225 réponses à ce sujet

[Ganen]

I always knew rift had huge potential for control at the very least, considering how the equivalent spells performed in DAII.

but yeah so far rift mage is the spec that I am having the easiest time finding synergy with, it is ubber battle control with frost and good dmg with fire (even if knight enchanter fire gives much more personal survivability and dps, rift mage compensates with strong combo setups crowd control and debuffs for party).

 

 

 

I do not know if this has been answered, or addressed, but I play as a storm mage, and it does wonders, especially on the fade rifts. I also use spirit but do not know if the rift mage will go together with spirit and storm.

 

Spirit has 5 perks for a barrier, similar to a shield, and also has dispel magic which is good with fade rifts, and the rift mage has stone fist which deals spirit damage.

 

Knight enchanter has 2 perks that contribute to the barrier I use from spirit.

 

Necromancer on the other hand deals a lot of spirit damage with walking bomb, and spirit mark and despair. There are also damage bonuses that come through the necromancer.

 

Does anyone have any idea which one would go best with spirit and storm?? Could the rift mage be it??

 

 

 

the only tree Im struggling with finding any synergy with so far is storm... the mana costs are just too high dps too low and control too situational/short lived to combine with other spells from other trees, plus good luck getting paralyze+precision combos with such short lasting paralyses

 

honestly either I'm missing something very big in terms of how storm performs, or the tree is overall inferior to all others, I see nothing at all that it brings to the mage specs that other trees dont do better.

[brazen_nl]

 

honestly either I'm missing something very big in terms of how storm performs, or the tree is overall inferior to all others, I see nothing at all that it brings to the mage specs that other trees dont do better.

 

There are two passives that are nice. On the right side, one gives you more power the less mana you have, and the other paralyzes someone that interrupts your casting.

[konfeta]

Well, I finally reached Static Cage and put a lightning spell on my Rift Mage bar.

 

People are right, Lightning damage (shocked status maybe?) + Spirit damage (or weakness?) somehow causes mass sleep spam. Static Cage with some Stonefist or Dorian Necro DoTs thrown in resulted in a silly number of combos going off.

 

Will need to test with Chain Lightning later to make sure it's explicitly Lightning Damage related stuff rather than Paralyzed status effect from cage stuff.

[brazen_nl]

Well, I finally reached Static Cage and put a lightning spell on my Rift Mage bar.

 

People are right, Lightning damage (shocked status maybe?) + Spirit damage (or weakness?) somehow causes mass sleep spam. Static Cage with some Stonefist or Dorian Necro DoTs thrown in resulted in a silly number of combos going off.

 

Will need to test with Chain Lightning later to make sure it's explicitly Lightning Damage related stuff rather than Paralyzed status effect from cage stuff.

 

Are you sure it isn't the Discharge combo, where you do an Impact Detonator like Stonefist on Paralyzed enemies from Static Cage?

 

See here for the detonations.

[Morroian]

I've, respecced to lightning as well as rift mage and holy crap is it powerful.

[SpaceV3gan]

So far there are no videos nor players reporting their experiences against tough encounters on Nightmare level, which is the only difficult level a powerful build should take into account. Thus it is difficult to really measure the Rift Mage against the KE. All I can say is that Vivenne kicks Solas butt all day, though I am eager to play as an Elf pro-Mage-Liberation Inquisitor next.

[Saresi]

"Tough encounter" means Bosses, and many Bosses are immune to Rift Mage´s CC effects. So it goes down to a pure DPS race.

What does this mean?

Well, your basic schools of magic is the biggest determing factor. There are as many dragons reistant to fire as their are to frost, lightning and spirit ALL TOGETHER.

 

So this means a rift mage with fire heavy build will be seriously handicapped, since he is down to staff attacking and relatively harmless Stone Fist-Spamming.

Frost Mage is out the equation, since he simply does too little DPS.

 

This leaves lightning, mainly arcane barrage and cage-abuse.

 

As funny as fire-riftmage with fire mine might me, lightning is far superior in nearly all regards.

 

If you take lightning and perhaps immolate with upgrade as main schools for a Rift Mage, you will be fine.

Fire however, or god beware, frost, will seriously hamper you in boss fights and most dragon encounters.

