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Title: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Falconeer on March 16, 2011, 01:48:10 AM
This is a QQ post. Mind, I do have a Riftblade character, and since I got Rift Surge I am owning faces in PvP. As if Riftblades weren't very good characters enough already (seriously, plate wearing rangers?) Rift Surge makes us ridiculously efficient in PvP. The problem is, it's a kind of efficiency enemies can't do anything against. For those who don't know, let me illustrate you what is Rift Surge:

- Rift Surge is a 1 point ability from the Riftblade soul.
- it's a tier 4 ability, it basically requires you to be level 30 I think.
- It's instant.
- It's ranged.
- It can't miss, and I've never seen it resisted.
- Cooldown is 10 seconds.
- It costs you 20 power.
- It costs you attack point, activates with one but you want to use it when you have 3 (which as a riftblade you have no problem getting since all you have to do is spam Flamespear from a distance)
- It applies a "curse" (debuff) on your target, lasting 15 seconds and damaging him/her every time he/she casts any spell OR ability for the next 5. Yes, even if they heal themselves.
- The damage is significant. At level 38 I hit for 300 a tick. It's 1500 damage over about 10 seconds (that's what it takes for many players to cast 5 abilities). That happens while I am STILL pummeling them with Flamespear.

How can they counter this? They can't. The only thing they can do, when they realize they have Rift Surge on themselves is STOP using abilities (geee.. auto attack?) and be sitting ducks while I roast them. If that wasn't horrible enough, REALIZING you have Rift Surge applied to you is hard (impossible?) enough as to only way to notice is having a pair of additional eyes stuck on the buff bar waiting and looking exactly for that.

Now, while I am all for giving them time to fix things, it's understandable that with 32 souls not everything can be perfectly balanced from the get go, I am a bit concerned about how they can fix things like this. Let me explain: what is supposed to force you to cycle through different abilities, and eventually having you choosing different kind of abilities is 1) cooldown 2) attack points 3) power/mana. Given the three conditions, I am always gonna use the most effective spell, right?

So, Rift Surge is almost always up, it costs the same attack points of any other Riftblade skill (basically making them all obsolete, unless I need AOE, or I need 5 more seconds for the cooldown to be over, but that's fine since the ability lasts 15 seconds on my target so a 10 seconds cooldown makes it "always up"), and it costs the same power thatn any other skill.

Now if that isn't OP I don't know what it is. What do you think? And how can they change it without impairing the Riftblade in PVE? I am under the impression that linking too many skills to the attack point mechanism without differentiating them enough make you want to use just one (not cool) and cannot be nerfed without risking to make it identical to the lesser powerful ones, or hurting the class in PvE.

Bottom line, I think there's something possibly broken here, and I really REALLY hope they'll find a way to fix it soon. The best would have been to have different effects/damages for PvE and PvP as EQ2 did. Without that, I really can't imagine how can it all been fixed. Mind, this is not a general balance concern, I really woldn't care. This is about a specific skill which is NO fun, as it forces you to die or not play for 10-15 seconds, and it's not really counterable.


Next, Saboteur Blast Charge, hitting for 1500-2000 (and more), instantly. How in hell am I supposed to realize I have charges on myself? How can I prevent that? What if I don't have dispell (which very few souls have anyway)? What re the drawbacks of beign a sabo, when you can actually feat up your charges and just use it as an "I win" button in so many circumstances?

Don't you think that, in PvP terms, super heavy hitting abilities like this shouldn't be that easy to let go (instant, castable while moving, very low power cost, very low recast)?

Finally, don't you think that a huge visual cue/indicator for abilities that affect yoru character so much could be helpful? Like a screen message flashing telling you "YOU HAVE RIFT SURGE ON YOU! CAREFUL!" or "YOU HAVE SABO CHARGES ON YOURSELF" DISPELL NOW IF YOU CAN!" - I know it sound immersion breaking, but I feel at the moment nothing is more imersion breaking than just having your character explode and not knowing exactly what hit him and why, and how easily. Plus, I am pretty sure someone will soon come up with an unofficial mod doing exactly that: informing you that you are surged/charged. If they don't plan to change those abilities, shouldn't we at least have more help from the UI in trying to counter it?

Finally, Crowd Control. Isn't a bit too much? Certain classes can just keep you perma-controlled. Nothing you can do about it. How is that even remotely fun? Is it me or the post-effect immunities are not enough, especially considering CCers just cycle through different ones to make sure to dodge the immunities.

