Top Class Balance Issues for Inquisitors

[LardLord]

Updated 3/30/2010

-The heal on Inquisition and Punishments (EoF Endline AA) are based on the mob's stats.  This limits how much we can improve those spells, which will eventually make them significantly less important relative to other spells (not that they're very important currently).

[Razlath]

Quabi@Antonia Bayle wrote:

- Reactives: Mobs have hit harder and harder (as opposed to more and more often) with each expansion, resulting in reactives being less and less effective at mitigating spike damage.  Tanks also have higher avoidance, and there are fewer encounters with multiple mobs in RoK, resulting in less triggers. +toheal cap: Reactives cap much lower than Wards (or even regens), further increasing the advantage wards have over reactives with every new piece of +toheals gear Shaman get. 

Mobs hitting harder instead of faster also affects DPS from Punishments.  Perhaps an AA abil each for Reactives and Punishments that lets them have a chance to proc twice off a single hit would help in this regard?  You wouldn't get any more triggers than you do today and heals could potetnially be wasted more at the start of combat, but if reactives are not cutting the mustard, the loss should be minimal.

[Norrsken]

Dartak@Nektulos wrote:

Quabi@Antonia Bayle wrote:

- Reactives: Mobs have hit harder and harder (as opposed to more and more often) with each expansion, resulting in reactives being less and less effective at mitigating spike damage.  Tanks also have higher avoidance, and there are fewer encounters with multiple mobs in RoK, resulting in less triggers. +toheal cap: Reactives cap much lower than Wards (or even regens), further increasing the advantage wards have over reactives with every new piece of +toheals gear Shaman get. 

Mobs hitting harder instead of faster also affects DPS from Punishments.  Perhaps an AA abil each for Reactives and Punishments that lets them have a chance to proc twice off a single hit would help in this regard?  You wouldn't get any more triggers than you do today and heals could potetnially be wasted more at the start of combat, but if reactives are not cutting the mustard, the loss should be minimal.

Actually, make the punishments proc off both when the mob does something, and when someone does something to the mob. that way, all punishments (well, almost) would be pretty [Removed for Content] nice in pve.

[Calain80]

- reactive triggers: All our reactive triggers are prevented if the whole damage is warded. This includes our reactive damage shields and our reactive heals.

[Norrsken]

Calberak@Valor wrote:

- reactive triggers: All our reactive triggers are prevented if the whole damage is warded. This includes our reactive damage shields and our reactive heals.

Which is odd, since the SK blessing line doesnt work like that afaik.

[inhumanus1986]

Lemme see -----Nothing comparable to Stoneskin; making us have to heal up to 18% more damage.Crappy single proc heal that is very small, maxes out w/ plus to heals way too low and can situationally cost the Inquisitor 4 times the original power of the spell at twice the cast time.Sanctuary vs. Fervent Focus - not even close in effectiveness.  How about make its recast much faster (30 seconds) and have it proc a 15 second immunity to control effects for the group.Double damage to undead - the only healer class that misses out on a double damage bonus.Limited usefulness/resist ability of Inquisition.   Change it to a group/raid target and dont penalize the recast to begin after termination.No real big heal save or ward to eat damage spikes or to get the tank back up.Proc damage mostly useless in raids, somewhat useful in groups.Enhanced Zealotry/Fanat/Devotion penalizing our healing ability.  Erasing that penalty would not make us overpowered,  but just 10% faster on recasts on heals.Im sure ill think of some other things later.Inhumanus Nex

[LardLord]

Inquisition being resistable is a big one.  I think it'd be fine if they kept it as a debuff as long as they made it 100% unresistable.

[graxnip]

Quabi@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Inquisition being resistable is a big one.  I think it'd be fine if they kept it as a debuff as long as they made it 100% unresistable.

certainly one of my biggest gripes with being a lvl 80 mid level raiding inq - i'm so sick of having the timer call for an aoe in 10 seconds - cast inq ... & ... resisted..by the time its back up and able to cast there is little point since the druid regen has taken care of most of the dmg.was thinking it would get better once I got the m1 but no still resists when ya need it.fixing itemization would go along way to making wardens mystics and us happier. - most of the problems with our dps come from that they do not build items that are perfect for a 'MELEE HEALER' we often have to walk around with several sets depending on the situation, if we are wearing dps gear our healing suffers, and vice versa.

