f13.net

To balance out the gripes thread I figured we ought to compile the good stuff as well.


~Autolooting.

Rifts. Public quests done right. and not only those... the zone bosses, the random attacks on hubs, all of it.
Overall feel of the game. I don't like the word polish, but it fits and has a lot to it.
Autoquest prompts - if an NPC has multiple quests, it automatically goes to the next in the line.
CLASSES (choices - right now it feels like there are -omgwtf so many- classes to each of the four archetypes.

Isn't this a bit premature?

What I like so far:

- Soul system:  I think some classes don't get a ton of benefit over mixing souls, but it's fun to play around with.  It has the potential to keep me trying out different stuff while limiting the total number of alts I would have to make to try it all.  I still think the interaction between many of the souls is lacking in areas and could be improved by making lower tier talents/base abilities more interesting.
- Crafting interface
- Autoloot
- I CAN MOVE MY UNIT FRAMES. This is pretty good for a stock UI.  If they stick to a no addon policy, it will need some work.
- Rifts/invasions.  Even if it is mostly zerg or go home, it's a fun addition to an otherwise static questing experience.
- Mount being cash and not level limited.
- Being a bit more serious than WoW and yet still having some humor here and there.
- Artifacts.  Nice carry over from EQ2 design.
- Game is mostly rock solid. I haven't crashed yet. I think I've crashed in every single MMO at least once before this. 
- Pretty good graphics and little in the way of system lag.  I like the look of the graphics.  A good mix of poly count + style.
- Pace of combat.

To be honest I could have had a what went right thread for warhammer since they did do a 'couple' things well. It's not so much about rift succeeding or not, I hoenstly couldnt tell you if i think itll do well or not.  The game does however shine in a few places and I think it's nice to highlight that since I'm bitching about it in the other thread.

This is not true. The collectors edition mount is free, level 1, 60%. There are purchasable 60% ones as well, with no level restriction (I think; for some reason I thought they were level 20 but it's not showing that this is the case in game atm). However, 90% mounts require level 40, and 110% mounts require level 50.

1.  Artifacts.  They have me obsessed.
2.  Just the sheer technical competence Trion has shown so far.  Startling for an MMO.
3.  Immersive, mainly due to 2, above.

They cut the level requirement for 1st mount.
Cash is the only gate.
+1 Fun

Mega-invasions/events.  I believe we had the 1st post-release ones during peak time tonite.  The devs opened the floodgates for a huge Life Invasion (whole map was green) + lvl 20 uber elite and 1 hr. later did it again a bit smaller.  By the end of the 2nd invasion, I had every bit of meaningful rare planar gear the zone gives you plus some lvl 20 stuff to open.   :drill:

After this, leveling became much easier and I also opened up the scholar's gear.

I did Realm of the Fae for the first time last Sunday and was highly impressed by the environment effects in the final section.

Also, this game just flat out rocks for framerate in massive crowded fights. I have yet to go into into slideshow mode.

I agree that the last part of RotF is awesome, but in general the dungeon is kind of a trash overload.

Shinies.  I love finding shinies in unexpected places.

There was this tree sticking out over a cliff, just horizontal enough to be climbable, so I climbed out on it just for the heck of it, only to find a shiny artifact nestled between some branches.

I also got a random rift reward that turned me into a vampire bat for a little bit. That was a nice random bit of fun.

I'm finding more little things about this game that I like, it is really growing on me more and more.

Got my first piece of rare planar last night (chest) - checked the stats and  :drill: :drill: :grin: :drill: :drill:.

Now to farm participate in some more rift events...   :awesome_for_real:  At 14, I feel like I can actually help out with most of them in one way or another now without falling back to my dinky heals because everything's resisting.

All of that said, the game is remarkably playable, stable, and fun for having just released.

Is that the Guardian equivalent of IF, the level 17 zone?

Guardian: Realm of the Fae - Silverwood - level 17
Defiant: Iron Tombs - Freemarch - level 19

Heh, I love the chalice of the bat.  I sit in the crafting hall with that thing on while I'm churning out stuff, since that apparently doesn't count as activating an ability.

Two very small things that made me smile...

During an invasion in the first zone, one of the NPCs was getting attacked and a chat bubble appeared over his head saying "Call in the Brute Squad"

And second there's an section in the western mining desert area called Rock Ridge.

I'm only level 13, but so far I haven't seen any humor in the game, it's all very grimdarkohgodeveryonesdeadfromtheinvasionhelp!!

It's an MMO.  You're not supposed to smile or laugh while playing.  SERIOUS BIZNESS!

There's some humor there, and the occasional pop culture reference, but it's not like WoW was/is, where you're getting smacked in the face with it every 3 steps.  However, the setting is supposed to be somewhat dark, and frankly, I rather like not having a Monty Python reference every 30 seconds.

If you play Guardian, the "Scotty" quest line at the Silverwood School is pretty silly. There is also a lot of "Scotty" trash loot -- homework, pencils, mugs, dice, bong, underwear, condoms, lube...

Yeah I have noticed some subtle humor, and also find the overall darker vibe a nice change of pace from some of the overly silly aspects of WoW.

Though I think everyone riding around on giant two headed turbo turtles is pretty funny in and of itself.

I agree its a nice change. I mean considering the gods just abandoned the world, and the world its self is tearing apart, I'm not surprised people are a bit down.

I do wish they went a little 'more' dark though. There's no blood/nudity or really much violence and even the quests seem very pg13.  They don't have the rampant puns wow does(a plus) but they didn't add anything in its place.  It may be too late in the game to change that and if so its a missed oppurtunity.

I agree.  I'm not saying go grimdark, but we're talking about extra-planar people invading and trying to kill us.  You would think these alien invaders would be doing shit we look at and go, 'that's just not fucking right'

grimdark - I am dark mcdarkgrit, tallyho!
evil - Elemental fire lord invades hamlet and you have to fend off waves of pint-sized elementals which turn out to be the burning corpses of children animated by malevolent flame.

They want to sell to teens.  I'd love a more mature world, but they're not trying to be niche.

But teens love blood and tits. :-P

RIFT loves being stocked in Wal-Mart.

Pretty sure I bought age of conan in walmart.

Speaking of a sense of humor...


Evil of them, but funny as hell.

Played LOTRO with my buddies last night and right away I found myself wishing the game looted nearby corpses, as well as auto-advanced to the next quest the quest giver had for me. It's such a small thing but feels so nice/thoughtful from a usability standpoint. +1 RIFT

(That said, we had a blast running two LOTRO's skirmishes and advancing the Book/story.)

Yeah I haven't been able to play LOTRO at all since I've started playing RIFT.  I like the story in LOTRO but the RIFT just seems to be much more engaging and user friendly.  Sure it has its flaws but I'm overall pleased.  AOE AUTOLOOT IS  :Love_Letters:

I know it's been said but since I never played in beta this is my first Rift exposure and I absolute LOVE the soul system. Being able to try out all the different souls and tweaking them until I'm happy is awesome. My Nightblade/assassin/riftsalker/bard/ranger/bladedancer makes me happy.

