Every mastery has skills that are good and some not so good against bosses. The old ones that aren’t very useful are Olexra’s Flash Freeze, Blade Trap (lol), Wind Devil (varied opinions exist regarding this)
Now I could spend few more hours spending time with skills and items to check everything myself but this seems much more convenient and time saving
From what I gather so far
End Game Skills -
Inquisitor -
Runes, Word of Renewal, Word of Pain, Flames of Igneel, WPS (Haven’t tested for animation based DPS loss yet), Deadly Aim, Inquisitor Seal
Necromancer -
Summons, WPS (haven’t tested for DPS loss through animation), Siphon Souls, Boner Harvest
Skills which don’t appear so useful to me -
Necromancer -
Drain Essence, Ill Omen, Mark of Torment, Ravenous Earth
Inquisitor -
Storm Box of Elgoloth, Horn of Gandalf
So what do you guys think? How far off the mark am I with my judgement of these skills?
Note:
These skills might have some effect on lesser mobs my curiosity is regarding their effectiveness on bosses
Drain Essence, so far at least, seems fairly weak. It has all the drawbacks of AAR without the 100k dps (or the range, annoyingly).
Ill Omen is a support skill, since it’s one of those spreading debuffs it’s great to trigger devotion skills. Doesn’t do a whole lot itself I suppose.
Mark of Torment suffers from the same problem that made Iron Maiden in D2 stupidly broken: player dps is astronomical compared to enemies and those enemies have tons of hp compared to players. Also the reason reflect is meh, making it actually hurt mobs means that if the effect is applied to players, they pretty much instagib themselves. So what’s in the game now means that reflecting mobs are annoying but not lethal and player reflect is fairly pathetic. So what we have here is I guess a sort of weak (compared to mirror and blade barrier) oh shit button.
I know Ill Omen is a support skill, but unlike the other support skills I listed like Word of Pain this one seems just off. It doesn’t seem useful against bosses
I think Siphon Souls is a bit underwhelming, in terms of damage. Also, I use Ill Omen all the time and I really like it: it procs devotions very well, it scares off some enemies, it slows them and makes it easier for you to pick them off while they’re running away. But, most importantly, it lowers their physical damage (it’s noticeable, especially against hard hitting bosses) and spreads decent damage. I use it to proc Murmur’s Rumor and it works great, as it softens up enemies and cuts a decent chunck of hp. I can see it working well with elemental storm, twin fangs and wendigo’s mark as well.
Mark of Torment, on the other hand, looks good on paper but… it needs to be maxed to be worth something. It lasts too little as a one pointer, and its cooldown is too long. It’s not a bad skill by any means and it helps against harder mobs and bosses, but it’s too inconsistent.
I agree with you about Word of Renewal. It’s exceptional: the hp boost is awesome, the CC reductions, the racial bonuses, the overall dmg buffs and aether/chaos resists are amazing. One of the best skills in the game, in my opinion.
I have a question: does Word of Pain scale that well in the late game? I haven’t bothered trying it. It seemed strong very early, but I didn’t want to invest on it. To be honest, I’d like it to be more useful. The resist reduction is very nice, but outlandish for the inquisitor, except for a pierce focused build and maybe… aether? it doesn’t stack with arcane bomb, does it?
RR stacks with other sources. Word of Pain is there solely because of the RR.
Mark of Torment, how good is it against bosses when compared to Overguard and Blast Shield?
Ill Omen for devotions sounds nice but the physical damage reduction doesn’t last long enough for me to consider it good. Especially against the new stuff where 1 sec is nothing
And Siphon Souls seems like a weaker Sigil of Consumption only with extra QoL. It doesn’t seem that bad for sustain and stuff
Well, considering it is a different skill meaning you can stack two of those skills, I’d say it’s still not bad for using against heroes and bosses, in fact that is really the only time to use it. Up to 50% damage absorb on max rank, which will stack with overguard/blast shield/possession/inquisitor seal/etc.
It’s not great but if you need 5 seconds of extreme tankiness…
I guess people still don’t understand how contagion type skills work… how sad.