[Somatic]

Our 6 set on our Veeshans Peak pattern gear is pointless.  Should be changed to make  Tenacity have double attack or something.It would have to be a mighty good ability to give up Runic Cover Procs / SOH Gloves / SOH Hat. (Some kind of augment to one of our buffs i think would be best -- esp more augment to Tenacity, or to our group STA buff ).Inquest should be made to do something else besides just mana tap since Mana procing gear is so common they have basically given our ability to all healers. Our Combat Arts should be increased in damage, they are already penalized greatly in raid encounters due to jousting etc.  The increase in damage from 70 to 80 was VERY small.  -- or as a compromise don't increase them but instead make our auto attack and CAs usable from 25 meters.  -- I'd be very happy with this.Repentance / Blasphemy / Reactive dmg spells are near useless on raid content.  Make them trigger off like dots instead of by hit -- OR add some kind of nasty debuff to them each, like Repentance: Lowers Double attack percent by 20, Blasphemy:  Lowers Spell damage of encounter by 20 percent.  Reactive Dmg(forgot name):  Adds hate to current target by 500 every 4 seconds. By constantly making tanks get hit less often the benefit of these have gone down greatly.  Also Boss encounters tend to not use CAs or cast beneficial spells very often at all.  Thus by adding bonuses above it makes them way more useful.

[Nembutal]

While my inq is lvl 80 I don't raid on her much...  but I suppose one of my main complaints with her is cast times... so an epic that lowered cast time significantly would be nice.  It's hard to DPS when you know your good heals take so long to cast that by the time you notice, switch targets, and react... then wait on a long cast time heal there is a good chance that person is dead.  The Inq in our guild has pretty much given up on trying to save people at this point because he can't often succeed... and if he doesn't all he really accomplishes is lower his DPS.. so he prefers to just rez and cap HP back off.

Also since Inq seem to be in scout team alot... maybe an aggro management effect on the epic would be nice? 

Another idea would be if you attack it can proc a group ward.... the ward could be used to help manage AE.. or as a very short buffer to allow you to stop attacking change targets and start healing.  This would help you fulfill your role of DPS and healer better.  Procing a heal on all group members isn't quite the same because it doesn't help with spike damage like a ward does... a 1000 point ward can turn a 8k scout into a 9k hp scout... and that extra 1k gives you a an extra swing before they are dead.  If the proc is rare enough... and large enough... and covered the whole group in the same manner as a shaman group ward (not per person... one person can eat the whole ward) you could buy some critical "task and target switching time" which IMHO when I play my Inquisitor would be much appreciated.

[graxnip]

Skoshi@Guk wrote:

It's hard to DPS when you know your good heals take so long to cast that by the time you notice, switch targets, and react... then wait on a long cast time heal there is a good chance that person is dead.  The Inq in our guild has pretty much given up on trying to save people at this point because he can't often succeed... and if he doesn't all he really accomplishes is lower his DPS.. so he prefers to just rez and cap HP back off

bloody hell.. /sigh

[Avirodar]

My input/opinions will primarily focus on higher end raiding, eg: VP cleared.

Tenacity - Is often watered down by easily obtained high DPS mods (diminishing returns) in RoK.

Devotion - Is often watered down by easily obtained high haste mods (diminishing returns) in RoK.

Enhance: Devotion - Significantly overpenalised. Should remove all penalties, and add none.

Damage reactives - Trigger rarely, do very little damage.

Mit/Sta buff - Is the first buff to be dropped for extra tenacity due to mit+sta lacking use for typical Inq groups.

Low burst heal capacity and non existant defensive buffs, an inherent part of the class, but our DPS yielding buffs are suffering and our defense/burst options remain unchanged.Damage dealing capacity - needs an upward nudge. Our DPS capability should be within range of the figures which furies can parse... Also keep in mind, for our premium DPS we have to be standing at point blank range, we can not sit back...Mythical weapon:

DPS - It is incredibly non-effective for our ability to deal DPS.

