Inquisitor seal is not in a good spot

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
1

Heard this sentiment a few times recently between this forum and reddit.
I also played 3 different classes with Inquisitor (Paladin, Tactician, Infiltrator) and the overarching impression is that Inquisitor seal is kind of pointless in the endgame currently.

As a defensive skill, that is. Arcane Empowerment is kind of a fine damage buff, with a caveat.
But more on that later.

The defensive part feels really useless in Ultimate (let alone ascendant) for the most cases.
The fodder mobs are not a problem damage wise and they die too quickly, so no point in dropping seal for them.

Hero packs and especially totem spawns (but not celestial or tempest) are probably the most useful scenario. Or rather the only one, I’d say.

On bosses it’s borderline useless.

The main overarching theme is that in the situation where Seal could be useful, like on hero packs — the animation + activation time renders it’s useless. Why waste time on seal if we can just maw down the pack.
On boss fights, where the sheer amount of HP of a target demands us for a more prolonged fight — we wouldn’t want to facetank some moves, and seal doesn’t make any difference.

So it’s both bad numerically and very clunky to use.
Especiially in the current state of post lvl 100 gameplay with all the mechanics we suddenly need to respect rather than stat-check-facetanking. I have no problems with those mechanics per se, they make for a more interesting gameplay in my opinion.

Going back to Seal. It is also quite point hungry.
It’s not a one point situational utility wonder like Deadly Aim, Mirror, Nullification etc.
It’s a whole 12-24 point investment for a clunky skill.

These days whenever I play Inquisitor I end up thinking that those points are just wasted.
I’m not using it on trash mobs, I sometimes use it on heroes and totems, and then I again don’t use it on bosses because I have to reposition every very often.
Mutator for 2h somewhat solves the latter, but we’re still limited to only 3 seals at a time.

I know that feedback as this better be supplied with builds and proofs.
Well, I don’t have videos of performance, but I hope other people I’ve seen discussing this recently would back this.
When it comes to builds, don’t think it’s really necessary but for what it’s worth, here are the three I played recently: a meme one, a decent one and a really good one

Now, I know that devs / designers are better at figuring out solutions to feedback, but here are a couple brainstorm ideas to start a conversation:

1) Make it an aura, maybe tune down the numbers to balance.
Given the current relation between underpowered Seal (even at 22 / 12) and the current tuning of endgame this would at least justify the investment. If the bonus is always with us without needing to constantly spam the button and place strategically and wait for activation — it would be huge.
I know Wind Devils once were not permanent, as well as a whole lot of buffs too, so there is hope(ium).

If the above seems too radical, here are some other options, looked up in the “OP things__” thread:

2) increase aoe

3) reduce the charge time. I’m not sure if it’s even possible with the engine, but waiting ~1.5 sec is not working very well in the current state of things.

4) make it non-target and force spawn right underneath the character where it currently stands.

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2

I wouldn’t mind a little QoL improvement on seal, but I don’t really think it’s as bad as you claim. Currently the skill lasts substantially longer than its cd. You don’t really ever need to spam it unless you are constantly moving around.

3

I don’t disagree with this bit.
It’s tangentially related to my main point: if you don’t have to move around — you’re either facetanking (so you feel safe enough to do so in the first place) or killing stuff too quickly (so the seal is irrelevant).

If you don’t feel safe to facetank (like heavy hits or sunders and stuff) — seal won’t help you.

Another way to look at it is that there are no situations where seals make a noticeable difference, a clear distinct with / without. Like those before / after photos of people achieving some fitness goals.

My sentiment is: where the seal is useful it doesn’t carry an impact.
And then it’s not useful at all where it could have been.

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4

In so far as the whole delay thing goes…

I’m not sure if this would work mechanically in the engine, but changing it from a PSP to just a simple AoE that just ticks its bonus onto the player (Instead of ticking damage onto enemies like reular AoEs) would help alleviate the delay. Since that comes from the whole PSP and how summoned entities are braindead for ~1 second (Which also negatively impacts Wendigo Totem and Reap Spirit)

The whole heal and harm aspect that requires a PSP is irrelevant for Seal. No-one’s dropping Seals to actually use its damage ticks (Maybe they’re proccing a devotion with it at best). So making it into a regular AoE that only ticks a defensive effect onto players would be fine.

