Thread: 5.4 Inquisition

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  1. #1

    5.4 Inquisition

    I edited the original post and added my idea for Sacred Shield so that the idea of my original post can be read more concisely.

    This is just a thought-peice. Some ideas I had about the role of Inquisition. I posted this on the official forums but I'd like to see what people here have to say as well. If anyone has any ideas or opinions on what they'd like to see happen to Inquisition, whether it should stay in the game or be replaced for something else, definitely leave a comment about it (and feel free to criticize my own, lol).

    Think about it this way. If you increase the duration to one minute, that's HUGE right? In my opinion, it almost makes it trivial to simply push a button once every minute that serves no other purpose than to buff ourselves. Especially when we traditionally never had any mechanic resembling that kind of ability before Cataclysm.

    So now, if you hit Inquisition you can just forget about it; a nice quality of life improvement. But doesn't that defeat the purpose of the original design of the skill? Which, for all intents and purposes, is more or less a skill-check. If you take out the skill check part, what's the point of having it on a 1-minute duration?

    Do you revert it back to 30 seconds? I certainly wouldn't like that. I don't like Inquisition at all. I played a Paladin because I liked a playstyle that didn't feature maintenance buffs like rogues or ferals. That was the deal I signed on for. Doing a 180 on that and giving Paladins combo points and a maintenance buff really killed the class for me.

    I understand the need of a rotation. I understand you can't win by pressing just 4 buttons. But really, Dk's and Shamans have a very whack-a-moley rotation, and they have never been given a mandatory maintenance abiltiy like Inquisition. And they can upkeep whatever Dot's or debuffs that they need to simply as part of their rotational abilities. And they can do this with the benefit of every skill still dealing damage, unlike Inquisition.

    So really, what is the point of Inquisition now? Paladins are 2 expansions ahead of the WOTLK-era, and we are not anywhere near being as overpowered as we were back then. A Ret who can always keep Inquisition up still isn't killing people in just 4 button presses like we could in WOTLK. That kind of burst has been toned down for us. Inquisition sucks for Ret in PVP due to the dynamic nature of PVP encounters and how hard it can be to get HP when your being controlled. Simply put, Inquisition does nothing for the Spec, and we aren't given anything to compensate or even to justify having to keep it up. Unlike Ferals and Rogues, Paladins can't lock down a class to get the combo points they need. Maintenance buffs for Ferals and Rogues makes more sense because if they didn't have to work for that extra bit of damage, then they would be way too bursty in addition to the amount of control they have over you. Paladins simply don't have that kind of control, nor do they even have that kind of burst damage when Inquisition is up to begin with. We have our 2-minute window for amazing burst, but after that, even if we can maintain Inquisition, Paladins simply aren't putting out huge numbers, nor do they have any unique control or utility against other classes (like rogues or ferals) that needs to be balanced against having to maintain Inquisition.

    What if Inquisition was removed, the damage buff baked back into our spells and abilities, and replaced by another unique ability that gave us utility or maybe some CC, or maybe we could cast Sacred Shield with 3 Holy Power, or just anything really? Here's an idea I had for Sacred Shield (which I think needs to be given back to us baseline regardless of what happens to Inquisition)

    Sacred Shield (WOTLK model): Is now baseline for Retribution spec. Cost: 1-3 Holy Power.

    Protects the target with a shield of Holy Light for 10 seconds, per charge of Holy Power. Absorbs X damage based on spell power. Can be cast on multiple targets. If cast on self, you cast a Shield that is half as powerful as when cast on others, all other instances of Sacred Shield end, and you deal 10% less Holy Damage (ballpark numbers). If cast on others, all instances of Sacred Shield on self end and you deal 7% less Holy Damage (ballpark numbers) per instance of Sacred Shield.

    **EDIT**: Perhaps the damage reduction part of this spell isn't too attractive. If you took that out of the equation, I think you can still get the general idea behind the change. Basically, no more Inquisition, and more personal/group utility to spend Holy Power on.

    My proposal is this (obviously this is just an idea, just to get the creative juices flowing on how we might be able to come up with an interesting replacement for Inquisition): Remove Inquisition, and replace it with this hypothetical incarnation of Sacred Shield in its place. Give us increased utility via Sacred Shield and the choice to decrease damage output levels similar to the decreased amount of damage that we currently have if we're not keeping Inquisition up. The purpose of incurring this reduction in "Holy" damage is to balance the fact that we inherently have Inquisition's buff baked into our abilities as well as the extra personal and group utility that has become available to us. Hopefully, the choice we would make between damage/survivability/group support would be dynamic and interesting enough to not be overpowered after baking the Inquisition buff back into our spells.