Aftershock - Heal credit + crit chance should go to, and be based off the Inq instead of the recipient!! The heal proc should have no trigger delay, instead of 2 seconds. For this "single target only" proc to compete with overloaded heal items etc, it should either be made a group wide heal or notably bigger heal (eg: double cast?).

Penitent Smite - Unfortunately has little/no use in an offensive or defensive setting. Needs to be massively modified, or more ideally - replaced.

Proposed Cure Clickie - A good idea... But it will only make a difference for me, on 4 or 5 raid encounters. This is rather limited in terms of practical use, and should not prevent other parts of the weapon recieving a much needed boost.

[Vidar64]

Its already been stated that Inquisitors are arguably the worst healer among the six priest classes.  For example, on my last raid to the Chamber of Destiny, over forty percent of my healing was the result of gear procs.  Admittedly, I wear more proc gear than most of my fellow healers, but I have to.  Supposedly, we were to be an offensive healer, but deminishing returns has seriously cut into that role.  Here's some of my thoughts regarding the specifics.  Its a rather large wish list but maybe one of the devopers will be inspired by a new idea even if its now one of the ones below. 

Spells

Reactive heals are probably the worst of the specialty heals.  All too often I've had my group reactive heal up when an AOE hits and find that I still have the full nine triggers left on the spell.  I would like to see two changes to these spells.  One, ensure that they will proc on any damage that is inflicted to the player, regardless if it is melee, spell or ability.  Two, any leftover procs will trigger at the spells expiration, much like shaman wards do now. 

Our mitigation/stamina buff has always had problems.  The stamina portion has never had as much benefit as a pure hp buff.  How about instead of stamina, it added a chance to block.  The buff icon looks like a shield anyways, maybe it could function as one.

DPS buffs have been steadily losing their luster due to both gear and other buffing classes having an even better version of this spell.  With all the orange mobs in this expansion, plus combat skill buffs are often preferred more.  We need some sort of a secondary effect with this buff line if we want to continue to be considered an offensive healer. 

Our group proc buff, Act of War, is showing its age too.  I used to see it amount to 3-5% of a group-mate's damage parse.  Now it is down to 1-2%.  That's even with me having more AA points towards this spell.  A couple changes that I'd like to see with this spell line.  One, increase the base proc rate to 2/minute.  Two, add a small heal, 100HP, to the spells proc.  That will help with both our offensive buffing and our healing.

The temporary haste/INT buff is also being affected by deminishing returns.  The penalties associated with this spell are making less sense as time goes on. 

Debuffs are another staple of being an offensive healer.  The mitigation/resist debuff is easily the best of the bunch.  It has a noticeable affect on melee hits.  Its affect on spells though is far less impressive but is still there.  You have to wonder, though, how much affect the STR/INT debuff and the skill debuff have on an orange raid mob.  That, and with the change awhile back to raid mob resists, I've seen a lot more resists to all my debuffs since then.  Having "Condemned" resisted five times in a row, is rather frustrating.  The main thing I'd like to see with these spells is lower the rate at which they are resisted.

Another problem that Inquisitors have is our offensive capabilities are handicapped in a raiding situation when we have to maintain range.  Our best damage spells, the reactives just dont trigger reliabily in a raid.  For the melee reactive, I'd like to see it trigger even if the damage is warded.  For that matter, I wouldn't mind if it triggered on anything except a miss.  For the combat art reactive, I'd like to see more than just combat arts trigger it.  I'd like to see the raid mobs special abilities, such as an AOE, trigger this spell as well.  For the benificial reactive, maybe change it to any spell.  Another option would be for two new lines of spells, one for offensive spells and one for special abilities, rather than combining them with existing lines. 

AAs

Part of the problem with our healing is the triage tree doesn't boost our healing other than to give us a longer range.  I'd really rather see our healing spells listed with either faster casting speed or increased healing.   

