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Topic: Soul opinions (Read 127844 times)
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kildorn
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Posts: 5014
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Anyone have a good Rogue spec for taking on elites? I've seen a number of elite quest-starting mobs but can't handle them as a BD.
I think a beastmaster/minor bard can do it but take a while (pet does most of the work, you spam heal it) I have a riftstalker/bard setup right now that is trying to exploit the higher incoming healing/mitigation with the healing and damage reduction motifs. Is it just me, or does the armor anthem Suck? It bumps my mitigation by less than a percent. You mean ranger/bard, right? I'm 32 now, and thinking of going back to ranger/bard for leveling, because my pet just sucks. Sab is fun but not nearly as survivable. World PvP lately means that I get ganked by a group of enemies, since it seems that few people solo, so I might as well be ganked as a ranger and not killed by mobs anymore. Yeah, ranger. Post 30, I believe you need to primary ranger so you have a non shitty pet. Prior to 30, you can primary bard and get away with it.
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Draegan
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Ginaz
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I don't know how it works it pvp or dungeons, but my riftblade/champ/reaver set up is doing very well for me. I put most of the points into riftblade with the rest into reaver to get soul feast and plague bringer and 6 points into champ. I'm a little bit of a glass canon but the damage I'm doing makes up for that and getting Avatar of Water will reduce the damage I receive by 10% so it won't be too bad after that. Will probably end up dropping down to 5 points in reaver and champ (or switch some other souls in) since Avatar of the Rift looks nice with the 50% increase to Burst damage, with I'm assuming means instant abilities like Flamspear.
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Typhon
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I went Riftblade / Champ focusing on 2h weapons. Really liking it, but I find that I only use the flamespear for pulling (which is rare because I use the Champ bullrush to charge). I haven't felt like I was especially fragile, but I do feel like I do substantially more damage than my stormcaller / elemental. Not sure if that is because the riftblade / champ is a beast, storm/ele is weak, or a bit of both.
Definitely more fun playing the warrior than the mage, maybe the mage will pick up a bit at higher levels.
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Jherad
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I find Rachel Maddow seriously hot.
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Not sure if that is because the riftblade / champ is a beast, storm/ele is weak, or a bit of both.
Definitely more fun playing the warrior than the mage, maybe the mage will pick up a bit at higher levels.
I don't know how far you went, but I know at least in the early levels, the difference in damage output between storm and pyro is huge. Looking over the soul tree, it seems to be more of a AOE/debuff type than pure DPS. Probably useful in group PvP, but not huge damage numbers. I couldn't make it work for me, so stuck with pyro (which is a real glass cannon, especially when you sacrifice 10% hp for extra damage later in the tree). On a related note - the 31 point talent for pyros is insane (cooldown refresh, half second global cooldown reduction and 50% cast times for 15 secs). Just being able to spam 1 second fireballs is crazy enough, even without messing around with a double serving of cinder bursts at the start, and random procs throughout your spam. Start with a full tank of gas, and Internalize Charge for an extra 20% damage - not much can survive.
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Ghambit
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What? .5 second global reduction? What's the cooldown time on that? Dom. actually has a similar passive ability after Mezzes that reduces casting speed by 50%. Problem is you have to lay 10 pts. into two talents to get it. The goal is near instant lightning strikes.
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« Last Edit: March 08, 2011, 08:35:09 AM by Ghambit »
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"See, the beauty of webgames is that I can play them on my phone while I'm plowing your mom." -Samwise
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kildorn
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Posts: 5014
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Stormcaller's damage is entirely in the top of the tree, it's silly.
Basically, you get a whole mess of stacking buffs/debuffs that crank your damage up by about 120% per nuke. But they're all post 30ish points in the tree for no reason.
As for the rogue tanking article: it appears to be written with a mindset of "if all this worked" not "how it works in game"
Shadow Blitz, Shadow Stalk and Shadow Assault all put you INSIDE mobs, not behind them. And what has me really bitter after rogue tanking last night (respecced to make a KB group work, because the tank we had was terrible, as was our initial healer):
All plane shifting abilities come with a ~3% chance of you falling through the world and wiping your instance group on the pull.
Oh, and the top of the riftstalker tree is depressingly useless. Imp Guardian Phase is ace, the rest is "meh, okay I guess. But I'm starting to eye points in that first tier +attack power just because you all suck"
Also: low level riftstalker tanking blows, because unlike warriors you don't get your massive hp tanking buff until ~26 points in, you don't get your AE taunt until 40(!) points in, and you lack the points to pick up much evasion while scrambling up the tree to stop being so damn squishy.
