f13.net

Highlights:

- Level 50 Alternative Leveling is in
- Level 50 single/duo versions of end-game raid content
- Level 50 'Master'-dungeons.  If dungeons were normal, heroic were normal+, master would be normal++
- PvP Accolades.  Completing bonus objectives in battle grounds gives the player and team bonus cash and prizes.

I lot of this is really appealing to me.  Nice to see Trion give the casual people some love after 4 mega patches of raid content.

Any word on when add-ons will be going live?

I don't think its duo/solo versions of the raid content, it is something completely different.

Iirc, you need to unlock the solo/duo stuff with the regular version first, too.

wat

1 and 4 are interesting but not enough to get me to resub. 

If that's true, then the developers are dumber than I thought.

You are all wrong.  You hit l or k our something and you get instantly telported to the instancw.  Currently there is one for hk and gsb ans gives almost raid loot.  

They are open to everyone.

They take place in the raid zones.

You fight some of the raid bosses altered for solo or duo play.

You dont have to unlock anything.

How was I wrong?  I think my statement was spot on.  

Thanks for the info!

Well you would be right if everyone else wasnt wrong!

I may or may not give it a whirl.  What server is everyone on?

Bat Country is on Threesprings, Guardian. I have a couple guys there but was mostly playing Defiant on Shadefallen (rp-pve).

And in the spirit of putting my money where my mouth it, I re-newbed to Rift to get a character to 50 to check out the solo content implementation. Didn't take me long to remember how much fun a necrolock can be...

Yah, I'm a little tempted to get my druid or rogue to 50 now.   :|

The 1.5 patch is on the test server. I haven't copied my 50 to it, but they've set the xp for monster kills to what seems like 10x normal. (I got a rogue to 12 in 45 minutes, but am not wanting to test the full leveling slope -- but seems doable.)

What is lvl 50 alternative advancement?
And solo/duo raid content?  That's...pretty awesome actually!

Can't go back to Rift just yet though, prepping my toons for Rise of Isengard.

So far it's every 500k xp gets you 100 points and there a grid with abilities that cost 100-150 pts.  They give you slight bonuses and you can fill up to three tiers of grids.

Anything that would impact pvp?

http://www.riftjunkies.com/2011/09/02/planar-attunement-quick-peek/

Thats the Rogue stuff.  Only changes was that the 30 dps per weapon type was a bug and it's actually 0.3

Screw it I resubbed since a beta in another game is on hold atm and I need something to do.  Saw whats on test and spent last 2 days filling my quest log full of completed quests I can hand in on patch day for alt adv type stuffs.  Am I playing this right? 

Don't know when patch day will be, but sounds like the right approach. I've just stopped taking/completing any new quests on my 50 and focusing on other things (raid rifts and invasions/events mainly).

Remember daily quests do not count towards the 25 quest cap, you can have unlimited number of them.

prolly dumb question: are any of the non-50 instances availbale to solo? (within a reasonable level limit)

Right now? No unless you are way overlevel.

Thanks for talking me out of trying this!  :awesome_for_real:

Fun game with a group.  Solo, not so much.  Pretty much standard operating procedure for an MMO.  The trip to 50 isn't bad, but after WoW, EQ2, and LotRO it's really nothing mind-blowing.  The soul system is the primary redeeming feature.  It can keep you entertained during the trip with cheap respecs.  I also enjoyed pvp from level 10 on. 

It's really the best diku out there right now, either that sounds appealing or it doesn't.

Ive played this game solo since launch and its ok for a while but once you get 50, work out specs, get your alt to 50 and do your 1000th pvp game you've pretty much beat the game from a solo standpoint.  I resubbed for the alt adv stuffs but this is all just filler until X MMO launches. 

PTS Patch Notes are up for 1.5.

Looks like there will be a solo path for gear up through T2 Experts.

Rift events will drop Inscribed Sourcestone where you will be able to buy T2 Expert gear along with epic essences etc.

Sweet.

Rogue changes are pretty hot actually, bout time we got some love.  Looking forward to that going live.  Tired of Warriors in rank 6+ gear detroying everything, no reason rogues shouldnt be able to do the same. 

I can't decide on the T2 via rift mechanic. I like the focus on the titular rifts. But they need to do something for actual rift spawning. It can be a real pain in the ass finding an available tear when you want one or many. Additionally, there are only two available per zone for a total of six and there's nothing terribly interesting about them other than the Stillmoor Perdeen one. The Iron Pine protect the guy one is a little different, but still kind of meh. Setting aside how annoying they can be, I liked some of the alternate modes from the RoS world event rifts - the be in the light and the kill the right things ones in particular. There was an interesting one in Droughtlands too, something about opening boxes.

On the rogue thing, they look good for when I am not raiding, but as a raiding bard, I am thoroughly underwhelmed. I still need to go 51 into bard and pick up a shit ton of useless crap to get Verse of Joy. My heals still suck ass and are overwhelmed by my lvl 42 epic essence that everyone buys with shards.

The rogue changes concern me with regard to pvp.  Rogues already have the ability to pick their fights and escape when they don't see an outcome they like.  I think that rogues should have to make the hard decision between high dps and stealth, not have both.  If you get to pick fights and escape with stealth, then this should come at the cost of dps. 

On the bright side, playing my MM is going to be laughably easy.  I was killing rank 6+ players at rank 3.  If they up my dps even more, kiting morons will be stupid easy.   

I was leaning real heavy MM with my solo pve build, which was originally ranger-heavy. The runeguard world event guns are ridiculous with MM, though I imagine they don't stand up to raid gear.

Rogues being underpowered(at least in comparison to high rank warriors mages and clerics) was why we had to pick our fights :P  As the devs stated rogues shouldnt have to re-stealth to win a fight...simply shouldnt be part of the rotation needed to win.  Rogues should be as aggressive as warriors are and not in the position where we do less dmg then warriors and we wear leather. 

As for bards, they still suck and I dont understand why they keep getting bypassed like they are fine. 

Have you played another class in endgame pvp?  The problem with giving stealthers so much power is that they can kill any non-rank 8 target before stuns wear off.  They can do this with impunity.  While that may be a lot of fun for the rogue, it sucks for any other class.  Having played mage, rogue, and cleric in endgame pvp I can tell you that rogue stealthers, particularly those above rank 6, are already plenty deadly when played well.  If they get much more powerful, good players will dominate pvp just as well-played warriors already dominate.  Rogue stuns being able to be used simultaneously will make them ridiculously powerful at higher rank. 

Stuns? are you playing the right game? I play a warrior, clerics are unkillable and rogues are free health potions waiting to happen.  They needed major buffs.

My mage is rank 7 (almost 8), my two clerics are rank 3, my rogue is rank 3.  I am always top 3 in wf's for damage and kb's on my rogue and it's stupid easy to get compared to my mage.  Then again, I only play MM since rogues are too squishy to play melee.  A well-played high rank rogue can kill my rank 3 cleric without issue if my timers are down.  They have two stuns that they can use back to back.  I don't recall the names off hand.  My mage deals with the same issue, but has more timers and better gear so they aren't an issue.

I agree that rogues are underpowered compared to warriors at rank 8, but that's how it should be.  Warriors can't stealth or vanish. 

Not sure what game you play and yes I also play a cleric, rank 4.  My cleric even at rank 4 is stupid hard to kill, usually takes 2-3 people and / or a high rank DPS player.  A rank 6 rogue cant kill a rank 6 cleric because the cleric has 1000 valor(40% dmg reduction), retarded HP and infinite heals.  A rank 6 rogue cant kill a rank 6 warrior because they have 1000 valor(40% dmg reduction) + high armor + full self heal, block block block, etc.  Rogues needed a buff, they dont scale as well at higher levels as clerics and warriors do.  Clerics continue to benefit from valor moreso then any other class and warriors get retarded high armor + valor that reduces our dmg down to half normal or less. 

