Rift: Planes of Telara

[kildorn]

Are Shaman more of a 1hd/board or 2hd class?  Nothing in their tree stands out as one or the other.

2h last I checked. This may have changed with the reduction in white damage importance, I haven't touched mine in a few patches.

[Merusk]

I'd go with 2h as well.  Their attacks all are based on weapon-damage and there's nothing to increase blocking or shield use in their tree.

Here's a metagaming question.. Do the same abilities in different trees stack? So if I get the 5% damage reduction in the shaman tree does it stack to 10% when taking the same ability in the Justicar, or does it only give 5% because they're both flagged as "Damage reduction"

[Threash]

I have not tested it personally but i've been told that passive bonuses are supposed to stack.

[Merusk]

Woo, 15% reduction to physical damage on my Justicar, here I come!    Thanks.

Ed: This game doesn't load if it's not the focus window.  So alt-tabbing out when portcullim traveling just means your client is sitting there waiting for you to refocus.  That's bullshit.

[Sky]

Make sure you mention how awesome it is, there is still time to nerf it.

Not a bitter cleric.

[kildorn]

Make sure you mention how awesome it is, there is still time to nerf it.

Not a bitter cleric.

Hey, I can talk about how I can dominate killing blows, damage done by about double the next, and only die twice using a riftblade in pvp and nothing will happen <3

Flame Spear is pretty much the best pvp nuke in the game. Why it's on a warrior I have no clue.

[Pennilenko]

I can't tell if i like this game or not.

[Draegan]

The only cleric that should be going sword hammer and board are Justicar tanks.

[ghost]

Ed: This game doesn't load if it's not the focus window.  So alt-tabbing out when portcullim traveling just means your client is sitting there waiting for you to refocus.  That's bullshit.

Ay.  That may be a deal killer.  I always tab out. 

[Nija]

I have not tested it personally but i've been told that passive bonuses are supposed to stack.

When I last played... who knows when. Beta 2 or 3? Some things didn't stack. Namely, the bard song that increased Dex and the Saboteur dex buff.

[Segoris]

I have not tested it personally but i've been told that passive bonuses are supposed to stack.

When I last played... who knows when. Beta 2 or 3? Some things didn't stack. Namely, the bard song that increased Dex and the Saboteur dex buff.

While those aren't the passives asked about, it is a good thing to note. Basically, you can only have 1 stat buff (active buff, not passive buff through talents) for a given stat. Not even scrolls stack with buffs.

Also, bards will have the best buffs available if they specced for it. It's possibly they're better even without speccing for it, but the bard endurance and str buffs are better than anything a warrior can cast, and the war endurance buff is equal to a clerics iirc.

Ed: This game doesn't load if it's not the focus window.  So alt-tabbing out when portcullim traveling just means your client is sitting there waiting for you to refocus.  That's bullshit.

Are you in fullscreen mode or windowed? I ask because I thought it still loaded while tabbed in windowed mode

[Merusk]

I was in fullscreen mode, I'll give it a shot in windowed.

The really fun part was that the game still loads your character (I don't know why I thought it might happen otherwise.) So, after I was done loading in I found I was dead because an invasion mob had eaten my face.

[Nija]

Borderless windowed mode. Use it in every single game that offers it.

[Tmon]

I can't tell if i like this game or not.

I had sort of the same problem.  I didn't dislike it, but didn't like it enough to log in again after my first play session.  I realized as I started the uninstall that I had spent about 1/3rd of the time it took to download actually playing, I think that may be a new record for me.   I guess subscription based leveling games are no longer my thing.

[Arrrgh]

I can't tell if i like this game or not.

I had sort of the same problem.  I didn't dislike it, but didn't like it enough to log in again after my first play session.  I realized as I started the uninstall that I had spent about 1/3rd of the time it took to download actually playing, I think that may be a new record for me.   I guess subscription based leveling games are no longer my thing.

I think they did such a good job imitating past games that I'm already burnt out on that I was immediately burnt out.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I can't tell if i like this game or not.

I had sort of the same problem.  I didn't dislike it, but didn't like it enough to log in again after my first play session.  I realized as I started the uninstall that I had spent about 1/3rd of the time it took to download actually playing, I think that may be a new record for me.   I guess subscription based leveling games are no longer my thing.

