First off, I am both an avid PvPer as well as PvEer, so my suggestions try to keep both aspects of the game in mind. The following post pertains to mage souls only. Yeah, I know other callings have issues. Other callings need buffs or nerfs here or there for one reason or another. This post is in the mage forum, so let me preface this by saying "I don't care, and if you really want to complain about rogues, warriors, or clerics, go do it in your own forums". It's a sad fact that mages aren't able to discuss anything about their favorite calling in their own boards without someone from another calling trolling the threads and complaining at length about their calling's shortcomings and why our calling deserves to suck because warriors don't have enough viable builds, and rogues don't want to compete with us for DPS slots, etc. etc. You people have your own forums to make your own suggestions about your own callings. I promise, I'm not going to come dump on them because mages are more important than you, or whatever banal reasoning you have for trolling our boards.
Having gotten that out of the way...this post is going to be pretty longwinded and filled with my own opinions on how to change/balance mages for the better. There's going to be some rants and some rather blunt statements here and there, so you'll have to forgive me for that I guess. I don't sugar coat things very well.
While most players look at the soul system we have and demand more synergy so that they can min max hybrid builds and carve out niches for themselves as "best heal build", "best DPS build", etc., I think we lose sight of balance along the way. I think the reason for us wanting more synergy is that the higher tier powers in many cases are poorly designed or poorly implemented, and we just don't want to feel like we're wasting points. However, while min maxing is great in terms of making the best out of what we have, it's also what has lead us to where we are now. Creative uses for soul talents in hybrid builds leads to Trion nerfing us. Mages have struggled since beta with synergy due to a number of nerfs across all of our souls to cut back on hybrid effectiveness. Anyone who remembers the old tempest knows what I'm talking about, and more recent use of burning purpose with building storm and plague bolt should be something many players who signed on at launch have heard of. Trion has made it a point, at least where mage souls are concerned, to put the real key/useful talents and abilities deep into the tree while sadly neglecting many 38, 44, and 51 point powers, or just flat out nerfing some abilities into the ground to avoid unexpected synergies. These practices are causing the mage calling to begin lagging behind the other callings in key areas. (more on that later)
We haven't reached a breaking point yet, but it's getting irksome. Too many of us feel like we're not being heard, or that Trion isn't communicating enough with us about their idea of where mages should be and what they should be capable of. I submit that Trion has made a few points clear and is still working on the situation. Trion has told us indirectly that effective (some would argue over effective) hybrid builds are not allowed and need to be nerfed, while telling us directly that they do plan on making 51 point builds more effective eventually.
So, where do we find balance? Is it in creating synergies that make any combination of the souls we have useful yet not overpowered? (a clearly difficult task to say the least, but a wonderfully ambitious one) Or is it to create more viable pure spec builds, and less powerful but more useful hybrid builds? I personally believe that pure spec builds should be more effective at their chosen roles than hybrids, but with less utility. A pure spec chloromancer should outheal a chloro warlock hybrid, just for the sake of an example. A balance model based on this will be easier to achieve, but will unfortunately detract a bit from Rift's "combine anything you want" theology. Well, the way I see it, if combining things how we want is going to get us nerfed because it pushes our effectiveness up to near "best in class" status, then it seems clear that we aren't allowed to combine anything we want. If that's the case, and we want something more balanced, then we need to evaluate each soul on it's own and how effective it is on it's own. Synergies should still exist, but since some of our key synergy abilities that we use today for hybrids (tempest and warlock armor) are so deep in their respective trees, it will keep them away from deep spec builds who would be overpowered if balanced in the ways I would suggest. It's with this in mind that I have come to the opinion that souls should be balanced at the 51 point level first, and finding tier 1-4 synergy with other souls should be considered only after each soul is shored up properly on it's own. I suspect that was how the souls were designed originally, and sadly we seem to have gotten away from that. Balancing is always a process, never a goal, so with that in mind I've decided to try and give some constructive suggestions and criticisms here.
