[Guide] Rift Chloromancer-Warlock build

Chloromancer 33 - Warlock 14 - Dominator 19

Build 1

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Build 2

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I've found that the roots of each soul are just as much a part of the build as the branches. You can skim past the text just to look at the ability links and brief write-ups if you like, but if you are curious as to why I chose the branches as I did, I'll be giving more in-depth explanations following each list. This may come off as sounding more like a guide than a build, but technically it's acting as a guide TO the build.

By no means is this an all-inclusive finished product. As the game has not gone live yet, we may see drastic changes, additions or removals from what I have here and if that happens to be the case (as it most likely will be), then I hope to revisit this and make appropriate alterations to match the changes that may be made.

Buffs:

Lifegiving Veil - Converts damage into healing based around the target's location.
Living Energy - Reduces cost of party and raid member's abilities by 10% until canceled.
Synthesis - Enhances the effect of Lifegiving Veil on one ally for 1 hour.
Neddra's Strength - Increases an allies endurance for 1 hour.

For any Chloromancer, I would go so far as to say that Synthesis is an absolute must have. if you decide to go all the way up the Synthesis tree as I have, It only gets better. Pound for pound, these are some of the most valued abilities available to the Chloromancer as far as I'm concerned. With Synthesis and Natural Fusion alone, the converted healing from life damage is 225% (or 262.5% if multiplicative).

Empowered Veil is just as important as Natural Fusion in this build that seeks to capitalize off of Synthesis. It will have a heavier impact on those not targeted by Synthesis, though your Synthesis target will be thanking you as well. There is just no way to justify NOT taking this branch ability if you intend on doing any form of support role with the Chloromancer.

Living Energy is completely amazing. It keeps your allies and yourself in the fight 10% longer. It wouldn't seem like much but when it comes down to getting off that Flourish or Natural Conversion, this will tip the scales in your favor. I personally feel that this ability pulls it's 32 point weight.

I've not got much to say about Neddra's Strength. It increases your health and the health of any ally you cast it on. Hands down a great ability for both PvE and PvP alike. I Do feel like this build is lacking a bit in buffs for the party or raid, but to be fair, it's not a buffing build. It was designed to heal and support and That intent will become more prevalent as you will see.

Survivability & Control:

Nature's Cleansing - Removes one negative effect from an ally.
Wild Abandon - Removes roots and snares from ally as well as granting immunity.
Soul Thether - The "get out of jail free" rez.
Fear - Sends a single enemy running in fear for a short durration.
Wither - Snares a single enemy severely for a short durration.
Transmogrify - Transforms a single enemy into a fluffy squirrel.
Deny - Purges all debuffs from a single ally.
Memory Wipe - Reduces your threat with a single enemy by a large amount.
Storm Shackle - Roots a single enemy for a short duration and causes damage to them and all enemies around them, snaring each target struck, if they move before the debuff fades.
Void Shroud - Reduces all heals a single enemy receives for a short duration.
Priest's Lament - Punishes a single enemy each time they cast a spell by potentially silencing them for a short duration.

Some things are just better in pairs, and the Deny / Nature's Cleansing is no exception. Deny is probably the more obvious stronghold between the two, but without a solid knowledge of what classifies as a debuff versus what is a curse, disease or poison, I feel both to be necessary for the time being, and I'm quite sure both will have their specific uses individual to themselves.

Wild Abandon is a great opening ability in PvP when your main assist is charging headlong into an enemy group just as much as it is a superb tool for your own survival. The quintessential "Survival & Control" ability amongst the line-up. Unleashed Abandon goes a long way to making this gem even more shiney by adding additional time to the immunity given. 10 long seconds of nearly complete CC ignorance is definitely something you want to have in your arsenal. We aren't too sure how the CC game is going to look on release, but for now, the only thing that will stop you is a stun, Transmogrify, or fear. As far as I am aware, there is nothing available to stop those aside from one little gem that I'll be getting into further down the line.

Another great opening ability that I think might be overlooked is Storm Shackle. As mentioned before, when a group of angry people with big weapons are bearing down on you and you find yourself rooted, the natural reaction (one would hope in this scenario) would be to use any means possible to break the root and kite. Storm Shackle WANTS to be broken. It burns for it deep down in it's little stormy shackling soul. I'm not a librarian of all the abilities in the game, but as far as I've seen, this ability is one of the few if not the only root AND snare all wrapped up in an explosive package.

