Rift: Planes of Telara

[Threash]

The way things are now, I don't see myself playing a warrior or mage (assuming I pick up the game at launch -- still on the fence). Clerics get all the fun mage toys except for maybe cc; they're also way better healers and can spec to tank if they want. Same with warrior: rogues can tank/heal/dps while warriors can only tank/dps...

or am I missing something?

No you aren't missing anything, rogue/tanks are the best tanks in the game.  Warrior tanks are not optimal, and therefore people will overlook them in groups later down the road once the general population realizes warriors aren't the best tanks.  This has been pointed out to the Rift devs time and time again, and apparently they are ok with warriors not being the best tank.

Clerics/Tanks are pretty solid and their counter is the stunlock-rogues, and spike DPS on them.

Mages, because there is no collision detection, cannot effectively be protected in the backline of PVP.  They have limited CC options, they are easily interrupted, and a melee can just run through them (during their 1.5 cast time on most spells) to use Line of Sight (LoS) to screw up their offense. Again a good rogue will eat their lunch before they know what's happening.

Necro pets can simply be ignored, and the pet owner quickly burned down to kill 2 birds with 1 stone.  This has also been pointed out, but never addressed.

The PVE side of things is relatively ok, but the PVP side of this game is not balanced, the content is not compelling, and PVP servers seem extremely limited with world PVP options since people have to voluntarily flag themselves.

I don't think things are that bad, there is a lot of flexibility and counters in the class system.  I think a well played dominator for example will be the most dangerous class in pvp, a void knight will wreck any tank cleric he runs accross

[Draegan]

Head start is on thursday, release is on the next tuesday.

[Lantyssa]

I'm interested to see how Warrior will stack up against Rogues as Tanks in the endgame though.  It's common knowledge rogues chew through energy like no one's business.  Warriors tend to use less of it and have mana as a backup option, making them a viable battlemage also if built as such.  Assuming long, complex encounters will be the norm. in the big instances how is a Rogue going to mitigate their energy use, dps, and threat over time compared with a Warrior?

As Ghambit says, I wouldn't use level 20 as the basis for a blanket statement.

Also there are a lot of DPS Warrior builds, and I can tell you that my tanky Rogue was not nearly as tough as my DPS Warrior who didn't even use a shield.

[Modern Angel]

since people have to voluntarily flag themselves.

This is not true on PvP servers that I've seen.

The rogue tank as best tank is also wildly, wildly overstated. The energy issues serve as a check, less AE threat is another. Less passive damage absorption may/may not be depending on how they play it.

[jakonovski]

Does one get into the beta through Euro preorders too? Steam says nothing.

[Morfiend]

Head start is on thursday, release is on the next tuesday.

What?

Their site says March 1st.

[Sky]

Head start is on thursday, release is on the next tuesday.

What?

Their site says March 1st.

March 1st...is a Tuesday :) I imagine he means Feb 24th will be the head-start.

[Modern Angel]

Yeah, head start. It's in February so it's not a full week.

[Segoris]

The rogue tank as best tank is also wildly, wildly overstated. The energy issues serve as a check, less AE threat is another. Less passive damage absorption may/may not be depending on how they play it.

Rogue energy is being looked at and will be buffed sometime soon (a dev posted that they were trying to get a fix in, so I'd imagine some rogue buffs for beta 5). So that balance check isn't exactly a good argument moving forward.

As for less passive damage absorption I don't know about that. Rift guard (with 3/3 improved rift guard) will shield 1800hp on a 3k hp tank. The only comparison to that is the paladin 600hp absorb shield at level 21 or 26 (I forgot which tier it was in) that cannot be improved further, and the void knights ability which has it's strength determined through the number of pacts used to activate it. As for the mitigation and avoidance for a rogue, a riftstalker/bard build is pretty insane. The only place a rogue tank clearly falls behind a warrior tank is AE threat. The rest, from what I've seen and what I've noticed while healing tanks of both archetypes, leads me to believe that even at later levels the riftstalker will be superior for single melee mob tanking. The warrior soul at later level will have the advantage of being very capable in both magic and melee mitigation at the same time when due to having multiple tank souls it can combine (26/26/14 vk/pal/reaver for example).

[Modern Angel]

The multiple tanking souls thing is another good point, actually. There's certainly less versatility by default in rogue/cleric tanking. I could see fights being designed around a Void Knight tank alone.

But I also think the entire premise is flawed. There's nothing anywhere that says warriors or warrior analogues have to be the "best tank" in any game, anywhere. That's a player assumption based on little more than "it's always been like that" which is, in itself, flawed because it hasn't always been like that.

[Lantyssa]

I like that Rogues have a tank option, personally.  It'll be good for single target stuff and perhaps soloing, but their AoE threat probably won't be as good.

