48 réponses à ce sujet

[Reptillius]

bigdawg. I don't know how your doing it but when bosses put up guard against me it's usually not up a significant amount of time.  Not to mention I usually get my weakness in before they put their guard up. Which far as I remember doesn't disappear just because they put their guard up. Now it can disappear because it does have a timer of it's own until it wears off.  And everything I said to you is what I can do against the typical boss. Not just his little minions.  Realistically I don't care one whit about a bosses minions. I usually let the tank pick them up and once they start to be getting too many or the fight is 3/4 done. I drop a firestorm on them and pretty much wipe them out fairly quickly.  Or I use the Mark's focus power for one big lump sum hit if they are all piled under the boss.

 

As for Shocked. I may actually be able tell you what the problem with shocked is if you like and why it has issues with weaken. According to the codex for shocked(haven't checked the wiki) Shocked is basically supposed to be a form of weakens increased damage component from the passive anyway but specific to magic spells. For whatever reason the game sees the target as already having weakness with shocked on because of this and we can still get most of the passives with shock on a creature... though the bonus damage we get doesn't like to apply. At least not in any useful or consistant manner.  And all tooltips I've seen for things that apply weakness say 15% increased damage. Now if it's a matter that the passives are doing increased damage above and beyond an amount automatically applied by weakness they need to fix the way several things are worded about both.

 

Also. If you start doing things like laying firemines and such. That's at least 1 of those 8 seconds your not using your spirit blades power. So we can actually subtract that and add it in later.  Firemine can be a really big hit later on and worth the time spent to do it. I'm not argueing that.  But your argueing about bosses so my example applied only to bosses. Not the other pulls. The other pulls are basically crowd control blitzkriegs for my rift mage.  I even tend to snag up most if not all of those stealthers you are so worried about.  Archers are a little more problematic sometimes but they always are.  I rarely get backstabbed because of a stealthed enemy on my rift mage.  Partly because I have a CC heavy build and and l am good at laying them down to snag up a lot of stuff and sometimes start off with this because my upgraded stonefist is a lot more effective if they are altogether because now it's an aoe attack and all the enemies are right on top of each other.

 

Your argument is a fallacy because you want to use only certain things to justify it. You want to justify the KE by only being able to use Spirit Blade and it's passives over and over again.  with Rift Mage I don't have to make the sacrifice of only getting my advantage out of rift mage by endlessly casting rift mage spells. I get to use my whole mage arsenal and My wonderful rift mage powers all at once.  And for better damage for the most part.  Yes you may take down something's guard a couple seconds faster than I do. But I'm going to make up for a lot of that bonus you do to guard with sheer outdamaging potential.  Dragons don't even keep their guard up all that long unless I'm forced to reposition or they do that danged winged flapping aoe just as I cast one of the projectile based spells so they slam into that safety line and disappate harmlessly.

 

As for barrier.  In solo. Yes I would have to recast it.  If I was doing a rift mage heavy in support I'd be recasting it anyway. and probably just not on me.  But since I'm not. Vivienne usually casts that on my character pretty religiously.  Partly because I believe it's Cassandra has this thing where if a mob finally even ruffles her hair she pops it and puts full guard on the whole party and that guard seems to stay until it's either taken away... I do something really stupid. Or I switch screens it seems like.  So I could argue this.  What do I really need barrier for? A little extra damage on a couple spells?  I'm not seeing why I should bother honestly.

 

And Chaotic focus. I'm sorry but it's a bad trump card with the length of the cooldowns on most fire spells.  Most of them are at least as long as the barrier cooldown without its upgrade.  Your just conveniently skipping a step to take advantage of it for the most part. Unless your extremely fire heavy.  Then your going to have a lot more issues with that dragon than I am because your KE has just weakened a big chunk of their arsenal because of passive resistances.  As you said. Fire resistance is the most common one in the game.

 

If your that worried about shocked however. Build yourself a kickass ice staff to combine with Energy Barrage (but be wary of the rest of the lightning tree).  I suggest just taking it for those that are really worried and then take out of other trees if they are for the other elements to compliment it. Or take a lot of the support stuff along with barrier.

