Preview of 1.2 - Lots of awesome changes and fixes

[Nebu]

I forgot to thank you, Numtini.  I appreciate the help. 

[Shatter]

I am enjoying the changes.  Nice to see that my rank 4 PvP gear has decent stats now.  WIth the valor changes my pvp dmg reduction is 30%...nice.  Also ended up buying the newly moved rank 4 weapons which are nice as well. 

[Tannhauser]

I like the Marksman changes.  It actually feels like a dps class now.  My bard role does noticeably less dps (unchanged) than when I switch to MM.

LFD didn't work for me last night, guess no one wanted to try it? 
The Runecrafting changes are MOST welcome!  Actually cleared a lot of bank space now that the ingredients are evenly distributed.  It seemed a very smooth, polished change. 

Right now I can't think of anything I dislike about 1.2.   LFD may be it if I can't get a group this weekend using it.

[Shatter]

Scott said if LFD fails server specific only they will change it to cross server.

[Zetor]

The CC-in-pvp changes are extremely terrible; so are the spammable offensive dispels some classes got.

Other than that, good patch.

[Falconeer]

The CC changes are awesome. The offensive dispels, I didn't know. Who got them?

[Shatter]

The CC changes are awesome. The offensive dispels, I didn't know. Who got them?

Marksman got one that has a chance to dispell 2 buffs I believe.  Not sure of others. 

[Falconeer]

Marskmen are the only one I knew of. And I think it's a good addition. Who else?

[Threash]

Nobody that didn't already have them before as far as i know, void knights have a 2 buff every 15 secs dispel but they always did.

[Nebu]

Marskmen are the only one I knew of. And I think it's a good addition. Who else?

I think it's terrible from a pvp standpoint.  It renders many souls that depend on their buffs for class balance, worthless.

[Threash]

I agree, it needs at the very least a 10s cooldown.

[Nebu]

I agree, it needs at the very least a 10s cooldown.

I'm a big fan of longer cooldowns in pvp as they promote the more strategic use of abilities.  I can see the use of a short cooldown in pve as it's needed in dungeon crawls.  That's the pitfall of slapping a pvp game onto a pve construct.  This game seriously would benefit from dual roles of abilities between pvp and pve.

[squirrel]

I agree, it needs at the very least a 10s cooldown.

I agree spamable 2 buff dispel is a bit much but if they put a 10 s cooldown on it they need to look at reworking the MM tree then as it's a 44 pt ability (other callings dispels that have cooldowns are 10 pt).

A possible solution is to make soul defining buffs such as Living Veil undispellable.

[Nebu]

A possible solution is to make soul defining buffs such as Living Veil undispellable.

Making Living Veil a passive ability for 32 Chloro spec would solve that nicely.

[Zetor]

It's the same issue WOW encountered back in BC-WOTLK.. they gradually made class buffs undispellable. In rift, even passive class auras are dispellable (not sure if all are, but my champion's 'bearing' and 'way' 1-hour selfbuffs definitely were). And yes, I was referring to marksman 2-buffs-every-second dispel. :p

Regarding the CC change: it went from a terrible CC system (mindless AOE cc, chain cc) to an awful one (Did you just charge someone? Good job, the 2-sec root and 3-sec stun just nerfed all useful cc against them or even made them immune to all kinds of CC, including snares!). CC done right is a good thing, it allows coordinated burst, kiting (!), peeling off damage dealers from healers, making use of chokepoints, etc. Now it's just "everyone goes immune to all CC including snares in 5 seconds, and just does their highest burst damage rotation on the other team until someone keels over". There are plenty of crucial utility / damage skills that have a 'minor cc side effect' like charge, dusk to dawn, a ton of voidknight stuff... if you use them now, you'll just make the enemy immune to CC for 30 sec.

edit: and that's without getting into the 30/20-sec cooldown [!] cc breaker abilities many souls have AND the 5-second cc immunity on the break free ability...
edit2: I was maybe a bit too harsh, the new system is fine in organized pvp (and it IS better than the old system, just broken in a different way). The problem is pugs that use their short pseudo-ccs all the time and end up making your gamechanger skills useless.

[waylander]

I am glad they put in the CC changes, and PVP feels completely different than in 1.1. Prior to Patch 1.2 you had constant CC fear, stun, root, fear, stun, root, etc.  CC was so bad that you either spent your match rooted and AOE nuked to death, or you spent most of your fight being the victim of spammable AOE fears.  Now you have to actually prioritize and focus on targets instead of letting mindless idiot proof chain AOE fears/roots do the easy work.

