103 réponses à ce sujet

[Mako482]

If your mage was the thinking and intelligent mage then they would have gone Knight Enchanter.

 

RIft Mage is for the mages who think they are too cool to follow the pack.

Troll more.

[Hermes_tri]

I am curious about something.

Which is better for a Rift Mage ? Frost Step or Winter's Grasp ?

I use neither, but would prefer frost step. You have enough CC from rift spells as it is, and frost step may help you survive longer since rift mages tend to pull a lot of aggro!

[JaegerBane]

I am curious about something.
 
Which is better for a Rift Mage ? Frost Step or Winter's Grasp ?

I would assume that depends on what other spells you've picked.

[duskl1ght]

I think you mean Fade Step? Every mage needs Fade Step. I skipped Winter's Grasp because I felt I had better choices for my 8 abilities. It's good but it generally doesn't do enough damage to keep the Rift Mage infinite mana loop going, so I didn't think it was worth it.

[Hermes_tri]

Frost step is an upgrade of fade step. I like it, but the short delay after the teleport annoys me plus there are better choices for me personally ( Storm/Fire)

[AshesEleven]

I am curious about something.

 

Which is better for a Rift Mage ? Frost Step or Winter's Grasp ? 

 

I say Frost Step, it's nice to have one mobility move, in case things get hairy around the Inquisitor.  

[Saresi]

 Every mage needs Fade Step.

No.

Riftmage has so much CC, he will never be touched by melee and ranged can easily be shut down 99% of the time by letting your tank engage first.

 

Fade Step is only useful when fighting dragons, but that doens´t make Fade Step a "must".

 

Seriously, I play Fire/Rift on Nightmare and every trash mob bores me to death. They all die in freaking Abyss + Mine  Immolate + Stonfist-Combo, repeated by another Immolate+Stonefist if really necessary.

I´ve done hissing wastes and the frozen area with the terrible french name full of red templars and lyrium with lvl 14 inquisitor/lvl 13 party and T1/2 equipment without sweating once on nightmare.

Rift/Fire is just pure pownage.

[Fionna&CakeFan]

On a side note, I intend to dabble in RM defensively. Playing with no tank and don't want to go KE again, so I'm going to dabble in RM to get some controlling abilities and then Spirit/Frost for support. Though I can certainly see the appeal for DPS mages as well, I think that RM can be just as valuable to a support mage that doesn't wish to be a KE. Necromancer would certainly work to a degree as well, but it simply doesn't sync well with my mage. Really leaves only RM, not that I'm complaining, the abilities are amazing. Hopefully I can manage to make RM work well for my group, but I'm not too concerned about it. PotA will be boss with IB using MB and/or Whirlwind, and it will greatly benefit Viv and her CL/Immolate. Varric will be the only one that will benefit less, but I'm sure he'll be thankful if he pulls aggro and I suddenly yank everyone somewhere else and freeze them

[JackPoint]

Yep. I have never been the type of guy who likes to melee stuff...I prefer to be at a distance...Either with magic or omnitools or grenades or medi-gun...I am not a CQC guy...

i really loved my Shotgun Engineer in ME ME2 ME3

[JaegerBane]

No.
Riftmage has so much CC, he will never be touched by melee and ranged can easily be shut down 99% of the time by letting your tank engage first.

Fade Step is only useful when fighting dragons, but that doens´t make Fade Step a "must".

Seriously, I play Fire/Rift on Nightmare and every trash mob bores me to death. They all die in freaking Abyss + Mine Immolate + Stonfist-Combo, repeated by another Immolate+Stonefist if really necessary.
I´ve done hissing wastes and the frozen area with the terrible french name full of red templars and lyrium with lvl 14 inquisitor/lvl 13 party and T1/2 equipment without sweating once on nightmare.
Rift/Fire is just pure pownage.

I'd agree from an NPC mage standpoint, as the AI just isn't clever enough to get the best out of it... But on your own mage? It's one of the best spells in the game. Supreme mobility, relative invulnerability and the best source of ice damage and it doesn't even cost any mana. It's all very well saying 'bwah wah wah no-one gets near me' but when you're facing anything that eats up crowd control, it's hard to say no to it.

Particularly when you smack down a PotA and fade step through the cluster.

[mredders91]

http://www.rpg-gamin...33342853a65a757

Works for me. Would work great if the weakness skill bugs were fixed.

[doctor michael]

I miss the control wheel. I liked having all of my abilities available, and at my fingertips! I'm not happy that they changed that.

[JaegerBane]

I miss the control wheel. I liked having all of my abilities available, and at my fingertips! I'm not happy that they changed that.