Once you have the points though, it's not a bad spec, just buggy as sin. And the UI needs some form of threat display already. It's completely stupid after playing any other MMO that I can only tell what mob isn't attacking me based on what direction it's facing, and have no idea how much of a threat lead I actually have.
edit: memory recall also helps on basic pulls, where I've had a few "must live for 2 more seconds so heals land" moments, and memory recall or plane shift just to buy mob running time for the healers to finish casting.
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« Last Edit: March 08, 2011, 08:33:04 AM by kildorn »
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Ghambit
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Hence why I'm thinking of dropping stormcaller altogether, you really get nothing at the lower lvles cept the awesome channeled knockback that also electrifies and a wicked crit to air spells (wherein the best low lvl air spell is actually in the ES tree). The knockback is almost worth it just for that though as I've lost count how many times it's saved me or someone else, 'specially when combined with silence. So pretty much w/o combining it with ES, s'caller is useless unless you main spec it.
This is the problem with this game, it's a constant "tease" with these abilities. I'm beginning to think to really own the game you're pretty much forced into shuffling souls.
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"See, the beauty of webgames is that I can play them on my phone while I'm plowing your mom." -Samwise
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kildorn
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I respec about once a day, if that makes any difference into how I view soul builds.
I'm usually running a bard/mm support build, an assassin/riftstalker solo questing build, and a "free" build that ranges from a pvp build of the day to my current "crap, we need a tank, looks like I'm learning riftstalker tactics" build.
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Jherad
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I find Rachel Maddow seriously hot.
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What? .5 second global reduction? What's the cooldown time on that? Dom. actually has a similar passive ability after Mezzes that reduces casting speed by 50%. Problem is you have to lay 10 pts. into two talents to get it. The goal is near instant lightning strikes. 3 mins. Enough that I can be fairly sloppy whilst grinding out quests, and have a decent 'oh shi...' ability. I've gone into Dom high enough for Mana Wrench, Reflective Command and Priest's Lament. 3 Great abilities for a few points.
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Ashamanchill
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Posts: 2274
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So like a sucker, my first kick at the can was with a warrior calling. I was a paladin wit a bit of warlord thrown in. Two mobs was death to me, and a mob three levels above me? not a chance. I can see how they get better post 20 or so, but on my ride to 18 it was so bad I wanted to quit the game.
Now I'm a Justicar/Purifier/Sentinel. There is no killing me.
Edit: Which is a shame, because I loooooved how many off the GCD moves the pally has. Oh well.
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A poster signed by Richard Garriot, Brad McQuaid, Marc Jacobs and SmerricK Dart. Of course it would arrive a couple years late, missing letters and a picture but it would be epic none the less. -Tmon
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Ghambit
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Heh, Warrior or not, so far the 1st two instances require a real MT or you cant win... unless you have an overleveled tank-specced cleric instead. MT has by far been the most requested setup in /LFG talk.
Your issue was not the calling, but your class and ability choices.
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"See, the beauty of webgames is that I can play them on my phone while I'm plowing your mom." -Samwise
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Ashamanchill
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I didn't even tank yet, just mobs out and about questing were killing me. As for my choices, maybe. I threw every point I could into paladin, and the 3 level overflow ones into warlord to increase my armor and block. If that's not enough to survive three, or in some cases, two, mobs, then I don't know what to say.
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A poster signed by Richard Garriot, Brad McQuaid, Marc Jacobs and SmerricK Dart. Of course it would arrive a couple years late, missing letters and a picture but it would be epic none the less. -Tmon
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Ghambit
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Posts: 5576
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If you're just questing as a Warrior isnt it pretty much REQUIRED that you either: a) go riftblade/reaver, or paragon b) grab a pet soul c) both
At the very least maybe some VK or Champ. Warlord and Pally are support souls. You can pick em but they wont be your bread 'n butter till you group. Sure you may last long in a fight, but you'll eventually see diminishing returns against multiple mobs unless you've got some CC.
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"See, the beauty of webgames is that I can play them on my phone while I'm plowing your mom." -Samwise
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Threash
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Pali is one of the best soloing classes actually. You can pull 5 or more mobs at a time and come out with full health. Pali backed up by reaver for some extra healing and you can solo elite invasions by yourself.
