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.
 
Not surprisingly, the primary soul for Mage healing is the Chloromancer so that is where you will spend the majority of your points.  From there it’s a matter of where to spend the remaining 15 points.  For this build the supporting souls will be the Harbinger and Archon (7 Harbinger / 61 Chloromancer / 8 Archon). Click on the image below to bring up the full-size version of the tree.

Alternatively, you can check out the build at http://www.rifthead.com/stc/zcdRzVzzvldIuqAssIsdRvqM. 

The Buffs
There are 7 buffs that are important to maintain as a Mage healer.  Most of them are hour long buffs, but three of them are five minute buffs that need to be refreshed in order to keep the benefits going.  One important thing to keep in mind when you are casting your buffs is that Synthesis will overwrite Lifegiving Veil with the lesser Lifebound Veil so after casting Synthesis you should cast Lifegiving Veil.
 
Living Aegis        Mage armor which boosts healing and damage (1 hour buff)
Living Energy     Decreases ability costs by 5% for the raid
Synthesis            Typically cast on the tank to increase healing they receive (1 hour buff)
Lifegiving Veil    Provides group healing when damage spells are used  (1 hour buff)
Searing Vitality  Boosts Mage endurance by 14 per stack and autostacks to 5  (5 minute buff)
Ashen Defense   Boosts Mage armor and increases physical damage to target by 5%  (1 hour buff / 5 minute debuff)
Shared Vigor      Increases raid endurance by 70  (5 minute buff)
 

The Macros

Ruin (aka spam macro)
#show corrosive spores
suppressmacrofailures
cast ruin
cast corrosive spores
cast Vile Spores
 
GClean
#show Cleansing Rush
suppressmacrofailures
stopcasting
cast Cleansing Rush
 
Clean
#show nature's cleansing
suppressmacrofailures
stopcasting
cast @mouseoverui nature's cleansing
cast @group01 nature's cleansing
cast @group02 nature's cleansing
cast @group03 nature's cleansing
cast @group04 nature's cleansing
cast @group05 nature's cleansing
cast @group06 nature's cleansing
cast @group07 nature's cleansing
cast @group08 nature's cleansing
cast @group09 nature's cleansing
cast @group10 nature's cleansing
cast @group11 nature's cleansing
cast @group12 nature's cleansing
cast @group13 nature's cleansing
cast @group14 nature's cleansing
cast @group15 nature's cleansing
cast @group16 nature's cleansing
cast @group17 nature's cleansing
cast @group18 nature's cleansing
cast @group19 nature's cleansing
cast @group20 nature's cleansing
 
BRez
#show Soul Tether
suppressmacrofailures
stopcasting
shout Getting %t
cast Soul Tether
 
Abilities and Button Layout
The spells that will be most important to you will vary based on your role in the group or raid.  If you are tank healing then you need to make sure Bloom, Essence Surge, Resurgence, Natural Healing, and Healing Torrent are easily available since those are your direct healing abilities.  The spells have been listed in order of their cast time, but keep an eye on the cooldowns too since most of them have at least a 10 second cooldown.  If you are group healing you really only have two direct group healing abilities to supplement your damage/cast-time related healing that occurs.  Those two abilities are Natural Splendor and Flourish.  No matter what role you are playing when you don’t need to bump up your healing output with direct healing spells you should be using your damaging and debuff abilities to ensure a steady flow of healing procs are occurring. 

If you find yourself in moments where you really need to bump up the heals per second (HPS) then be sure you use Entropic Veil to boost your healing by 16%.  If your tank is still taking massive damage then pop your Symbiosis on him/her and if that still doesn’t get you through things you can pop Natural Conversion, but leave the healing pots as a last resort.  Wild Growth is another nice HPS boost that also increases damage to your enemy by 10%.  The only catch is that both Wild Growth and Entropic Veil are charge consumers so you’ll need to watch your charge to make sure you get the most out of those abilities.  As with most mage healing spells you should always be conscious of the cooldowns, but that’s especially true on your big HPS boosting abilities as they can help get you out of a sticky situation. 

I would suggest setting up your button bar to look similar to what is listed below.