Judging by the threads, the comments, the reviews and informal stuff I've heard from others playing this game, you're in the same boat as thousands of other people.

[coldflame]

I miss the control wheel. I liked having all of my abilities available, and at my fingertips! I'm not happy that they changed that.

 

Yah, I have just recently tried a bit of SP (spent most of my time in MP), I agree that the 8-skil limit is one of the worse decisons made by biowares in DA franchise. It sucks monkey balls. Not sure what were they thinking really. The limit on skill is ok in MP but is it just too restrictive in SP. Bioware needs to patch in a second skill bar, at least make Mark of the Rift has its own slot (example: a ninth slot for Mark of the Rift at least).

 

 

P.S. Is Icemine with Ice Armour good for increasing the survivability of the Rift Mage?

[JaegerBane]

Yah, I have just recently tried a bit of SP (spent most of my time in MP), I agree that the 8-skil limit is one of the worse decisons made by biowares in DA franchise. It sucks monkey balls. Not sure what were they thinking really. The limit on skill is ok in MP but is it just too restrictive in SP. Bioware needs to patch in a second skill bar, at least make Mark of the Rift has its own slot (example: a ninth slot for Mark of the Rift at least).

I suspect they did this to speed the game up - more slots would have required more pausing. This is a perfectly valid design decision by itself - blizzard actually went as far as a 6-slot system and it worked like a charm - but it imposes the need to design the spell system with the slot restriction in mind, as Blizzard did.

Bioware didn't bother with that and simply jammed Mass Effect's power UI over DA2's spell system - and it works about as well as you'd expect two contradictory systems being mashed together would work. At the *very least*, passives and actives should have been in seperate trees.

P.S. Is Icemine with Ice Armour good for increasing the survivability of the Rift Mage?

It's ok. Ice Wall is generally the best option for a ice armour rift Mage because it's a much more dependable source of ice, and works great as a defence itself.

[Bigdawg13]

Ok I must be doing something.  My normal build includes: PotaB+, Veilstrike, Stonefist+, Focus, Firemine+, Immolate+, Energy barrage+, and Fade step+.  I use a dragonbone staff for maximum damage.  The problem is I end up very fire heavy and when I run into fire resist mobs all have is fade step+ and stonefist+.  If stonefist detonator worked things would be ok...maybe.

 

So I went through this thread several times.  I see a re-occuring theme.  A lot of people chose chain lightning, lightning bolt, and/or static cage.  So I tried this.  I felt more balanced, able to take on more enemies without dealing with resistance, but my mana regen falls flat the moment I put shocked on a mob.

 

I recognize the shocked/weakness bug (and Bioware's slow response in fixing this, if they ever plan to).  So it's the shocked that's killing my mana regen.  Have most rift mages dropped all shock, or is there a way to weave it in so i don't drain my mana.  If I avoid shocked effect, my mana is always full and I'm cooldown limited.  If I use shocked, it's like I'm an ordinary mage again and missing half my passives.

 

For fire resist mobs, I'd like something to use in addition to stone fist.  I am a big fan of upgrade fade step on my KE, but it keeps putting me into dangerous situations on my Rift Mage.  Winter's grasp is only 200% damage (compared to the 300% with multiple hit capability of upgraded fade step).  If I go into lightning I run into mana problems.  Any ideas?  I guess I could step down a notch from  mastercrafted (+10% to all stats) tier 4 dragonbone staff and go with a cold staff.

[Reptillius]

Drop stone fist because of the bugs with it(take it only to get down to the passives).  I know everybody in this thread loves it. But it's not needed. upgraded veilstrike after a start up of static cage and other lightning spells. Hit things, even dragons, with it somewhat regularly and you will keep your mana regen.  And it's not a cast once and done regen effect either.  I only run out of mana because I sometimes do back to back large spells.  Also...Things that reduce your cooldowns in the fire and RM trees are good things. it's even a reason to go into the winter tree later on.  The few things that get close enough to me to be a bother I usually drop a static cage. a Pota+ or a Stone fist on them to knock them down and move away.  none of it survives. dots are your friend. Whether it's to proc more upgraded static cage hits or what have you.  Restorative veil serves you better from a constant barrage than it does from wanting to see those really big numbers. Which you can get anyway. Weakness only has a duration of like 15 seconds. 

 

So things like immolate, energy barrage, and a couple others can really be your friend.  The hits might not seem as big but when they start working together with things like static cage. It makes up for it.  It also dumps some really good mana on you at a fairly fast regen pace.  I'm not sure if it's an internal timer on it they never mentioned or a limit on the amount of mana it will return to you in a single go (from what I've played with it, it feels like the latter) but something slows it down if your all about the big hits.