Rogues get stealth, warriors get plate..I think maybe you forgot so just reminder :P 

I like how they nerfed cross-armor fitting for Warriors wearing leather and Clerics wearing cloth  :awesome_for_real:

Solid troll attempt.  I'll check back occasionally just in case you want to discuss something.

By all means lets continue the discussion of how rogues deserve to suck because one of their souls has a 32 point vanish.

What rank is your rogue?  

I think this becomes a philosophical debate.  I happen to think that a rank 8 rogue shouldn't be able to go toe-to-toe with a rank 8 warrior in melee.  That's not what they're built for. Rogues can disrupt healers, can drop dps mages in a heartbeat, and kill other rogues.  That's their perceived role in a wf.   Rock-paper-scissors is a very common balancing scheme in mmo pvp.  

I also encourage you to play the other classes.  It's pretty interesting to see things from the other perspective.

Dam, never knew Warriors should come with a Win button

You're on a roll.  

I kill warriors all the time.  I do it with a ranged spec.  I do agree that warriors need some adjustments.  I just don't think melee damage is the problem that I have with them. 

The point is warriors surpass some threshold once they achieve a certain rank / gear level where they enter some secret club of uberness and the only classes allowed in are clerics and warriors. 

My solution is to fix warriors, not make other classes more powerful. 

What's your issue with clerics?  The only thing I don't like is that they will always win a drawn out 1v1 if specced correctly and played well.  The game isn't about 1v1 balance.  It's about team vs team balance and both teams have access to identical classes. 

For what it's worth, it looks like Bloodthirsty is getting a serious nerf.  That will do a bit to decrease the power of warriors, particularly in high kill wf's. 

Don't worry the high dps builds don't even get slip away.  And unless Rogues were going up against someone not in a PVP spec and had no PVP gear on, the rogue was probably losing.

Rogues were crap in warfronts or any other group oriented pvp.

Edit:
More to add.  Rogues can not kill clerics or mages, unless it's some open world vs. a noob bullshit.  I can get top damage in WFs with my PVE gear easily but I don't actually kill anyone.  Essentially I just tab until I find a target that has low max hps, which meant no valor and just attacked them. 

There were some WFs where the other side had a ton of high rank players and I would do a ton of damage, but that ton of damage was easily healed by a single cleric doing AOE heals.

I'm not sure we're playing the same game here.  Rogue's Slip Away is on a 2 minute cooldown.  So every two minutes the rogue can get away IF the rogue has other cooldowns to remove DOTs.  If he doesn't, then he pops out of stealth after the immunity.

It's silly really.  Rogues have 7 other souls, to say Rogues should have shit damage, mitigation and survability vs. a Warrior because of a single ability on a 2m cooldown is ludicrous.

Now if I could get Slip Away on a 10 second cooldown, sure. But c'mon.  Rogues don't have enough burst to double stun kill someone with over 6k hps and some valor.  That never happens unless you're going up against someone with crap gear, PVE spec, or afk.

Dont think Nebu is playing the same Rift as we are Draegan

I think we approach pvp MMO's differently.  You should also know that Draegan has admitted that he isn't into PvP. 

I didn't say that.  I said that a rogue should expect to lose a toe-to-toe melee battle with a warrior.  Warriors are meant to be the kings of melee.  That's why they lack the finesse tools that rogues have.  The job of stealth is to allow a rogue to pick off high dps targets on the fringe and cause trouble to healers on the fringe.  Rogues have been in pvp MMOs primarily to negate high dps ranged classes.  That's what the stealth was given to them for.  It's a means to close the distance gap on ranged classes.  

Slip away is a tool that should allow a rogue to get out of Dodge and not a tool used to reapply attacks from stealth.  It was very poorly implemented.  

I've played my rogue a lot and it does very well in the wf's, even at low rank.  I refuse to play melee at low rank because there's no reason to.  I can kill more effectively at range or bring more to the group by being a bard.  To be 100% fair, my knowledge of high rank melee rogues comes from being on the receiving end of them.  The well-played ones do just fine.  

Are you suggesting that rogues should be equal to warriors and have stealth?  That would ruin the game, especially for anyone of lower rank.  The WF's would be filled with hordes of rogues killing people in a few GCD's after unstealthing.  

As of late I have to be far too selective with my targets.  I look at HP, gear, etc and know if I will win a fight or not before it starts.  Not saying as a rank 6 rogue with full rank 6 gear that I should beat everyone, but I shouldnt have to cower knowing I cant beat a cleric or warrior whos rank 6 as well.  I know I wont beat them without using slip away and with it there is a slim chance.  Of course this is dependent on what their spec is, etc but most go cookie cutter and have the best PvP specs if they are in warfronts.  Ideally what you and I think of all of this is illrelevent, Trion in their own words said what I am telling you, they recognized the issue and decided to buff rogues to correct it and fact is they are correct, rogues need a buff.  Nerfign warriors isnt a great solution because a lot of the rogue problems come from stupid mechanics which they are also correcting...ie rangers / marksman who do better dmg standing still.

How do you think that mages do against a rank 8 war or cleric?  We don't have stealth.  If I exploit broken dominator mechanics, I can do it but I refuse to play a dom spec.  Storm is a pretty strong spec for dps, but the survivability is terrible.  Necro relies on a pet that warriors treat as a free heal (bloodthirsty).  That leaves two specs a mage can play without relying on a dedicated cleric: full chloro or a chloro/lock.  Full lock isn't terrible either, but much of that comes from the fact that archmage is an overpowered soul once you hit rank 5.  

This is why I play a MM.  I can kite better, do more damage, and have far more escape tools.  Having played a mage since beta, I feel like rogues are more effective and easier to play (from range). The only reason I play my mage anymore is because some premade is farming the BG and my mage can do a much better job of surviving against the well-disciplined warrior trains.  


FWIW: I enjoy discussing this stuff.  Can we dispense with the mud slinging and just talk mechanics?

I played range for a while but even with the latest rogue class improvements they arent that great.  I am actually looking forward to the new rogue ranged class changes, would be nice to go back to it from melee.  Im tired of doing the weekend Whitefall which is a giant zerg most of the time and melee(other then warriors) get stomped. 

The Rogue calling has one soul with permanent stealth.  One.  So the whole calling should be balanced off of that?  So the only build that Rogues should have to fight with is with at least 32 pts in Assassin?

Being able to disappear during combat every 2 minutes is really not that overpowered at all, considering no one will die in any sort of competitive PVP area. 

Am I suggesting Rogues should be equal to warriors in melee? Yes.  Should the have stealth?  Why not.  Warriors have everything Rogues have except stealth and are better.

Warrior shave more dps, more survivability, more hps, more armor, more burst damage (not in 1.5 maybe).  Better mitigation, better healing.   Alot of this change sin 1.5, but still, how does all that balance against Rogues being able to go back into stealth every 2 minutes?

Like I said, I played in WFs a lot before I realized I was terrible as a Rogue in them.  I very often got tons of damage numbers plunking away at range.  I just never really killed anyone or actually did anything that mattered.  My damage was very low, and my surviability was nothing.

We agree more than we disagree, Draegan.  I think warriors are out of balance.  They have too many tools and pay too little for them.  I think they need to be toned down and ALL of the classes need to have more clear exchanges between DPS, survivability, and utility.  If you're high dps, you should have low survivability.  Glass cannons should exist in all 4 callings.  If you want tools and survivability, then pay for them with damage.  

Stealth grants initiative.  It's a very difficult thing to balance.  For that reason, I've always been strongly against its existence in pvp games.  You just can't balance one class always getting to attack first.  Just look at chess.  If two players are equal in ability, white will win or draw the majority of the time.  Giving them stealth and two stuns that can be used one after the other is just poor design in a pvp setting.

