[Mage] Adjustments for 1.5

[lgw]

In the following I'll go through all souls and a little general stuff about the Mage and his souls. While it may seem to be more about PVP, it's largely because our problems in PVE are less severe than in PVP (which are also addressed in another thread).

General
* General tree synergy: Issue since beta - what about at least some kind of response ?!!
* Backloading: We always need to build up something - at least charge, usually also de/buffs to get some meaningful results. This is complicated and prone to mishaps during situation, and creates some issues in PVE and serious issues in PVP. Yet our finishers (except maybe some SC stuff and Fulminate) lack the impact of the only other class with such mechanics - Rogues.
* Crit cap: In T4 gear, both PVE and PVP (which is more crit heavy) we are close to or over the crit cap, pre enchanting and stuff. Please save us wasted stats.
* Worthless Wisdom: Hitting the softcap for regen is well possbile in random T2 gear, besides that fact that Mages hardly need it anyway. So again, Wis is kinda a bad deal to us, as it's only useful as in giving us 0.5 SP - not even some avoidance or stuff like Str/Dex do for physical classes.

Archmage
* Talents up to T4 left and T1 right side are nice. Rest is underpowered to crap.
* Root talents are very useful up to 5p, kinda useful up to 10p, and very situational afterwards - at least take Rune Shield off the GCD and lessen Phase Shift CD to 2min.
* Some kind of actually useful and attainable heal debuff and some kind of mobility enhancer would really suit that soul well.

Archon
* Suffers from the unique snowflake style due depencies on auras.
* Make some talents and root abilities more interesting to take, as an alternative to fix above.
* Kinda crappy in PVP due build up time, self debuffing and little utlity/burst. But I guess we can live with one primary PVE support soul.

Chloromancer
* Void Life is far too in the tree as it became such a central ability. Move it much lower with less power, and add it to the 32p passive scaling talent to make it the same again at 51p, to stop to force people into 51p specs.
* We're crappy actual healers in PVP, despite it being a healing soul, as we have very little ability to actually save people getting focused - and the one we had (Bloom) has nerfed PVP healing.
* ... and we take a double hit, as compared to direct healing, our indirect healing becomes much worse the more Valor people have. Fix, please ?!

Dominator
* DRs hit this souls hard, although some bugs seem to be addressed for 1.5.
* Make Thunder Blast instant hit - an interrupt on GCD is already bad enough, but over 1s travel time make it a joke.
* Please make the spamable nuke of this soul (Neural Prod) more than a joke ? Thank you. Cleaning up some meeh talents Efficient Control would be nice, too.
* Controlled Opportunity is bad. With 5/5 it's bearable as gateway to Swift Control, but with lesser investment it hurts you instead of helping.
* Like Archon, this is PVP heavy - but again, probably something to live with.

Elementalist
* Oh dear, we need a miracle.
* Kinda OK passives, but you more dodge around the real crappy stuff to get to Tempest. Hence rather make Tempest a low tier (T3 ?) scaling ability, which increases crit bonus dmg by 1% per point in Ele.
* Then fix all the real crappy pet related stuff.
* Afterwards make the nukes at least not suck royally if used without outside supporst (basically only LS with SC).
* And at last, if this supporst to be the utility like soul, than make it so - Encase / Icy Gale are a bad joke.

Necromancer
* Please add proper pet scaling.
* With that, it would be a nice, solid soul. A bit better utility (like less crappy off-heals) for PVP and a bit better sustained DPS for PVE, and you'd have a solid, well rounded soul.

Pyromancer
* You're already addressing GoP - that's a major concern.
* IDK if Withering Flames critting alone will save it, but it's a shot. I'd probably make it instant, with the channel happening automatically draining Charge (like WL Defile), and lower the CD to 20s.
* Maybe also slight up Combust to 30% or 35%.
* That would be the slightly needed DPS increase for PVE, and better allow for setting up some burst without getting 1.1 Fulminate issues again.

Stormcaller
* Mostly solid - but please somewhat lessen the overly complicated rotation with debuffs and Charge toggles, so we don't get royally screwed by anything but stand still fights in PVE, and have more options than fishing for snipes in PVP.
* Also give us at least some range utility besides slow. Mages have weak defenses due CC, but after a single snare braker this one has none. Hell, even an interrupt and/or cast time increase would already help.

