51 réponses à ce sujet

[andy6915]

First mage was a fire+knight enchanter, my second mage was meant to be a storm+rift mage. Pull of the abyss pulling enemies together to lock them in a static cage sounded like a great combo, so I was sure it would work well... Or not. Nothing went according to plan. Weaknesses are a pain in the ass to keep applied, stonefist and pull of the abyss (the 2 activated skills I meant to use) cost so much mana that the weakened state is already 3 or 4 seconds into its duration before I can do another spell, which leaves me unable to do the kind of damage needed for restorative veil to be doing a damn thing. I use pull of the abyss and drain over half my mana, which leaves me either with something crappy like fade step or immolate which don't do enough damage to get much mana back or I have to wait until I have over half back to use something actually powerful... Which, by then, their weakened state only has a couple seconds left.

 

And using pull of the abyss followed by static cage? Hah! That never happens. They both cost 65 mana, so the abyss pulling has only a second or so left by the time static cage can be used. So the main combo of spells that I even wanted it for WON'T. EVEN. WORK. And even without the mana cost, pull of the abyss has a 6 meter radius while static cage is 9 meters. That means that forget pull of the abyss pulling enemies together for static cage, it's pretty much the other way around to where static cage can pull everything pull of the abyss can and then some. And pull of the abyss is worse for actually controlling a group, they keep fighting while being held in place whereas static cage will fully paralyze enemies who get uppity inside it. And the damage difference? Huge. The extra damage I do to weakened enemies with twisting veil while they're in the abyss pulling is significantly worse than the damage static cage does with how it shocks enemies everytime they're hit while inside it. And pull of the abyss lasts way less time than static cage, only about half the length (I have the enhanced static cage duration ring equipped which I've read is bugged to increase the duration by 80% instead of 30). So let me sum that up: It has a smaller radius, a mana-to-use ratio that isn't worth it, it doesn't give me the same damage output, it's half the duration, it doesn't disable enemies with paralysis... Not a single useful thing here that static cage doesn't already do better.

 

Stonefist knocks enemies down for a whole 2 seconds, seems to affect enemies other than the target with its AoE only some of the time, said AoE is tiny at only 4 meters, its shatter combo only does 1 damage, and once again its mana-to-use ratio seems abysmal. It's not utterly useless like pull of the abyss, but I can't justify it on my button map of skills.

 

And finally, I've realized that it's nothing more than a gimmick specialization. Other ones tend to be all around useful no matter what, but rift mage ABSOLUTELY counts on a very specific status ailment. If an enemy isn't weakened, then every single passive it has is useless. Half the entire tree relies on weakened enemies, and every single activated skill is mostly there just for the sake of applying a weakened effect. The skills are about setting it up, and the passives exist solely for that set up. This means that rift mage is "selfish", its passives have absolutely no use or bearing on any other school of magic you can pick. Most passives work well for trees outside of its own school, but all 4 rift mage ones only work for rift mage. And said weakened state is, as I mentioned before, a pain in the ass to even upkeep.

 

So it's useless. Other specializations I've used so far have given me a clear feeling of feeling like I'm on a whole different level compared to before I got my specialization, but rift mage gave me a reaction that can summed up with the word "meh"... Or, if you don't like that word, "disappointment". Instead of empowerment, I actually felt weaker when I started using it. Every time I did a pull of the abyss I wondered why I didn't just do the superior static cage for the same mana cost, every time I did a stonefist I wondered why I didn't just do an energy barrage (which does more damage overall than stonefist). Every time I used one of rift's powers, I had a superior alternative that would have given me more bang for my mana. I was better off not even using rift skills because using them instead of my storm skills just did me worse. So the only reasons to use them was for their weakened gimmick, and I can't justify using crappier skills than what I already have just for the sake of that stupid status ailment.

 

So either I will just take veilstrike and not even bother using pull of the abyss (and possibly stonethrow) since it at least has an extremely managable mana-to-use ratio of only 20 mana once upgraded, or load my save of before I selected rift mage just in case it turned out to suck. I completed all 3 specializations quests so I could freely choose any of them, and then went and did some trial runs against respawning enemies and rifts. So I won't lose any progress by doing so. But I was wanting to not use the same specialization as my last mage, and had been planning rift mage since before I even started this character. To have it be a tiny wimper of uselessness after planning it to be what I picked for the entire playthrough... It doesn't feel good.

 

Or maybe rift mage works better with fire. I can see there being some good combos there like pull of the abyss pulling everything into a fire mine. But storm is staying my main magic this playthrough, so that's not going to happen. Or maybe I should just say screw it to the weaken passives, pick up the first 2 skills and just use the shock>weaken combination to cause sleep on grouped enemies as a form of crowd control. Or pick knight enchanter. Which would be best, knight enchanter again since I know it at least doesn't suck or forgo the passives and the useless pull of the abyss skill and just focus on making groups of enemies fall asleep with chain lightning>veilstrike/stonefist combos?

[coldwetn0se]

Interesting that this is your experience. I absolutely love playing RM, and now choose it consistently. Since I generally run more than one mage in the group, I often have another mage set for Static cage (not the RM, whether it is my PC or Solas, for example). I also upgrade Immolate and all of the Fire tree passives. Combined with the RM passives, I can effectively Barrier/Pull/Immolate, and take out a huge (if not all) health, with those caught in the Pull. If I have Cole with me, I have him toss in MoD, and upgraded Hidden Blades, during the above.

If I do choose to use PotA with Static Cage, I set it up so my warrior uses Charging Bull, once all are clustered. It is seriously like a pinball game. I kid you not.

And of course, the good ole standby of PotA + Firemine. Always quite nice.

Stonefist, I admit, I use as more of a "get the fudge away from me!", even though I know I can use it in certain setups for Sleep. However, if you have taken all the passives in the RM tree (and I usually have the passives in the Cold tree as well), Stonefist is usually ready to fire, almost all the time. The CD on it is generally very short, with all those passives.

I have come to love RM so much, that I often run my mages with Solas. Two RM's are quite fun, actually.

Anyway, again, sorry that it hasn't been quite as fun. Here is hoping you find something redeeming. But if not, nothing wrong with going back to KE or Necro. You can leave the RM stuff to Solas.

**EDIT**

Oh, and I should admit; I never use storm on any of my mage builds (whether PC or companion). I get more mileage out of the above options, and more variety. At least, for me.

Modifié par coldwetn0se, 24 juin 2015 - 02:33 .

[andy6915]

Interesting that this is your experience. I absolutely love playing RM, and now choose it consistently. Since I generally run more than one mage in the group, I often have another mage set for Static cage (not the RM, whether it is my PC or Solas, for example). I also upgrade Immolate and all of the Fire tree passives. Combined with the RM passives, I can effectively Barrier/Pull/Immolate, and take out a huge (if not all) health, with those caught in the Pull. If I have Cole with me, I have him toss in MoD, and upgraded Hidden Blades, during the above.

If I do choose to use PotA with Static Cage, I set it up so my warrior uses Charging Bull, once all are clustered. It is seriously like a pinball game. I kid you not.

And of course, the good ole standby of PotA + Firemine. Always quite nice.

Stonefist, I admit, I use as more of a "get the fudge away from me!", even though I know I can use it in certain setups for Sleep. However, if you have taken all the passives in the RM tree (and I usually have the passives in the Cold tree as well), Stonefist is usually ready to fire, almost all the time. The CD on it is generally very short, with all those passives.

I have come to love RM so much, that I often run my mages with Solas. Two RM's are quite fun, actually.

Anyway, again, sorry that it hasn't been quite as fun. Here is hoping you find something redeeming. But if not, nothing wrong with going back to KE or Necro. You can leave the RM stuff to Solas.

 

Well that's the thing, you're using fire. Fire seems to have the skills that mesh with rift mage best, which I stated in the final paragraph. Storm and rift mage seems to have too much overlap, both their final skills at the bottom of the tree do basically the same thing. You didn't say anything about if being a sleep mage by using shock+weakened combos is worth it, by the way. Though I suppose I'll do some more trial runs tomorrow myself and find out anyway, it is possible that doing that could make this specialization not suck for storm.

 

Necro utterly failed the trial runs. I wasn't set on it as my plan from the start like RM though, so it wasn't a big deal. But yeah, realizing that walking bomb's explosion only did 200% weapon damage instead of 600% was an instant fail on its trials. That would be like a knight enchanter that couldn't gain barriers from doing damage, it pretty much ruins it.

[ottffsse]

Idk but try respecing a bit and get winter stillness from frost for better mana Regen or do u already have it? . I only ran winter inferno when doing a Rift mage or specing solas. While lightning is good it was always a support tree for me with eb the damage dealer without a lightning staff. In general due to weaken it is better to use good old fire mine and Flashpoint with Rift until you are over lvl 18. After that it was blizzard lighting cage pull for me. Nothing beats static cage in terms of utility if you have that bugged ring though. So do a quick test if you go Rift inferno with upgraded immolate and fire mine. but if that is too boring and indeed lighting is the way to go do load an earlier save and try the necro which is much more lightning friendly. Necro gets free casts of devastating spells if you run flash point or mana surge and cast your second "big" spell like static cage or energy barrage immediately after casting walking bomb under Flashpoint or ms and before it hits the target. (while wb animation is flying towards the target it doesn't count as a cast yet under Flashpoint so you can release an energy barrage and still have 50 mana left when under Flashpoint even after casting those two massive spells - I think there was a video somewhere here on the forums or youtube showing exactly how that works). Make sure you tag a target with wb and than take it down with eb and everyone else from the party targeting it. That will kill it and a bunch of other things and give the necro back mana and life with death siphon. Static cage harmonizes excellently with walking bomb which is effective at it's explosion at the end which means you can get your mana back and cast lightning cage a good deal after walking bomb and time the explosion yourself. or use the cheaper firewall after static cage and torture enemies by making them panicked and run to the edge of the cage only to be paralyzed and pulled back in into the firewall.

[andy6915]

Idk but try respecing a bit and get winter stillness from frost for better mana Regen or do u already have it? . I only ran winter inferno when doing a Rift mage or specing solas. While lightning is good it was always a support tree for me with eb the damage dealer without a lightning staff. In general due to weaken it is better to use good old fire mine and Flashpoint with Rift until you are over lvl 18. After that it was blizzard lighting cage pull for me. Nothing beats static cage in terms of utility if you have that bugged ring though. So do a quick test if you go Rift inferno with upgraded immolate and fire mine. but if that is too boring and indeed lighting is the way to go do load an earlier save and try the necro which is much more lightning friendly. Necro gets free casts of devastating spells if you run flash point or mana surge and cast your second "big" spell like static cage or energy barrage immediately after casting walking bomb under Flashpoint or ms and before it hits the target. (while wb animation is flying towards the target it doesn't count as a cast yet under Flashpoint so you can release an energy barrage and still have 50 mana left when under Flashpoint even after casting those two massive spells - I think there was a video somewhere here on the forums or youtube showing exactly how that works). Make sure you tag a target with wb and than take it down with eb and everyone else from the party targeting it. That will kill it and a bunch of other things and give the necro back mana and life with death siphon. Static cage harmonizes excellently with walking bomb which is effective at it's explosion at the end which means you can get your mana back and cast lightning cage a good deal after walking bomb and time the explosion yourself. or use the cheaper firewall after static cage and torture enemies by making them panicked and run to the edge of the cage only to be paralyzed and pulled back in into the firewall.

 

I'm not changing her element. She loves lightning, and her entire face references it. Her eyes are purple colored like the lightning magic is, her Dalish blood writing is the same shade of purple... It's part of her character, not just the element I picked on a whim. First playthrough was a fire mage because Adaar (qunari Inquisitor) means "fire weapon" in the Qunari language*, second playthrough was lightning to mix things up which I then turned into a character trait.

 

*specifically, it's their word for a cannon.

[ottffsse]

But honestly other than ke which significantly improves and changes the vanilla mage and has op abilities the other two specs do more cosmetic adjustments.

Edit: the point of stuff like virulent walking bomb or lighting cage or blizzard (on Rift mage) is that it may only deal moderate damage in comparison to fade cloak immediately but it does so with tics over time to potential do over 1000 percent damage to a group of enemies.

[Rogue Unit]

Try using Mana Surge. (I think that what its called) from the Winter tree. It give you a free spell casts everytime your barrier expires. You can even use barrier in the field so during your next encounter, the first spell you use will be free. That should help with your mana being drained so quickly. This works for barriers casts on you by any mage too btw.

 

Winter stillness and lyrium potions are an option also

[andy6915]

Okay... This is interesting. I had a lot of success using sleep on everything. That level 18 and level 20 group of red templars that was able to give me multiple gameovers even as a knight enchanter when I trial runned that spec (my own party is only level 15, I figured a hard fight like this was perfect for spec testing) was having a very hard time killing my rift mage once I stopped using pull of the abyss and starting doing stonefist and veilstrike after shocking everything. You ever see an enemy 5 levels above you on nightmare difficulty get killed because it spent literally half the battle sleeping, to where it could go get a few hits in before passing out again? I just did. I then went to a rift that randomizes the demons in it, so you can try out multiple demon types with different reloads. Only hard things were pride demons and rage demons, since both are immune to weakness status ailments (and pride demons are immune to my bread and butter lightning attacks too). Well, despair demons were also annoying since they are immune to sleep specifically, but weakness still worked and I could still lock them in a static cage so they can't do their stupid dancing bullsh!t they use to avoid attacks.

 

Overall, I am pleased now. Pull of the abyss still sucks, but the other 2 skills are actually good. And stonefist does better than I thought it did, I think pull of the abyss was souring it for me. I still don't know what spec to pick, but rift mage is back on the table.

[PapaCharlie9]

Rift mage plus Storm works perfectly well ... as long as you use two characters to do it. Solas Rift Mage + Dorian casting Static Cage kicks ass.

 

If mana is the only limitation, did you try guzzling upgraded lyrium potions?

 

If you aren't getting maximum value out of Pull of the Abyss, you probably are doing it wrong. You'll probably be less frustrated if you approach it from stand-point of making PotA the center-piece and then figure out how to stack DoT, AoE, etc. into the mob that's caught in the spell.

[andy6915]

Rift mage plus Storm works perfectly well ... as long as you use two characters to do it. Solas Rift Mage + Dorian casting Static Cage kicks ass.

 

If mana is the only limitation, did you try guzzling upgraded lyrium potions?

 

If you aren't getting maximum value out of Pull of the Abyss, you probably are doing it wrong. You'll probably be less frustrated if you approach it from stand-point of making PotA the center-piece and then figure out how to stack DoT, AoE, etc. into the mob that's caught in the spell.

 

I went over this in-depth, remember? Static cage is better than pull of the abyss in about every single way it could possibly be.

 

"So let me sum that up: It has a smaller radius, a mana-to-use ratio that isn't worth it, it doesn't give me the same damage output, it's half the duration, it doesn't disable enemies with paralysis... Not a single useful thing here that static cage doesn't already do better."

 

Only thing it might be useful for is putting it right at the edge of a static cage so I can play ping-pong with enemies, which I admit would be a good strategy. But between it and veilstrike, veilstrike does me much better with its fast cooldown and very low mana cost. Besides, I'm only level 15. That means that short of respeccing and removing many useful abilities I rely on, pull of the abyss is at least a couple levels away from even being usable. I had 4 point saved up before unlocking the specializations, and that was enough to max both stonefist and veilstrike. That's enough. Maybe I'll work towards PotA, but I'm thinking I'd rather just start leveling fire so that I can get fire mine and that ability that makes it so critical hits make skills not have cooldown. That sounds better for my points, and I already prepared for that by making a staff with a 40% critical chance.

[draken-heart]

you apparently dislike Rift Mage. So just pick a different spec and never play rift mage again. Problem Solved.

[andy6915]

you apparently dislike Rift Mage. So just pick a different spec and never play rift mage again. Problem Solved.

And you're apparently an ass.

[draken-heart]

And you're apparently an ass.

 

Just helping you solve your issue. If you never play rift mage, nor use Solas, then Rift mage is no longer draining your mana or useless.

[andy6915]

Just helping you solve your issue. If you never play rift mage, nor use Solas, then Rift mage is no longer draining your mana or useless.

I don't hate it though, I like it as a concept and its abilities. The PROBLEM is that it seems to not work that well with storm magic, which is my main element. If I was fire focused, I would likely be singing a very different tune. That's why the title notes that it might just be bad for storm... Which further research shows is the case. For storm you either use it for sleep combos, or you never use chain lightning. One or the other, because said sleep combo cancels the weakened effect the passives rely on.

[draken-heart]

I don't hate it though, I like it as a concept and its abilities. The PROBLEM is that it seems to not work that well with storm magic, which is my main element. If I was fire focused, I would likely be singing a very different tune. That's why the title notes that it might just be bad for storm... Which further research shows is the case. For storm you either use it for sleep combos, or you never use chain lightning. One or the other, because said sleep combo cancels the weakened effect the passives rely on.

 

And you say it sucks, and therefore the answer is to not play it or use Solas at all.

[andy6915]

And you say it sucks, and therefore the answer is to not play it or use Solas at all.

It does suck... For storm, if you don't want to just become a sandman.

I was less informed and more ignorant (and irritated from rift mage not working with storm like I thought it would) when I made this topic. So get off my ass.

[draken-heart]

Then you must not have been on the forums AT ALL. IT is common knowledge that Rift Mage and storm do not play nicely together, and has been fro a while now.

[andy6915]

Then you must not have been on the forums AT ALL. IT is common knowledge that Rift Mage and storm do not play nicely together, and has been fro a while now.

I don't often enter combat or build sections, I stick to scuttlebutt and story sections. So yes, I was unaware. And again, sleep combos are surprisingly good, I'm surprised no builds have been made around it yet.

[draken-heart]

I don't often enter combat or build sections, I stick to scuttlebutt and story sections. So yes, I was unaware. And again, sleep combos are surprisingly good, I'm surprised no builds have been made around it yet.

 

So is freeze+W&S warrior or DW rogue. Plus, Fire is the best school of elements PERIOD. The only thing Storm is good for is Energy Barrage.

[andy6915]

So is freeze+W&S warrior or DW rogue. Plus, Fire is the best school of elements PERIOD. The only thing Storm is good for is Energy Barrage.

You think so? You're obviously ignorant of how powerful the upgraded static cage is. 50% of weapon damage every time ANYTHING hits an enemy within it, even from other party members. This means entire party damage is 50% higher for the entire duration. Don't do what I did and show your ignorance to the world by saying what you just did.

[draken-heart]

You think so? You're obviously ignorant of how powerful the upgraded static cage is. 50% of weapon damage every time ANYTHING hits an enemy within it, even from other party members. This means entire party damage is 50% higher for the entire duration. Don't do what I did and show your ignorance to the world by saying what you just did.

 

50% of weapon damage, BASED on weapon damage, not DPS. Not that great compared to 12 hits of 66% weapon damage or fire mine upgraded with burn bonuses.

[The Baconer]

50% of weapon damage, BASED on weapon damage, not DPS. Not that great compared to 12 hits of 66% weapon damage or fire mine upgraded with burn bonuses.

 

Why would you try to directly compare it with nuking abilities? That's just inane. Static Cage is a great utility spell that enhances other abilities used within it, including the ones you listed.

[draken-heart]

Why would you try to directly compare it with nuking abilities? That's just inane. Static Cage is a great utility spell that enhances other abilities used within it, including the ones you listed.

 

Freeze an enemy warrior shatters and kills,  no need for static cage.

[andy6915]

Why would you try to directly compare it with nuking abilities? That's just inane. Static Cage is a great utility spell that enhances other abilities used within it, including the ones you listed.

Glad someone gets it.

[draken-heart]

Glad someone gets it.

 

When talking rift mage, you need damage to regain mana. Static cage, even upgraded, does not do enough damage to justify the cost of using it.