Krobie

Hey all, I've been reading these forums for a while now however have never really had a question I really cared to ask to you all as you have answered most of them with previous posts.

I currently have a level 80 Warden with about 160 AA (would have to log in to get the actual number, and I'm currently at work.) I have a solo/group spec (Melee + Infusion) and a Heal Spec (for raids or solo healing instances). I enjoy playing the melee spec much more. I state this to give you a bit of background about my play style to be used when considering the answer to the questions I am going to pose.

Now I know most of you are probably thinking by now "hey wait a minute this is the Inquis forum buddy!" but here comes the questions.

Now that I am level 80 and have the majority of my AAs as well as full t2 void shard gear and what have you I've decided that now is as good a time as any to start playing a new char on the side.

I would first like to start by saying that I run with a static group (the same 6 of us play together about 6 nights a week with the same chars). We have been playing together for about 3-4 years now (since before DoF) over the years we have evolved into what we are now. as we have a templar as our main healer me as the warden and being an x-beastlord took up the melee route filling in as the backup healer / ghetto dps.

Now I know that when you have 2 plate healers the effectiveness of the 2nd healer is somewhat lost as a portion of their stuff wont stack. I had originally thought of making a PLD to "replace" my warden outside of raids, thinking that they would have more dps and what not with a bit less heals. However over at the PLD forums they said that Battle inquis really was the way to go for what i wanted.

I had a few quesitons. For starters I was wondering how Inquis dps fell in the battle preist trio. ie whos first 2nd and 3rd (asuming same gear and skill players) between mystic inquis and warden (in the melee spec) which would come out on top which would land in the middle and which would come in last. For whatever reason (i know almost nothing about melee mystics) i would guess that they chain was something like Mystic > Inquis > Warden.

If our group main heal (the temp) were to switch over to defiler (hes been thinking about that) how much more valuable would the inquis be?

With full t2 void shard gear (infused jewelry + t2 armor set) with a 623 staff (the 77 MC monk style staff) i think its about a 5 second base delay. About what kind of dps would an average melee inquis pull you guys think (all spells would be AD3 or higher) given say about 140 aa (usually what i land at when i hit 80)? granted it could vary grately but what would your guess be?

Last, do you all think that I would enjoy a melee inquis more then a melee warden? What i am looking for is a self sufficiant melee who can take dmg as well as dish it out and keep themselves going (in solo play) and a backup healer (only need to provide maybe an overall of 15% of the total healing as our main heal takes care of the rest) who can dish out some dps and utility to help more so then my warden.

I suppose it is important to note that our group is Zerker (MT) Monk (OT) Temp (MH... considering swithcing to defiler) Warden (OH & about 2.5-3k dps (me) ) Wizzy (sets stuff on fire) and Ilus (does the ilus thing).

Please let me know what you guys think and any concerns or additional thoughts you all may have.

Krobie

No one has any thoughts or advice for this situation?

juzam

I did the reverse you did. I still prefer my Inq but you will miss the ports lol. DPS order depends on group/raid set up but in my opinion its inq>mystic>warden.

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Krobie

Well fortunately my warden is on a separate account so i actually have him auto following my melee inquis for sow/ports

So what would an average level 80 inquis with full ad3 or better spells 140ish aa and full t2 shard gear parse ballpark wise? solo? and in a standard group as a backup healer?

Inhumanus

Solo w/o flurry proccing, Inqs can easily hit 4k dps solo w/ even t1 dps shard gear ( I could hit 2.6k easy w/ mastercrafted gear and the Mallet from the x2 in KJ).

Inqs have more DPS mod for their auto attack and castable haste w/ Devotion. Their new dps buff from the Inq tree makes all the dpsers want to pay favors to get you in their group.

The assumption of 4k dps is w/ the Thex Mallet, melee bonus from TSO priest tree, 100%+ DA, Melee crit, 140 ish DPS mod and 180 ish haste, 800+ str.

Casting order - Condemned, Strike of flames, Writhing strike, Invocation strike, Strike of corruption, Litany circle, Invocation strike (last IS w/ 182 AA for tree buff and O stance will hit around 5k ish) and timing your auto attack for 3k double attacks every 2 to 2.5 seconds (at 140 AA as you specified).

Good luck.

pagansaint

Those values are rather high for that DPS number, was getting 4-4.5k fairly easily with 650str, 98% DA, 126% MC, 120 DPS, 70-120 Haste without the Inquis Endlines using the Supple Dogwood.

If you want better DPS, Litany Circle needs to be used as soon as possible, it has a longer recast but is the hardest hitting CA you have, get the initial spike going and use the DoTs to sustain afterwards. Also Writhing Strike can be used first to debuff the mob so you can land Condemned easier, it still resists against orange cons regularly on pull at M1 with full EoF AAs.

So something like Writhing Strike => Condemned => Litany => Race/AA CAs => Strike of Flames, both Corruptions, Invocation Strike etc.

Also against mobs that AE auto attack and/or physical damage AE using Forced Martyrdom, timed to cast between Auto Attacks, can benefit you greatly, otherwise its not worth using in most cases.

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Krobie

Wow sounds like this would be a big step up from my warden DPS wise. The reason i use shard gear for the example is i currently have about 200 shards sitting in the bank so it will be quite easy to get him in a full set of the jewelry (infused) as well as a t1 armor set... then a few weeks later id be able to have the shards for the t2 set. (seperate accounts but my warden can craft it so i should be able to consign the item over to the inquis.... or does it not work like that?)