That much I agree with but it is what it is.  However as Draegan said a rogue cant come out of stealth and stun / CC any class to death who is Rank 3-4 geared or higher.  Newbs..yes.  Like I said before, warriors and clerics when they reach rank 5-6 gear level become very difficult to kill for a rogue which means rank 7-8 geared clerics and warriors are near impossible for a rogue to kill.  The whole stealth dynamic no longer helps the rogue anymore then.  This is what Trion has realized and why they made the change

Do you not see how this exacerbates the current problem?

1) Low rank players don't find pvp fun because they get killed in a couple of GCDs.

2)  

If you make rogues more potent, then they will be able to pop out of stealth and kill even higher rank toons before stun wears off.  See 1)

This goes back to my original assertion that rogues don't need more power, it's that melee clerics and warriors need less.  Low level players are dying too fast.  There's too great a power differential between rank 1 and rank 8.  It's causing the slow death of pvp in the game. The length of the pvp grind only adds to the problem.

I want balance in pvp, just as you both do.  What I don't want is for stealthers to have the ability to kill anyone without them having an opportunity to at least fight back.  A stealther shouldn't be able to do more than half of a person's health in damage before a stun wears off.  This goes for warriors with their charge or mages with their stuns as well.  At least with warriors and mages, you can see them coming and position yourself accordingly on the battlefield.

Are we talking 1v1 here?  Silly argument if it is.

In WFs, going up against any average player, a Rogue does not have enough burst to kill anyone in a couple (2-3) GCD.

Stealth
Jagged Strike > Puncture > Impale
Slip Away
Assassinate > 2pt ability or builder x2 > Final Blow

That is the highest burst you can have and that is frontloading three DOTs.  If that player has any purge/heal/backup they won't die.

The only way a Rogue can kill a properly specced Warrior is to do the whole Jagged > Puncture > Impale > Slip Away and then reapply bleeds.  If the warrior doesn't have pots, or isn't a Paladin, the Warrior will always win.

Against a properly specced Mage (ChloroDomLock) a Rogue won't win unless the mage has no Mana.

Rogues can not kill a properly specced Cleric.

Rogue vs. Rogue is whatever.

Now you can come up with scenarios where you killed a lot of players.  They were either, under geared, poorly specced, or just bad.  An average PVP rogue against an average PVP cleric/warrior/mage will probably lose most of the time in a group setting.  The rogue is only useful for the passive Bard buffs or Eradicate spam from MM and a healing debuff which warriors have a better version of.

Rogue's need some help.

Draegan, what is your thoughts on the PTS rogue changes?  Personally not impressed.  Assasins seem to get a little better, cant tell if MM is making forward steps or backwards.  Other changes seem mediocre.  I think the idea that "people should fear seeing a rogue like they do a warrior" isnt going to happen with the proposed changes. 

Marksman has been improved in dps, nerfed in burst. Assassins got buffed, bladedancers got buffed, nightblades got major survivability buffs, and most importantly for pvp riftstalker got dps viability making all those incredible mobility skills fair game without giving up killing potential. Also warriors ate the beef bat once again.

Sounds promising but are rogues going to still have to take it in the no-go hole for DPS in order to get decent survivability still?  As for warriors they deserve the nerf bat especially after the BS I saw this weekend in Warfronts.  Keeping in mind I am almost a rank 7 rogue with full rank 6 pieces+ and in codex I went to vault with 3 other people and it was us 4 against a single warrior.  After about 1 minute of us beating on him we finally got him down.  Dont think he killed any of us but he would of if a healer hadnt been present.  Are rogues going to be that awesome after 1.5 cause I have doubts, warrior nerfs are welcome. 

Holy motherfucking autocorrect Batman.  It does fit even though i meant nerf bat.  I haven't tested the changes myself, the only survivability benefit warriors have over rogues is shields and the ability to use a soul that mostly can ignore weapon damage as a damage source to go with it while the rogue upgrades are mostly in the self healing department and don't seem to cost any dps loss at all.

Yeah I ignored the typo lol.  Warriors...not sure what tree....also get that dam full heal that isnt impacted by heal reduction skills.  Same warrior I mentioned above we got "dead' after 30 seconds until he self healed to full and the fight basically started over.  Pretty sure thats a skill not a pot since I havent seen a pot that heals to full.  Whats the timer on that anyone know? 

I think it's Touch of Life.  An 8 point paladin skill on a 10 min timer. 

I don't know, with the current build on the PTS I can hit 2600 dps in BIS gear with some bard buffs and consumables.

I say that's an improvement.

There are some good ones, and some half assed ones, and Bards are still shit.  I like what I see though.

Get ready for the teleporting and backstabbing Assassin!

As for PVP, I haven't gotten a WF to open while I've been on testing stuff.  But check out a 32-36 ASN / 20 RS / 10 MM for PVE and that can by modified for PVP easily by taking points out of assassin and put into NB for felblades or infiltrator.  Or put 2 points into RS for run speed.

Key is to that spec is you're shifting every 10 seconds for +25% damage, a damage reflect shield, and increased run speed.

And a buncha crit, unless they changed that.  You only get 15% damage from shifting, the other 10% is baseline for being in the dps stance.

I already do this in vanilla PvE, and like to do it in instances when practical. Nice to know it might be viable in PvP.

You can do it now, but it's terrible for dps.  Now it's fantastic for dps.

Crit too.

Ive done that spec in PvP some months ago and like you said it wasnt great dmg anyhow so I went full assasin with Inf instead.  Maybe I'll respec to that again tonight to start getting back into the spec, thanks for the feedback.  And yes I agree Bards are still crap, not sure they ever plan to "fix" them adequately.  I get the impression they like them how they are.  However the horrible scaling they get from gear, etc only hurts more in PvP as more and more people get well geared.  Its sad that as a rank 6 rogue my cadence on mage targets often only does 60-80dmg(non-crit), nevermind the even worse dmg on warriors. 

The spec won't work now, it'll only work in 1.5.

Yeah I know but I can get used to having to phase again while I DPS.  I think the only spec I have out of 5 where I use Riftstalker is my Whitefall steppes shard runnign spec

Serious question: Have any of you guys currently playing a rogue/warrior played a mage or cleric in level 50 pvp? 

Yes, I have/had 2 accounts.  My first has 2 rogues...one defiant one guardian both are rank 6, one is almost 7.  My second account which is closed Sept 24 has 2 clerics, both 50..one is rank 3 the other just hit 50 so its rank 1. 

Does playing a cleric (particularly after playing a rogue for a while) give you a different perspective on rogues/warriors, particularly the mechanics of bullrush and stealth/sap?  I assume that it does as you still play a rogue as your primary. 

Playing a cleric is why I feel they are more powerful then a rogue.  Granted even at rank 3, I still dont have all the rank 3 gear I fair ok against the average player but I get raped pretty hard against well geared rogues warriors and mages and other clerics.  However, the problems I see dont come from your average player base, its the high end thats the problem.  Like I said before I dont feel rogues scale as well with high end gear as the warriors and clerics have.  Clerics still benefit the most from valor over any other class, I guess mages to a large degree as well.  I can imagine my cleric in rank 6+ gear sitting on valor that gives 40% dmg reduction in PvP and laughing at people that try to kill me.  Rank 7-8 is when it becomes virtually impossible for me as a rogue to kill mages, warriors and clerics who have the gear, specs and intelligence enough.  I dont feel like holding onto 2 accounts anymore so thats why I canceled one and since I had this much "work" into my 2 rogues I decided to keep that account open and cancel the other.  I fI could transfer my clerics to this account I probably would and play at least the rank 3 to get him higher rank.

Having the ability to a) debuff 80% of someone's damage every minute and b) heal yourself is a bit too much.  I was more interested in how you feel about having a rank 8 rogue appear on top of you from stealth, stun you, and vanish the moment that things start going bad. 