I think they did such a good job imitating past games that I'm already burnt out on that I was immediately burnt out.

I'm itching to play a new game aside from wow but the problem is its too much like wow.

[Hawkbit]

I'm still buying it, and I'll enjoy my trip to 50 on two toons along the way.  But I am concerned that they're adding in a lot of stuff that I didn't like from WoW.  Back in B1, gear was much simpler.  Now we have valor and another stat that wasn't there before (to my memory).  It's starting down that path of needing a few college level calculus courses to figure out how to be decent.  When they actually do get a solid damage meter mod up and used by the population, then I'm screwed because I just don't want to play that metagame anymore. 

This sounds terrible, but I hope this game has a raging first month or two, then peters out a good bit on population; maybe eliminate more of the dick players and they'll go back to WoW. 

[kildorn]

A lot of the stats just didn't show up until later. Spell/Physical crit for example doesn't rear it's head until 30ish. Same with spellpower as a pure stat.

Valor is just WoW resilience. Which I was very amused to see on the char sheet, and even more amused to NOT see on the low/mid level pvp vendor gear ;)

[ezrast]

Their PvP rewards model is so screwy. PvP souls that you can unlock as soon as you have the favor (had mine before level 20 on one character) but can't put more than a few points into until 50; warfronts open at 10 but no gear rewards whatsoever until 25; a PvP-only stat that shows up on high-level gear for no apparent reason...

It all basically works I guess but there's no apparent reason for them to have designed it this way as opposed to any other possible way... kind of like someone was saying earlier about the limited non-dps options for certain classes: what design goal could they possible be going for here other than "it kind of worked for WoW"?

Anyway, I preordered and should get a bit of fun out of it rolling with Morfiend's crew. I just hope it doesn't turn into a mess at high levels.

[kildorn]

Oh, it's a complete balance mess right now, as far as pvp goes. But hey, it might get better!

For the open beta, I'm amusing myself with the blatant nerfbait of a riftblade/reaver combo. lawlreavers.

[Spiff]

While those aren't the passives asked about, it is a good thing to note. Basically, you can only have 1 stat buff (active buff, not passive buff through talents) for a given stat. Not even scrolls stack with buffs.

There are buffs that do stack btw, like the endurance buff from riftstalkers which stacks with other endurance buffs (even within the rogue line).
I believe the difference is that one can only be cast on yourself, so only buffs that work on anyone don't stack or something.

I'd be very surprised if passives from different souls didn't stack anyway, it would nerf the hell out of their flagship 'customize your own build' system.

[Segoris]

There are buffs that do stack btw, like the endurance buff from riftstalkers which stacks with other endurance buffs (even within the rogue line).
I believe the difference is that one can only be cast on yourself, so only buffs that work on anyone don't stack or something.

I'd be very surprised if passives from different souls didn't stack anyway, it would nerf the hell out of their flagship 'customize your own build' system.

That's good to know then, I haven't had any of those buffs yet but it may make 8 point beastmaster a little more tempting for me

[Sky]

I haven't played since beta 3 event, but cleric endurance buffs did not stack. They didn't even cancel properly, a 3pt endurance buff could cancel a 20pt endurance buff  I hope that's been fixed, anyway.

[Shatter]

I haven't played since beta 3 event, but cleric endurance buffs did not stack. They didn't even cancel properly, a 3pt endurance buff could cancel a 20pt endurance buff  I hope that's been fixed, anyway.

As of beta 6 it didnt, havent checked this one yet though

[Xanthippe]

Woo, 15% reduction to physical damage on my Justicar, here I come!    Thanks.

Ed: This game doesn't load if it's not the focus window.  So alt-tabbing out when portcullim traveling just means your client is sitting there waiting for you to refocus.  That's bullshit.

I play in a window (a big window that takes the whole screen).  I haven't had any problems with this.

[Paelos]

I do hope the passives stack, because if they don't stacking tanking classes together would be stupid.

