Media To All Riftwalkers, and Anyone it may Concern: Riftwalker, A Retrospective

-"BabaFisi" Makyrlynn

To all Riftwalkers, or to any who would or could care to read, this message will effectively be a way to remember Riftwalker as it is now before its rework.

I'm sure you've noticed by now that your magic seems to have a new twang to it, as if there's more potential to grow. For us Riftwalkers, our magic is warping and changing at an alarming rate, and we're all unsure about our future as Mages, and more specifically, worried about the future of our magic.

So I feel the best way to calm this panic slightly is to give a nice history; a "riftwalk" down memory lane, so to speak, and give a very important message that us Riftwalker all know, but bears repeating:

We all remember the 2.0 update, where we Mages were introduced to our respective covens. At the time, it was the Arcanists who held the most promise, with their high damage and mana, who wouldn't want to give that taste of power a try?

Second to them was the Lightbenders, who shed their meteor casting ways to hold onto their 3 heals-per-cast ways, along with a new DPS option in Ophanim that was easier to aim. It was lightweight, simple to understand, and had a lot of practical use in team and solo environments.

For those of us wanting to stick to the old ways, the ways Wynn had taught us to use our magic, things would only be difficult for a while. We had a new ability in that of Winded, which gave us an ample damage boost, but it was far too slow to rely upon, as the only way we had to inflict it was our main attack.

"So maybe" we thought "Maybe we could just use Tierstack Melee and play as a mixed attacking set, spells and melee, together in harmony!".

We were naïve at the time, and thinking about it now the practice of mixed attacking probably wouldn't've lasted that long anyway, but regardless, Tierstacking for us Mages was taken away through cruel and unpleasant means (by that I mean Armor and Tome nerfs).

So for ages, we squabbled. Some of us left to join the other covens of magic, bored with how we made no progress.

Those of us, such as myself, held onto hope that one day something would come to awaken our power. And thankfully for us, that day eventually come.

We all were sceptical of Gust, since it didn't do much more for us as it only gave one Winded, and we all got angry when Entropy was taken away from us in place of Windcharged. But everything changed with a simple number change to Gust.

3 Winded per cast of Ice Snake, as opposed to 1

This is why math is an important class to take, as simple number changes like these can have extreme impacts.

With this simple change, us Riftwalkers took to experimentation by storm, using abilities we had never even concieved as viable to use. It started with Timelocked, which most put off as a wasted ability, as it had no tactical advantage and in fact had an anti-synergy with Lightbenders who were STEALING OUR MAGI-

But now, we could properly play how Riftwalker was advertized: High Damage Spell Burst. We were always able to do this, it's just that non of us tried because no one wanted to wait for winded to stack up and use Timelocked.

And this lead to even more applications of abilities that had previously gone unused. Most importantly was Blink.

What was originally thought to be an annoying ability that changed your one way of traversal became not only an excellent tool for flight, but also an excellent damage tool. Timelocked would turn it into a laser of sorts, and combining it with Explosive Entrance and the Flickering Transmission Aspect turned it from a simple movement spell into the equivalent to that one scene from the Digimon Movie where Omnimon uses that big awesome cannon to kill the Y2K Virus.

Riftwalker had entered as whole new renaissance, and with several nerfs to Arcanists and Lightbenders who had unjustly stolen our magic, we now had a firm place right beside those who once insulted and berated us for "Being Bad" or "Too Slow" or "Winded Thieves"

And to those people, I have two seperate messages, one for Lightbenders, and one for Arcanists.

To Lightbenders: "No Damage? Man, must really stink that you have to rely on a trick that another Mage can do better, but it must REALLY feel bad that your main source of damage is getting replaced later in Fruma huh?"

And to Arcanists: "I've seen what you do with your mana, and frankly i'm disgusted. You deign to walk away from your given right as a Mage to heal, and turn it into a source of brutish destruction. All Mages abide by the notition that Wisdom is power, but there is no wisdom to be found in Mana Horders."

Now, did I write that whole section to just be salty about constantly being made fun of for playing Riftwalker when it was bad? Yes. But now that we're on the subject of Me, I'd like to recount my own adventures with Riftwalker.

There's still wynn forum, discord and reddit posts that you can find of me trying to be the next big hype man for Riftwalker, giving my ideas on how maybe it could work. Looking back on them now, they're all frankly terrible ideas, but I feel it's important that they stay in my mind, as it shows my devotion, not only to the Riftwalker Archetype, but to Wynncraft as a whole.

