Currently, I think Arcanist due to most of the reasons above (great support, lacking damage skills, OFF gated).
Occultist does have the weak non-pet damage skills, but it is so fundamental to many pet builds…which compensates to some degree.
Heh, I used to have a strong dislike of Inquisitor circa FG release simply because of how overly strong it was in that release compared to all others and would have said that it was worst due to power creep. To their credit, Crate revised the game with many updates and my pettiness became a thing of the past.
Devouring Swarm is 2 times stronger than other RR skills. Not to mention it also heals yourself a lot against packs. How can it be bad? Players often spam Bloody Pox or Symbol of Solael skill for extra 10-15% RR…
Wind Devil is a bit slow and has low movespeed, but you only have to cast it once every 15 seconds, and it also provides impaired aim debuff. There are worse RR skills, like Thermite Mines.
And aside from RR, shaman has very strong buffs and passives, the best AA skill, WPS and good AoE spell (GV).
It’s 2 times stronger than other RRs: ONLY concerning Vitality and ONLY if you invest 6 additional skill points (Vulnerability caps at 10, DS at 16). Goes NOT for bleeding.
The healing was never quite noticable to me. Moreover, I can barely dare really spamming it in tight situations, cause mobs do NOT die from it.
Blade trap is FAR from useless. Rimetongue set provides -55 entrapment resist for it, making it useful against most bosses too. Try a cold Blade Trap + Grenado Saboteur, it’s a strong endgame build that can clear crucible, SR, etc:
You probably have a wrong build then. My tanky Vitality EoR Archon can afford spamming it and it feels really great. And i dont even have the optimal gear setup for it, it could be even stronger with a proper MI helm and medal.
Skillpoints invested into RR skill are always, ALWAYS worth it. I’d put +20 extra skillpoints into RR skill for extra 20RR, if skill allowed me. AndVulnerability, btw, it also requires some points into CoF to have decent AoE and duration.
Arcanist’s most useful spells are AAR and TSS. PRM is kinda weak, and CT is even worse. OFF is decent with Mageslayer set.
Inquisitor DOES have a spammable spell - Flames of Ignaffar, and it’s pretty good. Inquisitor also has 3 bonkers ranged 2-handed WPS skills and a constant flat damage absorb skill - Inquisitor’s Seal. Yes, Inquisitor isnt good for everything, but if you properly utilize his strong sides, he’s very good too.
Uh-huh, a skill that requires you to equip an entire dedicated set to even work is not useless. Right. If you’re playing anything other than Mageslayer or Rimetongue respectivelly, OFF and Blade Trap might as well not exist on the skill tree. Unusable outside of one specific build = pretty damn useless.
I will refer you to my original vote post where I’ve already said what you’re trying to explain to me and present the myriad downsides that hold Inquisitor back IMO.
And other skills dont? There are a lot of skills that are too weak without proper items - Drain Essence, Flames of Ignaffar, Phantasmal Blades, etc. Retaliation builds are also extremely gear-dependant. Tons of builds rely on damage conversion from specific items and dont work without them. Some, like Belgothian BM, rely on item skills.
Overall, items make the build in this game. Yes, there are some builds that dont require any specific items to work, but most builds rely on specific items to work anyways. I dont see how Blade Trap is an outlier there.
SS, ABB and PB dont even require DW to work, and they dont work with all those WPS skills either. As for AA skill for inquisitor - you can get it with items, like Mistborn Talisman, Shard of Beronath or Runebinder Spellthrower. Not to mention spamming a single skill isnt the only way to play this game. And masteries are balanced around the fact you can get TWO of them at a time. They arent meant to be completely self-sufficient.
But there’s a world of difference between being weak without proper gear support and being useless without it. FoI, AAR, EoR, PBs, DE, DEE…and whatever other abbreviations…still do damage, still perform their function without extensive skill modifier support. They may not do a stellar job of it, but they at least work. OFF and Blade Trap do nothing to the targets you need them the most against (Nemeses, Superbosses) without a dedicated set. You wouldn’t take unsupported Blade Trap just to deal with trash mobs or provide cc, you wouldn’t take OFF to cover your AoE. All it takes is one Unstoppable hero and the whole skill turns off (even with the dedicated sets). OFF being non-functional in particular without set is horrid as you lose access to the hefty RR you’d primarily take it for against the hard enemies. There’s a whole bunch of gear with modifiers to OFF and Blade Trap and none of it is of any real use to those skills unless and only unless you’re playing Mageslayer/Rimetongue.
I didn’t mean to imply that they do. What I meant was that, like Inquisitor, Nightblade also doesn’t offer any main attack to use alongside the dual wield WPS, so neither of the masteries is self-sufficient in that department. The difference is, Nightblade at least offers SS, ABB and PB to build around so that even though the DW aspect of Nightblade isn’t self-sufficient, Nightblade offers a lot of other avenues to take for a whole different, very Nightblade-centric build. Inquisitor only offers FoI as a spam skill, and then has a bunch of skills that are not very self-sufficient (Runes, Storm Box) as a core of a build. As in, you need a whole bunch of other stuff to fill out the build cause just Runes or Storm Box won’t cut it as your build’s sole source of damage/sustain…whereas something like spam PBs can be pretty much your whole build.
