f13.net

Rogue:

Saboteurs are incredibly good in pvp.  You can bring someone from around 75% hps to dead in a single ability.  This is because all the damage from their combo point builders is not applied until you use their finisher, giving you the damage of six abilities instantly.  Not that great at overall dps but their burst is unmatched.  Both the ranged souls are very good, combined or alone, specially backed up by very useful zero point abilities from riftstalker or saboteur.  Assassin is surprisingly middle of the pack, you can reach the perma stealth talent (at 21 points) only picking generic passive buff talents that can apply to any other soul, they are likely to be a favorite of gankers and receive much hate as result.  Nightblade is really good for a 12 point dip for all melee classes, i did not explore it as a main soul though.  The bard is special, you will not feel very powerful individually but having you around makes everyone else much more effective.  A single bard was sometimes enough to turn the tide in a warfront, when i wanted to grind favor i respecced to bard and had a much higher winning %.  I didn't really play around with the blade dancer or riftstalker and the pvp soul seemed extremely underwhelming at 5 points.


Warrior:

Riftblades are gods upon the lands of Telara, smite thy puny foes with thy mighty flame spear and watch them tremble in despair.  Void knight = if it has mana they are your bitch.  One strong benefit of both classes is that their main damage abilities are not weapon based so they can use a shield without giving up any offense, making paladin a very strong combination for both.  Champions are extremely mobile with very good damage, very fun class to play.  They are supposed to be the 2h specialist but a lot of their talents can easily apply to any weapon combination which also makes them a strong second soul.  The paragon is the dual wield soul, they are surprisingly very defensive while still having good damage.  Only played around with the reaver, beastmaster and warlord souls for a very short time but i was not very impressed with any of them.


Cleric:

I played around with Shaman and Justicar in the early betas and they impressed me enough to almost make me pick a healer as my class for the first time in an MMO.  Since i hear they've been nerfed a bit, i don't know how good they still are.  The cleric pvp soul is EXTREMELY good for a five point investment.  You have a detaunt (50% less damage from one target as long as you dont hit them), 15% less chance of being critted, and a wow pvp trinket power on a 5 min cd.  As a healer those first five points alone make you extremely hard to bring down by anything short of 3 or more dps.


Mage:

Did not play them at all, word is they are fairly underwhelming at this point.  It seemed like in some warfronts the rogue necro pets were the only thing that could kick my ass though.

Reaver can be insidious in pvp. If you can plague out a stack of DoTs to a bunch of enemies while your team is wailing away at them, it's pretty awesome. Wish they had more lifetap abilities, though the AE lifetap is decent. But those DoTs can stack up to a really stiff tick of damage, especially when you plop on an explosive infestation.

Reaver paired with Riftblade was a really powerful combination.  Three ranged attacks, self-healing, and the area DoTs sky mentions.

Anyone get to try the Dominator?
The gameplay centered around that soul kinda suits my fancy.  They seem to be the kings of CC.

I will add that reaver with a dip into riftblade (because seriously, no warrior pvps without flame spear at a trivial number of points in) is a hilarious pvp pressure combo. Mostly because your survival scales with the number of targets nearby, so it's a hellishly good disruption build. You won't outright kill anyone, but you'll put their entire team on defense in 2-3 globals.

Whole lot of love for the reaver, interesting.

Well, I love the Shadow Knight / Dark Templar / Blood DK life-drain style of warrior to begin with.  Couple the AoE effectiveness with the Riftblade's single target dps and it just works wonders.

The other tanks are terrible in pvp, minus the VK running around mauling people due to a bugged talent thing. Which is fixed.

The only trick paladins have is a low tier full heal with a 10m cooldown. VKs are cute but entirely enemy team action based, so you're stuck hoping a mage picks you as a target for some reason or they're all caster heavy (which is unlikely, because mages are TERRIBLE in pvp right now)

Reavers are the one stop shop for self healing, universal pressure on clumps, and a very sneaky backloaded burst skill in Infection.

edit: LOOOOOL, the zam builder has the "live"/alpha skills up now. Riftblade's flamespear had it's dot removed.. and it's up front damage increased by about 20%. Which is pretty much completely missing the problem with flame spear and making riftblades that much more hilarious bullshit.

I predict 50% warriors, 30% rogues on release.

Paladins get Shield Charge that makes you fly to the enemy once every 15seconds - that's not to be discounted as a perfect gap closer.  Unless other souls have something like that too.  Combine it with the 3sec stun soul ability and that's pretty nice.  I could see a Paladin/Reaver/Riftblade combo, but I suspect that to be competitive in PvP upper ranks you'll want a few of the PvP tree points.

The PVP tree has a charge functionality as well (on the dps side), and a leap baseline.

Riftblades also have a summon at the top of their tree, and I believe VKs have something along the lines of a summon.

I've been thinking about using druid in a healing cleric build as a tertiary soul (warden/sentinel being the other two). It seems to have a very powerful mana regen ability* in fae hammer, and a good CC in slumber.

Yeah, you need to melee stuff for 10 sec to get mana back. That's not as hard as it sounds, imo, especially since warden and sentinel have a truckload of instant heals [warden has mostly HOTs too, so you can afford to 'waste' some time meleeing during a lower-damage phase or something]. In pvp you can beat on pets, or enemy players (who may just be ignoring you, since an oom cleric is worse than a dead-and-soon-rezzing cleric).

I played a dominator at the low 20s. It's useless in solo pve, not very useful in groups (yeah, you can cc two mobs... but you could also spec into a damage-dealing build and still be able to cc a mob with 0 points in dom). Where it shines is pvp, specifically destroying healers. 30 second cooldown mana burn that also kills regen (works on energy and rage too!), a spammable mana burn channeled spell, instant reliable CC you can switch between enemies to avoid DRs, a very strong ranged [!] 50% healing debuff, and up to 4 different long CCs at max level. Oh yeah, the mana burns don't break CC either, so you can drain a cleric completely dry without him being able to do anything; this is something that WOW fixed back in BC.

You'd probably want one [and just one] dominator in high-level organized pvp.

edit: even though VKs and riftblades kind of overshadow other warrior specs in pvp right now, champion looks very strong. 30sec cooldown (undispellable?) pbaoe fear with no target cap, 15sec cooldown knockback, 6sec cooldown interrupt (kind of standard, but still), 30 second cooldown disarm/root/snare/stun break, forced crit every 30 sec, bladestorm with CC immunity every 2 mins, and most importantly a (undispellable?) 15sec 50% mortal strike every time they crit (wording of the ability suggests it works with aoe, so use the forced-crit with the aforementioned bladestorm?).

Rfitblades have a cc breaking shadowstep that roots the target for 2s, VKs have the wow dk pull.  Both are on 45s cooldowns if you talent them, but riftblades have a weapon buff that refreshes the cd on both each time you crit.

Kildorn, remember it may be difficult for some people to discuss the reasons behind their statements  :grin:

As I said, the reaver is insidious. Not straight-out badass. If someone charges your clump (I like that word) and you lay into them with dots and send them on their way with explosive infestation, they run back to a cleric an BLAM explode and damage everyone around them. Or if they run back early or if you are charging their position, spread the dots with plague. It's not as in your face as most AE attacks, if you're attacking the main target, it might be a few seconds before others realize the dots are spreading through the group.

And with some paladin you get the survivability to head back to the healers to top off/cure - while you're also getting a very minor HoT from the dots...which also spreads so you can stack the HoT six times or whatever they finalized it with.

Still, I think my Paladin/Warlord/Reaver was probably the most effective in pvp. The dots weren't as scary, but survivability was through the roof, tons of hp and armor, and a couple options for stuns and interrupts to deal with casters.

explosive infestation is gone, by the by. Removed with the alpha notes :(

Didn't realize Paladins had a self HoT though, that would stack well with a reaver. Mostly I stacked RB on Reaver for both the spammable spike builder (flamespear) and a ranged finisher (Fire Burst), since the Reaver's actual AP users seemed lame.

I'm torn, since I loved my beta stormcaller, but on a pure functionality note, my beta Reaver was far more useful and effective in everything.

No, I was talking about Reaver's talented HoT component to soul sickness.

They removed explosive infestation? To be honest, that's pretty typical.  :oh_i_see:

Not many comments on mages so I will throw my two cents in from beta.  A mix of Necro / Warlock / Chloro is actually pretty solid all around.  For DPS just go heavy necro and warlock, only taking abilities in the warlock soul that synergize well (i.e. % increases to damage, etc, since you won't really be using the warlock spells themselves much).  I would put in at least one point early on to Chloro to unlock withering vine.  The damage it does is not that impressive, but AE healing it does helps on the contribution charts for rifts.

For a healing spec, flip it around and go deep Chloro and warlock again (you can probably get about 20 points into warlock without taking anything that applies only to them).  I never main healed as a Chloro, but I can see them being capable of it given the spells.  Kind of nice having healers that heal via DPS.

For PvP, there is a soul you can unlock with enough favor points (Archmage).  Never got to that point (not sure if it is level locked or just need enough currency to buy it, wasn't really paying attention).  I imagine you could swap it in for Chloro or Necro respectively in the above specs for improved survivability.  The little PvP that I did made me pretty much just run and gun, flinging instant cast dots on everything in range and putting the pet on whoever had the flag.  Of course, you can't really get the rogue pet till around level 22 or so your stuck until then watching the tank pet be useless.

I've heard, second-hand mind you, that Pyro/Dominator, or Warlock/Dominator, are decent in PvP, but I never got around to trying them out, as I was more than happy to watch the green numbers float up all over my screen on my Bard.

Dunno what exactly they did to the riftblade but the damage is not as out of control as before, not walking gods anymore.

They decreased damage across the board on most of their abilities in the last phase of beta. Including flame spear.

I'm not a fan of nerfs, but they did adjust it in beta, and at least they are paying attention. I was shredding people in PvP as a Riftblade. It was fun for a bit, but definitely unbalanced.

The funny thing is at level 13 my aoe instant damage + interrupt finisher now does more damage than my single target dot finisher.

Not going to be playing this, but +1 to sabo and bard.

I was regularly getting top healing with bard even when I was 30 in the 30-40 warfront, there is a chain of abilities you can use (one gives you 5 marks instantly, another makes it so those marks don't go away for something like 15 seconds, and then the coda of restoration) where you can spam an instant 300 hp raid heal over and over. With the saboteur I would get 30~ killing blows and huge damage rounds while barely being damaged, because who gives a fuck about the guy standing in the back waving his arms around, doing no damage? All of your abilities being instants gives you a ton of mobility. Also, annihilation bomb + its upgrade means 2000 damage crits to 10(?) people at level 30 or so. I went full charges, no bombs(except for annihilation), but I have heard either is good.

This all might have changed in the release patch, I haven't been following it.

Ok, I made a Purifier/sentinel/warden last night and the class feels way overpowered.  I don't do much damage, but I'm nearly impossible to kill and almost never run out of power.  I think the power consumption and regen rates for clerics are broken.  My cleric can spam spells nonstop and never go below half power while my mage goes through a bar every 3 mobs.  Will be interesting to see what gets adjusted after the first month. 

Any suggestions on cleric builds for healing?  I had originally planned to be a healer/ranged cleric but that seems inefficient with regard to power usage.  Melee + healer seems a better combination. 

I am working on Druid/Warden/Shaman.  It's a mostly melee solo build but Warden 0pt hot, 2pt heal+hot, and druids insta heal (and faerie pet heal bot) lets me heal semi-effectively in public groups.  Mind you I was only 11 while the mobs were 17-20.  I've managed to save people's asses while I see them being ganked solo, and working with other clerics in public groups (there seem to be a lot of them) few people die as long as the raid isn't split across the damn map (which seems to be a problem).  I don't die, ever, or even close, unless elite mobs want to hurt the healer.

I'm still sticking to my warden/sentinel/druid build for pve healing (will have to decide if I ditch sentinel or druid for templar in pvp). You get a pet for the first 30 levels, powerful HOTs and instants (mobility > all imo), good mana regen, a CC and a silence (see my previous post). I'm not convinced that putting more than 34 points into warden is a worthwhile payoff, as it just gives even more aoe heals [which the sentinel points help with]. Not linking a specific build, but I'm shooting for

warden: 34 [most of the main heals]
sentinel: 21 [this gets the pain suppression ability, the big single target heal, the silence, and the passive damage reduction for the entire group]
druid: 11 [this gets the slumber CC and fae hammer]

caveat: it might turn out that the 36-point 'dump your points into this tree' passive abilities will make it requisite to put 51 points into a tree to get good healing throughput. We'll see...

edit: as for leveling, I'm putting all points in warden, extra points in druid - mana regen and the CC will be more important early than the % buffs to healing that don't become significant until later levels with good gear IMO. I can kill 3-4 mobs at a time and tank an elite mob per rift (which almost always happens, sigh). Waterjet is my primary damage spell and it's OP!  :awesome_for_real:

Is it op?  I've found that when I first approach a mob, I try all of my dd's to see which the most has the worst resistance toward.  I'm starting to wonder if water is just the damage type the least mobs are resistant to. 