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I am the .00000001428%
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Zetor
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At high levels, yeah... not sure about sub-20 (but I haven't played a warrior, so ymmv).
Cleric-tank (justicar) perspective: once you get to the mid-30s, you obliterate 6+ mobs at a time just by spamming one button without danger of dying and mana problems. Before that, you don't have your main auto-selfheals, or the secondary mana regen from your chosen melee tree (druid or shaman), so you have to drink a lot or stick to single target attacks. I soloed with my healing spec until 20, then got an inquisitor dps spec, then switched to justicar in the mid-30s and haven't looked back. Still use my healing build for pvp though.
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Rasix
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I am the harbinger of your doom!
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You're messing something up if you're having problems with 2-3 mobs with a primary paladin build. It's pretty sturdy. That being said, if they're all magic based, then you could have some issues. You're going to do best when melee mobs are smacking you in the face. Also, your DPS potential isn't going to be there until you get to 20 and get your second reactive ability. Past 20, your survivability and DPS will get substantial boosts. I struggled at first with paladin, but once I got to know the soul better, it got to be pretty powerful.
That being said, you should have a macro for your primary attack, so you can hit your reactives whenever they are up.
#show Punishing Blow /cast Retaliation /cast Disarming Counterblow /cast Aggressive Block /cast Punishing Blow
This helps immensely. These abilities are off the GCD and add a lot to your DPS. I would take 7 points in Reaver, taking the +death damage, the dot spreader and the heal can also help a lot in multiple mob situations. Void Knight will give you 5% damage reduction from spells for no points. Warlord can get all enemies a 5% chance to miss for no points.
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-Rasix
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Segoris
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I use a similar macro on my paladin, but I've found I prefer to keep disarming counterblow out of my tank spam macro and prefer to micro manage that. Especially once you can activate an ability at 44 that blocks on all attacks for 10s, I think it's counter productive to then disarm while that ability is up (which happens when it's in your spam macro). Also, I find myself using DC less and less since disarm has turned into more of a "my healer is really bad and needs extra time vs melee mobs" type of use. Same with scales of justice, that rarely gets used anymore since it scales so poorly that mobs in t1/t2/raid destroy the shield in a single hit with 150+ toughness even. If anything, I use it for when someone is battle-rezzed so they have more of a chance to no get hit and die right away again, or when I see someone won't get out of an AE fast enough and am trying to reduce the damage taken.
If I remember later, I'll post a bm/champ macro and a pure champ macro. While I hate pet classes, I can't deny that BM does some really good dps when specced for it, and even brings a number of good buffs to the party through shared bonds.
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Polysorbate80
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Before that, you don't have your main auto-selfheals, or the secondary mana regen from your chosen melee tree (druid or shaman), so you have to drink a lot or stick to single target attacks. Are you referring to Doctrine of Valiance (damage + self-heal for 200% of damage done)? You can get that at 16, although the talent for extra conviction charges comes further up the tree. I don't have the second melee-mana return from shaman yet, but really the only time I find myself running out of mana is if I'm spamming stuff in a rift trying to raise the meter, or get too many adds while soloing. I've never bothered yet to use a drink. I'm not sold on keeping my current third soul (druid); the pet isn't contributing a lot and I don't have the spare points yet for the +endurance talent. Any suggestions for something with better synergy?
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“Why the fuck would you ... ?” is like 80% of the conversation with Poly — Chimpy
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Threash
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You're messing something up if you're having problems with 2-3 mobs with a primary paladin build. It's pretty sturdy. That being said, if they're all magic based, then you could have some issues. You're going to do best when melee mobs are smacking you in the face. Also, your DPS potential isn't going to be there until you get to 20 and get your second reactive ability. Past 20, your survivability and DPS will get substantial boosts. I struggled at first with paladin, but once I got to know the soul better, it got to be pretty powerful.
That being said, you should have a macro for your primary attack, so you can hit your reactives whenever they are up.
#show Punishing Blow /cast Retaliation /cast Disarming Counterblow /cast Aggressive Block /cast Punishing Blow
This helps immensely. These abilities are off the GCD and add a lot to your DPS. I would take 7 points in Reaver, taking the +death damage, the dot spreader and the heal can also help a lot in multiple mob situations. Void Knight will give you 5% damage reduction from spells for no points. Warlord can get all enemies a 5% chance to miss for no points.
