Here on GamingWeez, we’ll provide some guides to souls we’ve tried during our experience in the RIFT BETA. The first of these is a class that heals while doing damage: The Chloromancer.
Who would play a Chloromancer?
Well, you have to like healing to begin with. I know many people like comparison like “uh, i played a [Insert Class Here] in [Insert Game Here], which RIFT soul would I like?
The Chloromancer plays in some ways similar to a Shadow Priest in World of Warcraft and a Bloodmage in Vanguard. Maybe even a Grace Warrior Priest from Warhammer Online, but from ranged. What do this classes have in common?
You Buff people and, as you do damage, you heal. The key difference though: A Chloromancer is nicely built for solo-healing.
Abilities & Class Defining Skills
The chloromancer starts out with Radiant Spores and Vile Spores as a abilities. Both will be used throughout your character’s life. Radiant Spores is a debuff on the target that allows allies to heal themselves while damaging it for a percentage of the damage done. Vile spores will be your life damage nuke. With it, in the future, you’ll heal people with the damage you do. Immediately after, once you reach level 2, you get Withering Vine. This is another ability, a DoT, that heals surrounding allies with the damage done.
We skip now to level 10, and you get the class defining, in my opinion, buff: Lifegiving Veil. This buff allows you to convert up to 80% of your life damage done into heals for the players around you. Soon now, you will spec into Synthesis, an ability that you place on the Main Tank so he/she can receive 125%+ of the damage done as heals. (Remember Vile Spores? This nuke will be what will be healing your allies)
The Chloromancer does get 2 almost direct heals, semi early in the tree. Bloom is a 2 second (which can be reduced to instant through points),single target heal. Flourish is group wide instant heal. Finally, up in the tree, you’ll get Nature’s Touch. This ability has a cooldown and a 3s second cast but heals for a considerable amount and it a must-have in Dungeon healing.
Soloing
The Chloromancer has heals and damage which makes it easier to solo and quest through the game, at least up to level 27, as tested. What makes you almost invincible is if you select a pet class as second soul. Both Necromancer and Elementalist work as you send the pet in and you do damage from a distance while healing your pet. All Chloromancer healing skills affect the pet as well, including Synthesis.
I personally have not tested questing without a pet, but I can assume that it would be drastically more difficult. Hence, we here at GamingWeez recommend a pet Soul to assist in questing and then select Warlock or Archon possibly as third souls.
Where will the Chloromancer run into trouble healing?
Most likely with bosses than have large spikes of damage on the tank. It is hard to bring back a tank from 10% HP to 100% quickly. More of a reason to be on your toes, all the time.
Res Please
The Chloromancer also gets 2 Res’ of sorts. One is a standard out of combat Res. The other one though is the interesting one: Soul Tether is a buff that lasts for 30 seconds and has a cooldown. This ability allows you to buff the entire party with a link back to life. If a party member is buffed with it and dies, he/she can res immediately. This can be very useful for fights where you have to keep the tank up no matter what, and a DPS falls into an AoE trap, for example.
How much damage does a Chloromancer put out?
Vile Spores is noticeably weaker than regular mage’s nukes. But then again, don’t forget: You are a healer more than a mage. Specially if you go deep into the tree. What the Chloromancer succeeds in, as a person who has played healers most of his life, is that it makes healing fun. But not only fun: it makes it challenging. Working as a Chloromancer to heal instances, I had to work harder than as a Shaman healer in World of Warcraft end-game.
The class is challenging but fun.
So which souls to partner with the Chloromancer you are asking?
I tried Elementalist and Archon. I feel the Elementalist provides the pet and the Archon provides buffs and mana back. Whether or not you go with elementalist for the pet, I truly beleive Chloromancer and Archon go hand in hand.
More on the Archon on a different entry though!
Conclusion:
The Chloromancer is a damage dealing, healer mage. You heal your allies while doing damage and the soul is set up, at least at the time of this writing, to main heal instances with little issue. You will be challenged though as you really don’t have a regular heal at all, except for an instant cast heal that has a cooldown, so you can’t spam it.
If you enjoy healing while doing damage, or if you played a Shadow Priest in World of Warcraft or a Bloodmage in Vanguard, this class will suit you well.
