So, I really like the idea of Inquisitor’s Seal, a small area that you are protected in, but I don’t think it does a very good job of that.
Flat damage absorption is only really useful if your character is monstrously armored, but if enemies are hammering you for 1000+ damage reducing that by 200 won’t really save your bacon.
The damage component of it is underwhelming at best, there are so much more powerful ways to deal damage in the game it’s just not really a reason to go with this skill.
The damage buff from Arcane Empowerment is nice, but really worth standing in a small area for? When you’re rocking 1000% bonus damage getting an extra 85% isn’t that big a deal really.
The issue is that this ability just doesn’t really do the two things that you really need a defensive area to do: Stop enemies from entering into it and killing you, and stop enemies from simply setting the ground on fire in it so you burn to death if you don’t run away.
Anyone else feel like this skill would be a heck of a lot more useful if it actually created a defensive area that was a refuge for squishier characters, rather than just being a relatively minor defensive buff that only really synergizes with characters that are super tanky to begin with?
these two points right here show you have ZERO idea what you’re talking about.
for one, that damage absorb works wonders on ANY character, doesnt matter if they have max resists and are armored to the teeth, or if they have gaps in their defenses that damage absorb goes quite a ways in mitigating ANY damage you take.
two, You say the damage you get from arcane empowerment is peanuts when you blatantly overlook the fact that also buffs your crit damage which is WAY more damage than anything.
The flat damage absorb values aren’t insane like those of blast shield, but it’s still very significant and up 100% of the time more or less. You certainly don’t need to be monstrously armored for it to be powerful either.
You’re right about the % bonuses not being a huge boost (though still significant), but you’re totally ignoring the flat damage and crit damage. For pierce builds or elemental builds, especially a fire/lightning combo or ones featuring conversion from one to another, it adds a lot of flat damage to your weapon attacks. The crit damage is also a very nice dps boost when you have the offensive ability to crit with a high frequency
Man. That typo tho. If ever there were a crummy typo, that’s the one right there. Kinda just hits you in the… eye. Kudos to everyone who managed to stay on topic. I just don’t have that kind of willpower.
Inquisitor’s Seal is pretty much the only thing keeping my character alive. Sure, bosses can blow through it fairly easily, but for all but the most heavy-hitting attacks, it’s a huge deal. Works wonders for nullifying DoT’s, too.
That seal is amazing. It deals good amount of damage which harass you in melee. The absorb almost nullifies the vast majority of ranged damage and dots outside of a few bosses even on Ultimate and can compensate for sub-optimal resists as long as they are not outright terrible. Of course it does not make you immune to certain bosses and attacks that would be just silly but it does several things at once and increases survivability on all characters significantly.
Damage absortion is very good in this game, because it scale last- after the armor, the resist, the block and so on. So if mob hit you for 1000 fire dmg and you got for example 70% resist so it is 300 dmg, and from this 300 you absorb 200, so you loose just 100.
My english is not great so i hope i made my point
I kind of agree about it being most useful for someone armored to the teeth. The main reason I would agree on that one point, is you have to stay stationary to use the seal. If you are stationary, you have to be armored.
The absorption works great against DoT’s, Rain damage, and lots of trash hitting you at once. It basically takes out the steady stream of damage you often take in large battles. But you do have to be capable of tanking the harder hitting stuff to stand still in it all the time.
And the seal damage component adds about 4-8K damage to my character, depending on what buffs have fired off. If I had better gear, it would even help more.
My problem with it is that it is great when you least need it. Namely when you’re blowing through trash mobs, or weaker bosses. However, any large collosal type boss makes it impossible for a ranged character to hangout in and essentially wastes all the points because you’re constantly trying to kite. My character has 2600 DA, solid resistances, and is wearing heavy armor, and I still get absolutely hammered by those things since physical resistance is so hard to come by. In those circumstances the seal is basically worthless cuz I’m almost always moving.
What is your physical resists? Inquisitor also has 15% from Aura of Conviction. It’s easy to get 6% from devotion, and between The Coven and Barrowholm, the green drops tons of gear with physical resists. I ended up with 39% physical resists.
My dual pistol Apostate tanked every boss, except for a few with special mechanics you had to dodge, such as Master of Flesh, but I still stood in the Seal most the fight.
Oh god, yea, that typo in the title is terrible, didn’t even see that.
So, ok, the damage component isn’t quite as bad as I thought, but I still feel like as far as it being a defensive ability is concerned the biggest flaw in it is the damage the seal itself deals, because that’s just not even close to high enough to actually stop enemies from running right through it or attacking you in it.
Also I’m still not all that convinced that damage absorb is that great, because it doesn’t seem to really scale with anything, the only way to make it useful against big hits is if you have so much armor that they are small hits by the time they get to the absorb layer.
Running a Mage Hunter build right now, and all the enemies who do lots of small hits just melt before they ever become a threat, all those giant enemies in Malmouth that rush you and slam you with huge hits are killing me though.
You have to use it to see. Theoricrafting only takes you so far. Sometimes you just don’t know how much small hits you actually take.
The vast majority of damage you take comes in small ticks and hits. It’s only the massive physical hits that the Seal doesn’t do much for, and it’s a lot easier to deal with the massive physical hits, if your HP isn’t draining from the small ones.
the point of small/medium amounts flat absorb is not to help u mitigate melee hits but to make you neigh immune to dot effects which are composed to many small ticks that are often entirely negated by flat absorb.
for a very tanky character, one of the few things that can kill them is stacked up ground aoe/dots and the seal helps u mitigate much of that; and therefore allowing you to standstill in it
I think Inquisitor Seal is against ranged gameplay. TO me being ranged means at least some kiting. But with Inq. Seal you have to stay put… just against the class ideology imho. Would be better if it was a temporary aura-like buff.
You can kite against the big slow hitters. When they wind up, move to the other side of the seal, and the cool down is about 4-5 seconds, so you can pop a couple, and run back and forth.
And you can apply offensive devotion procs to the seal. As a pistol user, that might not be that interesting, but to a spell caster, it’s quite another story.
The problem I’m running into is that the entire expansion is full of huge enemies that rush you and hammer you with high damage while having a ton of health themselves. You can’t really kite them without some way of slowing them down, and when they attack on groups of 4 or 5 or the game teleports them right on top of you you’re just done.
I made an Arcanist/Inquisitor build centered around Aether Ray and it works really well for the most part, but those enemies just pulverize me and all the defensive talents I’ve picked up to deal with exactly that sort of thing are letting me down.