 Primary Bar

1. Wild Growth
2. Radiant Spores
3. Ruin macro
4. Withering Vine
5. Nature’s Touch
6. Void Life
7. Nature’s Fury
8. Entropic Veil
9. Natural Splendor
10. Flourish
11. GClean
12. Clean 

The secondary action bar could be set up in the following order so that between your primary and secondary bars you have all of your healing abilities readily available no matter what role (group or tank healing) you are playing.

 Secondary Bar

1. Symbiosis
2. Natural Conversion
3. Bloom
4. Essence Surge
5. Resurgence
6. Natural Healing
7. Healing Torrent
8. Searing Vitality
9. Ashen Defense
10. Shared Vigor
11. BRez macro

  
Rotation
Healing rotations are difficult to nail down because, unlike DPS roles, the rotation on your healing is cadenced by the damage your group or tank is taking and varies by encounter.  However, the basic rotation for your spells should be similar to what is included in this guide and as additional healing is required you can use the various direct healing abilities to supplement the HPS.

Before any boss fight starts be sure that you have a full charge available to you.  This can be done by casting Bloom, Resurgence, Natural Healing, and Healing Torrent till your charge is full.  Having a full charge before a fight starts gives you the option to cast Wild Growth or Entropic Veil early on in the fight if HPS boosts are required.

Once an encounter starts the rotation should roughly flow as listed below, but you should modify this based on the damage being taken by your group or the tank.

• Searing Vitality (remember this is a 5 minute buff)
• Ashen Defense  (lasts for 5 minutes, but could be dropped based on melee in your group)
• Shared Vigor  (another 5 minute buff)
• Radiant Spores
• Ruin macro (cast three times)
• Withering Vine
• Nature’s Touch
• Void Life
• Repeat the rotation starting at Radiant Spores or throw in Nature’s Fury IF the tank has agro on all the nearby mobs and immediate healing isn’t required

The Ruin macro was built to be somewhat like a spammable macro, but as a healer do not get caught up in spamming abilities or your group will wipe and you’ll become “that healer”.

Healing as a Mage can definitely be challenging, but once you get used to the souls and figure out how to get the most out of your abilities in different scenarios you will quickly come to enjoy the class.  Good luck with the class!  One last thing, be sure to run Empyrean Core till you get the Spent Heavy Omniparticle Emitter that drops of Prince Kaliban since it will boost your HPS with its chance to heal nearby allies.

I’ve been working on a DPS spec for level 60 dungeons.  The one found below has moderate mobility and very good DPS without having to worry about controlling a pet.  I never like to quote DPS numbers because it varies by equipment, mob/encounter type, etc. but for those that are interested I can usually get at least 7K sustained DPS in an expert level 60 dungeon against a boss with a fair bit of movement mechanics.

Please post up your questions and comments on this build.  I won’t pretend to have all the answers so if you see something that might work a bit better in the rotation, point distribution, or anything else then speak up. The only way we will all learn to get the most out of our class is if we share ideas, macros, and tactics.

61 Pyro / 7 Harb / 8 Archon

Soul Configuration
My goal with this configuration was to maximize my Spell Power and damage. The best way to do that with any soul configuration is to use Harbinger as one of your souls and drop 5 points into Eldritch Knowledge to get the 10% Spell Power increase. For my Mage that means a boost of about 340 Spell Power. I also chose Archon to boost damage by 5% with five points in Soul Fire and three points in Pillaging Stones to get the Wisdom and Intellect boost during combat.

Ok, enough about the numbers. I don’t want to make this a math class so let’s get on to the good stuff and talk about the buffs.  For this build there are five buffs that should be used.  Most last one hour, but there is one that lasts five minutes so you can either cast it occasionally or drop it completely from your buffs.  The buffs that I run are Glyphs of Power, Pyromancer’s Aegis, Flaring Intellect (Intellect buff for the raid), Lightening Blade, and Shared Vigor (Endurance buff for the raid).  If you have others in your group that are buffing for Endurance, or any other stat, be sure you compare notes on who is casting what before you start running the dungeon or raid.  As a rule of thumb no two buffs for the same stat will stack and it would be a nuisance to overwrite an hour long buff from another player with a 5 minute one. That would add another thing for you to keep track of in your rotation and we should try to avoid needlessly overcomplicating rotations.

