Storm Legion New Mage Soul Reveal

[Robotnik]

A big issue affecting mages at the moment is the synergy between souls. We have DPS, Healing, Support and Pet trees that utilize all six of the games elements and many abilities only increase damage of a certain type. Which elements in particular was the new soul designed to synergize with?

As characters improve more and more, their pets become increasingly inefficient due to how they scale. Recent changes to other callings improved their pet trees to make them viable in an end-game environment. Can you reveal any plans for the future of the Necromancer & Elementalist souls?

Will we see more uses for the Charge mechanic in Soul Legion?

What other names have been given to the new mage soul, if any?

The community has obviously given a huge amount of feedback regarding what they hope to see from future soul trees. Can you give any examples as to where the feedback has been put to use?

At the moment, from a PvE raiding perspective, there is very little reason to go beyond approximately 11 Dominator as the vast majority of the utility can be picked up early on, with the middle of the tree focusing almost entirely on Transmogrify. Will we see support trees such as Dominator become more viable in PvE raiding for fights that don't simply require the occasional reflected attack?

Would the new soul be learnt immediately upon purchasing Storm Legion or are there tasks to complete beforehand?

Will Estrode gain any new abilities or will using a SL soul just act like using a PvP one, randomizing it?

At the current point in time, many soul trees remain unbalanced and as such are unviable for end game raids. This means that rather than having eight soul trees to choose from, from the players perspective we have far fewer than this. Why opt for adding new soul trees rather before ensuring all 4 callings have eight viable ones?

Have you encountered any amusing bugs whilst testing new abilities, that you can share with us?

Will we see new ability icons?

[Simnir]

Since we are on the Mage, When will Stormcaller be a viable asset to a raid encounter? Great for trash, but beyond that....

[Zyzyx]

A big issue affecting mages at the moment is the synergy between souls. We have DPS, Healing, Support and Pet trees that utilize all six of the games elements and many abilities only increase damage of a certain type. Which elements in particular was the new soul designed to synergize with?

As characters improve more and more, their pets become increasingly inefficient due to how they scale. Recent changes to other callings improved their pet trees to make them viable in an end-game environment. Can you reveal any plans for the future of the Necromancer & Elementalist souls?

Will we see more uses for the Charge mechanic in Soul Legion?

What other names have been given to the new mage soul, if any?

The community has obviously given a huge amount of feedback regarding what they hope to see from future soul trees. Can you give any examples as to where the feedback has been put to use?

At the moment, from a PvE raiding perspective, there is very little reason to go beyond approximately 11 Dominator as the vast majority of the utility can be picked up early on, with the middle of the tree focusing almost entirely on Transmogrify. Will we see support trees such as Dominator become more viable in PvE raiding for fights that don't simply require the occasional reflected attack?

Would the new soul be learnt immediately upon purchasing Storm Legion or are there tasks to complete beforehand?

Will Estrode gain any new abilities or will using a SL soul just act like using a PvP one, randomizing it?

At the current point in time, many soul trees remain unbalanced and as such are unviable for end game raids. This means that rather than having eight soul trees to choose from, from the players perspective we have far fewer than this. Why opt for adding new soul trees rather before ensuring all 4 callings have eight viable ones?

Have you encountered any amusing bugs whilst testing new abilities, that you can share with us?

Will we see new ability icons?

The biggest problem with mages currently is spark. The devs are also aware of it afaik.

[Inixia]

The biggest problem with mages currently is spark. The devs are also aware of it afaik.

a lot of mage pve specs end up revolving around spark, its a powerful ability, surrounded by other good passive bonuses in pyro (glyphs of power) but I would say spark isn't necessarily the problem either. The main problem is how lacking dmg souls outside of pyro are, if you give these souls more worthwhile point investments in low/mid point ranges you will see less reliance on spark. I like the 1s gcd, I think it makes play more fastpaced, but spark ends up being a crutch too, without it mage dmg viability suffers.

[Morvick]

Will the Faction home bases be expanded in size or scope (Sanctum, Meridian).

Each was just an emergency headquarters in our current iteration of the game. Now that the Ascended have secured their immediate threats, will they have a chance to bulk up these "capital cities" (tunnels and new structures, spread into Freemarch/Silverwood) or will they become obsolete in the shadow of the new shared City?

[Fire Serpent]

Exactly how many soul points and new soul tree tiers will a level 60 character have? More than 10 soul points can create some interesting synergies and hybrids....