I am very very interested in all your opinions.



Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Zetor on March 16, 2011, 02:26:08 AM
I've been pvping a bit at max level (hit 50 yesterday - yay for 4-day weekends?), and it's kind of not very fun... heck, I'll say it, WOW pvp is a lot more fun.

As a cleric, VKs can mana drain me to nothing [effectively removing me from the battle entirely] from 20 meters using only instants, and there is an insane amount of long-lasting aoe silences / stuns flying around. You think cc spam at the 30s is bad? Try sitting in 3 different forms of CC/silence for half a minute, with only a 5-minute (can be reduced to 2 mins with prestige) CC break. Welcome to Port Scion! :P

Most cc / casts have no distinct effects or animations and the buff/debuff display is terrible -- both of those things are very bad for battlefield awareness. (I posted about this during beta and also in the gripes thread) This can be fixed by a better UI [built-in SCT that doesn't suck, or power auras] or modding.

In general pvp is pretty badly balanced across callings/souls; I have a champion alt in the 20s using only quest gear, and it's ridiculous how easily I can obliterate anything that's not another warrior. Also a ton of AOE cc on very short cooldowns, such as champion fear, bard mez, saboteur / pyromancer stuns, etc. Not much finesse in choosing what to CC and focus fire, just fire off AOE CCs / AOE heals, try to gank something... and it works! Maybe this'll change when people get more familiar with their class abilities?

As a note, dispelling blast charges is a losing battle - cleric GCD is 1.5 seconds and sabo GCD is 1 second. The cleric actually spends mana doing the dispels, and not doing anything else (if you're spam dispelling, you're not healing). The "remove all debuff" type dispel from purifier works, but it has a 45sec cooldown. The only solution is focus firing the saboteur.


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Typhon on March 16, 2011, 05:11:41 AM
My thoughts:

I'd rather see abilities tuned in a way that encourages thoughtful application, rather then just spamming them on cooldown.

- I like your suggestion of better (and optional, default to on) UI elements warning the player of negative effects that they can/may be able to modify based upon their response.  "RIFTSURGE damages you for X from casting spellY (Z seconds remain)!", appearing in the middle of the screen.

- (I have a Riftblade as well, he's my main) I'd make it more situational by making it so that the Riftblade cannot gain charges while the Riftblade is applied to other players (leave it alone for PvE, tune some mobs to stop casting, some to dispel).  Make the Riftblade want to think about whether to apply it or not.  This plus better intel to the effected player should bring the ability inline.


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Threash on March 16, 2011, 07:05:20 AM

How can they counter this? They can't.


Utter bollocks.  There are shit tons of ways to counter it, as a warrior i have at least four.  Riftblades are free kills atm, i finish them at full health in my pvp spec.  Blast charge is a different matter, but ironically if you want a very easy counter to them just look 12 points deep into the riftblade root abilities.


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Koyasha on March 16, 2011, 07:07:36 AM
I hate the idea of screen warnings popping up for that.  It's nonsense that people now expect it to happen in PvE, (something that never would have happened if UI customization were kept to UI customization, not running entire programs and doing completely new stuff) but to have it happen in PvP?  On the other hand, Rift does a pretty bad job with spell graphics.  This is the kind of thing that should be taken care of by a unique-looking spell graphic.  You see that hit you, you know something bad has happened.  However, Rift's spell graphics tend to be bland or even nonexistent at times.  I'd like to see this problem fixed by making the graphics much more distinctive.  Certain spells - the ones that can really screw you over - should have very obvious animations both for the caster and for the target.  That way you see someone doing That Thing You Hate, you can murder their face off quickly.  Alternately, if you see yourself hit by That Thing You Hate, you can react appropriately.  Other types of spells should also be pretty distinct - this is something WoW really got right, for example with the very obvious 'he's healing' spell graphics.  Or 'he's casting a CC'.

The buff display should also be way, way better.  Right now it's hard to tell what buffs you have on, and what debuffs you have on, and as usual for these default UI's, they appear as funky icons instead of clearly listed buff/debuff names.  Even back in EQ as soon as they put in the XML customizable interface I had my buffs display nice little blue bars, debuffs display red bars, with the name of the buff/debuff on it, not just icons that you need to mouseover to have any idea what's on you.