 

And I won't even comment on the barrier on a typical boss.  It generally isn't that hard to take down and I generally delight in seeing it because I just hit it with dispel a lot of times for the damage increase the upgrade gives. 8 second cooldown with a 10 second buff. The more they put it up the longer I keep that damage bonus going.

[Bigdawg13]

We're going to have to agree to disagree.  It's clear that neither of us believes the other person has any clue. 

 

But hey, if you want to be the advocate insisting that broken and buggy RM is better than KE more power to you. 

[Reptillius]

oh I understand KE. I'm aware that it relies on swinging that one spell sword quite heavily.

 

But you are right. We'll have to agree to disagree.  Specially on the fact that RM is broken and Buggy. 

 

Because the more I do different things and test different things. What I'm finding is somehow broken may actually be shocked itself. Even though it seems to work right. It seems to cause problems in other places and to itself.

 

Either way I enjoy my rift mage and what I can do with it.

[Bigdawg13]

Reptillius..I'm here to eat my words.  Honestly I can't tell who does more DPS.  But by the time you reach level 16+, it doesn't matter anymore.  I rarely get touched as a Rift Mage.  And being able to scoop people up to AoE them down is great.   I like the elegance of the spirit blade, but there is something just "fun" about knocking people over and down.  So much damage.  And literally too much mana.  I ended up dumping barrier to get another damage spell.

 

It would be nice if stonefist's detonator worked.  But it isn't necessary.  And honestly, none of the other mage spec's offer a detonator, let alone a cross-class combo detonator.

 

I do think I saw bigger crits on my KE.  Probably due to the barrier and chaotic focus.  But with the KE I rarely was able to engage more than 2-3 at a time, unless I relied on someone else.  With a RM, I was able to scoop up 5+ and hit them all with immolate, firemine, and stonefist.

[Reptillius]

Yeah. It's a trade off. But I have a blast.  And to be fair. I am a nutcase that has gimped himself slightly thanks to the fact that I mixed RM with Lightning before I knew of the shocked bug.   And since they altered a couple things to now be detonators I've got several ways to set off combo's.  If stone fists detonator worked I'd consider going through it again and combining it with a heavy amount of ice magic because it would become easy to lock down almost anything basically permanently.

 

and you may have been doing bigger crit hits on your KE quite honestly. I think they may be a little easier to set up for them.  RM's damage is a bit more spread out but it really is an AOE monster like no other when it gets going.

[SomeoneStoleMyName]

In FF11 (I think) the enemy bosses has something called guard. For example, if an enemy has 3 guard - you need to land 3 stuns to break guard, then the 4th stun will go through guard and can stun the boss (guard regens over time).

Imo DAI should have something similar for bosses, so that knockdowns and disables are weaker against bosses - but not irrelevant. 

I agree Rift mage is weak vs bosses, but rift mage is extremely strong vs packs of mobs and adds. Being weak vs bosses is sort of the trade-off imo. Also, I - and I believe - a lot of players, uses solas as their barrier/cc mage. Meaning for a boss-fight Solas can still do his job. For a main character rift-mage? Dunno... I dont like it. For the reason the OP stated. Rift mage does nothing where it actually matters which is vs bosses.

[Reptillius]

Stolen Name.

 

the problem is that at least half of his reasons were wrong.  So you can't just say for the same reasons.  most of the passives still work and it's shocked that tends to cause a boss to become immune to weaken. Not any actual affect of most bosses themselves.

 

Then there is the fact that FF's MMO mechanic of needing multiple stuns actually kind of sucks and was devised mostly for raid situations with large numbers of people all fighting a single target.  Which is not the case in any form in DAI.

 

MMO mechanics rarely ever work in non-MMO environments and usually aren't that great as mechanics overall anyway.  the mechanic your talking about was at times flawed and often paired with regenerating multiple levels of protection at about the same time that you needed to CC a boss to stop a major attack.  there aren't attacks like that to stop in DAI.

