[Mage-PvE] Confused about the Trees...Follow

There is only 1 PvP focused soul in each of the callings (for Mage this is Archmage, which you should entirely avoid for PvE). The Other 8 are general purpose, with largely abilities that apply to PvE.

While I don't have as much knowledge on mages as I do other callings I do know that certain mage souls pair very well with each other, such as Pyromancer and Elemental Summoner. Here's a sample Pyromancer build. Pyromancers get a lot of crit on one of their main spells, and elementalist offers additional crit chance and crit damage. Their main weakness is how quickly they can burn through mana. Primarily you'll be using Smoldering Power to help you conserve mana, but Archon offers additional tools to help keep it up.

The War/NEcro/Chloro pairing you were looking at is quite good for solo pvp leveling.

Even then, I'm not sure it's a proper build for PvE. I was hoping there would be a drop-down list with community submitted builds on the Soul Builder which can be similar to Aion, but it doesn't seem the option is there. I'm hoping something similar will be implemented at a later date.




I guess I simply don't understand what you are referring to when you talk about all these PvP abilities. Only 1 soul is pvp focused, and that is Archmage. Stuns and Roots aren't just for PvP. For exmaple, The Pyromancer Burning Bonds ability can be upgrade to not break on damage. Not having a PvE mob hitting your clothy for lots of damage and setting back your cast time is a very useful soloing tool. Flicker frees you from crowd control effects, but this isn't primarily a PvP ability. In the very first Guardian instance one of the bosses just loves to turn party members into rabbits.

I'd strongly suggest finding a Soul that has some form of Mana recharge ability. I went Elemetal/Pyro/Dominator and I can burn through mana SO FAST. Aside from burst damage, I'm nearly useless in a long fight. Thankfully, at 15 you can open up all the other souls and spend a bit of cash to gain access to a whole other soul list. (Forget the official term, but you can switch between the first set of souls and a second set so long as you're not in combat).

I'm not entirely sure how you could get so frustrated trying to make a build when your possibilities are virtually endless.

For leveling, anything with a focus on deep Elementalist, deep Necromancer or deep Chloromancer will make leveling a breeze. Here are a few builds I put together quickly and haphazardly for example.

Here's a Necro build that's great for leveling, PvP, and probably dungeons and raiding as well:

http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0zvws.ecRhoVVxz.ExczVzkzs
- Basically, keep enough Deathly Calling stacks up to sustain your pets abilities, keep up all your DoT effects and necessary debuffs (refreshing Life Leech with Void Bolt), and channel Soul Purge until you need to refresh a debuff/dot or reapply stacks of Deathly Calling. Everything else is a matter of cool down management. While soloing, use your Skeletal Stalwart/Knight as a tank pet. For max damage, you'll probably want to drop Ancient Tomb and Clattering Bones and pick up Vengeful Spirit and maybe Consumption instead.

Here's a deep Elementalist/Stormcaller build:

http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0zqys.Vx0t0Vttz.VMxx0xcsbo
- Just keep Hypothermia up, build up 3 stacks of Electrify, use Ice Shear, and spam Thunderbolt and Lightning Strike until you need to refresh Hypothermia or Ice Shear. For solo, use your Greater Earth Elemental as a tank. For groups, use your Greater Air Elemental for DPS.

Here's a deep Chloromancer build for ridiculous self heals, Skeletal Stalwart tank (plus a spammable heal from Necro root):

http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0zwRv.xxcz.EdIuqVcoRR.ccM
- Just keep up your Radiant Spores, all your DoTs and spam your life nukes while your skeleton tank pet holds aggro. Deals decent damage and keeps you alive at the same time.

While we're at it, here's a build that doesn't utilize a tank pet. A Pyro/Warlock build:

http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0zvIz.ecRhoVVxz.xc0Izuchto
- Keep your DoTs up, and nuke away. You'll pump out a lot of damage with your pyro nukes and you'll get a little bit of self healing from Life Leech. If you want a little more self healing, you could drop Neddra's Torture or Neddra's Grasp and pick up Draining Bolt.

There's really not much that's really PvP oriented. Keep in mind that anything like self healing abilities like Life Leech and Withering Vines also makes your life easier for when you're doing solo PvE content. You'll also probably want to pick up crowd control abilities and debuff abilities for raids as well. There's not much I'd absolutely avoid for PvE. There's quite a few PvP-ish abilities in the Warlock Tree, but there's also more than enough in the tree to pick up to allow you to skip them. Dominator's only a PvP-centric tree if you're stuck in the World of Warcraft mindset. In most other MMOs, support and crowd control classes are great for PvE as well.

Unfortunately the skeletal stalwart can't get higher than level 30 so you'd have to put 21+ points in necro to get the skeletal knight to have a useful tank pet.

Regarding the Dominator tree:

Quicken Transmogrify is, hands down, the best ability on the tree. Just by being instant alone will let you cast Transmogrify on the run, and the instant cast alone opens up a lot of possibilities, like cheesing caster mobs by interrupting all of their casts.

Also, you would be committing about 13 points towards benefits using crowd control abilities, but the payoff is pretty nice:

- 5 points to get 50% spell haste for 5 seconds after you cast Transmogrify/Overpowering Will/Mass Exhaustion/Disorient
- 5 points for 50% more damage on the next spell you land a Transmogrify/Overpowering Will/Mass Exhaustion/Disorient on.
- 3 points (because of the Quicken form requirement) to let you do damage to a Transmogrify target without breaking it, as long as they are above 70% health and you're not hitting a damage cap per Transmogrify application. (example: I can channel Mana Wrench fully on a target twice with this ability before actually breaking it.)


Edit: clarifying train of thought would be a good thing to do...

Edited, Feb 25th 2011 3:34pm by Ravashack