Saboteur charges should be balanced by making them easier to dispel.  Dispel an entire stack at once, so that it's more of a tactical game - will they blow it before reaching max stack, or will they wait?  When to dispel?  Give the dispel say, a cooldown based on how many debuffs it's dispelled, but make it work backwards - the more buffs it dispels, the lower the cooldown.  You dispel early, you get a cooldown long enough for the saboteur to reapply the stack and blow it, most likely.  Dispel too late and, well, it's already blown.  Possibly also spreading dispel mechanics around to some more souls, I think there's a rather limited number of souls who can do it at all.  Also, Rift Surge?  It's the perfect counter to saboteurs, cause they tend to be constantly spamming one ability every second, and every time I've used it on one of them he blows himself up immediately, sometimes four or five times in a row during the same battle (you'd think they'd figure out what's happening by the second or third time, but they just keep trying to stack charges on me like nothing's happened, and I usually kill them before they manage to explode the charges).

As for rift surge, I'm pretty sure it's dispellable.  You dispel it yourself you take damage from one hit, but avoid the rest.  Get someone else to dispel it, you take no damage at all.  Unlike saboteur charges it does have a cooldown on it, so it can't be instantly reapplied.  The entire tactic is instantly shut down as long as you're facing a competent opponent who can dispel themselves/get dispels.  Beyond that, if they made the spell graphics unique and distinct I don't think the mechanic needs much, if any change.  At most, bump it up to a 20 second cooldown.

The biggest problem I see in Rift PvP right now is not being able to discern that Important Stuff is happening.  Change that, and the tools the players have for dealing with that stuff can actually start getting used properly.  Without the immediate visual input of distinct flashy stuff, we're left stumbling as to exactly what's happening to us and our allies.


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Zetor on March 16, 2011, 07:17:48 AM
Yep... that entire lack of animations / spell effects thing is one of the worst gripes for me, I think I posted about 4 times on it in this forum alone. Really, the only spells that 'work' with respect to battlefield awareness (that don't have obvious physical effects like knockbacks) are transmogrify, the various beam spells (there aren't too many), friendly traps, and *maybe* slumber (you see the 'ZZZ's next to the victim's head, but from a distance they just seem as if they were standing still).

Just take a simple example: WOW priest psychic scream vs RIFT inquisitor trepidation. Both of them fear enemies around the priest/cleric for 8 sec.

If a priest uses PS, they get a noticable animation (priest actually doing a 'scream'), spell effect (expanding purple field around the priest's feet), sound effect (both the spell itself and the 'feared' sound effect if anyone was hit), after-effect (people actually running around in fear with the fear icon above their head, even). If a warrior breaks it with berserker rage, there's a visual effect (red face thing) and sound effect (same as bloodrage, etc; but in this situation it's obvious), and a visual aftereffect (the victim stops running immediately).

Trepidation? I can't always tell if it worked even if I'm soloing in pve. There's no animation, there's a "crack"-like spell effect and some black particles (those don't stand out, really), whoever is hit has no visible indication at all: keeps moving at normal run speed, sometimes changing direction, sometimes not. Is is that guy running towards our flag carrier to gank him, or did I hit him with the fear? No indication if/when it breaks early, either.

... And this was an instant cast spell! You could have much better animations for spells with casting times.

This can be applied to any number of other abilities, too. Did that warrior just use proper timing? (never mind that 95% of them just macro it to titan strike) In WOW if a warrior pops recklessness, there's a definite visual / audio cue. Same if they go defensive and pop shield wall.

edit: one way to 'fix' saboteurs (other than the obvious dispel-entire-stack-with-1-dispel thing) would be to have a clear visual effect on the target increasing with the # of charges. Something like bombs sticking to the armor with various 'bur' type fx, and at 5 charges it becomes really obvious that "it's gonna blow!!!".


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Nebu on March 16, 2011, 08:01:38 AM
Having to watch your interface in pvp completely ruins situational awareness.  When playing DAoC, I would pan constantly such that I was spaced well and could pre-kite any incoming melee.  Rift forces me to focus too much attention on the interface to see what cc/buffs/debuffs are going on.  It kills my ability as a cloth wearer and/or healer to play the game to my potential.  Plate wearers and classes with high evade rates don't suffer this nearly as much particularly since their dps also doesn't require them to stand still for a 2-3s cast time.

