So you want to join the ranks of Mage healing.  I won’t kid you, it’s a tough job that’s made even more tough by only having a couple direct healing spells.  While you could be a good dungeon healer you will likely play a support healer in raids.  This isn’t a knock against Mage healers, we are very good at pumping out group heals, but keeping a tank up during massive pulse damage can be tricky with little to no margin for error.

So with all the challenges that a Mage has to overcome when healing what spec makes it easier and how can a Mage go from being a good healer to a great one?  Well, most of the time you will find that those Mages who are good at healing know all the fights like the back of their hand and, more importantly, they know how to manage their cooldowns and time their direct healing abilities properly.  While the timing and management of cooldowns are an art form that will take a fair bit of practice to master we can take a look at how you might want to spec out your Mage souls, what macros to have available, and a general rotation of some spells.
 

Chloromancer healers are in excellent shape right now as far as balance is concerned except for one little issue in groups that feature more than one Chloro– their veil abilities (Lifegiving Veil and Lifebound Veil) do not affect other Chloros if they, too, have a veil buff up. This generally isn’t an issue if a group has both Mage and Cleric healers, but for groups that end up stacking Chloros, this sometimes presents a challenge. Chloro healers have been popular in Storm Legion so far, and some players on the official forums are asking Trion to reconsider how veil abilities work for the soul.

Daglar issued the following response regarding the suggestion:

Originally posted by Daglar (Source)

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I hate coming out and saying no, but that is what I’m going to do here.

There are no plans in to change the mechanic with Chloros where their veils do not affect other veil holders.

Trion’s stance on the matter is most likely due to a couple of reasons, one of which is probably to prevent groups from stacking Chloros in excessive numbers.

Last Friday, Kervik announced a few changes that are currently being made for Mages and Shaman Clerics. Here they are, starting with the Shaman changes:

Originally posted by Kervik (Source)

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Some additional updates on things in the work for Shaman.

• Cold Blooded now affects all damage (not just melee)
• Increase Lightning Hammer’s range to 30m.
• Increase Frozen Wrath’s range to 30m.

This are more changes that will make their way to PTS eventually for people to give feedback on. If they survive all that they will probably be part of the next full update.

And for Mages:

Originally posted by Kervik (Source)

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Another small update on some changes in the works:

• Increase the base chance for Fireball to proc Combust to 40%.
• Improved Combustion now increases the chance for Fireball to proc Combust by 20/40/60%.
• Pyromancer’s Armor can proc an additional Fireball once every 4s instead of once every 5s.
• The debuff from Rending Slash increases damage by 3% per stack. Up from 2%.
• Damaging abilities granted by Possession are getting a buff so its not a DPS loss to use.

After a recent update, Chloromancers received a nice little boost while tank healing that wasn’t entirely intentional. Kervik posted about the change in the Patch 2.1 Mage Bug Discussion forum on Friday. Here’s what he had to say:

Originally posted by Kervik (Source)

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As an update for you all, the jump in healing from the update was unintentional (if you hadn’t guessed already). We’ve found the issue and are working on a fix. I don’t have an estimate at the moment for when it will hit the servers, but it should be some time next week at the latest.

Mages are slowly getting an updated selection of minions and elemental creatures to assist them during their adventures, and during this past week’s updates, we’ve seen another new pet model make its way to the Public Test Server. Necromancers now have an updated model for both their Lesser and Greater Skeletal Zealot melee DPS minions. The models are probably not final in their current state due to some of the animations not being exactly correct, but the models themselves seem close to completion. Keep reading to see larger images of the new pet models!

Yesterday, RIFT’s third official live stream aired, which was co-hosted on MMORPG.com’s TwitchTV page. It featured Dahanese, Elrar, Kervik, who is RIFT’s Lead Mage Designer, and Gersh, Producer of Trion. The team jumped right away into the good stuff, and showed us Storm Legion’s new Mage soul– the Harbinger.

The Harbinger soul is a melee single-target DPS soul that synergies well with a number of Mage souls, enabling the soul to teleport right into the enemy’s face, transform their staff or one-hander into a powerful two-handed weapon that smashes and slashes, toss around powerful instant-cast spells, boost their own survivability, and with the right balance of support souls– even serve as an off-healer.

Yesterday, Gamespot released Trion’s Storm Legion Developer Diary video to the public. This video will probably be announced by Trion today at some point, along with our exciting Mage soul reveal during the official live stream, but until then, feast your eyes on this very awesome glimpse into Storm Legion.

Keep reading to watch the video and see our highlights and commentary.

If you haven’t been paying attention to the Mage forum chatter on the RIFT forums or happened to see yesterday’s speculation article here on Rift Junkies, there has been a lot of talk going around about Friday’s official live stream and the big Storm Legion Mage soul reveal. At this point, the evidence seems fairly solid– we’re probably looking at a two-handed sword DPS, tank, or hybrid melee Mage soul.

Yesterday morning, we all received another piece of evidence in our email boxes. Trion sent an announcement about Friday’s live stream, including the image shown above:

STORM LEGION™ MAGE SOUL DIVINED
A figure wielding untold magic approaches amid the gathering storm, setting mystics chattering about temporal energies … and outright doom!

The image depicting the weapon models is named “MageWeapons”. That third weapon is clearly a sword, and actually looks like the same two-handed model shown in this screenshot, which helps confirm our theories. The other weapons shown look like they could possibly be staffs, but the glows surrounding them almost seem blade-like, transforming the first image into a weapon that resembles a two-handed axe and the second into a scythe.

Until Friday, we won’t know for sure if all three weapons are actually melee-oriented or if the two on the left serve dual purposes as staffs for caster Mages, but regardless, all three weapon types look very cool. I think it’s safe to say that Trion succeeded in generating some hype about Friday’s live stream with the use of these images, and it will be exciting to see the new soul in action. In the meantime, I have this sudden urge to finish leveling my Mage…

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?

Updated 8/6: A new start time has been announced– 2:30 PM PST (one hour earlier)

Trion is hosting their next live stream event this coming Friday, August 10th, at 2:30 PM PST on TwitchTV. In it, Elrar and Dahanese will be showing off the Storm Legion new Mage soul and taking questions from the community. The team, who’s joining forces with MMORPG.com this week, will be taking questions up until Friday on the official forums.

Here is the original announcement:

We’ve been hinting that it’s coming for long enough! The first new Storm Legion Soul reveal – Mages, this one’s for you – is set to take place next Friday, August 10th, in a livestream partnership with MMORPG.com.

As with previous livestreams, we’re also giving you the opportunity to submit questions for Elrar and Dahanese to answer during the stream. We can’t talk about everything just yet, and specifics of the new Mage Soul are definitely still work in progress, but we’re psyched to show and talk about what we can!

Head on over to the forum post here to submit questions for the livestream.

You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook to get a real-time notification when the Mage Soul stream is about to go live!

Warriors, Rogues, and Clerics, don’t fear – you’ll be seeing your reveals over the next few weeks!

Get your questions in, and be sure to tune in to the event this Friday! If you can’t make it, no worries– it’ll be viewable on TwitchTV afterwards, and we’ll also be showcasing the highlights here on Rift Junkies.