Is this where I can brag about adding AOE Autoloot to DAOC?

(It was seriously the last thing I did when I was there)

Kudos then, Lum!  Let's hope more games pick up on it.

Even though they are spoilered everywhere the puzzles on every zone so far are a really nice touch.

Ran my first expert dungeon (rift's version of heroics) and was pleased to see the difficulty bump up a good bit. Also the loot grind for them seems somewhat minimal to get the tier1 dungeon set if you ran all of the tier 1 expert dungeons.

I wish I could experience this AoE looting firsthand, but I always loot right before I die, then loot the other mob after respawn and kill it. I need to lrn2play and/or change my soul choices.

You could bear through it until mid teens and see if your suvivability/damage change some.  But likely you need to look at how you're distributing your talent points (focus on your main early on and only spend extra points (you get one every 3 levels) in a secondary) and perhaps add a secondary that gives you some survivability (riftstalker or ranger(that pet is everywhere)).  

I wasn't happy with melee rogue survivability early on, so I didn't stick with it long in beta.

I think I may switch to a bard/marksman build or something for leveling, and then maybe back to melee/stealth for PvP at 50. I love the way I can really vary the experience with one character...such a great system (outside of skill based!  :grin:).

Bard is awesome. I was having fun with my Nightblade but a bit squishy in PvE - set up a second role bard/ranger and it rocks. I normally reallyndon't like bard type classes but they got this one right.

Ranger/Bard would probably be better WAP, so you have a pet that can tank for you. MM doesn't really have a lot of abilities that can be used in melee, and 0p ranger pet is only useful into the teens.

Something I'm glad to see again after a long time playing games that didn't have it, is dyes.  Although this could be improved by having it function the way it does in EQ: dye a body slot, any item you wear in that slot becomes that color.

I'm also still finding new ways to be impressed by how nice the ease of switching roles is.  In a warfront recently I went in as a saboteur, switched to a bard when I saw we were low on healing, then shifted to riftstalker when I grabbed the fang.  Now I'm picturing a group of clerics or rogues or mages who, every time the healer gets CC'd or killed, another one of them transforms into a healer and the former healer becomes a DPS or something.  The enemy team would have little chance of figuring out who the healer happens to be at the moment.

Standing around Meridian, at the manufactory section of the city, and all the erstwhile crafters hard at work making shoes and metal pants, I kinda like requiring players to find a loom or forge or whatever to do their work. It feels community-building to me.

Pre 30 go Full Ranger with extra points in Assassin and 0pt Riftstalker for the free blink.

That is if you care about using the best leveling build.

I found the most fun solo leveling for me was heavy assassin/light bladedancer. Stealth and stuns for the win. Ranged and pet just weren't fun to play.

Anyone found a reasonable leveling spec for Warriors yet? 

Just did 1-20 with this 14 Champion / 6 Paragon / 4 Riftblade like this:

http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0cukL.x0z.VI00c.m (http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0cukL.x0z.VI00c.m)

Damage was very nice through those levels, just mowing stuff down and having the ability to handle adds is nice. The Paragon Tree has some sweet abilities for 2H weapons. Don't let the dual wield tag fool you.

From the Paragon Tree, Strike Like Iron is an awesome opener. It's not uncommon to enter a fight with Attack Points, especially since you are using Bull Rush and Flamespear to charge all the time. Flamespear gives you the ranged attack for pulls (while adding a Attack Point). Starting with Strike Like Iron means all subsequent attacks are 30% extra damage since fights rarely last more than 12 seconds.

Also from Paragon is Rising Waterfall , which is a great second attack since it has to follow something else. Lastly Way of the River is a +3% Crit chance 1 hr buff.

From Riftblade, you get a ranged attack Flamespear, and another 1hr buff that adds 100% electrical damage and procs very often with this build.

From Champion you get another buff, some AoE, and all the 2 hander crit goodness.

With this build you literally mow stuff down with a 2 hander, if that's the way you like to play.

The downside is that starting around level 20, you are either drinking a lot, or fighting with around half health. As drinks top you off very quickly (3-4 seconds) it's not too bad but can be a little annoying. I havent used this build in the 20's yet and will experiment with some mitigation/self healing and see if it's worth giving up the burst damage goodness.

Up to about 20-21 I was primarily champ/paragon, which wasn't bad, if a bit squishy.  Since then stuck with a paladin/reaver tanking spec, mostly just so I could learn the rotation a bit better.

It's pretty ridiculous.  You don't take a lot of damage and still kill fast enough with all of your reactives being off the GCD.  Magical mobs aren't incredibly fun at the moment, but if I get 5 melee mobs on me, I'm in no danger of dying.  I can use the reaver dot spreading mechanic to get dots on all mobs, hit both my paladin AEs and then start destroying stuff with my reactives since the more stuff hitting me gives me more opportunity to do so.   It's not a DPS spec, since it relies on stuff punching you in the face, but it sure does nicely as a quest grinder.

Champ/paragon was coming into it's own a bit at around 20.  I did enough damage that small groups weren't a problem.  But for leveling purposes, I'm likely to stick with this paladin combination since it keeps getting better in the 20s (mobs get damaged when you block, reactives heal for 20% damage, etc etc).

Reaver/riftblade is an absolutely ridiculous levelling spec, you actually go out of your way to pull multiple mobs. With reaver it's all aoe dots and health regen, combined with riftblade for some nice single target dps you become a walking cloud of death. I add beastmaster for a pet to have some off the GCD dps and it's a good thing.

Ditto on paladin/reaver.  You will feel slow killing one mob at a time, but gather 3-4-5 of them and they die at the same exact speed as one so you are killing 5 times as fast, and ending up with full health.

I am very happy with the gargantuan collector's edition box.  I thought the box that came in the mail was the external HD my parents got be for my birthday today, it was so heavy.

Granite Falls is freaking gorgeous. One of the reasons I left WoW was because travel was too simplified; there was no opportunity to travel the world and just enjoy it. I loved riding through those rocky canyons and finding a damn waterfall town.

We'll take shit for this, but I totally agree.  There's something to be said for keeping people on the ground, actually looking at game content instead of hovering above it, swooping in to x of y for z.  I really, really hope they keep it.  It helps keep focus on world pvp, too.  Can't just fly away!  And the portal system is perfect - having one spot per zone to get back to Sanctum is great.  It just feels perfectly balanced to me.

I really enjoy the hell out of exploring this world.  The artifact collectibles are just icing on the cake, because it's almost certain that while I'm wandering around exploring off the main paths, up the mountains or whatever, I'll stumble over some collectible goodies too.

Really the only gripe I have is overroad travel is a PITA due to aggressive critters on or right next to the roads in many areas.  I can deal with overland travel, augmented by mounts for better speed, and portals for longer distance fast travel, but if I'm going to have to hike along the roads I'd love to not constantly be dodging critters or fighting my way through.