MACROS
You’ll notice on each of the macros listed I have placed Fireball at the end.  This is because occasionally during battles it will get so heated that it is easy to be pressing the wrong button.  Rather than build a macro with only cooldown based spells I added Fireball to the end of each one so that in those events where everything is on cooldown I am still doing damage till I realize “duh I’m on the wrong key”.  Another benefit of this is that most of the casts before Fireball are instant casts so once you start the 2 second cast of Fireball you know that you’re done with that macro and can move to the next.

Your spam macro will be the one I labeled “FB Prime”.  Notice that there’s an interrupt in there (Scorch) which I tossed in for our fight with Jultharin.  Yes, you don’t really have control over when the interrupt is popped, but if you are not on interrupt duty it’s kind of nice to have it in there just in case.  Plus, it’s only a 10 second cool down.  If you want more control of interrupts or you are on interrupt duty then pull scorch out of the “FB Prime” macro.  I usually run my “FB Prime” macro without Scorch included so that I have more control over the interrupt. Whether or not you leave Scorch in your macro is up to you, but don’t forget that you have a backup interrupt called Flashfire at your disposal as well.

FB Prime

 
Fulmin8

 
WF

 
Fusillade

SPELL BAR

Primary Bar
1) Searing Vitality
2) Pillaging Stone
3) FB Prime
4) Fulmin8
5) WF
6) Fusillade
7) Cinder Burst
8) Flame Volley
9) Inferno
0) Internalize Charge
-) Fire Storm
=) Backdraft

Secondary Bar
(left to right with numbering just for reference)
1) Burning Shield
2) Heat Wave
3 Extinguish
3) Scorch
4) Flashfire
5) Target Macro (macro content changes depending on dungeon)
6) Break Free
7) Flicker

ROTATION
Rotation on this build can be as simple or as complex as you want.  How complex you go will directly impact how much DPS you put out, but even an “easy rotation” will do respectable DPS.  A few things to note before we go on, you should only use Heat Wave when all of your big macros are on cooldown (Primary spell bar macros 4, 5, 6, and 8 as well as your Extinguish).  This will maximize your potential for DPS while not wasting Heat Wave since it has a 2 minute cooldown.  Also, the whole goal of a Pyro mage is to make the best use of your Combust stacks as possible.  I tried to make this rotation take that into account so that you do not have to think about refreshing or keeping up Combust since there are so many other things going on in a level 60 dungeon.

Another tidbit of information, the “Fulmin8″ macro only becomes available when your charge meter is at or near 100% (since Fulminate consumes 100 charge) and of course Fulminate has to be off cool down which is 45 seconds.  Sadly we cannot turn on Internalize Charge before we cast Fulminate because doing so would drop our charge below the 100 required to cast Fulminate.  However, it is easy to build up a charge so be sure to look for other opportunities to use Internalize Charge to boost your DPS output.

You want to try to always keep your Searing Vitality and Pillaging Stone buffs up and don’t forget about the Shared Vigor either.  All of these last 5 minutes and you must be in combat to refresh the Searing Vitality and Pillaging Stone.  If you have trouble keeping track of the time left on your buffs then I would highly recommend using the add-on called KaruulAlert.  It allows you to customize alerts for different events and is invaluable in keeping track of when opportunities proc or how much time is left on certain buffs.  If you decide to use Karuul to monitor abilities you can import the text below into Karuul in order to get a baseline set of alerts for Cinder Burst, Pillaging Stones, and Searing Vitality.