Warlock
* Actually the best and well most rounded soul we have - if every other lived up to this measure, we'd be fine. Hence only some minor suggestions.
* Make our 3min CDs slightly less strong, but shorten their CDs the same - would save us tons of whine threads about double 3min Chlorolocks and give the more actual usage.
* Half Neddra's Torture delay to 10s and make it profit from Neddar's Influence.
* Give the Soul an actual Charge dump besides 51 ED - even Defile lets you still build up, and even that is at 38p.
* This is more or less our anti-melee soul, but Mass Fear is horribly deep in for it to be PBAE, and Warlock Armor suffers from healing debuffs..
* Mortality is supposed to be a lifer saver the getting jumped by a crowd. Right now it's a wasted GCD - please fix !

[Shhhh]

Wow this is actually a good post.

I am nearly exclusive necrolock and I really hope they improve pet scaling including tank pet scaling. Also make shadow revenant useful. That would make me a happy mage

You have a lot of great points in this thread and it wouldnt overpower anything since it's stuff that should be in place anyway. I hope some of this gets at least discussed on dev.

[Shhhh]

Some things I would like to see in addition to necro:
- Plague bolt is still useless. noone specs it
- Detonate bones.. useless. I would at least want it's aoe dmg to be high and be able to manually detonate it.
- Shadow revenant is terrible still and could be such an awesome pet if Trion spent just a little time on it.
- 5 minute cd on 51 point ability

The necro could be such a cool tree, but it's lacking right now. All we do is spec dots, purge, and zealot and it has the potential to be so much more amazing.

Cmon Trion

[Aggressive]

In the following I'll go through all souls and a little general stuff about the Mage and his souls. While it may seem to be more about PVP, it's largely because our problems in PVE are less severe than in PVP (which are also addressed in another thread).

General
* General tree synergy: Issue since beta - what about at least some kind of response ?!!
* Backloading: We always need to build up something - at least charge, usually also de/buffs to get some meaningful results. This is complicated and prone to mishaps during situation, and creates some issues in PVE and serious issues in PVP. Yet our finishers (except maybe some SC stuff and Fulminate) lack the impact of the only other class with such mechanics - Rogues.
* Crit cap: In T4 gear, both PVE and PVP (which is more crit heavy) we are close to or over the crit cap, pre enchanting and stuff. Please save us wasted stats.
* Worthless Wisdom: Hitting the softcap for regen is well possbile in random T2 gear, besides that fact that Mages hardly need it anyway. So again, Wis is kinda a bad deal to us, as it's only useful as in giving us 0.5 SP - not even some avoidance or stuff like Str/Dex do for physical classes.

Archmage
* Talents up to T4 left and T1 right side are nice. Rest is underpowered to crap.
* Root talents are very useful up to 5p, kinda useful up to 10p, and very situational afterwards - at least take Rune Shield off the GCD and lessen Phase Shift CD to 2min.
* Some kind of actually useful and attainable heal debuff and some kind of mobility enhancer would really suit that soul well.

Archon
* Suffers from the unique snowflake style due depencies on auras.
* Make some talents and root abilities more interesting to take, as an alternative to fix above.
* Kinda crappy in PVP due build up time, self debuffing and little utlity/burst. But I guess we can live with one primary PVE support soul.

Chloromancer
* Void Life is far too in the tree as it became such a central ability. Move it much lower with less power, and add it to the 32p passive scaling talent to make it the same again at 51p, to stop to force people into 51p specs.
* We're crappy actual healers in PVP, despite it being a healing soul, as we have very little ability to actually save people getting focused - and the one we had (Bloom) has nerfed PVP healing.
* ... and we take a double hit, as compared to direct healing, our indirect healing becomes much worse the more Valor people have. Fix, please ?!

