On the Record: Alch Inqui is OP

[droid327]

Do not let any devs say they were not forewarned, that they didnt know how OP this was before it was released. No excuses to need to nerf this later because I'm telling you this is RED ALERT NERF right now...

Inqui + Alch does crazy insane damage, putting current Inqui to shame. It takes everything that was broken about current Inqui and dials it up to 18.

Here's the gist of what I was testing (despite Lama being a slideshow and I FREAKING HATE REINCARNATION MECHANICS!!!!)

20 Alch, Int>Con>21 Dex. 41 VC (capstone), 35 Inqui (T5s), 4 Apoth (temp HP). Ranged DPS feats, etc. etc.

I was only able to get <400 Poison spellpower on Lama with Dojo gear, testing at L24. Presumably at cap you'd be hitting far higher values. I ran in Green for the extra temp HP but you could see if Purple was a better option for the extra 5 BAB and Dodge.

Even so, I was doing several hundred Poison damage per hit, on top of Inqui Ratcatcher DPS. I had immune-breaking Poison damage, all the Alch buffs including unique +4 Alch INT, full suite of status cures and Heal admixture (which procs temp HP, as does Cocoon), unlimited Sprint and Haste boosts, and utility like Melt Lock. The only things I was really lacking was KTA and the Inqui capstone.

Basically I had all the best parts of /13 Clr, 20 Sorc for EK plus Poison AOEs and Savant-like SLA, /6 Rogue for evasion and locks and INT to dmg, /1 Warlock for Feigned Health, and still getting almost all the Inqui toolkit too.

What to do? I dont even know...the whole class concept itself is kinda screwy because its supposed to be too many things all at once.

I think scrap the Poison imbue entirely. I know that sounds extreme, but I think that's just the one thing that goes too far. Make VC into kind of a Poison Savant/Darts tree. They're going to do enough physical damage just with all the buffs to Darts, you dont need the Poison imbue on top of that. I think just being a Poison casting, Dart throwing tree with all the myriad heals and goodies in the Alch spellbook makes it a complete concept already, and has some different options both as a pure, and mixed with stuff like Wiz PM/EK, but doesnt lend itself nearly as much to crazy synergy with Inqui as a 20 Alch VC.

Other posters are seeing pretty insane results with Darts too, so again that seems to suggest that the Poison imbue itself is what's really throwing things out of whack.

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

Small side notes:

The Poison Arrow attack in VC is not functioning as a Red spell like the tooltip says it should.

There are WAY TOO MANY BUTTONS if you're playing the class to its full potential. There are so many good spells at every level, it eats up so much real estate in your hotbar.

Can something be done about Admixture targeting? If you're going to have it, at least have it work well: if you dont have an Ally targeted, can it default to self-targeted rather than on your reticle? I cant imagine many practical situations where you'd want to throw a potion at an empty spot on the ground. Likewise, much like Harm used to work, its frustrating to have to manually self-target to heal in combat if you have an enemy targeted. The healing is already slower to hit than actual Cure spells, without needing the extra buttons too.