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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Current thoughts on different mage play styles
Savic Prosperity
Member, Alpha Two
In its current form, i know it will get some updates in phase 2, this is mostly a how it feels to me post
Abilities i dont have a lot of time with are firebolt, fireball, combust, and blink. For everything else i feel comfy enough talking about it. Do want to mention currently level 14. Doing it based off build concepts for this level range first
Overall early levels it feels like there are 2 core build directions, but you can also just dabble in everything. Fire + lighting, Ice + lightning, some of all 3 (which leans more into burn building). By level 25 you basically unlock everything which I don't think is right, it should be a little bit more directed since it just means 2 mages have identical spell builds. I know archetypes will make things have a bit more identity but if you can unlock everything there really isnt a choice to be made by the end even if you play it differently than the other.
To start with a fire based build.
for the fire end of it it seems to feel good, the burn is satisfying and then conflag the burn for more burn. When combined with magma field it really stacks up the DOT number and looks really nice. I was unsure if the DOT number being higher with both magma field and fireball on the same target with combust was a bigger combust or if it was combing combust damage with additional burns caused by magma field. I have not tested "Thermal Equilibrium" (freeze conflaguated target to extend burn duration), but it also can be pretty annoying to get that passive to work because of the chill/freeze immunity targets get after getting just a couple of applications since it specifically has to be you freezing the target. The "Fuse" passive i have not tested either but in a group scenario the shock procs get consumed extremely fast so it is very difficult to imagine getting that to work constantly obviously others can apply the shock as well but it doesnt take much to miss out on the shock window. Overall like this flow, not a lot of time to do auto attacks though.
For ice based build
The way you go about getting shatters feels really good, in a group setting can potentially have a consistent stream of shatter procs although you do run into it is very hard to tell if someone is applying a snare proc or what the duration on a current chill proc is if it is not something you applied and are just trying to check whats left on it. It also runs into the problem of if there is a chill/snare proc and it gets refreshed, you can still freeze it that one time but then the target will get chill/snare immunity for 10 seconds so that doesnt feel very good, but if you can make it easier to identify when these situations are happening it will be better. Also since it seems that the shatter damage is pretty high so it makes sense it would be semi limited windows. I really like how it is a build that takes in doing a lot of auto attacks to freeze things more often too.
By the time you get to higher levels and have a lot more abilities you are in theory going to go lightning -> fire -> ice repeating since the passives indicate this is the order you want to go for max damage. I do think that is pretty neat in how self contained it is but in a group setting i dont see how you'll be able to make use of the full rotation properly but i imagine that was the intent. It is also why i'd like to see a way to specialize further into each elemental branch so you dont have every mage doing everything since they cant literally do everything with upkeep on debuffs and whatnot. But things may change when it comes time to update the class.
One other thing is it would be nice to know if a party member made use of a debuff you applied since it will give you more information about what another class can do when you dont know what they can do.
Abilities i dont have a lot of time with are firebolt, fireball, combust, and blink. For everything else i feel comfy enough talking about it. Do want to mention currently level 14. Doing it based off build concepts for this level range first
Overall early levels it feels like there are 2 core build directions, but you can also just dabble in everything. Fire + lighting, Ice + lightning, some of all 3 (which leans more into burn building). By level 25 you basically unlock everything which I don't think is right, it should be a little bit more directed since it just means 2 mages have identical spell builds. I know archetypes will make things have a bit more identity but if you can unlock everything there really isnt a choice to be made by the end even if you play it differently than the other.
To start with a fire based build.
for the fire end of it it seems to feel good, the burn is satisfying and then conflag the burn for more burn. When combined with magma field it really stacks up the DOT number and looks really nice. I was unsure if the DOT number being higher with both magma field and fireball on the same target with combust was a bigger combust or if it was combing combust damage with additional burns caused by magma field. I have not tested "Thermal Equilibrium" (freeze conflaguated target to extend burn duration), but it also can be pretty annoying to get that passive to work because of the chill/freeze immunity targets get after getting just a couple of applications since it specifically has to be you freezing the target. The "Fuse" passive i have not tested either but in a group scenario the shock procs get consumed extremely fast so it is very difficult to imagine getting that to work constantly obviously others can apply the shock as well but it doesnt take much to miss out on the shock window. Overall like this flow, not a lot of time to do auto attacks though.
For ice based build
The way you go about getting shatters feels really good, in a group setting can potentially have a consistent stream of shatter procs although you do run into it is very hard to tell if someone is applying a snare proc or what the duration on a current chill proc is if it is not something you applied and are just trying to check whats left on it. It also runs into the problem of if there is a chill/snare proc and it gets refreshed, you can still freeze it that one time but then the target will get chill/snare immunity for 10 seconds so that doesnt feel very good, but if you can make it easier to identify when these situations are happening it will be better. Also since it seems that the shatter damage is pretty high so it makes sense it would be semi limited windows. I really like how it is a build that takes in doing a lot of auto attacks to freeze things more often too.
By the time you get to higher levels and have a lot more abilities you are in theory going to go lightning -> fire -> ice repeating since the passives indicate this is the order you want to go for max damage. I do think that is pretty neat in how self contained it is but in a group setting i dont see how you'll be able to make use of the full rotation properly but i imagine that was the intent. It is also why i'd like to see a way to specialize further into each elemental branch so you dont have every mage doing everything since they cant literally do everything with upkeep on debuffs and whatnot. But things may change when it comes time to update the class.
One other thing is it would be nice to know if a party member made use of a debuff you applied since it will give you more information about what another class can do when you dont know what they can do.
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