Dominator
* DRs hit this souls hard, although some bugs seem to be addressed for 1.5.
* Make Thunder Blast instant hit - an interrupt on GCD is already bad enough, but over 1s travel time make it a joke.
* Please make the spamable nuke of this soul (Neural Prod) more than a joke ? Thank you. Cleaning up some meeh talents Efficient Control would be nice, too.
* Controlled Opportunity is bad. With 5/5 it's bearable as gateway to Swift Control, but with lesser investment it hurts you instead of helping.
* Like Archon, this is PVP heavy - but again, probably something to live with.

Elementalist
* Oh dear, we need a miracle.
* Kinda OK passives, but you more dodge around the real crappy stuff to get to Tempest. Hence rather make Tempest a low tier (T3 ?) scaling ability, which increases crit bonus dmg by 1% per point in Ele.
* Then fix all the real crappy pet related stuff.
* Afterwards make the nukes at least not suck royally if used without outside supporst (basically only LS with SC).
* And at last, if this supporst to be the utility like soul, than make it so - Encase / Icy Gale are a bad joke.

Necromancer
* Please add proper pet scaling.
* With that, it would be a nice, solid soul. A bit better utility (like less crappy off-heals) for PVP and a bit better sustained DPS for PVE, and you'd have a solid, well rounded soul.

Pyromancer
* You're already addressing GoP - that's a major concern.
* IDK if Withering Flames critting alone will save it, but it's a shot. I'd probably make it instant, with the channel happening automatically draining Charge (like WL Defile), and lower the CD to 20s.
* Maybe also slight up Combust to 30% or 35%.
* That would be the slightly needed DPS increase for PVE, and better allow for setting up some burst without getting 1.1 Fulminate issues again.

Stormcaller
* Mostly solid - but please somewhat lessen the overly complicated rotation with debuffs and Charge toggles, so we don't get royally screwed by anything but stand still fights in PVE, and have more options than fishing for snipes in PVP.
* Also give us at least some range utility besides slow. Mages have weak defenses due CC, but after a single snare braker this one has none. Hell, even an interrupt and/or cast time increase would already help.

Warlock
* Actually the best and well most rounded soul we have - if every other lived up to this measure, we'd be fine. Hence only some minor suggestions.
* Make our 3min CDs slightly less strong, but shorten their CDs the same - would save us tons of whine threads about double 3min Chlorolocks and give the more actual usage.
* Half Neddra's Torture delay to 10s and make it profit from Neddar's Influence.
* Give the Soul an actual Charge dump besides 51 ED - even Defile lets you still build up, and even that is at 38p.
* This is more or less our anti-melee soul, but Mass Fear is horribly deep in for it to be PBAE, and Warlock Armor suffers from healing debuffs..
* Mortality is supposed to be a lifer saver the getting jumped by a crowd. Right now it's a wasted GCD - please fix !

Man this is a great Post. I really hope the devs take a look at this and see some of our concerns for the mage class.
As a person who plays Pyro/Elem. I kind of have some concerns myself. Mainly about the pyromancer armor; Is there any way we can get the proc raised a little. Maybe to 13% or 15%. It just seems sometimes in raids it hardly procs at all. Then sometimes it procs two or three times in a row. I think it would be great for PVE, and in the process not affecting PVP much.

Second concern. Can we get a longer time for exposure to be up. 30 secs is not long enough at all. Can we get maybe 1 min or 2 mins on that to keep it up longer.

Third Concern. One of the things I noticed in raids as well is that Pyro AOE is no where near as good as Storm/Elem. Is There anyway we can buff the damage on Fire storm or Burning Ground or both.

These are my concerns with the mage class ATM. Please Dicuss

Thanks Trion for reading this

[Azguard]

Backloading: We always need to build up something - at least charge, usually also de/buffs to get some meaningful results. This is complicated and prone to mishaps during situation, and creates some issues in PVE and serious issues in PVP. Yet our finishers (except maybe some SC stuff and Fulminate) lack the impact of the only other class with such mechanics - Rogues.

Agree. We're the only class that has to build up the privilege of using another resource bar whereas other ones build up points for finishers only. And most of the charge abilities aren't even that great.

* Talents up to T4 left and T1 right side are nice. Rest is underpowered to crap.
some kind of mobility enhancer would really suit that soul well.