Nah, it's not really OP... but it's surprisingly effective for a spell that's instant cast, spammable, and has a negligible mana cost. It probably doesn't scale as well with spellpower as traditional nukes, but it's amusing to basically 'moonfire spam' the enemies down.

Most normal mobs don't have resistances to spell types. Leading to much frustration as an Inquisitor as I'd been leading with a debuff that didn't work on pretty much anything but a boss mob. (because you can't debuff past 0)

What should I pair with sabateur if I want to stick with it as a leveling spec?  Ranger and something else?  Does poison now affect charge damage?

The combination I have going right now is pretty terrible, so I'll likely be changing up as soon as I can get some new souls.

For sab I would grab nightblade for the improved finishing move talent and some of their other tricks. Then maybe marksman or hunter for some more instant ranged damage or riftstalker for the ports and some of their other tricks including extra durability.

Ah.  Thanks for that.  Looks like debuffers are much more valuable in pvp than pve. 

I went same route as in Beta -- MM/Ranger/Sab for PvE (does OK in PvP but with reduction in MM damage no longer drops people anywhere near as fast). MM feels more in line with other souls now in terms of DPS.

The ranger pet is pretty invaluable.

Ranger for the 0 pt pet, for sure.  I like Riftstalker, personally.  The teleport has saved my hide innumerable times. 

As fas as poison goes, afaik, if you're throwing bombs/charges from range, then no, it's not going to do anything. 

I'm running MM/Assass/Ranger 0p, seems to work pretty good so far.

Regarding soul points distribution: ok, of course you can plan your characters with the available builders, but what about the distribution while playing, before a final respec? Do you mostly concentrate on what you consider your "main" soul, or you plan out a more or less precise path, mixing up the distribution among all three souls?

I focus on my main soul, and keep it capped at my level. With the few extra points you get, I put them in my alt soul with a focus on things that don't buff soul-specific abilities.

I find that you need to get to approx lvl 18-20 before you have enough "lift" to spend points according to a plan.  In the early levels, just grab abilities that make leveling easy... then respect hard and often to capture new and better root abilities as they become available.  That combined with a second role at early levels should give you more than enough flexibility to have 2 builds to group and solo.

In beta I originally was splitting evenly between the first two souls with an occasional point dropped in the first tier talents of the third.  I began to realize shit was taking forever to kill and this was suboptimal.   I respecced to focus on one soul as the "Main" and put as many points into it as possible and things got better.  You're capped per level after a point, at which time you start to invest in the 2nd soul.  The 3rd really is only worth it for a few low-hanging skills and the 0-pt abilities, so I always made that a pet class of some sort.

I agree with March that respec early and often seems to work well. A few times I even switched which soul was my main because one of the others was working better at that level or with the gear I'd gotten.

I found it really depended upon the souls I was using.  Some I split evenly, some I focused as much in one tree as possible.  With so many combinations there cannot be a single best method.

So hilarious bug/should be a bug with reavers.

You know how infection says "deals X damage per reaver dot on the target"?

You notice how it doesn't say anything about them being YOURS?

You ever wonder why you just crit a boss for 1500 at level 20 with an ability that usually does about 270 damage? :D

0-pt pet classes are only good up to around lvl 30, by lvl 40 they're probably near useless cept to maybe buy a few seconds.  My plan is to dump it for something else eventually or maybe use the pet to leech health/mana.

Right now I'm working on a Dom/Storm/Ele build and it's a bear.  Based on pure control, mana-gement, and direct dmg.  I had an uber dom/lock/necro build before but DoTs arent smart with CC builds.  I'd lvl with it but respeccing and then re-organizing comfortably down the road would be  :why_so_serious:.

I looked at the dominator soul the other day for the first time.  What's up with the top tier point?  It affects player/player pet only?  Am I reading it wrong, or is that PvE soul's top ability for PvP only?

Oh wow.  That would make a Reaver paired with a Warlock/Necro a wonderful combination in PvE or PvP.

I am playing my assassin just like I played my witchhunter in WAR... being a vulture on the outside looking in for an easy meal. Of course, I have yet to dip into the PvP part, but I am going to keep with that and disrupting healers/mages/rangers.  :grin:

I need some advice on a good Rogue PVP spec; I'm level 20, and my MM build just feels useless in WFs. I've got most (all?) of the souls unlocked except the PVP one. That costs favor right? Anyone know where the unlock is on the Defiant side?

Hell, is there a good spoiler site out there? Telarapedia is the best I've seen so far, but it doesn't really have much info on it.

Catari Command Center, left side, Desma Chontos the Cadet Quartermaster should sell your PvP soul.  2500 Favor.

Found it, thanks.

So. Many. Marksmen.

I just got out of three games where the other team was ~7 marksmen just hanging out defending points. So goddamned hard to catch.

I figure by next month people will figure out the hammer to those nails. From what I have seen, ranged pet classes are huge huge huge so far. So far I have only run across two other stealths on the server - which I kinda like.

I figure there will be about 2-3 realistic builds per class once everything settles down.

That is correct.  Both top tier and root abilities are PvP only, which to me is a good thing for the simple reason it's terribly OP.  Originally this build was for Sunrest, but I cant even get on there without botting the login.  So I figure I'll just respec and occasionally go on long stints of PvP in the lvl 50 Warfront.

This sounds...odd. So many OHWOWTHISCLASSROCKS posts? Surly there must be some duds? What souls are not being used much, and why not?

The duds become more recognizable after level 20.  From what I'm reading on the pvp forums (doing my best to filter white noise) there are many duds when it comes to pvp. 

Anything that is not the very best is going to be considered a dud by the raiding and pvp crowds.  Either you are topping damage charts and getting 20 killing blows per match or you suck.  So far of the warrior souls the only one i would call a dud is the warlord, because it is entirely a support soul.

I'm impressed my the amount of thought that has gone into each tree.  It seems to me that the trees have very distinct purposes in mind.  Each tree is a tool to be used for a particular situation.  If I want to be a healer, I have three options: standard healing, hots, or bubble + heals.  You can also mix and match to find the sweet spots in each of the trees. 

Sadly, I can also see some of the shortcomings in late game pvp.  Many silence abilities, cc, and healing reduction abilities will make healing a tough role to be effective at in a pvp environment. 

I dunno, I kind of like the idea of healing reduction skills.  Since the idea that killing the healer might be better than futilely beating on the warrior that's being healed is lost on many people in the warfronts, and all.

And after getting blasted out of my boots by an Inquisitor last night, I'm not feeling any pity for those bastard clerics.

Chloromancer says "Hi there!".  :grin:

Agree.  There's a wicked amount of strat. options buried in these classes.  As for healing, HoTs will be the best option against organized pvp imo.  There's just way too much CC, silence, and mana drain/burn to sit there and try to standard heal all the time.  Matter of fact, there's so much 'control' in this game that one really doesnt even NEED to kill a healer.  Just keep him locked-down until you're done burning through the rest of the group.

There's also an assload of abilties that are essentially all "why you hittin yourself?"  You can throw debuffs on people that'll only proc if they use an ability, and some are pretty damned gnasty... hitting health, energy, mana, and so on.  So I can stack all this shit on you essentially "in secret" and then walk away.  If you fail to cleanse before you attk someone, you're fucked.   :heart:   Some are even an AE effect or hit you if you receive healing, etc.

So where is all this broken?  Doesnt help you in the dmg. rankings.  :(    

I am so going to respec into sab. assassin/sab/rift should be full of lulz.

The devs must have played DAoC.  Keeping a healer interrupted and/or locked down meant that they would rely on their instas.  I can see a purifier being a good pvp build in that they have bubble and insta heal for keeping at least themselves and a single target going.  Warden is also attractive in that their dd's are insta.  

I think pvp will suffer for the same reason that WAR did.  Too much cc, silence, interrupts, and heal reduction.  It makes playing a caster/cleric less fun and feel like less of a contributor.  My zealot felt useless at times in WAR.  

Mage is 42 now, I was originally only going far enough in Necro (Necro/Lock build) to pick up Soul Purge but as soon as the pet stopped scaling at 30 he started being pretty useless, I respec'd into full necro and now the pet is a wrecking machine. I tried out Dominator in PvP, it's difficult to see how to play it in a Warfront or even what to pair it with. The soul system is awesome though.

Wait, if i airburst someone that doesn't count as my damage?

Sab/Ranger/Riftstalker level 21: very fun build. The pet is a superb tank easily keeping aggro in pve and passive damage in pvp. 0 point RS gives me a 15m teleport, great for stealing nodes. Sab is awesome, I'm usually near the top in Warfronts. It's just become a lot stronger with the buy one, get one free + charge talent. Not only is it OP but blowing people up is really fun, I just wish I'd named him Osama. It's an incredibly simple build to play: charge up then detonate. I prefer instant damage charges and haven't worried so far about secondary effects. Single targets get the single target charge, if it has friends it gets the aoe charge. There's already a Youtube video of someone owning with a 2 button Saboteur.

I'll have to change my playstyle a little now I've got the buy one get one free charge booster talent. If I put 5 Blast Charges on someone the talent will give me a 6th (passively). If I put a Blast Charge, a Spike Charge, a Shrapnel Charge, a Caltrop Charge and a Splinter Charge on someone the talent will give me one of each free (passively). I'll be needing to remap my keybinds.

People are starting to complain bitterly about the burstiness of this build. If you put a Time Bomb (blows up after 8 seconds), 5 charges, toss a bomb (takes about 1 second flight time) and Detonate then within the span of a second someone effectively receives 13 nukes (10 charges, 2 bombs and a detonate). The defence against this is to learn what the debuffs look like and stop chasing whatever you're chasing and get safe if you see the icons building up on you. I'm quite sure however I'll never run out of numpties who will stay in range doing something else.

My backup soul is Riftstalker. Tanking on one of these is a little complex so I haven't quite got my head around it yet. I've only just acquired the tank stance without which RS isn't really a tank (so don't try to tank an instance at 17).


Also I have a mage. I started out as a Stormcaller then realised I would go out of mana with no way to get mana back. The class is unplayable until you have a mana restore imo. That's at level 18 if you go Stormcaller/Elemental Summoner - ES is a great choice if you're looking for a second soul that gives you mana. Switching to ES as main, I now have a level 13 ES/Dominator/Stormcaller. ES get a superb mana restore, converting charge into mana at level 6. It's a huge help. The tank pet is solid. The air elemental pet is ranged which makes it nice in warfronts because it never dies. People avoid nuking pets that are in their face, no one is going to fuss over a pet that is 30m away. Squirreling people in warfronts never gets old. 1.5 seconds of my time for 36 seconds of their highest level healer? - I'll make that trade. Plus there is already a Don't fucking squirrel me, you bastards thread on the Trion boards (which inspired this character). As for ES the damage isn't stellar but it's a soloing machine: squirrel, root, 2 knockbacks, tank pet, ice shield and unlimited mana. Survives anything non-ludicrous, never needs to stop. Icy carapace deserves special mention: it says when you cast an earth spell the dot is consumed doing 0 to 0 damage. It's actually 83 (125 on a crit) at level 13. 0 point Stormcaller gives you quite a nifty knockback.

PS remapped my hotkeys and tried out my new Sab rotation. Level 21 in a 20-29 warfront. Top on damage.

I'm fairly certain CC does not last 36 seconds in pvp, i've been squirreled before and it's somewhere around 8-10s if i am not mistaken.

8-10s is an eternity in pvp. 

Most of the stuns/roots, etc last WAY too long in PVP. 1-1.5 Seconds should be the absolute max. Right now it feels insane.

Ah thanks, didn't know that. I wonder if the Dominator +2 secs duration talent increases it? Will duel tomorrow and time it.

Wow yeah. 4-6  seconds is about max what any cc should do in pvp IMO. No experience pvp in rifts yet but that sounds really long.

Edit: um, I can turn things into squirrels? Well WTF. Now I must roll that too.

It's annoying that AE CCs seem to have short cooldowns and no counters at low levels. The current fad in Black Garden seems to be champ AE fear bombing.

That said, marksman/bard is seriously punishing amounts of utility and "ignore me at your peril"

Not only is squirrel super long but you dont heal faster as one either, so I can hit you hard, squirrel, and repeat.  If u spec in it fully it's also an instant, cheap manawise, and will last 30% longer i believe.  Oh, and afterwards your spells cast at least .5 seconds faster.   :why_so_serious:    Dom's also get the mana wrench ability at low lvls.  Basically a channeled mana drain on a target that does dmg.  It's one of the few in-combat mana regens mage's get aside from some higher lvl ability that gives like 200%+ regen if you mez someone or some shit.  The ES regen is only good OOC.  Not needing water is very nice in Rift 'cause you cant make it can u?