Dominator:
Make no mistake, for mages 1.3 will be the rise of the dominator. If you can't find anything else to be excited about with mages in Rift right now, get excited over this. The changes on the PTS are looking great in light of the way CC has been implemented and subsequently nerfed in 1.2. Dominator is having some of the clunky and useless CC taken out (overpowering will ,disorient, the old priest's lament), it's mostly useless regen mechanic (iron will) replaced with a wicked debuff and AOE party heal, and it's signature abilities (chastise and draining presence, previously PVP only powers) replaced with what I feel are better powers that work in PVE and PVP. These new abilities will attack core mechanics (power/mana/energy regen drains and blocks) rather than deal with CC in it's current form (and thus NO immunity) plus we'll be getting significantly better damage scaling and output through spells like storm shackle/microburst and split personality. The implications and possibilities for PVP are obvious, but even in PVE we may see some serious utility being brought about with Dominators. We can't CC a boss, but it may be entirely possible for us to slow down his casting, force him to heal us when he does damage to us, and even possibly reflect some of his spells back at him. If Trion has been listening to us in terms of making Dominator PVE viable, and all signs point to the fact they have been, then we may be in for some real surprises. It's unknown at this time if the new dominator powers are going to work like this in a raid environment, but I suspect it's highly likely that they do or will in the future. Hopefully someone from the community can get on the PTS and test this stuff out, especially any of the bigger guilds currently testing hammerknell.
So, that about sums up the "good". Now for the tough love.
We have 2 support souls, 1 healing soul, and 4 DPS/offensive souls. In a perfect world, you would be able to PVE or PVP with any of them, and manage to do alright. The reality check is that we have (up until now) 1 useful support soul for PVE that's not great at all for PVP, and one mostly useless support soul for PVP that is almost completely useless in PVE. We have 1 healing soul that is useful in a raid but never more than 2 are needed, and in PVP...well, chloro's a mixed bag. We have 1 DPS build that is a combination of 2 DPS souls that is on par with top level PVE DPS, 1 hybrid that does about 25-40% less damage than the previously mentioned hybrid, and the rest are all trash. (I know, you warlock and necro enthusiasts get bent when someone tells you that your favorite soul is trash in PVE, but for raids..well..it just is. 1k DPS is not acceptable when other DPS slots are pulling 2k. It's just how it is, don't shoot the messenger) To complicate matters further, most of our souls have the same problem that most souls in the game in general have. TOO MUCH CC, packed into every soul. The game was rampant with it at launch, and it's because of this overabundance of CC in every soul that makes some of them even harder to balance. (It's my opinion that no soul should have had more than 1 CC option in it's arsenal, with the exception of support souls.) With this in mind, here's what I'd like to see change. This will read as a bit of a "mage's dream patch notes" that in some cases couldn't exist without other callings being given the overhauls they need alongside of this, so keep that in mind.
Archon:
As our primary support soul for PVE, it has a few shortcomings. 1, there's no need to ever bring more than 1. 2, it's survivability is quite low in PvP. This is primarily due to a lack of defenses, healing, and crowd control. These things can be shored up with hybrid builds, but will largely detract from it's ability to support a group if you steal points away from it.
As a support role, you are expected to help keep others alive, help them do damage while you yourself likely puts out less damage on your own, or hamper the enemy enough so that your team comes out ahead. To date, archon has been mostly about helping your team do more damage while you sacrifice your own damage along with some relatively minor buffs to survivability for your team at the cost of your own survivability. Overall I think Archon is pretty well designed, as it's one of the only good 51 point soul builds we have, but it's not so good in PvP as a 51 point build. So, my suggestions are as follows:
Consuming flames: Shrouds your ally or yourself in protective flames. Any time the recipient of the buff is hit, there is a 3% chance that consuming flames will proc a damage shield that will absorb up to 3% of the Archon's maximum mana pool. Can only affect 1 target at a time, and can not be stacked with other Consuming flames effects. (think defensive synthesis)
Martyr's Solace: 3 point talent. Increases the damage absorbed by Consuming flames by 3/6/9%, and the proc chance by 2/4/6%. Reduces the Archon's maximum health by 4/8/12% for each point spent. (this will keep it away from burning bright pyros)
Lava field: removed, replaced with Earth's Embrace: An earth based AOE that works the same way as lava field, with the following change. 15 second cooldown. Allies within the earth's embrace receive a stack of the Earth's Embrace field buff each second, which increases the effect of healing spells that land on them by 2% each stack, max 5 stacks. These stacks last for 10 seconds. (and are not removed for each heal that lands as they do with lava field)
Healing Flames: Removed, replaced with Healing Embrace: 2 point talent. Increases the duration of the healing bonus provided by stacks of Earth's Embrace for 2 seconds.
Power in numbers: 2 point talent. Allows multiple archon auras to stack, but reduces their effectiveness to 55-60% if another archon is present. Increases spell damage and healing by 2-4% for each archon aura active in the group.
These small changes will make archons more valuable in numbers to a raid, help their pvp survivability, and do so without increasing their damage much beyond what it currently is.
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