YAFWP: 3.5-dev High-elf Mage

[Derakon]

Rift and Meteor Strike remain solid; Rift is especially good in hallways where you have a decent chance of hitting the same target twice (they get teleported to a square that the beam hasn't yet hit). But you're right, the mage has many possible attack spells with no clear winner, and that's a very good thing for keeping gameplay varied.

[yrriban]

Originally Posted by Derakon

Rift and Meteor Strike remain solid; Rift is especially good in hallways where you have a decent chance of hitting the same target twice (they get teleported to a square that the beam hasn't yet hit). But you're right, the mage has many possible attack spells with no clear winner, and that's a very good thing for keeping gameplay varied.

I do like Meteor Strike, but it's a spell you have to be reasonably careful with to avoid hurting yourself too badly. I lost a lot of items before I figured out all the various cases. The damage of Rift is really nice, but I'd prefer that it didn't teleport enemies I had neatly arranged in a line around into a chaotic mess.

[Derakon]

By the time you're using Rift, you don't want to be in LOS of many enemies at the same time, so I usually consider its teleportation effect to be more helpful than harmful -- it keeps enemies out of melee range reasonably reliably.

[yrriban]

Very true! I tend to live on the edge with that sort of thing though, which probably isn't the best plan for character survivability.