Karuul Alert Monitors

 
OK, so let’s talk about the rotation.  The basic rotation goes as follows:

1. Searing Vitality
2. Pillaging Stones – cast 5 times to get the maximum stack
3. FB Prime macro – cast until Fireball begins to cast
4. Fulmin8 macro – if you have enough charge, if not then cast when charge is available
5. Flame Volley
6. FB macro – spam till charge is built back up
7. WF macro – once charge is above 50%
8. FB macro – a couple more times to build a little charge
9. Fusillade macro
10. Extinguish
11. FB macro spam – to get your 5 fireball instant casts in
12. Heat Wave – to reset cooldowns
13. Repeat the rotation – skip Searing Vitality and Pillaging Stones unless they are close to expiring

As the enemy gets below 30% you should toss Inferno into the mix and if the instant cast Cinder Burst opportunity proc is available then use it.  However, you should NEVER cast Cinder Burst any other time because the cast time is far too long and you will likely die from ground AOE before you get the spell off.

Don’t forget that if you get snared or slowed you have both Break Free and Flicker to help you out. Be careful using Flicker since you don’t want to appear right in the middle of some mob or in front of a boss that cleaves.

Finally, you have the end of the primary spell bar (0, -, and =) which will give you a modest AOE ability without having to switch specs.  Be sure to hit Internalize Charge (IC) before you cast an AOE. While you are channeling your AOE you can hit Internalize Charge again to turn off IC and save your charge.  The cool thing about this approach is that if IC is on when you begin your AOE cast your whole cast will realize the benefit of the IC boost even if you turn IC off after you begin the AOE cast/channel.

As part of RIFT‘s second anniversary celebration, Trion is holding another free weekend event for returning players from March 21st to March 26th. Also at this time (not quite coincidentally), Trion is offering players a special 25%-off promotion for both the Standard and Infinity editions of Storm Legion.

Both the returning player and new player versions of the expansion are on sale for this promotion. This 25%-off sales event will run the same length as the free event, from March 21st to March 26th. This might be a good weekend to talk a friend or two into trying Storm Legion.

For more details, check out the full pricing details as well as Trion’s official announcement.

The addition of a new expansion is always an exciting time. There are, however, always some downsides. The biggest with any first expansion seems to be the level grind.  The worst spot, that little hump before you can start the shiny new content. I’m talking, in the case of RIFT, about the mid level 40s.

There are some clever ways of dealing with these issues. Before the XP was nerfed, crafting was a viable means for alts to level. However, in the wake of the XP reduction on SL (Storm Legion) crafting dailies, what is the best method for getting from 46 to SL with ease? I am about to tell you exactly how! SL quests. I know, you have to be 48 to start in Cape Jule or Pelladane.  However, there are some quests you can do in later zones that will level you quickly… and you won’t even have to do the impossible and kill mobs! Even better, it works for new players as well as alts. Here’s how, for both Defiants and Guardians:

1. City Core: There is a single quest at the starting spot as you head north from Cape Jule. Take the quest and you have you will be ready to start stealthily gaining levels and gear! For Guardians, simply get the animals you need. For Defiants, you will need to have a little cc to get to your objective points and escape. While there, you can try to do the quest for finding the four dead bodies, although that will again require cc to complete at this level.

These quests lead to Salvarola, not far up the road. He gives Egg Sacks and Boom Boxes for you to do. If you have a spec with CC you can complete the egg sacks without dying (the tough mobs with red names are immune to the boxes). The Boom Boxes are just spam uses to get enough credit. If not, then you will have to mitigate the damage from the tougher mobs as much as possible while getting your eggs. This leads to scouting the mutant camp. That should leave you without anything you can do (You’d have to kill a 52 after you finish the scouting portion), so head toward your next destination!

2. Eastern Holdings: At 46 for Guardians, you can do the daily drinking quest, and get 2 others. The first is simply porticulum finding, which can easily be done. The second is ‘Hard Reboot’ which requires you to use reboot stations on 5 malfunctioning robots. They will hit for ~1k, so you can easily survive at 46 the one hit they tend to deal before being rebooted.  It may also be possible to get the energy core, but I did not try this. Defiants should be able to complete one or two quests at the Southwall bunker, including ‘Hard Reboot’ and the porticulum quest. Avoid anything that requires you to kill mobs, as it just won’t end well!

3. Ardent Domain: You can complete a large number of quests here. Start with the Bunker, and go through the story. You get a tour, and the ritual quest. You can then complete feral cats, grasping at humanity, and the porticulum exploration. While you’re at it, you can complete the hidden supply quest from the chests in the river.