Totally. The rank 6 ones are especially crappy. Rift Tomb would be better if it were say 3 minute cooldown and targets can't be immune to it so it would be a reliable escape. Right now it's even worse than Transmogrify essentially thanks to diminishing returns which makes it not work most of the time.

As many mages have suggested, we really do need a teleport/blink type talent in archmage with a low cooldown. Flickr requires pyro tree. The generic Break Free for each class is horrible! A warrrior with break free compared to a mage with break free uses it under different conditions and for different purposes. Warrior usually for attack to break cc on offense, mage usually for defense to escape with his life.

* Void Life is far too in the tree as it became such a central ability. Move it much lower with less power, and add it to the 32p passive scaling talent to make it the same again at 51p, to stop to force people into 51p specs.
* We're crappy actual healers in PVP, despite it being a healing soul, as we have very little ability to actually save people getting focused - and the one we had (Bloom) has nerfed PVP healing.
* ... and we take a double hit, as compared to direct healing, our indirect healing becomes much worse the more Valor people have. Fix, please ?!

Yes, void life is used because it's instant channeled so less chance for failure. 51 points in the tree is too high and for pvp essentially forces you to go 51 point which leaves you with essentially no options for other trees aside from archmage. should be lowered to a 31-38 point talent.

The broad stroke -50% healing nerf is not the wisest. Bloom and fluorish cannot be spammed, it should not suffer from the same -50% penalty. Maybe -30% would be better.

Yes, higher valor means chloro does less healing depending on target rank. Whereas cleric heals always hit for the same amount.

* Make Thunder Blast instant hit - an interrupt on GCD is already bad enough, but over 1s travel time make it a joke.
* Please make the spamable nuke of this soul (Neural Prod) more than a joke ? Thank you. Cleaning up some meeh talents Efficient Control would be nice, too.

Agree, after dom nerf it's quite crappy except for transmogrify but only when talented. so basically you're going a minimum 16 points just for some sort of cc which is used more for survival.

I'm thinking adding a blink/teleport talent to the tree under 16 points would help a lot.

* Oh dear, we need a miracle.
* Kinda OK passives, but you more dodge around the real crappy stuff to get to Tempest. Hence rather make Tempest a low tier (T3 ?) scaling ability, which increases crit bonus dmg by 1% per point in Ele.
* And at last, if this supporst to be the utility like soul, than make it so - Encase / Icy Gale are a bad joke.

Elementalist is so bad for pvp compared to necrolock, chlorolock or anything else even for that matter.

* Please add proper pet scaling.
* With that, it would be a nice, solid soul. A bit better utility (like less crappy off-heals) for PVP and a bit better sustained DPS for PVE, and you'd have a solid, well rounded soul.

Yes, a buff to the 2 heal spells would really be interesting and give a new spec/job to serve in warfronts.

[Hateborne]

I really don't want, nor can I actually do, a repost of an entire thread.

"It's dangerous to go alone! Take this." -> http://forums.riftgame.com/rift-gene...rs-i-hope.html
Oh and this -> http://forums.riftgame.com/rift-gene...s-1-5-a-3.html

Been begging for some of this, for what seems like forever and a day.

WTB Other Viable Mage Specs, PST.


-Hate

[Shhhh]

I hope trion sees this O.o

[AquaSquirrel]

Third Concern. One of the things I noticed in raids as well is that Pyro AOE is no where near as good as Storm/Elem. Is There anyway we can buff the damage on Fire storm or Burning Ground or both.

Pyro/ELE AOE beats out SC/ELE on matron and zilas AOE. SC/ELE wins for AOE on 4 target fights. If you are not doing more with Pyro/ELE you are not using it properly. If you know an AOE phase is coming, suck it up, eat 80 charge for reduced mana casts with smoldering presence and just cancel cast FS non stop. Still does more than internalize charged FS and the damage is frontloaded.

[Dreabyne]

I will admit I am sort of shooting for the stars here but I would like to see
1) pushback protection in Chloro
2) Something I can do when forced to move
3) some immunity to perma kite by warriors
4) silence and fear being on same DR as they are the same basic thing for a mage - both make us compeltely useless
5) ability to actually use a dps tree in pvp and not know that the second anything looks at you funny you are dead. If I see a SC in a bg on my assasin rogue I know I have a 90% chance to burst him down before a healer can even react and that's with a calling that is known to be weak and in need of a major buff.
6) competitive dps
7) Mortality to be unccable - note that other long cd channels are protected (think strafe in rogue)

Let me repeat AN ABILITY TO USE DPS SOULS IN PvP without using 32 chloro!