Don't forget the immunity timer - first squirrel lasts for 12 sec, second for 6 sec, third is immune (for 30 sec I believe?). Of course you should keep track of this timer and cycle your squirrelification among the enemy team. While doing this, you're also putting a ranged 50% mortal strike on the kill target and mana draining healers. 'Course, if a melee or ranged physical damage dealer looks at you the wrong way, you're probably dead. Oh, and give up trying to actually *kill* stuff as a dominator. Leave that to the other players. :awesome_for_real:

There seems to be some limited reprieve for silences at least later on. Clerics get a 2-second silence reduction high in the templar tree, and I seem to remember an enchant reducing silence duration by 2sec. If those stack, it basically means only 5-second silences count for anything; if they don't (likely), it still turns 'long' silences (in WOW terms) from a strangulate to a wind shear, which is pretty huge.

edit: Mages shouldn't need to drink, really. Put 6 points into warlock for lifetap -> profit. The warlock HP drain spell or reconstruct (8 pts into warlock) can deal with the HP issue.

There might be a lot of cc but there is also A LOT of cc breaks and cc reduction talents.  At least as a warrior i have cc breakers and duration lowerers in practically every single soul.  If you are going to pvp planning your character defensively is just as important as getting those big numbers.

The potential for theory crafting is really making me enjoy this game.  Mages, in particular, require a lot of thought in their builds.  I see people complaining about Mages on the forums as being weak when, in fact, their strength comes from utility rather than pure dps.  My warlock/archon/chloro is a joy to play. 

This is why i love this game.  No game has had this amount of class building fun and variety since shadowbane.  If it's anything like that game and people are still finding new powerful builds and combinations years later it will keep me around forever.

I think WAR players were looking to find (even expecting) the next Bright Wizard somewhere in RIFT but were disappointed that it doesn't seem to exist. Possibly Pyromancer is more devastating at higher levels but it is just not the nuking machine it was in WAR.

I personally think having such a multitude of skills and abilities to choose from gives such a range for character creationm that it will alleviate the NERF mentality.  I'm sure people will still cry and call for it, but no matter what uber build someone comes up with, there should be ways to mitigate and counter it within the class system itself if people are smart enough.  The ability to rework your souls within your calling should help this greatly.  No more having to reroll to counter.  It's a lot like MtG and building your deck.

I eagerly await the emergence of the Marksman killer builds.

Hah.

The mix and match approach to skills pretty much means proxy nerfs for everyone, beyond just straight ability nerfs (rift surge, I'm looking at you)

I fully expect to see a lot of talents move up in the tree so they're not easily taken by everyone.

Anyone got good ideas on souls that work well with champion.  Beastmaster is useful for the +hit, free horribad pet, and the buff, but it's a bit underwhelming.  Most other souls don't really work that well for a primary 2 handed build. Paragon seems to make its living off the volume of hits that dual wielding would produce.

Will my crit numbers get to the point where riftblade will be worth taking for the weapon buff?

Champs are stellar with a BM secondary in the mid 20s and up. Before then, you don't have the points to take 2h weapon spec, the healing debuff, the snare and anything worth your time in BM. RB can also fill in with some pretty brutal finishers.

Pre 20, I'm not impressed with champs. They ate a huge damage nerf across the board when 2h spec was fixed, but that sadly made their 1-20ish experience a bit bland.

edit: and Storm Blade is just lame all around. Can take it and abuse the champ free crit/followup to crit with it, but it'll only tic for like, 20 damage.

I was wondering this as well. The warrior classes seem to be split into sword and board compliments and all the rest. Granted, I tend to the board type (tank) so I would be set if I would alt a warrior.

Void knight will give you an extremely sexy 50% strenght buff when you attack casters, or anyone if you go higher in the tree.

I played a ranger (26)/bard (12)/sab (0) to 29.

At 30, I respecced to sab (28)/bard (12)/ranger (0).  I take mobs down a great deal faster now, but I'm not sure it's as survivable with a great many mobs, like ranger/bard was.  I didn't kill fast, but I rarely died, even when taking on 4-6 even cons.  However, I had my ass handed to me in my first world pvp 1on1s by sabs, every single time.  I barely scratched them in the time I went to 0 health.

Sabs seem to have an odd breaking point spec wise where they become lethal. Part of the problem is there's no actual counter to what they do (you can't shed charges with anything, and you can't heal the damage since it hasn't happened yet), about the only thing that works is a shield based healer.

But before that breaking point, they seem to suck. I was fooling around with Sab, and could stack charges and blow the stack for .. like 30% of someone's health.

Personally, I'm running a Marks(6)/Bard(19)/Sab(0) and having a blast with it. Marks requires almost no point investment to be brutal, bards are bullshit all around, and as zero pointers go, Sab's is easily my favorite (an AE 70% snare? Yes please.)

I'm enjoying playing riftblade/reaver/paladin (17 right now).  It does good damage, even using a 1h+shield, and has nice survivability.  Haven't tried it out in pvp or dungeons yet but I'm hoping to try both this week. 

Have a 41 Inq/Cab/Sent cleric and the thing is a beast for questing and grinding. Once you get bewilder you can solo cc'able elites since there is no DR apparently in PVE which is very helpful for doing some of the group quests in the 35-40 range (solo). Still want to try out a justicar build for tanking =D.

You're loving it 'cause you're a 'lock.  Lock's are damned sexy in Rift.  I re-rolled out of it though, and now I regret it even though it just doesnt work with a control build unless yah, you're an archon/chloro.

I'm toying around with adding a 10 point Nightblade to my rogue pvp build. For those 10 points you get 15% increase in damage to all combo-point generating abilities, and 15% damage increase to all Finisher damage. I added 7 points in as assassin for %5 increase in crit chance and 4% physical damage increase. Rest in Marksman to increase range and damage to the bread and butter MM skills. It's all theorycraft at the moment, but now reading about the burst/spike capability of Sabs combined with Bard stuff makes me want to try that as well. Curse you clever Soul system for giving me so many interesting options!

I'm playing Riftblade/Champion/Warlord (for the -5% debuff). I like it, but I am having a hard time seeing how it will play out in the long run. From everything I read half the Riftblade abilities are not modified by stats or weapon damage. And if they are, the modification is very low. I could see that leading to Riftblades being incredible beasts in PVP in the early endgame due to being able to stack crit (Dex) and Endurance, but not scaling well, as nothing will increase our damage very much.

12 points in nightblade is amazing, but if you are melee based.  The weapon buff upgrade and the out of stealth damage buff rock.

I figured I'd post this here in case anyone was playing a Rogue.

I wrote up a leveling spec guide for my favorite Rogue build.  You can start it at level 27 or so, but it doesn't shine until the mid 30's.

http://www.riftjunkies.com/forums/showthread.php?1374-LVL-FARM-BD-18-ASN-13-RS-Grind-Baby-Grind-Its-What-a-Blade-Dancer-Does-Best

Ranger still shines up until 27 or so though, then this build becomes on par with it, then moves past it.

I was toying with having an offspec Bard/Riftstalker/Bladedancer just for taking out elites. Mostly because of all the defense I can pull out of RS/BD and exploit with the self healing from heavy Bard.

Right now though, Bard/MM solves all my problems in life. Heavy Bard solves anything.

I really like my NB. I am thinking of picking up Sab for PvP - 15% increase to charge and detonate damage should be worth some tears. If you go 0 point for a third soul you can essentially have a melee Nightblade (non physical damage for warriors) with all the goodies and all the Sab charge talents at 50.

EDIT: Hmmm, I wonder if Heat Retention works with charges? Have to test that out...

I finally hit for 1k dmg on a final blow crit today on a same level mob... I am sticking with Assassin.  :drill:

Something like 38 NB / 18 ASN / 10 BD is one of the highest (if not the highest) melee dps specs in the game.  Assuming you're in a group.

Thanks for the melee build Draegan; I had been MM/Ranger but things started to suck since I was more MM than Ranger (tank pet stopped scaling at 30) and I was dying a lot.

I'm up to lvl 17 on my Dom build and I'm starting to notice I definitely shine much more in long engagements.  I stayed at the top of the dmg. charts during the big rift invasions tonite and hence got some serious rewards.  The key has been mana wrench (mana-regen+dmg) and a nice synergy with low-lvl air spells getting +crit and dmg.  When I grab aggro, I memory wipe and continue.

I'm looking fwd. to the storm shackle/haunting pain combo.  Only root in the game that sticks regardless if dmg. is taken.  Endgame Haunting Pain can DOT 2000+ dmg in 10 secs if they're not moving.

Healers and dps are rewarded well during invasions.  What about tanks and support?  Is there a mechanic in place to measure their contribution? 

I tried out 3 different specs on my cleric (warden healer, inquisitor ranged dps, justicar tank), my experience in the late 20s:
- Healer did very well as long as I pressed a button every GCD. Easily gold contribution if I actually did useful healing (invasions!), but could get gold even outside of that by just throwing HOTs at anyone who looked like they might take damage and spamming my instant cast damage spell.
- I really had to work to get gold rating on my DPS spec (DOT focused), but silver wasn't too bad. Key thing was killing stuff that nobody else was killing, otherwise I could lose valuable casting / buttonmashing time (which seems to be the #1 thing that defines contribution).
- Tank was also fairly easy to get gold rating with -- as long as stuff was beating on me. If there was another tank, I couldn't get higher than silver. When that happened, I actually switched to my healer spec between phases and got gold easily during the rest of the phases.
- If there was a public group, joining it was ALWAYS a good idea, if only to benefit from buffs and whatnot. No downsides, which is as it should be imo.

edit: As for support, bards seemed to do fine if their healing was useful (and since it was full AOE, it probably was). Warlords probably get their contribution points by tanking. Not sure how archons fare...

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 switched from riftblade/reaver, which got me top damage in almost all warfronts to reaver/paladin aoe tank for rift invasions and my rewards shot way up.

I don't think this is true. There is a high spec Pyromancer ability that makes Burning Bonds stick regardless of damage taken.

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.

Damn, I was lookin for it but didnt find it.  Too bad you have to spec in multiple abilities to make it happen though and it's high spec....  I cant reach it.
My other avenue is fully specced 'durable control' which gives me 5%+.5% per point spent in dom in non-poppable dmg. to mezzed targets.  So a fully specced Dom can lay 30% of his health in dmg. (including teammates) on a target b4 popping any mez.   :drill:  Finally an ability that prevents early pops from jackass grps.


I noticed that when I laid dmg-shields on tanks that it possibly helped, but I'm not sure about passive stuff.  I didnt notice any jumps when I threw silences or mezzes, so tough to tell.  There may be a difference in reward alllocation for support-based stuff even though you dont do much dmg as you're implying, but this can be an illusion dependent on the fight since most support is only noticed on rift bosses or long waves.

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.

If anyone is interested in tanking with a Rogue, I wrote up a quick guide for it (http://www.riftjunkies.com/forums/showthread.php?1525-PVE-TANK-RAID-DUNG-49-RS-9-Bard-8-RGR-Rifstalker-Tanking-Dungeons-and-Raids&p=6855&viewfull=1#post6855).

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.

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.

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.

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.   :oh_i_see:
The goal is near instant lightning strikes.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Excellent ideas.  Now I can get shield charge off my bar.  :grin:

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.

This (http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0cAhE.xuq0bhk.E0ohocis0rz) 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.


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.

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 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.

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?

My ranger/mm has bard as third so I just blast 'em with my guitar when they get all up in my grill.

 :headscratch:

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.   

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.

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. :awesome_for_real:

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!).

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".

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... ;-)

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.

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.

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.

How many <lvl30 pure tank specced clerics have you come across?
Aint a whole lot of em 'cause they're lvling like everyone else.

I said overlvled for the simple fact it's EASIER for a meatshield warrior at the proper lvl to tank during lvling-time than a more jack-of-all-trades cleric.  Let alone hold aggro.
It's the same argument with trying to turn a Dominator into a dps-whore, it's POSSIBLE, but easier with a few xtra lvls and not likely unless you completely tweak your Role.

If properly geared, clerics can tank Expert dungeons just fine. 

You can buy your second role before you even leave the starting area. I've probably met more pure tank rogues and clerics than I have warriors in the game! I very much doubt there are warriors levelling in pure tank spcs either, I'm sure they swap roles as well.

Really, need to get away from this idea that the warrior is more likely to be the tank at *any* level. We have multiple specs, and lots of peopel seem to like tanking on their rogues or clerics - certainly there's enough folk running around with full tanking specs on the class. When someone says tank, it's cleric / rogue / warrior, and all three are equally capable and equally likely in my experience to be the tank.

I wouldn't say that they're equally capable, but all three can certainly do the job with a good group. 