    To everyone who thinks Inquisition is needed to prevent dumbing down the class: Would getting rid of Inquisition be such a problem if it were replaced by something more useful, something flavourful and unique, while still keeping the player engaged with the spec? A compensation might need to be made in scaling down our magnitute of burst if it meant that we'd inherently be receiving more sustained damage, but I would be ok with that.
    Last edited by cletis1234; 2013-06-19 at 02:40 AM. Reason: to clarify post, and grammar

  2. #2
    Deleted
    You seem to have misunderstood what Inquisition is for. It isn't a skill check, it's simply to give a ramp up time for paladin burst in pvp which is no great hardship in pve. Or do you want to go to the bad old days of Blizzard nerfing us in pve because pvp players don't like us killing them so quickly?

  3. #3
    Inquisition will be removed when Blizzard decides to remove Savage Roar, Slice and Dice, Tiger Power, Invoker's Energy.

  4. #4
    True, it is also there to limit burst, but couldn't that be accomplished by other means? For instance increasing the time it takes to get 5 stacks of Censure on the target? Paladins have so many damage modifiers now. Inquisition, Wings, GOATK, Holy Avenger. We will never really have big CD's that do anything else because our huge burst compensates for our lack of sustained.

    I don't know, it just seems that the entire Ret mechanic is very binary. You get awesome burst damage for 20 seconds, and then you go back down to much lower sustained damage with no other interesting utility or attacks that make a difference in battle (from a PvP perspective). The off heals can be great, and Devotion Aura is useful, but it still leaves something to be desired. I'm not discounting the benefits of all our Hands spells, but I'm interesting in something purely from a rotational perspective, or something that strictly replaces Inquisition for a cool ability that adds to Ret's toolkit.

    Personally, I'd like to see us able to cast Sacred Shield (the WOTLK model) using 3 HP, which would take the place of Inquisition. I think it would be cool if we could cast it on more than one ally at the expense of keeping a low-absorb shield. It would be a choice between pure team-support at the expense of damage, but still not sacrificing all of our damage during the process of building HP thanks to the hypothetical increase of sustained damage from removing Inquisition.

    I think it really captures the picture of Paladin as a battle healer; someone who can protect their allies and dish out damage at the same time. Being able to bubble your teammates would be a pretty cool and engaging way of providing support, not to mention the visual splendor of everyone running around shielded by your bubbles of the light (Of course they should probably still be able to be spell stolen and dispelled).

    You could feel like you made a difference, and you can directly see the effort of pushing that one button.
    Last edited by cletis1234; 2013-06-16 at 04:46 PM.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by cletis1234 View Post
    True, it is also there to limit burst, but couldn't that be accomplished by other means? For instance increasing the time it takes to get 5 stacks of Censure on the target?
    That is a very bad idea; because then they must buff censure to crazy numbers, and this would paladins make much more vulnerable for target switching.
    Last edited by Velerios; 2013-06-16 at 05:03 PM.

  6. #6
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    Honestly, what I think you're suggesting *replace* Inquisition are items unrelated to what Inq is in line for, and not only that, I think a bit of what you're suggesting should be looked at regardless of Inquisition's status.

    I think that if Inquisition were to be removed it would be replaced with an older style Seal system.

    It's meant to fill a certain hole/function and it's no longer doing such.
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  7. #7
    I'm totally fine with Inquisition if it's on a 1 minute duration. What I'm not fine with is the fact that its only another button that we need to press to buff our damage among the multitude of other damage modifying spells we have. I'd rather have more group utility than personal maintenance buffs to spend our Holy Power on.

  8. #8
    Inquisition is fine your solutions do nothing. Move along

  9. #9
    Actually I tend to agree with the OP. I don't like having to constantly maintain inq however it is in all sense of the phrase it is still a 'skill check'.

    Those of us that play paladins quite well are the ones that can fluidly and effortlessly maintain Inq into our rotations even with the pressures of a pvp environment. The true pro can to this without the aid of a mod ( im not one of these I need a mod lol ) Howevver even with a mod its still another element you need to be aware of in your dps cycle.

    I still think a better solution would be using Inq without any HP gives you 10 seconds duration and triggers the GCD however if used with 3 HP it goes for 40 sec and doesn't trigger the GCD.

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by cletis1234 View Post
    I'm totally fine with Inquisition if it's on a 1 minute duration. What I'm not fine with is the fact that its only another button that we need to press to buff our damage among the multitude of other damage modifying spells we have. I'd rather have more group utility than personal maintenance buffs to spend our Holy Power on.
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  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by Thete View Post
    You seem to have misunderstood what Inquisition is for. It isn't a skill check, it's simply to give a ramp up time for paladin burst in pvp
    Judgement, Exo, Crusader Strike, Inquisition. Whew, dat ramp up time.
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  12. #12
    "Among the multitude of other damage modifying spells we have".