Essentially why I chose Inquisitor is because I feel it does the least to be a self-sustained centre of a build. If you take, say, Soldier, you can invest 80 % of your skill points there and have a pretty nice build, with good passives, buffs, procs, WPS and several usable main skills to choose from. You can then just take a second mastery that provides mild support and you’re fine. With Inquisitor I feel your second mastery has to be doing a lot of work to make for a more complete build. Doesn’t mean Inquisitor is bad, if anything it would be pretty boring if every mastery was the same in terms of its skill distribution. Inquisitor being a more “incomplete” mastery opens up more ways to make a good half-and-half build. Inquisitor doesn’t have outright useless skills but requires a lot of support from the other masteries to feel complete.
to decide the worst mastery i guess it should be viewed in the context of mono classing the game 1-100/Veteran-Ultimate
and if that’s the case there is only one obvious answer, Arcanist
it doesn’t have the defence enough to feel good on its own, regardless how strong mirror and nulli is
and despite being one of the offensive support masteries, keyword is support, because on its own it’s not cannon enough and the oomph it does have ends up missing a bit compared to others
Get AAR with Pulsing Shard and conversion to lightning. Not enough to mono classing campain? Are you serious? If AAR isnt a “cannon enough”, then what is?
And for tankiness, Arcanist has Maiven’s Sphere. With around 22%+ damage reduction that stacks with everything and works before armor… Hell, it’s better than all Soldier’s defensive passives combined. Or Shaman, or any other class.
The ONLY downside of arcanist is that it doesnt have any RR skill (aside from OFF, that only works with specific set). For a reason - it would be far too powerful.
Yes, PRM and CT are pretty weak. But TSS and AAR are very strong spells.
and that’s all it has,
it’s not a competition of “if the mastery can make it through”, all can do that, but mono arcanist with pulsing shard alone and devos feels the least comfy compared to all the other masteries
not even close, aside from Soldier also having %absorb, it has armour increase, native regen, native heal, and overguard for flat absorb
which is basically immortal while levelling with just swarm
and is the only thing it has, and TSS makes you a tedious kiting squish boi, and as mentioned AAR in mono mode just doesn’t feel as good as all the other classes,
doesn’t even matter when you combine AAR+TSS and Devastation, it’s “less” than all the other classes, even Demolitionist, which i think is on the list because people are taking it in context of a dual class build not mono play
I’m honestly very surprised that demo is on the top here when it is IMO one of the strongest solo masteries there is.
It offers oa, da, dmg, good cb in bs, fat flat rr with dmg reduction in one skill that also happens to clear stupidly well, mines even are ele rr %, nades/bombs/mortars that nuke things, huge regen in VF with cs on top of that… aaaaaaaaaand the boy even has huuuuuge DA shred in nade with fumble + impaired aim.
no idea what more people want from a single mastery tbh…
EDIT: I also forgot to mention stun jacks which are a stupidly strong single target nuke if spam.
To give a legit response, i like all the masteries more or less equally. I can make functional builds with pretty much any combo, even the ones that are considered the worst by people.
I would go for different approach than some of the previous answers and not comment on mono mastery or how self-sufficient the class is but how it performs in class combination. After all GD is encouraging you to always pick two classes.
And as subjective it is, I vote for Occultist. Class have some of the most underpowered skills without skill mods. Occultist skills barely do damage without ridiculous item mods (if you want Occultist to be your main attack’s class) and not super great for support class either. You have plenty of types supported by RR but is all through CoF. And Curse is cast, which isn’t ideal for number of builds, doesn’t have great values and provide little to no effects outside of RR. Possession is pretty decent skill but is the only exclusive skill and there are better skills out there. Also Occ is pet class, I know. But then again, can’t put it over the other pet classes. They have dedicated pet exclusive skills for example. Also worth mentioning lots of builds perform better if you switch Occultist to different class.
I haven’t voted yet (my experience with some masteries is not adequate) but my first thought was Occultist too - because of this dependency on gear you mentioned. One thing I’d like to add is that Possession is often to high of a skill point investment for me because I need 18 skills point from Aspect of the Guardian to reach it. I had no issues with CoF until my last build where I had to recast CoF and Plague every 6 seconds which felt super bad, especially against Ravager.
Oh, also what mastery you choose as worst is highly dependent on your preferable playstyle. I for example don’t mind Thermite Mines at all (they have very fast animation and long duration) but I almost exclusively play at melee range so enemies never leave the AoE of my mines.
Occultist is one of the best support classes for gunslingers. It layers on massive amounts of flat chaos damage, along with a good chunk of damage absorption.
It supports acid and vitality damage as well, with the possibility to convert 100% of elemental to acid, a belt that converts up to 60% of chaos to vitality, a hat that adds quite a lot of flat vitality decay, and RR for both damage types.
. Like Ulzuin’s Fury or something.
.