Kicking Inquisitors While They're Down...

My main was in inq from the day EQ2 went live in 2004, but they're not as fun since DBG seems to have swept them under the rug. There is basically nothing an inq can do that another healer can't do better. It was with not a small amount of sadness that I put my beloved inq out to pasture this year and moved on to another class as my main.

The only thing the inq has that nobody else does is Verdict. Until now, that is. My new main is a necro, so I decided to go Thaumaturgist for my Ascension class. I was just reading through the Thaumaturgist spells, and noticed this:

Lvl 9 - Tainted Mutation
* Potency decrease on target
* When target falls below 3% health this spell will cast Tainted Mutation on caster. Lasts for 20.0 seconds.
** Reduces target's health to 1.

So basically, anyone who gets to level 9 in thaumaturgy gets a Verdict. Since there are only four Ascension classes, it's a safe assumption that somewhere in the area of 25% (give or take) of people will choose this class.

DBG just took the SINGLE ability inqs had to set them apart, and made it available to anyone who chooses thaumaturgist. This would cause me to hang up his hammer & shield if I hadn't already quit playing my inq.

I know some people will argue that it will take time to get to lvl 9 in the ascension class. If you look a bit further down the road though, there will be a time when almost everybody has at least one ascension class maxed.

I truly hope DBG makes inqs relevant someday. The tiny amount of love they gave them with the launch of KA wasn't enough to make them desirable again, and this is like giving a starving man a single drop of water, then kicking him repeatedly when he collapses.

I, personally, cannot WAIT until my guild leader has the thaum verdict, because finally, I will get to pay him back for telling me "VERDICT WOMAN" every time the mob was almost dead.

I will love it. And I will cackle insanely every time I do it. Do I care that he probably won't cast it because it takes a year to cast? Nope. Just the ability to scream it at him will make my raid night.

Does it suck that we share verdict with basically everyone now? I guess. But it's not a deal breaker for me. All the other issues in my inq thread (and others I haven't bothered mentioning in said inq thread) are closer to deal breakers for me than other ppl having verdict.

I agree that this is FAR from the worst issue, but rather the icing on the s**t cake we've been given. It's just insult to injury.

I was about to ask how the inq was. I've had my side project Chilo since 2008. but now i see.


Color me surprised.

the inq has the biggest group wide hp buff in game... thats huge and makes them incredible now if u can learn to play them.. they arent an easymode shaman.. they actually require skill

Dude or dude-ette...

You are talking to people who have played this class and clerics in EQ1, so some of us have been through the changes and evolution of this class for almost 20 years (me since I was 13 years old playing a raid cleric in Eq1).

I noticed you commenting on every post about inquisitors on here as a new member (basically telling us we just don't know how to play our class) and while you call it "easy mode shaman" it's a real challenge for us to solo heal the important heroics and sure in the hell couldn't solo heal a challenge mode or event heroic, while (as you call them) easy mode Shaman can...even with 2x the potency, and better gear-they will out heal us no matter what right now.

So we are left with a choice: ***** and moan, or make mystics.

Thank you.

Everyone else, I have been thinking about how important the trade-skills have become this expac...while i HATE crafting...i managed to make a level 100 alchemist and started working on the cloak. I also noticed how many potions we have that could possibly help us in those tough fights, there are also charms from the ToT mushroom vendor to help with fear fights that are worth looking into that have big benefits that make them still relevant.

While I have yet to go into the challenge mode, I'm wondering which event heroic you think you can't solo heal? I haven't noticed one yet where the lack of healing was our issue...

Not saying it's easy by any stretch. But it's not all gloom and doom either.

first... just cause my forum says new doesnt mean anything.. new account or maybe never decided to post on forums until now.. in case of me both.. ive raided as shaman templar and inq (MT healer right now to).. right now the inq is in way better solo healing spot than templars.. (and they arent complaining) so the fear named in the heroics is due to low DPS... just cause uve been playing inq since launch doesnt mean anything.. classes grow u have to adapt and learn.. they arent as bad as all the posts are saying... but yes shaman do have the upperhand.. but it can be done..

Don't know if you know this or not but, pretty sure there are a good majority of mobs that have percent based AoEs. The inqs are settling with their band-aid fix and praying to god the right side is fixed (Threshold is ridiculous). Melee damage especially on priests is dead. It has been replaced with procs. The auto attack mods on Melee priests that made them better than a priest with a wand is pointless now. Not one priest is using melee damage right now. So yes, as a melee priest, they are absolutely broken and need love.

As for heals, their "special" class defining heals have been broken for a while now. I mean, I guess with the class cloak from last expansion, they do "alright". There is nothing in this expansion that is hard to solo heal in heroic. Most every class can run the heroics and do them decently enough to finish. The people talking about the real issues are absolutely correct. There are many many posts that talk about a good fix for them and I really hope the devs listen. This has nothing to do with "easy mode shamans" and all to do with the trade-off on the classes. People aren't moving to shamans because they are easy, they are doing it because Inquisitors in their current state even if played to the absolute max don't offer anything that is severely needed in a raid.