    You mean our dps cooldowns, which are on 1min+ cooldowns?

    Those don't even fall in the same category.

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Wazooty View Post
    You mean our dps cooldowns, which are on 1min+ cooldowns?

    Those don't even fall in the same category.
    Yea I'm talking about our dps cooldowns. Because when this change to Inquisition goes live and you only need to activate once per minute, I think for all intents and purposes it falls in line as a DPS cooldown. You can line it up with a PvP trinket once every minute, etc. And then theres our REAL big cooldowns like Wings, GOATK, and HA. When have we ever been given anything other than big damage CD's? And really, this is all just a referance to the fact that our sustained is relatively weaker than our burst. Maintaining Inquisition is just weird for a spec that already has lower sustained damage than most other DPS specs.
    Last edited by cletis1234; 2013-06-17 at 02:52 AM. Reason: grammar

  14. #14
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    Tis a fairly large QoL change, nothing more. 1 extra TV per minute isnt going to make much dps difference- maybe 500 dps.

    ---------- Post added 2013-06-17 at 03:01 AM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by cletis1234 View Post
    Yea I'm talking about our dps cooldowns. Because when this change to Inquisition goes live and you only need to activate once per minute, I think for all intents and purposes it falls in line as a DPS cooldown. You can line it up with a PvP trinket once every minute, etc. And then theres our REAL big cooldowns like Wings, GOATK, and HA. When have we ever been given anything other than big damage CD's? And really, this is all just a referance to the fact that our sustained is relatively weaker than our burst. Maintaining Inquisition is just weird for a spec that already has lower sustained damage than most other DPS specs.

    Umm, a dps cooldown has limited, not 100% uptime- its called an upkeep buff if it has close to 100% uptime.

    Soo, yea. 1 min duration does not a cooldown make. If it had a 1 min CD, 15 second cooldown, and increased holy damage by 30%, THEN it would be a cooldown.
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  15. #15
    Dump Inquisition. Bake the damage buff into the abilities it was buffing already or add it in as a debuff built in with censure.

    Replace it with nothing, get rid of some of the button bloat.

  16. #16
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by cletis1234 View Post
    True, it is also there to limit burst, but couldn't that be accomplished by other means? For instance increasing the time it takes to get 5 stacks of Censure on the target?
    No freaking way. I still abhor the days when Censure stacked so hard, due to so few "generators", and its ramp up was a bad joke..
    Yes, it seems Inquisition is a skill check for some, not so much different than DK diseases, rogue S&D etc.

  17. #17
    Fluffy Kitten Krekko's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Shelly View Post
    Dump Inquisition. Bake the damage buff into the abilities it was buffing already or add it in as a debuff built in with censure.

    Replace it with nothing, get rid of some of the button bloat.

    Orrrrrr Dump Inq and bring back SotC, and Consumable Seals (to some extent).

    Once again, OP, you're suggesting a solution to a half-cousin of a problem.

    I think the SS model from WotLK needs to be looked at again in some form, however dropping it in as the replacement to Inquisition is not the proper way to do it.
    -Retribution, the path of the protector or mender brought to it's natural conclusion; destroying evil before the weak need to be shielded from it, and before it can wound the innocent.
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  18. #18
    Inquisition is a skill check? Yeah...no. It's "cooler" now because they actually added a noteworthy graphic for it. However, it remains an exercise in tedium. There is little to no difficulty managing it in PvE. They buffed the duration to make it less annoying to handle in PvP. End of story.

    Ret ramp up time for optimal damage currently includes

    building Seal of Truth stacks on the target
    building Holy Power for Inquisition
    building Holy Power for Templar's Verdict after Inq is up

    This time is largely exacerbated in PvP because of the dynamic nature of PvP.

    With all of that said, Inquisition is still not a very "sexy" button to push. Blizzard might think about adding another set of small wings or a minor halo graphical effect to it.

  19. #19
    Deleted
    this idea is abhorrent. I would NEVER use sacred shield if it reduced my DPS. not in PvE, not in PvP. what you're suggesting is as foolish as rogues losing damage when they use TotT, or warriors losing their crit chance when they use their banner.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Ramiell View Post
    With all of that said, Inquisition is still not a very "sexy" button to push. Blizzard might think about adding another set of small wings or a minor halo graphical effect to it.
    Stop. Just....stop.

    Stop tacking on graphical shit to abilities and claim that they are now "interesting". It's ruining the class.

    Here's a shitty ability. But look, now we made it glow! Now it's 50% less shitty!

    No, it's not. It's still shit, just it's shinier. What we need in order to fix "problems" like Inquisition (if you are of the opinion that it IS, in fact, a problem) is a mechanics or fundamental ability dynamic change. NOT. MORE. GRAPHICS.
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