[Modern Angel]

If GW2 gets its on the fly during a fight role switching I think the old school MMOers complaining about THIS are going to have strokes.

[Draegan]

Head start is on thursday, release is on the next tuesday.

What?

Their site says March 1st.

March 1st...is a Tuesday :) I imagine he means Feb 24th will be the head-start.

Yeah I was typing from my phone.  Head start Feb 24th and the Tuesday after that is the 1st which is the official release.  Just got my Gamestop pre-order in today. Woot.

[Ghambit]

Anyone built a viable "Magetank?"  I remember back in vanilla WoW, in 20 and 40 mans, the mages always ended up assigning a tanking mage + healer (usually me, during Ony, Rags, and some of BWL) to handle adds, etc. I had a fully Arcane Specced (back when no one went Arcane), gnome-architect that could tank better than many rogues if played right.  I played with it a BIT in Rift but I really didnt study far enough up the tree (especially factoring in the 3rd soul), to see if there was enough AOE nukage, mana, and dmg. mitigation (shields, resistance, etc.) to make it worthwhile.  Also, it might make more sense up the Warrior trees with AE threat, assuming they get an AOE nuke somewhere in there.

(this game gives me a charbuild headache)

Head start is on thursday, release is on the next tuesday.

What?

Their site says March 1st.

March 1st...is a Tuesday :) I imagine he means Feb 24th will be the head-start.

Yeah I was typing from my phone.  Head start Feb 24th and the Tuesday after that is the 1st which is the official release.  Just got my Gamestop pre-order in today. Woot.

Did you only have to pay $5 for the pre-order?

[Modern Angel]

No offense but frankly the only groups assigning mages to tank duty were groups with really shitty tanks that couldn't hold aggro (I was in one of these guilds during late vanilla). Warlocks were a little different with the life manipulation but that was limited to gimmicky stuff and nobody ever had them "tank".

Rift seems to be following basically the same general outlook. There is no tanking mage tree. If you find a tank asking you to offtank or anything like that on your mage, at least with the stuff we've seen so far? You need to drop group and run for the hills.

[Kageru]

If GW2 gets its on the fly during a fight role switching I think the old school MMOers complaining about THIS are going to have strokes.

Not really, it's like a WoW druid in that it can mode switch (and thus sacrifice some capability) and the mode possibilities are class limited. That's different from rifts in which the power is "baked into" the character and always available, with even fewer top level archetypes and a clear design intent that each archetype can cover every role.

They'll run into the tankmage problem (and no, it doesn't have to be mages or have PvP meaning) and also rediscover the EQ hybrid problem. Namely that a class that is 90% of the "best" class in multiple roles is nearly worthless once the content becomes challenging. Of course if they're doing a level limited beta these problems won't be prominent.

[Modern Angel]

Obviously the GW2 information is limited but it sure sounded like they were touting limitless trinity switching with full effectiveness on the fly in one of the previews. I can't recall specifically but it was something like a tank death with a mage switching up quickly and finishing as tank? There's some assuming going on here but if one rogue spec in Rift being able to main tank (theoretically) better than any warrior tank I can't imagine the heads exploding if you can literally take zero warriors any time ever and do just fine in a game.

(It's very strange that it's almost always folks who play warriors traditionally that are most insecure about class roles)

[Ghambit]

Are they gonna keep the mechanic where if you put points into a tree it effects the roots of all the active souls?
If so, anyone know of a charbuilder that includes this?

[Modern Angel]

Unsure of what you mean. Do you mean that (for example) if I put one point into a secondary tree which gives me 1% more crit on melee attacks does that affect melee attacks from all trees? If so then yes.

[Ghambit]

Nvm, I was imagining things based on Beta3, which isnt really what I said in the 1st place.  I'm a confused soul.
In re. 0-point root unlocks.

Many of the Soul-specific ability unlock changes below are related to opening all soul choices at level 1.

[Kageru]

I think GW2 want to degrade the dependency on a dedicated healer class and make it a more general "support" function, plus make "mortally wounded" and recovery from that state more dynamic. But from some magazine scans I was looking at they don't intend to break down archetypes entirely. A warrior will go into battle with two weapon load-outs, all of his weapon options are going to be different flavors of warrior style abilities and none are going to turn them into a healer. Whereas a necromancer is a support class and will have a healer option.

Though I agree trying to base arguments on pieces of pre-release info is fairly dodgey.

I still think the rifts "class buffet" is going to lead to a lack of class identity and some fascinating game balance issues.

[Ashamanchill]

I still think the rifts "class buffet" is going to lead to a lack of class identity and some fascinating game breakingly brutal balance issues.