My point being that the abilities Rogues get are really fun if you're the one playing the rogue.  They're just not so much fun when you're the victim of the rogue.  I don't know how Trion will ever be able to balance rogues and warriors.  Rogues have the ability to both initiate an encounter and leave an encounter when it's going bad.  Coupled to stuns, that's a very powerful skill set to have.  If their damage is brought to that of warriors, I think rogues will do so well that everyone will soon be playing one... and that makes for a pretty uninteresting warfront. 

You're right, I hate rogues / stealth classes unless Im playing one.  They might not be so bad if there werent stuns, etc.  Again, and like Draegan pointed out that on high geared classes a rogue cant even come close to an intitate, stun and kill type of encounter.  Clerics can live through it at this level than heal to full.  Warriors will easily live through it then rape your face.  Keep in mind too that most people have at least 1 break free of sorts whether they get it in their pvp tree or a standard tree and it makes you immune to any CC's for 5-7 seconds afterwards which negates rogues pretty heavily.  There are a lot of things in Rift PvP wise that are retarded from CC to buff purging, PvP would be a lot more fun without this crap.  However you need to understand my point as a high rank PvP rogue not being able to hit the back line where a healer is and kill them is very frustrating especially when thats supposed to be my job.  Instead I attack that back row healer and they bunny hopo away laughing at the loldps I am tickling them with

There is a change though.  You can blink every 10 seconds with only 3 shifts.  They changed cooldown stuff.

I understand completely.  That's why I play MM.  I feel as MM I can be much more disruptive to healers/casters than I can with a melee rogue. 

I also agree that melee rogues need a boost.  I just fear that they will get a boost to the point where the better rogues out there will become gods in the process of bringing the average player up to par.  I don't mind losing to clerics, mages, and to a lesser degree to warriors because I can see them coming and position/kite accordingly.  Positioning doesn't help much against invisible players.

I have an MM spec as well and MM(pre-1.5) is ok but I feel the improvements on test are very necessary for the class.  I enjoy the AE aspect of the class combined with Ranger rain of arrows, single target DPS is a bit weak I find...how are you specd?  I typically use Marksman / ranger / Infiltrator combinations although Ive been thinking of dropping the Inf in place of something else. 

I went with this MM spec tonight and it went well, was typically within top 5 for DPS.

Marksman (38) / Nightblade (16) / Infiltrator (12) (http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0Mfib.EhtoMdhudR.Vhx0h.xx0M)

I was able to get some difficult players down with Improved hit and run + Empowered Shot spam + Deadeye but anytime that was down a tougher player simply wouldnt drop.  I ran into 2 warriors tonight and 1 cleric that even with Improved, ES and Deadeye I wasnt able to make much of a dent in them.  In fact one warrior when the 15 seconds was over I only had him down to half HP or just under and that was using bulls eye twice for two Deadeye crits.  He was mitigating about 70% or more of my dmg the entire fight so my 2000+ deadeye crits were only doing 500-600dmg.  His Hp was around 10K. 

You really can't drop anyone with access to healing without a 50% health debuff.  Rogues are getting three new ones with the patch if i'm not mistaken, from nightblade assassin and marksman.

Yeah was going to go higher into Inf for the debuff but opted for just DPS.  Ill have to rework the build anyhow when 1.5 goes live.  My main builds I use right now which are mostly melee all have it in one form or another

Patch hitting next week.

This...

Chronicles – Teams of two players (or one, if you’ve got the gear) can take on Rift Chronicles, exploring breathtaking dungeons — including Greenscale’s Blight, Hammerknell, and the Chronicles of Attunement—in fun, story-driven adventures!

..alarms me.

Was holding on in the hope of further solo advancement; will see what they mean by "having the gear," but if they mean I need to have group dungeon gear to do solo content... then I'm done (not a threat, just an observation).

My understanding is that the first Chronicle can be done using quest gear from Stillmore/Shimmersand quests.  Assuming one doesn't just stop at Whitefall when they hit 50 and try to attempt it, you should be able to farm the Chronicle to get the stuff you need for the other Chronicles.

And there's also the bit about getting T2 quality gear from lvl 50 zone events and expert rifting.

I have not heard about the Chronicle of Attunement.  From some of what I have read, if you have a good solo spec able to handle groups - ie necro/lock or some of the -icar clerics - a fresh 50 can solo the GSB chronicle with good play.

Might be some hope for my necrolock, then. If I can slog through the next 9 levels, anyway...

They probably said gear when they should have said class.  My warrior can solo tons of shit easily, my rogue would have a problem soloing anything.

You can get full T2 stuff by just hoping from invasion to invasion getting inscribed soursestones.

The first Chronicle you do at 50, takes 10 minutes and gives you 2 planar attunement dings with some blue weps at the end. 

It's duo content, I'm sure clever people will be able to solo it with certain specs.

One thing my low rank rogue can do that my warrior can't is easily solo the world pvp quests.  Even the 25 kills one is just a matter of time and opportunism, with my warrior trying to do them without a raid is an exercise in frustration.

While I understand what you're saying, a kick in the nuts is still a kick in the nuts. I resubbed on the promise of solo dungeons, if it doesn't work out that way, that's the end for Trion in my book (my own book, I imagine they'll be ok as a company, hah).

What do you play?

THAT'S NEITHER HERE NOR THERE

Necrolock

Solo the intro chronicle, solo lvl 50 rifts for T2-equiv gear, solo the harder chronicles?

Why do you assume 'solo' content means 'easy at all gear levels'? You still have a method to do the content solo, but there will be some challenge/effort in doing so.

You'll be fine :P

No assumption to mouth action here, Holmes.

Well gear certainly helps, my rogues can solo a lot of tough mobs with the right specs.  Not hard to drop 50 elite mobs and literally avoid almost 100% of the dmg.  On a side note I was just looking at the rank 7/8 gear since im almost rank 7 and the jump from rank 6 to 7 on most pieces is a signifigant jump compared to rank 4 to 5 and rank 5 to 6.  No wonder rank 7 and 8 players are gods.  The rank 6 dagger has top end dmg of 79 with a DPS of 33.6, the rank 8 weapon is 105 with DPS of 44.7..dam

Sky is just being batshit crazy as usual.  He ENJOYS being disappointed.  He looks for reasons to be :D

That sounds like 90% of the people on F13.

There's a huge difference between "enjoying being disappointed" and "expecting to be disappointed".  Rift is a great game, but let's be serious here.  Given Hartsman's talent, the game is filled with squandered opportunities.  

Given the track record of recent MMO releases (AoC, WAR, Vanguard, Horizons, Star Trek, Tabula Rasa, Champions Online, etc) there's good reason for anyone here to be skeptical. 

I'm not saying the game is flawless. Most people here (and in the MMO 'community' in general) focus on the negative rather than the positive in any game they talk about. Look at any thread for an upcoming game and you'll typically see more focus on "what features will suck" rather than "what features will be good". People seem to take more pleasure in watching an MMO fail than in seeing one succeed. The 'complaints' thread on this Rift section of the forums is 4x as long as the 'what went right' thread.

You think Rift is a great game. I think it's pretty good too. It certainly nailed a lot of things at launch, especially compared to most MMOs that have launched in the last few years. They've done a great job listening to players and actually implementing that feedback in a timely manor. Why is there more discussion about what's wrong with the features in 1.5 than what's right?

Complaining that Trion 'didn't deliver' on solo content just because that solo end-game content isn't easy is a stupid complaint. I could understand if the Chronicles were almost impossible in the best gear you could get from soloing, but that isn't the case here.

Here (http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/09/21/enter-at-your-own-rift-hal-hanlin-and-scott-hartsman-on-update/) is an article talking about what's coming with 1.5. I see a *lot* of stuff to be happy/excited about.

If there is a complaint, it is based on the public utterances that their Solo content is designed for Two people - which is a pretty crappy way to design solo content - and has nothing to do with being easy or hard.

It is possible that they are stupidly explaining their content; but it is also possible that they designed stupid content.

Perhaps they are afraid that solo content will drain the group content queues, so to avoid that they made the solo play require two people...or gear from group content; it wouldn't be the first time that devs designed a system that was too clever by half.