The only real issue I've noticed is that single target roots probably need to be on a reduced timer because Ranger/Marksmen who have extended range are running around all over the place.  Their extended range puts them out of caster range, and it puts them out of range for talk/riftwalk abilities designed to close distance. So now we're slowly seeing an army of extended ranged DPS marksmen showing up in Warfronts, and then just group kite/spike targets out.

[Threash]

I switched to a riftblade/paragon spec just to be able to keep up or range kill marksmen.  It's working quite well.

[Jherad]

I switched to a riftblade/paragon spec just to be able to keep up or range kill marksmen.  It's working quite well.

Ah yeah, I've been playing as a rogue (up to 47 now), and when I use my MM role (primarily in the Black Garden), it is Riftblade warriors and Nightblade rogues who give me the most trouble.

Other than that, MM is crazy powerful in warfronts - Rapid Fire Shot does a good amount of burst, and the spammable dispel is just silly.

[Hartsman]

There's a specific note that says you have to be 33 or higher chloro to flag as a healer, which is so utterly retarded I don't have words. Most chloro specs are 32 chloro/34 something else.

It's in the known issues post, but it's in the fixed section, as a subnote to another issue, and I think it's by design, which is mildly rage inducing.

The update for this (and other too-restrictive-spec issues) is set to go out with the next hotfix.   The thing in the notes you're linking was a different thing.  :)

[Falconeer]

I don't know. The Marksman dispel is instant and with no cooldown, but on GCD, and only removes 2 buffs. But costs 20 power and it's a 44 points ability. If someone invests that much into the MM tree, just to become a professional debuffer, I think it's fair that he can play the role that well. And it's still a skill on GCD and costs 20 power, which means that if he's spamming dispel he is a) not causing any damage and b) going down on power. Not saying it's perfect, but I don't think it's too bad. It's a specialist role, I like it. I agree that SOME buff might and probably should become undispellable or just passive skills.

About CC,

Regarding the CC change: it went from a terrible CC system (mindless AOE cc, chain cc) to an awful one (Did you just charge someone? Good job, the 2-sec root and 3-sec stun just nerfed all useful cc against them or even made them immune to all kinds of CC, including snares!). CC done right is a good thing, it allows coordinated burst, kiting (!), peeling off damage dealers from healers, making use of chokepoints, etc. Now it's just "everyone goes immune to all CC including snares in 5 seconds, and just does their highest burst damage rotation on the other team until someone keels over". There are plenty of crucial utility / damage skills that have a 'minor cc side effect' like charge, dusk to dawn, a ton of voidknight stuff... if you use them now, you'll just make the enemy immune to CC for 30 sec.

Seriously? First of all the cycle is 24 seconds, not 30. Then, the first and second CCs are gonna work, eating away more time from those 24 seconds. So what, some characters have roughly 20 seconds they CANNOT be prevented from playing? Boohoo. I can see why anyone who uses CC is gonna hate that, but you should be objective and understand why it's simply stupid to make a game where some classes can spam CCs and make the same game unplayable for other classes.

Personally I think CCs ruined the PvP of pretty much any mmorpg since Ultima Online (paralyze my ass), so while I might be ok with some tactical, rare, positional, occasional CC, I think it's just a mechanic that should be completely changed if not removed from future iterations of the model. Simply put: not controlling your character is NOT fun, no matter what's the stupid balance or flavour reason behind it. Anything that reduces that crap is good to me, no matter what class I am playing. In this specific case, I think the CC changes are well done.

[Zetor]

The issue with dispel spam (and remember, the marksman dispel is on a 1-second GCD instead of everyone else's 1.5sec) is that it basically removes a lot of classes from the game. Chloromancers without lifegiving veil up [and/or synthesis removed from their target] just lost use of 90% of their soul. A lot of casters depend on their buffs for damage and defense (admittedly spam dispel is an annoyance here, not a complete game-breaker). Justicars can get mien of leadership dispelled if they're in tank mode (which makes them almost useless) or mien of honor if they're in healer mode (ditto). Wardens have almost no healing abilities other than HOTs, and a single marksman can dispel those HOTs 3 times as fast (2 dispels at a time, 1sec GCD instead of 1.5sec) as a warden can put them on. You might as well be spending your entire time CC'd, or mana drained to 0 in 5 seconds by a pre-1.1 void knight. All other dispels are on cooldowns, the MM dispel should be too.

