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So, I’ve tried running my mage as a pure Elementalist for the last few days, and I’m now trying out Necromancer, so I thought I’d report in on ‘mages as a pet class’. General impression: brilliant for solo questing, and the Necromancer has the edge as the more interesting class to play.

I say “has the edge”, when I really mean “craps all over the Elementalist from a great height”. I’m glad I tried Elementalist out first, because I was basically impressed. The improved elemental pets and the pet-heal ability both combine to make for a very solid soloing experience. Clumsy pulls that would have left a Pyromancer in a bloody pulp were much easier to control and survive with an effective tanking pet. As previously discussed, I was unsure which secondary souls to take with Elementalist, as there doesn’t seem to be much interplay between this soul and the others. At the end of the day, I’d say it doesn’t matter: I’d recommend Chloromancer for Radiant Spores, and maybe Dominator for the sheep… Perhaps, with a bit of experimentation, Stormcaller would have revealed itself to be useful (maybe at much higher levels?), but at mid-levels you seem to be pretty much stuck with the Elementalist’s own abilities…

Which are boring. Every pull is the same, the exact same two or three (or four, if you’re lucky) spells in rotation. Rinse, repeat, move on… It’s efficient, it definitely works, but the Pyromancer’s appeal was that there were a few different ways which you could use to kill a lone mob. I missed that.

So, I was getting ready to switch back to my main soul, when I thought I might as well try the other mage pet soul, the Necromancer. Night and day. This is so much more fun than the Elementalist, and so much more efficient. Combine it with Warlock and Chloromancer, and you and your pet also pretty much indestructible. So. Many. Self-heals. Warlock gives you Life Leech, Chloromancer gives you Radiant Spores, and Necromancer itself gives Essence Link and the awesome Soul Purge (damage to the target, heals to you and your pet!). Talents in Necromancer improve this stuff, while talents in Warlock back up the primary soul with useful buffs to health and DOT damage, charge generation (which powers Soul Purge), and a decent chance (through Opportunity) to fire off instant-cast Plague Bolts – which in turn increase your charge, and improve your pet’s damage and threat generation. This is an amazing synergy the kind of which just doesn’t seem to exist with the Elementalist and any other soul.

Also, Feign Death! Awesome.

All this adds up to a robust experience, featuring a lot of flexibility: numerous ways to kill mobs (and so keep play interesting) and numerous ways to get out of trouble when it all goes wrong. Massive thumbs up. I shall be sticking with Necromancer for some time, I think. I love Pyromancer – and in a group or raid situation, that’s where I’d want to focus – but for soloing, I’m not sure Necro can be beaten.

I’m sorry it’s been so long between substantial posts. I have no excuse. I have a reason - playing lots of Rift – but that’s not an excuse! But it is time to actually start talking about my experiences in the game, prompted especially by this comment from Brandon/OMF/thebmatt:

I’m especially interested to hear your thoughts about each of the individual Mage souls. I just got to level 13 recently and completed all the quests to get the others. I’ve only tried Pyro supported by Elementalist and Archon for leveling, and just recently switched to Stormcaller backed by Elem and Dominator. I’m finding the Stormcaller at this low level isn’t quite up to the task of soloing as much as Pyromancer and from what I read, Necromancer are. Just wondering if you’ve tried any of them. From what I’m reading, for solo leveling, you’re best off going with primarily Pyro, elem, or Necro. Stormcaller and Warlock get more useful in that regard in later levels, and Archon/Dominator/Chloro are best saved for groups. Would you agree?

My ‘main’ (though it’s probably too early to be certain of that) is a mage, and he’s currently sitting at the heady heights of level 23. He’s a Pyromancer, and has been since the beginning – that was his first choice of soul. (His name is Keene, which was the name of my first ever character in World of Warcraft, who was a fire-specced mage.) I had read, too, that Necromancer was a very solid soul for levelling; I’d also read that Pyromancer had mana issues… Though I don’t know how they were playing it, because Pyromancers seem essentially to have infinite mana.