I wouldn't mind mobs on the road if 1) being on the road made your toon move faster, 2) there was some faction to gain for keeping the road clear.  I would really like it if roads actually served a purpose other then different scenery.

I switched to about equal bits of marksman and riftstalker (or is it blade? I can never remember- the rogue one), with a 0 point sab for the snare and instant finisher in PvP. I like it for PvE since the tanking abilities let me survive a bit longer (and give a melee skill and finisher). In PvP it kicks ass- I often finish in top 2 or 3. Ditto for rifts- marksman spec rules for them. Have only run 1 dungeon so far, but the tank spec came in handy when our tank went down- I took over as a temp tank and we managed to kill the boss.

I am willing to bet this build is completely gimped, and that I will revisit it in the weeks to come and just shake my head. But it is fun, and that is the important thing right now.

A small thing but something I really appreciated was the warrior Ability powers not decaying. Even to the point where if I had three before I logged, they would be right there waiting for me when I returned.

Yeah, I also like that at least some rogues can make use of combo points left on the target when the target dies (looking at riftstalkers here, not sure if there's others).  That's one of the things that I loathe the most about the combo point mechanic in general, but the heal when the enemy dies with combo points on them is quite nice.

What I find I particularly like is that during rift events, the planar invaders attack everything, even mobs that are aggro to you. It's consistent with the whole "we're here to destroy everything" vibe.

That said, I've been playing a champion/riftstalker/voidknight spec. Not bad, gets the job done.

Yeah I like that a lot. When there's a narrative that I'm involved in but not necessarily central too it's more enjoyable, and having NPC factions that are hostile to each other helps. This is something mmorpg's can do uniquely and should do more of.

If you want a good soloing character early on bard/hunter is super. Once you get 8 points into bard to get your cadence heal your pet is pretty much immune to mobs. You don't kill as fast as pure DPSers but there is zero downtime fast and steady pace and if you are in a rift or invasion your cadence heals +motifs are amazingly good.

So, today I purchased whatever the second craftable leather hat is and made one. Apparently the plan is, kill some guy, skin his head slide it on.

Egger suits. :why_so_serious:.

Looting while mounted.  :drillf:

Yet another small thing from the really good idea department: they have all the types of armor from quest rewards in the same spot. i.e. I wear chain, it is always in the first slot; plate for my warrior, last slot.

Started up a defiant character, as my entire experience in the game has been Guardian.

I actually find the defiant story more compelling. Being sent back from a future where the world is all but destroyed to stop skynet Regulos? Shit, I named my marksman KyleReese.

Regarding that gripe I posted in the other thread about broken quests... they fixed the Podovaxus bug in yesterday's patch. I can live with a turnaround time like this...  :awesome_for_real:

 :awesome_for_real: :heart:

Just announced: coin lock, if you login from an ip far from yours it locks your coin until you authorize it via email.  Simple and elegant, took four weeks to come up and its already better than anything wow has thought up.

nice, but does it count for selling/destroying items?

Even if you sell the items, what purpose does that serve if they can't touch your coin? Someone could maliciously vendor all your gear, but what would be the point if they can't do anything with your gold?

Hrrm. If someone has hacked your game account, they can use the same login info to access your main account and change the email address to which the ip lock notifications are sent. System remains vulnerable unless, of course, you first have to confirm the email address change from the original email address.

Well it doesn't help the player much if all their stuff is gone, even if the cash equivilent is there.

That's how every email change system i've ever had to use has worked.

The people doing this aren't doing it to be dickheads, they're doing it to make money by selling gold. If they can't come up with some way to get value out of the account, I don't see why they would just vendor shit for the fun of it.

From the post on the forums:

That's actually very nice, and something I hope Blizz rips off soon.

It won't help when they just log into your e-mail to grab the unlock code since I'm sure >90% of people use the same password for both. Blizzard already does something similar with the dial-in authenticator. When an unusual IP tries to log-in it locks the whole account until you dial an 800 number from a pre-designated phone.

Well you can't just code away stupid, the gold sellers are going to win sometimes.

If you're not on a PvP server, you're doing it wrong.  Having been playing in Scarwood Whatever-the-fuck (level 30-36 zone) for a while now, I've had the most fun in an MMORPG since DAOC, and it all boils down to rifts and PvP keeping things unpredictable and exciting.  The emergent factor where both teams are trying to complete objectives and take down the big bad boss at the end of an invasion is simply an unmatched experience in MMORPGs.  And it's a good thing too, because the questing otherwise is rather terrible, the dungeons are nothing special, and warfronts while fun are a straight WoW rip.

I pretty much disagree with everything you just said.

Oh, and if you aren't playing with a tazer hooked to your nuts, you're doing it wrong.  Go ahead, give it a try.

That's awesome!  Obviously you have a different criterion for fun than I do.

For myself, well I already tried playing with a tazer hooked up to my nuts.  It's called trying to grind to 50 through terribly bland quest content and predictable dungeon crawls.  But one man's nut tazer is another man's....um, nut caresser?

Have fun with your uninterrupted theme park experience if that's what you so desire.  For others that enjoyed any kind of emergent PvP content in the past, especially DAOC, I would definitely try out a PvP server, because it's hot stuff in this game.  Far superior to WoW PvP servers which basically were just PvE + random ganking.  Of course that exists to a small extent in RIFT, but much more often you get group vs group battles with both sides meeting up at rifts/invasions.  And then the fun really begins.

You're a perfect gem.  Never change.

Oh no, it's a hyperbolic statement on the internet!   :oh_i_see:

But even sans hyperbole, my statement holds for anyone who has any possible inclination to enjoy world PvP.  If you didn't try a RIFT PvP server, you did it wrong.  If you hate PvP no matter what, then by all means, play on a PvE server.  

Just curious, did you actually play on a RIFT PvP server, or are you extrapolating from other games?

This is fascinating. And you do sound like an asshole, but that just might be how you communicate.

The PVE in this game isn't all bad.  I have enough to do with Rifts and invasions that I have a hard enough time getting through the content given a limited playing time.  I like those events enough that I'll often hang around Silverwood if it looks like they need a tank.

ANYHOOO, rerolled my mangled spec rogue, who was only lvl 10.  A couple hours of wasted time was worth throwing away for.. the Carlton dance.  So +1 for Rift, first time I've ever rerolled for a dance.

He just sounds as much as an asshole as you are by calling him an asshole.  :oh_i_see:

But hey it's F13.

He's right though.

When PvP gets fixed to a point that the game is playable, I'll gladly roll on a PvP server. 

Just for interest, what are you playing as your main?  I'm going to guess that you're having so much fun because you're playing a warrior or a rogue. 

How do you get the Carlton dance?  When I played the only thing I ever saw was the stoned trance dance.

You may like pvp and regardless of whether you do or not, the pvp in this game is a joke. The outdoor bosses and rifts give an excuse for pvp that other games don't have so yes rift encourages pvp better than most games. The pvp itself however, is still shite.