Right now pvp is too heavily weighted toward melee, has too many mana drain abilities, and has too many spammable abilities.  Pvp requires longer cooldowns to force players to use abilities situationally.  Right now there are too many classes that can faceroll to victory.  If I'm to be successful as a caster or healer in pvp, I require a very good group to keep me on my feet and I need to play at least twice as well as my melee counterparts to be similar in effectiveness.  It's a balance issue that may be resolved in time, but is a bit weighted at the moment.  If you don't believe me, I encourage you to play a caster in pvp for a while and then play a melee.  See which you are consistently more successful with.  Having to stand still to use half of your arsenal puts you huge disadvantage.  I won't even comment on scaling issues. 


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: kaid on March 16, 2011, 08:13:33 AM
That is one main gripe of mine in pvp. The seething mass of buffs debuffs once pvp gets going makes it really hard to see at a glance what exactly you are being hit with. Unless you know what the icons look like you may not notice that a sab is slapping charges on you. The particle effect of them launching the trap charge is pretty damn minimal and easy to not see in combat.

The fear animation or lack there of is kind of annoying because you can be feared and not even realize it for a second or two if it just happens to randomly continue in the direction you were going. At least the stun/daze effects are very noticable givin the way it makes your screen go all screwy but other things are very very mild effects. Such as the sap graphic at any distance its a total bitch to notice the lil halo around their head.


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Lakov_Sanite on March 16, 2011, 08:18:22 AM
If I go into pvp with my reaver, I alone can put 5 debuffs on everyone around me. Four of them are dots and one of them is an undispellable aura. Add to this the single target debuffs i put on whoever I'm attacking and I think the total goes up to 7, maybe 8? Shit even I lose track and that just from a single player in pvp.


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Draegan on March 16, 2011, 08:46:39 AM
I can't wait until a buff/debuff UI overhaul.  It's easily the worst thing about the game.

Then again I don't do much PVP so..  :awesome_for_real:


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Morfiend on March 16, 2011, 09:02:42 AM
I can't wait until a buff/debuff UI overhaul.  It's easily the worst thing about the game.

I agree with this. Their buff display is just craptastic.


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Modern Angel on March 16, 2011, 09:22:33 AM
The only thing that's making the Saboteur QQ so loud is the UI. Seriously, that's it. One cleric with poison removal can shut down a Saboteur. Not the shut down that means the Saboteur has a hard time. I mean completely, 100% make the Saboteur useless outside of the lower damage bomb cooldowns.

The second it's more obvious that charges are on a person is the second Saboteurs become middling. Pubbies will still fuck it up, because pubbies have never cleansed in any game, ever, but in any sort of high skill PvP Saboteurs will be back with everyone else.


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Comstar on March 16, 2011, 09:43:55 AM
Right now pvp is too heavily weighted toward melee, has too many mana drain abilities, and has too many spammable abilities.  Pvp requires longer cooldowns to force players to use abilities situationally.  Right now there are too many classes that can faceroll to victory.  If I'm to be successful as a caster or healer in pvp, I require a very good group to keep me on my feet and I need to play at least twice as well as my melee counterparts to be similar in effectiveness.  It's a balance issue that may be resolved in time, but is a bit weighted at the moment.  If you don't believe me, I encourage you to play a caster in pvp for a while and then play a melee.  See which you are consistently more successful with.  Having to stand still to use half of your arsenal puts you huge disadvantage.  I won't even comment on scaling issues. 

Why aren't your melee pvpers engaging their melee pvpers? Is there no way for your team to stop their team rushing past the front line to where the support people (ie archers/skirmishers/missile troops/healers) are standing?


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Pennilenko on March 16, 2011, 09:46:12 AM
Why aren't your melee pvpers engaging their melee pvpers? Is there no way for your team to stop their team rushing past the front line to where the support people (ie archers/skirmishers/missile troops/healers) are standing?

Because they suck and are not organized? All i hear in this thread is bad poorly organized pvpers bitching about being bad and poorly organized.


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Lakov_Sanite on March 16, 2011, 09:53:24 AM
Why aren't your melee pvpers engaging their melee pvpers? Is there no way for your team to stop their team rushing past the front line to where the support people (ie archers/skirmishers/missile troops/healers) are standing?

Because they suck and are not organized? All i hear in this thread is bad poorly organized pvpers bitching about being bad and poorly organized.

have you played this game?