Well okay. Rogues and clerics are the best tanks, but at a pinch a warrior can substitute if you can cope with the lower threat and surviveability... :)

I am currently level 13 with my Warlock/Necro.  I started out Chloro, but I just don't care much for it.  Maybe after 20 - 30, when I can get deeper in to it, it'll be better.  Anyway, 1 - 12 was ok, but I was likely screwed if I got adds.  After I got the stalwart pet at 12, it got a lot easier, as it will actually hold aggro.  Still feels weak compared to the BM, and Ranger pets, though.  Between Life Leech from the Warlock tree, and Essence Link from the Necro tree, I can handle 3 mobs of my level at a time.  Once I get Soul Purge at 16, I understand it gets pretty easy from there on.

After level 21, if you're really adamant about ditching the pet, you could do Lock/Pyro/X.

I was gonna ask you this Draegan but you beat me to the punch. Sweet.

So now we're gettin into gear?   :oh_i_see:
Long live the clerical gear-whore I guess.

I really like putting 6 in Elementalist then combine with any two other non-pet classes. The little pet rock holds aggro really well, and the Revitalization you get at 6 gives such a good out-of-combat exchange rate of charge for mana that I can start almost any fight with a full bar of mana.

Huh? I just wanted to know if it was possible for cleric tank specs to, you know, actually tank at the end game content. Mainly because I don't want to level my warrior.

I did this last night with Pyromancer and it does work well -- I get a decent pet and a fast mp recharge.  The only thing I miss from Necromancer is the ability to drain HP.  In a party situation with a healer around that shouldn't be an issue though/

In beta I played a Stormcaller/Elementalist/Chloromancer to high 20's. Just put 6 points into chloro to get bloom, 6 points into Ele to get revitalize and everything else into Stormcaller. With chloro heal, Ele shield, pet and Stormcaller AE can usually do fine with adds.

I've been having a lot of fun with Cleric. My Rogue (which I adore) has been shelved in favour of Cleric.

Firstly, Purifier with some basic pvp nounce is utterly broken in warfronts. I have macroed all my cooldowns on top of a healing flare, one macro for me, one for other people. I can run across entire maps, vaulting walls and U-turning while spamming heals without ever stopping (until I eventually run out of mana). The guy I play with and I did some Whitefront(?) Plains maps today and we lost 2, won 5 with him scoring at least twice in every win. Our wins were all 3-0 despite some people on the Rift forums already insisting the best strat is to score once then turtle. Also we were 32 in a 30-39 battlegroup.

People are really bad at snaring, I don't think anyone mana drained me, people don't even move well so turning 90 degrees is enough to shut down the keyboard turning Champion chasing me.

And the heals really over power damage unless we're massively out-numbered. Quite a few people don't seem to be able to hurt a moving target anyway, I guess relying on slow cast spells. It's really easy to neuter Sabs and dotting classes because unlike WoW the decurse button lights up if there's something to decurse. So it's Pavlovian - button lit? if yes, press button.

Also people don't know where the power-ups are, one time we went through a 5 v 4 fight at the base entrance, ran past the 3 guarding the stone. I shielded him so their attacks failed to interrupt, then he grabbed the stone, grabbed the nearby speed boost, ran to the middle for the next speed boost. They left him to score while wailing on me 3 vs 1 but I just tanked them and ran across the map. Eventually they gave up for easier targets. I mounted up and rode across the map eventually catching my partner at the turn-in point.

In pve instances things are tougher. I find it rather hard to solo heal. I can just about do it but I really miss a heal my tank + heal the dps too. Because my best heal is a 3 second cast if I am casting on the tank and a dps spikes low I can't really do much. I'm committed to the big heal, throwing a 3 second cast on a dps then going back to the tank means a 6 second hiatus which I'm not always willing to do. One poor guildie died to all 4 bosses in FC. (In my defence he was a little under-level, the impregnate from the spider practically one-shot him).

It all becomes cake if I have support. A bard or a second healer makes life so smooth.

So anyway if you pvp definitely recommend Purifier, having an utter blast with mine.

Uhhh... Any class that wants to tank needs proper gear. 

Speaking of which, seems like every other drop I get is a cleric-tank item.  Endurance out the ass.

p.s.
I was treating it as "all things being equal"

I have to back-pedal on this a bit. After hearing Nebu talk about it, I tried switching to full Necro at 24; the PvE game now feels like it moved into easy mode. The high power skeletal knight does great and the combination of dps with healing is super effective. Adding in the ability to drain your pet at any time, multiple times, for mana regen, and  I very rarely have to run from multiple mobs. If it gets hairy, I fire off feign death and as soon as the local situation allows, stand up and insta-summon the Knight.

I'm experimenting with 2nd and 3rd classes. So far Chloro (for Bloom) adds a nice instant heal, and I mix that with Dom for the CC if I'm getting a little too overwhelmed. I had Warlock for a while but liked Chloro better.

Yup, I've been doing main Necro since lv12 or so and it is crazy survivable.  Feign death is a very nice "redo" button once you have it.  I rarely see any downtime because I drain enemy buffs for mana and drain enemy HP to recharge self and pet HP.

Do the Chloro "heal other" spells work on necro pets?  If so, a necro/chloro would be stupid overpowered.

I realize this comment was a few weeks ago and that there have been subsequent updates/patches, but I'd like to rehash how amazing the reaver can be.  Here's a build that melts faces (primarily in AoE-friendly environments, like questing in mob-dense areas or any instance) while having practically no threat & survivability issues:

http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=1cALk.Vuqtzukqbk.xMszdcMM.V0o (http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=1cALk.Vuqtzukqbk.xMszdcMM.V0o)

End battles with 6-8 mobs 1-2 levels higher than you with 80%+ health.
Kill 5 mobs at a time only slightly slower than many classes kill one, with little to no downtime between battles.
Boost the damage of your entire party with Enraged Essence (http://rift.zam.com/en/ability/1396457374&ntt=1/Enraged-Essence) (and also make every pyromancer you party with completely fall in love with you thanks to Improved Freeze Armor's +20% fire damage).
Reduce the load on your healer with a constant stream of self-healing (Soul Feast (http://rift.zam.com/en/ability/5000000186&ntt=1/Soul-Feast) + Soul Devour (http://rift.zam.com/en/ability/5000000187&ntt=1/Soul-Devour), not to mention Master of the Abyss (http://rift.zam.com/en/ability.html?riftability=340495169) on a 90 second CD), solid blanket damage reduction (Improved Avatar of Water (http://rift.zam.com/en/ability/501920592&ntt=1/Avatar-of-Water) for 10% reduction + 5% from 5/5 Imbued Armor (http://rift.zam.com/en/ability/5000000171&ntt=1/Imbued-Armor) and up to 10% more from 5/5 Power From The Masses (http://rift.zam.com/en/ability/5000000711&ntt=1/Power-From-The-Masses), automatic block abilities (Stoneshield (http://rift.zam.com/en/ability/230076056&ntt=1/Stoneshield)), and several interrupts/fears.

I'm consistently pulling 33-38% of my instance groups' total damage as the tank with this build (not quite L50 so I haven't filled out the Champion section or all of the RB stuff yet).  Yes, I realize that the pugs I'm playing with may not be super skilled - but I'm also generally finishing instances in less than an hour with few to no party deaths so I haven't been grouping with many complete scrubs.

PvP has been hilarious - virtually the only people that have killed me in random world PvP have been gank squads 5+ levels higher than me, and people don't get away from me with Avatar of Wind (http://rift.zam.com/en/ability/1115947072&ntt=1/Avatar-of-Wind) and Freeze Armor (http://rift.zam.com/en/ability/1320952037&ntt=1/Freeze-Armor), though admittedly my self-healing really takes a dive (though not to the point of being useless) in single combat.

I would recommend leveling up with zero-point Beastmaster instead of Champion for the pet if you're halfway decent at the pet-control mechanics, but if not, Bull Rush from Champion may be preferable.  The 0-point pet's level limit is just starting to make it less desirable around L39-40, meriting the switch.

Also, and let me stress this - I am completely open to critiques/suggestions/questions.  I feel like this is a solid build but if it appears I've misunderstood synergies, please feel free (even encouraged) to point them out to me.  One thing about this build that I kind of personally like is the lack of reaction/follow-up abilities combined with CDs that need to be used intelligently making it unfriendly to the macro-reliant faceroll types.  Stick with Paladin if that's what you like.

 :grin:

I think 20% less damage when under 30% hit points beats 5% less damage all the time.  Great build though.

reaver/riftblade is awesome for solo though I got with a 0 point warlord for the aoe -5% hit debuff on mobs, combined with the -5% hit debuff from your disease(which can be aoe) things miss a LOT, plus beastmaster pet dies too much and resummoning in pvp is a pain in the ass.

for tanking though I go reaver/paladin, reaver dps is already crazy and i have no troubling with aggro so riftblade doesnt bring as much to the table that the paladin survivability does, just having two tanking specs alone gives me a ton more hp. Not to mention thing like highly increased block, 20% to all threat and a couple oshit cooldowns it makes for a beast in both dps and tanking.

Cool - thanks for the input, all.

http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=1cAhk.Vuqtzukqbk.E0ozccr.V0o (http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=1cAhk.Vuqtzukqbk.E0ozccr.V0o) would probably be stronger from a tanking perspective, at the cost of DPS (at least I would think).

Yes.  But it isn't really needed.  Soul Link or whatever that charge spell is, works enough for you.  Just go Necro/Lock and use the Lock's DD and the necros DoTs.

Thanks.  I'm just using the necro/lock combo to level.  My goal is to be primarily Chloro... as soon as I figure out how it plays.   :grin:

Why do you like champion so much as a third soul? Doesn't seem to add much besides that little kick/knockback and I'd go at LEAST 44 points in reaver, shroud of entropy is too good a cooldown to not have for tanking.

http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0cAhE.xuqtuukIfk.N0Rukock

That's kind of a rough draft, may not even need to to that deep into paladin but warlord 0 point talent of -5% hit is too good for a tank to pass up I think.

Wouldn't you want a paladin for tanking?

That looks like an awesome tanking build for sure - so perhaps I need to clarify a bit on the motivation behind my build design.  I understand there are plenty of ways to make the build better at one thing or another, and with roles being available specialization is probably the right path to go down, but if you're looking for a single build that appears to be good at everything, I can highly recommend the one I posted.

I'm currently L41 or 42, and admittedly haven't seen any content past RD yet.  I can tell you that up to this point I've had no survivability issues with even a halfway competent pug healer, and damage output is crazy with this build.  Sacrificing DPS to increase your tanking ability is likely required for endgame, but while I'm leveling, this has proven time and time again to be a very effective build.  Once I get up to 50, I'm sure I'll have to fill my roles with more specialized builds (heavy tank, heavy melee DPS, heavy ranged DPS, etc).

Great tips, and thanks for the feedback!

That's definitely one way to go - just not the way I went for leveling.   :grin:

Pure paladin tanking is good mitigation but not so great for threat gen and aggro, also very single target with a couple exceptions. Reaver brings a lot to the table in the form of aoe/self healing/debuffs and some really good cooldowns so I like having that as the primary spec.

You guys teach me stuff daily. 

Warrior is the only class I haven't played to 30.  I should give one a try. 

My warrior is using a reaver/riftblade/champ build and I find the dps and survivability in both pve and pve to be very good.  I would recommend switching the  5 points in Titan's Strength in the Champ. soul to Take No Prisoners since you won't be using enough melee abilities to make the extra 10% str. worth it.  Your a spell caster in plate and Take No Prisoners will increase the damage of Flame Burst, which is the ability I use the most that consumes attack points, by 10%. IMO you should also be using a 1h+shield, making the extra str. even more irrelevant.

So I leveled up to 32 or so as primary bard with ranger second and BD just for the zero point dodge. Loved it and still use it in groups but it got a bit dull solo so I switched to my other role which I haven't really played at all - nightblade/assassin and wow! It's a very task specific build and has to drink after every other fight solo (my bard never drinks questing) but OMG the damage increase is insane.

I LOVE the soul system.

Up to 26 so far on my necro/pyro/dom mage - full necro, 7 or 8 in dom for squirrel and 2 insta DDs, and 0 in pyro for another insta DD.

The upgraded skeletons are awesome, and I have a feeling the mage skele should be badass in pvp, but it doesn't seem as good as the stabby damg skeleton right now, as the stabby guy cranks out some insane damage with multiple deathly calling stacks, necro and looming demise.

Pve is EZ-mode up to 3 or 4 mobs, after that it depends on if the skeleton's AOE taunt grabs everything.  The DPS is pretty sick too - I was fucking around with moki's warrior earlier and my necro killed the same stuff at least 2x as fast at the same level.

Wanting to try out some other roles, but I'm afraid of fucking up and having bad combos/useless roles - they really need to put in the option to respec soul choices themselves, not just points within souls.

Also, is archmage the only pvp soul for mage, or are there others too?

You can respec your choices. Get a respec (0 points allocated), and you can click on the soul within the tree window to replace it with another.

Yeah, archmage is the only one.