Fear and Transmogrify are two of the few if not the only abilities to get around targets immune to snare and root. Pretty standard, solid CC forms for pre-kite and individual lockdown. Assuming you can manage to get a full duration out of them, that's 40 seconds of not having to worry about a particular individual, or two enemies if you really need it. I shouldn't have to go into detail on why either of these are worth the points invested. It just so happens that Transmogrify comes free when you pick up the Dominator soul, which is bonus. With Clinging Form, Mental Discipline and Efficient Control all working to enhance the effectiveness of Transmog, you'll see it landing more frequently, costing less to cast and after reducing the cooldown to nil, you can switch it to different targets as needed, or simply recast it if the first is resisted or removed. An argument against it might be that it could simply be removed by some outside effect, but as a counter, if they are working to stop your transmog, then they are obviously not focusing on the offensive. That in and of itself is another form of control.

Memory Wipe: Great for PvE and completely useless in PvP. Unless spell effects elicit a pushback on spells being cast, leave this one on the PvE instance hotbar. Outside of it's one-sided caveat, it still is invaluable when in the dungeons. Void Shroud and Priest's Lament, on the other hand, are excellent abilities for most any occasion. I'm not certain yet whether there will be diminishing returns from debuffs such as these, but I find it highly unlikely as they are status effects rather than inhibiting effects. I'm not certain that I would have both on the same target though, as Lament will stand a good chance to cause silence and negate the effectiveness of Shroud. The best thing about Shroud is it has a cooldown equal to it's duration, so with adroit keysmithing, one could keep it up on a target indefinitely. An absolute boon, that goes without saying, to any supporting mage.

Wither is another one of those abilities that just doesn't require a lengthy explanation. Snare your target by 70% for ~8 seconds. Here is your cake. It taste's delicious.

Healing & Healing assistant:

Radiant Spores - Places a debuff on the target that when struck has a potential to heal the attacker for an amount equal to the damage dealt.
Withering Vines - Causes damage over time as well as healing over time to those around the target.
Stream of Reclamation - Channeled spell that causes damage over time and increases the likelyhood of Radiant Spores procing,
Natural Conversion - Converts the enemy's next damage spell into a heal.
Flourish - Heals up to 10 allies within a certain distance of you.
Essence Surge - Health bar "reset" button.
Nature's Touch - Causes damage to a single enemy and heals your Synthesis target.
Bloom - Good old fashioned heal spell.
Life Leach - Causes damage to a single enemy and heals you for a percentage of the damage dealt.

Radiant Spores is plain and simply a bread and butter Chloromancer spell. Because of this train of thought, I decided that Phytogenesis was an absolute must. With it at 3/3, Radiant Spores becomes AoE which is brilliant, but even more important; it now procs 30% of the time up from 15%. Even if the percentages are multiplicative which would put it at a sad 17.25%, it's STILL an AoE effect which would more than make up for it.

Flourish is a great "Pbaoe" (Point Blank Area of Effect) healing ability that you can crack off every 20 seconds. At first glance, I had mixed feelings about this one, but after a few minutes of glancing through the other abilities in the tree and roots I came to realize that for a Pbaoe effect, it has a rather large range on it. In most situations save the few where you are granted the luxury of standing back at max range, people ARE going to be close to you, or at least working hard at it. 20 meters is a rather sound distance, and Healing Slipstream just pours on the gravy. The only thing better than healing, is instant healing, and we have nearly all of our main healing spells now instant thanks to this gem of a branch ability.

Keeping the focus on better healing, Call of Spring and Circle of Life work very well together to boost your healing efficiency and viability. I would consider these Must Haves as well, though I do think that depending on the options available, the points may or may not be better spent elsewhere. With my current options, I consider these two branch abilities mainstays.

As it stands, Nature's Touch seems like it could actually be a hindrance. Granted, it does give 100% conversion of damage done to healing received, but it's not clear whether that is factored in BEFORE synthesis. With the wording as they have it, I feel it could bypass Synthesis just as easily as it could heal twice; once from the written text of "the ally...with their Synthesis buff is healed by 100% of damage dealt." and once from the damage passing through LGV onto the Synthesis target again. If it does infact heal twice, then I would be thrilled and the 2 second cast time (which as of current cant be reduced) would be outweighed by the healing done. If it only heals for 100% of the damage done and does NOT pass through LGV (acting as a filter for damage into healing) then its actually worse than just using a standard Vile Spores. Testing is required.

Withering Vines is nice at lower levels but suffers from multiple component syndrome. It is not healing allies as a direct result of the damage dealt, but rather as a secondary component of the spell itself. As the spell reads, Withering Vines deals X damage to target enemy over Z seconds and heals allies within 10m for Y health over Z seconds. As damage is augmented by things like Intelligence, you could boost the damage of this spell to... 10,000 for sake of argument, but the healing component is the Y variable, and is not affected by the increase in damage. Unless this ability is designed to scale up proportionately on both ends, its really nothing to write home about.