Rift has no metagame... its end-game slavishly copies the worst part of WoW, and its world is not big enough nor its non-combat-systems dynamic enough to sustain interest (even I, a hardcore-casual, have 3x 50's that are shelved).  Getting Alternate Advancement and Solo content right is a pretty big deal for the long-term success of the project.

RIFT has more endgame content that WOW does.

What meta game are you looking for?

Yar, this. Though Trion has consistently exceeded my expectations, my expectations are exceedingly low. That's why I chuckle when considering I'm one of the premiere TOR fanboys: my greatest expectation would be fulfilled if they could deliver a Rift-like experience with the better IP. I can spend the day at work griping about raids and solo players being second-class citizens (let's face it, we are), but at the end of the day, if the game can deliver a solid experience in an environment I can get immersed in, I do enjoy mmo. I played EQ2 for five years, and it certainly wasn't a very original IP or great writing, but the sheer diversity went a long way.

But as March points out, it's hard to not be pissed that "SOLO DUNGEONS" turned into "ok, well duo and maybe solo if you have the right spec."

As I said, though. Trion has a history of remedying things I bitch about, within reason. So I do expect it to loosen up to soloing with maybe a wider array of specs at some point, I hope that's before November 22nd (or whatever the release date of the moment is). And I'm ALWAYS happy to have my expectations exceeded, which is why I even renewb'd to Rift in the first place.

This is why I left Rift.  Weapon damage scaling is out of control in the warfronts.  I enjoy rolling alts and pvp'ing with the different classes.  You just get punished too hard for starting over, which is a shame.  Many of us enjoy rerolling and gearing alts as our endgame. 

Beyond that, I agree with Sky.  Rift exceeded my low expectations.  I loved the soul system.  I really enjoyed running dungeons with my friends (before they made them trivially easy).  I was happy to see a wardrobe system. 

Im not even sure how you balance having rank 6+ players and Rank 1's.  I guess a)  you separate them out warfront wise where you have ranks 1-4 and 5-8 or b) hand out rank 2 gear to new 50 players?  Then you do this and it pisses off the higher rank players since we had to earn it.  Give additional bolster to players rank 3 or less? 

You get favor and prestige for losing.  Noone earns anything.  The power curve needs to be flattened.  The difference between a rank 8 player and a rank 1 player should be no more than a 10% power increase and significantly more utility.  Were I designing the pvp, I'd make the gear improvements significantly smaller and focus my attention on making multiple deep and interesting pvp souls for each class.  High rank players should have more options in combat... they don't need more power.  High rank players have had more practice.  Giving them more power just creates a win-more mechanic. 

The more you win, the weaker you get. You're so fucking good, play with a handicap.

Anything... I'm wide open on this one.

In fairness, it is possible that they envision the social media plug-ins to be a sort of meta-game... and for all I know it is wildly successful.  I could well imagine back in DAoC days how this sort of social media updates could have been used to stoke the Realm rivalries.  So perhaps it is flaming hot across the PvP servers; in which case I'll grant a point in their column on using social media to add layers to the metagame. 

Im just throwing out what I would expect the complaint to be, I personally would prefer more balanced PvP.  Its not fun for me to smash some rank 1 player as much as it isnt any fun to lose to high ranks of other classes repeatedly.  A similar instance of this is like when WOW or other games lower difficulty of X Dungeon, a bunch of people who did it "the hard way" will always complain.  I PvP because its just what I enjoy, there should be rewards of some sort but I would agree the difference in gear ranks (ie 1 compared to 6) is pretty ridiculous.  However in PvP you would also have to balance PvE geared players into the mix because their gear cant be signifigantly better either in the same scenario.

This was the quote that you were responding to:

"Chronicles – Teams of two players (or one, if you’ve got the gear) can take on Rift Chronicles, exploring breathtaking dungeons — including Greenscale’s Blight, Hammerknell, and the Chronicles of Attunement—in fun, story-driven adventures! "

Not that it required a certain spec, but that some of the chronicles would be too hard to solo unless you had the gear for it. There is a solo path to obtain that gear.

It's likely that spec will be just as important, but imo that's understandable for a game that gives you 5 'soul roles' and is as open about how you spec as Rift is.

Strongly agree. With such possibility in the Soul system why not have 8 PvP souls per class, why only 1? Might even make it easier to separate PvE and PvP skills such that the two rule sets don't interfere with each other.

This.  They've always said solo/duo content, and never promised just solo content.  You just read solo and ran with it.    :awesome_for_real:

It is not I mis-reading anything... this was telegraphed well in advance.

Massively: Preview RIFT's Chronicles of Telara solo instance content on the PTS
http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/09/01/preview-rifts-chronicles-of-telara-solo-instance-content-on-the/ (http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/09/01/preview-rifts-chronicles-of-telara-solo-instance-content-on-the/)

Epic Toon (features a funny looking guy in a funnier hat): Solo content are not dumbed down raids in RIFT 1.5: Ashes of History
http://www.epictoon.com/blog/2011/08/31/rift-15-solo-content-dumbed-raids/ (http://www.epictoon.com/blog/2011/08/31/rift-15-solo-content-dumbed-raids/)

ZAM: Explore the new solo dungeon on Rift's Public Test Shard with ZAM! We'll take you on a video tour.
http://rift.zam.com/story.html?story=27568 (http://rift.zam.com/story.html?story=27568)

I didn't test it... so for all I know its a solo cake walk.  And as far as double speak goes, there's a big difference between solo content you can duo with your bro, and Duo content that you might be able to solo.

But, if it turns out that they flinched at the end and didn't want solo content to be soloable... yeah, that's a flinch.

 :x

So your evidence that they designed solo content primarily around groups of two is 3 videos of people successfully soloing the Chronicles?

 :oh_i_see:

Precisely...   :grin:

I'm just confused by their message... I believe my original word was: alarmed.

After I go into the squeeze-machine and play the patch next week, I'm sure everything will be ok.

To come to March's defense a bit, when I read "solo/duo content" which was bandied about a lot, I don't expect that to translate to "well you might be able to solo this duo content that we're giving you if you're awesome". I expect that to mean "here is some solo content, and here is also some duo content." Like LOTRO skirmishes.

Which barely qualify as a shining example of balancing. Where people avoid the duo skirmishes because they are insanely difficult compared to the solo ones. Appearantly balancing solo vs 2 ppl is harder than it seems.

So Draegan, on a scale of 1 to 10 how retarded/useless is the Trion Rogue Dev?  No wonder rogues have sucked so long, f'ing idiot doesnt have a clue and most likely doesnt even play the dam class / game at all. 

When I quit playing, rogues and warriors were the best pve dps in the game.  For some encounters, rogues were the best tanks in the game.  Did I miss something? 

I'm sure you'd do a much better job as the class lead.

At least I know what specs to run for DPS evaluations :P

Rogues have great pve dps, can be amazing tanks, and are a required support class for raids.  What else do you want besides PvP balance?

Whoever is in charge of rogues has been pretty damn clueless since Alpha in August of last year.

I could say the same about the mage lead.  Outside of pvp, mages haven't been the best at anything beyond ae trash killing. 

2nd best healer, 4th best single target dps, and maybe the best buffer... but archon is stupid boring to play.   Granted, mages are quite fun to solo. 

You are pretty much completely wrong.  

Rogue dps is behind warriors of equal gear from 200-500 dps (which is anywhere from 10-30%) depending on the fight and it's mechanics.  Apparently, but I'm not witness to this, warriors are still 100-300 dps ahead of rogues on the PTS.  But I can't vouch for that statement as it comes from sources I really don't trust.

Rogues can not tank any encounter in Hammerknell at any gear level.  When I say can not, I mean that they take 35-50% more damage than a Warrior of equal or lesser gear.  A rogue can be in full HK gear and not be able to tank entry level encounter while a Warrior or Cleric in HK entry level gear can easily do it.  