Had to give up my low point Elementalist third soul in the end - the pet just doesn't scale once it hits 30, and it was getting near instagibbed by standard lvl 38 mobs. Swapped out for 0 point Chloro instead - Radiant Spores is really rather good, and should always scale given that it is 100% of damage returned as healing.

Ok, this looks like an opportunity for me to learn a bit about game mechanics.  Reavers don't benefit from +spell power, so I had to assume their damage was based on attack power.  Strength gives me attack power.  Does strength not increase the damage of my non-physical abilities?  If not, is there anything that does?

Probably posted before, but for clerics at medium-high levels (with decent amounts of spellpower) an inquisitor[31+]/cabalist[11]/sentinel[10] build works wonders, it's kind of like oldschool WOW affliction lock soloing. Tag 6-7 mobs at a time with vex, break LOS to pull ranged mobs in close, fanaticism + soul drain, and most will die on the spot; use circle of oblivion to finish the stragglers, use vex on any adds and repeat. Use healing breath if needed (usually only if I get 5 stacks of exposed during the round-up part). Every 2-3 mob packs use decay to 3 stacks -> obliterate (with sigil of power) to refill mana bar. It gets even better at 44 inquisitor with the automatic pbaoe damage field. No real risk of dying unless mobs dispel vex (VERY rare) and/or you don't reapply vex in time against healer mobs or mobs with lots of hp.

This spec easily soloes all minor rifts, except for the last phase (if it's a melee elite and/or there are no green crystals left). For soloing elites you can just switch into a random justicar tanking spec and win... eventually.  :awesome_for_real:

If a soul has zero points spent in it you can switch it out whenever you want, you don't even need to respec for that.

For tanks past level 18 - I could not disagree more. At 18 pallies can be full pally and pick up plague bringer when using reaver as their secondary soul, pretty much solving their AE threat issues they had previously. It only gets better from there on out, especially at 32 when you pick up Light's Decree.


Strength does have some effect on non-physical abilities for wars, but the scaling rate with gear is really bad to the point of being almost unnoticeable. IIRC, the difference between being naked and using dps gear when using flamespears was roughly 15%. This is why I was against the riftblade nerf they did, and the way they did it since once people have resists, riftblade damage will be worse than it is now compared to something like champ/bm. What they need to do is remove the nerfs from riftblade and simply adjust the values from lower level abilities, or keep the nerfs in and allow the abilities to scale off of AP better.

Though, the current way non-physical abilities are barely effected by str/ap is an advantage when leveling up and before you get any good weapons/gear, since flamespear and similar skills that aren't based on weapon damage will still hit for a good amount. You just have to look for a different spec at 50 after getting gear.

And yet  here is Falconeer saying  (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=20588.0) that at 30 Riftblade has a one-trick-pony-I-win with its riftsurge ability -- so wouldn't it be the case for Riftblades (even at 50) that they'll be effective compared to champ/bm?

I got tired of my rogue and rolled a cleric last week and came up with a pretty badass leveling build: Justicar/Shaman/Druid. Up to 19 you focus on Justicar,
like so. (http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=00nra.V0z.Eu0ooc) Before the teens you're just a half decent tank, but once you get Even Justice fully specced you start pulling packs of 3-5 and smashing them all at once; spam EJ mostly, using Doctrine of Valiance and Glacial Shield (along with passive healing from the 0p druid pet) to keep yourself alive. 2h weapon is mandatory because EJ's damage is weapon based. In the event that you're fighting only one mob, you can use the following macro (it also works to help aggro mobs at range):

Post 19 you start to pump the shaman tree; this is what I look like now (http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=00nra.Exz00M.Eu0ooc) at level 28. I've now got two separate 1m CD mana skills that give back 10% mana per melee swing which fixes the only issue the build ever had; this is aided by Endless Winter which restores 4% mana whenever I crit. EJ is still the primary skill, although I do use Fated Blow whenever it's up.

By 39 I'm going to finish the Shaman tree like so, (http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=00nra.Eed00Mshk.Eu0ooc) to get another AoE that includes a dot*, 30% more damage on my next swing when I crit, and a 1m CD that makes everything crit for 6s.  :drill: After that I'll probably drop 10p in the Druid tree for 5% more crit, but that's not set in stone yet.

Thoughts?

*I'm honestly not sure if Strike of the Maelstrom will be worth using, due to the damage reduction non-Justicar skills take from Mien of Leadership.

Initially yes, not after a while though since the ability doesn't scale almost at all.

RBs just need scaling based off weapon, and their base damage values slashed in response.

All of their abilities scale fine, the reason the nerf was stupid was that they increased the DD portion of their primary attack and removed the silly DoT. Which helped them a bit in high end pve (without addressing scaling issues) but made them even more bullshit in pvp.

But Rift Surge in general needs a swing of the nerf bat, even if the nerf is to simply make it dispellable. Right now, it's a death sentence to any non tank player (you can avoid it's damage by not doing anything! While the RB gets ~10 seconds to dismantle you without retaliation), and you can abuse it by running around with 3 AP built up that will never decay out of combat.

I'm running my defiant as 1hd+board Justicar/Druid/Warden.  I don't kill fast, but I'm nigh unkillable in PvE.  Unless its something that is grossly over my level or a super-elite, it dies.  Even con mobs I've taken on 6-7 at a time and walk out full health.  The shield from Druid and the 0pt hot from Warden compliment each other very well for solo PvE.  Not to mention that if I get in a group and someone draws aggro from me, I can hot them real quick to take the edge off.  I'm liking it so far.

When they removed the dot from flame spear, they did not increase the direct damage portion - they lowered that by around 30%. People read the patch notes that said "damage values updated" and made incorrect assumptions that it meant increased, which was proven to be false. That was a huge nerf to that ability, which was needed at lower level when people had no good gear and no resists making riftblade abilities stronger than their counterparts, but with poor scaling (which no, the RB abilities do not scale fine by any means) it becomes a much weaker ability compared to almost any other dps any-time ability. To give an idea of the scaling difference, in t1/t2 gear flame spear has to crit in order to come close to non-crit damage from Path of the Wind from the paragon tree.

For rift surge, I wouldn't mind rift surge being dispellable, just as long as it starts scaling.

It may have been nerfed in the high end, but the damage on the sub20 ranks of flame spear were increased when the dot was removed. We were comparing beta tooltips to live and seeing the increase of about 20%.

The note would make more sense if they buffed and nerfed it at different ranks, because otherwise they should have just said "increased" or "decreased"

I still maintain my huge complaint: Trion's patch notes need to include some damned numbers, not just "we edited a skill!"

Any suggestions on speccing a cleric in purifier?  I was sentenel spec for the ae, but found it to be far too power intensive to be worthwhile.  I switched to purifier on my late 40's cleric and still feel underwhelmed by my healing ability particularly on Rift bosses.  While my most efficient heal does a great job, it has too long a cast time against hard-hitting mobs to be useful.  I find myself relying too heavily on bubble and my insta coupled to my faster cast heals.  For tanks, it's just not enough. 

Perhaps I just need to learn a better rotation?  Any advice welcome.

This isn't strictly a purifier thing, but with respect to mana regen (from a 'healing pug pvp / instances / rifts' point of view), I've had good results with putting 10 points into druid for fae hammer. It's a very powerful cooldown: gives you ~60% total mana every minute if you can stop healing for 10 sec and spam fervent strike on something -- make sure that you don't buy higher ranks of fervent strike, so each "strike" only costs you 8 mana while regenerating 10% of your total. I suspect it isn't viable in high-end raids and expert dungeons, but it's very good for everything else. It is also a decent counter to the massive manadraining that goes on at 50.

(bonus: if you put 1 more point into druid, you can pick up slumber - a solid pvp / emergency cc. The other points in druid aren't all wasted either, since you get an instant heal on 10sec cd, a physical self-bubble and some extra crit. Tier 1 is kind of useless though, since 5% endurance is the best choice and it's not so hot)

Invasion bosses are usually not inteded to be solo healed, I believe. But fromo the tanking side of it, I found the long heal to be plenty, you just have to cast-cancel like other MMOs (pre cast it before damage has been taken. If you're at 20% of the cast time left and there's still not a HP dent to fix, jump/move to cancel the cast and restart it)

Instance wise so far, I've found nothing that will immediately murder my rogue tank. But I've found a lot of healers with big heals who wait until I'm at 30% health to start casting a giant heal, and I die in the window between cast starting and hp bottoming out.

Raid wise, I found Wardens to be awesome at spreading hots around everywhere. Easily as functional as my Bard for keeping an entire raid up while someone else keeps the tank topped off.

+1 on wardens for mana efficiency, at least in my experience.  They can also effectively burst on the tank with Deluge (assuming a fair number of HoTs).  Can't really speak to the other specs yet, though.

I'm shooting for something like this for end game healing:

http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=00Gej.Ex0V0zz.xE0xqkRqz.t

As mentioned, if you pre-hot your tank before the engagement Deluge is a great main heal.  It can be painful to micromanage stacks of Soothing Stream, but it's quite effective.  You also have the two Purifier insta-heals and the Shield still to give you a buffer leading into a Deluge.  Cascade helps with mana issues and you still have several options for dealing with AoE damage.  Orbs of the Stream is great for dealing with any initial damage bursts at the beginning of an encounter.  I usually put it on the main tank a few seconds after he initiates an encounter.

That might be my next route. At 21 I'm mostly Pyro with 4 in Elem and 6 in Chloro for Bloom. The Earth pet is getting weaker but still holds aggro well enough. And while I'm drinking after every fight, anything up to 4 level+1 is easy mode as long as I keep remembering to keep Withering Vine and Radiant Spores going. But I keep hearing great things about Necro pets and DoTs and haven't messed much with Dom.

I was thinking of dropping my earth ele. pet at 30 but with "mind wipe" (sheds aggro) in the Dom. tree it's like having a pet with lvl 50 taunt ability.  Problem is the cooldown. 

Anyone have any advice for a Warlock build?

Reaver question: does Grisly Works trigger when something you damaged dies or only when you strike the killing blow?

I'm rocking my Reaver/Paladin at 39 now.  Swapped out 0-point Champion around 33?, which I kept mostly for it's Bull Rush, for RiftBlade and its Storm Blade once I got the Pally's Shield Rush and it was like shifting into the next higher gear.  Still very happy as a warrior, which is unusual for me, and I love all the theorycrafting with the characters even though I'm too busy with my warrior to do more than dream about the other classes.  Too bad I really really hate some of the Vision design decisions like cloning WoW's Auction House instead of EQ2's broker but without the possibility of using addons to alleviate the suck, seriously low prioritizing of crafting issues, lack of housing, lack of appearance tab, lack of mentoring, single-point bank, piss-on-you moneysinks EVERYWHERE and that infuriating running away debuf  :mob: have led me to switch from the 6-mo Founders Subscription to the monthly plan so I can bail at will.  It looks like I'll last more than one month, but I have serious doubts about making it through 3 months.  And since the pressure for leaving is building up from deliberate annoyances by the devs rather than just a general boredom from having consumed all the content I was interested in, I'm likely to leave bitter and much less willing to give it another try later.  And that really saddens me.

Anyone have a good low level warrior PVP build? I hear Riftblade is pretty nice, but I wasn't sure what to pair with it. Reaver? Champion?

Riftblade + reaver rocks the early levels, all the way up to the 40s were riftblade stops scaling and the reaver aoe dots stop doing any significant dmg.

Riftblade/Reaver as mentioned. It can do basically anything expect heal others with one spec.

If you don't want to run around with the same build as everyone else, I also like BM/champion. Ridiculous damage both single target and AOE (with dots, so it sucks a bit in PVP) and you can self heal which makes soloing pretty trivial.

Both are getting nerfed hard in 1.1, so enjoy while it lasts.

I went with the champion / paragon / riftblade build on my alt that I level exclusively via PVP... it's nothing special until 18, but then it starts to pick up steam and at the mid-30s (where I'm now) it becomes a one-dwarf pain train. I'm almost always top damage (usually by a large margin) even if our side doesn't have healers. The build is insane at killing any kind of FC / fang-holder / node-defender, since battlefield intimidation can aoe fear enemy zergs (most importantly healers), you get a knockback early on that can punt undesirable tanks off hills and whatnot (or people out of LOS for their healers), a reliable hamstring, a passive mortal strike that's basically always up (VERY important in my experience), an interrupt, an execute, and the ability to kill someone in 2 GCDs if you get some procs lined up, preferably from just having killed someone. Oh yeah, and +30% damage if someone crits you (even with a dot tick or something silly), which stacks with the base finisher in paragon that gives you +30% ability damage for 12 sec.