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Nebu on March 16, 2011, 10:03:58 AM
Because they suck and are not organized? All i hear in this thread is bad poorly organized pvpers bitching about being bad and poorly organized.

Do you play a healer or a cloth caster?  I can tell you this very plainly: I have to play my caster/healer perfectly to be almost as effective as a mouth-breather facerolling a warrior. 

If you want to post LRN2PLY, at least be specific about your counter argument.  Having to fucking stand perfectly still for 2s to cast a spell in this game feels like an eternity regardless of the quality of my team.  Instas and HoTs aren't enough to deal with spike damage, particularly when faced with opponents that know wtf they are doing.  Add spammable mana drains to the equation and playing a mana-dependent class gets doubly frustrating.


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Zetor on March 16, 2011, 10:18:44 AM
Modern Angel: I already said that cleansing doesn't shut a sab down [at least it 50 it doesn't]. Cleric GCD is 1.5 seconds, saboteur GCD is 1 second. Cleric also uses mana to dispel (however little). You -can- shut down a saboteur if you have the purge-everything thing from purifier... every 45 seconds. Warden has a cleanse-over-time that's way too slow, and sentinel has an AOE cleanse (that's actually pretty useful). I've spam cleansed sabs in the past (while running away and trying to los them), they just put on more charges. CC and killing the sab is the way to shut them down... killing is actually kinda easy since they're squishy. It's still bad design IMO.

Now of course, you can cleanse one stack of the charge before detonate to take off the edge, or even cleanse one of the many charge types when a sab is doing the 'put one charge of everything and use a skill that does over 9000 damage' thing. That part is fine. Hell, the damage itself isn't unhealable (I'm not afraid of sabs at 50, warriors, marksmen and freakin PYROMANCERS are more deadly), but almost-unavoidable backloaded damage is just ugh.

edit: I guess what I mean is -- you can 'shut down' an inquisitor by cleansing (most of their dps is from dots), and you can 'shut down' a healer by having a VK/dominator (but especially VK) look sternly at them. You can sort of shut down a warrior by having a stormcaller / dominator mess up their day, and sorta shut down a bard's healing by concentrated focus fire that their aoe smart heals can't keep up with. You can reduce the effectiveness of a saboteur at the cost of giving up your cleric's healing for the duration.
Why aren't your melee pvpers engaging their melee pvpers? Is there no way for your team to stop their team rushing past the front line to where the support people (ie archers/skirmishers/missile troops/healers) are standing?

Because they suck and are not organized? All i hear in this thread is bad poorly organized pvpers bitching about being bad and poorly organized.
I love posts like this. When I see Ssjlegolaskeyboardturner from Backpedalia 2-shot someone, that doesn't mean the victim is "bad". If you care so much about 'skill', read any number of posts made by multi-gladiator posters playing RIFT, you'll see many of the points in this thread there as well.

Or just play pvp at 50. Port "Crowd Control" Scion awaits!  :awesome_for_real:


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Comstar on March 16, 2011, 10:58:24 AM
have you played this game?

Only as a Bard playing (literally) full support at levels under 30. I've learned that standing out in front gets me killed, if the fighters in front get killed I need to retreat, and staying at the back providing support both allows my team to win and me to not die. When we're obviously winning I switch to a Stealth NB/Assn build and hang around the flanks looking for someone who's watching their front and not their flank/rear (or someone doing the same thing by themselves at a flag, or help cover one of our guys doing the same thing).

I've also seen teams where the guys in full plate/shields are up front, the squishy people in the back, covered on all sides, and been pretty much impenetrable to get too. 

For level 50 PvP, if both sides are doing Crowd Control/Stuns/Slows - doesn't that make the Warriors pretty helpless and negates a lot of the complaints?




Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Threash on March 16, 2011, 11:06:21 AM
It does.  I make sure i have several cc breakers on pvp builds, trying to cover all kinds but it isn't always possible.


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: kildorn on March 16, 2011, 04:17:25 PM

How can they counter this? They can't.


Utter bollocks.  There are shit tons of ways to counter it, as a warrior i have at least four.  Riftblades are free kills atm, i finish them at full health in my pvp spec.  Blast charge is a different matter, but ironically if you want a very easy counter to them just look 12 points deep into the riftblade root abilities.


Unless this was silently fixed, the only way to remove Rift Surge is any ability that removes all negative effects.