Rogues "support" is pretty shit but it's required.  You need someone with 51pts in bard to hit the same 5 buttons every 30 seconds and the rest of the time just sit there and do either 400 dps or spam a cadence heal spell that really isn't necessary.

If you want more detail than that, let me know.

Mages are in an odd place right now.  They have so many required quirky specs to defeat encounters in HK.  Their single target dps is really hard to get to, but you can reach high numbers if you can master an extremely difficult and complicated rotation.  The average person probably isn't doing this.

Also, they do have the best ranged dps in the game which is quite often required in some encounters.  But yeah, they could use some help in sustained PVE dps.  They aren't really competitive in some instances.

I never raided HK, so I am admittedly ignorant about it.  What I stated was the truth when I stopped playing/raiding PvE. 

I am glad to know things have evolved... that's a step in the right direction.

I couldnt give a crap about PvE, Its the PvP balance I want and the rogue dev is an idiot who doesnt appear to even play / know his own class hes responsible for

There's no such thing as pvp balance, unless you dumb it down to simplistic gameplay and remove all level and gear inequalities. So, good luck with that.

That's the kind of thing I dislike, when mmo gets to the point where you need x,y,z and the game gets tuned to that. Especially with the inclusion of macros to the point where they're also considered standard when tuning. So the regular joe who is just playing for fun, even with an otherwise decent build, just isn't going to cut it. I think as a game designer for a massive game, if you've excluded a lot of your audience (or at best restricted them to the blessed path), you've failed.

Of course, I'm also not naive enough to think this will ever change because of the rampant QQ of the hardcore  :grin:

I know there isnt perfect PvP balance but 1 class getting rolled by all others at high end PvP should be a pretty good clue something needs to change.  Also I wouldnt care if the dumbass could at least get the specs right for DPS builds, is that really asking too much?

1.5 patch tomorrow (http://forums.riftgame.com/official-rift-news/news-announcements/258733-update-1-5-ashes-history-arrives-north-america-wednesday-9-28-a.html)

About dam time

I think I made two, maybe three levels (42? 43?) in the three weeks I've been subbed. It's pure grind logging in and leveling to 50 at this point.

Here's a tip:

1) PvP when quests get to you.  The 40-49 bracket is a lot of fun.

2) Head to Shimmersand and Stillmoor and follow the zerg during events.  If you join the rift raid, the xp is quite good. 

This patch rocks.  I soloed both chronicles as a rogue in rank 3 gear.  Edit: the only challenging fight was oracle.

Yeah Im liking it too.  Rogues are definitely better in PvP, just need to work out my specs.   I did all chronicles solo with my rank 7 rogue pretty easily.  I had saved up quests for this patch and used my 50% xp pot and got 2 attunement upgrades tonight alone. 

Oh yeah the veteran rewards rock too, having 30 hours of 100% extra exp might even get me to roll another alt.

I am still using the 50% xp pots and like I said blew threw 2 full attunement bars last night, granted I had quests saved up but I still made 1.5 attunement bars after that from a few warfronts, pvp dailies and the chronicles.  Im going to chew threw those 100% xp pots but Im going to go find a killer grind spot first.  Im thinking elites are the way to go with grinding, takes me about 15 seconds to kill one with minimal dmg to me or just use pots to keep a constant kill rate.  With 100% xp pots a 50 elite is worth about 5K xp, kill 3 per minute thats 15k xp / minute so 34 mobs will take about 12 minutes for 1 attunement bar.  

Oh yeah, the warrior tears this patch are making for a mighty strong cup of javalol

Like they have anything to complain about, the new warfront announcements made it very clear last night that warriors are still on top of the hill.

These things frequently made no sense and they seem to be given out too frequently. And just to complain some more, it needed to be the Unreal Tournament guy doing all those. If they are going to go that way, they need to go all out ridiculous with it.

Not too ridiculous, frogdog.

I see what you did thar

He has a point though, the voice acting on those announcements is horrid. 

Reducing it to a simple 'man down!' or something might be ok, but not sure it would be useful at that point. Probably better off just shutting it off for death messages, or better yet, have a menu so you can toggle which notifications fire for you locally.

If you are doing the chronicles make sure you look around for artifacts, even the white ones are selling for ridiculous amounts.

I got around to trying all the Chronicles this weekend. They felt pretty easy on my new 50 cleric, so I really don't think another person is needed unless you have a solo-unfriendly spec and are unwilling to change for the chronicles.

The GSB/HK chronicles were not especially exciting. It was cool seeing the environments, but the fights themselves weren't enough to make the experience interesting, and there was very little story to speak of. The 'celebration' chronicle was much better and the boss fight was actually pretty fun with one person. This is the way they ought to go for future chronicles, though I suspect the celebration chronicle was expensive to make and people really don't have any reason to run it more than once.

That's ultimately the problem with chronicles. Raids are expensive to make, but a single raid will keep raiders occupied and subscribed for months. Tailor-made chronicles would be just as expensive to make (maybe moreso since balancing for most souls to be able to solo any given fight is probably rough), but they're only going to last one play session unless they throw a reward timesink in or make the content more difficult. Neither of which will be appreciated by players that would be interested in chronicles.

It would be a ton of work for a part of the game most players have already moved past, but I've love to see chronicles used as the way for people to learn new souls. Have the chronicle take place in an instanced version of an existing area, which teaches you the lore behind the soul and also shows you how the first couple abilities can be used.

Chronicles shouldn't be hard to make.  They are using existing art sets.  Heck, they are using pre-made zones, so you don't actually have to build anything really.  The major environment change of the two duo Chronicles is the different hedge maze in GSB.

The hardest part of all of them is the scripting of some of the RP in the events and then the ensuing QA.  The fights are designed to be more open, this much more easy to balance.  They are set to "do no punish".  What they really can do is create a single-player like environment there where you have to do some platforming or other game elements.  It could be an amazing content piece if they concentrate on it.

The celebration is the best one.  HK/GSB are pretty damn boring after 1 or 2 runs through.  They need to incentivise them better.  They need to up the consumable drop rate and the PA exp.

The consumable thing would be really nice. They seemed drop fairly frequently at the start, but then not so much shortly thereafter.

PA is really odd. I would have expected chronicles, dungeons and raids to be fairly rewarding, but they aren't. PvP, Rift grinding or just straight mob grinding seems to be the most effective.

As someone interested in them, I'd say if it gave a fun dungeon crawl experience, I wouldn't mind repeating it...if the rewards were there. Making the content more difficult could follow the vanilla>heroic style of progression similar to the regular group dungeons. So you run the easier vanilla chronicles to gear up for the tougher chronicles, which lets you handle the easier heroic chronicles, which lets you handle the tough heroics. Which would then lead you into maybe mid-range group stuff?

I'm not a huge fan of gear progression, but if the content was fun to replay I wouldn't mind it as a byproduct.

The crafters had a big problem with the consumable drop rates, rightly so i assume. Consumables are how the majority of them make money, killing the demand would be a big blow.  I as a pvp only player was doing the chronicles daily until they nerfed the exp, i felt the reward was fine for the time invested (also i was chugging 100% exp pots, which helped a ton).  Without pots and with the nerfed exp i see no reason at all to bother.

On the crafter thing, I could care less. Too many idiot crafters out there making things for under cost anyway that trying to make money on those things is a lost cause. And its not like you could farm up enough of these things with the variety of drops to fuel an entire week worth of raiding. At 3 nights a week for 4 hours, I need 12 flasks and 6 whet stones.

Interesting, my vanilla 50 Rogue was beaten senseless by the elites in the Duo dungeons; so, I took them at their word that nudge-nudge "properly geared" folks could solo it...and canceled.

Proper spec is key.  What were you trying to solo as? At the bare minimum you need the improved proc chance leeching poison, the life refund on unused combo points in RS helps a ton too.

