1781

Are most of the characters in your guild higher-level, or do you have a mixture of new and old players? What kind of activities does Rift provide for the level 50s?

Kal

1782

It’s a pretty large guild, so there’s a mix. No doubt that we have a number of “achievers” in the guild, including officers, but there’s a ton of folk at all levels. As for activities, last Friday we had a PvP raid scheduled and all (not just 50s) were invited. So we got a nice tour of the front of the main Defiant city before we got wiped out.

1783

What faction are you on?

Mages are OK if you have good classes doing the heavy lifting for you. And you do if you’re Guardian. Otherwise you have all Assassins and Mages don’t really do much.

Stormcaller looks especially impressive as the numbers roll of big packs. You’re not really doing much (barely negating the countless sources of passive healing) but it looks cool.

If you’re SC/Elementalist you’ll want to be a Lightning Strike focused build. Stack all your Air debuffs, pop your +%Air Damage charge ability, and cast Lightning Strike. If it crits (you have a good chance for it to do so from talents) you can hit for over 1k starting at about 29 or so.

Mages seem OK until you try another class in PvP. Then you start to see how dire their situation really is*.

*Until 50 when you spec 51 Pyro and kill everyone.

1784

As a 46 level mage, the pvp after about 30 to 35 is just a mess. Its just stun after stun, and I have tried pyro, it can be good but there are times where it just does nothing to, your totally depended on procs and that can be great or horrible.

1785

Yeah, The Sentinels has been a great guild with a wide spread of player levels. And I’m so glad I didn’t bail on Sunrest like the other guys here. The queues have all but vanished, as you’d expect from a half-way competent MMO, and the player population makes a huge difference. If you’re interested in a PvP server – I honestly can’t get excited about playing PvE servers these days – I’d heartily recommend Sunrest.

  -Tom
1786

plus this way you have a chance to get ganked by me if you go out alone!

1787

I agree completely. There is a ridiculous amount of stun in this game. Getting chain-stunned from 100-0 makes it feel like Heroes of Newerth.

Of course, pre-50 Mages are the gimp PvP class at the moment. It’s infuriating to get 100-0’d in a stun, but it’s not something that’s happening to every class.

Unfortunately as a Mage you’re forced to play Pyro in WFs if you’re not running with a full premade. And even then you should probably play Pyro. Flicker is mandatory. Ground of Strength is the only thing preventing Mages from being anything but a worn speedbump to the stunlock storm and Warrior hordes.

You can start using Pyro at 44, but you’re not going to see it be very useful til 50 when you can dump all your points into the tree and get Fulminate, which is really the only spell Mages get across any of their souls that legitimately scare players of all types (Clerics get all huffy about Mana Drain, but it’s getting nerfed so oh well).

1788

I have found in most warfronts that playing as Chloromancer is viable. You won’t kill a lot but you can stay alive and generally help out. Necro is less useful but in some WFs can be ok. In open world I quest as Necro and Lich Form is sometimes a nice surprise for gankers, but certainly as a mage you’re very vulnerable. I usually am out with a warrior and a rogue, friends of mine, and in that combo being a Chloro is very very effective. So unless your only criterion is pure DPS numbers, I don’t think (sub-50 at least) you have to be a Pyro. I’ll see at 50, as I’m 37 now. Even at that level Pyro is pretty fun in WFs, I’ll grant you that.

Regardless of what they do to mages, I’ll still play one, as it is my favorite MMO archetype. I pretty much suck at everything but ranged casters.

1789

I’m having fun with a dom/pyro/elem spec in wfs right now and do pretty well - still take hits for 900+ from warping, endless-stunning warriors, but flicker helps a lot with that, and instant squirrel, storm shackles, haunting pain, death’s edict, another squirrel, cinder burst (with the dominator casting speed increase, it’s about 2.2 sec cast), fireballs can almost kill them before they stomp me. Heck, with some healing, I can actually kill them from time to time.

1790

I think mages are pretty much group players for PvP. With the possible exception of WoW Frost Mages at times, and EQ2 Necros at times, I’ve rarely seen mage builds in any MMO with PvP that were really good for 1v1 fights. With a meatshield and some healing, though, they come into their own.

1791

bright mage from Warhammer…fire mage back in the days in WoW…

mage dominates PVP both in group and solo, nothing like group of mage jumping around spamming arcane explosion back in the days.