[Kestral]

I always knew rift had huge potential for control at the very least, considering how the equivalent spells performed in DAII.

but yeah so far rift mage is the spec that I am having the easiest time finding synergy with, it is ubber battle control with frost and good dmg with fire (even if knight enchanter fire gives much more personal survivability and dps, rift mage compensates with strong combo setups crowd control and debuffs for party).

 

 

 

 

 

 

the only tree Im struggling with finding any synergy with so far is storm... the mana costs are just too high dps too low and control too situational/short lived to combine with other spells from other trees, plus good luck getting paralyze+precision combos with such short lasting paralyses

 

honestly either I'm missing something very big in terms of how storm performs, or the tree is overall inferior to all others, I see nothing at all that it brings to the mage specs that other trees dont do better.

 

 

She has been doing pretty good so far. I will be taking 4 perks from each tree, and the rest from KE or rift. From storm I use energy barrage, conductive, static charge and static cage. The static charge works good in keeping those melee off me, and when they are un-paralyzed, they turn away to fight someone else. In the battle at the last thing you had to aim to bury Haven, my gal was turning the wheel, and was the only one who did not need a potion. My gal is usually the only mage in the group for she takes Varric, Cassandra and the Bull.

 

She is level 8 and has already racked up over 23 power points, and has only been to Hinterlands, Val Royeaux and the Storm Coast, along with Haven. While on the coast, she witness a giant fighting a dragon, the dragon flew off, and she and the rest of her party took care of the giant. Just watch out for those boulders he throws. It was a good fight and took a bit to bring him down.

 

I am not smart enough to mess with the tactics part of controlling my group, so I leave it as the game set it. I also play on normal. Being the only mage in the group, I wanted a little of this, and a little of that, and I use an upgraded staff of the dragon, and upgraded enchanters armor with the upgraded arms and legs. My companions weapons and gear is also upgraded.

Modifié par Kestral, 29 novembre 2014 - 03:37 .

[Ganen]

 

As funny as fire-riftmage with fire mine might me, lightning is far superior in nearly all regards.

 

would you care to elaborate a bit on that? in what ways is it far superior?

storm spells are mana costly and have much lower dps than fire... you must mean dmg output from combos that start with paralyze or something? if so what are they and what is the rotation to use them effectively?

 

as for control well pull of the abyss + frost mine is pretty much THE best long term CC you can have atm, static cage is vastly overrated me thinks... it doesnt really control anything that isnt a melee attacker that wants to go for people outside of the cage during its short duration, and the dps is still very low compared to other more spammable and cheaper spells like immolate.

and ye frost does slim to no dps really, but the power of both rift and frost mages is not individual dps, but the control and debuffs that make easy to trigger combos, like shatter (winters grasp + stonefist) and rupture and the like, combos that make even a sword and board warrior do high damage with common abilities like shield blash and lunge and slash...

[Saresi]

Immolate has **** DPS cause 50% of its damage doesn´t stagger if you happen to cast another spell with burning effect, simple as that. The initial proc alone is nice but nothing to sing home about.

Upgraded Cage will just cause crazy DPS for your ENTIRE team, something immolate / firemine+Abyss doesn´t do.

[Saresi]

"sagger" means stack, sorry.

[Ganen]

Immolate has **** DPS cause 50% of its damage doesn´t stagger if you happen to cast another spell with burning effect, simple as that. The initial proc alone is nice but nothing to sing home about.

Upgraded Cage will just cause crazy DPS for your ENTIRE team, something immolate / firemine+Abyss doesn´t do.

 

 

I'm sorry m8 but there is no way in hell static cage does more dps than immolate and even less so than a fire mine (we are talking about 3-5k hits followed by just as much in dot), sure you cant stack burning, but then again unless you had a fire cooldown proc thingy and can spam a spell you will want to use a 2X fire rune not a 2X immolate.

and you are not meant to spam 1 spell, you are supposed to combo in things when you cast immolate, you cast something else after while the dot ticks and the cooldown ends

[Anelyn77]

Rift mage has always been really good against lots of small targets but against stronger mobs it's ineffective on higher difficulty. 