Well, that's the thing. We'll only see chronicles that re-use assets and probably don't have a lot of interesting fight mechanics because of this. In other words, we'll see more GSB/HK, not more Celebration.

The difficulty/gear progression would be hard to pull off considering the variety of specs out there. Then again, if they just balance them for two players it does save them some headaches.

My rogue without any raiding gear at all has soloed them all, without leeching poison either.. I just went tank spec and took advantage of the. Talent that refunds  health for unused combo points to stay alive.  The. Hardest boss by far in the entire set of instances is the bomb guy in GSB because he doesn't have any adds at all to feed you health.

I think I have pretty much beat the game, for me at least.  I got my rogue to rank 8, picked up 85% of the rank 7/8 gear, have the best item enchantments I can get, planars(lessers and greaters without raiding), etc.  All my armor is dyed how I want it, 200G in the bank without anything to spend it on.  Outside of wrapping up the final rank 8 piece and shard I need there would be no point to PvP anymore(other then to do PvP).  Once TOR beta is back up I guess I'll finally close this account.  I find it somewhat strange that Trion hasnt made any announcements for any kind of upcoming expansion(assuming one is coming).  I might keep the account open just for veteran rewards or something if I knew a solid expansion might be coming but meh.

There are tier 2 lessers coming out next patch, as well as library of the runemaster rep vendors with stat/valor shoulder enchants.  Also tier 2 planar attunement.

Hmm. I recently resubbed and while there are a lot of things I haven't done, I kind of feel the same way. I've done a raid, I've done the dungeons, and I've run more than plenty of Rifts. And while there's bunches of raids I haven't seen, I feel no compulsion to go do them. It just feels like I've experienced what I'm going to experience and explored all the systems and nothing seems compelling or exciting.

Yeah, I can fully clear Hammerknell except the final boss and get maybe... 1 PA level.  Maybe.

They need to increase the xp rate of boss in all content.  I should be able to farm older raids and gain 25-100% of a PA per kill.  Some significant chunk.  Same think with 5 and 10 mans.  It gives raiders a reason to do 5 mans, just like in WOTLK when raiders did it for badges.

Well, you're more likely to see chronicles that use the same assets.  I would assume in the future all new raid/dungeon/sliver content will also release a chronicle as well and they all will share the same art assets.

They can easily interject more fight mechanics if there is a demand for it.  Trion is all about demand of the player base, and they listen.  Trust me.  If you want it make a post about it on the official forums (if you care that much).

I don't think it can be repeated enough what a great team they have at Trion.

Yeah, a dev house this good deserves to succeed.  They've added several years and expansions worth of features and content to this game in a little over six months, i wish Rift wasn't so damn vanilla and was doing better.

I'm not going to post about chronicles changes on the forums because I'd rather be doing group content anyway. It was nice that I got to see GSB/HK as a solo player, but I'll probably enjoy them more as raids once I find a casual guild that I like.

It sounds like they're doing well (http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/10/25/trion-worlds-may-go-public-following-rifts-success/), but it's possible they're exaggerating their success. I have to agree that they seem like a really excellent developer. Allowing free server transfers really shows you what type of company they are.

That's one of the reasons I decided to give the game another try, and I've been active for almost 3 months now with plenty of stuff still left to do.

I thought the dungeons were sort of mediocre while leveling, and I was disappointed end-game consisted of re-running harder versions of them. What I didn't realize is that T1/T2 dungeons often had whole new sections to explore with a bunch of new bosses. It means that leveling dungeons stay fast and easy, but end-game dungeons feel like a bit more of an adventure. Running Deepstrike Mine as a T2 was a completely different experience than the original version. It's just another example of really smart design.

Thanks... yeah, I tried lots of specs (best thing about the game).  Ultimately just didn't have enough gear umph.  This character was 100% solo, so just Quest/Crafted/bought blues; but that was one of my pre-patch points... if I needed group (i.e. Dungeon) loot in order to do the "solo" content, then its not solo content.  They made it easier to discern when they explicitly called it Duo content, so I wasn't surprised... I just decided that the game was not going in a direction that would be fun for me.  For me, its not about getting a group - I had no issue getting groups in Rift - so designing content for 2 people is the same (in my eyes) as designing it for 1+x: once you add the "x" I don't care if it is 2x or 20x... its the x I don't want.  Or, more precisely, I like to group as an enhancement to my solo experience.  I just ran out of things to do solo and dropped the game after my 3rd 50.  I wish them well, it is a solid, well built game.

When they came out i soloed them in rank 3 pvp gear, that does not require grouping.

There is also a solo path to obtain T2-equiv gear via inscribed sourcestone from zone events. I mean, those are inadvertently group events, but you can participate in them solo. There is some really easy to make crafted gear as well. I think I paid about 2plat for the mats per piece of armor, and then I just found someone in trade chat to make them.

As has been said, there are a couple of paths to go down for gear that will allow you to solo the chronicles. Rank3/4 pvp will allow you to do it without much of a problem as a rogue. I have done both solo in rank 4 pvp gear as both a 44 nb/ 22rs spec and the 51 assassin/ riftblade spec. I'm sure there a couple other spec also. The leeching poison with the heal from killing a mob is a big deal. I have also soloed them as a pvp r3 warrior and as a cleric. I haven't tried it on a mage, but i would assume it would be doable at a comparable gear level there too. You have the option of getting rings and a weapon made that are on par with rank 6 pvp weapons i think, though it takes a bit of doing to gather the mats. The sigil you can put together by participating in daily raid rifts or just doing rift events. You can put a simple one together easier, but a good one will take some time and a fairly hefty sourcestone investment. I think the biggest thing are the weapons and weapon enchants. You can put 5 dps stones on each dagger and go to town. There are also various epic crafted armor pieces or you can work your way towards doing pug t2s and gathering the equivalent of badges for raid gear.

I don't think it was a reasonable expectation that you would run into chronicles with crafted blues and solo it, but maybe that is just me. Also, you don't have to solo it. Finding other people in the same boat isn't too hard. I know with my mage i ran through in a duo for a while in blues, and it was pretty easy that way.

So you need pvp or raid gear to solo the chronicles? Why wouldn't the first one be set up for fresh 50s in crafted/quest greens/blues (sans mats from raid events/zone event count as raids imo)?

They are, two of them.  And honestly I seriously doubt most classes couldn't solo them even at that gear level.

The first one is for new 50s to solo.

The other two are for 'duo's or well-geared 50s to solo.

I had no problems soloing all 3 with level 50 blues, but it's very spec-dependent. March said that he was having problems with them regardless of spec, so we were pointing out a few gear paths for solo players.

Raid gear, for what it's worth, is total overkill. T1/T2-equiv gear should be enough to solo the chronicles if you are having problems.

For the record, i wasn't saying you needed raid gear to do the chronicles solo. It most definitely makes them easier, and you would be hard pressed to screw a chronicle up in rank 6+ pvp gear or t1 raid gear for example. The last 2 chronicles are set up for two people. By my experience running with a green and blues mage and a similarly geared warrior this means someone with some healing, of some sort, and someone with damage. At least that was my mileage. You would have to be wearing the quest items you got in the 20s to be a sadder duo than what we ran out there. It was a bit painful and slow, but still doable.

Also, if you are having a tough time there are consumables like powerstones, weaponstones,etc. that will help a bit. You can actually find some of these throughout the chronicles, which is part of the reason i still run them.

I see what you guys are saying, and I'll leave off any further discussion since I haven't actually played through them so I lack first-hand experience.

I just think selling solo content that is duo or counts on group content for gearing is utter fucking bullshit. More about something for raiders/pvp folks to do while waiting in queue or bored than for true solo gameplay.

The horse is ground to bits, though...so as I said, I'll just keep my peace. It's definitely not the thing to pull this casual soloer back into Rift, and I'll leave it at that.

I contend that they used cautionary language in calling it "solo or duo" because some people are so fuckstupid when it comes to playing MMO's that solo isn't an option for them. 