Go heavy into champion first, picking up the AOE fear (very important), the in-combat charge and the talent that makes you stun people when you charge. Put leftover points into paragon, avoiding all DW talents; after you get 31 points in champion for titan's strike, put the other points into paragon until you get the disarm.

fake edit: tanks/riftblades are the hardest to fight, but disarm helps push things into your favor... also jousting and using the 3-second intercept every 15 seconds.

real edit: Note that this build IS getting a nerf next patch, but as I understand it, it's mostly the length of titan strike's stun, and fixing the 100% armor bypass bug. Also, you'll need a good blue-quality weapon that you upgrade every 5 levels; puzzles/cairns are good for that, or you can do instances / use the AH.

I tried this yesterday and (at 36) and it does bring the pain if you can just reach your target. Sometimes critted for 1300+ on peeps (around 30% of their health typically at this level). I didn't manage to weave the paragon finisher for 30% boost yet though, so it should hit even harder if the bonus stacks with everything else.

Is there some PVP trinket that breaks all CC effects? The champion ruthless pursuit doesn't break the most common one where you just stand and can't do shit (mez?). I might try replacing the riftblade with PVP soul to get break free.

Yea, riftblade is kind of a tack-on in this build, so pvp soul should work. I actually don't see that many mezzes (when in doubt I just go for bards, they go squish after I interrupt that verse of fascination thing) compared to stuns/roots/slows. People'd rather kill me than CC me most of the time...

That's actually kind of a weakness: no real defenses outside that fear, hamstring kiting [har] and disarm at low levels. Later on you'll get a sprint to help against casters and 1-minute cooldown that gives you +75% parry chance for 10 sec to help vs melee. Still, if you have a healer (and most wfs I've done so far do have at least 1-2) against a team that doesn't know how to cc and focus fire properly (ie. most pug WFs), you become an almost-unstoppable wrecking ball.

edit: I don't use Strike Like Iron that much (you are trading off momentum for burst, and the former is generally more useful), but it's handy in some situations, ie. coordinated healers on the other team. Designate a primary and a secondary target, start working on the primary, pop SLI at 3 points if secondary target is below 75% hp, aoe fear, switch over to the secondary and burst him in the fear's duration. If you catch the healers in the fear, they'll have to choose and let one of the two die...

Another use for SLI is to use as an opener when you have 3 points going into a battle to make your early pressure much nastier. You can also use it if you're at range and won't get into melee range anytime soon (and need to spam path of the wind... which is getting a 4-second cooldown next patch btw)

Popping SLI after a kill so I can bull rush bloodthirst frenzied strike flinching blade rising waterfall Deathblow is basically my main source of chain kills, it's down right scary when I can keep that going.

what?

I don't know what all of those things do, but maybe try reading it like this:

After a kill, activate Strike Like Iron (paragon buff that consumes attack points)
Bull Rush (champion charge) to the next target
Activate Bloodthirst, which I assume is a combat buff
Use Frenzied Strike
Use Flinching Blade
Use Rising Waterfall (paragon attack, that must follow other attacks)
Use Deathblow
Profit

Bloodthirst is an instant no global cooldown attack that autocrits which becomes available each time you kill someone, frenzied strike is an instant no global cooldown attack which becomes available each time you crit, flinching strike is a paragon no global cooldown attack that interrupts spells with a 10s cooldown and it triggers follow up attacks, rising waterfall is a paragon follow up attack that hits hard and has extra chance to crit, deathblow is a finisher which does a shit ton of damage but is only available when the target is under 30% health.  Basically i charge someone, unleash 4-5 instant hits and then finish them.  

I think what he said was 6, 1, E, Q, ctrl+3, 2, 5.

(Actually I lie, I don't have Strike Like Iron in my hotbar atm, but I keep meaning to shove it in there somewhere. I used to use the Riftblade fire damage proc in much the same way, however.)

Bloodthirst with the 100% crit upgrade was also the point where PvE entered ezy-grind mode for my Champion. Two extra instant attacks (one of which is guaranteed to crit) at the beginning of each fight makes everything die a lot faster.

So I had some fun last night with my Paladin/Reaver tank. I had just noticed and respeced into the Paladin tier 6 talent "Tip the Balance". For 1 point this heals the you for 50% of the damage done from "Balance of Power" which does 160% of weapon damage on blocked attacks. So with my crappy sword it heals for about 40 with 1 point.

So, I'd tried it out on packs of four-eight and it worked well. I was ending fights with 90-95% health, but I thought most of that healing was coming from Plaguebringer/Soul Feast/Soul Devour. 

There was a big invasion in Gloomwood. That first outpost in from Silverwood in the north was completely over run. So I figure to try out the new block heal thing on this pack. I accidentally/on purpose pulled maybe 15 mobs. They could not hurt me. I pulled everything. Maybe 6 full invasion packs. They could not even dent me.  Granted I had 15 levels on them, but still.  :awesome_for_real:

They are nerfing the crap out of that Paladin Tip the Balance heal so its going to be worthless later this week, and they are nerfing the Reaver's damage based heals.  As they are now I could effectively solo a non boss elite mob of an equal level as a Pally/Reaver, about 5 equal mobs, or hordes of lower level mobs.  It was also a good tank build because the healer wasn't under so much pressure.

But after the changes go in this week there's not going to really be an awesome true tank build anymore.  Too many people made videos showing players owning 30+ grey con mobs as Reaver+RB or Pally, and so morons at Trion decided that you can't be a tank without a dedicated pocket healer available at all times.

Oh please, as a pali/reaver i've charged stacks of equal level invasions and easily finished them off and come out with full health.  It's not just grey mobs, you can tank 12-15 equal level mobs easily and finish them off without any trouble and with zero downtime.  It was obviously ridiculously overpowered, frankly the crying people are doing over nerfs to things that were incredibly broken is just retarded.

And that same build will get destroyed in an expert dungeon as it currently stands without a pocket healer paying close attention.  So if it scales so that normal mobs are an actual threat, then I can't wait to see how badly it performs in expert dungeons.

I'd be thrilled if Warriors lose their role as the tank class.  What better shift from standard diku if clerics/rogues became the tanks, warriors became dps, and mages became healers. 

If your reactive heals were doing so much healing that experts will now be difficult for the healer, or the "build" will get destroyed, the issue isn't they are over nerfed. No, the issue is the healer is either using a really bad spec or is really bad at healing and the other possible issue is that the tank has other stat/gear issues going on and possibly bad as well. There are many tanks not even using specs with those reactive heals and have no problems plowing through all the content available.



FWIW: There are guilds using rogue tanks in raid rifts and green scale currently and doing just fine, after the itemization patch I'm sure we'll hear more of this as that is more the issue than anything - it's tough to get the toughness and tank stats on non-warrior tanks currently but is doable. I haven't heard of clerics main tanking in GS yet, but I'd guess they're out there as we've used cleric tanks for GS trash/off tanking and raid rifts

One of the coolest things Rift made was giving Riftstalkers the ability Warlocks had in WoW (Demonic Portal).. you mark a spot on the ground, and then you have an ability that lets you teleport to that spot. It's so amazingly handy for things like LoS pulls. In fact the whole Riftstalker tree is amazingly cool, this tank that is ridiculously mobile and can port all over the battlefield.

Last night we were struggling mightily on the third boss in greenscale for lack of a rogue tank.

Oracle?  You don't need a rogue tank.

You need two tanks to swap on werewolf, someone to kite the other.  Get a few people to kill the pollen.  Thats phase 1.  Phase 2 is tank the werewolf in center, have ranged dps kill the pollen as they spawn in the four corners, everyone else on the boss.

I'd like to see them add a mage melee class.  I tried to make Archon work, but just couldn't get it to do anything that other classes couldn't do much better, so I'd offer up Archon as a soul that could be sacrificed to make a "melee attacks proc shields"-type support class (partly stepping on what Chloro does, I guess).  Keep the auras!auras!auras! portion of the design.  I just love the dps+support classes that they've added to the game.

Herald of Xotli?

One of the most awesome classes in any game ever.

Very fun Solo Melee Rogue build viable at level 33:

I call it the Ninja-Pirate build...  :grin:

At level 33 you can spec into 27 Bladedancer / 17 Riftstalker / 0 Assassin thus: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0MMVp..g0dGhoMkMb.Vcbhho (http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0MMVp..g0dGhoMkMb.Vcbhho)

Besides the awesome Ninja Leap (aka Flash of Steel), you get two Phase-shift abilities that you essentially use as 15 sec Damage/Defense buffs.  If you avoid most of the Riftstalker "tank" abilities, you can load up on passives that you can almost always keep up: 15% damage reduction plus 15% Damage increase plus 15% Crit chance (after Phase shift)... also includes 30% Self-Heal + Energy regen (unused pips) - that you can manage by not using a finisher.

At level 36 you can add a 3rd Phase ability that can give you theoretical 100% up-time on your phase buffs... plus a great AoE combo.

I macro the AoE like this:  Shadow Blitz (45 sec cd - initiates buff), Rift Disturbance (8 sec cd - + debuff), Twin Strike (No cd + combo point generator).... AoE finisher as needed.
I macro the Single target like this: Reprisal (reactive), Precision Strike (10 sec cd), Quick Strike (no cd) - this is the "Follow-up" button to Keen Strike (which you can also bind Reprisal to, if you wish).

Minor nuances include a prep-fight to activate your 60-sec and 30-sec +Parry/Doge (+hit/crit) buffs

No stealth (until 40-ish), no pets, no wimpy fighting from afar, and definitely no singing... just good ol'fashioned leaping into the middle of a pack of enemies and spinning around to everyone else is dead.

There's just enough control and survivability to make the whirlwind fun to manage.

Anyhow, if you haven't already discovered this yourself, and are tired of the relentless monotony of the Ranger... give it a whirl.

Edit: attempt to fix link.

Twin strike is terrible for AOE.  It only hits two targets. :(

I've got a level 50 BD/NB/Asn spec that is aces for dps in raids and experts.  There is also a pretty nifty melee ranger build too.

My champ/paragon is getting into the 40s now, and... wow, the pain train keeps picking up steam. Or something. It's not half bad damage in instances either, but maybe that'll change at 50.

Case in point, Shifting Blades* is pure  :why_so_serious: when bursting healers / targets being healed in warfronts. Build up three APs, use Strike Like Iron, build up three APs quick again, use SB, use disruptive strike, rising waterfall, proper timing + titan's strike, follow up with random reactives. Chews through a healthbar and then some in 3 GCDs, stuns the target at the end, and healers can't really see it coming unless they keep an eye on the warrior's selfbuffs. Downside is needing about 10 seconds of face time with the target, but that's not as bad when the champion fear itself all-but-guarantees 6 seconds of that.

* Shifting Blades makes it so the next 3 attack abilities will do an additional 75% of their damage as a second attack; this stacks with the 48% damage increase from SLI and the 30% from enrage. It also works with a 2-hander (bug? feature), and the 3 attacks I listed all hit ridiculously hard to begin with.

Deep paragon is fucking glorious.  A death touch powered by SLI, shifting blades and the auto crit on follow ups opener = about 3.5k damage.  The best part is you can do that vulcan neck thing and dance with them while you wait for death touch to go off.

Might be neat at 50 for raids... but solo for levelling, NB at 33 as second spec just was not fun.

I'd be interested in melee ranger build... haven't looked at it seriously other than to wonder if wolf+melee might be possible.

I  :heart: my rogue for solo exploring, artifact hunting and questing.  I usually use my ranger/bard/sab (high enough bard to get motif of regeneration and the good speed buff), and can switch out to assassin to stealth out of places.    I sometimes use my full bard in rift raid groups.  It's... disappointing.

I don't have a spec for groups.  I ran Realm of the Fae back when, and that's the only instance I've done (other than attempt Darkening Deeps solo - 3rd boss can't be soloed no matter the level due to cocoon mechanics).

Pvp is disappointing - I can play utility and that's about it. 

Port Scion, Codex and Whitefall Steppes, I can run my ranger/bard for speed buff, humanoid tracking, mediocre healing/dps.  Or stealth about as assassin and take down unwary mages and rogues at half health.  (I'm not a good assassin, too fumbly and slow).  I just don't know what to do in Black Garden. 

What are people doing at 50 for dps instance specs?  Nightblade?  Marksman?  I have an empty spec that I haven't decided on.  Or even pvp specs?

I went with the most popular pve rogue spec for marksman for my 4th soul.  MM/ranger/assassin.  Managed to put my damage up from 230ish to 330ish on the last boss in expert Kings Breach (according to a guildie's combat meter, at any rate), so it was a significant rise (although still unimpressive damage compared to others).  Anything I brought to the group as a bard was done better by the chloro and archon, so losing the bard part was not a problem.

My 4 specs now are:
assassin/riftblade/infiltrator for pvp or permastealth
ranger/bard/sab for solo exploring/tracking/farming
full bard for mediocre group healing/buffs, rarely use this unless support is needed
marksman/ranger/assassin for dps

Looking forward to the upcoming changes.

My warrior is too.  51 void knight is going to have a base 20% damage reduction vs melee and 30% vs spells, along with 50% extra armor, depending on what i do with my other 15 points and adding in the buff to pvp armor and valor and i am going to be a fucking rock in pvp.