I'm an asshole and proud of it.

Mathosian male.

I'm a mage.

Some things to consider:

1)  You need to be respeccing to find things that work.  Not every spec is going to be good, and if you get absolutely rolled you need to consider trying other specs out.  If healers are seriously bothering you, make your PvP spec involve heavy dominator to mana drain and silence them.  If melees are bothering you, Pyro/Dom can make them a laughing stock with a ton of CC and good damage.  Tweaking your PvP and PvE specs is for me quite a bit of fun, but understandably not what everyone signed up for.  Still, try respeccing if you are having an absolutely terrible time in PvP.

2)  Some specs are terrible.  Stormcaller and Elementalist are pretty much worthless for a mage in most PvP situations (and honestly they are just poorly designed trees overall), and Pyro/Dom/Lock are really the only 3 trees that I think are good for a variety of PvP situations for mages.

3)  Despite the above, the game is definitely in a state of imbalance when it comes to PvP with Warriors and Rogues overpowered.  But it's not absolutely hopeless.  I posted a video of Pyromancer PvP of myself doing fairly well in what is considered a very weak level bracket for mages.  Finally, even with imbalance, in world group PvP the class imbalance really doesn't effect you as much as it does in a 1v1 gank situation, which so far my game experience has been fairly clean of.  Mages in particular might kind of suck 1v1 and have crappy survivability, but they can lay down some nasty ranged AE on the enemy population when they are engaging rifts, forcing them to either disengage the rift or take a ton of damage.  Laying down upgraded Radiant Spores and then AE DOTting on my 32 lock/14 chloro can be pretty ridiculous.

The game's PvP has a ton of problems, but I think those problems are actually minimized in a world PvP setting where ranged classes are naturally stronger.

I agree with all 3 points.  Having played PvP MMO's for as long as there have been PvP MMOs, I looked at the trees carefully.  I give preference to instas and counters.  DoTs suck in this game and don't scale well rendering warlock pretty worthless.  Being successful on a Pyro almost demands that you play against bad teams.  Melee have too many ways to close the gap quickly and/or mana drain casters to a point where their effectiveness is limited.  Right now, I see casters as heal/cc support classes.  If you want to DPS, warrior (and maybe rogue) are the only choices.  Perhaps people are just adjusting to the paradigm shift.

Oh, rerolled, not respeced.  Gotcha.  I was confused.

 I always thought that's what those classes were for. Why is this a bad thing?

It's not... that's why I stated:

Just wait for raid rifts and cock blocking people from rewards and having them do the same...that really is fun and brings some interesting competition to them since the good rewards (not the contribution rewards) are bound to the group/raid that initiated the raid/expert rift.


I do too, and am learning that certain mage specs work really well in pvp with cast times as they can have the highest 5 second burst with some specs. Also, fuck dominator + sabo combos when I don't have a someone dispelling. Just go pair up with a sabo with your +50% damage on next damaging ability to your poly'd target and watch the squirrel die....instantly

It seems weird to me that in a game which allows more classes to fill more roles, that they would limit clerics and mages to just the heal and support roles in PvP.  So, it's a bad thing because it seems to throw out their philosophy that any class can fill any role.

The only way it makes sense to me is if it's Trion's stance that ranged dps is just too strong in PvP in these types of games when they are also amongst the highest dps, so they're consciously making the ranged classes do less damage... then I'd have to say, "ok, why don't mages have a melee class, and why are none of the cleric melee classes built for dps"?

What warrior class can do healing? The back of the manual doesn't list every class as being able to do every thing. Bard's are very much a AoE support healer - as part of a TEAM they work very well, but you still would want a primary direct healer as well, and I don't think warlord's heal much at all?

All classes can SUPPORT each other, but a balanced team of warriors+rogues+clerics+mages should beat a team of only 1 or 2 classes in return.


Though I do think an army of Bard's would be hilarious.

Does the back of manual say "casters are intended to fill heal/support roles in PvP, they are not intended to be primary PvP DPS"?  Has Trion said this somewhere else?  I didn't follow this game at all prior to f13 buzzing about it, so I honestly don't know.

Rift has rogues, clerics, mages and warriors that can do support healing, mages and clerics that can do primary healing, clerics, rogues and warriors that can tank and virtually every class can do PvE dps (maybe not clerics?).  If after all that effort to accommodate most classes being able to fill multiple roles in PvE, casters are intended to only fill heal/support roles in PvP... well that just seems :uhrr:

Warriors can't heal. Self healing on a couple souls with support and hp buffs but no actual healing.

Rogues can DPS Melee/Ranged and heal/support but are not intended to be primary PvP healing.
Warriors can DPS Melee  and support but are not intended to be primary PvP healing/support.

Can Warriors be better than Mages or Rogues at ranged combat? I didn't think they could. And I think Cleric's can do everything.

The back of the manual lists all the souls and clearly shows some are better than at others at DPS/Tank/Heal/Control/Support.

What they didn't do was make a Warhammer 'Bright Wizard' equivalent. I remember the wailing and gnashing of teeth on the forums around the insanity of the damaging ability of the Bright Wizard in PvP. I *like* that gave melee/physical damage classes something better than standard because in all other PvP MMO's I've played, being a melee warrior meant living in a pit of shame. At least in RIFT they're viable. And I'm playing a mage as my main in RIFT and having a ball despite not having the flaming ejaculations of an super-powered glass cannon.

Love the idea of the sabo+dom combo attack, BTW. +1 for coordinating attacks with even 1 other player...

On Sunrest, there's a defiant guild that kills guardians during these rift boss events, which makes this guild hated by everyone (including some defiants).  I guess they enjoy going around with an outlaw type label that says "kill me on sight."  Annoying as they are, they are part of what makes Rift incredibly fun for me.  There are anti-pk type guilds as well.

I found that Scarlet Gorge and Scarlet Reach had a great deal of pvp; Moonshade/Droughtlands/Iron Pine Peaks has had more cooperation on rift bosses - that could be due to me taking a few days off the game, so I'm leveling with a different crowd now, too.  I'm not sure.

But yeah, pvp server is making me very happy, despite me hating to be ganked and refusing to gank (except Acolytes who I will kill no matter the level whenever I see them).

Edited to add: I play a ranger/bard mostly, which is not a good pvp spec, and I end up getting owned by people levels lower than me sometimes.  I am also not great at pvp.  I've been ganked a few times, camped only once.  It's not as prevalent as I feared it would be.  Most of the pvp has been really fun.  Closest thing to DAOC rvr I've seen in a game since.

Birdsongs.  Nice ambient sounds.

I'm intrigued. I'm on a PvE server, the f13 server, so don't have the same frame of reference. I'm curious how you see this as DAOC rvr type gaming? I don't see the capability to be honest given the lack of persistent goals, rewards etc. But I'd be interested in how you see that?

