Hi!
I noticed Inquisitor Seal is quite a popular skill. At the same time, I have learnt to never stay in place. Both in campaign and Crucible there are too many reasons to move in combat, aren’t they?
Could you please explain how to use Inquisitor Seal correctly in order to survive all the ground effects, nukes, swarming foes and so on?
And is it really so good? Half the stats do not look so important. What is the secret?
Inquisitor seal is very powerful because it gives the player flat Damage Absorb. The mechanics of this stat work by lowering all damage by the value after all other damage reductions have been applied (res, % absorb etc). The fact that the flat value is deducted after capped res and all reductions mean that seal is best at reducing magic damage to very low amounts or 0 (because high phys res and armour are usually only present on tank builds). That is the secret power of seal, it’s useful because many boss have added magic damage on auto attack, it is very good against damage over time effects since it applies reduction over whole duration and it is very effective against packs of weaker monsters (like in Crucible).
However the effectiveness of seal grows the more incoming damage has been reduced by res/armor/%absorb. If you play a squishy characters with low defences then seal will only give minor damage reduction and kiting remains necessary. The graph visually shows the steep increase in effectiveness as character becomes tankier (by reducing incoming damage), this is assuming 200 damage absorb seal but the curve shifts slightly to the right with higher seal lvl.
You can also apply the seal offensively, especially if you have items that modify the skill with resist debuffs such as the runebinder set.
Seal is powerful against shotguns, auras and DoT mutators in the crucible. Many sources of small damage. Dmg (and crit) buff on Arcane Empowerment is very decent too for relevant builds.
As for mobility, very few builds pass on the seal for that reason. You can’t move and autoattack/spam after all. Nex&Ortus powerhouses don’t use it but those are crucible speed runners. Most builds use it and usually max it.
Thank you for your vision. Maybe it is just my childhood trauma of losing a HC char due to abusing the Seal and I need to give it another try :).
What still concerns me is debuffing ground effects (disruption!), but it is apparently possible to adapt to these situations.
You should start thinking of seal in terms of how they could be used with mobility skills from FG. For example, as a ranged build you can cast seal immediately after teleporting to a location, assuming the cooldown on the mobility skill is equal or less than the cooldown on seal.
Like Halcyon said, they can be used offensively, but IMHO this is recommended only if you have at least 20% CDR.
If you have no CDR, seal is best used defensively and only for situations where you’d actually need it. Defensive usage implies minimal investment in Arcane Empowerment and no offensive devotion skills attached.