So 6 months (or so) ago I made a post right before launch of RIFT after doing a while in BETA. It was my first impressions and if RIFT was any good. Find that post HERE. It’s not at the 6  month birthday/anniversary of the game launch and I am here to ask the next question. After 6 months, is RIFT still any good?

In short yes, and in short no. Confused? Well yeah me too. So READ ON!

First let me preface a bunch of things with a history of both my play style and my happenings with the game. My “play-style” is almost a 100% prototypical casual-hardcore. Meaning that for me, I can only play the game on my off weeks of work (I work nights 7 on 7 off–so for those 7 nights of working I cannot get into game). So the typical friend/relationship building in guilds is REAL hard to generate this way. This can take away from enjoyment of the game if you sign on to a game and even tho you have a guild you still are a stranger in your own guild because you are gone for 7 days at a time. I also hurt myself this way b/c I tend to be quite the alt-aholic and I have 5 characters I have been playing and I think of them 4 are in a guild and only 2 of those are in the SAME guild. I freely admit, it’s my own fault, but a nice lesson learned going forward. Find one guild get as many toons into it as the guild will allow so you are around the same set of people in the game. The hardcore part of my self proclaimed “casual-hardcore” is that when I AM off from work, once the family is in bed and I have finished with blogging, and catching up on various stuff, I am then in game for 2-3 hours a night.

My second preface for this RIFT experience, is my crashing issues. It’s no secret if you have been following my blog that for the first 4-5 months of launch I had some SEVERE crashing issues with the game. The 1st instances of it I knew 100% were my CPU’s fault. I had a video card that was on it’s way out so I knew I needed a new one. Sure enough 1 week into launch and the card officially waved bye-bye so I ended up with a new one and a new power supply to go with it. Alas, my crashing was not fixed. Going back to the whole work thing… When you have problems with something and support opens tickets for you, it’s nearly impossible to get into game and check out said fixes you get real fast. SO when these suport people close tickets in 48 hours with no response it was a huge PIMA to get the ticket constantly re-opened then a fix sent to me. I got the usual idiot the 1st time every time who cut and pasted all the usual stuff… Is your computer on, is it plugged in , yep that bad…. Then I would get the next guy who would always ask about my video drivers blah blah… BUT, finally I got to the mighty level 3 support! I finally got to a guy who handled my ticket and even when it auto-closed in subsequent weeks he was able to grab the ticket pretty quickly and work with me. And to Trion’s credit, they never gave up and they finally last month (yeah I know a LONG time) fixed the issue (apparently), and I haven’t gotten any crashes of my system since then (knock on wood). If I hadn’t had these issues, it’s kinda likely that not only would I be max level on at least 2 toons, but it’s possible I could have had more contacts in my guilds. Yet, it’s quite a testament to the game that I kept with it this long and saw it through to when I could play full time with no issues. I still love it and now let’s go over why!

Six months ago the first thing I mentioned I loved were THE RIFTS! Make a game called RIFT and you better make said things good. Are they still as good? Yes, and no. The yes part is, sure they are fun and the rewards are still good. The problem is that after you solo 1-2 of them in a short session, you can grow weary of them kinda quickly and then they bore you. If you have that killer AOE build and can mow them down quickly then it might not feel as bad but they tended to get old after a bit. Granted, this is only b/c I am 90% a solo player. See the normal “minor” rifts are mostly a piece of cake to solo. That is, until you get to the 1st end boss of the rift it gets a bit more challenging, but still manageable. What happens next is that you get a timer on that boss and if you beat him in the timer range you get to the bonus stages. The #1 problem with the bonus stages is, they always end in an elite boss. Which in a group is fine, but when you are soloing the RIFT it’s damn near impossible to defeat. Sure you still get the rewards, eventually, but it’s frustrating to put in the time and have to wait for the payout. Now, if you have a buddy (or 2+) and group up just wander around completing RIFTs in a zone, then you tend to not grow tires of them and it’s an absolute BLAST to do them. I loved this the few times I hooked up with a couple of strangers for some good old fashioned kill fests. It’s a ton of fun to game this way and a good break from soloing quests/rifts.