I wouldn't have stuck with Wynncraft for nearly 10 years now if I didn't find the game fun. It's my own little autistic interest, and i'm sure i'm going to be sticking with it for as long as the servers still live and breath life into the world of Wynn.

But enough sentimentalities. To end off this message, I'd like to reiterated to all Riftwalkers that whatever comes next is not important. To walk into the Rift is uncertainty, it is simply within our nature, so instead of walking in with dread, I say we put a spring in our steps and Riftwalk right in. We have more pressing matters than to worry about our magic, after all.

The Queen waits for no one, and neither will us Riftwalkers.

 

Cursed reaction/response: instead of going full riftwalker; weave through the skill tree so that you near-perfectly replicate (with just a couple additions if you so choose :) ) pre-archetype-split mage, and carry on with the most disgusting/impressive (depends on who is beholding) build yet witnessed by [the poor souls raiding with you]... and then go full rift as a treat here and there... because timelocked makes such a brain-scratchingly fun sound... and... and... yea :')

Hello fellow "tried or enjoyed rifting before it got better" wynners :D

A kindred spirit indeed.

Anyway I'm kinda excited to see how the rework is gonna play out :o and maybe some other archetypes will get a (hopefully) nice rework to boost their popularity too? :,)

 

how?! i must obtain this knowledge!

 

As someone who quite liked how mage played pre-2.0 (and frankly doesn't like the ultra-sweaty meta way to play any of the archetypes now), I've run riftwalker since 2.0 came out.

Also, yeah, I definitely tried out a "pre-2.0" skill tree because I miss sentient snake. Such a useful upgrade. Fun fact: I've literally not used timelocked a single time since 2.0. I should probably try it at least once before it gets removed. "Nerf your damage in exchange for infinite spells for 5 seconds" is a great selling point if you don't build with a ton of mana sustain, but as someone who wants to always have infinite spells? It's just a damage nerf.

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I'll try to remember to link the skill tree when I get on my pc, but basically you cut the riftwalker tree off about ⅔ of the way down and just branch over to arcanist in a few places. You lose out on timelocked and a bit of max winded, but you sentient snake back (which honestly might be worth it). The ultimate reason I didn't stick with this is mana storm (and now the faster meteor).

 

rest in peace timelock, i'll always remember you as the funny spellcast-macro-skill-check

 

I say Cursed because my skill tree is split between riftwalker and lightbender in the way that it kinda misses all the actually important nodes for each archetype lmaoo. I still wanted to be able to do a comically large amount of healing, but I didn't wanna give up meteor so... My tree goes something like: (or honestly it might just be easier to look up my stats so you can point and laugh in real time, but anyway :D)

Spoiler: unique would be a polite word to call it

-get the first lil upgrade to meteor and burning sigil
-obtain sunshower
-go down through windsweeper
-go across to get breathless and all the healing nodes + sentient snake beside it
-go down and grab fortitude (also such a fun lil ability I love watching it noodle around hehehe); this is where I do some experimenting sometimes, but the main goal is fluid healing and orphion's pulse. Freezing sigil and snake nest are a fun bonus if so you wish :o
-that leaves you with just enough to reach diffusion and the winded increase. That's it. I mean you could probably reach time dilation but :,) currently I do not :,))

TLDR: I do no (ok I do SOME, but people WILL get mad at me for not being optimized in a meta way.. or something) damage BUT the healing number is funny, and the way I play is quite reminiscent of a tanky turtle :,)) It is how I was before the skill tree so... ok point and laugh now

 

as the creator of hesperium tier stack (at max level) and many other things of horror, let me tell you that I will be the last to laugh
This is great, thanks!

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counter-argument
TELEPORT

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people use manastorm?

 

Seeing riftwalker be completely changed right when people are realizing its actually the best archetype makes me tear up BUT! I will continue to hold the torch of walking the rift!

 

Manastorm isn't amazing (it was pre-nerf) but it really shines if you have low spell costs and decent sustain already. I use the anime-infused shirt so it actually does a decent amount (if you already have a decent mana cap/spell costs, it actually can be kind of nice; think of it as a 5 mana refund on every spell, which means that as long as you have enough regen to keep above 100 mana you can get quite a bit of mileage out of it).

Here is the skill tree I was talking about, along with a thematically appropriate build. You can actually snag the faster meteor upgrade, which is nice.