1792

So I rolled a rogue on Sunrest last night, and I’m really enjoying it, partly because since I don’t play many MMOs I"m not that burned out on fetch quests and “Kill x enemy”-type quests. I love the art style, it really looks great, and there always seems to be a lot of stuff going on.

Character’s name is Dasein if anyone wants to group or something.

1793

Guardian or Defiant?

1794

Guardian

1795

Look me up in game (same user name) and I’ll get you some info on joining the Sentinels guild…one of the largest on the server and rather active. I want to try to level an alt soon (warrior), but with the event starting tomorrow I’ll be busy on my 50.

1796

Maybe in RIFT this is true. Not so in other games.

DAOC: Light Eldritch Stun nuke nuke. Elementalist spam. Warlock bombs. Casters were great, and it probably screwed the archetype for the rest of MMO history based on how hard people cried about it. The best PvP class MUST be something that beats your face with a giant phallic symbol, anything else isn’t fair.

WoW: AP-PoM-Pyro in Classic. Frost from there on out, with periods of Arcane being shiny. Both could easily solo PvP. Whatever you may think about PvP class balance in WoW, it is by far the best out there (minus Guild Wars, but that doesn’t count)… which is probably more of a testament to how awful PvP balance is in general, but still.

EQ2: Summoners were bar none the worst classes in the game for PvP from Classic to Kunark (I gave up on Nagafen after that, so maybe Necros became gods, idk). In terms of Mages, Wizards, Warlocks, and Coercers were probably the best (in that order), and were pretty good in general, but still weren’t anything compared to how amazing the Rogues were.

WAR: bright wizards lol.

Conan: Mages sucked and were outshined in many cases by DPS Clerics. (Whatever the lightning one was).

RIFT: Sadly, they’re just bad for the majority of the game. Anything I can do you can do better. Jack of all trades, not even good at any. Pick your corrupted meme and run with it. You’re pigeonholed into Chloromancer (getting nerfed in 1.1) or Archon (a buff bitch) in PVE because your DPS is pretty pathetic. Spell coefficients are depressingly low, so your gear does little for your damage – a new weapon for a Warrior may give him 50% more damage, while a new weapon of equal quality for Mage is lucky to do 5-10% more.

And yes, I’m bitching about MMOs, mostly because I’m a damn fool and always pick a caster when it’s clear the current trend is to grossly favor physical damage, especially melee. The ONE TIME I tried to change my ways it totally backfired (I wanted to be a Spiritualist in Aion but, knowing my first choice is always the weakest, I went Champion. Turned out Champion was godawful and Spiritualist was amazing. lul).

1797

If you thought champs were bad in Aion, you were definitely doing it wrong.

1798

At release? Solo? Without an extendable weapon? They were godawful. Rangers just /lol’d.

1799

James, you know mages are generally getting buffed in 1.1, right? Well, to be more precise, the talents that destroy a mage (and a casting cleric) are getting nerfed somewhat. And since I’m a cleric, don’t you dare complain about the Chloro nerfs…they were massively overpowered compared to what my Purifier could heal.

But no, generally cloth-wearing casters have a harder time in PvP than other classes until they’re properly balanced, which takes a lot of time. It’s not just spell coefficients. It’s having little armor, having to stay in place to cast (thank goodness the LOS check is now at the start of the cast!) and generally having few fallback skills that cause problems with casters. They’re tough to tweak because they generally put out such awesomesauce DPS that if you let the mage survive for very long they’ll destroy everything and everyone.

1800

I do, and they’ll certainly help, but probably aren’t buffs in the right direction. I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth, but they’re rasing base spell damage but not coefficients, which is great but means gear still won’t have as much of an effect as it should.

I’d seriously prefer higher coefficients and less spell power on gear. It’s silly, imo, to get +50 more spellpower and hardly be able to tell a difference!

Chloro nerfs: Oh, absolutely. All passive AOE healing needed to get smacked around with a nerf bat. The problem is that it diminishes a huge part of the Chloro’s value to a team, which means Mages are further pigeonholed is all.

On another note, I’m considering making a stealth-alt on another server because I feel my friends’ interest waning (lots of RL stuff just erupted in their lives). Would you be able to hook me up with the Sentinels, Blackadar? I promise I’m not as much of a bitch in-game. ;)

I’d probably be going Mage and DPS Cleric (at very least to level with). I can’t play Rogues (morally obligated to avoid them) and Warriors… well, for some reason I always lose interest in the archetype pretty quickly. Except in EQ1, oddly enough, which is by far the most boring Warrior implementation in MMO history.