I can see this ahead of time, yet I'm still looking forward to it. I'm guessing, as people are saying, that their will be one basically viable spec per archetype, and the rest will range from gimped, to playable but underpowered. It's gonna be AoC complete with the ToS all over again.

[Threash]

The thing is there are counters to pretty much everything, and the ease with which you can switch roles/specs plus the availability of every soul for your base class for you to chose from means you are never "stuck" with a gimp spec/class.  You don't have to reroll or quit if the class you happened to pick blows.  People seem to be stuck in this "im fucked if my class sucks" mentality when in the game if your bombing sniper didn't work out you are one click away from an assassin with a pet or a teleporting bard.

[Ghambit]

Furthermore, even if you feel fucked in your base class (warrior, rogue, etc.), there's such specialization within the sub-classes that you can just about design something totally "un-base class-like."   So even whining about being a plain ol' Warrior is kinda  'cause I can go healer, buffer/battlereser, ranged mana sink, dual-wield stancemaster, controller, DOTter, and on and on.  You might not be perfect in base roles, but you'll have a place.  And often when the mantras of these base roles are broken, people come up with better, more ingenius strategies to compensate.

Now, if Trion can code in the need to make use of these strategies, then they'll have cracked the issue of balance.  This all depends on their level designers really.

[Modern Angel]

There was one dev quote which explicitly stated that they're not balancing souls against one another but classes. Also, as stated, it helps immensely that you're not going to be fucked if you pick a soul that's not so hot since you have access to all of them. My only REAL balance concern is just how good clerics are and not just for PvP reasons; current healing power is going to trivialize content in the hands of non-retards.

[Threash]

Balance isn't that important in pve, and in pvp there are plenty of counters to clerics.

[Lantyssa]

How quickly people forget City of Heroes had only a loose need for the Holy Trinity.  Guild Wars had less of one as will GW2.  RIFT is still more dependent upon those rolls than either, even if the name on the dps/tank/healer is more variable.

[Ashamanchill]

The thing is there are counters to pretty much everything, and the ease with which you can switch roles/specs plus the availability of every soul for your base class for you to chose from means you are never "stuck" with a gimp spec/class.  You don't have to reroll or quit if the class you happened to pick blows.  People seem to be stuck in this "im fucked if my class sucks" mentality when in the game if your bombing sniper didn't work out you are one click away from an assassin with a pet or a teleporting bard.

Yeah I get that, but it leads to scenarios like this:

I roll a justicar (or what have you), only, it sucks in pvp. It is basically only a counter for another sucky class on their side of the fence, which no one uses. The game then tells me, "No no no, stupid, if you want to pvp as a cleric you roll a vindicator." Only I didn't roll a vindicator. I couldn't care less about it's abilities and whatnot. But if I want to be competative...

As has been said, that leads to very little class identity.  What it means is you are not a separate class, but just one of (four? three?) templates.

[AcidCat]

I'm a little surprised at the positive overall vibes this is getting on the variety of gaming forums I visit. I think the fact that a game this derivative can still generate a lot of interest is because A) the fantasy MMO genre still has huge potential and a huge pool of gamers that is still willing to give that next game a chance, and B) at 5+ years a significant portion of the core WoW playerbase is really ready to move on, or will be within the next year IMO. I think at this point time is going to start sneaking up on the behemoth and the right game will have a good opportunity to be that next big thing. I'm pretty confident that contender will be Guild Wars 2 and not Rift. At any rate there really is a huge market out there - Rift seems well done enough in this well-worn template to at least have a good chance of carving its own little place in the MMO gamespace.

[Kageru]

Balance isn't that important in pve, and in pvp there are plenty of counters to clerics.

In theory, yes. In practice, no.... Paladins in EQ getting groups or raid spots was a major PvE complaint.

[Ghambit]

Rift-Samurai Build

What say you guys to this build?  Anyone play anything similar?
edit:  looks like the builder is a bit borked... deletes a point from the top tree

[Threash]

Build looks decent enough, i don't know what's "samurai" about it though :P

[Nebu]

Rift-Samurai Build

What say you guys to this build?  Anyone play anything similar?
edit:  looks like the builder is a bit borked... deletes a point from the top tree

Holy crap! 

Just looking at that character builder makes me want to avoid this game.  It looks like an Excel-o-phile's dream. 

[trias_e]

Wow, looking at the character builder definitely causes my main desire to play the game.    What can I say, I'm a Johnny at heart, and it simply looks like too much fun (I would likely respec every session in this system if cost isnt prohibitive).

...Perhaps I should get a job that has to do with spreadsheets.

[Lantyssa]

Just looking at that character builder makes me want to avoid this game.  It looks like an Excel-o-phile's dream. 

Don't let a builder with everything unlocked scare you.  It eases you into it in game.  It's one of the best systems, and you don't need spreadsheets to figure out something which works.