Just to add more perspective to it, other night, we had an inquisitor in group, giving everyone a ton more hp. Heroic dungeon. Adds popped during boss fight and murdered everyone one shot dead. No time for the inquis to heal people. Just like it has been for a while now. Tried multiple times, tried different strategies, got frustrated and left. Later on, shaman in the same dungeon, same tank, new healer, everyone stayed green through the fight. Hp boost is not enough to do the types of things a shaman can do for solo healing a dungeon. This is one reason why I don't play my templar anymore (the other more important reason is my necromancer is way more fun to me). Game mechanics do NOT favor non-shaman healers who want to solo heal heroic content. Can it be done? Yup. I did it a lot on my templar. Is it easier on a shaman? Yup by a long shot. And I would say it has become even more annoying in KA due to the aggro ripping that is happening much more often.

On my templar in ToT content, as long as one person could steadily maintain aggro, we had zero issues. Only problems I ever had was when aggro was being tipped all over/crazy adds etc. Now.. well aggro is being tipped much more often and we have add fights on top of it. If you have a super awesome amazing tank who always grabs adds instantly and never loses aggro, then you're probably going to do well on any healer in KA...but from what I've seen so far, that's a lot to ask for, especially if you pug.

I hope the clerics feel like they have more of a place in the raids right now, but if we're talking about solo healing a heroic dungeon, an hp boost, even if it adds 1million hp, just doesn't cut it for some of these instances/scripts/dps aggro management issues/etc.

Adds 1 million hp? I think it is more like adds 10 million hp.

I was in a heroic group and noticed the hp went up to the next million mark. Maybe this person was not running the super huge buff or perhaps not spreading it around or something. If there is a buff that adds 10million hp in a heroic setup, then inquisitors really need to learn about how to use this buff appropriately...

Yes inqs can give 10 million hp in heroic groups, and its a group buff that can be maintained if recasted correctly.

sounds like the inq u had doesnt know its class... and they absolutely have a raid spot... tank gets hit for 74 mil... 50 of it is warded/healed.. so 24mil gets thru... the hp buff makes ur tank now have 25mil+ hp... therefore ur tank lives... without that inq buff it would have died...

This guy right here gets it. Left side spec is absolutely unneeded in raids if your tanks and shamans know what they're doing. The only place I have seen it "needed" so far in heroic zones is in the challenge mode heroic, and even then it's debatable.

Does it make some things easier? Absolutely. I tested that in raid a couple nights ago. Doesn't make inquisitors useful though, because I am sure if other changes had been made besides me changing specs, no one would have even noticed.

Left side is boring and hardly a fix to make this class actually valuable in the long term. As people get better gear, infuse, or whatever, the HP increase we have the ability to provide will be come less and less useful. Other fixes have been requested in other threads, but at this point I doubt even those will be enough to make this class useful in the long run.

Can't stress this enough. Not only do we lose a ton of CB going left side (maybe not a problem if you're capping it with gear, but heroic players sure aren't doing that), but if you want it maintained at full strength on the tank/group you're stuck recasting it constantly. I enjoyed the gimick of high HP for a while, but seeing my dps plummet from the lost stats and constant recasts I'm only going to use it if it's absolutely necessary.

I'm a dps so I don't care about how much I heal for. Your a healer why do you care if you lose some dps? The hp buff is so strong, 2 inq's can keep a raids hp in the 18 to 25 million range, making inq's probably the best class in the entire raid. And I can ensure you that the loss in your dps will not compare to the gain in dps of the summoners soulburn. You can say that inq's are boring, that is your opinion. There is no way that you can say that inq's are not one of the most important classes right now.

Inquisitors are the most sought after class for raids right now. So why are Inquisitors in such high demand? So what, they get a health buff, who cares? Let's take a look at why it's so amazeballs....

100,000,000 damage comes from the mob
50,000,000 - First shaman group ward until it hits its max value then it uses the second ward for this 50 mil
25,000,000 - Second shaman group ward / Third if the 50 mil absorbed the first and bled into the second
12,500,000 - Third shaman group ward / defiler class cloak.

But what happens when you you don't have a third ward on group? They go splat.

Now introducing the new and improved Inquisitor. Their health buff serves to pick up bleedthrough that was missed in the last rung of the ward ladder. Or as an alternative to shaman wards, it allows druids to actually keep their group alive.

Keep in mind the above scenario is a T1 mob. If a T2 it has 60% bleedthrough. If a T3 it has 70% bleedthrough.

This is why inquisitors are needed for Kunark. Nobody cares about DPS from a healer. It's an added bonus after you do your job.

I haven't raided on a priest since early in ToT and that was limited to one night of filling in for an absent guildy so maybe it has changed but through AoM at least healing has been faceroll easy for like 95% of the fights in the game. DPS at least gave a lot of us priests something to work at but now most priests don't even get that. Having one spell to cast over and over again may make inquisitors viable again but it doesn't make them much fun.

And an inquisitors job now is to spam a single buff over and over while other classes do the real work? That can be achieved with auto follow and a key press emulator.

They may have made inquisitors desirable in raids, but they haven't fixed the class.