Disarming counterblow should probably go first in the macro since it has a longer cooldown. I use something very similar to that, i slapped shield charge in there also so i don't even have to be in melee range to start attacking.
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I am the .00000001428%
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Count Nerfedalot
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Pali is one of the best soloing classes actually. You can pull 5 or more mobs at a time and come out with full health. Pali backed up by reaver for some extra healing and you can solo elite invasions by yourself.
Can you point to a build that can do that? I must be doing something wrong as my 2/3 reaver / 1/3 pally build gets its clock cleaned by a same level elite invasion even duoing with a healer at level 27.
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Yes, I know I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
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Rasix
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Disarming counterblow should probably go first in the macro since it has a longer cooldown. I use something very similar to that, i slapped shield charge in there also so i don't even have to be in melee range to start attacking.
Excellent ideas. Now I can get shield charge off my bar. Thinking of combining my dot spreading rotation partially onto one button as well. Anything to keep my hand closer to the same set of keys. Adjusting to tanking being mostly a clicker in WoW has been a little difficult.
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-Rasix
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Threash
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Pali is one of the best soloing classes actually. You can pull 5 or more mobs at a time and come out with full health. Pali backed up by reaver for some extra healing and you can solo elite invasions by yourself.
Can you point to a build that can do that? I must be doing something wrong as my 2/3 reaver / 1/3 pally build gets its clock cleaned by a same level elite invasion even duoing with a healer at level 27. This is my build now, i probably exaggerated a bit on the soloing elite invasions but it comes damn near. Keep in mind its a soloing build, not a tanking build as it lacks all the inceased threat talents. It absolutely shines when the reaver 20% less damage at low health kicks in, you have plenty of time to use any of your myriad of oh shit abilites, or chug a potion. Thinking of combining my dot spreading rotation partially onto one button as well.
Perfectly viable, the healing dot has the longest cd of all so just use that one as your queue to spread your aids around each time.
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I am the .00000001428%
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Ashamanchill
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Sorry I forgot to mention another reason I dropped that pally like a stone over my justicar: no one, no fucking one at all, on my server heals rifts. I would tank them, but that just meant eating a few corpse runs. Fuck that. My Justicar/Purifier/Sentinel does all the healing on me I need thank you very much. And as I said, I haven't made it to high enough level with my pally for all that good shit in it's talent tree. I can see how they get better post 20 or so, but on my ride to 18 it was so bad I wanted to quit the game. I really really didn't want to creep around a few more levels fearing one more mob pull like the death it was just to get to it's viability point for me. Oh ya and the Justicar is way too fun.
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A poster signed by Richard Garriot, Brad McQuaid, Marc Jacobs and SmerricK Dart. Of course it would arrive a couple years late, missing letters and a picture but it would be epic none the less. -Tmon
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WayAbvPar
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What do other marksmen do when shit gets into melee range? I have several points invested in riftstalker for survivability, but it feels like I am wasting points not going deep into either RS or MM. Have sab for the 0 point instant finisher too...any other souls that have something equivalent that might offer more at 0 or low points?
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AcidCat
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My ranger/mm has bard as third so I just blast 'em with my guitar when they get all up in my grill.
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Rasix
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I am the harbinger of your doom!
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What do other marksmen do when shit gets into melee range? I have several points invested in riftstalker for survivability, but it feels like I am wasting points not going deep into either RS or MM. Have sab for the 0 point instant finisher too...any other souls that have something equivalent that might offer more at 0 or low points?
Uhh, doesn't marksman have an instant finisher? I think you're going to want to pair it with something like ranger (so nothing gets in melee) or bard, as mentioned. What level are you? Your posts in general are a bit baffling without context.
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-Rasix
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Rendakor
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MM get 2 knockbacks (one instant single target, one channeled AOE) and a root; where's the problem? RS/MM is kind of a bad build, one is tanky melee, the other is ranged; if you spec into MM/Ranger you'll have a pet that can tank for you.
