Why Inquisitors Holy Burst is overrated.

[2Radon]

Any Inquisitor builds I see suggest maxing Holy Burst and using a skill crest for 20% damage for it. They back this up by saying that it has the best scaling per rank. I agree it scales nicely, but some people doubt its usefulness because of the long 40 sec CD. So I decided to compare it with a few other attacks. (But not Lightning Bolt because it should be maxed and crested anyway)



Most of priests lightning attacks have 20 sec CD, while Holy Burst has exactly double that - 40 sec. That means that in the time it will take to cool down a HB, you could have done two casts of any other ability that has 20 sec CD.

For the purpose of comparing the damage, I will translate HB into a 20 sec CD attack, which means I will halve its values (for example 320 x 0.5, etc.:
Rank 1: 160% + 303
Rank 7: 171.5% + 1503

Now take a look at the other abilities:
Chain Lightning:
Rank 3 (prequisite): hits 3 times on a single target, so total 252% + 255.
I couldn't find out how it worked on multiple targets - whether it hit each of the 6 targets three times or only the first one.

Detonate:
Rank 5 (prequisite): 288% + 916

We should compare HB at max rank, because the scaling for an Inquisitor focusing on DPS is definitely worth adding points into. But as you see the only thing that HB wins with in this case is flat damage. To easily see if, for example, Detonates higher (288 - 171.5 = 116.5) % damage is better than HBs higher (1 503 - 916 = 587) flat damage you just need to do a check on how much magic damage you have. Which is: if 116.5% of your magic damage is higher than exactly 587, Detonate will do more damage than HB.
If it's confusig how I handed it to you, then just compare them by yourself.

In a set period of time (like 40 sec), the best damager out of these three abilities will be as follows:
Detonate > Chain Lightning > Holy Burst (Rank7!)

***

What about scaling? I'm too lazy to calculate this to show you, but at least take that HB rank 1 to 7 grows by 11.5% + 1200 damage every 20 seconds (damage halved so it's equal to other abilities for comparison, like I said) andDetonate by 11% + 1208. You don't want to rank up chain lightning if you focus on single target (if it doesn't change the amount of hits on single target per rank), and it's already better DPS than HB.

If you want to min/max like a 1337man, is 0.5% of your magic damage higher than 8? If yes, HB wins in scaling! But hey, it takes 16 SP for Detonate to do this scaling from rank 5 to 9, while it takes 24 SP for HB from rank 1 to 7. Detonate > HB even if you have to spare points for DPS.

***
So my conclusion is that for pure DPS Inquisitor, you probably still want to max Holy Burst, but not crest it. By default you need to have Lightning Bolt +20% dmg, and now I showed that Detonate +20% dmg and Chain Lightning +20% dmg are both better than Holy Burst +20% dmg. The 4th skill crest you want is for your ultimate, or Consecration (which is, by the way far superior in DPS to the compared abilities, even if only a -12% CD crest is available). Cresting Heavenly Judgment will total you over 200-345% more magic damage dealt by it. Not for DPS, but I expect its real purpse is destroying a boss in a vitally dangerous phase.
Another note that HB will definitely hit everything around you, while CL has a limited number of targets. If there are not more than as many targets as your CL tooltip states, CL > HB, unless someone clarifys how CL works, because I assume 3 times each target, not just the first one. If you are an Inquisitor, spreading Electrocuted status should not be aproblem to keep Detonate the best.

TL;DR? Really?
LB +20% dmg
Detonate +20% dmg
CL +20% dmg
Consecration -12% CD
Max Detonate > Max HB b/c its same value, but 8 SP less.


Edit: Actually if you require an ultimate skill crest, CL crest is probably the best to swap for it, since you probably don't rank it up and it is weaker than the other two crested skills.

[K4kashii]

I agree wit you, though i guess its the individuals decision if they want to max HB or not. From personal experience i had it at 7 and 1, I do see the damage difference but SP restrictions i had to lower it to 1.. now i only find it useful for breaking super armour.

Offtopic. The korean voice acting sounds like the priest is saying "Samsung pitchio" which sounds awesome lol