[VeroMaestro]

Some things I would like to see in addition to necro:
- Plague bolt is still useless. noone specs it
- Detonate bones.. useless. I would at least want it's aoe dmg to be high and be able to manually detonate it.
- Shadow revenant is terrible still and could be such an awesome pet if Trion spent just a little time on it.
- 5 minute cd on 51 point ability

The necro could be such a cool tree, but it's lacking right now. All we do is spec dots, purge, and zealot and it has the potential to be so much more amazing.

Cmon Trion

I'd love to see plague bolt hit like a 2second cast SHOULD hit (especially without all of off GCD other classes have).

And 5mins on a 51pt ability is just bad design.

[DiabolicWeapon]

Pyro/ELE AOE beats out SC/ELE on matron and zilas AOE. SC/ELE wins for AOE on 4 target fights. If you are not doing more with Pyro/ELE you are not using it properly. If you know an AOE phase is coming, suck it up, eat 80 charge for reduced mana casts with smoldering presence and just cancel cast FS non stop. Still does more than internalize charged FS and the damage is frontloaded.

So are you doing 3100+ dps on Zilas and Matron as Pyro/Ele?

[Aggressive]

I'd love to see plague bolt hit like a 2second cast SHOULD hit (especially without all of off GCD other classes have).

And 5mins on a 51pt ability is just bad design.

I am curious about this one as well. Why is this the CD on the 51 point talent of necro tree at 5 mins with a long cast time at that. Trust me and the other mages; 3 sec cast time is long too. Forgive me as i say this, but that is bad design indeed. Would like to see this reworked along with the other issues of the mage trees.

[titansgrip]

So why are all those things "crappy"?

A long post that doesn't really elaborate or provide any concrete data or numbers. Hm.

[OniGanon]

Archon Suggestions
- Change Soul Fire to increase both Fire and Earth damage (rename to Soul Magma or whatever) so it can affect more of the Archon's early abilities.
- Swap Blood Pact for Exhilaration. Tier 1 talents should be useful from 1pt onwards. Blood Pact needs 4pts in Archon to even do anything.
- Swap Favored Ally for Strength of Stone. There's no need for an aura improving talent when you don't even get your second aura until 10pts in. Pillaging Stone improvements, on the other hand, are useful right from the beginning.
- Reduce cooldown on Lava Field to 15 seconds. 90s is completely absurd.
- Reduce cooldown of Rockslide to 15 seconds.
- Replace Efficiency. Deep spec Archons don't care about mana costs.
- Replace or improve Flowing Sand.
- Replace Purification. Archons already get Cleansing Flames.
- Increase Lingering Dust and Crumbling Resistance self-buff duration to 1hr, to match Ashen Defense.

[OniGanon]

Chloromancer Suggestions
- Reduce Withering Vine cast time to instant
- Have Healing Slipstream reduce Natural Healing cast time by 0.5s per point
- Have Nature's Swiftness reduce Nature's Touch cast time by 0.5s per point
- Reduce cooldown of Stream of Reclamation to 15s
- Replace Bloom with Stream of Reclamation
- Replace Synthesis with Natural Fusion
- Move Empathic Bond down to tier 4
- Replace Nature's Touch with Wild Abandon and have Unleashed Abandon require Wild Abandon
- Place Blight in Tier 6
- Change root abilities to the following:
2 Withering Vine
4 Lifegiving Veil
6 Bloom
6 Flourish
8 Ruin
10 Entropic Veil
10 Track Life Creatures
12 Lifebound Veil
12 Synthesis
14 Nature's Touch
16 Corrosion
18 Nature's Cleansing
20 Soul Tether
20 Seed of Life
26 Nature's Fury
32 Natural Conversion
32 Living Energy
32 Living Infusion
38 Natural Healing
44 Void Life
51 Natural Splendor