It's an admission that the chronicles aren't balanced for every soul to be able to finish in blues. If I try to solo Chronicles with my Purifier, I'll probably fail. What sounds better:

"Chronicles are designed for some callings to be able to solo, or for two players to duo"

"Chronicles are designed for two players to duo, or for a well-geared solo player"

Immediate thought that pops into my head after reading the first: "Why didn't you balance this for X soul?" Any failures experienced in the chronicles would also be rationalized as "well, this obviously isn't balanced for my soul" even if it was, rather than "well, this is designed for two people". It's a language thing, and Trion chose the language that would land them in less hot water with players. It gives people an easy way out to explain why they failed (even if it's 100% their fault), and Trion doesn't have to endure people saying "Trion admits their soul balance is poor" for the next 3 years.

They admitted they weren't shooting for balanced before the game launched.

Anyone who looks for balance in something as complex as Rift's soul system is an utter moron. I'll take some complexity and customization over balance any day, but then, I don't pvp in mmo. Hell, they put rpg imbalance into the formerly level playing field of fps, so what the fuck is balanced any more?

There's a new 5 man on the PTS that is apparently gigantic.  At the hardest difficulty level, it has 11 bosses in it.  It's also non-linear with a lot of traps and obstacles to get around.

Some more details about 1.6 (http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/11/04/trions-hal-hanlin-and-mike-daugherty-give-details-on-rifts-upd/). Lot's of interesting stuff coming with this patch.

Ember island seems pretty awesome so far. Very pretty and a tad overwhelming (a good thing for an MMO, imo).

This game gets better and better but they are still going to take a huge hit next month.

Zone event last night had a end boss with 58 MILLION hps.  For fuck sake...

I liked the 150k HP minor rift stage 4 mob.

I will say the daily to defend the base from invasions daily was niffty but kind of long.

The source well stuff is pretty cool.  I just wish I can find a reliable way to farm inscribed sourcestone.

The zone events are pretty reliable, i easily farmed the 600 i needed in a couple weeks.  Made a shit ton of exp too.

Yeah I know, I do that as well.  But it's a lot of waiting around doing nothing in between.

Oh, well i did it as a break from pvping to rank 8 not as my main source of playtime.

Rift PVP is crap, so I don't involve myself in that.

A lot of people have hit maxed rank and have all their gear which leaves little reason to PvP other then to PvP.  Not sure when they even plan to do more PvP wise but the warfronts are stale.  The game is out for 9 months and still no mention of any real world pvp coming anytime soon.  I was debating keeping my sub past TOR launch but I likely wont, just not seeing any reason to keep it as a PvPer. 

There are tons of world pvp to be had.  The order of the eye dailies pack both factions into small areas and the zone events are always big free for alls.

There are no real objectives like DAOC or WAR, you just find some PvP rift and gank other players who are trying to run shards, etc or do it in the daily spot.  If you want straight up pure PvP sure you can find it, but it doesnt really serve a purpose other then to just do it, you dont get favor or rewards of any kind.  Also until recently it cost a lot to mend yourself afterward :P

I thought that was the point of world PvP. PvP for PvP's sake, not for some objective or reward.

If I wanted to just PvP I would play BF3 or MW3, not an MMO.  I PvP in MMO's to get rewards to improve my avatar the same way people PvE for rewards.  you could use the same logic there, shouldnt people PvE for the fun and satisfaction of killing a boss?  Why do they need rewards?  Point is if MMO's didnt have rewards for PvP and PvE they wouldnt be very successful :P

No, they would have to focus more on fun and gameplay than grind to be successful... which might be a wonderful thing. 

You miss the point of MMO's then.  The idea of an MMO(especially sub based) is to keep people playing, get them to sub each month.  Without gear or rewards or carrots you would never have a successful model, I dont care how "fun" your content is.  People wouldnt bother to assemble 25 people together and go through the stress and annoyances of raiding just to do content with no rewards.   

It precisely matters how fun the content is.  Because if it is fun enough, it doesn't need to be propped up by external rewards (numbers on the character sheet, prestige, whatever).

Still, those kinds of things are easier and cheaper to crank out than content that is all things to all men but that doesn't mean fun can't keep one subbed for a long time.

It better be about as fun as a blowjob then

Not to interrupt the argument which will never end, but what are people's guild situations like nowadays? I kind of feel like picking this up again but want to land somewhere active and competent without being hardcore (I no longer have time to be hardcore).

So, the Instant Adventures got sort of hot fixed in. Kind of odd timing, but they are mildly entertaining. They feel somewhat like directed grinding. They are fun in that they feature some of the more interesting locations in Stillmoor and Shimmersand. Personally, they changed the direction I move through areas and this gives a fresh feel to places I have spent a lot of time in already. These are mostly very easy, but even these spectacularly easy things are too tough for about half the people I see in them. Most of the end bosses telegraph their abilities with big on screen warnings or ground effect graphics. A solid quarter of the people in these will die to these effects. Repeatedly. I have not wiped on one of these yet, but it has come close a couple of times.

IA's are fun, but the rewards are shit so therefore the whole system is failboat until they increase the experience gain or the drop rate of Inscribes sourcestone and Crystalized insights.

The rewards are really are terrible when compared to an Onslaught on Ember Isle. For the apparent target level, these should be an inscribed farm with an eye toward getting people into raid ready gear. There's a nearly full set of gear available for inscribed now, but it is gated by crazy costs and faction. 600+ stones and glorified for a single piece. You need to be glorified with the new faction to even buy some of the pieces. I can outfit an entire sigil with new essences for less than a single piece.

But the implementation is fairly interesting. I've now been through the same adventure twice but with a different middle and end stage. The first time I was in a 15+ group and we detoured to elite mobs and a crazy dragon. The second time, we got another kill x regular mobs and an easier witch boss with a group of 5.

Speaking of Ember Isle, several vehicle type quests/events have shown up.  The best is the water event stage where you turn into a burrowing rock elemental. Granted, I did not figure out that stage until about the 5th time through. And I still have not figured out the what or where of the warmth stone is for the next stage.

I've resubbed and am farting around with it on my unguilded 50 rogue. Two things are striking that are germane to this turn of conversation about rewards.

1) There's so much fucking gear out there, from so many different places, that I have absolutely no idea what to get where.
2) I'm having an absolute blast doing the events and instant action.

Point 2 is directly related to point 1.

Not sure I like the new R8 rogue models, better then the old ones though

(http://i473.photobucket.com/albums/rr92/Valimay/2011-12-09_123203.jpg)

(http://i473.photobucket.com/albums/rr92/Valimay/2011-12-09_123146.jpg)

So, this most recent hotfix seems to have added an attempt at matching. Occasionally when I enter a WF I will see a message about Matched: Rank 2-6 or 4-7. These are kind of interesting. It almost, at times, if you squint just right, feels like the leveling WF experience. They only seem to pop about half the time, but when they do, they are slightly more entertaining.

Though I will have to admit some of the fun may be from going over to the darkside and playing a nightblade/riftstalker rogue with 1 HK tank weapon.

Oh, and Instant Adventures. Still mild fun until you get to one of those boss stages. At least one real healer is often a necessity, some of these bosses have shit you just can't get out of fast enough.

The Rift Mobile App is kind of interesting, though only available for the iPhone at the moment. It's one part offline guild chat tool and one part facebook game. The facebook game is the most interesting because you can get phat lewtz from it. There are three "scratch off" type games you can play. One for planarite, one for crafting mats and another for artifacts. The facebook part comes from the charges to play bit. You get one charge an hour. Each game takes a charge and you can "bank" up to six charges. I've not "played" the planarite one as EI means I have no use for any planarite. The single time I tried the crafting one, I got 4 carmintium. The artifact one has netted me 6 artifacts, 3 of them blue, and only two I have already had for 12 charges. So, not bad.

The guild chat is live and oddly archived so guild chat stalking ahoy.