So we all hate Inquisition but maybe ...

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

If you don't use ES your dps is gonna suffer.
If you don't use TV your dps is gonna suffer.
If you don't use AW your dps is gonna suffer.

It's the same for all specs, as a affli lock or any dot spec your dps is gonna suffer if you don't put up your dot, with snapshot mechanics gone in WoD dots basically turns into what Savage Roar, Inquisition, Slice and Dice is today.
Again, Inquisition can be improved by adding to it but for the love of this class stop saying it needs to be removed.
For those who say it's boring: your main task is dps, Inq is by far your biggest dps changer. Isn't doing MORE dps MORE fun?

If Inquisition gets removed we're looking at another complete rework on ret.. A class that imo in MoP has played better than it ever has before, note; we're not top dps spec, but our rotation is so close to being perfectly smooth and enjoyable. We have 2 major scaling effects, 1 is getting to a haste point where we get as many finishers out as possible, usually 50% haste (by rating). The other is increasing the damage our finishers do which Mastery (and str, wep damage) is the key scaling factor. By removing Inq you're removing 30% scaling on our mastery, not to forget all other holy damage effects, so PLEASE stop asking for it to be removed, I don't want to be turned into a DK that needs to be buffed every 4months because our scaling can't keep up with everyone else, PLEASE stop!

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I'll ask it to be removed if I damn well please. ;D


As I said. As it's current incarnation, go away. If it stays let it be something else.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

Ask for it to CHANGE, add something to it...
Just terning into a passive isn't going to add gameplay!

[Shelly]

"Boring gameplay" is really, seriously being abused to try to add a dramatic spin to the more accurate "I just don't like it", and has been for about as long as Inq existed.

How about "uninteresting?" Is that better than saying boring? You can have things that are boring if they still feel like you're making a dynamic choice. I'd say Execution Sentence is one of them, here's why:
1) It's a talent and as such on different fights and for different reasons you may want to swap it out to something more group advantageous.
2) While for most of the fight it's considered proper to bang it out once a minute there are times - especially add fights - where you may want to hold back a bit because the damage will be wasted on your current target, maybe you'll just swap to the boss, maybe you'll need it for the next big bad that's about to pop?

Inquisition on the other hand:
1) There are no viable alternatives which would offer differing rewards to your group or self. You keep it up or you do significantly less damage, that's boring.
2) There are no times in a fight where you are benefited from losing the inquisition buff. Yes there's some finesse in choosing when you refresh it but at any point if you don't have it up you're letting down the team.

There is nothing inherently more or less boring about buffing your damage with 3 HP vs. pressing your 5 key and seeing a yellow number pop up. They're both boring. You're not actually running around with the wind in your face and blood spraying out while you pray to God to kill people for you.

You're pressing a button on a plastic rectangle and watching some pixels confirm that, yes, you did 'damage' to another pixel, which is represented in no visual way other than a solid-colored bar decrementing slightly.

Really?

You're going to play the "well it's just a game and everything you do is boring anyway if you look at at the right perspective ..."

Yeah, because it was SUPER FUN when we essentially had two attacks - judgment and CS - and they both such long cooldowns that most of our damage came from auto-attacking. Mostly you just prayed wings would come off CD so you could throw hammers at shit and feel like more than just a blessing machine.

Inquisition lacks choice, which makes inquisition an uninteresting ability to myself and many others. That's really about it, we can fully recognize the usefulness of the ability and be grateful for the increase in damage but at the end of the day there's nothing interesting or dynamic about it.

To someone who's not a gamer, that's a completely "Uhhh, that's nice " moment. If you asked them "What's more boring, hitting something with a glowing sword or infusing yourself with Holy energy to smite your foes with more damage?" They'd be like: "I don't know, I'm busy watching House of Cards".

It's like complaining that buying a tract of land is boring because you could spend that money on 32,000 popsicles instead. Yes you could, but that's not really the point.

And no, it's nothing like that. It's more like saying "My boss will pay me 25% more each paycheck if every 5th paycheck I deposit the whole thing into the bank."