 

Gathering Storm and Stormbringer do work. They aren't bugged. Stormbringer has a cooldown timer that does not get shortened. It will only happen 1 time every 15 seconds.  it also has a limit to it's radius. like 25 meters. It's really easy to carry out a whole fight outside of this distance.  If you do have a lot of stuff in this distance the target hit is completely random and the animation is very easy to miss.  Gathering storm only works off of basic staff attacks. nothing else. your not doing this a lot. You won't see anything out of it. you will assume it doesn't work. 

 

Cassandra and her small chance of anybody in the party applying weaken from either attacks or crits. don't remember which. She will be your friend. it lets you do fun things like take an enemy through shocked and sleep to nightmare in nasty little tricks like one lightning energy barrage.

 

static cage does synergize well with a number of things. Various lightning spells included. A combo of static cage and Lightning bolt can actually paralyze a whole group for a few seconds. It can string with energy barrage and turn your screen full of purple numbers if your too close. Static cage and chain lightning are guaranteed to shock a number of enemies really easily.

 

Immolate is fun and also detonates things for you so it's worth taking and upgrading. And it's worth getting the flash point and clean burn passives early on either way.

 

At 10% reduction in mana costs is not a bad masterwork to go with.  It can help you throw out a lot more of those big spells. And lets face it. There are plenty of them going on with the spells I'm talking about.

[Reptillius]

Oh and KE's are an outright poor man's flashy ripoff of the Arcane warrior.  The spellblade of theirs being a cheap version of combat magic and aura of might (with a slight DA:A spirit warrior dabbed in).  And the generation of barrier rips off shimmering shield and fade shroud to make you hard to damage.  But it's no heavy armour and real sword in one hand and magical spells in the other that the arcane warrior embodied.

[Bigdawg13]

An interesting and unusual suggestion.  I would have never considered removing stonefist.  I'll ... think about it.  Stonefist is the Rift Mage's only source of spirit damage, which is arguably the best element type in the game.  

 

At the moment I just respec frequently.  For boss fights I take energy barrage and for everything else I switch to chain lightning.  I will experiment more.  Thanks for the idea Reptillius.

[Gya]

*Snip*

I forsook chain lightning for a more friendly fire safe approach, and it worked just fine. When I wanted to proc shocked to initiate sleep for combo, I just dropped immolate on the mooks under a static cage. This gives you a bit more control over when shocked gets applied, and IIRC it will refill your mana with restorative veil because the damage is scored before shocked is applied.

Reptilius' suggestion is pretty interesting, but I loved stonefist too much to drop it, in the vain hope BioWare would fix it as a combo detonator!

Regarding the fire heaviness, I ran with a cold staff and energy barrage, so I can't really help with that issue. It must be pretty painful to have to swap out a T4 dragon bone staff...

[Bigdawg13]

I forsook chain lightning for a more friendly fire safe approach, and it worked just fine. When I wanted to proc shocked to initiate sleep for combo, I just dropped immolate on the mooks under a static cage. This gives you a bit more control over when shocked gets applied, and IIRC it will refill your mana with restorative veil because the damage is scored before shocked is applied.

Reptilius' suggestion is pretty interesting, but I loved stonefist too much to drop it, in the vain hope BioWare would fix it as a combo detonator!

Regarding the fire heaviness, I ran with a cold staff and energy barrage, so I can't really help with that issue. It must be pretty painful to have to swap out a T4 dragon bone staff...

 

mastercrafted (+10%) T4 dragon bone staff .... yeah not much else compares to it.  I gave a cold staff to Dorian with +1% heal per hit (to exploit his necro passive) and swap him, but the damage is less.  78 fire damage (T4 +10%) vs 69 cold damage (T3).  I guess I could go for a critically crafted cold staff.  *shrug*

 

Ok, explain the static cage + immolate.  The moment you put up static cage, it will likely start doing damage.  Damage from upgraded static cage will cause shocked, and prevent me from applying weakness.  So the damage from immolate is wasted insofar as mana regen.

 

A few times when I'm in an area with mostly fire resist enemies (lots of venatori seem to be), I swap to heavy cold.  Blizzard's damage isn't great but the Rift Mage's mana regen feeds it rather well, and it gives me something that doesn't cause issues with weakness.  It's just really sad that Bioware doesn't address little bugs like this.  It would make the gameplay so much more enjoyable.

