For a long time I’ve personally considered Inquisitor to be one of the bottom‑tier masteries, and a big part of that is because Aura of Censure, as an exclusive skill, is completely obsolete now.
Back in the AoM era when Inquisitor was first introduced, Aura of Censure was amazing. At that time, damage reduction was a rare stat, and the fact that it is a passive aura requiring no manual input made it even better. But years have passed, the game environment is totally different now. These days, no matter what you play, it’s easy to stack some damage reduction. Meanwhile, other exclusive skills have kept evolving, with their numbers scaling up significantly. So, looking at Aura of Censure now, its advantages have been diluted, while its disadvantages have become more obvious: elemental RR is tied to it, forcing you to use it, yet it provides no meaningful ceiling (the minor flat damage is negligible). Worse, with new gear being added, its downsides spill over — other damage types’ RR are still tied to it, which creates more conflicts with other exclusive skills.
Think about it, playing a Mage Hunter means I can’t use Star Pact; playing a Radaggan Deceiver means I can’t use Possession; and the most ridiculous case is Stonefist Rebuke, which attaches physical RR to Aura of Censure. As a physical Tactician, I’m supposed to skip Oleron’s Rage and skip Aura of Conviction, to pick Aura of Censure for 18% RR? That makes no sense at all.
I have a maybe somewhat crazy idea: give it an active effect that doubles all its values for 5 seconds, with a 25‑second cooldown. Would that sound OP to you?
By the way, I also feel that Inquisitor Seal is somewhat outdated too. But maybe not many people would agree with me on that one.
I started thinking this as soon as I started the dlc and needed to dodge so often that I was never in the seal There’s definitely a huge emphasis on repositioning with foa which seems to clash with things like seal. Also agree censure’s damage reduction could be replaced but I don’t know enough about the balancing landscape to suggest with what
“pro” tip, seal can’t only be cast where you’re currently standing
i haven’t used seal on ascendant yet, i’m just curious if the increased dmg values are gonna devalue seal absorb where before it was pretty great for some dmg
as for Aura, it was already brought up during PTR, “differing opinions” i guess
Yes, by far the worst exclusive skill. Taking it means you will always lack damage.
That is some ragebait from Crate
Nah, just increase the value of RR by like 10 % to compensate for no % damage and increase by 5 % the DR to equalize other sources. It will be fine then.
It should just automatically spam below you. Without any need to target it using mouse. Just a press of a key. Playing Inquisitor is a pain these days. And I try to avoid it mostly.
I think the main thing is Aura of Censure being mostly just a RR aura skill.
Which is odd, given that Death Sentence carries every other RR for the mastery (Except the one that Word of Pain would naturally care about itself).
Most other Exclusive Skills are just a boatload of damage with a secondary bit of utility.
Which can leave AoC feeling weird especially compared to other Exclusives. Even more so when itemization doesn’t know whether it wants to tack on alternate damage type RR onto Word of Pain or Aura of Censure.
In regards to Seal… Could implement a modifier that makes it so if you use the new Evade skill while standing in it, you automatically recast Seal on your (New) location. Allowing much more fluid uptime in light of recent mobility requirements.
Simply raising the numbers is indeed a safer choice, or I’ve also thought about directly giving it an elemental damage bonus. But if go with my idea, future updates could add gears that modify it, which would make things more interesting. Of course, putting exact numbers on that idea might be a big work.
I’m not sure about the technical things. But skills like Vindictive Flame seem to be able to combine both offensive effects and buff effects together. Either way, as long as it gets some kind of strengthening, that would be fine.
any dmg mods to AoC will only boost aura’s dmg ticks as far as i understood debuff auras and aura modifiers. Adding dmg will just boost a damaging aura’s dmg, similar like dmg added to VF only boosts the explosion dmg not your stats
Aren’t the last three lines of Vindictive Flame actually attributes added to the character? Anyway, I don’t want to get stuck on the technical side. If the devs decide to buff AoC, I’m sure they’ll find a way.
Yeah it really needs more juice right now. DA shred would be nice addition. But it must be on top of increasing RR and DR. Without these two it will just suck.
I think I haven’t seen one more weakness of inquisitor. If you take censure, you have zero oa on inq aside from deadly aim. And you need a lot of base OA so you can make good use of deadly aim. This wasn’t a big deal when censure and seal were broken. But things are different now.
Wouldn’t DA shred start encroaching on Aura of Conviction a little? But yeah this resist reduction being the exclusive skill is a feels bad moment most of the time
There’s definitely a huge emphasis on repositioning with foa which seems to clash with things like seal. Also agree censure’s damage reduction could be replaced but I don’t know enough about the balancing landscape to suggest with what