Last time my big fear was that the RIFT system was going to have the same issues that WAR had with it’s PQ system. That, after a month or so once people out level the content and quit that there wouldn’t be anyone left to help you complete them. Well, the good thing is that you can solo the RIFTs (see above). The bad thing is that you cannot solo the zone events. And if you are in zones of level 20-45, even at peak times you tend to not have enough people to complete a world event. And these events are 100% non-soloable. Even if a level 50 was doing the zone event in the lowbie 1-10 zone I highly doubt he could be everywhere at once and be successful before the zone was over run and it would fail. This can be HIGHLY frustrating on a few levels. First, the zone events are damn cool. They have some story to them, they are challenging and they also have good rewards if you have done them from begining to end (They have decent awards anyway but when you go from start to finish you really clean up). Second, even if you know you won’t be able to complete/succeed with the event and ignore it all together, you still have to worry about the damage it’s doing to the zone. The invasions will take over smaller towns and even some of the big cities of the zones. This makes traveling around a lot more perilous. Sure the argument can be made, “This makes the game more exciting”, which sure I will agree with. Yet, when you alreayd know you don’t want to do the event and also are just trying to cram in some questing before bed, then you just simply do not want to worry about if you will be killed trying to turn in a quest, or even worse the quest giver is gone and you gotta wait for the zone event to time out and the attackers to de-spawn and you get the npc’s back. It’s something Trion will have to keep an eye on for the future of the game and see how they can combat this problem which, like I said, sometimes even happens on peak hours.

World Events—> Trion has made a big deal about their dynamic world events and how interactive they were supposed to be. They also have been rolling out these world events every couple of months. I would grade these as merely average at best so far. All they are, in essence is taking a different element, building a story around it, creating a currency for the event and throwing in different skins of the same daily quests to get these drops as rewards. You take these rewards and go to the event vendor and buy new loot. Sounds good right? Well it’s a tad monotonous. And that’s just from me. Imagine the guy who plays this game daily or 4-5 days a week and keeps getting these dragon tears from dailies or rifts etc. It’s great when the world event starts but becomes a grind in less then a week. They need to make these events TRULY dynamic. Make something big happen for the event. Make a town or city disappear for a few weeks if players don’t do enough to help out. If not enough tears are gotten and spent make the god get pissed and exact some revenge. So world altering things! Right now a bunch of dailies and a dungeon event isn’t big enough for these world events to truly make a splash or make big headlines. They have become nothing more then a WoW holiday event. I hope they can mix it up a bit and make it fun, challenging, and rewarding without the daily quest grind.

The Souls

Ok before I get back into talking about each class and what I have done in them, and before my bottom line I want to gush AGAIN about the soul system. I am 1000% in love with the fact that Trion has said… Hey we have a ton of skill tree ideas, and here, enjoy! Oh and if you get bored we won’t make you break the bank to respec! Sure it’s a bit pricey after a while training the skills again, and beyond 3 or so spec slots, it does get a  bit pricey but oh so worth it. I still maintain the best way to avoid any and all burnout in RIFT is, when you start feeling like it’s becoming a grind go ahead and re-spec and pick something new out. Or even a completely different role in the same class. Tired of a pet class? GO ahead and try tanking. Tired of Tanking or healing with your roles? Then go Assassin and stalk the shadows. It’s this idea that has kept me an alt machine. I have done this with every class and it still to this day works. (as you will see with my class report below) Every single class I have used anywhere from 3-4 different Specs and trees and it’s been rewarding every time. Sure it’s more learning of how to play each time but, that my friends is what makes it fun. Seeing new ways to play and trying to get each and every ounce of DPS or healing out of a new spec is just a blast. And who says you have to lose the old spec? I will go back 2-4 levels later and put the new talent points into an old spec and run with it for a while to see if that one skill has opened up from doing that, that turns an old grindy boring spec into the greatest spec since sliced bread! 6 months later this is still the single best part of the game, the class/soul talent choices available to you, and I think it’s the main reason I have just loved the game. I think that if I had more time and all my guys to 50, there is a good chance I might have stopped playing by now. I have so loved the changing it up so much, that I don’ think it would have the same effect if all my guys were max level.