Does anyone ever use Maladroit.  The finishing ability for the detriments tree has always been overshadowed by the simple cure spell.  One idea would be to make any debuff cast by the inquisitors group 5% stronger.  Even if this finisher is made useful, I don't know if I'd ever get it.  I haven't used either the fear or root spell since my Lavastorm days, so not much point in putting AA points into them.

Along with boosting the base proc rate for Act of War mentioned above, I'd like to see the AAs give a larger boost to this spell line.  Its not like we can boost the entire groups procs, both gear and spells.  At least allow us to give a significant boost to the only spell we can. 

I already mentioned my thoughts on the penalties associated with the temporary haste/INT buff line.  Enough said.

I don't use the punishments finisher either.  More than likely, if any of the spells listed triggered, the mob would be on someone other than the main tank.  If it would agro if the mob is targetting a fighter and deagro if the mob is targetting a non-fighter, then it would be useful. 

Gear

Part of the problem is how easy it is to cap our heals spells with +healing gear.  On top of that, our specialty heals only gain 16.7% (1/6) rather than the 50% that our direct heals do.  I haven't investigated the other healers, but I would immagine that druids with their regen spells have the same problem as cleric reactives.  I don't know about shaman wards.  If they cap at 16.7% as well, then things are balanced.  Otherwise, shaman have a major advantage over both clerics and druids.

The problems with the mythical weapon have been covered pretty well.  Getting rid of the tank killer affect is a step in the right direction.  I still feel it could use some work.

Another problem is that the Veeshan's peak gear, other than a couple pieces, isn't very desirable for the class.  I just cant see it replacing some of my current pieces, no matter how good the stats, when I'm wearing gear with overloaded heal and runic cover.  This expansion has become all about the procs.

[auvii]

Inquisitors need to be equivalent to Templars in desire for raids. Either increase the need to have them in  dps oriented group or finally make us capable of being the MT healer. I am tired of hearing about dps and how its better/worse or what it could be. We are CLERICS. Its time SOE put us back on that path and do what needs to be done to make us one of the top healers in the game and especially in end game.Give us a better tank or group buff, maybe make our current sta buff better with an hp mod on it. Honestly just make the class more in line with clerics and the role EQ originally set for our class.

[Baaltar]

Im a 80 inq. VP Cleared.

Nothing short of the following for the Mythical will make the Inquistor Class on par with the other healing classes in a raid.

Fanatical Devotion (while equipped)

- Removes all penalities associated with the Devotion line.

- Makes Devotion a raid wide buff.

- Adds a 10% spell casting Haste buff to Devotion.

- Makes Devotion a clickable buff effect. (2 concentration slots  + 2x reocurring power cost)

Zealots Burnout (Click Effect lasts 1 min 10sec 5 min reuse)

- Group wide +100% chance to crit (ca and spell only)

- Increase power cost of all group member spells and CA's x2

- +CA DMG by 200

- +Heal 200

Torqamadas Inquisiton (Do not implore him!)

- Makes Inquisiton a raid wide effect.

[StormQueen]

quote:

Torqamadas Inquisiton (Do not implore him!)

- Makes Inquisiton a raid wide effect.

Huh? Inquisition already can hit everyone in the raid.

[Szerian]

I have an ideaInquisition

• No longer heals the enemy in pvp.

[graxnip]

Baaltar wrote:

- Makes Inquisiton a raid wide effect

huh?are you saying make inquisition a spell like devotion where you toggle it on and off - and raid wide heals would be gauged on distance from yourself ?------------edit - lol inquisition is still doing that on pvp (healing the enemy) I thought that was a bug that would have been fixed like a week after the expansion was out. - dont play on a pvp server so I dont really follow that.wow.. thats slack, but I imagine thats pretty tough to fix. no excuse though.

[w1sch]

Imo the fix cannot be that hard. The pets that spawn from my star of malice do exactly the same that inquisition should do.

They heal and ward all allies in range of them (even when not in grp) and they dont do it on enemies.....