 

While it is matter of opinion I think it's crazy to say that KE isn't flat out better than any combination of Rift mage. I mean come on, there are people straight up soloing the game as KE. While Rift couldn't do this. (except maybe with great care on normal)

 

That said, I'm with you. Rift Mage is a badass spec and I totally would not have felt useless if i had chosen it over KE during my first playthrough. My usual group was Me (KE mage), Solas (Rift/Fire mage), Cass or Blackwall (Sword/Board Warrior) and Sera (Archery)

 

That combo gave me everything i needed; Sustain, Tankyness, AoE for weak mobs, and High Single for bosses. Except during high level dragon fights i would take both cass and blackwall and micro'd them so that one would pick up the dragonling adds when they spawned (subbed out sera since KE does crazy good damage regardless).

 

Perspective of somebody who played on hard.

 

Am not sure why you say Rift Mage is ineffective against tougher targets on hard / NM. You have a hard spirit nuke, you can still grab Lightning Cage, and have insane dps with chain lightning / auto-attacks, even grab the single target from lightning (the one with 12 projectiles). Also Lightning Cage boosts all your party DPS. Dragons and other big creatures have multiple hit boxes which are all affected by AoE spells - coupled with Lightning Cage you get insane dps.

 

You won't get as high hits / crits as an archer / warrior / dw rogue of course. But that is burst. Your sustain is highest in game, bar none, with all the CC / utility / combo initiators / detonators I really couldn't ask for anything more from a Rift Mage.

[Saresi]

Am not sure why you say Rift Mage is ineffective against tougher targets on hard / NM.

Everything you say is also true for the two other mage specs. And they have higher damage numbers than Rift mage, simply because rift mage has one, read, one: damaging ability that is left to you once your primary elemental school is locked out cause of reistances.

Stone Fist´s DPS is inferior to necro´s or KEs dps spells.

[SpaceV3gan]

Am not sure why you say Rift Mage is ineffective against tougher targets on hard / NM. You have a hard spirit nuke, you can still grab Lightning Cage, and have insane dps with chain lightning / auto-attacks, even grab the single target from lightning (the one with 12 projectiles). Also Lightning Cage boosts all your party DPS. Dragons and other big creatures have multiple hit boxes which are all affected by AoE spells - coupled with Lightning Cage you get insane dps.

You won't get as high hits / crits as an archer / warrior / dw rogue of course. But that is burst. Your sustain is highest in game, bar none, with all the CC / utility / combo initiators / detonators I really couldn't ask for anything more from a Rift Mage.

That is pretty interesting. This thread started out with the OP mentioning the Rift/Fire Combo could out damage the KE (something which I still have trouble to digest), and now many players here are saying the Rift/Lighting can out damage the Fire version, if not all kits in the game (I am quite sure it can't out damage a fast Focus casting Tempest, but nevertheless all Rift Mage supporters seem to be very optimistic about this specialization).
I really feel like trying one out. Maybe I won't even finish my current playthrough before it.

[duskl1ght]

I'm sorry m8 but there is no way in hell static cage does more dps than immolate and even less so than a fire mine (we are talking about 3-5k hits followed by just as much in dot), sure you cant stack burning, but then again unless you had a fire cooldown proc thingy and can spam a spell you will want to use a 2X fire rune not a 2X immolate.

and you are not meant to spam 1 spell, you are supposed to combo in things when you cast immolate, you cast something else after while the dot ticks and the cooldown ends

 

Static Cage does 50% percent weapons damage per hit on any enemy within the bounds by ANY hero in your party. If you cast energy barrage that's 50% x 12 = 600% extra on top of normal energy barrage, if you have 2 mages both casting energy barrage that's 1200% extra if it's a rift mage it should be quite easy to cast energy barrage twice during the duration of Static Cage. Even if you just have every hero autoattacking during static cage it's going to be more than 3x the damage you can do with immolate. 

[Ganen]

Static Cage does 50% percent weapons damage per hit on any enemy within the bounds by ANY hero in your party. If you cast energy barrage that's 50% x 12 = 600% extra on top of normal energy barrage, if you have 2 mages both casting energy barrage that's 1200% extra if it's a rift mage it should be quite easy to cast energy barrage twice during the duration of Static Cage. Even if you just have every hero autoattacking during static cage it's going to be more than 3x the damage you can do with immolate. 

 

if this if that and if some more, means doesnt work to me really...