Yeah, that's awesome and sweet and no one would ever NOT do that, which is kind of the point. If there's no tension there and we all do it then why have the skill?

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Ask for it to CHANGE, add something to it...
Just terning into a passive isn't going to add gameplay!

Neither is leaving Inquisition at this point if we're going to be frank here. I know you love it but honestly I find the idea of having annoying stuff in a rotation is good gamplay to be quite silly.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

Corruption, Agony, Rake, Rip, Thrash, Living Bomb, Rupture, Immolate, Rend, Shadow Word: Pain and all other DoTs is going to be EXACTLY like maintenance buffs in WoD when snapshots gets scrapped.
You hit button when the previous one is about to expire.
Guess we should look at the gameplay value of DoTs as well then?
And no I'm not being ridiculous about that comparison, uptime buffs you maintain a buff on yourself - dots you maintain a debuff on targets.

[TheWindWalker]

Honestly, the thing about Inquisition that always bothered me was how little you could notice its effect. Unlike a DoT with numbers flying around, a flat damage buff just felt like "I wouldn't notice this is gone until I've been hitting this guy for a solid minute and my recount/skada seems low."

[Shelly]

Corruption, Agony, Rake, Rip, Thrash, Living Bomb, Rupture, Immolate, Rend, Shadow Word: Pain and all other DoTs is going to be EXACTLY like maintenance buffs in WoD when snapshots gets scrapped.
You hit button when the previous one is about to expire.
Guess we should look at the gameplay value of DoTs as well then?
And no I'm not being ridiculous about that comparison, uptime buffs you maintain a buff on yourself - dots you maintain a debuff on targets.

They probably are looking at gameplay value of DoTs. In fact they already have which is why they have some abilities (I think it's only a Warlock one) where they'll consume all DoTs currently on the target for one big boom. Then you have probably the most well known DoTs that everyone forgets about - Frost Fever and Blood Plague, neither of which benefit from snapshotting at this moment if I remember correctly, those have an added dynamic of more damage from other abilities while the enemy is infected as well as certain abilities are only usable on a foe that's infected as well.

At this point I think they've removed every single stand-alone debuff from the game. Now all debuffs are handled via a direct damage ability, essentially they said "Well if everyone HAS to have it up, then why isn't it just a passive anyway?"

That's the position inquisition is in. If we HAVE to have it up then what's the point?

What did you trade off to activate inquisition that made it a dynamic and interesting choice? What did you give up for that benefit that in ANY OTHER SITUATION you would have KEPT?

The answer is that you gave up NOTHING. In no situation is a TV more valuable than an inquisition when you don't have that buff up.

That's why it's an uninteresting ability.

[nyc81991]

Corruption, Agony, Rake, Rip, Thrash, Living Bomb, Rupture, Immolate, Rend, Shadow Word: Pain and all other DoTs is going to be EXACTLY like maintenance buffs in WoD when snapshots gets scrapped.
You hit button when the previous one is about to expire.
Guess we should look at the gameplay value of DoTs as well then?
And no I'm not being ridiculous about that comparison, uptime buffs you maintain a buff on yourself - dots you maintain a debuff on targets.

DoT's are damage spells. Inquisition is an arbitrary "buff". It adds nothing other than a button and it doesn't feel good to use. Like I said in my comment before, Ret has to keep Inquisition up, only to still do mediocre sustained damage. Meanwhile classes like warriors can run around freely doing stronger damage and do not have to worry about managing a "buff".

Imagine warriors needing to spend their first 50 rage to put up a temporary buff like Inquisition only to then do less damage than they do right now without it. Not very fun and it hurts PvP.

[tristannarutofan]

Ok first of all...

3 point inquisition lasts for a MINUTE. and requires only 4 global cooldowns.

Slice and dice lasts 36 seconds, so does savage roar (both requiring 4-6 global cooldowns). Colossal smash only lasts for 8 SECONDs, Mage buff requires 2.5 seconds of doing NOTHING, willingly anticipating and taking damage, or staying rooted to a spot. Aff warlocks have to CHANNEL theirs.

