My DW Inquisitor/Arcane sucks

Grim Dawn Gameplay Discussion
1

My damage is horribly low. My original idea is to rely on all 3 Rounds. I love the idea of proc build but I do not like how I can only activate one Round at a time and the animation of shooting those Rounds slows me down a bit. I also dislike how I can only put 10 points in and stuck at 20% proc chance. I really want to go much higher and focus on Chilling and Storm Rounds.

Anyway, here is similar to my current build: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/qNYJmEA2

I read a build guide for Inquisitor / Demo Purifier. I have no interest in Fire Strike even though I see great synergy with Aura of Censure.

Is Inquisitor / Arcane a horrible idea? I guess the main goal of this build is to proc DoT damage?

Should I go for more Cunning because Cunning improves my Physical / Pierce which gets converted to Elemental damage by those Rounds and Aura?

2

What gear do you have? Damage output is hugely modified by gear and this link is skills only. Devotions would be helpful too. Just use the upload button on the top left corner of grimtools and post the resulting build here so we can troubleshoot for you :slight_smile:

3

Here is my file: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/1NXp3OkN

My gear sucks so far. I need better pistols. Does Inquisitor / Arcane work? Should I increase my cunning?

4

Constellations are a great source of damage. Consider going to the south part of devotions. Also, cunning is not a priority with elemental damage. Stack conversion.

5

Possibly the quickest and easiest fix is to take those 5 points out of Aura of Conviction, and shove them in Aura of Censure instead. Get Censure up to at least 12/12 as and when you can. -*% Elemental Resistance is very powerful, and that change alone should already start nudging things in the right direction. :slight_smile:

6

My advice would be along a similar lines but rather more drastic.

It is generally better to focus and not spread points around when gear and points are minimal. Gear is a really big part of a build performance later on.

I’d suggest to remove all points from Arcanist except one or 2 in inner focus-only if need OA - and a point in nullification, which is handy on some bosses. —until you get more skills and find better items

And as mentioned, move from Conviction to Aura of Censure. Max this and max inquis seal. These will also do a lot of support damage.
This should be all the defense you need for current needs and as such Maiven’s sphere is not critical. It will get harder later, but you’ll have a better gear selection for tailoring skills.

If you don’t like Inquisitor seal game play, then umm…you could try augmenting your damage with a rune such as Rune of Haggard, Word of Pain or Arcanist CT (also see devotion notes below).

A small investment in Isk EE is inferior at this point to simply putting some basic components on your weapons, such as chilled steel or whatever you currently have that fits into your cold/lightning idea (flat damage, 10%to physical convert, etc)

Olex Flash Freeze is only good if it actually freezes, and I actually don’t know if it works well early in the game. Later it will be ineffective vs most heroes and bosses, and if it doesn’t work, it won’t tick for an attached devotion proc.

Also, devotion procs:

There is a problem with tying devotion procs to % chance procs. It reduces the % chance drastically: basically it is %chance*%chance = very low chance.

I would move the procs away from Chilling rounds and Bursting.

A better bet is attaching these to some support skill like Word of Pain, Inquis seal, etc… that ticks 1 per second over a duration and you get the full devotion %chance per second, every second.

If you don’t want to grab some support skills, then I’d recommend for now reworking and getting Viper for some extra RR - and viper is not tied to a skill so any weapon attack will apply it.

Another power devotion proc that you could maybe look at is Blizzard, which is a 100% on crit and could be attached to Inquisitor seal or some other support skill…if you can get your OA to a point where crit chance% is 10-15+, which should not be that hard with the skills selections you have available.

For future consideration.

A default attack replacer is superior to none. Shard of Beronath component is your best bet and iirc this is a random find? Anyways…this boosts all those proc wps damages and you can also tie a devotion proc to this. (there are a few others via items)

7

Thanks for the advice. What is Aura of Conviction good for then? The +% seems good but it doesn’t increase my DoT damage as much as I would hope for.

I don’t know man. I am not liking this build. Damage is way too low. With heavy investment in all 3 Rounds, I don’t see good damage. I don’t know why they can’t all proc at once if I get lucky. It’s only 20% chance. It’s not like each Round does crazy damage. My Burst round is only doing about 1000-1500 damage when it happens; whereas Inquisitor’s DoT build can easily tick 1500-2000 per second.

I wanted a build theme - Magical Bullet build with 3 elements but looks like I am going to dish it. lol

The Spender skills do way more damage. I wish they could re-design the Rounds and give us a choice to make it a Spender or give us more points to improve the Rounds more than just 10 points.

