In Inquisitive, Jovion discusses and debates issues of class balance, game design, community perceptions and other contentious subjects involving the Inquisitor class.
As many would know, Inquisitors as a whole is a dying class. This is due to the fact that Inquisitors find it very difficult to find a raid or nest spot nowadays as it is unable to distinguish itself from Saints.
What do I mean? You see, Saints have the ability to single-handedly make a run more "stable", you would have a much higher chance of surviving if you bring a Saint because of one skill: Holy Shield. I've been in a few runs with a Saint before, to put it bluntly, so long as the Shield was up, the party will almost never die, no matter what skill is thrown at them.The icing on the cake is the much bigger AoE radius of key support skills like Cure Relic and Healing Relic, allowing the Saint to perform both roles with less constraints with regards to the positioning of raid or nest party members.
This means that Saints are almost always guaranteed a slot in nest or raid parties, and because it brings all the same party buffs (blessings) and have a superior support skill set (healing, curing and Holy Shield) the Inquisitors are never taken as they have nothing unique they can bring over a Saint. Even if we bring superior DPS, we are still overall lower than other classes, as such, in the DPS slots, either a pure DPS class or a semi-DPS class with a unique support element like Elestras is taken. Inquisitors are left by the wayside.
In order for an Inquisitor to be seen as a viable pick without compromising the viability of Saints, the design paradigm of Inquisitors have to change drastically from a hybrid. There are three possible design paradigms I will be discussing after the jump and the possible ways to push Inquisitors towards those paradigms. The three are pure DPS, semi-DPS with unique support elements, and support.
1. Pure DPS
Pushing Inquisitors into the pure DPS role will allow it to distinguish itself from Saints in that now, a priest has the option of furthering its support capabilities (Saints), or becoming a very powerful damage dealer (Inquisitor), the current design paradigm unfortunately only allows priests to pick becoming a great support or a mediocre hybrid.
The current issues with Inquisitors in DPS roles are as follows:
a) Low board damage without sufficient boosts to allow it to match pure DPS classes
b) Two skills in the Inquisitor skill tree, namely Mindbreaker and Detonate, are either too low damage, or completely counter-intuitive to Inquisitor DPS. As such they are left at level 1, meaning that compared to other DPS classes, Inquisitors are already lacking two damaging EX skills.
c) Extremely low Super Armor, almost every skill will be interrupted if a boss attacks the Inquisitor.
d) Shock Transition is completely useless in single-target situations.
To push Inquisitors into a DPS role without buffing the DPS capabilities of a Saint (that will make them OP), it is better to focus on improving the skills within the Inquisitor tree.
Resolving a) and d) for pure DPS
What I suggest is a complete overhaul of our EX skills and Shock Transition.
To improve our board damage, our EXs should be given a much bigger buff than other classes, instead of 30%-50%, you are looking at 100%-300% depending on skills. Chain Lightning should be around 100%, Lightning Bolt around 150%, and Mindbreaker around 300%
To rework Shock Transition for single-target situations, it can simply be changed to a multi-cast effect, in other words, attacks have a 20/30/40% chance, increasing with level, to deal its damage again when striking an electrocuted target. When multi-cast triggers, it will also spread the electrocution debuff to nearby enemies, dealing 20% of the original damage done to the initial target.
A minor change that would also be neat is if Magical Bless applies for all targets, i.e. all attacks from anyone in the party will deal 10% additional non-elemental damage to a target electrocuted by an Inquisitor, its implementation would simply be turning Magicial Bless into a debuff that is applied to targets whenever electrocution is applied.
Resolving b) for pure DPS
To improve these two skills, Mindbreaker's damage can simply be buffed with the aforementioned EX buff. Also, Mindbreaker should also be a cast-on-demand skills, in other words, it should be placeable on one's action bars, not unlike an Engineer's Rocket Jump.
For Detonate, a change in the EX is sufficient:
Instead of producing additional lightning that hits for pathetic damage, it should increase damage dealt by 50% and it no longer removes the electrocution debuff.
Resolving d) for pure DPS
Simply improving Super Armor for the skills across the board is sufficient, even Saints would appreciate that. Alternatively, in the Inquisitor skill tree, Consecration can also be improved to give Super Armor to the Inquisitor and any allies standing in it for 10 seconds. The buff is refreshed every second the person stands inside the Consecration radius.
2. Semi-DPS with Support Elements
This set of ideas simply makes Inquisitors retain its current damage. In exchange for being lower than a pure DPS, we would, instead, bring party buffs or debuffs that are unique and powerful enough to warrant a raid slot without compromising the Saint's support slot.
The changes are relatively simple:
a) Mindbreaker EX
Instead of applying its current -15% light resist debuff, it is changed to -15% physical and magical defence reduction. Small, but a good buff that benefits the entire party.
b) Magical Bless
Instead of merely dealing +10% additional damage whenever the Inquisitor attacks an electrocuted target, buff it to +50% additional damage as non-elemental damage whenever anyone attacks a target electrocuted by the Inquisitor. The implementation is the same as the suggestion in the previous section, but instead of being only 10%, it is upped to 50%.
These two changes should be sufficient to justify bringing Inquisitors in a DPS slot, -15% to enemy defence and +50% damage to the entire party is nothing to scoff at.
3. Pure Support
This will make Inquisitors overlap with Saints to a large extent, thus potentially threatening the Saint's raid slot.
To make Inquisitors pure support without losing its flavour, I was thinking something similar to Atonement Healing by Discipline Priests in World of Warcraft: Damaging attacks will also heal party members for a % of its damage.
As such, for ALL EXs: Increase in damage is removed, instead, the party is healed for 30-50% of the damage dealt by that skill.
Implementation can either be a group heal (the heals heal everyone in the group for the same amount) or smart heal (the heal will only heal the party member with the lowest HP).
Shock Transition and Consecrate remains the same. Magical Bless is reworked:
All of the Inquisitors attacks will heal party members for 10% of the damage when striking an electrocuted target.
This change will differentiate the Inquisitor's support capabilities from a Saint's, instead of powerful burst heals and strong defensive buffs, we would instead offer excellent sustained healing capabilities as our main attacking skills are all on short cooldowns.
Conclusion
Here I've presented three viable paradigms that the developers can push Inquisitors towards in order to make Inquisitors a viable pick in either a DPS slot or support slot. Here are some questions though, what exactly is the direction the developers want Inquisitors to go? Is there even an overall design in mind when it comes to Inquisitors? When will they realise that mediocre hybrids are really not viable in a raiding environment? Will they ever implement any of the above changes to save Inquisitors from becoming a dying class?
Reader, I also have a couple of questions for you: How would you change the Inquisitor to end discrimination against the class? What buffs would you give the Inquisitor?
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