If you have a problem with maintaining a buff that requires 2-4 global cooldowns ONCE every MINUTE then you are SPOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOIIIILLLLLLED

Spoiled spoiled spoiled. Trying playing a class who's dps rotation is difficult. And i say this having just got off my Retribution paladin. Hell even half your attacks use spell range so you dont even have to stay near the enemy to do most of your damage!

------------

Second it does have an impact on gameplay. If the first thing that happens when combat starts is you pop wings and throw a hammer then you lost a huge chunk of DPS. there is the decision of when to use it, how soon. Should i start off with minimum time on my inquisition or get the full 60 seconds and then blow some cooldowns. Its no different than the Avenger, setting it up early to optimize your damage throughput. A fight go long and you've been tunneling boss? suddenly you have to go a few GCDs with gimped damage.

-------------

Third, there is no way in any shape or form you WONT be punished for not casting inquisition. That is like saying you shouldnt have to use mortal strike, or fireball. Your attacks give you buffs or do damage, or both. Your average DPS is balanced according to that. If you where to say that paladins are doing 100% damage now, would they ever make it so that you could do 130% damage by using it properly. I'm sure maybe 110% or so is reasonable as there was probably some testing to see a perfect timing rotation that had inquisition maintained with minimal dps loss.

But seriously, your damage is suppose to be equal with others. if they took away inquisition it would just mean that damage would have to come from somewhere else....

and then you know what? that time the boss gets moved away, or you get CCed? you just lost ALOT more damage because you couldnt use crusader strike right away. because that damage was baked into there.

-------------------

P.S. I said this already.

but seriously

If you hate having to maintain a 60 second buff..

you are spoiled.

[Deleted]

Diseases do have a snapshot. Thats why festerblight was viable in ToT. They just donr scale with haste. Other than that, it was well said.

[tristannarutofan]

DoT's are damage spells. Inquisition is an arbitrary "buff". It adds nothing other than a button and it doesn't feel good to use. Like I said in my comment before, Ret has to keep Inquisition up, only to still do mediocre sustained damage. Meanwhile classes like warriors can run around freely doing stronger damage and do not have to worry about managing a "buff".

Imagine warriors needing to spend their first 50 rage to put up a temporary buff like Inquisition only to then do less damage than they do right now without it. Not very fun and it hurts PvP.

No warriors have to maintain deep wounds and apply colossal smash intelligently to do maximum damage.

Aff warlocks have to channel their spell and make sure all 3 dots are on the enemy AND maintain a cast time spell that has to TRAVEL to the target and they only have 4 or so seconds to take advantage of that dps. now THAT is difficult. What is annoying is spending Demonic fury on transforming early to put on Doom because my dps is based on having BOTH doom and corruption on, and then having to turn back to start building up demonic fury because i have almost none at start of fight.

Oh also you forgot the fact that Warriors have to BUILD their resources. takes a few seconds for Warriors to get some rage. Takes a fixed amount of seconds for paladins to get their inquisition up.

Oh wait...but paladins can maintain a 40 second inquisition from 30 feet away (exorcism, judgement) while Warriors have to stay in melee range in order to keep their rage going.

[Natureseer]

The ramp up is the only thing that sucks about inquisition. Otherwise maintaining it is simple and doesn't require very much thought.

[tristannarutofan]

in regards to maintenance i can tell that all the buffs out there have the same trigger in my mind. I'm playing and i think "oh is X-buff still up" and i look up and to the right to see if it is, and panic if it almost falls off.

The only difference between all these other classes and paladins, is that when i play a paladin most of the time when i look i have a good 40 seconds left. Hell even on my assassination rogue, in which slice and dice auto replenishes when i envenom i still have to double check because adds dying to quick before i can envenom or trying to get up other maintenance buff* resulting in no refreshes and it falling off unexpectedly....and then having to cast it with low duration or work to get it back up again. Even if i do it with one combo point i still have to get off a 5 combo point envenom to refresh it fully.