When the Archon soul was introduced I was most impressed with the idea of self sacrifice resulting in group buffs. This idea could have been better if multiple archons could add something unique/useful to their group. Something like a cross between Vanguard's Blood Mage and Psionicist would have been nice.

Will our new soul be viable with a high soul point investment in a raid setting or will it be severely limited like so many of our existing souls?

I hope whatever the new soul is that it will have more use than a zero point soul like Archon with tedious 5 minute buff stacking in the end game setting (raids). That said, I will probably be happy with any new mage calling as long as it does not rely on pets.

[Tyrexas]

More than 10 soul points can create some interesting synergies and hybrids

Defilemancer with Heat Wave anyone? =P

[thoroar]

So with the old souls, I know they are all being looked at but will they include new abilities for each of the trees?

[aabuster1]

As it stands now there generally speaking for every class there is a soul or combination of souls that are the best. I prefer it when I choose a soul within a class that I can be sure it will be equal to the other souls for its designated purpose. There is a large amount of uniqueness in each soul for the mage class, an offering of varied plays tyles, but as it stands now the player can only use a miniscule amount of those soul combinations or they are no longer the best.

1) What, if anything, has been done to make each and every soul within the mage soul equally viable for raiding, grouping in general, and PVP ?

2) What, if anything, has been done to ensure one soul combination does not far outweigh another soul combination and in effect invalidate other souls for their designated purpose?

[Caydin]

As it stands now there generally speaking for every class there is a soul or combination of souls that are the best. I prefer it when I choose a soul within a class that I can be sure it will be equal to the other souls for its designated purpose. There is a large amount of uniqueness in each soul for the mage class, an offering of varied plays tyles, but as it stands now the player can only use a miniscule amount of those soul combinations or they are no longer the best.

1) What, if anything, has been done to make each and every soul within the mage soul equally viable for raiding, grouping in general, and PVP ?

2) What, if anything, has been done to ensure one soul combination does not far outweigh another soul combination and in effect invalidate other souls for their designated purpose?

Your first question actually misses the point of the souls. Each soul isn't supposed to be equally powerful in every facet of gameplay. Some souls will excel in some aspects of gameplay, other souls will excel in others. Instead, their focus should be whether or not mixing and matching souls is fun and rewarding, as that's the main thing that sets this game apart from all others. It's less important that 51 Warlock does exactly the same amount of DPS as Defilemancer or 51 Pyromancer or whatever, but instead that each of those having a different playstyle and, when played well, won't be a hindrance to the raid. By hindrance, I mean falling behind the DPS required to beat the game's enrage timers.

[Crithappens]

Do you ever plan to have all classes be able to fill all roles?

I.E. Giving Warriors a healing and support role, Rogues a full healing role, Mages a Tank, Clerics support etc.

^ This. SO MUCH THIS.

[TheProtagonist]

Currently for raiding, you bring one archon, one to three chloros, and one to three defile mages. I would really like to see this group composition change, so that there is some sort of incentive to bring one defile mage, one stormcaller, one elementalist, and one necromancer as opposed to just stacking defile mages because they have the highest dps output. Is there anything being done to address this?

[ChrisGo]

Get rid of the 0 point Archon needed in every freaking spec. Pillaging Stone is annoying! Just give us a buff or something geeeeeeeeees.


Also, allow multiple mages to heal each other with giving buffs. Seems like a bug that my trickle down heals don't affect another mage using a healing type buff.

[Harmil]

If there is something that you’d like to know please submit questions in this thread

When I came to Rift, I'd played EQ as a Necromancer and WoW as a Warlock. I was really looking forward to being able to hybridize the two as a Rift mage. Then I hit max level and found that Necro/Lock is OK, but not powerful enough to be viable. Will more of the spec combinations be viable at the top-end in the xpac?

That's the short form of the question, the longer form is more specific. Will soul balancing efforts focus on having a reasonable range of dps and hps output within which most "obvious" builds will fall, and will that range be tight enough that raids will not force mages into niches that they don't enjoy? I'm happiest when I'm melting faces and my undead pet is stealing souls. Will I be able to compete within, say 5% of the numbers that a pyrolock or SClock can pump out?

[Harmil]

Get rid of the 0 point Archon needed in every freaking spec. Pillaging Stone is annoying! Just give us a buff or something geeeeeeeeees.

I know this isn't meant as a discussion thread, but complaining that mage is too hard because you have to occasionally cast a slow nuke is going to lead to comparisons with rogues who have to build combo points for EVERYTHING...