Ugly’s Builds
These are the builds I currently use in game for various purposes as of April 2011. Rift is continuously evolving, so these may be outdated in a month or two. These builds are all intended for level 50. Again, these are what I myself use and enjoy, your mileage may vary.
Build #1
Hybrid 34 Chloromancer, 32 Warlock, 0 Archon for Main Healing
This is my dungeon and raid healing build. The rotation is very simple, but it has to be since I will often be paying attention to health bars to throw out Bloom and Flourish when needed. You also have to pay attention to your target’s health because if it dies as you are casting on it, the tank will not receive the expected heal and this can have dire consequences.
Macros:
Ruin
#show Ruin
suppressmacrofailures
cast Ruin
cast Radiant Spores
cast Searing Vitality
Eep!
#show Neddra’s Essence
suppressmacrofailures
cast Neddra’s Essence
cast Shadow Life
Bloom
#show Bloom
cast @mouseoverui Bloom
Cleanse
#show Nature’s Cleansing
cast @mouseoverui Nature’s Cleansing
InstaRez
#show Soul Tether
cast @mouseoverui Soul Tether
Tips and Tactics:
- Always keep the Lifegiving Veil buff up on yourself, and keep Synthesis up on your tank. If you ever zone out or teleport, remember to refresh Synthesis because it may fall off of the tank.
- Open up with Radiant Spores, this can be done before or during a pull since it does not create aggro.
- Cast Nature’s Touch as often as it is off cooldown. It has a 6 second cooldown that starts as soon as you start casting, and it has a 2.5 second cast time, so that means you will need to fill 3.5 seconds with other spell casts before you can cast it again. One Vile Spores cast and one Instant Cast spell will work handily. If you proc an Opportunity cast of Nature’s Touch, you will need to fill 4.5 seconds of time instead of 2.5, and casting Vile Spores twice works well in that case.
- Try to keep both the short duration 0-point Archon buffs up on yourself whenever possible. Pillaging Stone will increase your Intelligence, thereby increasing your DPS and healing. Searing Vitality will increase your hit point count, making you more survivable. You won’t always be able to keep up these buffs, depending on healing requirements (keeping your tank alive is the highest priority), but if you find the tank isn’t taking much damage, feel free to work in a Pillaging Stone cast to renew the buff!
- If you get into trouble (pull aggro or have an add on you), hit the Eep! macro I list above. Hit it twice if you don’t think your tank will save you fast enough or if you have become low on health.
- The @mouseoverui macros above for Bloom, Nature’s Cleansing, and Soul Tether can be used by rolling your mouse cursor over the group member unit frame that needs to be healed, cleansed, or battle rezzed then pressing the button it is assigned to on the action bar. I prefer to run dungeons in raid unit frame mode because the raid frames easier for me to pick a target off than the party frames (there is no penalty or drawback to running a 5-man dungeon in a 5-man raid group).
- When your charge gets high, activate Entropic Veil to increase your damage and healing through damage for a brief period.
- When your mana gets to 50%, activate Living Shell and keep on casting your normal rotation. Be sure to activate it right after casting another life spell so that Natural Awareness is still active on you to get back more mana from it. There is no real need to waste cast time on the Warlock’s Sacrifice Life: Mana unless you feel like it or if you take damage at a bad time and your Living Shell shield is expended too quickly.
Basic Rotation
Nature’s Touch > Vile Spores > Ruin macro
The Ruin macro can be replaced with either Bloom or Flourish as needed, and you can switch the order of Vile Spores and the instant cast as you desire. The Ruin macro can also be spammed during movement phases. If Opportunity procs for you, use it to instant cast Nature’s Touch while on the run. Note that Opportunity procs can bugger up your rotation! When in doubt, cast Vile Spores twice in a row then Nature’s Touch.
Build #2
Hybrid 40 Elementalist, 26 Chloromancer (0 points in Dominator) for Pet Tanking
The premise of this build is to have a stout pet capable of tanking elite mobs while still dealing damage to the enemy and at the same time keeping your pet alive and yourself aggro free. Having more points in Elementalist makes the pet a better aggro holder, that’s why I limited Chloro to 26 points. Since patch 1.1, I have had no problems with pulling aggro from my pet; he holds them like a champ.
