Prediction: mages will have a hard lifeFollow

Being a mage in PVP always has it's +/-'s. You can deal great damage, you take damage easily. That's general everywhere. Having a tank to taunt enemies makes life much easier. As far as PvE goes, mages will be fine. Can't say on PvP, but I know there's at least one class that looks like it'll be beast with lifedrain's if played correctly. Not sure how they'll actually stand up against other players, but PvE they were crazy.

riftrolebuilder.com makes it look like some of them won't even have the CC part! It wouldn't be quite right if the trade-off for that is just having way more dps and, therefore, being able to level much faster than any other class. They should have an easier time leveling as a result of the harder time staying alive during pvp, but I can't really see there being an anti-rogue mage. What would you even call that? From what I understand, equipping different souls doesn't allow you to equip items you couldn't wield before, so even if they did put in a scrappin' n tankin' melee-type battle mage, it still couldn't carry a shield, right?

Just speculating really but this will totally be the last class I attempt unless I find out they *did* account for this... but then again, if even the cloth-wearers can survive a rogue gank, what good would the rogues be ?

From what I've seen, the rolebuilder site doesn't have all of the possibilities for classes / souls. That makes it hard to determine what you might be missing.

well, it all just depends on the mechanics of resists and mitigation this game will have. It looks like there are multiple tanks suited for tanking a magical vs physical mob. I think mages will likely have just the same outlook. They'll survive a lot better against spells than physical mobs, so I think its not really gonna leave them in the dust.

Well, i think the mage will be something like a great aoe dps/CC. Like with novas, great slows, interrupts, silences, stuns, roots... For survivability, they'll probably have a couple of skills that worked prett good elsewhere, like blink, or some "take 50% less phys.dmg but 50% more m.dmg" mode. Some bubble would be appreciated, i guess.

What has been said and that would seem indeed logical is that mages could have highest magical defense, so that they will have to tank at some bosses, and where they'd require some particular tactic to keep agro...

That beta is stimulating my imagination xD

Anyway, i'm very willing to try mage as the first class i'll reroll to. Especially if they DO have a tough life.

I looked at some builds on Roll builder where there was great AoE with mages. From my DaoC days, I know that a choke point and several good AOE casters can amount to a huge pile of bodies in PvP.

I think it will be about the same for all classes. If you get caught in a PVE build you are going to die. I've dueled lots of Warlock/Necros as my rogue and they have amazing survivability and warlocks or necros (can't remember which) have an ability that seems like it complete heals them. I can only kill a good one if I have every cooldown up (like 2 2m, 1 5m CD's) AND they screw up. However, my character isn't really spec'd for duels.

That said, it seems you can combine to make a very specialized character and this seems to be where mages might come into trouble. They won't have a build that is good enough at jack of all skills. Seems they will have to be more specialized and picky about what they choose. I know rolling around on my rogue (Rift/Ass PVE/PVP mix) he does well against almost all builds he comes up against. But as soon as I hit a PVP spec'd warrior or necromage, its time for me to die.