Rift Raiding Inquisitor Guide

Rift Raiding Inquisitor Guide by Sokanon

Author’s Notes:
If you want to pull maximum raid DPS as a Cleric, do NOT play Inquisitor. This guide is merely a means for those who wish to play a ranged DPS soul and to be the best at it. If you want to pull maximum DPS as a cleric, I recommend the 31/24/11 Dru/Sham/Inq melee build, it is 200+ dps better. Patch 1.2 DID buff us, despite its annoyances, but we are still far behind where we should be.

Some changes I recommend:

– Take BoD via L&D; off its cooldown
– Increase the SP coefficient of BoJ or remove its normalization. Our talent Castigation, while it lowers the cast time of BoJ, it also lowers its damage (100+ damage per hit).
– Change Nysyr’s Rebuke, it’s a nice talent for PvP, but it doesn’t belong in the 51pt tree of a PvE DPS soul. Cabalist is clearly our PvP soul.

This guide is meant to be more formal and less theorycrafting than my previous one. My original guide can be found here.

Why Bring Inquisitor?

• 7% additional magic damage debuff provided by Soul Drain (stacks with all others EXCEPT Censure (3%)… YES it’s been tested, don’t believe me do it yourself, tired of hearing your untested BS)
• AoE DPS is only slightly below an SC, but we provided ^^ to increase SC and others in raid
• It’s another cleric, capable of other roles if the need should arise

Stat Priority

Crit Rating: stack until you reach a *recommended* 50% raid buffed. This should provide you with maximum Corporal Punishment uptime
Intelligence: provides 1 crit rating per and .26 sp
Focus: Raid cap is 220
Spell Power: Begin stacking after you’ve reached the recommended crit ratio
Wisdom: increasess mana regeneration by .33 and spell power by .76 per

Corporal Punishment and Crit

Why shoot for 50% crit?
– Maximizing Corporal Punishment (15% Life and Death damage increase) uptime.

But I read on another thread, you only need 33.3% factoring in raid buffs to do this?
– On paper it works. However, Corporal Punishment only has a duration of 5 seconds, and can proc over itself, so it doesn’t always last the full 5 seconds from the previous duration, making the calculations hard.
– Example: Duration 1:46 (106 seconds), I had 25 Corporal Punishment procs (duration 5seconds, 5×25 = 125seconds) more than the duration of the actual fight, and yet it did NOT have 100% uptime.

So why is 50% the magic number?
– Given the duration of 5 seconds, you have the ability to get off 1 Bolt of Depravity or 3 Bolt of Justice (in a perfect world). 50% crit allows you, in theory, to crit every 1 of 2 hits. Because CP can overwrite itself the only way to get as close to 100% uptime as possible would be to force it to keep refreshing.
– It is impossible to crit 100%. 50% will allow you to crit as often as possible, maintaining a higher >usable< uptime, without gimping your spellpower.

Armor and Recommended Usage

Armor of Awakening: increases spell damage by 5%, critical hit rating by 5%, mana regeneration by 10%, and increases damage taken by the cleric by 5%
Recommended: All PvE circumstances unless it runs the risk of death.

Armor of Devotion: increases Spell Power and Spell Crit by 42
Recommended: PvP or when an increased chance of death from mechanic is forseen

Armor of Treachery: increases armor by 215 and Endurance by 50
Recommended: Tank or when an increased chance of death from mechanics is forseen

The Builds

The Former 51/11/4 inq/sent/ward
Pros

• Maximizes spell power bonus on Vex and Sanction Heretic (total of 65%)
• Provides minor off-healing via Healing Breath, Healing Spray, and Healing Current
• Allows for movement based DPS via Waterjet
• Maintains the one of the highest DPS output of any current ranged soul combination (<50% crit raid buffed)

Cons

• AoE dps is less than that of some hybrids, specifically where Cabalist is concerned

The Criticar 46/10/10 Inq/sent/sham
Pros

• Provides 3% damage reduction to counter Armor of Awakening’s 5% damage taken
• Maintains second highest damage for Inquisitor builds
• Provides an extra 20% bonus critical strike damage (totaling 60%)