My Characters—> Ok so I don’t clam to be a RIFT expert with leveling and such, but what I do claim is that I had some fun levelign so far, and I have some tips from what I have done. One thing that I have found about the leveling is that from level 1-20 or so it goes well. You are getting new spells/abilities quickly and they all seem to help nicely. But you hit that 20-30 plateau and it hits a damn brick wall. It starts to feel grindy and the new stuff isn’t awesome anymore. BUT, fear not… hit that magical level 31 point and BAM you can unlock the big 31 point top of the tree talent. So you then pick out which one you like the best, re-spec and go have some fun. SOOOO many fun things come of the powerful and fun 31 point talents.  So check out my history of each class and what I liked about each!

Cleric (Currently at level 31)

When I last wrote about the cleric I was having a ton of fun with the Justicar centered build. I loved being in the thick of rifts and throwing out an AOE heal to help out others. Since then? Well the healing has become quite weak from my justicar to the group. This has turned my Justicar from a tanking healing rifting toon to an AOE tanky grinder. I ended up making him a Justicar (31 points)/Shaman/ Inquisitor. I ended up throwing Inquisitor in there to get some DoT damage on the group I was fighting to help with damage instead of sitting there hitting my cleave attack to hit the 4-9 guys in front of me each time I used it. Great fun 1-20 or so but then boring as all hell. I went pure healer for a few levels of warfront PVP (which I am generally admittedly awful at and hate), which turned out to be kinda fun. You can basically throw 2-3 souls of healer, or 2 soul healer and 1 for some defense, head into a warfront and just heal your little ass off. By the time you are done you have done some good healing, earned yourself a ton of the favor points and you can then buy some pvp gear (which is really just pve gear when leveling but a little better so you can almost always get an upgrade. Eventually I hit the magic level 31 (cue angels singing aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!!). NOW it’s time to hit the big talent and see what’s good for DPS. So lately I have been running a Shamen (31)/Sentinel/Druid build and a Druid (31)/Shamen/Sentinel build. The Shamen primary one seems to be a bit more fun right now, mainly for damage output and survivability. Throwing sentinel into those 2 builds was just for the extra healing and when you solo, self healing is a must. The Druid 31 point build so far is decent to meh. It gives you access to the Satyr pet which I think MIGHT end up as a solid damage dealer but for now, he cannot hold aggro enough and can get to be a pain. This is only a factor in group quests or trying to battle elite type guys, b/c you will get banged on and eventually die if you cannot out-heal it before you down it. So for now I will either stick with the Shamen big build or use the Druid on non harder quests opponents and for the change up from the norm when Shamen gets old.

Rogue (level 42 now)

I didn’t do a whole lot of branching out 6 months ago with the rogue. I primarily used the Nightblade back then to throw some firey spikes around and that was it. SINCE then, I changed it up 100% in the Rogue builds and did quite a bit of fighting with different specs. In my teens to twenties I used a Ranger build which gave me a pet. I always say in RIFT you need a pet in the 1st half or so, of the leveling. You can get mobbed quick where even 2-3 guys can overwhelm you if you don’t have self healing and you can die easy. The Ranger helped that a bit till I got to 20 then I was able to get some decent self heals or shields. I then switched to this tank type build for the bulk of my twenties. It was a Riftstalker primary build, which has a ton of teleporting on the battle field and then giving you some shields when you teleport. Not only that, when you kill things with combo points you get healed for a % per combo point left on the dying creature. I think the % has been tweaked a couple of times over the course of the last few months tho, but it was still a blast. I ended up using this mostly as a rift grinding build and it worked awesome for building up exp and planarite in the 20’s. Once I hit that late twenty and early 30’s magic point I went to a Blade Dancer (31) /Riftstalker (heals!)/assassin build. It’s got a KILLER 31 point talent–> Dancing Steel, which is amazing for AOE killing and questing. I think I flew thru the majority of the 30’s with that spec until I started to use the Assassin (31)/RS/BD build. This build also has some healing but just an amazing beast of a burst damager. Might not be as great in huge group fights but in 1-3 people in front of you, you can’t go wrong. The sap, and burst damage and the “oh shit button” of Slip Away is huge for survivability as well. I have been using this Assassin build the most lately in PVE and PVP and it’s been the most funI have had with the Rogue yet. The Rogue continues to be my favorite toon to play in RIFT, the only one that comes close is the Mage but I have to say my Warrior has been gaining ground of late.