Outside of that:

  • Bump up the damage absorb. Incoming damage is much higher in FoA so a slight nudge up would help keep it relevant.
  • Replace the Elemental Resists with something else (ADctH, Healing Effect increase, DA or basically anything else) since it’s kind of useless since no-one’s relying on Seal to provide their resists.
  • Increase the area.
  • Reduce the base CD.

Optionally, I suggested in t’other thread to replace the Runic Seal transmuter with one that casts Seal on your location after using Evade.

Which would help with not only casting it underneath you (Without removing the prep of placing them down ahead of time) as well as directly support the higher mobility design of FoA.

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5

(1) is good and very practical. Inquisitor is one of those very heavy piano masteries and making this an aura would be quite welcome…

(2) not enough by itself

(3) not enough by itself

(4) good but requires very fast effect of seal like 0.2-0.3 s and lower cooldown on the skill

Nah, it is absolutely horrendous in the endgame.

Seal in its current form is a relic of tanking times of GD. They are gone and Seal must evolve one way or another and the entire Inquisitor mastery with it. It is not in a good state overall. The worst of them all.

6

Option 4 looks the most reasonable I’d say. Removing the casting animation, like it was done for War Cry, would also help immensely.

7

In my opinion, none-casting motion with +2 charges is… awesome solution.
+X charges is underestimated in QoL improve discussion, imo.

Anyway, Seal is outdated.

8

I like the idea of it getting extra charges scaling with skill rank

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9

I think adding x % damage absorbtion via ascendant affixes or legendary item will help too

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10

Right now seal is more anti-dot thing, It would be great if Seal were more versatile

11

Hard agree. Inquisitor is my most played class for some reason and the current state of seal is part of the reason why I barely played him in FoA.

Regarding #4, there’s still a handful of items that grant -x% resistance debuff to Seal, so we still need to be able to target it. However, recent balance changes to Leafman Trophy and Bonemonger set have moved that debuff to another skill. Maybe those remaining Seal debuffs could be moved to other skills as well.

I’ll add one more suggestion. Give the Seal shield buffs (%damage blocked mostly). Seriously, this stat is so hard to get, especially on non physical builds. This would help any inquisitor using Stronghold set, Watcher of Erulan, Siegebreaker, Octavius, Voidsoul, Untouchable (ever seen anyone pick this? :sweat_smile:),…

One could also bring up the terrible %damage reduction on Aura of Censure and compare the physical resistance on Aura of Conviction to Aspect of the Guardian, but that’s another discussion.

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12

I like the extra charges the more points you put into it.

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13

Turn it into a passive — standing still for, say, 0.5 seconds automatically generates a seal. Active activation: instantly generates a seal with increased radius and values.

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14

Another idea for a passive spawn (with arbitrary values, dunno if they make sense):

  • 30% chance when hit
  • 3.0 meter radius
  • Lives for 3.0 seconds
  • 3.0 second skill recharge

Spawn chance, radius and lifetime increase with rank, skill recharge time decreases.

15

Awful, I will rather take what we have now.

16

Better than spawning automatically every 0.5 seconds

17

How do we feel about Arcane Empowerment? I feel like every inquis is always too point starved to ever dump points into it

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18

Typical one pointer.

19

Inquisitor seal’s existence and mechanics is just about the main reason why more often than not, I look at a build that is X+Inquisitor, and everything looks pretty good, and then I look at the Seal skill, and am like “nah…”, and move on to look at other builds.

So I’d be all for making it somehow a bit more QoL friendly. Auto-proc, or aura, or whatever it might be. Even if it’s as a transmuter, or throw the transmuter into a handful of Legendaries or MI’s.

That’d definitely make me revisit the firework show gunslinger Purifier builds.

20

That’s pretty much the conclusion I reached recently after having played a lot of Inq + X builds.
I have a seal fatigue at this point.

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