Just for shits and giggles, are people experimenting with phys crit stacking and does that make a damn bit a difference in dmg output? I am genuinely curious since I have been stacking crit for the hell of it and my DoTs seem to crit more than not - I usually open with a Jagged, followed by a punc then rupture (5cp) and just watch the blood flow. Assassinate, sadly, does not crit as much as I'd hoped if I chose to open with it, however if it does, I can usually kill the mob as fast or a tick faster than bleeding them to death. And as always...I am Assassin build, had 51 but was less than impressed with Viper or Serpent or whatever the hell the 51 is.

I don't know much about rogues, but for warriors Crit is > AP by an extremely substantial margin, such that some warriors opt for leather with Crit and Dex instead of a plate piece with Str and AP. Conversely, SP is > Crit by a very large margin for mages. It's why you should always give the mages/clerics the red ball in a WF, SP is so much better than AP for the respective classes.

Yeah, ap is freaking useless.  It is kinda depressing that to max my dps i should be wearing leather on my warrior.  I refuse to do it.

From what I have read this isn't actually true. You get the best result getting to around a 35% crit rate, and then stack AP as well as crit.

Yes, AP makes only a very small difference to your damage. But so did spellpower for casters in WoW when it first launched. the majority of players ignored it and stacked crit, and exactly the same happened - turns out you needed a good combination of both to do the best damage. (in fact turned out you needed spellpower above all else in WoW for some time!0.

Not saying that Ap is great, crit is bad, but some of the bets players out there are stacking both stats for PvE and not just crit.

Stack crit to around 35-40% unbuffed.  After than point it's up for debate.  Myself I have 40% self buffed, and then I started stacking AP.  That's on my rogue btw.

Edit: AP is far from worthless.  Especially in 1.2 where many abilities are going to be doubling the AP coefficient value.

Any idea how I'm supposed to gear a shaman?  It's making me crazy.  Ok, that and keeping two sets of separate gear.

I think it's Wis > Spell Crit > Spell Power but I'm not 100% sure.  I'll check with some experts.

Shaman is a melee cleric.  Were it an inquisitor, I'd agree with you.  See what the pros have to say.

I think shaman want crit above all.

Time to start making myself a set of leather gear then. 

All melee clerics have mechanics that convert Spell Power to Attack Power and Spell Crit to Melee crit.  You gain more from wis that str/dex.  Stack cleric gear, not leather.

If you go caster, some cloth may actually help in some situations.

I had no idea that this was the case.  Thank you for the info!

Now I just need people on Dimroot to log in and run some dungeons with me before I'm forced to level a 4th toon to 50.

Yeah when you play with a Justicar/Shaman/Druid check your buffs and it'll show up.  (At least there used to be a buff that stated the conversion)

So is this build completely bonkers?  Ranger/NB/Assassin (http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0MNiM.VMcf0eks0mz.V0xMh.0VMcx0b)

Trying to think of a ranger build that doesn't necessarily include marksman.  Very little wasted points I see here (some in assassin), but I'm open to suggestions.

Also open to suggestions on fun rogue dps builds I can try when I start doing dungeon runs at 50.

Certainly not bad.  You've got all the standard ranged-talent options from Assassin, and your NB choices are sound.  If you don't mind Marksman, Sozu's Ranger guide (http://forums.riftgame.com/showthread.php?191485-Sozu-s-PvE-Ranger-Guide-1.2-REVISED) pretty much sums up extreme Ranger play nicely.

For some fun, here's a neat Saboteur build (http://www.guildportal.com/Guild.aspx?GuildID=413965&ForumID=1984602&TabID=3514142&Replies=0&TopicID=9668269).

Both are average builds, but not great.

Best PVE spec for Rogues:

http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0MTVM.VcMcyb0o0o.VV0A0c.0VRcxzb

Rotation:
5x Spike Charge
Deadly Strike
Puncture
Detonate
5x Shrapnel Charge
Detonate

Repeat.

You can vary in Blast Charge for Shrapnel  Charge if you have to avoid AOEing.  This is a melee dps build, but can also pass for a ranged build in a pinch, but Deadly Strike is key to this build.

Essentially you're getting up Deadly Strike's buff Deadly Dance that super buffs your next combo point generating abilities.  You then use Puncture to gather up 2CP.  Now your detonate will detonate all 5 charges at almost double the damage and do 2CPs worth of Detonate damage.  The Deadly Dance buff will last through you putting up 5 Shrapnel's up so you only have to do it every other rotation.

Plus you get auto attack damage.

There are a few variations to this, taking points out of Ambidextrous for Blade Tempo and +Poison Damage in the Assassin tree (+Poison damage increases base charge damage)

This build will probably get nerfed, but I can sustain 1.8-2k dps in full T3 gear + relics

They key here is also to create macros for all of your charges.  


This is because autoattack bugs out and sometimes stops.  This lets you keep attacking.

--------------------

If you want something more complicated that can put out more dps in more complicated boss encounters that require movement, use the Impale/Assassin build:

http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0MNiM.qMcf0ckckmz.c.bqRcxof0d0R

Your rotation will look something like this:

You will have a build macro like this:

You will also have to take off your pet attacks from autofire.  The reason is that the pet's AI doesn't shoot them off whenever they are off GCD.  Also you want to cast Rend all the time because it stacks and the stacks will run off if you don't do it yourself.

Quick Shot is in there so when you have to move you can keep spamming your attack macro and fire off quick shot.

You can also make another macro if you want, to help manage your pet.


Which essentially allows you to shoot Quick Shot without the pet attacking and having him run back to you.

You're main build macro will be accompanied by four finishers:
Head Shot (+5% Damage)
Baneful Touch (+50% Poison proc damage)
Impale (DOT damage)
Final Blow

You will also need to keep Fiery Spike up, as it provides around 200-300 dps if you can sustain it.

This build is very hard and a large pain in the ass.

Your rotation looks something like this:
Backstab -> Puncture -> Fiery Spike -> Impale
Fiery Spike -> SS -> SS -> SS -> SS -> Head Shot

Then repeat Backstabs/SS's and reapply Impale/Puncture as they fade from the boss, and don't clip them.  But more importantly you have to reapply Fiery Spike after each finisher, or you will lose DPS.

What makes this build so well is Spotter's Order: http://rift.zam.com/en/ability/812882124/Spotter%27s-Order

This warrior ability which adds 43 damage to every single attack.  That's every pet attack, every bleed, every dot, everything.  This build really excells in raids mostly.  The sab build above works for EVERYTHING, from dungeons to T3.


Also this Impale Ranger build is great for AOE.  ShadowFire + Trick Shot is pretty devastating, but perhaps not as much as Sabo.

--

The sab build is really the best for over all AOE and single target.  If both builds above are not to your liking, there are some other builds that are somewhat close at the expert dungeon level and entry raid level.  The best of the rest is 27 BD spec

http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0MViM.Vi0A0s0o0b.VhxzhoM.0VRcxob

Which is a really easy build to play.  It requires 3 keys:

Standard Build Macro (1pt builder)


Then your 2pt Builder


Ebon Fury Macro

Remember never to use Blade Tempo and Ebon fury at the same time.  BT is physical damage, and Dusk Strike is death damage.  

Open with:
2pt Macro - Fiery Spike -  Fiery Spike - 1pt Macro - Deadly Strike

Then it's:

2pt Macro, Fiery Spike, 1pt 1pt -> DS

Use Ebon Fury macro when it's up.

------------

There are other builds you can play around with, but ranged Ranger/Marksman is 2nd class if you care about doing the most dps.  They're not terrible, but not great.  Ranger is pretty simple.  Essentially Ranger/MM/NB and you just spam quick shot (using 1/3 augmented so the bleed never clips itself) and keeping Shadow Fire up.  If you don't like the pet, go full MM/NB(or Asn)/Ranger.  But you'll always be doing about 70-80% of your melee counterpart.

I'll have to try that for Rogues.  I'm currently using a Ranger/MM/Bard setup and that works quite well for leveling.  I've done the other classes to the 20-30 lvl range and this has been the easiest/fastest by far.  I rarely die or have to drink. 

Leveling is a different animal.  Anything usually works.  BD/Asn/RS is usually the best.

Cool gonna try that sab build for PvE - currently using an older ranger build but I don't love it.

I go Shaman sometimes and this is how I would prioritise stats:

1) Focus (if you're 50). Apart from anything else Focus is your "can I join you guys?" stat, if your focus is low people won't want to group with you. 50 for T1, 100 for T2 and 150 for t3 are acceptable although ymmv. It's also the best number crunching stat until cap. Cap in t3s is around 220, in other instances it's lower. To check if you're capped use ACT and open up the stats on your name to see your miss rate.

2) Next figure out a trade-off between spell crit and spell power. The game weights spell crit at about double spell power, so an item with +10 spell power will be comparable to an item with about +20 spell crit. It's probably worth going with that. 2 spell crit is probably the same usefulness as 1 spell power because shamans have a lot of innate crit (so you get less use out of the stat compared to other classes). So 1 spell power = 2 spell crit is a good basis to figure out your stat weightings.

After you have your sp:sc ratio the thinking part is over and the rest is just data entry. 1 Wisdom gives 0.75 sp. 1 Int gives 1.0 spell crit and 0.25 sp.

So
1 spellpower is worth 1.0
1 Wisdom = 0.75 spellpower and is worth 0.75
I Int = 1.0 spell crit and 0.25 sp and is worth 1.0/2 + .25 = 0.75
1 spell crit is worth 0.5

Wisdom and Int also have mana affects but you should never have mana issues so I've disregarded those. Even if you only have Ageless Ice you should be ok for mana and I doubt many people would build a Shaman without putting 10 in another soul with a mana restore.

It will vary depending on your spec and gear. For instance some Shamans take the +20% crit damage bonus talent from Sentinel and from Inquisitor which gives a total of +60% extra crit damage. If you have that Big Crit build then adjust spell crit up a little higher in the stat weighting, maybe 1 sp : 1.8 sc.

Physical stats have identical worth to the magical stats they correspond to, so 1 physical crit = 1 spell crit. (Unless you are also using spells, for instance if you have Inquisitor in your build).

PS: if you're not 50 yet use the same gear for everything. Just swap weapons. No need to min/max because the 1 spell power : 2 spell crit ratio is close to optimal for every soul (tank healer melee dps and caster dps). You don't need two sets of gear before 50.

Justicars are absolutely hilarious.  Clerics may be a bit boring at low levels but goddamn, this soul is damn near unkillable.

Downside is that it takes them a year to kill anything.  I think that's why I prefer my mage over my cleric.

I dunno, I took shaman to jolt, then druid, and put a couple of points into justicar to get the self-heal. It's not lightning fast, but I kill at least as fast as my riftblade warrior and with no drinking or dying.

I did Justicar on my druid as main starting off.  I don't advise it.  It is definitely harder than hell to kill, but is really boring and takes forever to kill things.

Perhaps it is a good soul to use later towards 50 when you can evenly balance it with another, but you don't want it for the lvl climb.  It is definitely worth looking at for a tank or off-tank soul at any level.  I'm using 3 roles; dps, tank, heals.

I've settled on a mix of Druid and Shaman for DPS right now.  Seems to work quite well.

Shaman/Druid with whatever 3rd soul for healing is a beast for leveling.

I tried the melee cleric builds and found them surprisingly squishy when compared to my necro/lock at any similar level with the added bonus of being way slower. In my 20s I got tired of dying to caster clerics in WFs and decided to out a caster. That was a game changer. With the right spec it was like playing a cross between my necro and a tank warrior and things died fast.  like Inquisitor/Justicar/Sentinel starting at 31. (http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=00drj.VEkbMt0Rz.VhMI)

Vex the crap out of as many as you want. Find a tree to hide behind to LoS casters. Soul Drain, Circle, Circle, Soul Drain then use your instant cast macro to finish off anything left standing. Repeat. Add Reparation for more healing. Occasionally fight a mob solo for Aggressive Renewal mana and call it a day. I like Sentinel for 20% more crit (Walk in the Light) and another instant cast DD (Life's Vengence), but the bubble in Purifier is handy early on. Past the 11 points in Justicar and the 10 in Sentinel, I just filled out Inquisitor in ways that fit how I like to play.

I heart my justicar/druid/I forget cleric. He's a giant goon.

Guess I should move the soul talk into the proper thread :)

For clerics, my favorite would probably something like this: 42 Shaman/14 Justicar/10 Sentinel (http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=00nra.Eedx0RsAz.Eu.Va), though I'd have to learn what's been nerfed since beta to really get a handle on it (for instance, Justicar's Salvation used to be much more synergistic). Drae likes them Druid heavy, I like them Shaman heavy.

Looking at Inq, wow they gutted that soul. Might be good now, but it's really taken some shots since beta, especially beta 1 weekend. Making Life & Death Concord put a 10s CD on BoD? Youch.