EDIT: My question comes as someone who had 2 RR10 characters so I am a fan of that kind of game.

I don't think there is currently a DAoC type of mechanic in the game.  But, with the way their wardstones work I could easily see there being something like that in the future.  As it stands you can go kill the other sides quest hubs (take out the wardstone, all NPCs disappear), but it is very temporary and mainly just annoys them.  From what I have seen you don't actually get your own quest NPCs in their place (which would be interesting).

Of course in every zone but the level 50 zones that type of thing would be grieftastic as one level 50 could basically stop tons of level 20s from being able to quest.

But, put those wardstones inside a DAOC style fortress, and you have yourself a persistent world asset that can change hands depending on who beat it down, etc.  I am hoping the game moves in this direction personally, but I have yet to see how the Raid Rifts are going to work... perhaps that will be fun PvP without the hassle of having to defend your base at 3am.

Something I've noticed running experts the last few days that shows how versatile the soul system can be, after wiping several times on the same boss most people will default to "let me try something different" rather than "fuck this, we can't do this, you guys suck" like in WoW heroics. 

Was this a regular group or a pug?  How likely a party is to say "fuck this" depends almost entirely on their faith in the ability of others in the group.   

I can't imagine doing a PUG heroic - I did FC 8 or 9 times in 3 days for sweet, sweet drops to blow up for runecrafter mats, mostly as a chloro healer.

Some tanks just SUCK.  Not the spec, the player.  I've had groups where the tank never drops below 80% with me just throwing down RS and having veil/syth up, and groups with the same type of tank where I'm constantly having to drop my 2 instaheals to keep them above 40%.

On the plus side, I've found that chloro as a main healer is incredibly viable and actually fun to play - instead of staring at the HP bars the entire time you're basically just DPSing while dropping a shitload of group heals on everyone.

Talking about pugs with both, random dungeon for wow and /50 chat pugs from rift.

I would attribute at least some of that to the fact that there's no LFD available.  When you can just re-queue, and be back in a group within a few minutes, dps notwithstanding, then just saying fuck it becomes viable.  If you have to hang around in town, or whatever, and actually put together a group, then there's more incentive to stick with it once you have a group.

Being able to swap out souls doesn't hurt either, though.

There are no persistent rvr type goals.  It just happens.  There are pk guilds, and anti-pk guilds.  It's an rp-pvp server (Sunrest), so there are also events that guilds run.  (I don't know how other servers are.)

One week, a large defiant guild came to "take" Sanctum, and the guardians battled them from the Sanctum bridge all the way back to Stonefield, then attempted to get to Meridian (I logged after Stonefield).

I cannot imagine the same type of fun on a pve server.

Most people quest and ignore the other side.  I've seen very little ganking (except by the pk guilds - the ones who swear that if it's red it's a target).  I've seen more cooperation than ganking.  It's quite pleasant, actually.  The community is also about 100x better than WoW's.

I like that they are actually using the test server to test out their changes, and are making adjustments based upon stuff that happens on the test server.  I felt like that was the exception, rather than the rule in WoW.

I also like that they are trying to pace the changes.  Rogues are complaining of low damage output, and they have stated that they are reviewing that, but they will push the mage buffs and warrior nerfs first to see how it all shakes out.  I just appreciate a more thoughtful evolution rather than knee-jerk nerfs/buff cycle.  I understand that it probably feels like it's taking forever for those specs that are under-performing.

I finally ran my first dungeon last night with a few f13 folks.  I now understand why Draegan enjoys this game so much.  With a fun group of people to play with, the experience is very different from the solo grind to 50.  I was pleasantly surprised by the boss encounters and REALLY enjoyed some of the humor added to the dungeons/instances.  It has been a long time since I've laughed as hard in a game as I did last night.

Trust me when I say that the Rogue dev (or team) has their head in the sand.  It's been like this for a long time.

Glad you found an enjoyable experience.  These games suck if you just play them solo the majority of the time.  Realm of the Fae's Atrophinius is pretty amusing. :)

Well after having tried my first expert dungeon I have to say while the normal dungeons are fun, the experts are....not so much. They seem to be just as long and hard as wow's current crop of heroics and the amount of trash is pretty vile such that unless you already over gear it, even with a competent group you're gonna be there 2+ hours.

edit: since this isnt the grip thread I'll add that the dungeons are actually nice to look at.

Maybe they are as long and hard as wow dungeons are NOW, but i never experienced the failure rate i had on heroics when cata launched.  In fact i haven't been in a single expert dungeon group that out right failed in the end to finish the dungeon, while in wow i had about a 40-50% failure rate doing random dungeons.  There are short cuts in most dungeons that allow you to skip large swaths of trash mobs, whether this is intended or not i do not know or care.

Nebu I'm glad you came last night!  It was fun  :awesome_for_real:

See you later rabbit

There is an awful lot of trash, though, and Trion's taken the tack that tripling hit points on them and calling it a day is basically a sound policy. That doesn't really make it hard, just long.

If you hate trash NEVER do expert DSM.  It has my favorite boss encounters, and it's generally a fun dungeon.  But the amount of trash is horrific.

I just did expert KB yesterday (my first expert) and some of the trash was OTT in there as well. I have *no* idea why they had to put three of those 'omfg this takes forever' death idols that spawn worms. One of them is a cool novelty (that takes forever), second one is  :oh_i_see:, third one is  :ye_gods:...

Those death idols are awwwwful.

Yeah, that's the only thing that made me go "another? really? fuck you trion".

Been PuG'n experts for a week now, it's very doable. Because there is no Dungeon Finder yet, you get to know people and find yourself grouping with /friends or friends of friends. I have only run into a couple of real idiots on my server during expert pugs, and as they were neither tank or main healer we were able to drag them along.

My 50 is a rogue. 

I recently made a mage (necro/warlock/chloro for leveling), and bought 3 souls quickly, and played in Black Garden as a pyro.  Unlike my experiences as a rogue, I was topping the charts in damage and kills, and we won almost all of the games I was in.  It was silly, the amount of damage I was doing.  But what a fun changeup.

I have heard rumors that one of Trion's devs is the Mythic dev who was responsible for bright wizards.  Whether this is true or not, it apparently is commonly believed.

I love my rogue for solo pve/exploring/farming.  Ranger/bard gives me speed, tracking for humans and animals, and I just love how it plays.  I can switch to assassin if I need to sneak out of a place.  But I haven't found either ranger, bard or assassin particularly fun in warfronts - utility and support are great for Codex and Whitefall Steppes, ok for Port Scion, but I can't find my niche for Black Garden - and I feel pretty underpowered going against anyone except another rogue 1x1 (exception: assassin vs. single mage where I can pick the time to attack). 

Pyro being ridiculously OP is a fun alt until they fix it.

Well they didn't take that long to slap warriors down to balance.  I still feel powerful, just not facerolly op anymore.

