Acid Purge vs. Flames of Ignaffar, and can Seal be used offensively?

Ok, I really didn’t want to spam this subforum, so I put two topics in one and I feel bad about it already.
Anyways, two questions:

A) I’ve been thinking about trying to make an acid inquisitor. Of course, I could just try auto-attacks, but I also considered a channeling skill.
Now, given that I want to go Acid anyways, Acid Purge seems like a good fit - it certainly has far higher base damage than flames of Ignaffar. It also saves me 30 odd skillpoints. However, using Purge would mean forgoing around 10% weapon damage - 30% considering a possible amulet.
Is, in your experience, the skillpoint saving worth the loss in potential?
Or is the idea stupid to begin with? (Don’t worry, I will probably never try it - at least not long enough to actually be able to use seal of blight:wink:)

B) What is the point of the rebuke skill on Inquisitor Seal? Is it possible to actually use seals offensively? Or is it just a minor, inconsequential damage bonus?

Thanks in advance. :slight_smile:

A) Both skills differ in what you would want as well on the surface:

Flames of Ignaffar typically gets more % weapon damage, especially with some of it’s skill modifiers so scales better on flat damage.

Acid Purge has it’s weapon damage fixed but gets a lot of side Acid/Vitality damage that becomes potent when you convert it to mostly/pure Acid or Vitality damage.

Of course both trends can be broken and a strong Flames of Ignaffar character can be made with less focus on weapon damage (like with Mageslayer) or more focus on the weapon side for Acid Purge (e.g. with Nightbringer) but it’s just some food for thought in both cases. Like you speculated, the skill points saved on Acid Purge can also be sunk into a different skill to help on damage, usually spam component skills get paired with a strong cooldown-based nuker/consistent damage dealer and/or additional flat damage to compensate.

Since you’re intent on doing Acid damage, it is also worth noting that Flames of Ignaffar has no dedicated support for Acid/Poison damage so you are going to be picking at generalist gear pieces like Benn’Jahr’s Shoulderguards for skill ranks in the base skill node and Intensify and stacking as many + to all skills in Inquisitor to push points as far as you can for as much damage output in addition to getting the relevant conversions and casting speed - more difficult to do than traditional/supported builds like Fire or Chaos. Acid Purge on the other hand frees up your gear completely to go anywhere you want with it while still sticking to Acid damage but still benefits greatly from conversion.

B) Some minor damage, nothing more. As it is a debuff, stacking multiple Seals won’t increase the damage it deals for each one, just means more area for enemies to receive the debuff and damage respectively.

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FoI’s damage should be higher when you account the other nodes and item modifiers, and its cost can be lower since it is affected by cost reduction unlike item granted skills. About the %weapon damage conduit, if you make an acid inquisitor you may be interested by the Radaggan set that takes the amulet. FoI would also require some specific gear pieces if you want to make it acid.

With the Bonemonger set, the seal does some good aoe damage, otherwise I don’t even notice it does damage. Even then, it just feels like a bonus and not a main skill

Thanks for the overview. :slight_smile:
I suppose with a deceiver, I would invest some in bloody pox and cap doombolt for a support skill and nuke.
Though I got a bit of a follow-up question there:
How come acid seems to be such a niche damage type?
I originally wanted to try Ugdenbog Venom Launcher to take advantage of the more damage modifier, and I have to admit it was difficult to gear - hence I figured I’d try a caster instead.
Ranged acid doesn’t really seem to be a thing.

As for the seals, I suppose that was about what I expected. I figured the bonemonger set with the offhand granting vit damage might make for a good support skill for a necromancer, but maybe that investment would be a bit high for someone who never even found a level 94 legendary (I tend to get bored of characters before that).

The Venom Launcher is more awkward to gear up properly but the Bilelauncher on the other hand I find is fairly good both while levelling and later on.