8

The reason that they can’t all proc simultaneously is in the nature of WPS calculations. The WPS skills generate a pool of potential outcomes, with 100 possible entries in the pool (this is a simplification but bear with it). Each of your WPS skills takes up a number of entries equal to its chance to be used (in this case 20 each) resulting in a 60% chance of some WPS triggering but no control over which one comes out of the pool. The remaining 40 slots are assigned to main hand, off hand, and both weapon (if dual wielding) attacks with the default attack or replacer you are using. If your chance of proccing a WPS goes over 100%, say you had all three inquisitor WPS and both soldier WPS maxed for 110% chance, then the values are weighted down to yield a total chance of 100%. This is why I say there are 100 ‘entries’ in the pool. Your various WPS would simply take up fewer entries per WPS, so you’d have something like 16 on the inquisitor ones and 21 on the soldier ones.

The reasoning behind this system is that WPS usually yield a specific upgrade to the damage of the attack, sometimes with %weapon damage, sometimes with flat damage, sometimes with unique effects such as multiple hits or a fan of shots. If multiple WPS could trigger at once, they could unpredictably synergize or conflict such as 3 shots for chilled rounds that exploded on contact and dealt massive weapon damage each on the synergy side, or such as the difference between the 3 projectiles for chilled round and the 3-5ish ones for storm spread that go straight or are fanned out in a cone on the conflicting side.

If you’re looking for a mage hunter that uses the inquisitor WPS, maybe consider getting an Arcanoweaver or the Runebinder crossbow. Alternatively perhaps get hagarradian enforcers and focus on just cold, or get dagallon pistols and focus on fire/lightning.

9

Weapon pool abilities are good when used with autoattack replacers because they stack (weapon damage is multiplicative, the rest is additive as far as I know). In your case this might be an option https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/2888

Also, as your attack speed is high, you will want to add more flat damage. And vice versa, if you invest into weapon pool abilities, maxing attack speed will be a good option because WPA have much flat damage.

10

This Shard of Beronath builds up charges when I attack with AA and releases when one of the Rounds happens? If so, I only like Chilling and Storm and I can just focus on Cold/Lightning damage and do more damage when the proc happens?

11

I just find my current damage really really low with 3 Rounds as main attack. Other spender times rank up and they deal amazing damage. I can see the idea behind “each activation” but I just wish they allowed me to rank up higher to like 33% each Round at rank 16. That way I can focus on activating each time I shoot at the expense of spending a lot of points.

Or some Legendary items that increase proc chance by 5-10% for each specific Round so I am limited to which type to focus on.

12

You get charges with each attack (maybe 3 charges for Chilling Rounds, need confirmation). Each charge increases the strength of your attacks. They expire (only) over time.

The bonuses are always applied to WPA. Here people explain how the buffs work with other skills on the example of Savagery (similar mechanics) http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=80198

13

Oh, it’s the Rounds that proc Charges which increase auto attack damage?

14

Yup, but every attack will create charges, not just WPS like chilling rounds. It functions very similarly to Savagery. Your first hit is weak, second is stronger, third is even stronger, etc until you stop hitting things for a while and then you slowly get weaker again until you start hitting things again.

15

So, how come I don’t feel like Dual wielding pistols procs the rounds more? I shoot twice in a row. The game checks the proc once or twice when I shoot?

16

Does anyone know if I dual wield the same weapon with the same Weapon procs like Aether Smash with 10% proc chance. Does it mean I can proc each Eather Smash 10% of the time, or the cd only allows one happen at a time? If the CD only allows one proc at a time, then I am better off DW two different weapon proc attacks right?

The reason I am asking this because I really like Aether Lightning. It’s fast and targets 3.

17

The proc chance is not per ‘shot’ but rather ‘attack’

When you attack, you have a 20% chance of each round firing, and then whatever remaining chance there is to make 100% is divided between right, left, and both guns. You can therefore get a ‘both guns’ shot that doesn’t proc the rounds at all. Attack speed is therefore the best way to increase your proc rate because you’ll be making more ‘attacks’ per second.

The skills are separate and triggered/cooled down separately. You can only trigger one per attack (I think) but you could trigger one, then the other while the first cools down yielding a much higher proc rate of that particular skill than you’d see normally. I use mythical hagarradian enforcers on an infiltrator with aura of censure and I proc the ice spikes way faster than it seems like I should.