After this, you can safely do hiding behind the well, the torches leading to the storehouse there, convince the guy he still likes human food (hint– go chocolate!), and the supply crates in the storehouse. You can also sneak off to get the 4 shrines in the area (the first is near the storehouse) and also activate 4 holovids… with a little stealth and only one use of cc for the last holovid required. Just pay attention to mob pathing! You can also try to sneak up and use cc or random invasions to get several other quests (3 bodies while doing feral cats/grasping at humanity and zappers while working toward the storehouse).

At this point, you will be able to start Storm Legion quests, and might have even reached level 50. The vast majority of these quests only have 1 mob at most that would ever need to be engaged at a time. You just need to be patient, and work around the spots that would give you trouble. Remember to keep healing spells/items on hand, and any forms of emergency escape or cc available to help you survive.

Have fun out there in RIFT’s Storm Legion zones. You’ve earned it. Even if you didn’t spend all those hours grinding…

This coming weekend, December 14th through 18th, Trion will be showcasing RIFT Patch 2.1 and Storm Legion for free. Former subscribers will be able to explore all of the content of Storm Legion without purchasing the expansion, and prospective players will be able to experience some of the new additions to RIFT, including dimensions and the newly-arrived Fae Yule holiday event.

Storm Legion has already been called a “truly inspiring,” “gold standard” expansion with “by far the most innovative housing system in the genre.” Try it free from Dec. 14-18 when you join the Ascended in a march on the forces of Air and Death! Former subscribers can dive deep into Storm Legion with no restrictions, while anyone, including RIFT Lite players, can celebrate a huge new Fae Yule World Event and build in private or public, personal or guild Dimensions.

For more information, see Trion’s official announcement.

Trion has a pretty amazing art department, and Storm Legion showcases that fact well. The art team posted a whole slew of Storm Legion concept art drawings on the Polycount forums recently, which is a community geared toward video game artists and designers. Some of the pieces have been shared by Trion’s art team previous to the expansion’s launch, but others are new. All in all, the collection is a pretty fantastic source of eye candy for fans of RIFT’s artwork and overall design.

To check it out, follow this link to the Polycount forums. As a warning, the thread’s rather large. Make sure to scroll down to see everything.

Many of you may be returning to RIFT, maybe many of you are starting up for the first time, or maybe you’re just leveling an alt. In any case, you’re probably trying to catch up with some friends and are eager to dive into the new Storm Legion content. This video and guide is probably the fastest and best way to hit level 50 in the fastest time possible. Keep reading and we’ll give you the low down on what you need to do.

The game has changed quite a bit since the game launched and questing is out as the preferred method for speed leveling. Instant Adventures have given the game a whole new angle on things; but that is not what helps you level the fastest! We’re going old school in this tutorial with some straight up mob grinding.

This whole theory hinges on that you can get your hands on some veteran experience vials. These vials give you a 100% boost to experience pre-50 from mob kills which means you earn double the experience when you kill something. Once you get your vials stocked, you need to head out to the undead farm in Freemarch (see maps to the right). Now you have to de-level yourself to level 14 or so. You’ll be fighting NPCs that are approximately level 12.

There are two ways to de-level yourself; right click on your portrait and mentor yourself down to level 14 or join a Freemarch Instant Adventure and you’ll be there. Load up your best AOE farming spec and go to town.

This guide was done with a cleric using a Defiler spec, but any class and spec that can handle 5-10 NPCs at once will work just fine.

For those who are doing this, you might have to take a break and do some dungeons or Instant Adventures for gear so once you are high enough, your de-leveled stats are good enough for this.

The farm is loaded with mostly melee mobs and a few casters and is mostly densely populated. If you can find a better location, please share in these comments. However the relatively low hitpoints of level 14 mobs makes this ideal. The higher level you get, the easier things become.

Once you have that all straightened away, you’ll be melting faces in no time. At level 48, you can expect to get about 850 experience per kill and you’ll be killing 5-10 mobs at once. For comparison sake, you are gaining 2500 experience completing stages in IAs and 4500 or so for finishing them.