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"i can't be a star citizen. they won't even give me a star green card"
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Zetor
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Before that, you don't have your main auto-selfheals, or the secondary mana regen from your chosen melee tree (druid or shaman), so you have to drink a lot or stick to single target attacks. Are you referring to Doctrine of Valiance (damage + self-heal for 200% of damage done)? You can get that at 16, although the talent for extra conviction charges comes further up the tree. I don't have the second melee-mana return from shaman yet, but really the only time I find myself running out of mana is if I'm spamming stuff in a rift trying to raise the meter, or get too many adds while soloing. I've never bothered yet to use a drink. I'm not sold on keeping my current third soul (druid); the pet isn't contributing a lot and I don't have the spare points yet for the +endurance talent. Any suggestions for something with better synergy? My build is the usual {x}justicar/{14}shaman/{2}druid to get access to the melee shield from druid, but imo you can go with justicar/shaman/anything. Shaman is nice because you get a lot of damage reduction / "improve healing" type talents, a shield that also reflects damage, and a mana regen ability. My first priority would be getting 3/3 vengeful justice, then putting 14 points in shaman. I ignored shield talents, since using a shield is not very useful outside instances (see below). Re mana: single target I don't run oom, but justicar 1v1 killing speed is slow. Usually I gather 2-3 mobs to start (if they're far apart) or 5-6 (if they are in a camp or something), toss up my absorb shields, spam Even Justice. Use my first mana regen ability when I'd hit 75% mana, then rotate the two mana regen skills every 30 sec. Even Justice does about 80% of the single target strike's damage, but it does it to 5 (!) targets at once, once talented. If I get an add, it's all good -- this build can stay alive against ridiculous numbers of mobs (max I tried so far was 8 +1s) and grind them down at a decent pace. Only issue are casters and hunter-type mobs, but they can be LOS'd, or just the entire pack pulled on top of them for aoe. (I use a 2-hander for this btw, more damage/healing and avoidance via the spellpower->parry conversion) Even Justice eats mana like crazy, hence the need for multiple mana regen sources. You COULD deal with it by using a shield and getting the various regen-as-you-block talents, but that's a lot of points that you can't really afford before high levels imo... edit: Even Justice spam is also how you win contribution at anything Rift-related. It's kind of like swipe spam for ferals in WOW-WOTLK.
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« Last Edit: March 09, 2011, 09:23:11 PM by Zetor »
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Maledict
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Heh, Warrior or not, so far the 1st two instances require a real MT or you cant win... unless you have an overleveled tank-specced cleric instead. MT has by far been the most requested setup in /LFG talk.
Your issue was not the calling, but your class and ability choices.
Um, clerics and rogues are more than capable main tanks - indeed, rogue tanks seem to be the easiest to keep up if they play well enough to keep all their shields / self buffs running. Warriors are absolutely not the only 'proper' main tanks, and both the other classes are just as capable. Obviously bad players of those classes might colour your perceptions, but a justicar specced cleric is as good a tank as a tank specced warrior. That's how the game is designed, and it's glorious (if confusing as hell sometimes!).
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« Last Edit: March 10, 2011, 03:04:20 AM by Maledict »
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Typhon
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I believe that Ghambit was saying, "whether the MT is a warrior or not, you need an MT". I believe he was NOT saying, "you need a warrior MT".
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Maledict
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It was the point about an 'overlevelled cleric tank spec'. You don't need an overlevelled cleric tank spec - a level 18 cleric or rogue specced for tanking is going to be just as good a tank, or better depending.
Until the rogue teleport through the floor of course - all bets are off then... ;-)
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Polysorbate80
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\edit: Even Justice spam is also how you win contribution at anything Rift-related. It's kind of like swipe spam for ferals in WOW-WOTLK. Yeah, I just grab everything that spawns and kill it all at once while everyone else focuses on the boss/rift thingamajig. That and raid heal spam works pretty well, but it eats mana hard...that's when I find myself running low.
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“Why the fuck would you ... ?” is like 80% of the conversation with Poly — Chimpy
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Nebu
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Need some advice:
Now that my cleric has started to close in on the end game, I decided to play a mage... again. I'm finding that the class is VERY squishy in the early going and wondered if anyone could suggest a best way to get through the 20's with the least frustration. I made it to 20 with a warlock build and I enjoy it, but adds make my life a challenge. I'd also prefer to not play a pet class... if that's even possible.
Thanks.
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- Mark Twain
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Modern Angel
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I think you're basically stuck playing a pet class. You could maybe swing a Dominator secondary for the squirrel and shield but for the latter you're going to have to invest some points for not much damage output in return. That said, you're an extremely efficient leveler as a Necro/Warlock/Chloromancer if you can stomach the pet class thing.
I'm looking forward to the Mage revisit alluded to in the patch notes because they do need to be a bit less squishy.
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