Rift: Planes of Telara Mage Souls

Rift
Rift: Planes of Telara Mage Souls
Page content

Mage Souls

RIFT: Planes of Telara, releasing on March 1, 2011, has a rather surprising and unique take on building your class specialization. For the Mage calling, there are eight different PvE-centric Souls from which to choose, and a max-leveled player will have three of these attuned. Each of the Souls use a specific type or types of magic; combining the Souls into builds gives the player a great deal of flexibility in choosing direct damage abilities, support abilities like healing or crowd control, and AoE abilities for large-scale destruction. Some of the Souls also function as pet classes; choosing more than one pet class Soul isn’t recommended, since you can only have one pet out at a time.

The specifics

2011-1-29 12414

Archon: Support specialists, debuffer.

  • Instant DoT
  • Debuffing / buffing DD spell
  • Instant Buffer / Debuffer spell
  • Eeventually gains abilities that benefit the group or raid at the expense of the Mage’s personal armor or power
  • Uses Earth and Fire magic

Elementalist: Offensive mages with Elemental magic.

  • DD spells
  • Summon Elemental as a Pet of Earth, Air or Fire
  • Eventual AoE
  • Uses Earth, Air and Fire magic

Pyromancer: Offensive mages with Fire magic.

  • DD spell
  • Instant DoT
  • AoE damaging spell
  • Buffs self by standing in “grounds” cast
  • Uses Fire magic

Dominator: Support specialist, CC

  • Polymorph
  • Instant DD
  • Instant DD with knockback
  • Eventual reflects and silencing spells, ally cleansing spells and an aggro dump
  • Uses Air and Death Magic

Chloromancer: Healing specialist

  • Debuff target; allies attacking it receive heals
  • Root that heals nearby allies
  • Eventual direct heals and cleansing spells
  • Uses Life magic for both damage and healing

Stormcaller: Offensive specialist, weather (wind and water)

  • Channeled DoT with knockback
  • DD spell with debuff
  • DD spell with slowing effect
  • Eventual rez ally spell
  • Uses Air and Water magic

Warlock: Offensive specialists, entropy and death magic

  • DoT
  • DD spell
  • Mana Tap
  • Eventual Fear, Self-heal from Charge, Silence, Slow
  • Uses Death magic

Necromancer: Offensive mages, undead pets

  • DD disease spell
  • Instant DoT
  • Eventual drains and AoEs
  • Sacrifice part of health pool for ally heal
  • Uses Death magic

Best builds

2011-1-29 123738

Many souls have talents or abilities that boost one or more specific types of magic; taking two souls that use a shared magic type gives you a much more potent arsenal from which to draw. For instance, taking Necromancer, Warlock, and Dominator gives you a boost on all abilities that use Death magic. The Death’s Ally talent in the first tier of the Warlock tree increases all Death-based abilities for you and your summoned pet. Building the rest of your points into the Warlock and Dominator trees will give you a nice arsenal of crowd control and PvP abilities like Fear, Silence, and Slowing mechanics.

Likewise, and Elementalist, Pyromancer, Archon spec takes advantage of the Fire magic used by all three Souls. The Soul Fire ability, in the first tier of the Archon tree, passively boosts all Fire damage, while the Ignition talent in the first tier of the Pyromancer tree reduces the cast times. Put together, you are a flame-slinging instrument of molten death.

Perhaps you prefer more of a support role, standing in the back and helping your allies while hindering your foes. Look to the Chloromancer / Dominator combination. Not only can you heal yourself and your group members with Life energy, you can also limit the healing that foes receive, polymorph them, silence them, and root them. You’ll be bringing the pain while also being a pain. Add Elementalist to the mix to mesh it’s Air magic usage with that of your Dominator, or choose the Stormcaller Soul for its eventual ally resurrection spell.

Even among builds that choose the same three souls, there are still an almost infinite number of ways to apply your points and choose your abilities. The RIFT class building mechanic is unique in that it allows for a break from cookie-cutter specs and lets you choose the play style you enjoy, rather than the one experts say provides the most dps. True MMO enthusiasts understand that dps is never the whole picture; sometimes its the support, healing, and crowd control abilities that can make or break a fight.