The last hint is to do your Random Warfronts every day. At level 49, winning a random warfront netted you 76,000 xp and winning five got me level 49 to 50 in about an hour. However, I did manage to win 5 in a row so this is very faction dependent.

If you really want to game the system as you grind, join up the local IA and let other people complete stages. If you are without scruples you can leech of other folks for a few extra thousand experience every few minutes. Also, when you join up warfronts for the bonus experience, determine quickly if you will win or not (most of the time you can figure this out quickly). If you suspect you will lost, quit and go back to grinding and try again when your desertion debuff wears off.

If you have any way to improve this strategy, leave it in the comments section below.

Being new to the world of Telara is a daunting experience, looking at all those high level Clerics with their shiny armour wandering around on fantastic mounts bristling with weapons and virtually aglow with magic can be enough to cause the new Cleric  to think they can never be that good.

Fear not the challenge, for here is a way to beat the levelling woe’s and become one of those Clerics you first looked up to.

This guide is set out to make the transition from level 10 to level 60 as painless as possible if you have to do it Solo or with a friend. So the first thing you need to do is get out of the starting zone by following the quest line and get to today’s Telara, you should be around level 8 when you emerge, I’d suggest following the quest line till you get to level 10 then you can reset your souls to take advantage of this guide.

Single target Macro

Healing Macro

Buffs to Keep Active

• Armor of Devotion – Increase Crit Hit chance
• Vengeance of the Winter Storm – cause your attacks to deal addition damage.

Strategy: 
Fairly straight forward at this level. You use Vex to pull mobs (this is a DOT ~ Damage Over Time~ spell) and then spam your single target macro until the target is dead. You have no AoE abilities at this level so keep your pulls to single target. Use your Healing Macro as you see fit to keep alive.

Single target Macro

Buffs to Keep Active

• Armor of Devotion – Increase Crit Hit chance
• Vengeance of the Winter Storm – cause your attacks to deal addition damage.

Strategy: 
Exact same as level 10, new spell “Sanction Heretic” added to Single target Macro.

Buffs to Keep Active

• Armor of Devotion – Increase Crit Hit chance
• Vengeance of the Winter Storm – cause your attacks to deal addition damage.
• Shroud of Agony - 20% chance when hit to deal Death damage to up to 10 nearby enemies over 6s

Strategy:
Make sure you have the buff “Shroud of Agony” up when fighting multiple mobs and always pull with Vex where possible as this heals you for 6% of your max health over the duration, otherwise just as before. Just remember to Vex everything to keep your health topped up.

AoE Macro

Buffs to Keep Active

• Armor of Devotion – Increase Crit Hit chance
• Vengeance of the Winter Storm – cause your attacks to deal addition damage.
• Shroud of Agony - 20% chance when hit to deal Death damage to up to 10 nearby enemies over 6s

Strategy: 
Pretty much the same as before, Vex and then spam your new AoE macro if fighting multiple enemies or use your Single Target Macro when there is only one.

You can now use Harsh Disciplin as well as your Healing macro to heal yourself. Remember to make sure you have “Shroud of Agony” on if you are fighting multiple enemies.

Single Target Macro

Buffs to Keep Active

• Armor of Devotion – Increase Crit Hit chance
• Vengeance of the Winter Storm – cause your attacks to deal addition damage.
• Shroud of Agony - 20% chance when hit to deal Death damage to up to 10 nearby enemies over 6s

Strategy:
You now have Ride the Lightning to get you into the fight quicker,it also damages the targeted enemy and damages all others on the way past. Also useful for breaking out of any movement imparing effects.Otherwise, as before, tag with vex to heal yourself and mash single/aoe macro

Single Target Macro

Healing Macro

Buffs to Keep Active

• Armor of Devotion – Increase Crit Hit chance
• Vengeance of the Winter Storm – cause your attacks to deal addition damage.
• Shroud of Agony - 20% chance when hit to deal Death damage to up to 10 nearby enemies over 6s
• Righteous Mandate – put this on your friend/partner/random person to help heal them as you DPS.

Strategy:
Use Glacial Shield on a pull, otherwise it’s the same as before, this time your single target macro has a ranged attack in it so any mobs out of melee range, you cast ekkehard’s grasp doing 115+ damage to them.

