8 réponses à ce sujet

[Gya]

I’ve had a good root around these fora and the internet in general, and I’ve yet to find any dedicated friendly fire mage builds. I thought it would be interesting to see how other people played it, and perhaps get a discussion going. Maybe even bounce a few ideas off eachother. Feel free to post your builds, if you so wish, as well as difficulty viability. Obviously Knight Enchanter god-mode scrubs need not apply (No, seriously, I hope your KE gets HIV from sharing used spirit blades).
I’ll start off, including my reasoning behind choices, and then hopefully someone who knows what they’re doing can contribute. Also, very interested to see FF necromancer builds...

I’m using this on nightmare. (caveat: it sucks against bosses, especially giants, which tend to be grind-fests). Sleep immune enemies in general are also annoying, but nuking them to death as punishment is still fun.



Rift Mage “Enter Sandman”:

The way this build works is to try and set up and detonate as many combos as possible by itself. Especially ‘shock + weaken -> sleep’ and ‘sleep + eldritch detonator -> nightmare’, and the ‘freeze + eldritch detonator -> basic combo’. I also spend quite a bit of time in CQC.
If/when Stonefist is fixed as an impact detonator, I’ll switch to using discharge to spread shock. (I want to DISCHARGE like an STD-ridden nymphomaniac without underwear, Biover plox).

Without companion tactics, you can’t fine tune when, for example, Cassandra will use Lunge and Strike. So if she uses it to set off a combo, awesome, I save some mana. If not, well, I wasn’t expecting much. Just go back to spamming taunts, luv.
I’ll often open with PotA to cluster as many enemies as I can, and then drop immolate on them to get back my mana, before Cassandra gets too close (tanks do seem to sometimes avoid FF like PotA if its already been placed). This was where I used to drop a Fire Mine, but I got bored of that.
Then, I stick on a Static Cage, and hit something in the centre of the mook-blob to spread as much sleep as possible. Immolate may not be off cooldown, so I fire off a Dispel, which has the added benefit of restoring 50% barrier. Then I like to follow Cassandra in and spam stonefist/whatever I feel like/mash the keyboard around ‘1’, and wait for my barriers to drop. This freezes any mooks near me, and lets me drop a dispel for a basic combo and some moar barrier. At this point, most things are dead, and it’s a case of cleaning up any remnants. I use Wall of Fire to distract anything that I can’t grab in my PotA or Static Cage clusters.

Companions don’t seem to matter, as long as you take a tank with you (you don't want a whole bunch of aggro, you're not a KE...!). I was rotating them to get as much banter as possible, but as of patch 1.04, I get one conversation per hour of trudging around. Awesome. Er… I derailed my own thread, in the first post.

Active skills: Barrier, Dispel, Stonefist, Pull of the Abyss, Static Cage, Energy Barrage, Immolate, Wall of Fire/Fire Mine.

Skill points as follows:
Spirit:
Barrier – Er… it’s barrier. Why not? I didn’t take fade step, because this build is already stupidly skill-point heavy, so occasionally I’ll throw this on myself in a dire spot. Also, I use Barrier decay with Mana Surge to freeze any bozos who try to get to close.
Peaceful Aura – Go away, Venatori zealot. Stop beating me with your sword. Hopefully.
Dispel + Transmute Magic – Boom. This is going to be one of our detonators. It’s completely tank friendly, and probably even cleans Blackwall’s beard for him.

Winter:
Winter’s Grasp – I don’t use this, but I need to get it for…
Mana Surge – This is basically only here to spread AoE non-FF freeze. Because combos. Yeeeeeah.
I don’t take fade step because I don’t have enough active slots, curse the 8-slot limit. (Biower pls).

Inferno:
Immolate + Wildfire – As of patch 1.04 (or was it 1.03?), this is now fixed as a combo detonator. OK damage, but mainly, detonator.
Flashpoint – No cooldown on a spell after a crit? Moar plox.
Clean Burn – Part and parcel of a rift mage build; since mana regen isn’t a problem with Restorative Veil, this helps lower those pesky cooldowns.
Wall of Fire – I’m sure most people prefer to take Fire Mine for the damage, but it’s quite nice to panic stuff; the purple glow is so pretty. YMMV.
(Fire Mine – Great damage, but I find outside of the initial PotA combo, once my tank has engaged, I don’t get to use it much, so I took Wall of Fire instead.)

Storm:
Energy Barrage – It looks like elemental blobs of milk are shooting from my inquisitor’s breasts. Need I say more? Well, ok. It’s a bit slow as a combo detonator for my tastes, but it (along with stonefist) is the only nuke I have for combo-primer immune bosses.
Conductive Current – Normally completely useless on a rift mage. And it’s pretty useless here too, but because I spend so much time setting up combos, I do sometimes find myself low on mana so it helps a bit I guess.
Static Charge – I spend a reasonable amount of time in melee range, and even when I’m staying at range I can get bum-rushed in confined spaces. This spreads some paralyse love. Now if only they’d fix Stonefist as an impact detonator, this build would actually be pretty good…
Static Cage + Lightning Cage – STOP! Hammer time! Sort of. I use this for CC, like everyone else. It’s also a nice way of spreading the shock.