The issue is while it says it's a curse, it's actually a physical debuff, which means it's not dispellable. Most classes do not have abilities which strip ALL debuffs.

The problem with Rift Surge is that it's a death sentence to anything that isn't a tank of some form, entirely because the only counter is "don't cast" for most people. The most effective way to "deal" with rift surge is to CC the riftblade(and hope he didn't pick up any of the anti CC cooldowns littered in the warrior trees) and wait it out.


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Falconeer on March 16, 2011, 04:56:47 PM
Exactly. And that skill would be overpowered enough even if it was flashing bright yellow on your screen. But in the actual state it's just a joke. And I have it, since I am a warrior, but I still think it's crap.


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Threash on March 16, 2011, 05:38:52 PM
What levels are we talking about here? riftblades drop off majorly in damage output at higher levels, i do 2-3 times as much damage as a champion or paragon.  In the 40s riftsurge is like 200X5 damage, that is not a death sentence on anyone, that is not even 25% of my hps and its spread out.  I was planing on using 32 riftblade 26 void knight 8 paladin as my pvp build but the damage is kinda sad compared to what the physical damage souls put out.  titan's blow hits for 1500 to 5 targets, i've gotten death blow to crit for 3k.  Riftblades rock the lower levels but their damage totally peters out and does not scale at all with gear, it is really more of a utility soul you use for planar blade, shadow step, silence and avatar of water.


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Falconeer on March 16, 2011, 06:45:03 PM
I am 39 and my Rift Surge is about 270x5. If yours hit 200x5 in your 40s you are doing Rift wrong.


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Threash on March 16, 2011, 07:11:00 PM
It's not like i was looking at the screen, i knew it was 200 something.  Fine, 270 so your finisher just did 1350 damage to me over however long i choose, out of my 4500 hit points.  Still not a death sentence, still lower than what the other warrior souls can do instantly, it can still be dispelled by some classes and completely absorbed by void knights.  I loved the riftblade while leveling too, it just doesn't hold up in the damage department later.


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: kildorn on March 16, 2011, 09:32:59 PM
It's not like i was looking at the screen, i knew it was 200 something.  Fine, 270 so your finisher just did 1350 damage to me over however long i choose, out of my 4500 hit points.  Still not a death sentence, still lower than what the other warrior souls can do instantly, it can still be dispelled by some classes and completely absorbed by void knights.  I loved the riftblade while leveling too, it just doesn't hold up in the damage department later.

Hint: your spec probably has a VK, Reaver, or Pally in it.

It's a death sentence to anyone who isn't a TANK.  It's "you will either take a third or half your hp in damage if you try and cast, or you have to let the RB beat on you for the next 10 seconds"

The problem is that other warrior souls, you can usually do something about them (as hard as it is to kite a champion, they can only hurt you in melee range), whereas an RB can shut down your kiting attempts by having somewhat of a range, and the ability to punish you for casting.

Essentially, assume you have 3000 hp (mage/non tank HP at 40) You are going to take ~1500 damage no crits if you do anything to someone attacking you. They have about 30% more health than you. So, you need to make up for a hp deficit from the start, AND you have to spend large amounts of your time doing so by not casting.

Rift Surge: warriors don't give much of a shit about it. Mages just die (lack of a tank soul to just suck it up and take it, about the only thing a mage can do about it is channel soul purge and hope the RB is dumb enough to not interrupt it, or instant squirrel and hope the RB doesn't have any CC breaks), most rogues just die (lower GCD and almost entirely instants, rift surge murders rogues), most clerics just die (barring tanks)

It's.. just an absurd ability. It's like throwing a 10 second disarm with a 20s cooldown around in the mage souls and wondering why warriors would get upset.


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Threash on March 16, 2011, 09:43:57 PM
Sigh... it is LESS DAMAGE THAN INSTANT FINISHERS.  I don't have any tank souls on my pvp spec, it's 32champion/29paragon/5vindicator or 44paragon/22champion.  Honestly, you are complaining about the wrong soul here.  I HAVE played a riftblade most of the time leveling up, it is very disappointing at higher levels as anything other than utility.  Each tick of riftsurge does less than any of spammable abilities, even when i played riftblade using my mana burn finisher from vk was a lot more effective on casters than rift surge.


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Ice Cream Emperor on March 16, 2011, 10:21:32 PM
titan's blow hits for 1500 to 5 targets, i've gotten death blow to crit for 3k. 