Now Essence Surge on the other hand, is definitely something that makes the front page. This ability is simply amazing. Ignore Pain 3 anyone? Don't mind if I do! Honestly If I should have to explain how a 100% instant heal on a 5 minute timer is worth the points, I think I've lost you along the way somewhere between "this build is about healing" and "this build is about support".

Life Leach seems like the odd man out in this list, since it is mainly a damage spell with a bonus heal attached to it. For what I intend to use it for, it facilitates a rather nice ability in the Supplemental portion of this build. So I'm leaving it here in the healing section since that is what my primary function of the ability is.

Damage & Damage assistant:

Haunting Pain - Puts 10 stacks of an effect that causes damage over time for each stack on the target. Movement removes stacks each second.
Neural Prod - Instant damage with no cooldown.
Vile Spores - Bolt that deals life damage
Ruin - Instant life damage with moderate cooldown
Nature's Fury - Classic AoE life damage nuke
Void Bolt - Bolt that deals Death damage
Dark Touch - Death based Damage over time.
Neddra's Torture - Increases all death damage received by target.

Right, so starting with Void Bolt, I decided to invest in Improved Void Bolt, and Lingering Pain. At the quicker 1.52 cast time, it makes juggling upfront damage from a bolt and longer lasting damage/healing from the DoT much easier to manage by just stapling one to the other. I only have to cast Life Leach once and then I can continually refresh it with a new serving of Void Bolt. The benefit of this is multifaceted. With Magical Affinity 5/5, one Void Bolt generates 19 charge alone, where as Life Leach only nets about 11. If a net gain of 8 charge doesn't do it for you, then consider that the Void Bolt will proc a heal conversion from LGV as will a refreshed Life Leach, so I've also gained in Healing efficiency. On top of those, I'm saving on mana as well by not having to balance both spells, but instead simply casting one and having it do all the work for me.

Nature's Fury and Vile Spores both trigger LGV in a bigger way than the Warlock spells do, but Vile Spores is favorable for raw healing where Nature's Fury is more of a blanket damage option. Granted it is on an 8 second cooldown, but baring that, It's one of the few abilities that can be put into a short duration rotation that delivers AoE damage.

To Elaborate further on the Death Damage Trio that I've got from the Warlock soul - speaking of Dark Touch, Life Leach, and Void Bolt - I've picked up Improved Life Leach for the added health returned (the damage increase isn't necessary but you wont find me saying no) and Neddra's Torture. a flat 15% increase in death damage dealt stands to give my DPS a bit if a kick in the pants while simultaneously helping to boost the LGV conversion. Anything that gives more than one benefit to my objectives with the build generally earns merit, if not a spot on the team. Yay Synergy.

Haunting Pain almost made it onto the Survivability and Control portion, but I seriously doubt most players will be worrying about when that specific ability is on them, and then they would need to run about like a loony for long enough to reduce the stacks to a manageable number. It's not doing real control, so this one is reserved for enemy mages.

Consumes Charge:

Corrosion - Pulsing Pbaoe around you that hurts enemies nearby
Entropic Veil - Increases all magic damage dealt by a percentage.
Reconstruct - Converts charge into health.

These abilities all have their uses, though some more specific than others. Empowered Veil increases the effectiveness of Entropic Veil from a 10% boost to a 19% boost, so that at least is noteworthy when coupled with the Neddra's Torture 15% increase in death damage. Corrosion I see as being more of a Last Stand type of spell. If you are surrounded by enemies and you just want to go out with a bang, I'd fire this one off. Now interestingly enough, if the coefficient is on the higher end, Corrosion could end up being extremely powerful, but without that data available yet, I can only speculate. Reconstruct on the other hand, helps quite a bit not only for survivability, but also mana generation paired with Sacrifice Life: Mana. I've heard separate arguments for and against Sacrifice Life: Mana, but I've got more mana tricks up my sleeves so this is more of a fall-back spell in case you just REALLY need some mana.

Supplemental:

Sacrifice Life: Mana - Converts a percentage of your health into a directly proportionate amount of mana.
Empathic Bond - Returns mana to you based on the amount of damage your Synthesis target takes.
Reflective Command - Reflects the next hostile spell cast on the target ally back on the caster.
Mana Wrench - Damage over time with a mana drain component.
Accelerated Decay - Applies a stacking debuff that reduces the target enemies casting and attack speed.