I am running Pyromancer as my main soul, backed with Elemental Summoner and Chloromancer. I’ll talk about the back-up choices first. Chloromancer is my ‘zero point’ soul: it’s there wholly for Radiant Spores, which offers a little bit of useful self-healing. I’m not sure it’s the most efficient zero-point choice, but it’s the one I’m most comfortable with.

I’m not someone who normally likes running with pets but, although I’m not certain that they’re essential in Rift, they certainly help when levelling. A mini tank as a constant companion? Yes, please. So the choice of pet souls was therefore Necromancer or Elemental Summoner. I picked Elemental chiefly because of the first-tier talent Biting Cold, which bumps up your crit chance with all spells. It struck me that Pyromancers were built around fast, sudden, big damage numbers – and so far, that guess has worked out true.

At around level 18, Pyromancer starts to come into its own. You’re going to be picking up Improved Fire Bolt (increase damage by 10%), and preparing to build your whole rotation around that – especially when, in the early 20s, you get Wildfire (your fireballs give you a chance to reset the cooldown on Fire Bolt, and remove the cooldown from it for the next three casts). And then, when you hit at least 21, you can get Pyromancer’s Armor, which give you a reset on the cooldown of your super-hard-hitting Cinder Burst and makes it instant cast instead of 6 seconds (before talents).

When you hit this level and this combination of talents, the value of a pet becomes abundantly clear. You pull with Radiant Spores (sends your pet in, but doesn’t itself aggro the mob), hit the mob with Countdown (no damage up front, explodes after eight seconds) and fire off a Fire Bolt (so now all further fire damage is at +10%). (Ground of Power, by the way, is totally optional. I try to use it in rifts, but it’s just too much faffing for soloing and it leaves you vulnerable to huge incoming damage.) Then, you start with the fireballs (reliable, solid damage) and let your pet hold the mob.

If nothing procs, you just fireball the mob down and move on. If you’re lucky, everything procs and you fire off an instant Cinder Burst and a heap of cooldown-free Fire Bolts, turning the mob into a pile of ash before it knows what hits it. In the process of firing off these things, the mob will come and try to kill you – but it will be dead in seconds anyway. (Especially with the nifty Inferno finisher.)

When these pieces start to fall into place around level 20, the Pyromancer really takes flight. It’s pretty damn solid up to that point, anyway – but it’s really starting to shine now.

To answer the specific points in the comment:

Archon, Dominator and Chloromancer are not great as soloing souls, beyond the use of them for their zero-point abilities. Radiant Spores is definitely useful: though it’s heal isn’t guaranteed, it has saved my ass on more than one occasion. I can see Dominator’s zero-point polymorph being really useful in multi-mob pulls – but I really haven’t experienced many such mob groups so far. While the Archon’s zero-point buffs look useful, they only last five minutes and they take five casts each (that’s ten in all!) to fully stack. In five casts, a Pyromancer has immolated its prey. I’d recommend either Chloro or Dominator as a decent zero-point, ‘utility’ soul. (Chloromancer and Dominator have loads of obvious benefits to all manner of groups; Archon – like the rogue’s Bard soul – seems best left for groups of 10+ players.)

I’m afraid I have no personal experience of Necromancer or Stormcaller. Stormcaller seems to have a complex combination of procs and spells that play off other spells. It strikes me that there’s a lot going on with it at later levels, but that it could be lacking early on, just because you’re not playing with a full deck. Necromancer, meanwhile, has bad-ass pets, but I know nothing of it beyond that. I have been choosing ‘secondary’ souls (ie, souls you intend to spend points in, but not specialise in) based on what flat, across-the-board bonuses their talents have to offer, not so much what new spells they bring to the table.

I hope that’s helped cast some light on my mage choices while levelling. And I apologise if people still vague in the ways of Rift were left confused by all that!