 

why so many ifs, including the if of having 2 mages to be effective and the multiple use of several abilities to make up for a simple combo of rift and 1 fire spell?! (which even with all those "if's" still doesnt even remotely compare to a fire rune)

sorry, there is NOTHING static cage -> rift has to offer that either frost or fire -> rift doesnt do tons better...

edit: ok I am being too one sided here, I know a few advantages:

-its lightning so less prone to problems with magic type resistances

-it is both a CC and a dmg spell at the same time (while fire is just dmg and frost just CC)

-the paralyze even if short and unreliable can chain up combos such as nightmare or sleep reasonably often/easily depending on party setup

but thats about it, if there is more plz shed some light because high dps it doesnt have (compared to both fire spells) and strong CC it is not(compared to both ice spells)

 

you can use energy barrage just as easily during a rift-> ice mine (tho why not use fist instead for shatter + another CC and weaken instead of energy barrage) or fire mine as you can during a rift+static cage... no wait, you can use it easily due to mana cost...

[Anelyn77]

Ok I missed the part where you explained that by higher DPS you meant including and/or based on focus ability.

 

I thought you simply compare what DPS a rift + X school can achieve compared to an EK / Necro + X school. 

 

I am not saying nor implying that other specs can't produce higher DPS or burst, but saying that Rift it's ineffective for single target dmg on higher diff's is just not true. Finally since this is a party / team based game, the DPS and burst both depends on your composition / specs / gear.

 

And lastly, magic is all about mixing stuff up, there is no Ice mage, Fire mage etc, everything can mix and match. CL is great to sap enemy magic resistances (short CD as well and nice damage for single target, amazing if multi-hit boxes). Nobody says you can't respec out of lightning if you're fighting the lightning resistant dragon, and grab fire or ice w/e for this particular kill. You're not stuck with your choices, you can and should prepare for major fights

[Back Lot Basher]

Thanks for the post.  I kind of have my heart set on KE, mostly because I want to have options when the nasties close in.  However, I'll definitely be sure to pay close attention to using Solas and his RM powers

[Saresi]

Ganen, you´re simply denying the OPness of static cage.

I know, Immolate and Fire Mine is nice and all and what ever. I prefer Fire + Rift my self for the style factor.

But it is simply the weaker alternative compared to lightning. Yes, without the cage upgrade, lightning would suck balls compared to fire as basic school for a rift mage. But it has the upgrade, and that means fire is blown out of the window.

Especially if you consider the context in which I´ve made that statement: Enemy resistances. Frost and Fire have far more reistances on enemies than lightning. 50% of all dragons have fire reistance. Venatori Mages have fire reistance, a very common enemy. Rage Demons. A lot of animals especially in the western regions.

This has to be considered.

[knownastherat]

Static Cage does 50% percent weapons damage per hit on any enemy within the bounds by ANY hero in your party. If you cast energy barrage that's 50% x 12 = 600% extra on top of normal energy barrage, if you have 2 mages both casting energy barrage that's 1200% extra if it's a rift mage it should be quite easy to cast energy barrage twice during the duration of Static Cage. Even if you just have every hero autoattacking during static cage it's going to be more than 3x the damage you can do with immolate. 

 

So if my mage weapon damage is 100 how much is Barrage according to this formula supposed to do?

 

I would expect that without Lighting Cage casting Barrage with 100 weapon damage would do 66% from 100 times 12 ~ 66 x 12 = 792 

 

600% goes where? 

[Saresi]

Each proc of Barrage will cause the Cage Upgrad to proc 50% of the weapon´s damage.

That means you´ll do 600% on top of the pure Barrage damage.  Equals 1392% weapon damage from ONE skill alone. Even more if you´ve taken the upgrade of Barrage.

Assuming the tooltops are correct, though.

Where is your problem, exactly?

[Saresi]

Now take fast four the ather party members into consideration and you know why the Cage Upgrade is simply OP beyond belief.

[konfeta]

Are you sure it isn't the Discharge combo, where you do an Impact Detonator like Stonefist on Paralyzed enemies from Static Cage?

I am explicitly seeing the sleep status effect occurring all the time.

 

As for the whole Rift mage DPS argument, as long as the enemy is vulnerable to Weakness status (so far I think only Giants aren't), RIft Mage with a moderate crit amount translates into never having to use a single staff attack for the duration of the fight.

 

Oooh, I wonder if overlapping Static Cages stack for the upgrade.

[Saresi]

Dragons are immune to the effect.