One thing that really bothers me about Rift is how many nerfs they put into the game due to pvp. But people here seem to love pvp, so maybe I'm just ont the core audience.

Anyway, to pick up on where I left off in the 1.3 thread, last night I was playing a Ranger/Marksman/Sab that was a lot of lowbie fun. So I was thinking something like 32 Ranger/34 Marksman/0 Sab (http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0MNfT.EGo00fos0Vz.E0tMq0hhzR) or maybe evolve it into 31 Ranger/18 Marksman/17 Assassin (http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?riftstc=1MNfM.VMcf0ekso0z.x0x0V0c.0VMcx0b) to crank up the crits. Or maybe just go into something like 32 Assassin/18 Bard/16 Riftstalker (http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0MMVp.0VRftsb0ddo.xcbVh.Vcxh).

By design. Rather than put in a wide variety of plate, they wanted warriors to use leather for squeezing out the dps. Not saying I agree with it, but that was what the developer intended.

Why do you need a wide variety of sets? all you need is a tanking and a dps set.

For fun? Hadn't even thought of a tanking rogue.

My Rogue has 4 sets right now:

Solo Grinding: Bladedancer/Assassin/Riftstalker (Bladedancer face smashing + Assassin passives + Riftstalker HP regen and teleport)

Tank: Riftstalker/Bard/Ranger

Support: Bard/Ranger/Nightblade

Ranged PvE: Saboteur (just got this slot...still experimenting)

Someday I'll make my 5th slot for PvP.

I have 5 Sets right now:

Dungeon/Raid DPS - Sab/Asn/BD
PVE 51pt Bard
Solo: Impale Assassn/BD something like 34/32
Random slot for a second DPS slot for testing builds.
PVP spec (I hardly PVP)

I love having a Vampire sourcestone (purple one from Stillmoor vendor), Leeching Poison, Lost Hope trinket (chance to proc heals from expert RD) and Fang of the Life Lord.  I don't need any of the healing from RS.


And Sky, Ranger/Asn/MM or Bard or Sabo is excellent fun for low and mid level Rogue fun.  Sabo's are awesome these days.

Played the Assassin melee-based newb for a while and it's a lot of fun but if you don't get the big damage spike, he's going to have a tough fight (and it sucks when the game gives you set pieces you can't set up ahead of time). Also gets a bit boring vs the ranger/mm/sab who can do a few different things with the charges or straight arrowman.

Also rolled a warrior that I was playing champ/bm and wasn't sure what to do for the third. Many of the warrior trees seem either self-dependent or forced synergy (like paladin/warlord/vk look great together..for defense). I liked reaver/paladin in beta, but wanted something different. Took paladin but don't plan on spending anything in it, none of the other low hanging fruit looked any better. Also shocked how quickly she gets slammed when a second opponent steps in, I remember it being slightly easier to take on multiple opponents, but that might be due to reaver/paladin more than warrior, yeah?

Might try some of the other mage souls, I got a lot of necrolock in testing but didn't play the others because it was during the very restricted soul period. How are they currently unlocked, could I have most/all by 20?

I haven't gotten anyone into the teens yet, not really feeling anything in particular, though so far the ranger/mm/sab has been the most fun. I guess I really want to be able to switch between a lot more on the fly and not be restricted in playing with different builds, something I didn't care for in the beta.

But since the $10 didn't include a free month  :oh_i_see: I'm going to push through and play /something/ even if it's bouncing between multiple characters for a couple weeks. Also still torn between the remnants of BC on guardian side and playing the awesome defiants  :grin:

Gotta go with Riftblade for the newb warrior I think.  Only soul with a useful 0pt ability outside of Champ/BM.  It's got a weapon buff.  Damage on crit or something.

Heh, I usually have all souls unlocked before lvl 15.  It's the first thing I do after hitting 13.  Easy enough to unlock a few during a zone invasion (still happens enough in Silverwood) or just go stomp down a rift on your own.  You can always let it time out before hitting stage 5 (usually not a choice with cleric  :awesome_for_real:), and you won't have to fight the elite.

I don't think you get a real feel for a class until you're out of Silverwood.  Well, except if you look at the shaman line, not a very exciting future.  :awesome_for_real:

Shamans get the super awesome charge like Champs, though! I'm partial to Shamans....so probably a bit biased toward them. Again, want to go with something different, even though I really do like clerics.

Drae, forgot about Storm Blade. Good call, was my third with reaver/paladin due to that.

So, finally got my cleric to 50. Don't feel comfortable healing yet, so que'd up for the gigantic wait as DPS. From what I had read, this 31 druid, 24 shaman, 11 inquisitor build is where it's at. (http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=00and.VVMVhoqcz.Ex00t0c.Vxz)

It's a one button wonder. There is some question about the organization of the macro, but here it is:


It's kind of ridiculous. ACT had me at 550 DPS reliably. Some fights spiked up to 750 with lucky crits. All this with the R1 pvp weapon/gear. Everything else is leveling blues. I have a set of lvl 35 pants, low 40s stuff from Lantern Hook/Droughtlands and the ring from the first world event.

That macro for all its apparent randomness (ie why is Jolt down at the bottom below Vex?) works very well. It does not waste GCDs. Vex only winds up on mobs when I'm not in melee. Even with Fae Hammer getting blown very early in most fights, I never run out of mana. I do have Ageless Ice from the shaman tree for when I AoE trash.

One thing to be careful of is the pet stuff in the macro. I managed to pull an extra group because my pet went hairing off after a fight was done and I tabbed to a different group.

That sounds like a fun game to play.

Exactly half of what I despise about this current generation of MMOs is in the spoiler tag.  The other half is the monotony of pick quest, find on map, kill 10, return.  This shit needs to change. 

Why is all of the stuff that's off the GCD down at the bottom?  :headscratch:

Because they are off the cooldown.

Its some mildly clever thinking about the cool down. Its a way to get more damage out faster. GCD abilities logically have to follow the cool down. So if your macro prioritises the GCD, they will fire off on a button press if available. But if the GCD is in process, you can slot in the off GCD things to get something done during that second and a half.


I'm kind of on the fence on this. How different is a one button macro from something like Diablo or any of the other action RPGs out there? Even the more RPG focused real time games generally give you the option of maybe 4 things to do and the answer to most of those is keep them on cooldown.

Then as a someone who actually likes to play with other people, I appreciate when it's relatively easy for everyone to pull their own weight. That particular macro is actually really optimized, but the difference between it and a list everything by cool down is slight. A macro like that means your friend who has trouble DPSing and not standing in the fire only has to pay attention to not standing in the fire, the game manages the DPS portion for them.

It does get kind of boring though when my only real choice is which finger to hit the 1 key with.

I think the macroing system is one of the best things about Rift.

Ahh, that does make a good deal of sense.  Don't want to even slightly delay taking up the GCD on something that's on it.  Thanks.

That's my point - if you've created 15 abilities that all do damage by pressing the same button over and over, why not just create one ability that does damage on a shorter cooldown?  The sheer amount of abilities in Rift or WoW is silly.  GW had it about right with eight abilities you take with you.  Pick some for the rotation and others for situation.  

But hey, its working for some folks and they like it.  It just doesn't work for me.  The ability management is what drove me off Rift, ultimately.  

As long as there is a reason for the multiple abilities, like this one adds to crit or that one debuffs or whatever, I don't mind micromanaging a few hotbars of abilities. I'd rather do that in a sub-optimal fashion than just hit a macro (probably lifted from a website telling you the proper way to play).

But stuff like that is also why I stay out of raiding, people can get demandy about you playing the 'right way'.

You rebel you.

Dicking around with my mage I've been using as a gatherer for my craftards.

Main solo setup is this one (http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0zvwR.xbo.xkcpVdo). I am also running a chloro build for dungeons that's worked out ok so far (mostly all chloro with a little warlock until I tweak it properly). After running IT a couple times, I was thinking about setting up the necro pet the way I set up the tank with Synthesis. I tried it last night (this build (http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0zvwR..xkcpVdo.xkhz)), once I got enough points to get my better pet (zam's builder is out of date, the rogue pet talent is different in game) and Synthesis. Though on testing, apparently life bound veil is better when synthesis is cast on the tank? Whatever, I tried both veils and the setup just was nowhere near as durable.

I thought it was odd that healing seemed much less of a problem with the necrolock build. I can only guess that the enhance charge building, speed of casting and mobility combined with Soul Purge is just too strong a setup. My MO with regular mobs is just tag the highest HP mob with Essence Link and maybe Spores for the pet to beat on and then I grab one to three other mobs and Necrosis/Dark Touch them. All that is instants, so very mobile. At that point I can pass around some Spores to the DoTed mobs to keep moving (phytogenesis would be nice here) or pick a spot and start blasting with Plague Bolt until I need to Soul Purge.

I pretty much never even have to use mana recovery at level 25 or whatever I am now.

Really, if you want to zomgdps, go rogue. The necrolock is amazingly survivable and the chloromancer has nice utility in a group, but my marksman/ranger/assassin rogue with the world event gun is retardedly OP compared to every other build I've tried across callings. The necrolock is a great soloer, but a bit slow to the markrangass (or whatever its called), and the kiting isn't as good...but then it doesn't really need to be. I originally had FD in the necrolock build but took it out because I used it so rarely.

Actually getting into Rift again brings home how restrictive TOR's classes seem to be. It's going to really chafe being stuck in a single role vs switching from dps to healer on the fly, or even just different dps builds for different situations. The soul/role system is just so damned good.

If you want to dps, be anything but a mage.  While mage ae dps is pretty competitive, a rogue/tank/cleric can out dps a mage with a button or two easily.  It's too much damn work to be a mage when your rotation requires perfect timing just to get within 20% of a rogue/war's single target dps.  

My mage just hit rank 6 in pvp and I may just give it up.  Warriors/rogues run the show in there as well. It seems like weapon dps scales much better than sp does in terms of dps output.

I like my cleric.  Sticking with a druid/shaman build for now.  It's one button faceroll with a high amount of survivability.   Perfect for leveling, although the satyr is a bit squishy.

Next patch is looking like I'll be going 40+ in druid or shaman.  Would be nice if shaman was on par with druid.  I'd rather not have to manage a pet.

Sadly true. Mages seem good early on in the gearing cycle when everyone has crappy stuff, but as I am moving up with my rogue, its kind of stupid how much easier it is compared to the mage. Even a "complex" sab rotation is much easier. Never mind the wonder that is the 1 button ranger/assassin/bladedancer.

The marksrangass was pretty decent before I got the shiny world event gun, but once I got that my finishers moved into something like 800 range, just ridiculous. Not looking forward to finally out-leveling that, since it's quest-based and I won't be getting into my 40s before the event ends.

But the mage is mostly for gathering for the craftards to twink my other characters. It's the way I played EQ2 and I got tired of playing the Wizard before I hit the level cap and never played my kitted out lowbies much. So I should probably learn from that and just play the rogue.

I have a warrior and cleric but I already played them to death in the 'beta' and I get tired of pug bullshit blame game crap. So nice to just sit back and pew pew.

They have a tendency to keep those things working. So, I might stock up several maps for after the event ends just in case.

I've got my Cleric up into the mid-30s but I'm having issues with elites, specifically some at the end of minor Rifts.  The damage build I'm currently running with (Inquisitor/Justicar) just started getting bowled over by elites these past few levels (or I guess I've started running into them more).

Ideally I'd like a caster-y option but I'm open to anything at the moment.

Edit: I'll add that I'm aware of Justicar/Shaman but from a playstyle standpoint that's almost the opposite of what I'd like.  Now that I've got a bit more of the vocabulary down, it does look like I'm sunk though.

The stage 5 bosses are tough. There's no way around it. When I was doing them, I mostly cycled life spells to keep up convictions and then spammed DoL as necessary. But even then, a couple of lucky crits will take you down. That's why I mostly stopped at stage 4 if I was doing them solo. I'd wait for the timer to complete and then kill them off to get the rift closing exp.

I don't remember what there is in the 30s, but you might want to look into the passive heal greater essences.

How far into Justicar are you? 11 points is about all you want for Reparation. I skip DoB.

Yeah, just up to Reparation (as I weirdly get LFG queues as damage more than half the time).  This is where I'm at now. (http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=00drj.Exobrt0qz.Vuzo)  I like DoB just because it's like 1/6 the cost of DoL.

Impede is all you need to solo level 5/6 rifts as an inquisitor. DoT the elite up, keep impede up at all times, and use fanaticism when you get instant cast bolt of depravities. Kite the enemy in circles, and use excommunicate when it gets too close. I've been able to solo every rift I've done so far on my 46 cleric with a inquisitor build.

Some elites (last bonus stage) are immune to slows and knockback, though. For those I just switched to a justicar tank build and ground them down. You do need to be inquisitor spec (fanaticism+soul drain) for most of the earlier stages, or you'll probably miss the timers...