Rift Mage:
Veilstrike – This (if upgraded) is a nice alternative to PotA, but I don’t use it personally. I just need it to get to…
Restorative Veil – Get some mana back for dealing damage? Yeah, ok, if I have to…
Stonefist – Punch a fool in the face. Very regularly. Unfortunately, it’s currently bugged and doesn’t work as an impact detonator (the DISCHARGE text will appear, but no AoE damage and shock is applied).
Encircling Veil
Twisting Veil
Pull of the Abyss + Shaken Veil – OK, so it’s not strictly friendly-fire friendly, but Cassandra doesn’t seem to mind being dragged into a mook clusterf*ck.


Well, that's me done. Anyone else?

[Gya]

Bump/ update... or bumpdate...

My justification for not taking a focus ability: mark of the rift is massive overkill for 99% of encounters. I personally can't justify a slot for it. If I find an encounter that's just too hard, then I'll temporarily replace Wall of Fire.

Also, I'm trying to find a way to work Fade Step into this build, so I can vanguard in DA, but I can't think of what to replace. Any advice or thoughts? #firstworldproblems

[JaegerBane]

Also, I'm trying to find a way to work Fade Step into this build, so I can vanguard in DA, but I can't think of what to replace. Any advice or thoughts? #firstworldproblems

Conventional wisdom would say that you don't need both barrier *and* fade step, but dropping Barrier would render the points in Winter's Grasp and Mana Surge worthless. Of course, as far as I was aware, Surge does not trigger on a natural barrier decay, so I guess it depends on whether you've seen it work.

But ultimately, if you want Fade Step, I'd probably drop Immolate. You have Fire Mine already, and RMs can compensate for the Mine's awkwardness sufficiently that immolate likely won't ever be needed. You have already have Dispel for Detonations and Stonefist for general AoE.

[Gya]

Conventional wisdom would say that you don't need both barrier *and* fade step, but dropping Barrier would render the points in Winter's Grasp and Mana Surge worthless. Of course, as far as I was aware, Surge does not trigger on a natural barrier decay, so I guess it depends on whether you've seen it work.

But ultimately, if you want Fade Step, I'd probably drop Immolate. You have Fire Mine already, and RMs can compensate for the Mine's awkwardness sufficiently that immolate likely won't ever be needed. You have already have Dispel for Detonations and Stonefist for general AoE.

Thanks for the input. Yeah, mana surge is a weird one, it seems to proc for me even with natural barrier decay.

I'll try dropping immolate for FS and see how it goes.

[JaegerBane]

Thanks for the input. Yeah, mana surge is a weird one, it seems to proc for me even with natural barrier decay.
I'll try dropping immolate for FS and see how it goes.

I didn't know for sure, I've never tested it myself. On my current run, Mana Surge is something that is a good few levelups off in terms of priority but it's interesting to hear decay procs it. I'd heard that it did not.

As for Immolate - don't get me wrong, it's one of my favourite spells, my canon KE inquisitor uses it for his main source of fire damage... But he uses it mainly because he doesn't have Stonefist. There's a debate to be had about which spell is the better one but they're so similar that unless you specifically need Immolate for something, Stonefist is a better option if you have it. As near as I could tell, you were only using it for Eldritch detonations, which Dispel is a bit better at.

[Gya]

I was mainly using immolate to grab a whole bunch of mana back after PotA or any weakened enemies, but I also kept it as another option for combo detonation on the off chance that dispel was on CD. TBH, with clean burn, Dispel is very rarely on CD! That said, I'm actually thinking about trying dropping wall of fire instead, I'll see how both play out.

[OrionAnderson]

Mana Surge activates when your barrier hits 0 for any reason. If you have no aggro you can totally just walk up to people and wait for them to freeze. You can even cast it before a fight even starts to pre-load a free spell for the big fight. 

[JaegerBane]

Mana Surge activates when your barrier hits 0 for any reason. If you have no aggro you can totally just walk up to people and wait for them to freeze. You can even cast it before a fight even starts to pre-load a free spell for the big fight.

I guess the big question is... does it proc on a decay from a fade shield barrier?

[Gya]

Mana Surge activates when your barrier hits 0 for any reason. If you have no aggro you can totally just walk up to people and wait for them to freeze. You can even cast it before a fight even starts to pre-load a free spell for the big fight.

Yup. Not sure if it's a bug or a tool tip error, but either way it's pretty nice.

@JaegerBane

That's a good question... I have an aversion to KE so I won't be able to test that until I see my therapist about it. If it does proc off fade shield... well, it's not like knight enchanter is stupidly op already, right?