[kildorn]

Passives always stack, it's active buffs that have some really confusing stacking logic (same thing WoW used to have, and why they heavily simplified buffs to clarify it)

In essence, any buff that looks like another buff won't stack (warriors can take two 5% damage increase self buffs in different souls. They do not stack.) unless it's a self buff and a group buff (self +end and group +end will stack)

I'm fuzzy on similar debuffs (if I have two "+10% damage taken" debuffs from different people on a boss, I think it only applies one of them, but I have not tested this)

[March]

Passives always stack, it's active buffs that have some really confusing stacking logic (same thing WoW used to have, and why they heavily simplified buffs to clarify it)

In essence, any buff that looks like another buff won't stack (warriors can take two 5% damage increase self buffs in different souls. They do not stack.) unless it's a self buff and a group buff (self +end and group +end will stack)

I'm fuzzy on similar debuffs (if I have two "+10% damage taken" debuffs from different people on a boss, I think it only applies one of them, but I have not tested this)

They really need to make their Talent GUI "smart" - if you take passive ability A, then it needs to automatically grey-out a conflicting/redundant talent in soul B.  There are enough overlapping buffs/de-buffs that make you wonder if your points are wasted or not.

[kildorn]

Self updating tooltips would also help (if I have a +5% damage talent, my ability damage values should reflect this), but yeah, a soul tree ! symbol when you have a spec that has non stacking points wound be nice.

[sam, an eggplant]

if you take passive ability A, then it needs to automatically grey-out a conflicting/redundant talent in soul B.  There are enough overlapping buffs/de-buffs that make you wonder if your points are wasted or not.

That was my concern as well. Coming in as a new player the soul system was just incredibly confusing and frankly daunting. They need to provide more hand-holding.

[Hawkbit]

If you read your abilities, you'll find that some of them do overlap in damage - but often they do different elemental damage types so you need to keep them around anyways.  Going to disagree that it needs more hand-holding, imo.  It is a deep system; its supposed to be daunting.

[kildorn]

I love that they made new icons for all the souls. Which work for warriors (most of the icons make sense and are neat theme designs), but on my mage I just have a mess of rune icons that all blend together and have no logical reference to the soul in question <3

Beastmaster has a stylish icon of a tiger or something!
Elementalist has.. some unknown runic design, not a stylish elemental or something :P


But as for "it's a deep system, it's supposed to be daunting", that's just more "rawr, our game is for the hardcore" that drops your subscriber numbers.

If you want a deep daunting system, they could just remove all the tooltips entirely from the soul tree, and make you pick talents based on the name alone, and never tell you what does what! Hell, hide damage and hp values, too.

At some point "deep" does not need to mean "archaic and poorly documented", unless my perl scripts are now "deep"

edit: to add more snark, a deep system is one with 75,000 pages of documentation and examples on what you can do with the functionality. Not 800,000 lines of undocumented code.

[Koyasha]

Yeah, I should never have to guess at what an ability does or whether it stacks with, or is overwritten by another ability.  Now, how to use an ability to my greatest benefit, that's where deep comes in.  Deep does not mean "incomprehensible without extensive testing."

[Morfiend]

If you read your abilities, you'll find that some of them do overlap in damage - but often they do different elemental damage types so you need to keep them around anyways.  Going to disagree that it needs more hand-holding, imo.  It is a deep system; its supposed to be daunting.

I disagree, I think it would be very nice to know when abilities don't stack. Not quite sure how you could do this. Maybe grey out the ability that wont stack when you have already put points in the other.

[kildorn]

If you read your abilities, you'll find that some of them do overlap in damage - but often they do different elemental damage types so you need to keep them around anyways.  Going to disagree that it needs more hand-holding, imo.  It is a deep system; its supposed to be daunting.

I disagree, I think it would be very nice to know when abilities don't stack. Not quite sure how you could do this. Maybe grey out the ability that wont stack when you have already put points in the other.

A single simple set of rules, and place them in the tooltips.

"% damage buffs don't stack" or "only stack to 25%" and put in the tooltip "Stacks with similar buffs up to 25%" for passives.

"does not stack with other endurance buffs" and such.

You see it in the newer tooltips (warrior "tank" souls all have Gift of ____ that increases hp per point spent, all of them include text that says they stack with other warrior Gift skills)