AoE Macro

Buffs to Keep Active

• Armor of Devotion – Increase Crit Hit chance
• Vengeance of the Winter Storm – cause your attacks to deal addition damage.
• Shroud of Agony - 20% chance when hit to deal Death damage to up to 10 nearby enemies over 6s
• Righteous Mandate – put this on your friend/partner/random person to help heal them as you DPS.

Strategy:
Not much new here except your AoE macro can now be spammed. Remember to cast Vex on your targets to keep the healing flowing, Doctrine of Bliss when you need a quick boost. Don’t forget Harsh Disciplin when the last target is nearly dead to finish it off and heal yourself.

Buffs to Keep Active

• Armor of Devotion – Increase Crit Hit chance
• Vengeance of the Winter Storm – cause your attacks to deal addition damage.
• Shroud of Agony - 20% chance when hit to deal Death damage to up to 10 nearby enemies over 6s
• Righteous Mandate – put this on your friend/partner/random person to help heal them as you DPS.
• Glory of the Chosen - Weapon attack heals you for a small amount

Strategy:
No major changes….keep at it…

Buffs to Keep Active

• Armor of Devotion – Increase Crit Hit chance
• Vengeance of the Winter Storm – cause your attacks to deal addition damage.
• Shroud of Agony - 20% chance when hit to deal Death damage to up to 10 nearby enemies over 6s
• Righteous Mandate – put this on your friend/partner/random person to help heal them as you DPS.
• Glory of the Chosen - Weapon attack heals you for a small amount

Strategy: 
Tag as many targets as possible with vex. Use Ride the Lightning if possible when you get snared. Gather the mobs up and try to have them all face you. Mash your AoE macro until all dead; use your ST macro if there’s a straggler or two. If you get really low on health use doctrine of bliss a few times. When low on mana, hit purpose immediately after a soul drain for quick mana recharge.

Single target – OPTIONAL

Buffs to Keep Active

• Armor of Devotion – Increase Crit Hit chance
• Vengeance of the Winter Storm – cause your attacks to deal addition damage.
• Shroud of Agony - 20% chance when hit to deal Death damage to up to 10 nearby enemies over 6s
• Righteous Mandate – put this on your friend/partner/random person to help heal them as you DPS.
• Glory of the Chosen - Weapon attack heals you for a small amount

Strategy:
If you run into Mana problems, cast “Ageless Ice” to recover 7% of your mana. “Jolt ” is a big hit if you activate it when it procs off, The macro above is for those people that don’t want to have another button to press. If you want to do more damage though, keep it on a separate key to cast “Jolt” when it Procs for a 50% damage increase.

You also now have “Interdict” – An AoE Interupt, works well in PVP and PVE with a 10 second cooldown

Word to the wise, the mobs start hitting like a truck from now on, until you know you can handle them, pick your target with caution, nothing worse that attacking a higher level mob, nearly beating it down, then it’s friends jump in and paste you to the floor.

Buffs to Keep Active

• Armor of Devotion – Increase Crit Hit chance
• Vengeance of the Winter Storm – cause your attacks to deal addition damage.
• Shroud of Agony - 20% chance when hit to deal Death damage to up to 10 nearby enemies over 6s
• Righteous Mandate – put this on your friend/partner/random person to help heal them as you DPS.
• Glory of the Chosen - Weapon attack heals you for a small amount
• Heart of the Frozen Sea - Increases resistance

Strategy:
Apart from the new buff “Heart of the Frozen Sea” you get another interrupt, “Bitter Wind” , this is a Single Target interrupt, for those times when you just need to stop someone after you have already interrupted the crowd..

Oh, and welcome to level 60

Storm Breaker Protocol is a level 52-56 dungeon. The portal is in Tempest Bay near the vendor for Planar Dimension items.

The first half of SBP has a unique mechanic: each member of the party is given a mech suit! Along with the new look comes a whole new hotbar of abilities.