Ah, yes, the bilelauncher.
I tried making a ranged ABB build with it. Still wondering if occultist or oathkeeper would fit with that. CDR or an extra -10% res later.
Tough leveling, though. … mostly because I didn’t actually find any bilelauncher for many hours.

edits in italics

I found it levels really well with ABB. Great crowd clear, good enough damage to Bosses. Not a bad proccer on Guardian’s Gaze either, especially with the Mythical Venomblade head later for a further -0.3s to it.

Given that the helmet also grants -10% res for Bloody pox, should I prefer occultist over oathkeeper(Which would grant 15% cooldown reduction)?

Also, while I’m at it, are there any other recommendable item-based skills? I can’t really imagine their use case for a lot of them, and so I assume a lot of them are exclusively for piano builds. I excluded acid purge from that assumption because it is a channeled skill.

Spammable item based spells that can deal significant damage in my opinion. No Resistance debuffs / spells with cooldown here - but rather the ones you can more or less build around, preferably with high casting speed.

Skill (link to YT) Item (link to GrimTools) Damage types Item type
Acid Purge Seal of Blight Weapon, Acid, Vitality, Poison component
Aether Corruption Seal of Corruption Lightning, Aether component
Aether Lightning Arcane Tempest:white_small_square:Arcane Storm Weapon, Lightning, Aether jewelry set
Biting Blades Seal of Shadows Weapon, Piercing, Acid, Poison component
Bone Lance Mythical:white_small_square:Decree of the Circle of Five Weapon, Physical, Piercing, Aether dagger
Chain Lightning Seal of Skies Weapon, Cold, Lightning, Electrocute component
Chillspikes Seal of the Night Weapon, Piercing, Cold, Frostburn component
Conflagration Conflagration Fire, Burn transcendent relic
Obliteration Mythical:white_small_square:Tome of the Arcane Wastes Elemental, Electrocute off-hand
Oblivion Oblivion Weapon, Vitality, Chaos mythical relic
Obsidian Tremor Mythical:white_small_square:Obsidian Juggernaut Weapon, Physical, Chaos 2h mace
Stormfire Seal of Destruction Weapon, Fire, Lightning, Burn component
Voracious Reach Yugol’s Hunger Weapon, Cold, Acid mythical relic
Winter King’s Might Mythical:white_small_square:Crown of the Winter King Weapon, Cold, Frostburn helm

Since I put Corruption in the table (mainly because it’s from easy-to-include component), maybe also
Mythical Codex of Eternal Storms
Mythical Arcanor, Blade of the Luminari

I don’t know Retal so not sure how good the :poop: throw skill is.

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Now that’s certainly an overview.
So you can build around them. Well, sort of, at least. That certainly opens more whacky opportunities. :upside_down_face:
I had my doubts - looking at the forum, I found that f.Ex. Biting blades was nerfed recently, and I didn’t find any commentary on their new efficacy. Much obliged.
Interesting there’s combinations of acid with pierce, acid with vitality, but no pierce with vitality. Or maybe sad. Didn’t even consider oblivion before.
I do actually have experience with the poop. The combination of range and projectile speed makes it a questionable habit.

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Functionally, Biting Blades is a boomerang-style skill like the Shifting Sands devotion proc or Nidalla’s relic. So for all intents and purposes, the damage on it can be counted as double as one cast will deal damage going forward and when the projectile returns back (assuming it doesn’t collide with a wall before it’s max travel distance is reached going forward).

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Ok, I looked at how much I can do for inquisitor seal.
Best I could do is this:
image
with bonemonger, mythical panetti’s replicating wand, leafmane trophy and mark of nacrathan.
At 240-334 base damage, it’s slightly worse than an 18/12, 15/12 siphon souls with the same equip, so I guess that’s really not spectacular. Not horrible, though, either.

Oh, and while we’re at boomerangs: Will a really short cooldown devotion proc have a chance to proc twice off a returning projectile, once each way?
I guess it’s irrelevant given the cast speed, but I’m curious. :slight_smile: