18 réponses à ce sujet

[CosmicGnosis]

The Trespasser ability upgrades have changed the potential for many kinds of class builds. Just curious about the great BSN's response to the Rift Mage vs. Knight-Enchanter question.

[sjsharp2011]

The Trespasser ability upgrades have changed the potential for many kinds of class builds. Just curious about the great BSN's response to the Rift Mage vs. Knight-Enchanter question.

 

 

I think it depends on whether you like to get up close and personal with your enemies or prefer to keep them at a distance. Personally I prefer to keep my enemies at range but I did enjoy my playthrough I did as a KE though and will likely do another at some point. Rift mage is my fave class though because it does keep the enemy at range very well.

[PapaCharlie9]

IMO, the new toggles for upgrades benefited other specs much more than either KE or RM. Which is a good thing, since for example Necro needed a boost. Necro got the lion's share of improvements for mage specializations and is now a much more playable class. I never would have considered a solo run with a Necro before Trespasser, but now it doesn't seem so crazy.

The nerf of KE's Spirit Blade was a pretty big change, enough to put a lot of people off KE. Arguably, this was also a good thing, since KE was such an OP outlier, practically wasn't a mage class anymore.

RM was practically unchanged. The new Veilstrike and the new PotA have marginal utility, and the new Stonefist is a no-op except for maybe dragons and promoted Knights. Which is fine, since RM was pretty all-around good before Trespasser. Don't fix what ain't broke.

That said, all mage classes benefited from the rework of Winter. I ran a level capped RM through Trespasser DLC with a Winter's Ruin/Ice Array loadout and had a blast. Winter is now quite playable, though Inferno still can't be beat for pure damage and utility.

So I'd say that post-Trespasser is less about KE and RM and more about Necro and Winter. And "roll to win" for Warriors, sigh.

[Serillen]

Rift Mage actually came out quite well in Trespasser. The new option for immolate basically gives you a 300% weapon damage spell with no cooldown which you can spam to trigger clean burn to get your good spells back. With its unlimited mana restoration you pretty much always have something to cast, just avoid lightning based spells like they have the plague(because they sorta do and will kill your weakness debuffs). Knight Enchanters on the other hand lost access to their spammable 300% weapon damage spell for a much more gimmicky charge up option. If you want to play KE as a melee character at this point I'd say go play a warrior or rogue do a lot more damage and save yourself some annoyance. However as a ranged caster KE is fairly solid.

[PapaCharlie9]

Rift Mage actually came out quite well in Trespasser. The new option for immolate basically gives you a 300% weapon damage spell with no cooldown which you can spam to trigger clean burn to get your good spells back. With its unlimited mana restoration you pretty much always have something to cast ...

Interesting. I hadn't seen that synergy before. Does it work, though? Restorative Veil is not really unlimited mana restoration and Immolate/Consuming Fire burns up all your mana after only 3 casts, 4 with lyrium potion. That seems more like trading off a cooldown limitation for a mana limitation. Since cooldown is a lot easier to buff, does it make sense to make that trade-off?

[Forsythia77]

You know what I find funny about KE is that I consistently pick it as a mage specialization but almost never take spirit blade as an active spell.  I'm kind of it it for the passives and the barrier, I guess.  I cannot get into Rift Mage at all - even with the toggled upgrades.  I've tried.  It feels like a less fun version of Force Mage from DAII.  And I enjoyed Force Mage a lot (honestly as a mage it was the only specialization that I found interesting in DAII.  I'm not into being a healer and not into blood magic at all).  It was fun as hell to Fist of the Maker a group of mooks and the same spell with a different name as RM just feels.. lacking.  I'm kind of an odd duck that way though. 

[sjsharp2011]

You know what I find funny about KE is that I consistently pick it as a mage specialization but almost never take spirit blade as an active spell.  I'm kind of it it for the passives and the barrier, I guess.  I cannot get into Rift Mage at all - even with the toggled upgrades.  I've tried.  It feels like a less fun version of Force Mage from DAII.  And I enjoyed Force Mage a lot (honestly as a mage it was the only specialization that I found interesting in DAII.  I'm not into being a healer and not into blood magic at all).  It was fun as hell to Fist of the Maker a group of mooks and the same spell with a different name as RM just feels.. lacking.  I'm kind of an odd duck that way though. 

yeah I mostly used it for Barrier recharge and all that too during my play with it too. Although I did use Spirit Blade but mostly on enemies that got close to me and for taking out the dragons. As I found it very useful against them combined with Frost Step to stay out of the dragon's clutches I found it quite good fun.

[Forsythia77]

yeah I mostly used it for Barrier recharge and all that too during my play with it too. Although I did use Spirit Blade but mostly on enemies that got close to me and for taking out the dragons. As I found it very useful against them combined with Frost Step to stay out of the dragon's clutches I found it quite good fun.

I'm a static cage kind of girl myself.  Ring of doubt always puts you in stealth so I love ninjaing up on a group (especially hakkonites) and static caging the crap out of them with critical hits - or energy barrage. Those are my magey bread and butter.  I also take a giddy joy out of immolating the same target three or four times in a row since I usually take the no cooldown toggle.  I'm easily amused.  Ha!

[sjsharp2011]

I'm a static cage kind of girl myself.  Ring of doubt always puts you in stealth so I love ninjaing up on a group (especially hakkonites) and static caging the crap out of them with critical hits - or energy barrage. Those are my magey bread and butter.  I also take a giddy joy out of immolating the same target three or four times in a row since I usually take the no cooldown toggle.  I'm easily amused.  Ha!

yeah I used static cage a lot in my last rift mage run worked very well. I use energy barrage a lot too regardless of what spec I am as a mage as it's too valuable a power i find to not have in my arsenal or at least it works extremely well with the tactics I tend to use anyway.

[CosmicGnosis]

So what would be considered the optimal build for Rift Mage with the new upgrades?

[PapaCharlie9]

So what would be considered the optimal build for Rift Mage with the new upgrades?

Same as before Trespasser, but with more options. Though I'm waiting to see what @Serillen says about Consuming Fire. If that is true, you could load up on long cooldown abilities, like PotA and Wall of Fire, and then using Consuming Fire + Clean Burn to reduce their cooldowns and get them all back faster.

 

For reference, here are all the actives and upgrades for RM. The second bullet is the new Trespasser upgrade:

 

Stonefist

• Shatterstone:  Area of Effect 4 m, weakened duration 10 sec
• Unblockable Force:  Bonus damage to guard: 250%

Veilstrike

• Punching down:  Cost reduction 15 mana, weakened duration 10 sec
• Wounded Veil:  Cooldown reduction of 50% when you take damage, and now targeted at your location

Pull of the Abyss

• Shaken Veil:  Cooldown reduction 8 sec, Weakened Duration 10 sec
• Devouring Veil:  Damage 500% 

 

As you can see, the toggles only have some special purpose utility, but aren't all that interesting in general, compared to really versatile toggles like Flame Array and Ice Array.

 

You might switch Stonefist to Unblockable Force against a dragon or Pride Demon, anything with lots of guard regen.

 

You might toggle to Wounded Veil if you are really trying to spam PotA or some other long cooldown spell. But the loss of Veilstrike as a CC spell doesn't seem worth it to me.

 

You might toggle to Devouring Veil if you don't have a better AoE damage spell, but that's kind of niche. Who doesn't have Fire Mine? PotA/Shaken Veil + Fire Mine seems like a better option in every respect.

 

While IMO there isn't anything special about RM from Trespasser, there are lots of new options for all mage specs in Winter. Winter got a good boost in Trespasser making an Ice Mage a real option, finally. Here's a build I did that was designed to make the most of combos with Winter's Ruin and Ice Array, plus the awesomeness of Ice Armor.

 

Actives:

1) Fade Step/Frost Step

2) Veilstrike/Punching Down

3) Stonefist/Shatterstone

4) Immolate/Wildfire

5) Ice Mine/Chilling Array

6) Winter's Grasp/Winter's Ruin

7) Pull of the Abyss/Devouring Veil

8) Barrier/Elegent Defense 

 

http://forum.bioware.../#entry19740433

[midnight tea]

I can't help it - I love Devouring Veil too much not too use it. It's such a hilarious spell: PULL - WHOMP!

 

Plus it can do some decent spirit damage, making PotA more than just CC ability.

[CosmicGnosis]

Well, I'm still trying to figure out which specialization is most effective against everything the game throws at it. Knight-Enchanter has great defense, but Rift Mage seems to have better crowd control and damage-per-second. Against a dragon, Knight-Enchanter seems to have the advantage, but Rift Mage now has Unblockable Force, which might be quite effective. I don't know. It seems like a lot of things are balanced now, and that makes this all so complicated.

[ottffsse]

Ke - still "harder to kill" than any other mage with good build and good play on part of the player. Just need to mix in energy barrage or chain lightning in between spirit blade swings to charge blade. Rift - better cc (only slightly though as aggressive use of fade cloak on ke is great knockdown cc), slightly higher dps potential.

In comes down to a hybrid melee mage playstyle on ke vs traditional raged mage controller and nuker on rift basically.

Necro is a bit more exciting to play than either those two imo and you can squeeze a bit more dps out of a necro now than the other mages since stuff like walking bomb can actually crit now.

Mines are op btw since trespasser with a fire belt on no matter the spec you find the most effective thing is just to spam ice array and flame array to kill stuff and maybe barrier in between for some ranged protection, unless you are a ke who can do pure offense.

[PapaCharlie9]

Well, I'm still trying to figure out which specialization is most effective against everything the game throws at it. Knight-Enchanter has great defense, but Rift Mage seems to have better crowd control and damage-per-second. Against a dragon, Knight-Enchanter seems to have the advantage, but Rift Mage now has Unblockable Force, which might be quite effective. I don't know. It seems like a lot of things are balanced now, and that makes this all so complicated.

As it should be. Well, the balanced part, not the complicated part. Now you can play whatever you want and not worry about making a "bad" choice.

[Serillen]

Interesting. I hadn't seen that synergy before. Does it work, though? Restorative Veil is not really unlimited mana restoration and Immolate/Consuming Fire burns up all your mana after only 3 casts, 4 with lyrium potion. That seems more like trading off a cooldown limitation for a mana limitation. Since cooldown is a lot easier to buff, does it make sense to make that trade-off?

 

As long as you have weakness active you should be able to get 6 immolates off while still being at full mana, going to 8 casts will drop your mana down but I think that's more because weakness wears off around that time and needs to be reapplied. I actually ran through using it recently and it worked great especially once you get into tresspasser. Inferno pact belt plus heart of fury will let you spam 2.4k immolates as filler attacks. I didn't even bother using my staff at that point in the game because it was inefficient for me to do so. The only thing I wouldn't recommend is getting chaotic focus with it because you're going to blast through your barriers way too fast and your hp is so low you get dropped by the first enemy that sneezes at you.

[PapaCharlie9]

As long as you have weakness active you should be able to get 6 immolates off while still being at full mana, going to 8 casts will drop your mana down but I think that's more because weakness wears off around that time and needs to be reapplied. I actually ran through using it recently and it worked great especially once you get into tresspasser. 

Wow! I think I completely misunderstood what Restorative Veil does. I thought it was a flat 10% increase to mana regen if nearby enemies are weakened, but based on what you have seen, it sounds more like it is a direct conversion of damage on weakened enemies to mana, at a 10% rate. Now that I re-read the description, I guess it does sort of say that:

 

You pull stray magic from around weakened enemies to regain mana based on the damage you do to them.

Mana Recovery: 10%

 

I think the word "regain" made me think "regen", but "recovery" may in fact be a point-for-point conversion of damage!

 

Oh, Bioware! Why do you have to be so vague? Just give us the Excel spreadsheet next time! 

[PapaCharlie9]

Wow! I think I completely misunderstood what Restorative Veil does. I thought it was a flat 10% increase to mana regen if nearby enemies are weakened, but based on what you have seen, it sounds more like it is a direct conversion of damage on weakened enemies to mana, at a 10% rate. Now that I re-read the description, I guess it does sort of say that:

 

You pull stray magic from around weakened enemies to regain mana based on the damage you do to them.

Mana Recovery: 10%

 

I think the word "regain" made me think "regen", but "recovery" may in fact be a point-for-point conversion of damage!

 

 

No such luck. I did a bunch of tests and can't convince myself that it's a point-for-point damage to mana conversion. Weakness + Restorative Veil does help, but I'm not sure exactly how. Without weakness, I could only do 3 casts, but with weakness I could do 4 and sometimes 5, depending on how much damage I was able to do. It's weird. It does seem to help if there are multiple weakened enemies being damaged at the same time, but it's not a big boost. It might just be an additional 10% boost to regen, multiplicative, per enemy that is weakened.

 

Another confirmation that the buff is to mana regen is that I tried interleaving an auto attack between each casting of Immolate. That also allowed me to squeeze in an extra casting -- more time between castings means more time for mana regen to restore you mana -- though it seems that there is some weird rule about how the cumulative cost of Consuming Fire is calculated. Each cast adds 10 mana, so 25 for the first, 35 for the second, 45 for the third, and so on. If I paused after the third and did an auto attack or three, I would expect the next casting to only cost 25, but it was closer to 55. So the period between consecutive castings is pretty long. Or maybe it is based on mana expenditure rather than time? The "counter" only resets if you expend mana using a different ability?

[Serillen]

I can say for sure its not a boost to mana regeneration but a direct increase to mana. I'm not sure if its based off number of enemies hit or amount of damage dealt but it can easily jump you from 20 mana to full in one spell cast. The only thing that affects it is using lightning based anything because shock interacts poorly with weakness and causes it to bug out. As for consuming fire, in order to reset its mana I'm pretty sure it requires casting another spell, auto attacks don't seem to have an effect on it.