The 140aa is a guess as that's what most of my level 80s have when they hit 80... He is currently 34 with 43(i think... its 40something) aa. However I PLed him to 32 in about a day lol. Now im going back through all the solo quest lines for the paydirt (aas). knocked out all the solo lines so far and am up to EL.

Being a warden as a main im a little jellious that inquis get melee crit and heal crit from the same aa tree hehe...

Do melee inquis need to raise disruption (er whatever the nuke skill is) for anything other then master strike and/or having their nukes to fall back on outside of their CAs? I ask this because my warden has a couple of nukes that arnt tied to the CAs such as the one from the druid line in shadows which is quite nice. I just want to make sure im not gimping myself... My debuff skill is almost maxed as my crushing defence and ministration are all maxed. the ordination(buff skill) is about middle but my warden dident max that until a while at max level... dont really feel like sitting around toggling my buffs on and off if you know what i mean lol. My theory about the nuke skill is that if master strike is really the only nuke that a melee inquis uses then ill just wait tell 80 and spend a day dragging the skill from the 40ish its at to 400... id rather do that then spend 5-8 sessions here and there trying to keep it up.. I tried replaceing one of my CAs with the nuke but just dident like doing that.

Anyhow so far im having a blast with the inquis and the plate armor vs leather is outstanding.

grahsa

not much point in disruption with our ca's. you will be fine just to get that skill up on a training dummy all in 1 go, (boring as F tho).

not sure if it is like this for a warden but (at least for me and how I play) to get the most out of whatever playstyle I am currently doing -solo healer in guk (heal heavy so i put on my emg for example) vs second healer in DF (dps, so i put on my void shard gaunts with 38 haste).

Carry several sets of gear. itemization is not quite there for our class in regards to inquisitor armor sets still having int/sta/wis and spell crit instead of wis/str/int, only with tso have we seen bits of armor that cater to a battle cleric that has heal bonuses along side +CA dmg/+dps etc.

To do maximum damage i carry around mostly scout gear (as well as the chain void armor (3rd set bonus = +ca base dmg).
to heal i wear my fabled drops with a scattering of the plate healer void armor.

use macros to switch them out on demand.

some classes like a fury arent as reliant on multiple sets of armor to excel in a given job. (they can wear their heal gear - and their heal gear is their dps gear.)

easiest weapon to get at lvl 80 for us for dps is the hammer that drops from boss in DF and the thex mallet hq. the latter being *very* close to bonecrusher. there are other threads about weapons though.

Krobie

Yea I checked out the AAs and spell lists again today to check for stray disruption spells that might be hindered by not leveling it up as you go. The reactive nukes are ordination based so "we" (im considering myself a noob melee inquis now lol) kinda get away with that one. The thing about the wardens is that they have 2-3 spells that dont get turned into CAs that work off disruption besides the master smite so if you let the skill slip there (which it will only using those few spells especially since they have long cool downs) your dps will suffer some. The big one being this VERY nice nuke that you can get at 133 aa (end line of druid shadows line) that is disruption based and not CAable as its a AA itsself. Does in the ballpark of 1100-1600 with a 800ish tick that hits about 6 times to the encounter (going off memmory here so values may be slightly different) I have maxed out disruption so its no problem for me. Plus I have infuison and droped the 8 points in spell crit giveing me a total of 36% spell crit which uped my DPS a 300-500.

Which leads me to a question.... I noticed there is a spell crit in the cleric tree... does this do the same for us? seeing as how im GUESSING that the reactive nukes are spell based? so is this aa reccommended? From my experiance as a melee warden My planned out AA spec picks this up (I sacrifice the heal crits as our static group has a main healer and ill be backup) My raid spec would definatly include maxed heal crit just for the reccord (I love the respec mirrors) but my warden dosent have heal crit either so I figured that it wouldent be hard to give up (especially considering my current plan would give me 2 points in heal crit where my warden has 0 lol) Now this is all THOERY mind you as I only have about 50 AAs at the moment and have just finnished off maxing all my spell to CAs at 5 with the 100% melee crit. My next plan is to flesh out the STR tree.

grahsa

I still love the int line - between divine recovery and spell haste, personally i like it more than the strength line in raids. (solo i swap int for str, and in both i have points in agi and sta) whether i use DR to get out of a sticky situation when solo healing - or blow it on trash to up the groups dps. I still find it incredibly useful.

In order to get that aa - you need to blow some points into spell crit.. at first i only dumped the necessary 4 into that line - i have over the months respecced and have 8 points into that now bringing my spell crit to around 45% ish depending on what gear i have on.

i picked up a master 1 of zeal for 13 plat. i respecced to m2 of vengeance. (i lost a total of 14 ish hps and 40 pts of resists in the switich from m2 to m1 ... whoopity doo. vengance damage went up 300ish points between my old ad3 to m1

back on track - so yes vengeance will proc a crit.
master strike can crit.
rallos cloak (bladed fury) can crit.
bonecrusher can crit.
fiery feedback can crit.
dire concequences can crit.
insipring peity (ho) can crit
fanatical devotion can crit.
divine castigation can crit.

raid buffs follow same
crypt's revenge
piercing faith
blade chime etc..

so ya - spell crit helps