On players? Who are wearing gear?

Man I must be playing my champion wrong, I don't even hit mobs for that. Amusingly enough champion is so OP that despite apparently doing half the damage the spec is capable of, I still roll over flag carriers and generally smash things at will despite my lackluster DPS. Frankly I could just have Bull's Rush, the snare, and the AoE fear and no DPS at all and I would still feel pretty effective in PvP.


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Arinon on March 17, 2011, 12:31:53 AM
I'm in the high 40's on my warrior and had the same experience Threash is talking about concerning the Riftblade.  I levelled up as one and in the 20s and 30s bracket did very well.  As soon as you hit the 40s it becomes perfectly clear that you either take a physical damage soul or you go VK and target mana bars.  I think this is mostly a consequence of healing being out of balance, both ways.  I don't know about the really organized PvP but when queuing with a buddy or two opponents are either impenetrable brick walls or they fold up after the alpha strike.  I can never really wear anyone down, it's either one or the other.  So the two responses to that are kill before they know they need to heal (Champ/Para) or deal with the ability to heal directly (VK).

I'm starting to see the same thing on my rogue.  I'm dreading the moment when he rolls over to level 40.

As for CC, why did we move away from total lock-outs and into diminishing returns again?  Just give people 4-5 times the CC duration in immunity time to said CC and call it a day.  I haven't had any major CC issues so far but if the 50 bracket is full of chain CC it's going to get old fast.


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Threash on March 17, 2011, 06:56:16 AM
titan's blow hits for 1500 to 5 targets, i've gotten death blow to crit for 3k. 

On players? Who are wearing gear?

Man I must be playing my champion wrong, I don't even hit mobs for that. Amusingly enough champion is so OP that despite apparently doing half the damage the spec is capable of, I still roll over flag carriers and generally smash things at will despite my lackluster DPS. Frankly I could just have Bull's Rush, the snare, and the AoE fear and no DPS at all and I would still feel pretty effective in PvP.

Hint: there is a reason i went champion/paragon.


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Ginaz on March 17, 2011, 11:56:31 AM
I did some pvp the past few days with both a riftblade centric warrior and a rogue that was primarily sab.  Both did incredible damage and and the sab esp. was able to take people down from full health to dead with 2 detonations of a full stack of blast charge.  However, my rogue is only 18 and my warrior is 33, so I'm going to reserve me judgement on pvp until max level. 

On a side note, I had great time healing as a bard.  I was always the top healer in the war fronts and usually in the top 10 for damage (granted out of only 20 people).  There were a few times where I did 35k+ healing and the next closest was around 15k.


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Azuredream on March 17, 2011, 12:35:10 PM
After doing a bit of PvP at 50 (my cluster is Lotham/Faeblight/Sunrest) 70% of the team (on both sides) is usually comprised of Pyro/Champ/Sab. Clerics are usually running healing builds. Sometimes I see a few tank specs or a chloromancer. But those 3 souls, Pyro/Champ/Sab are all very easy to play and very effective. I'm sure nerfs will be incoming, but until then I'll keep rolling with my Pyro in WFs.


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Falconeer on March 17, 2011, 04:16:20 PM
Sigh... it is LESS DAMAGE THAN INSTANT FINISHERS. 

How is 1500 damage at level 39 less damage than instant finishers?


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Threash on March 17, 2011, 04:50:42 PM
I'm not level 39.  I never denied riftblade is good in the 2x/3x brackets.  But while other souls damage ramps up exponentially riftblades get their static +12 damage or so per ability every 5 levels or so and fall far behind extremely fast.  You'll still be doing that exact same damage all the way to 50.  If its that big an issue right now then spec 26 points into void knight and laugh as they do zero damage to you.


Title: Re: Rift Surge, Blast Charge, and PVP
Post by: Segoris on March 17, 2011, 05:02:31 PM
I'm not level 39.  I never denied riftblade is good in the 2x/3x brackets.  But while other souls damage ramps up exponentially riftblades get their static +12 damage or so per ability every 5 levels or so and fall far behind extremely fast.  You'll still be doing that exact same damage all the way to 50.  If its that big an issue right now then spec 26 points into void knight and laugh as they do zero damage to you.

^this. At level 50 it is only around 2k damage at max for non-critt (meaning at most its 3k if you are incredibly lucky and have all 5 charges crit).