* yea, in order to be able to do max damage try having to keep a melee range bleed on someone, AND slice and dice.

lets see for my paladin its Judgement>Exorcism> crusader strike>max damage for 60 seconds
For my rogue its garrotte>slicendice>Mutilate>Mutilate>Dispatch (hopefully) or Mutilate>Envenom>Mutilate>dispatch>mutilate>Rupture....And now I can stop worrying about doing max damage for about....24 seconds...

[Lumineus]

Slice and dice lasts 36 seconds

lolmutilate

so does savage roar

lolglyph

(both requiring 4-6 global cooldowns)

lies

Colossal smash only lasts for 8 SECONDs

are you even fucking serious with this

Mage buff requires 2.5 seconds of doing NOTHING, willingly anticipating and taking damage, or staying rooted to a spot.

And they're SO happy about it too, let me tell you.

Aff warlocks have to CHANNEL theirs

it's also a highly damaging nuke

SPOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOIIIILLLLLLED
Spoiled spoiled spoiled. Trying playing a class who's dps rotation is difficult.

Well that's not Mages, Warlocks, Rogues, or even arguably Warriors, so I don't know WTF you're on about.

[Mormolyce]

As a Rogue who maintains SnD on all 3 specs I've never understood why people have a problem with Inq.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

Having ONE or possibly TWO maintenance style mechanics to your dps rotation/build should be seen MORE if you ask me. by "maintenance" I mean dots, hots and temp buffs. Tankadins keep up Eternal Flame on themselves for example, I seriously don't understand the hate towards the type of mechanic. Yes it's not "fun" but it's something you do that's expected of you to manage properly to play "correctly", if you feel ret has a problem of not having enough abilities that you decide how and when to use then complain about that and not Inquisition which is 100% perfectly designed imo.

Here's a couple things I consider to be "fun".
Divine Purpose - It's "fun" that you can decide to use it as soon as it procs or delay it a few seconds to use it when a pack of adds spawn. I also think it's "fun" that you can use it for single target or aoe. What I don't like about Divine Purpose is that it's 100% RNG and it's a nightmare to balance properly and you're always saying to yourself "man I could really use a proc now".

Consecration, like I mentioned in another thread or earlier in this thread.
7 sec duration, 15sec cd. Every use of 3 holy power increases duration of Consecration by 2 seconds (up to a max of 6).
In this model you'd have to chose when your Consecration is most effective and you'd have to somewhat plan your holy power use to extend the duration as long as possible until the next time Consecration is off cooldown.

Again, those two are examples on how to add what I personally would classify as "fun" and interesting gameplay with choices to make. Neither of them would touch Inquisition because Inquisition is NOT the problem.

- - - Updated - - -

As a Rogue who maintains SnD on all 3 specs I've never understood why people have a problem with Inq.

people don't see the "fun" of just being forced to hit a button because it's bad if you don't, if it had a 30sec duration and 1min cd people would be happy for some unknown reason. When I say "people" I mean those who (imo) don't understand the need and value of mainetnance buffs/debuffs.

[Lovestar]

How about "uninteresting?" Is that better than saying boring?

I apologize if my post came off as semantic masturbation; the point I was trying to make is that I find it really weird that pressing 1 button is "fun" but another is "boring" even though they're nearly identical in every way save for a number popping up.

If that's a legit issue for you, that's cool. Everyone has their particular gameplay quirks, I'm loud and outspoken about most of my 'feel' issues in both WoW and every other game.

To be honest, if you personally think Inq is "boring" well, you're entitled to that since gaming is a subjective experience. What I was trying to convey (and more-or-less failed to do so properly) is that just saying "INQ IS BAD BECAUSE IT IS SO BORING" and then moving on, as many forum arguments tend to go since the dawn of Holy Power, is totally unproductive and unhelpful because it's basically saying nothing.

It's like saying "Inq is just terrible because the icon is a shape". ... Uh. Little more to go on? Please? :p (@Shelly I'm not specifically referring to your posts, you've gotten fairly detailed about what frustrates you and that is productive)

Really?