This is not a high damage build, nor does it have a high healing output compared to the above Warlock/Chloro build, but the AoE healing provided is still very useful to a group. The Elementalist pet is picked over the Necro pet because it has better AOE threat generation and greater damage reduction. The level 50 pet can comfortably tank 2 level 50 elite mobs, although 3 can become dangerous, so that’s where the Dominator’s Transmogrify comes in.
Tips and Tactics
- Keep up the Exposure debuff on elite targets, only needs to be cast every 30 seconds.
- Always make sure you have Lifegiving Veil on yourself, and Synthesis on your pet. Remember if you take a portal or zone into a dungeon, the Synthesis buff is likely to fall off.
- Set the pet attack and pet follow buttons to easily reachable keys, so you can command it without clicking.
- Turn off the pet’s AoE and Single Target taunt abilities so you can manually activate them when they are needed. He always uses those before Thud if they are off cooldown and on auto-cast, and this is not ideal. You can pull packs of normal mobs and have him use Earthquake once on them, and he will hold aggro even over moderate AoE damage (feel free to cast Burning Ground, Nature’s Fury, and Fiery Assault without fear of pulling them off of him, but make sure to toss in a Nature’s Touch occasionally to heal him up).
- If you find you need to heal the pet but there’s something in the way or he is out of range, use Quicken Elements. It does not require line of sight and has (as far as I can tell) an infinite range.
Basic Rotation
Depends on the situation. If you have him tanking elites, use Nature’s Touch every time it is up same as the dungeon healing rotation. If you are having him tank many normal mobs, make sure he gets in an Earthquake or two, then you can add AoE spells to the rotation.
Build #3
Hybrid 32 Storm Caller, 21 Elementalist, 13 Chloromancer for Solo AOE Grinding
This build is specifically for gathering multiple normal enemies together to AOE them down (not recommended for fighting elites). The elemental pet is used to pull while the mage stands by safely, and when all enemies are gathered, the mage goes to the edge of the AoE area.
I generally use this for doing my daily quests if I am solo. It is very effective for killing a large number of enemies very quickly.
Macros:
Whamo!
#show Lightning Strike
suppressmacrofailures
cast Lightning Strike
cast Cloudburst
Geddoff!
#show Icy Gale
suppressmacrofailures
cast Icy Gale
cast Wind Chill
Tips and Tactics:
The idea is to have Radiant Spores up on all or just very many of your targets so you can be healed when they start beating on you. Your pet may die, but that isn’t a large concern once everything is gathered and you have started casting. This is not very effective on ranged mobs, so be sure to use your pet to pull all of the melee to the ranged types or they will just peg you from a distance outside of your AoE. The pet is not important for this spec except as a tool for gathering mobs.
More than four enemies (effective up to 10):
Radiant Spores > Lightning Storm > Lightning Field
Finish off any remaining enemies with Cloudburst or Forked Lightning.
Four or fewer enemies (or if Lightning Storm is on cooldown):
Radiant Spores > Forked Lightning x3 > Lightning Field
Cast Forked Lightning and Lightning Field as many times as necessary to clean up.
For a single target:
Start with: Radiant Spores > Raging Storm (or Thunderbolt x3) > Ice Shear > Whamo! macro
Every time Lightning Strike is cast, start over with: Thunderbolt > Ice Shear > Whamo! macro
Before your first damage spell, you can cast Ice Shield on yourself to buff against the initial whacks on you. The Bloom spell also gives you a little health to repair damage your Radiant Spores procs didn’t fully cover.
If you get more than you can handle, use the Geddoff! macro a time or two and run away! You have the Chloromancer Nature’s Cleansing if something has hit you with a slowing curse.
I am sorry to disappoint, but at this time I do not have a tried and tested dungeon DPS build. So far, I have only healed in dungeons (I actually like it better than plain DPS because I have to pay attention to a lot more).
My fourth role is currently used for testing purposes, and does not have a defined build locked in yet. Developers are making plans to change some mage souls so spending more points into a single soul is more desirable, so my fourth role may be used for a 51 point Chloromancer build some time in the future (depending on the changes that are made). This will likely occur in a few weeks with update 1.2.
(Reposted from a friend in Old Timers Guild)