[Szerian]

It's pretty stupid, especially since it would be extremelly helpful to have an extra 6k heal over 30 seconds in pvp

[Norrsken]

A few ideas for inqies to be wanted on raids again. Our core is buffing melee dps, and heals, with some minor debuffs on top of that.Currently our buffs dont really do jack since the item devs gave away too much this expansion. our heals are way to slow and small to actually help much since the raidmobs in RoK hit hard.Some people say we should get more dps to make up for it. Fair enough. but I dont really want that. Our dps can be fixed other ways really.So, here's what I suggest as fixes in view of that we are an offensive melee healer;Heals, the reactive needs to heal fo rmore, or go off more often for inqies to be effective. Given that we are an offensive sort of healer, how about making our reactives proc not only off when the mob hits whomever is reactived, but also when that person uses melee attacks? Should take care of the whole discrepancy with RoK mobs hitting too hard for us.As far as our buffs, add a melee damage proc on every bloody melee buff we have. Its about the only thing the devs didnt mess up with the itemisation that they could give our buffs.And as far as our damage goes...Make our punishments proc when either the mob does something, or something is done to the mob.there. that ought to fix pretty much anything wrong about inqies.

[Kiara]

Hey all.Stickied this to make it easier for you guys and the developers.

[zubad]

The biggest issue I have as a new 80 inqy is the lack of healing.  Our reactive is entirely insufficient to get our mt through a named mob without the tank being topped out.  All I would ask is to have the current decline in our relative t7 dps transfer to an increased heal capability.  As it stands now, we can't heal or dps.  At least in t7, I could be put into an off tank group or scout group and add signifigant dps to a raid. Now, I offer very poor heals, minimal personal dps and minimal group support as most scouts have tapped out there haste and dps modifiers without me. 

I have always looked at our class as a healer class, but at this point, I decided to start playing a coercer as they have more to offer a group or a raid.  When the inqy gets fixed, or if we get fixed, I would gladly prefer playing my inqy.  Til then, I am more of a liability than an asset to a raid.

Furlann

[Gungo]

somehow i think the overbuffed avoidance of players causes reactives and regens to basically be less useful.Uncontested avoidance has spiked the last year to the point where tanks are basically at a 50% cap. This lead soe to make NPC's lvl 88 to compensate. And still we are at the point where tanks rarely get hit and the only true hard encounters are those mobs that double atk for high spike damage. This also makes reactives and regens worse and worse, since there is no continous stream of incoming damage. Instead it becomes a prevention(ward) and spam (direct heal) fight. There are points were you cna sit your entire duration and not see a reactive trigger on a main tank. Uncontested avodiance has to be removed from items and AA's it should be tied to fighter defensive stance and capped at 20% tops. NPC's atk speed has to be increased and mitigation has to be changed to curve correctly. Instead of shields providing uncontested avodiance maybe they should just be a flat # reduction in trauma damage.

[Kleitos]

Act of War (and it's previous versions):As it is now it is a seldom used buff as it doesn't do much, even blowing it up with AAs doesn't help much.How about adding a second effect to it? It does take a conectration slot so make that slot count for something.This can be done with AAs or just adjust the buff with a second property, up to designer.- Double attack 5-10% (something for melee)- 5% casting speed/recovery/recast (something for everyone)- 5-10% chance to proc a small heal/regen/ward on attack on group/player (to help with healing)- Double the damage the it currently does (really cheap way to make it more usefull)

[slappy]

Yeah I have to agree that the once cool dps buff is now easily capped.  The haste one is not as bad but still because there arent as many haste adornments and procs as i have seen on the dps.  Its kinda hard to fix that one because they cant just take back all the gear and stuff.  I like the what the previous post said about giving a +10 double attack/crit attack to group also.

Healing wise i really dont know how to fix the reactives, i agree with the other posts about them not triggering especially my group one. 

 I really dont complain much on the fear and root because i think every class has a couple of spells that are useless in a raid so not much to cry about there. 

 Act of war is a joke, I have had people tell them to get it off them.  Should be more like a 30 second duration of every combat art does 431 damage, kinda like the dirge, I think that would be of more use and then would actually use it. 