[Honey]

is restorative veil work against target that become immune to weaken effect through the "weaken + shocked = Sleep" combo or not ? 

 

because the way i see it the shocked effect is applying a debuff of 20% to all elemental resistance, which is 5% higher than the 15% bonus damage from twisting veil and if we say a rift mage can use energy barrage to lower even father the elemental resistance of an ennemy, wouldn't that rift mage do more damage AND would still get his mana back from his spellcast ?

[mredders91]

is restorative veil work against target that become immune to weaken effect through the "weaken + shocked = Sleep" combo or not ? 

 

 

No, if the target had weakness on them to start with then became immune when you apply a new then it would work but if you turn weakness into a sleep proc you no longer have the weakness on them regardless it if worked or not would need to reapply but if they become immune at this point you can no longer give the target a new weakness proc.

[Honey]

so, if i just wait until weakness wear off and only use fire and my rift mage spell during the weakness status and use my lightning spell when weakness wear off would i still be able to get my mana back ?

[Bigdawg13]

This is why I just ignored the lightning tree (except energy barrage) while playing a Rift Mage.  I sold every lightning staff too.  It was a pain to try to regulate the weakness bug.  On top of that stonefist detonator is bugged.  Overall I felt like my exploratory playthrough with a Riftmage was a big let down.  Bioware just keeps on fixing exploits and ignores game mechanic bugs.

[Tharkun]

One thing about Rift mages is that if you avoid lightning, no spells, no chain lightning masterworks, don't let Varric use elemental mines, etc, you do get rewarded.  For instance.

1. Only rift mages have the mana to use Blizzard and its upgrade all the time.
2. Ice armor is insanely good and on the way to blizzard.  50% resistance to melee, ranged and magic basically means you cap out on magic resistance since defensive cloth and utility cloth is common.  You can also cap out on ranged defense by being an elf or get close via defensive leather.  You can cap melee defense by being qunari but in any case it will be high due to utility metal and defensive metal slots.  I will post a screen shot later of my mage with it up.
3. Weakness debuff of 30% is applied before barrier, guard and armor any damage that gets through will then be reduced by the defensive stats above.
4. Mana Surge is great fun and means that the Rift mage openers of Pull of the Abyss or Stonefist cost 0 mana.  Or you just cast barrier for free.  In any case it makes even the opening easy.
5. Rift mages are the best mage to play at range.  Weakness -> mana works at range unlike the necromancer passive which has a limited range.  
6. Rift Mages get the most use of Clean Burn.  Constant casting of spells reduces the cooldowns on all spells.  Rift Mages have mana as long as they have weakened targets.  Since Blizzard has 0 cooldown when upgraded anyway you can basically go nuts.  If your blizzard contains one target you are mana neutral, it is has 2 you are producing 5% (aka 5) mana per second (actually 10 mana every 2 seconds but whatever).
7. Pull of the Abyss overlapping a blizzard is fun.  Put the center of your pull within the outer circle of your blizzard and you will drag enemies into your blizzard and then they will freeze solid( in 4 seconds).  You can basically control half or more of a rift with those two AOEs.  Then just put a fire mine at the center and let the entire frozen pile of bad guys blow up.

All of this would have been unnecessary prior to the DLC. The main game rewards speed kills in 2 clicks but the DLC is so deadly that the slower play listed above wins in survivability.   And once you experience exploding frozen corpses in a blizzard you don't want to go back even though you have to set it up a bit.

[mredders91]

Tharkun your 2. and 5. points contradict each other to use Ice Armour with blizzard you have to be inside it which means your in melee range which is counter productive to range. its much easier and effective to simply place a ice mine underneath you as it will proc the ice armor effect and will protect you from any melee attacker that get in your face.

Overall tho even with the shock bug i would much rather have static cage then blizzard since it can lock down enemies more effectively and when upgrade can do as much damage as a fire mine with energy barrage, it also leave me with mana to do other things then just auto attack.

[Tharkun]

You only have to be in Chill range, not in the damage zone.  Blizzard is bigger than you might think.