You're going to play the "well it's just a game and everything you do is boring anyway if you look at at the right perspective ..."

Nah, that was meant to be intentionally absurb to try to put in context how "INQ IS BAD BECAUSE IT'S BORING" is ~useless without further personal/subjective context for devs to go on.

And no, it's nothing like that. It's more like saying "My boss will pay me 25% more each paycheck if every 5th paycheck I deposit the whole thing into the bank."

Yeah, that's awesome and sweet and no one would ever NOT do that, which is kind of the point. If there's no tension there and we all do it then why have the skill?

Hm. Actually, in that example I can conjecture many situations where people might renege on that deal due to poor planning, unexpected situations, budgetary tactics, etc. despite the ideal being to always aim for 100% uptime on 25% extra paycheck. Which, really, is what the "Inq has depth" crowd argues.

But honestly while the subtlety is there with Inq refreshes, that's not unique to Inq, it's unique to any mechanic which requires decision or timing. Methodically-minded people like that will always be processing those number streams during their content clears, no matter what set of tools you give them to do it with.

I think though, they don't want to go back to a time where there was no set of tools to game, tweak, and feel self-satisfied about being clever with (however tiny the gain), and there's a lingering sense that going "NO MORE INQ" will spiral Ret backwards in time if Blizz listens.

Thankfully I think we can be sure that Blizz is past that design point philosophically, so if Inq does go (regardless of my feelings about that possibility) it's basically guaranteed some other mechanical consideration will replace it. Whether that will feel worse than Inq once the dust settles, haha...

[anaxie]

Lots of faith in here. History shows though that when beta launches that we need to show no mercy in how broken / bad I expect ret to play with the new secondaries / limited gear customization options.

And just as the cycle has happened 5 times before ret wll be one of the last classes to have a balance pass on it. Likely the week of release and we will drown in mediocrity until they find the "Unforseen consequences" and awful damage they were told about 10,000 times within beta.

It's coming prepare your anus. Removal of Inqu <UNLESS ITS A PASSIVE> is the first step to completely fucking up the entire spec and it's scaling.

[Shelly]

Having ONE or possibly TWO maintenance style mechanics to your dps rotation/build should be seen MORE if you ask me. by "maintenance" I mean dots, hots and temp buffs. Tankadins keep up Eternal Flame on themselves for example, I seriously don't understand the hate towards the type of mechanic. Yes it's not "fun" but it's something you do that's expected of you to manage properly to play "correctly", if you feel ret has a problem of not having enough abilities that you decide how and when to use then complain about that and not Inquisition which is 100% perfectly designed imo.

The difference is in choice. Yes, a tankadin can and should keep up eternal flame, but what about those times when they have to make a choice of which will be better eternal flame or shield of the righteous? Do you go for the heal now or do you wait a bit to get the largest buff possible before using it?

There is NO CHOICE involved with inquisition.

DoTs and debuffs, both have choice involved: Do you hit CS now or wait because the foe is almost dead and save it for your next fresh foe or are you about to hit a burn phase or lust is about to be popped? When's the best time to hit it to capitalize on the damage?

Mages, do you make that choice to stand for your buff or is it better to keep moving? Are you about to enter a movement phase of the fight where it would be untenable to maintain the buff?

Rogues, is it worthwhile to try and keep SnD up for trash - because you are talking about trash here make no mistake about that - or should you just let it fall off? In cases of adds on a boss how quickly do those adds need to come down? Can you envenom on the boss before swapping? Is it better to stay on the boss and just let ranged take care of them?

Warlocks, I'm presuming you're talking about drain life? (Sorry, don't know much about warlocks, I tend to prefer melee to ranged and plate because I like to be able to take a hit or two.) In that case your channeled debuff is depending on your spec is always damaging the enemy, generating life and generating a secondary resource by expending your primary. Pretty sure it only falls under your idea of a "maintenance ability" by virtue of being a DoT. You could make a far better case for something like curse of enfeeblement or curse of elements but if I remember correctly both of those debuffs can be applied passively by other classes so they are seldom used.

