Korba into it. Yes, Wind devils is an extra cast, but given how Trickster has more attack speed it hardly matters in the grand scheme of things.
What matters is instant RR with some ridiculous racial damage and pretty huge OA (that is possible due to Inquisitor being so tanky that it can drop a lot of physique). Inquisitor is that good. Infiltrator in Deathmarked is also superior to its Trickster brother.
IDK, in my build I have a full blown SS with fully supported fire damage and this build still win by 30 seconds. I see the difference is nidalla relic procs (which is good and I will try it also), and very huge OA and crit damage.
What’s interesting is this build, not accounting blizzard procs, only has execution*120% WD by beronath’s fury for major single target damage, but it can still delete nemesis fast. It doesn’t have much WD and savagery/shadow strike should yield more damage, but the results is better. It’s baffling me.
The difference in clear times can be attributed to the following
not taking time to micro manage/recast seals
better conversion of elemental damage to cold
better cold damage %
better nb wps skill levels
probably most importantly more than double the slow resist
My build probably can do in the 6:15-6:45 range on a good computer with the current status of N/O. The above mentioned items will make up the difference.
[spoiler]And not just around the three main pet masteries.
As somebody who doesn’t play pet builds and is probably totally unqualified to talk about them…I think one of the issues with pets is how they feel (to me, at least) almost like a damage type - in the same way that a fire build has to equip fire gear and devotions to boost his damage, pet builds have to equip pet gear and devotions to boost their damage. Heck, throw relevant RR in there as well, even if last time I checked (a long time ago) casting RR skills as a pet character tended to just cause a ton of aggro-related misery. :rolleyes: So far, so normal, so 100% fine. You have 3 main pet masteries, and similarly most damage types have a small handful of masteries that excel at it.
…except that normal damage types get things like conversion and item skill modifiers which help diversify the mastery selection process. You want to make a fire Nightblade, or maybe an aether one? Go for it, there are items that support that. You want to make a pet Nightblade? Bugger off back to your designated pet masteries m8, there’s nothing for you here except maybe some suicidal melee-range RR.
Personally, I’d like to see some new items that allow pet builds to more easily use masteries outside of the regular three. I guess the issue is how doable these things are from a programming-or-tech-or-something perspective. Would it be possible to have an item that adds a Call of the Grave-like effect to Pneumatic Burst? Or maybe even a radius to Pneumatic Burst so that it becomes a group heal/buff? An aggro-reduction effect to Ring of Steel? Or a modifier that converts Blade Spirit into an attack that scales with pet bonuses? (I’ve heard requests for something like that last one a bunch of times before, and I’m gonna assume it’d be a pain in the arse to implement).
But yeah, that’s just my two cents. I don’t play pet builds or pay much attention to the usual pet discussion threads because of that, so idk, maybe I’m spouting a load of nonsense, or stuff that pet players all already talked about a long time ago. :p[/spoiler]
Wow, congratz for this insane build. Jaw dropping indeed. Though i didn’t expect this heated debate. Both sides have their valid points. And it’s not like we haven’t seen this pattern before (builds having occultist only for Cof and BoD, let’s say). Honestly, in this case anything else besides the 3 skills in Inqui would just result in loss of mobility and DPS. And, from a synergy point of view, the build doesn’t need more than this (although i tend to cringe when seeing so little investment in one of two masteries). But that’s fine, so many skill points that can be invested in nightblade. As stated before in the thread, inquisitor just caters to so many diverse needs that, by comparison, it may seem op and the more obvious/effective choice. It’s just better polished than the older masteries, more effective in all it’s possible implements.
But this shouldn’t be an arguments that it’s broken, more that the older masteries need some serious reviewing, maybe after FG hits. I don’t know if Norzan and Ceno had this kind of thing in mind when they tackled the inqui issue. Besides, just by viewing oathkeeper content, that seems like a helluva op mastery so far