Cons

• At least 2 wasted points to obtain 20% bonus critical strike damage
• More reliant on critical hits to maintain its damage output due to the spellpower loss on Vex and Sanction Heretic
• Less off-heals than the top build
• No ability that allows for DPS while moving
• AoE is the same as the first build
• Uses BoD as its main damage, can be an issue on movement fights due to cast time

Spell Booster 46/10/10 Inq/Sent/Cab
Pros

• Benefits the most from pure spellpower
• Provides an additional 5% spell damage
• Provides an extra mana return via Sigil of Power
• Provides slightly more AoE via Tyranny spam and Bounds of Fate
• Maintains the highest DPS output of any ranged soul combination (with 50% crit in a raid env.)

Cons

• Provides slightly less off-healing than the original build
• Loses out on 20% spellpower bonus on Vex and SH
• Uses BoD as main damage, can be an issue on movement fights due to cast time
• No movement based DPS ability

The Offhealer 45/11/10 Inq/Justi/Sent

Pros

• Provides nice offhealing via Justicar soul
• Stacks Conviction using BoJ
• Can provide large passive AoE healing using Soul Drain / CoO

Cons

• Loses about ~200 DPS from other Inq specs

DPS Rotation and Tips
Build 1 & 4

Single Target Rotation:
Sanction Heretic
Vex
[if in raid] Soul Drain (maintain this debuff at all times if you’re raiding)
BoJ spam

Build 1-(little trickier here):
– Did L&D; proc? If yes, use it. If no, keep with the above rotation.
– Did L&D; proc but BoD is on CD? See below
– Is the duration of BoD 4 seconds? If 4 seconds, use Shards of Light.

Build 4:
– Make sure you are using Salvation, Cavalier, Mien of Honor
– Doctrine of Loyalty for quick AoE heals, stacking Conviction using BoJ spam
– Use L&D; procs as they come up, then return to normal rotation

Build 2 & 3:

Sanction Heretic
Vex
Fanaticism + BoD
BoD spam
Use Decay to stack Lurking Decay, but ONLY use Obliterate if Corporal Punishment is up. Use Obliterate on CD.

AoE Rotation:
Fanaticism + Soul Drain
Will targets live long enough to dot? If yes then multi-target Vex, if no then go to next step…
Is Soul Drain up? If yes, cast.
Do you have 3 stacks of Lurking Decay via Decay? If no, use Decay, then followup with Tyranny
If neither is up, use Circle of Oblivion.

Tips
– Only use Fanaticism with BoD or Soul Drain. They receive the highest benefit.
– Make use of Waterjet/LV while moving, or if casting BoJ/BoD would force you to wait before refreshing DoTs
– If at all possible, reapply DoTs when Corporal Punishment is up. CP’s 15% damage boost only benefits spells cast while it is active, it does not passively effect DoTs already on the target.

Best in Slot Gear List

• This items listed first are based on Focus and maintaing ideal Crit Ratio, not specific EP values.
• Because it is important to maintain Focus cap and shoot for the ideal Crit Ratio prior to stacking SP, it is impossible to rate gear purely on an EP basis, thus outside of the ones I’ve listed as -best in slot-, it will be up to the indivdual to rate their current gear with any given upgrade according to those two factors.
• If you can upgrade a piece of gear that allows you to maintain your Focus cap, and maintains at least a 1sp to 2sc ratio, then it is an upgrade.
• I.E. 4sp vs 9sc, the piece with sc outweighs the piece with sp. 10sp vs 17sc, the sp outweighs sc.

Sokanon’s Inquisitor BiS

Final Notes

The DPS increase from 1.1 to 1.2 is approximately 70-90 dps as seen on the target dummy. I personally manage 1100 dps in a raiding environment using the first spec, Vindica averages around the same (slightly higher due to her spellpower) using the 3rd.

I am personally going to be testing 46/10/10 inq/sent/sham more because I’ve received more crit-based gear and it has shown a higher average for me on the dummy.

Hope you enjoyed the write-up and you can look forward to future updates! Keep fighting for Inquisitor DPS!