Here's a couple things I consider to be "fun".
Divine Purpose - It's "fun" that you can decide to use it as soon as it procs or delay it a few seconds to use it when a pack of adds spawn. I also think it's "fun" that you can use it for single target or aoe. What I don't like about Divine Purpose is that it's 100% RNG and it's a nightmare to balance properly and you're always saying to yourself "man I could really use a proc now".

Indeed. I love DP and always roll with it, I like it myself because it's very forgiving too. Last time I did some testing I had better DPS with the other options but just really hated the playstyle.

Consecration, like I mentioned in another thread or earlier in this thread.
7 sec duration, 15sec cd. Every use of 3 holy power increases duration of Consecration by 2 seconds (up to a max of 6).
In this model you'd have to chose when your Consecration is most effective and you'd have to somewhat plan your holy power use to extend the duration as long as possible until the next time Consecration is off cooldown.

It could and I think most Ret's would love to have consecration back. It may actually be too powerful a tool though with the amount of adds that are sprung on us these days. Then again 4-Piece SoO has us spinning around so much it probably should have been called Fergie's set of Righteous Lumps. (No one will get that joke and that makes me sad.)

Again, those two are examples on how to add what I personally would classify as "fun" and interesting gameplay with choices to make. Neither of them would touch Inquisition because Inquisition is NOT the problem.

No one has yet to demonstrate to me how Inquisition is an interesting, engaging and strong choice. There's been a lot of folks saying "Well I could take it or leave it, just as long as if it goes we don't lose the damage." There's been some "I like having the buff. I enjoy the gameplay of keeping up the buff and feel that my maintenance proves that I'm good at playing my class." And there's also been some "It can die in a fire. A fire made of orphans." (Yay! Hyperbole! But seriously, orphan fire, think about it.)

Ret is probably the most streamlined of all the classes these days as far as gameplay goes and ease of understanding the priority. However it does lack a dynamic choice as far as inquisition goes and with the introduction of timers and auras in Cat there's not the same reward factor as there was in say Affliction-BC where a highly complicated rotation managing multiple debuffs and DoTs was rewarded with significantly better DPS.

It's just too easy right now to borderline automate formerly complicated rotations so things like maintenance buffs are no longer the line between the good and the great, but instead just a chore. Let's keep the chore part of the game where it belongs - professions, leveling, to a lesser extent the AH - and keep them out of combat.

- - - Updated - - -

people don't see the "fun" of just being forced to hit a button because it's bad if you don't, if it had a 30sec duration and 1min cd people would be happy for some unknown reason. When I say "people" I mean those who (imo) don't understand the need and value of mainetnance buffs/debuffs.

Plenty of people understand the need and the value of the buff. Maybe I and the many others who aren't thrilled with Inquisition would be happier if it produced a second set of numbers that popped up from every hit so we could better quantify the value? But doubtful, the problem isn't that the value isn't recognized it's that the value is stale and without meaning.

It's the same value that a full tank of gas has. You can only go X-miles before filling up again. You have a fixed benefit for a fixed amount of time and need to maintain that or lose benefit.

Now compare that to say a Nitrous booster, again you have a fixed benefit for a fixed amount of time but now because it's more tightly limited it becomes more interesting as to when you push that button and choose to go faster. Do you do it on this hill that you're having problems with? Is it worthwhile to pop it right now even though there's a curve coming up? If you do it here will a cop see you fly by at 125-mph and bust you?

There's the difference for you. I'm sure there are a ton of folks out there who LOVE filling up their gas tank. That look forward to that tuesday stop off at the service station and the mediocre hot-case burrito they have to snack on while standing next to their vehicle nonchalantly holding the pump trigger. But I bet there are more folks that wish that they were on a desolate strip of road in Montana, nothing in sight but sagebrush and a big red button on their dash marked "GO JUICE!"

Pretty much at this point what it's come down to is that Inquisition is essentially mana and it's just not interesting.