[Honey]

i just looked and blizzard does 75% weapon damage without upgrade (at least it show that on the skill calculator found here -> http://www.rpg-gamin...de&a=03113a23d)and with the upgrade, it jump to 150% weapon damage (upgrade is 75% more weapon damage too) wouldn't that offset the 50% weapon damage of static cage wich only apply on hit and on targets that actively tries leave the aoe ?

[mredders91]

Static cage work off per hit and not just your own attacks, everyone in your party can trigger it (you will only see numbers on the party member your controlling)  and the damage is based off each party member own attack strength, so it does add up to a lot more then blizzard and even fire mine, also having Varric in party with the tricks of the trade passive also increases its duration that it out for.

[Tharkun]

Blizzard is a mana hog, no doubt about it, that is why only Rift mages can use it with impunity.  Static Cage does more damage than blizzard especially since Static Cage does bursty damage.  One funny thing about Static Cage is that if you are going that way, Rift Mages get exceptional use out of it.  Fire Storm (level 3) dropped on top of a Static Cage does almost 4 meteors/second.  Static Cage adds 50% weapon damage to each one while it lasts.  

[The Baconer]

Rift Mages get the most use of Clean Burn.  Constant casting of spells reduces the cooldowns on all spells.  Rift Mages have mana as long as they have weakened targets.  Since Blizzard has 0 cooldown when upgraded anyway you can basically go nuts.  If your blizzard contains one target you are mana neutral, it is has 2 you are producing 5% (aka 5) mana per second (actually 10 mana every 2 seconds but whatever).

 

I still think Spirit Blade synergizes the most with Clean Burn.

[Tharkun]

I still think Spirit Blade synergizes the most with Clean Burn.

My knight enchanter has more mana issues.  I can spam blade for clean burn but then I have to pause a bit to cast anything else (except fade cloak).  Admittedly you shouldn't be using Blizzard if you are trying to get other spells cooldown up quickly.

 

But I see your point and acknowledge that it is valid, I can see it going either way and can respect the thought that KEs get more out of Clean Burn.   Combat Clarity also reduces cooldowns and winter's Stillness does not (any longer) so KEs have to trigger clean burn less often to get other spells off cooldown.  And I just strengthened your argument  

[Honey]

ok so, according to others players experience, the restorative veil passive work even against ennemies that have gotten the "immunity" against weaken status, anyone can confirm it ? 

 

if you want to see more details, i did another post available here : http://forum.bioware.../#entry19255437

 

it started before i really knew what was the immunity to weaken status bug, turns out restorative veil work, even against enemies affected by the bug.

 

i just need people to confirm the passive still work even on target that become immune to weaken status through reapplying it with weakens-proc abilities

[mredders91]

Yes if you had weakness on the enemy then hit them with weakness again and they become immune the passive does still proc.

If however if you turn your weakness into a sleep proc then apply new weakness and they become immune the passive will not work and you wont be able to put a new weakness proc on to them.

[Honey]

and against ennemies immune to sleep ? if, say, i apply weaken status on a high dragon or something immune to sleep and that i turn weakness into a sleep proc and then re-apply weaken status, will i still get the bug ? or would the sleep immunity prevent the bug ? thus allowing me AT LEAST, to get mana back from restorative veil passive proc ?

[Bigdawg13]

and against ennemies immune to sleep ? if, say, i apply weaken status on a high dragon or something immune to sleep and that i turn weakness into a sleep proc and then re-apply weaken status, will i still get the bug ? or would the sleep immunity prevent the bug ? thus allowing me AT LEAST, to get mana back from restorative veil passive proc ?

 

And this is why I just avoided lightning staffs and spells altogether.  Even if some person on the forum answered, I would be wary of it being true. 

[Reptillius]

shocked prevents weaken is the problem.  And shocked can only be removed by stopping from casting any lightning for like 15 or 20 seconds.  But I never had problems with it.  Then again I don't have much time to play it again to retest it after they've done a little rebalancing. I should probably dig up the time to do that.  And there was a mana regen difference from when I would hit things that should have applied the weakness affect and when I didn't use them.