 Hopefully they are able to help us out a bit.

[inhumanus1986]

OK, here is my 2 cp for fixing a good portion of the Inquisitor class - WARNING - this is a non-raiding, PvE opinion.Spells - Heresy - Change this to a 10% Stoneskin/damage for a single target.              Repentance line - change this to a stun/damage/heal on any attack (not just combat arts) from an encounter.            Dogma - change its power cost to per spell cast from individuals healed - yes it is not necessary at 80, but somehow I am                          convinced that this one was never supposed to cost so much power for so little healed.                   Act line - change its base proc back to percentage based or buff it to 1.6/min without AA and add a heal equal to the damage for the                            entire group.            Focus line - make the recast much shorter (30 to 45 seconds) and give it a group immunity to control effects for 10 to 15 seconds after                                casting.            Inquisition - make it castable on a group or raid member and have the recast start at casting, not at termination.Inquisitor AA's            Add a 10% per rank increase to heals for Dogma (5 ranks).            Add a group heal proc to Inquest equal to the power drained.            Final healing ability - New spell - 1 Second cast, 30 second duration, 1 minute recast.  Any time the target drops below 50% health, the                                             target is granted a 3 proc stoneskin, healing for 10% of max health for every trigger.            Scrap Maladroit for damage proc on any hostile spell or combat art (Inquisitor only) about 6 to 10 points of damage per level.            Scrap final Judgement ability for an ability along the lines of a proccable manical infusion (through damage, crits, deathblow, etc).Kinda funny by my numbers - adding all these new tools still would not put us on par with Templars in healing, but would add a nice amount of proc heals whilegiving us a single ability to eat large damage spikes.So..........what do you think??Inhumanus Nex80 InquisitorNektulous Server           

[Drodin]

I totally agree that the punishments need to be changed in a way similar to the coercers, where its player action that triggers it instead of mob action.for heresy I'd like it to be a group buff with X triggers, and when a group member is healed it damages the encounter and does the knock down, and the cast time needs to be shortened quite a bit too.Inquisition - I dont see how they would make Inquisition castable on a player if they kept it on the mobs too, so if its only on players thats cool (i prefer it being on mobs), but with implied targets it would be confusing.  Either way it shouldn't be resistable. Also, if it remains toggleable, they cant start the recast until it terminates.Maladroit - I would like this to be an impairment placed on a mob, that has a % chance to debuff it for a certain amount of time upon recieving any damage, and is until cancelled with a constant power cost.For example, it has a 5% chance to debuff the mob for like 1k mitigation to all damage for 13 seconds, and each debuff is stackable, so if it procs 5 times within the time of the first trigger, its debuffed by 5k mit.It could be any sort of debuff, if its not mitigation, a % based spell, melee, avoid, or hit chance deacreases or some combination of those would be good.^^This also could be added to Act of Faith instead, that would be cool too. Fervent Focus:There should be some duration associated with this, maybe ~10-15 seconds. @InhumanusI know you said for non-raiding, but that final healing ability would be way to overpowered for raids imo.  throw in 2 inquisitors to the raid and the tank is practically unkillable.

[inhumanus1986]

Thx for the reply Drodin - I am kinda stuck at the moment as to what to give the Inq class as a large spike damage helper.Furies - hibernate, back into the fray upgradeWardens - multiple death saves available, 2 special HoTs, SS on mythicalShamans - Sentry and Deathward along with the nature of wardsTemplars - RepentAs much as i truly want the Inq class to recieve a non gear dependant bump to their healing, I certainly dont want to be overpowered nor make the healing job too easy : )Inhumanus

[Drodin]

Well, a stoneskin and spike preventer are 2 things we are missing.  So putting em together sounds good to me.  I really didnt think about what the other healers actually had in terms of spells like that, and had you proposed what repent is or sentry is I probably would have called it OP too lol. I can't say how exactly to balance that skill out other than adding recast time, but I wouldnt want to sacrifice that for the skill that needs to fill that hole.  I'll try to think of something