The first button is a basic melee attack. The second button is a chargeable ranged cannon — press the button once to charge, and again to deploy. The third button releases a series of missiles at your target. The fourth button shoots out a jet of flame that’s great for mowing down packs of little bugs. The fifth button is a shield, and the final button will revive a dead teammate. All the attack abilities can be used while moving, including charging the cannon. This is important, as you’ll be running around a lot.

Let’s say you’re standing in front of one of the bosses and the tank is about to pull — what do you need to know right this minute? Check out our Quick Tactics Guide!

Citybreaker Zidae

Zidae periodically sends red glowing aura on the ground, pulsing away from him. Don’t stand in it! If you get low on health smash one of the individual barrels in the corner and stand in the green orb. (Note: As of the November 20th hotfix your melee attack will not break the barrels. Try the missiles or flamethrower instead.)

Vellion the Pestilent

First Phase: Don’t stand in the red and purple ground auras. Vellion’s limbs are separate targets — everyone in the party should attack one Trunk, then the other. He’ll then stop moving and bend over.
Second Phase: Jump on Vellion’s back (the game assists a bit with the landing) and spam your melee attack.

Repeat these two phases until the boss is dead. Kill little spawned plants for a chance at a green health orb, or kill Vellion’s Pestilence Spewer to spawn a number of orbs at once.

Telaphalon

Telaphon will occasionally wrap someone in a cocoon and start channeling Tectonic Rupture. To release them, run up to the cocooned player, use the temporary ability that appears, and then run away from them. Once the player is free, the tank can interrupt Tectonic Rupture. The cocoon must be broken within 8 seconds or Tectonic Rupture will be uninterruptable and everyone will die.

One player will have to use a control panel to stop waves of bugs that otherwise increase Telaphalon’s outgoing damage. Use the control panel to port to the bridge shortly after the fight starts. Use abilities 2 and 3 to slow and stun the bug waves, and then shoot them with ability 1 until dead.

Storm the Estate

This is a quest on the way to the final boss. You will have the opportunity to choose one of two tactical objectives. Take the mines. Put them together in one area of the final boss platform when you get there, and kite the ensuing waves of adds over the mines.

Baron Slagstorm

Purge his blue shield, kill adds as they spawn. The boss will occasionally start to channel the 20 second spell Iron Surge and target one of the crystals in the room. All DPS should immediately focus fire on the Crystal, which must die before Iron Surge is complete.

Over the weekend, one of the popular topics on the official RIFT forums and in-game was the topic of mob tagging in Storm Legion. Trion has finally taken the first step in doing away with the old school “tag a mob first and grab all the rewards” system and now players are able to share experience, coin rewards, and quest progression on mobs they didn’t originally tag. Most players enjoy the new system, which essentially allows players to work together to defeat mobs and quickly complete Carnage quests and gain extra experience.

The downside, however, is the fact that since experience is split equally between all contributors of a mob kill, it actually becomes more efficient to throw up a weak DoT on a mob someone else is killing, remount, and continue finding something else to kill (or throw more DoTs around). According to some players, this kind of invalidates the whole “players working together” image that Trion most likely had in mind.

Elrar took a moment to clarify how the system works on the forums:

Originally posted by Elrar (Source)

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I want to clarify how the new tagging system works with some additional information -

With Storm Legion you’ll notice mobs are no longer “owned” and multiple players can contribute to the fight and get credit for quests as well as some XP.

What we realize is unclear is how that XP is divided so I wanted to take a minute to break it down.

As some of you’ve pointed out – XP is shared for the monster, in fact it works exactly as if you grouped together.

Now when a monster is killed it divides its base XP & coin along with a group bonus among those who contributed towards the kill.

We do feel removing tagging is a step in the right direction – but like any new feature we absolutely appreciate your feedback as we observe how it impacts your experience.

First off, I think it’s safe to say that most players definitely agree the new system is a step in the right direction. One possible next step might be to actually make the amount of experience dependent on damage done or time spent attacking a mob. Another option is to allow quest progression to be shared, but not experience. Alternatively, Trion could open the system up even more, and allow players to assist one another with buffs and heals while not partied. This might encourage players to stick together a little more, and discourage the whole “tag and run” system that is currently popular.

What do you think of the new tagging system? Is there room for improvement or has Trion nailed it?