My point about the CC change is that it makes a lot of abilities useless... actually worse than useless. Speccing into that 3-second stun in bullrush and the 7-second incapacitate in paragon hurts you now as a warrior in pvp. If you use any kind of break-on-damage CC (outside 1v1 or on faraway targets who cannot be hit by random damage) or CC that lasts shorter than 6 seconds, you are actively gimping your team and making it harder for everyone else. This includes 1-2 second 'pseudo-cc' on abilities like bull rush, the 1-second stun from warlocks, the 2-second stun from justicars, almost all CC that breaks on damage, etc.

PVP is just a battle of gear/burst now. If 3 people are on your healer, your healer WILL die -- you can't disarm them, knockback them, fear them, or even snare them. If you're melee, you'll be chasing snare-immune kiters who have passive movement boosts all the time (of course you won't be snared either) and good luck trying to hit enemies in melee if both of you are running at 100% movement speed and you have 200+ ping! A lot of classes don't even bother speccing into the PVP soul because you don't need breakfree anymore.

DR by itself isn't a bad idea [and as much crap as WOW takes for their pvp, their DR grouping is fairly good IMO]... but putting everything on the same DR... wut? Snares on DR is all by itself.


edited to add: I actually agree that pvp is more fun without CC, as long as you design the pvp game around that from day 1. Guild Wars is a great example -- there is zero CC in that game (except for knockdowns, which are short duration and can be avoided in some ways), and even keeping up snares isn't something you can do constantly. Control in GW comes in interrupting key skills and forcing your opponents to use their skills in less-than-optimal situations. That's fine, and I think Guild Wars pvp is pretty darn awesome thanks to this design. OTOH you can't just decide that "ok, from this day forward CC will be useless" in a game that has entire souls built around CCing people....

[Shatter]

The absolute worst part of Rift atm is premades vs Pugs.  I am at the point I am serioulsly debating on quitting just because of it.  There are people/groups/guilds that do premades ALL DAY and will literally win 100% of their games....all day.  That means the PUGS lose all day, or basically 1 faction loses all day.  It is to the point that PvP is almost useless unless you have a premade.  This weekend I spent the least time in game since launch, I logged in, qued, entered a warfront, saw the same premade I always see and logged off.  Any recommendations on a fun pvp MMO? :P

[Threash]

Any recommendations on a fun pvp MMO? :P

Pretty much all of them if you have a group, none as a pug.

[Draegan]

Your complaint can literally be applied to every MMOG out there.

[squirrel]

The absolute worst part of Rift atm is premades vs Pugs.  I am at the point I am serioulsly debating on quitting just because of it.  There are people/groups/guilds that do premades ALL DAY and will literally win 100% of their games....all day.  That means the PUGS lose all day, or basically 1 faction loses all day.  It is to the point that PvP is almost useless unless you have a premade.  This weekend I spent the least time in game since launch, I logged in, qued, entered a warfront, saw the same premade I always see and logged off.  Any recommendations on a fun pvp MMO? :P

As others say this is hardly unique to Rift. Does Scion pop on your server? That WF generally doesn't attract the premades as much although it has it's own issues.

[Shatter]

I could of swore WOW had a system that put pre-mades vs premades, but then again I havent played WOW in 4 years so maybe Im just on crack.  Scion does pop but its the least of all the WF's.  I was actually thinking of trying Global Agenda, gonna do some reading up on it today

[Falconeer]

Premades are an issue for whoever isn't serious about PvP. What Shatter describes happens on our server too. I think everyone is invoking separated queues for "ungrouped" and "grouped" (maybe ranked) PvP. I can see some pitfalls in that, but I think it's necessary as the difference in skill, coordination and gear/rank is driving people away.

[Dren]

I could of swore WOW had a system that put pre-mades vs premades, but then again I havent played WOW in 4 years so maybe Im just on crack.  Scion does pop but its the least of all the WF's.  I was actually thinking of trying Global Agenda, gonna do some reading up on it today

WoW has it down to 5-man premades now.  There may still be some shenanigans with coordinated queuing within and across servers, but once they did rated BG's that seemed to have stopped.  The good rewards are no longer in the PuG BG's, so it isn't really worth the hassle.

Still, in some of the smaller BG's a 5-man team that is coordinated can be very powerful.  I've seen some BG's where two 5-man premades were in the same one and blew us apart.  It really just takes the 5-man team to get just a slight amount of coordination from the PuG's on their side and it is a win for them.  Not perfect, but tons better than it has ever been with this regard.

Bottom line, if you want to get serious about PvP, find a group of like-minded folks.  Finding a balanced skirmish in any of these games is very very rare.