[Gya]

Ok, explain the static cage + immolate. The moment you put up static cage, it will likely start doing damage. Damage from upgraded static cage will cause shocked, and prevent me from applying weakness. So the damage from immolate is wasted insofar as mana regen.

Ok, so I ran a build based on self-comboing. For a basic rotation, I would use PotA to cluster some mooks and weaken, drop immolate on them for mana regeneration, then pop static cage, and stonefist to make them sleepy times by proccing shocked. Then I'd follow up with mind blast to detonate and get some barrier.

What I meant here was that you as long as you popped immolate on the enemies inside the static cage before anyone hit them to proc shocked, you could still use it to regain mana and then apply shocked as well. Of course, if you don't use immolate in time, your companions will hit them and overlay shocked getting rid of weakness, as you said. Also, there's always the chance that melee enemies will get themselves paralysed before you can immolate them, but I tended to find that I'd hit enough mooks under the cage who were still weakened to get a good portion of mana back.

Edit: I also really wanted to use blizzard, but for me the damage didn't feed into mana regen I haven't played SP since patch 4, though, so not sure of that got fixed?

[Bigdawg13]

Yeah been toying with it and my mana stays full even with blizzard on.  It's kind of nice.  But the cost of digging that far into frost really hurts.  Ice mine = no damage.  Ice wall = no damage.  Some use ice wall to keep their ice armor up, but blizzard does that just fine.  It's just so expensive and really the damage is still subpar.  It's the CC that is nice with it, but as a Rift Mage do you really need more CC?  

 

At least static cage synergizes by giving everyone damage bonuses.

[Reptillius]

The weakness doesn't apply but the mana regen affect still will jump into play and works.  I test it on dragons. The problem like I said is weakness (and thus the passives whether it seems to apply or not) doesn't stay for very long.  I generally don't have mana problems and I've been playing very lightning heavy because not much resists it.

 

the mana regen is certainly better the more targets that you have going.  Dragons and single bosses with high cost spells tends to make you feel it but I don't really.  My staff attacks tend to be because I've put just about everything into cooldown.  It's also a very fast way to get the most out of static cage. Static Cage itself is not a dot. it's just a proc off of damage done to those things inside of it. Whether it's hits, spells, or dot damage. Static cage gets better the more stuff you can have going off inside of it at the same time.  The immolate also has the added advantage that you can proc shocked very quickly on everything in the static cage from the dot damage which makes it a fun potential combination for all mages and not just rift mages.

 

And Stone fist would be nice if it was working as a detonator.  yes it's spirit damage and it's decent spirit damage but if your playing with lightning your usually not worried about resistances too much anyway.  I think there's only like 1 dragon that is resistant to it.  Maybe one of the bosses as well. Couple are cold resistant. Lot fire resistant.  I would have had room on my bar for stone fist if I either limited myself to either static cage or PotA or more likely dropped either firestorm or Mark off of my bar.  A lighting focused rift mage doesn't really need it however.  It's usually time I can spend abusing enemies in other creatively electrifying ways.

 

I'd say energy barrage is a spell that every mage should take however.  It's effective for pretty much every element and every build.

[Tharkun]

Hmm, I run very Fire heavy on my Rift mage.  Dragons require pre-knowledge of resistances and I use the correct staff.  But I don't find the regular stuff a problem.  I run a well-geared Cassandra and so Rage Demons are easy.  Red Templar Behemoths and Shadows aren't bad.  I use Dorian as my barrier/dispel/life ward mage with Immortal gearing.  He uses a frost staff for variety but a lot of his damage is spirit.  My third companion is a mercy killing Rogue spec'd into single target dps, generally Cole with bow + knockout bomb.

 

For something to be truly dangerous it has to resist stun, sleep, panic and fire.  Otherwise I have Cole sleep it, and then Dorian, Cass and I race to see who can trigger the detonation.  The AI won't break sleep by itself so you can always be the one if you have Immolate ready.  If not then hit Attack my target and Dorian or Cass will pop it.  

Stun + Eldritch Detonator = Rupture -> 1200% Spirit damage and Weakness

Sleep + Eldritch Detonator = Nightmare -> 800% Spirit Damage and Panic

 

That means Rage Demons are easy.  Behemoths and Shadows are the real danger.  But you run into Behemoths so rarely that you can easily use Mark of the Rift on them and you can always swap to Cole, and use Mark of Death/Hidden Blades.  For a Rift mage Inquisitor I like running Cole and I spend the time on his gear and key setup so that I can run him in a pinch.  Knockout Bomb is also a great way to setup the powerful Sleep + Eldritch Detonator combo.