Mage (level 36)

Back 6 months ago my favorite thing was the Chloro/Necro/Lock I was running. It worked real well b/c I put more points into Chloro then the others and was able to keep any pet up for as long as I needed. This was my primary spec until a good friend of mine opened my eyes to the Elementalist spec in my mid to upper 20’s and I basically have not looked back since. Once you get the greater earth elemental for tanking and the greater healing for him (I think it’s 25% health to him PER SECOND), throw onto that Fiery assalt which is a nice nuke, there isn’t a whole lot you cannot withstand. I ended up going Elementalist(31)/Choloro/ Dominator. It’s a ridiculous overkill spec. You get the pet who’s nearly impossible to let die, and if you do you can insta summon another, a huge amount of healing in the choloro, and one last safe guard in the CC polymorph squirrel in the dominator tree. Yep, it is one hell of a ride to take.

Warrior (one is 33 one is 21)

Warrior is the only class I have 2 of. I did this b/c I wanted to level one entirely as a tank and one entirely as a DPS. This was a good bit of fun as the Tank using a Pali/ Void Knight/Beast Master as my tanking spec. This was all well and good until late teens early twenties (where I am stuck now on him) where I have stopped tanking. Mainly I stopped b/c there isn’t enough people around to tank for in those areas and solo tanking is 100% a drag (see Justicar! above) So I went more to my DPS warrior. He’s 33 now, but like the other warrior I was bored of him and just didn’t like it at all for a while. There was not enough burst damage and not enough self healing to keep him fun. I have this # 1 theory for any solo warriors out there. The absolute must is taking Paladin. You have to have 8 points in Pali to get the 100% self heal on the 10 min cool-down. Sure the CD sucks but you need this if you are soloing. It will save your life countless times in battles and might even allow you to take on an elite at then end of the bonus section of a RIFT.  SO my 1st spec with DPS ended up being the Paragon/Pali/ Beast Master (see–> Pet + Lay on hands = more survivability). But as always I didn’t feel like I was doing enough damage so I tried something kinda dumb for a DPS warrior which ended up working nicely. I switched over to a Reaver primary spec (with Pali and Warlord) making me a DoT DPS warrior. By then I was able to use the Plague Bringer talent in the tree which spread out the DoT’s to 5 nearby creatures. SO all I did for the longest time (well and still now!) was mount up run around grab 4-5 mobs and then hit PB and start throwing DoTs, including the 31 point tallent which already spreads to all around. Couple that with the healing element of Soul Feast  + Soul Sickness, and Master of the Abyss and you have quite a bit of survivability and damage output. It has made my warrior be sturdy and have a great bit of damage output as well.

VERDICT—> Yeah I know I talk too much… but again is RIFT still any good? For now it sure is. It has me hooked and has me hopful that other MMO’s in the future see how they can have a ton of classes/specs and still keep it balanced and fun. The loneliness factor will cause me to stop subscribing the minute that SWTOR and or Diablo 3 comes out but it’s not so much that RIFT is bad but I will be tired of it solo by then and ready for a break. I still recommend this game 10000% to anyone thinking about playing it. Do so now, get in experiment and have a blast. The game is great and you will enjoy it quite a bit.

Any Q’s or comments post them here or email me directly at Geekjockblog{at}yahoo{dot}com

-GeekJock

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