[Threash]

I could of swore WOW had a system that put pre-mades vs premades, but then again I havent played WOW in 4 years so maybe Im just on crack.  Scion does pop but its the least of all the WF's.  I was actually thinking of trying Global Agenda, gonna do some reading up on it today

WoW has it down to 5-man premades now.

So does Rift.  At this point if you are queueing for pvp alone in any game do it with the expectation that you are going to lose, I queue solo before my regular team logs in and its damn near 100% loss ratio alone and 100% win ratio in groups.  The rewards for losing are over half what you get for winning though.

[Draegan]

The new colossus vs. colossus event in Stillmoor is pretty damn fun. 

[waylander]

I thought Patch 1.2 was going to usher in that resource battle, capture the tower, and the end game brawl zone event that would promote world PVP.  So far, if it is even in the game, none of us on Deepstrike have really noticed it.  If it is in the game, then it needs to have some sort of server wide announcement to people will head there to compete.

I do think the CC changes were great, and it makes people have to pay attention to group strategy.  As of Patch 1.2 my main issues with PVP content are..........

1.
No incentive for open world PVP and no real game mechanics

2.
No competitively ranked warfronts (by guild or team) per server cluster

3.
Matchmaker is horrible for PVP because it doesn't look for class balance, and instead fills your warfront raid up with warm bodies. Its awesome when you're PUG'ing it up, the other side has 10 healers and your side has 0 healers.  This happens frequently unfortunately, and makes PUG's / Warfronts more frustrating than fun.

4.
PVP Gear and PVE gear are too different statwise. Except for Valor or Toughness, the gear should be usable for end game PVE, but most of the time PVP gear isn't useful outside of PVP.

As of Patch 1.2 my only PVE issues are:

1.
I cannot stand to level Alt characters because by level 30 I'm burned out on kill 10, 15, 20 of X, or collect 10, 15, 20 of Y.

2.
Quest and mob exp is too low, the newbie population is 90% gone from release day, and I'd rather just speed through the lower levels to get a new ALT to level 50 for the end game.

3.
Guild Perks should significantly increase mob/quest EXP so that Alt characters level faster.

[Xanthippe]

The absolute worst part of Rift atm is premades vs Pugs.  I am at the point I am serioulsly debating on quitting just because of it.  There are people/groups/guilds that do premades ALL DAY and will literally win 100% of their games....all day.  That means the PUGS lose all day, or basically 1 faction loses all day.  It is to the point that PvP is almost useless unless you have a premade.  This weekend I spent the least time in game since launch, I logged in, qued, entered a warfront, saw the same premade I always see and logged off.  Any recommendations on a fun pvp MMO? :P

I have had a great time leveling a mage through warfronts.  Having a 50 who can fund the alt is essential, for gear.  You could always level an alt through warfronts - the sub50 warfronts are a blast.

I haven't pvp'ed much at 50 for various reasons, but one of them is that facing premades in warfronts isn't much fun.  (I also haven't been able to find my pvp mojo on my rogue for some reason).

[Draegan]

I've been playing a Rogue for a while and I still haven't found my stride with a Rogue.  They're either fragile or don't do the dps of other classes.

They're pretty good for one on one ganking and shit, but outside that, they're a bit lost, unless you want to play a bard tossing out ineffective heals (unless you have a SHOE).

[Zetor]

Yeah, atm it's premade or bust, especially if you don't have at least rank 4 gear (which you won't have until you pvp'd a lot... vicious circle). It is possible to beat premades with undergeared pugs (not just in Scion either), but the premades need to be very bad. It's also kinda rare, but a good ego-booster if it happens!

Unfortunately the prestige/favor grind gets really bad after a certain point and the system eerily reflects the vanilla WOW honor grind (after they removed the 'only top X honor earners can be rank Y' restriction). You get 250 prestige per win, and a single-digit amount for a kill; to get rank 6 you need what, 1mil prestige total? And then you need 140k favor per weapon, 70+k favor per armor piece, ...

[Dren]

It would be nice if the system automatically reduced the loss penalty based on the ratio of players with top rate gear or win rates to those that don't.  Meaning if only 5% of your total population on a server is really getting the pvp gear, make losses be maybe 75% of a win so people can at least feel some kind of accomplishment.  Leaving everyone in the dust doesn't really do anyone any good.  There would always be a loss penalty, so it wouldn't make losing totally irrelevant.  This would just keep everyone somewhat viable and interested.

Speaking from a WoW perspective, losing your 10th matchup for a night getting like 1/5 what a win could be just makes you want to stop playing all together.  So I did.