The Final Five abilities are here, and why I feel they are the best possible options available is right behind them! Sacrifice Life: Mana is an excellent ability, as I had mentioned earlier. When paired with Life Leach which should be a near constant stream (or trickle perhaps, but regardless) of health coming back to me, It shouldn't be really dipping into my health too much. Mana Wrench I find to be leaps and bounds ahead of Sacrifice Life: Mana in terms of efficiency. I plan on working Mana Wrench into any solid rotations for PvE to increase longevity, and casting it as often as possible in PvP when the situations afford it.

Empathic Bond continues to compound on the mana return, offering the second best option available. Although Sacrifice Life: Mana would return more per use, any option that doesn't cause the loss of life in order to obtain mana return is going to be a better option. The only thing that worries me is the hefty 3 minute cooldown on Empathic Bond for 30 seconds of mana conversion. I will have to test it more to see if Empathic Bond is worth the point or if It would be better spent in Wild Growth.

As far as the Branch abilities go, I'll reiterate that my choice of Acumen 5/5 over Controlled Opportunity is the better of the two. A steady 10% increase to Intelligence is much more valued in this build over a short burst of damage, albeit a very high burst. I don't plan on casting Transmogrify often enough to make Controlled Opportunity worth the invested points, but if I ever did find myself in a more solid Dominator build with a heavier emphasis on control... even then... I'm not so sure.

And finally, Accelerated Growth for the 5% increase to life damage spells and effects. This one is pretty self explanatory. More damage from life spells gives me slightly more DPS while playing off of the LGV conversion just as much.

With my beta time being intermittent due to work related issues, I was only able to get to level 20. That being said, I did however have the opportunity to test out a segment of the build to some degree. Here are my thoughts on certain abilities and how they function together.

Mana leach is out of the build. Since this is mainly for PvP, Mana leach being a channeled ability limits me for 6 seconds as to what I can do. Granted it gives mana back which is nice, I did find that Sacrifice Life: Mana did the job well enough with the amount of AoE healing I did. The added bonus of Sacrifice Life: Mana is that it is currently counted as you actually casting a damage spell on yourself so 5% of the life lost per cast is converted through LGV to your group.
Withering Vines has a higher value than I had intended. With no cooldown and a quick cast speed, I could throw it up on multiple targets and it actually became a rather valuable group healing mechanic.
My speculation of Void Bolt refreshing the timer of Life Leach granting a new tick of damage from the DoT was correct. With each refresh, It healed me for 45% of the damage (about 18 per application) and my group as well through LGV. Great for leveling, but not really anything I would use in PvP consistently.
At level 20, my Vile Spores was hitting targets for about 130-140, and returning roughly 80-90 hp per cast on my group. My Synthesis target was receiving about 110-120 hp per cast. This coupled with Ruin every 15 seconds made for a nice way to spike heal. Though my Chloromancer soul did not function well enough to be the main healer of our group, It was awesome supplemental healing which made our cleric's job infinitely easier.
With a 2 second cast time on Soul Thether, I thought it wouldn't be getting much use but It was rather contrary. Also, as a side note, It WILL res yourself if you are the first to die within it's 30 second duration.
Circle of Life did not cause a crit in my healing often enough for me to notice it and say "I'm glad I got that branch ability" but It's staying in the build because there really isn't much else that outweighs it.
Empathic Bond is out. Living Shell is in. Just as well as Nature's touch is out because it does not gain any effect from Synthesis. It might be a bug, but when it hit for about 160, it would heal my main target for 160. Ruin is doing the same at an instant cast speed (albeit on a longer cooldown) and 2.5 seconds is a long time to wait for something that isn't getting a conversion from Synthesis and isn't replacing anything in the list of spells. In a 6 second span, I could cast 3 Vile spores that heal for roughly 80-90 and pop off Ruin for 130-140 healing. I might consider it when Quicken Form and Quick Thinking are both in play and I can afford to Insta-transmog someone for a 2s Nature's Touch.
I'm considering shifting 5 points from Magical Affinity to Opportunity. I found that Charge generation seemed pretty good without it, and at the moment the only ability I use that consumes charge is Reconstruct. Opportunity would increase damage and healing through making my Vile Spores instant cast on occasion.
At this low level, I couldn't test the CC portion of my build as most of my points were being invested in Chloromancer and the rest into the Void Bolt + Life Leach combo. From what I could tell, Transmog was nice when I was with the guild group in PvP but gets broken too easily. I'd use it for emergencies only. Outside of that, the only other form of CC I had was Thunder Blast which really did absolutely nothing. It was too easy for enemies to close the gap created (about 10 feet of knockback). I was upset with this abilities performance through and through and wont be wasting a slot on my hotbars for it.

Author: Steveburger