I take it you were playing in the bottom tiers? (10-19, 20-29)

The damage increase for mages was primarily weighted at the lower levels, so a low level pyro saw something like a 50% boost - when they didn't particularly need much help in warfronts at that level anyway, due to a reasonably high time-to-kill for most classes. I can well believe this makes them insane in the first tier or two.

The damage increase is much more slight at 50 (maybe 10% for my pyro? I think Nerf mentioned that he didn't notice an increase at all with Necro). The Ground of Strength diminishing returns was also fixed recently making it a mixed blessing in PvP as you lose control of your stun CCs. Pyros got a bit burstier with the removal of the GCD on Inferno, but at the top end, overall dps isn't much higher - I'm pretty sure Necrolocks are still king of the mages.

I saw a 4-6% increase on devouring shadows when the patch hit, I was ~46-48 and running lock/chloro for lolaoe grindage at the time.

Mage forum parses were showing a sub-10% increase after the patch, and some of it could have been due to individual spell tweaks, or just pure margin of error.  Doing nothing but sitting there spamming the same macro button for 5 minutes I'll see variations of 10-40dps between parses @ 600ish dps.

I've got some more testing to do on a few things, but mother and sister in law are visiting for the weekend, just arrived tonight, so rift time for us only happens if we're lucky and they sleep in til 1 like usual.  When I've got the time, I'll be testing parses for:

a slightly different archon build, going 51archon/5pyro/10domi for the 20% increased cast speed on fire spells to bring volcanic barrage and surging flare down to GCD from 1.7-1.8s, which nets a free PS+BP cast every 5-6 vb/sf's @1k-1500 each.

How much SP/crit actually affect damage.  From my shitty napkin math, crit just isn't all that helpful until you're cranking out well over 1k dps sustained.

Crit = +50% damage
@ 500 dps, 100% crit =+250dps
26 spell crit = 1% crit = 2.5dps

Now, I know it's a whole lot more complex than that, because your 500dps includes some crit already, but at the very base of it, this is a best-case scenario for damage gain.  It just doesn't seem worth it - for a class that doesn't have %crit damage modifiers, if you were somehow able to get enough spell crit to reach 100% crit chance, if you are currently parsing 500dps, the most you could ever get is a 250dps increase.

I need to get ahold of some golem cores, and pure +spellcrit augs or spellcrit+dex/str/end if they exist, and then craft up 3 sets of gear - one using +sp augs, one using +spellcrit augs, and one with no augs, and then test it with a 0/0/0 build and neural prod, void bolt, pillaging stone, whatever.  I want to see what kind of gains the various stats give all on their own, without being modified by the various builds.

The last patch actually buffed warriors in PVE settings.

Today's? how so?

Patch not hotfix.

Uh, no i've lost about 250 dps since before the patch.

Saying "Warriors got nerfed/buffed" or "Mages are OP" is too generic in Rift really. I think the game's got some real balance issues - but w/e I'm not a hardcore player so I'll play my rogue and then make a mage and just enjoy them. But yeah, Warriors didn't get nerfed or buffed - some souls did.

That said, as much as I LOVE the soul system for it's flexibility and variety it's going to be worse than DAoC for balancing - I suspect the pendulum will swing many many cycles before they settle into a groove. Hell look at how long it took WoW to get a modicum of both PvE and PvP balance across what, 9 classes?

Do what? My Reaver/Pally took a dramatic hit in both dps and self-healing.  Where, pray, did you find some buffing?

On that topic, I think the nerfing was sadly inept and poorly aimed, even if it was needed in some form.  I went from being able to wade through wave after wave of 3-5 equal cons pretty much indefinitely to losing about 20% health each wave, unless I use all possible consumables to keep up, in which case I can still keep going indefinitely until I run out of consumables.  And now I die even faster to a single even con elite, nevermind a group of 3-5 of them.  So what's changed?  Not much except for a bit more consumable usage.  My wife (cleric) is happier since now she says she feels "needed" in fights, but she always was in fights against elites, and still really isn't in fights against normals unless I'm stupid and stand in the train tracks.

So they pissed off warriors without fixing the real problem of healers feeling unneeded in non-elite fights, and exacerbated the problem of elites being badass out of all proportion to their level/reward.  A tank being curb-stomped by a single mob 5 levels lower in 15 seconds (30 with lay hands and potions) is just stupid, even if it is elite or heroic or the dev's special snowflake or whatever the hell they call it.

Yeah, well, if they emasculate PvE for the sake of balancing PvP like DAoC did, then they can kiss my subscription goodbye.  Keep them separate, and balance them separate, or live with the remnants who are willing to sacrifice (or omit entirely) fun PvE in the name of trying to achieve the largely unachievable dream of balanced PvP.  The only truly balanced PvP would be to make everyone the same class of the same level with the same gear.  Anything else is going to be unbalanced in one way or another.  So DON'T break PvE trying to fix PvP!

I agree in general - although in DAoC my stance was fuck PvE and here it's the opposite. Time will tell, they might get it right or they might fuck it up. As a rogue main I don't have much concern and we're apparently the worst calling of all (there are issues mind you, I just think the QQ is overblown).

As to your specific question - Paragons got some very nice changes in 1.1 and Beastmaster is still, well, beastly. As someone who leveled as a bard from 10 - 39 I feel for your reaver, but that soul wasn't alone and at least Warriors got buffs in other areas. Rogues got nerfs to Sab and bard and got...well that's all. No biggie the games only 2 months old.

Speaking of DAoC... they get a "what went right" for re-using the theme song.  I think Rift tied it to rifts, but I get little shivers when I hear the DAoC horns sound off: Daaa...da da dum...Daaaaaaaa...DUM.

And yes, PvP will ruin this game.  While the devs might talk a good game about being ok with unbalanced specs, they really mean ok with unbalanced specs when employed against their silent minions of computer generated fodder.  they've shown no such willingness to tell the carbon fodder to L2Spec.

Then you need to adjust something because our warriors didn't miss a step, they actually gained dps.

I'm talking strictly pure PVE dps.  They did nerf some leveling/farming builds, thats for sure.

In your case, it probably was a needed nerf.  They don't want classes to go on pulling 5 mobs at once and keep on ticking without needing to drink/use pots.  They've nerfed clerics, rogues and now warriors that were able to do this.  You can argue whether or not they should of in the first place, but it was a balancing mechanic from the point of view of their design docs.  I don't think it had anything to do with PVP.

Does that mean that necro/locks necro/chloro are next to be nerfed? 

Trion also needs to generate a mechanic that outright separates PvE and PvP balancing of souls and damage output/mitigation.  If they don't, their PvP will continue to look like the poorly implemented, tacked on element that it is. 

There was apparently some bard stealth nerf to cadence - it doesn't damage nor heal as well as it did pre-patch.

I still don't understand bard mechanics at all.  What the tooltips say and what actually happens seem different to me.  I will admit to being lazy about my confusion - I haven't really tried to get it all squared away.

(This should probably be in the gripes thread rather than this one.)