Not bad for sustain? It makes you nearly invulnerable. In a group of enemies you become unkillable. In 1v1 (bossfight) situations, it does little, sure, but it is still a leech skill similar to SoC which was already considered to be very good.
Does it stack even if it’s the same kind of RR? I thought -% fire res., for example, would stack with - flat fire res. but not with -% fire res., in which case the stronger effect would overwrite the other. If that’s the case, and I’ve always believed it to be the case (… and I might have been wrong all along, it seems!), arcane bomb shouldn’t stack with Word of Pain (since they both deal -% aether res).
As for Ill Omen, I think they physical damage reduction gets re-applied with each tick. Meaning it should last untill Ill Omen fades and gets off CD.
In my experience, Blast Shield and Overguard are much, much better. Still, I haven’t tested a maxed MoT to be honest.
I’m using a cold/vit 2H reaper (Soulrend build) and Siphon Souls doesn’t do much for sustain, to me. What about Ravenous Earth? It deals decent damage thanks to the fragments (especially vs stationary bosses) and it procs devotions like crazy. I’m using it with Wendigo’s Mark. I just wish foul eruption would activate off attack chance instead of “on kill” chance. Makes it useless against bosses.
Stacking two defensive skills is great and all but it’s usefulness individually is more important to me. Its nice to know it isn’t useless against bosses
I had no idea it was contagion. Ty
Oh my bad, I was actually defending the skill. If you noticed I listed it under the “good skills” list
Drain Essence definitely need a buff, the base skill damage is way too low.
The damage gap between level 16 Drain Essence (60 aether damage/tick) and level 26 (180 aether damage/tick)need to be adjust. This is ridiculously scaling, no other skill dealing 3X more damage at max ultimate rank, the scaling between level 1-16 need to be increase, while keep the damage in max ultimate rank the same.
-% RR will stack with other sources of -%RR (stacks additive)
Reduced resistances, the highest applies (Stacks additive)
% reduced resistances the highest applies
I didn’t realize it was a plague type skill. Good to know
The damage on Ravenous Earth seems a little low for a good Poison build as well
It still feels weaker compared to AAR or Ignafar unless I’m missing something
It’s the scaling of it and itemization that are the main problem I see with Drain Essence.
The scaling of skill itself is so poor and only bump up in ultimate rank this, couple with low damage of the skill itself become really weak spell compare to other channeling skills. This lead to second problem the itemization of this skill.
The skill depends a lot on specific items to be one par, mainly Uroboruuk set, this set give high flat damage to Drain Essence, head piece +45 aether damage, full set bonus with +50 vitality damage, the gun with +33 aether damage and lastly the gloves with +40 vitality damage to Drain Essence. In total of +78 aether damage and +90 vitality damage.
For calculating end game damage, with level 26 Drain Essence (180 aether) and level 18 Decomposition (130 vitality damage), +78 aether/90 vitality from items, in total of 258 aether/220 vitality damage, 478 damage per tick is not too bad compare to AAR which deal about 600-700+ end game damage per tick, considering it does life steal and has AoE ability. This dependency of the set and poor scaling has make this skill feel underwhelming for leveling unless you have full Uroboruuk set and max the skill to ultimate rank.
What I suggest to devs is to increase scaling of the skill and buff overall damage of the skill so builds that don’t use the set don’t suffer from too low damage. They can increse its energy cost if nessecary.
I wish I had gotten some more pieces of the Uro set. I could’ve tried it to see how strong or weak the skill is in actual practice
There’s also the modifier. Currently I am sure Drain Essence’s Cold Modifier is roflstomped by Farath’s Cube FoI in terms of raw damage output
I myself don’t have the full set or end game build yet, still leveling him in Elite, this is just a speculation from what I see on grimtool but I can say that leveling with Drain Essence feel underwhelming. I have yet to try ignaffar though, but it should be a lot better than Drain Essence due to % weapon damage and % crit modifier.
Better compare it to Mirror of Ereoctres and Blade Barrier. And although it doesnt offer 100% protection, even 50% damage mitigation is usually enough to facetank an otherwise fatal enemy. And longer duration (5 sec VS 3) is highly welcomed.
I think it’s a must-have.