New Mage Soul Using a… Two-Handed Sword?

Okay, we have one more teeny bit of Storm Legion speculation for everyone. This time, it’s based on the artwork shown above that Trion used in their Storm Legion Mage Soul Reveal announcement. Look at the Mage figure outline, and that weapon being wielded. Is it a staff, one-handed sword, or… possibly something larger? Is it possible that the new Mage soul will use two-handed swords?

One player on the forums asked the community the very same question, and started a great little speculation topic. Here are some highlights:

Players began by asking themselves what racial stance fit the stance of the figure in the image:

“As far as I know, the only weapon type held like that is a two handed sword by a human at rest. Nobody holds a staff like that, and the arms are a bit too down for it to be a gun. Not an axe, hammer or a polearm, since the shadow doesn’t look like one and that’s not how a mathosian handles one of them.”

Staffs in RIFT are never held at that angle. Two-handed swords, on the other hand, are.

If this two-handed sword guess is correct, that would probably mean the soul is either a melee DPS soul or melee tank soul. Both would be very welcome by the Mage community, from the sounds of it.

“My guess is some melee dps type with magic shields that increase resists/armor. Which I would personally love, as long as it’s done well, if it improves my soloability.”

Players also discussed ideas from other games they’d like to see, including the Herald of Xotli from Age of Conan (very fun class), Arcane Warrior from Dragon Age Origins, Red Mage from Final Fantasy XI, and Death Knight from World of Warcraft. Toss a large blade, some sorcery, and a bit of extra survivability together, and we could have one very fun melee DPS Mage soul.

The idea of a Mage tank is also very popular among the Mage community. Ranged tanks can be extremely fun when developed right, and let’s face it– more tanks are never a bad thing, right? Since it seems unlikely that a Mage tank would be given a physical shield, they could, instead, use their magical powers to create barriers and energy shields. This would make tanking with a staff or two-handed sword possible.

“I’m hoping with SL that we see some encounters that involve tanking at range (this IS a primarily Air-themed expansion, after all….), and that consequently mages will be getting a tanking soul that, whilst viable as a melee-range tank, is focused on ranged casting and methods of generating and maintaining range whilst maintaining aggro. … I like the idea of a mage-tank being designed around castable shielding, reflects, absorbs, lots of CC and space-creators – all of which serve to generate aggro much like healing currently does for Clerics – that effectively allow the mage to be an active ranged tank.”

This would be great to see.

Kervik popped briefly into the thread to comment on the speculation:

Originally posted by Kervik (Source)

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Looking forward to this Friday. I am entertained by the speculation, but can offer no information regarding what stuff will be revealed on Friday, so by all means keep it coming.

Originally posted by Kervik (Source)

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I’ll be there on Friday to answer questions and such as well, so hopefully we can hit a good bit of the relevant info on the soul. I’ll try to make sure we hit all the critical parts even if they aren’t brought up by questions, anything that gets missed I’ll provide what info I can about them on here.

One player took their speculation one step further, and posted an… interesting take on Kervik’s second post:

“He mentioned a “hit” twice.
He mentioned “critical”.
He mentioned “missed”.

Yep, it’s a stabby-stabby melee soul.”

If there’s one thing that can be said about the RIFT community– the detective work is sometimes pretty dang entertaining.

Oh, yeah, and one more piece of evidence– among the latest batch of Storm Legion press screenshots, we discovered this picture. Slowly, the pieces are coming together…