My 1.1 inquisitor/cabalist spec could farm 5-6 mobs at the same time effortlessly at level 40+ while killing them with almost the same speed as a single target DPS spec; zero downtime. With inquisitor / justicar it could be even more survivable (at the cost of some mana issues that'd be mostly alleviated by the justicar mana regen skill).

Well, that would be shitty.

Maybe they'll get nerfed next, who knows.  As to your second point: Amen.  /agreed

Bards are the worst and most boring soul in the game.  But it's a huge gripe and probably belongs in the other thread.

But the short of it is: Bards are very boring.  You don't dps, you don't heal, you just stand there and buff.  You don't recieve any feedback from your actions.  Your healing is passive, your buffs don't actually do anything, you don't have to do anything to activate them.  There is not dps/buff rotation either.  At least archons have to do things to activate buffs and they can dps pretty well at the same time.

Hell Chloros can heal and dps decently as well.

Anyway, Bards need serious help in the mechanics department.  Sure their buffs are very useful, but actually playing a bard sucks ass. (In a group/raid, not solo).

What Bard are you playing and why are you playing like that? I keep the 30 second buff timers up, but I also do the 1 minute debuffs (both of them), the party heal, the party other heal, single target mez, the party buffs for anyone who's died in the PvP, and in between all that, a DPS finisher and a DPS AoE attack AND the the healing/DPS of my basic attack.

It's no more boring than any other DPS Buff + macro x 5 + finisher repeat endlessly that my Nightblade does, and it requires playing the keyboard a bit more. The really bad thing is you can't in game macro the 30 second buff x5 playlist, but I use my Keyboard macro to do that.

If we're just talking raids, you don't need to do distress or cowardice as an Archon does both, and doesn't need 5 combo points to do it either, and you WANT them doing it and not you because it buffs the Archon who casts it and lasts for 5 minutes and not 1. In the limited amount of raiding I've done mez'ing also has no use (yet). You should always have an Archon in your raid for Burning Purpose/Flaring Power.

Azuredream's got the bulk of it.  The healing is pretty poor (I'm trying to make it better with gear/trinkets/essences), the debuffs don't stack with other classes who have better versions.  You don't need/use the mezz in any dungeon/raid.  The party heal is pretty weak and on a 1? 2? minute cooldown so it's situational.  The dps of wrath/fury is pretty awful compared to anyone else.  The debuffs get wiped off by other classes who have better versions.

Again this isn't a PVP rant, bards are pretty good in warfronts and open world leveling and pvp I guess.  I don't have much experience with them.

The difference between a Bard rotation and a Night Blade is that a Night Blade sees immediate and measurable feedback from their actions.  I'm a Night Blade, here's my rotation, I see big numbers and bad guys die.  I can see it in parses as well.  A Bard is pretty much meh.  The healing is weak that you don't get to see green bars fill up.  You're not saving anyone.  You're essentially healing the damage before a Chloromancer can trigger it.  I have to spam buffs every 30 seconds which is awful.  Hooray for G15 Keyboards.  I don't get any feedback from them either.

Bard dps is like 100-150 on Greenscale.  I have a new build which is 31 Bard 26 Ranger 8 NB to see if I can push 500 dps while providing the same buffs.

Also don't get me started on Verse of Joy.  Useful for the mana return but it provides something like a third or half the mana of a mana tonic that uses two herbs.  So it's useless for all the extra points you spend.  There is virtually nothing useful in a PVE area between 31 pts and 51 pts.  You're only argument could be the AOE heal on a 1-2 minute cooldown that usually goes off for 500-1000 depending on crit/gear.

Most of my experts so far had a bard, and it was awesome. I play a healer, and I can basically focus on the tank full time except for bursty AOE at bosses (rare) and not worry about mana management (verse of joy is pretty awesome). All those buffs and debuffs matter quite a bit in a 5man [I have yet to see an archon in an expert dungeon, btw], and bard dps, while low, is offset by them amplifying the group's damage and survivability by a lot.


Random anecdote: the first expert I did after hitting 50 on my cleric was KB as the healer. The first boss and the trash afterward was a nail-biter at times, I had to rotate my cooldowns and maintain a very tight rotation, not to mention using mana-inefficient ohcrap heals all the time [we wiped on the first boss twice because someone got cleaved and I couldn't heal them without the tank dying - then the adds overwhelmed us due to low dps], and that was with a cleric in justicar support mode. Our DPS warrior dropped and a bard joined, our justicar switched back to his pure dps spec... healing became a whole lot easier, stuff started dying a lot faster, and we one-shot everything in there until Konstantin (nobody in the group has killed him before, so it took 3 tries to figure it out). The manticores in particular were dead easy to heal with a bard backing me up.

Bards help sure, but a Cleric/Chloro with 2 proper dps is soooo much better.  Chloro heals better than a bard and their dps is about 3x better.

I am a 50 mage who almost always runs chloro, I could generally soloheal almost everything in a 5 man (The bosses I needed help with were Atrophinius the Fallen, Calyx the Ancient, Caelia, Scarn, and Plutonus.. that list is down to Atro/Plutonus now), but if I needed help we would have our Inq cleric switch to heals. I never really found an encounter that I couldn't soloheal but I could heal with a bard helping. It's probably different for a Cleric healer though.

Follow-up on one thing they almost did right - the public rift raid grouping.  We complained earlier about the need to not loose our groups when joining the public rift group/raid, and they mostly fixed that.  First with the merge groups options, and a week or two ago they added an unmerge option which pulls your group out of the raid intact.  Now, it's still not perfect.  The merge group function often splits your group members across multiple raid groups (so much for using those F-keys during the raid!), and the unmerge option strangely isn't available every once in awhile.  But these really are big big improvements to an already great idea.  I'd grade the implementation as it stands now as a B+.

I spend most of my time exploring. Finding puzzles and cairns and rare mobs is more fun to me than anything.  There is so much of that in Rift that I'm having a blast playing this game.  I spent yesterday hunting artifacts - since it was Easter, it seemed appropriate. 

Playing on a pvp rp server is also greatly enhancing my game-time.  The community is terrific, for the most part.  The guardians on Sunrest are outnumbered by defiants, and there are pk-guilds and anti-pk guilds.  It's hilarious getting attacked by a guy who is 20 levels beneath me because I'm the enemy (reminds me of my brief time in Shadowclan on Mordred in DAOC).

One touch I enjoy is the way the zone loading screens update based on your character's progression through the zone's story.

So, I log in today to play something while I do some late night work.  Haven't played for like a month or so, but sitting in my mail is a nice event gift.  Free 20 slot bag and weapon cache?  Thanks!

That's the PR bundle that they handed out after the River of Souls server downtime fest Phase 2 & 3 events.

No weekly maintenance with a quarter-day of downtime.

They do bring the servers down almost every single day to fix something.  It never lasts more than 30 mins though.

I'm not quite sure how to categorize "Super Mario Cairn" as an experience.  I've never seen a company directly reward what is borderline terrain exploitation.

Gave me a green hat.  GEE THANKS.

Wait until you start hunting some of the crazy named artifact hiding spots.  It's pretty impressive how tough some of them are to get to. 

I think one the best things they did was that expert dungeons are actually *different*. When heroics were first launched in WoW, we were promised extra areas and bosses. In the end, we just saw more hitpoints and more adds.

Expert dungeons in Rift are completely different beasts, and often complete the storyline for that dungeon that you first saw 20 levels ago. Deepstrike Mines, Iron Tombs - they all have large, extra areas with completely new mobs and bosses. This works much better than the exact same dungeon with the numbers tuned up.

They are still doing almost daily hotfixes, it's pretty incredible.

I've been playing in the warfronts almost exclusively on my mage since about level 36.  It's a slower way to level but it suits me, because I know the warfronts turn at 50 (where people get gear and prestige ranks which enable better pvp powers), and I'm not looking forward to being a baby 50.  Mage is 48, so it's coming up.

I still haven't done many instances - that's a whole 'nother part of the game to open for me.  I'm planning on starting instances once I am 50 on the mage.

Rift is delivering for me, I'm still enjoying it immensely.  Achievements are sort of like a to-do list for me, I love finding shinies and collecting stuff, and have only solved 2 puzzles (and only found 3 -  I still have those to find and solve as well).  Updates are still bringing me happiness, and the community is real nice - both sides, in fact (mostly).  Love being able to talk to the other side.  Interacting on a pvp server without pvping is neat.

Yeah, Rift is official my "default" game now.  I will play SWTOR, GW2, Tera, and probably everything else that launches but i will not be going back to wow during the lulls or failures it will be Rift from now.  Much like wow erased any possibility of me enjoying everquest ever again.

Probably said somehwere else in this topic, but too long to read the whole thing now. 

The ability to play with 8 souls within a particular class set almost with no restrictions is awesome to me.  I haven't been playing a ton yet and my Cleric already has all 8 souls now.  I have 3 role sets set up and there are, what, 4 more I could open later?  The cheap respecs allow me to monkey around and get comfortable with my playstyle too.

So, right now I have a build for DPS, DPS/Healer/Self Preservation, Pure Healer.  I need to work on a tank role now, but I haven't done a whole lot with instances or a need for this yet.  The second role set was really cheap.  The third, not so much...  Haven't checked on cost for the 4th, etc.

I think I tested the other day that I could change roles mid-combat and it worked.  Not sure if I was truly in combat (was during a rift fight.)

Other than race and faction, not sure why you would have more than 4 alts at this point.  In the future, free server transfers?  Even more reason to just concentrate on 4.  Speaking as an altoholic, this is a good thing.  I get my altoholic fix without the huge number of characters/items/achievements/etc.

You were probably out of combat on a stage change. I am almost certain you can't switch in combat.

The souls thing is pretty sweet though. I particularly like the cheapness of respecs. I try out new specs on my cleric all the time.

One can have a total of 5 souls.  (The last one costs 100p, just as the last bank slot costs 100p).

You can switch to a different soul any time you aren't in combat, even in warfronts.

Respecs are really cheap.

Roles not souls.  Each callings has 8 souls plus 1 pvp soul.  You can save up to 5 (if purchased) configurations of those souls (these are called roles).

Yes, roles not souls.  Gack.  Sorry for the confusion.

Here's a feature I did not know about.  You can sell all your grey items at once at a vendor.  (Little button lower right vendor window).

Oh ho ho....thanks for that!

Gah, I need to read the Rift threads more often, this alone saves me more time than anything.

Finally updated my PC with an i5 2500K and a gtx560ti with 8gigs of RAM.

Finally able to play this game with the settings maxed and never get a slow down.  HK looks awesome in detail.

My new guild finished up all of the T1 content Tuesday night. The last bit of Alsebeth really needs some clown car music.

In all, I would say they are all well done, varied and interesting. Greenscale is probably the fight I enjoy the most, though as a bard I don't have a whole lot to do in a crucial way. Oracle and Infiltrator are probably the least interesting, but even they are not that bad. I like the fine line they tread between being forgiving of deaths and battle rezes, because they sure love their near one shots, and not letting the group coast on the strength of a couple of people.

I resubbed to find that you can now unlock all the souls from a trainer for a fee, instead of doing an annoying quest. Very cool.

Been playing on a similar computer build since last January so since launch Ive played Rift on max and never once had bad FPS.  Game is very optimized.

Ranking up in pvp is a lot faster now.  A lot of that is 100% bonus potions they gave out as veteran rewards, but also number of kills per warfront is WAY up now that one class isn't a complete gimp and the extra warfront accolades come in fast and furiously with extra bonuses too.

The fact that no healers queue for WF's anymore isn't hurting the cause either;  well unless you're a healer.

I've seen plenty of healers around this weekend, the team with the most still wins.

The team of 13 rogues, one dos cleric and one dos warrior I ended up in yesterday begs to differ!

(admittedly, 3 of us switched to bard and guardians were just being *dumb* so it's not how it sounds. People need to learn that if 3 rogues are AEing you you cannot just stand there and take it like you used to be able to.)

I'll say here that frequently I have no clue what is going on or what happened to me from an AoE standpoint. Most of the AoE graphics are really subtle and easily missed. There are no Ice Shards or Rain of Fire graphics. No big Death and Decay, not even Concecrate. The real killer is Devouring Shadows and that is often just a black spot on the ground. For the rogue ranged effects, the only one I can tell is happening is Splinter Shot because it has a distinctive sound.

The scrolling combat text is nearly useless in this regard. Even with names and icons turned on, incoming damage is often just not displayed if it happens too fast. And even if it does display, if you center things into a hud type view, it is frequently obscured. I would really like a Scrolling Combat Text mod with moveable text anchors and fonts.

That's not true for rogues aeing you though, you can see arrows flying right at you.

I could care less if clerics dont play, half of them dont heal anyhow and I can easily be standing next to a cleric at 1/4 HP and they still dont heal.  I was the underdog class so long I learned to be self sufficient so 1.5 made the game 100% better for PvP for me(rogue) so no heals is pretty much the norm. 

I'm bringing this back because after the last patch this has been going on non stop all day.  There are tons of zone invasions and now that the rewards are needed lots of people are doing them.  This is the best pvp i've had since shadowbane.

With the 1.5 riftstalker consolidation and the recent addition of the Deflection mechanic, rogue tanking is now much easier and way more entertaining.

Enjoy it until 1.6 :P

What's changing beyond the consolidation of Rift Guard and Guarded Steel? I added Blade Dancer to get False Blade, Strike Back, Reprisal, Side Step and Twin Strike (that's a whole lot out of 8 points). Anyway, currently I have a whopping three finishers. Moving to two is not a big deal and will probably be a good thing. Less mechanical nonsense means I can focus more on what's going on and being aware of when to use CDs and less on basic survival.

More tanks is never a bad thing.