*Release* Rift Warrior Discussion

I apologize in advance ... I just had to do that.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow also.

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And now, unfortunately, I have to go clean house in preparation of our guests arrival tomorrow, and so my wife doesn't come in here and take a shotgun to my computers.

alexicacon wrote:

I apologize in advance ... I just had to do that.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow also.

------

And now, unfortunately, I have to go clean house in preparation of our guests arrival tomorrow, and so my wife doesn't come in here and take a shotgun to my computers.

Have fun with the family - I'll be thinking of you while I play until the wee hours of the morning laddie.

That's ok, I'm prepping a can of grapefruit juice with 3 of those 5 hour energies and 15 mg straight vitamin B12 that I plan to drink tomorrow night as soon as the last guest goes to bed.

If that's what you're having, I can only imagine the kinds of beverages you will be feeding your guests.

Having only played the last beta for a couple hours the thing that seemed most overwhelming to me was establishing a good rotation. It was talent and ability overload for me and I didn't ever feel like I got the feel for it by the time beta closed.

I am considering going with a Pally/Void/? main. Any tips from our Alpha and Beta people on a third soul, builds, and rotations?

If you're going pally / void - that's a tank build, so I would toss in reaver for the AoE agro generation.

My recommendation is 14 void, 12 reaver, and 40 paladin, but you can mix and match however you like to suit your prefence. There's a ton of variation just in having the same three souls and how it plays based on how deep you invest in any soul too.

I fired up a warrior which I figured after beta I'd never do. They just seem to take so long to get going and they struggle from 10-15 because of having to fight adds and not having decent self heals. (yes I know the reaver gets the DoT heal but that is a whopping 50 heal over 15 seconds; yes i know you can aoe it but then its ~150 over 15 seconds and you are fighting 3 targets)

So, anyways I started off with riftblade and man they did a nice job beefing this soul up. My experience in beta with warriors was if you were fighting 2, the first one went down and then it was 50/50 whether the second killed you or died. With the riftblade beef up, this has changed to having half health when the second one drops. So that is a very positive change.

So I went with riftblade/paladin/beastmaster. Going sword and board for paladin doesn't hurt the riftblade's dps at all. And right now the zero point pet from beastmaster is for security, escape options and dps while leveling. It is working really well right now.

I have a warrior that i started Paladin (+riftblade and warlord) because that's what I played to about level 18 in Alpha. I swapped from Paladin 1-hander main to Riftblade 2-hander main around level 10 and that made things a lot easier - it was crazy how much faster I could kill with Riftblade abilities compared to Paladin abilities. So I'm interested in trying out that Riftblade/Pally sword and board combo FBB talked about above.

Once I started unlocking other souls, though, I started having serious problems second-guessing myself. I tried to do a Riftblade/Champion combo, but man I end up with so many abilities I get overwhelmed. I need about 2-3 attack point builders, and 1-2 finishers, and 2-3 utility abilities. Anything more than that and 1) I have no room on my bar, and 2) I can't keep track of what is what in the heat of battle. I'm thinking of just sticking to the basics and not worrying about all the fiddly other attack builders. Do you really need 6 different attack point builders at one time? Anyone else feel this way?

Anyway I ended up respeccing about 4 times last night. I ended up with Reaver/Riftblade (forgot which was the third). I have no idea what the hell I'm doing with Reaver though... I may just unlock the beastmaster tonight and then try FBB's riftblade/paladin/beastmaster combo. I love the Champion's Charge ability so much, though...

Khoram wrote:

Once I started unlocking other souls, though, I started having serious problems second-guessing myself. I tried to do a Riftblade/Champion combo, but man I end up with so many abilities I get overwhelmed.

this can happen for any class combo. what i end up doing is seeing which ones do the most dmg and clear everything else off my main toolbar. The rest if they're just copies and a lot of times they are or just lower end of the same thing i keep them off, but if there's other abilities that have special or a specific need i put them on another tool bar and set them up with hot keys. Then on a third toolbar i keep all my buffs and put them in order that iwould use them.

Makes things less overwhelming that way and the main toolbar isnt a complete mess.

A good portion of playing rift is in simply analyzing and sorting abilities effectively.

I work out an attack rotation of 2 to 4 buttons, no more, then a triage of maybe 3 max finishing moves based on effect, and maybe a couple other key misc abilities like a silence or something, and I do that for each char type I run.

Any buffs or misc seldom used abilities are sidebar'd.

One thing I do to help restore sanity to dealing with the overwhelming amount of abilities is to put a "panic" or "key" ability onto my thumb button on the mouse. For an example, on my warrior it's my bull rush. On my tank spec rogue, it's the taunt. I have the ability on my second hotbar and I went into keybinding to bind that button to the thumb button. It frees up a space on the main hotbar. There is no way I'd leave a taunt off the hotbar otherwise.

Also, I try to replicate my setup for every character. The 5 button is reserved for a "finisher" or "activation" skill. For an example, on my rogue, I put Guarded Steel, the most important finisher for a tank, on 5. I put my attack point consumer on 5 for my warrior and on my healer, I put my best instant heal on 5. 1-3 are for setups, 4 is my "miscellaneous" button and the stuff after that is just stuff I might use situationally and I want them in reach. Party heals, ranged attacks for a melee character, that sort of thing.

Sorry for the text bomb!

Tobliz wrote:

Also, I try to replicate my setup for every character. The 5 button is reserved for a "finisher" or "activation" skill.

lol i do the same for my finishers... alway 5

Thanks for the sanity check, I was already doing most of what you guys said.

I ended up respeccing last night to something that may be a bit weird: something like Paladin 8, reaver 8, riftblade 4, with a 1-hander/shield. I was worried that I may have spread myself too thin, but actually it works out very nicely. I have about 5 1-hour buffs, life-leach, Lay on Hands, temp shield buff, aoe-dots, a reaction attack, and 2 non-GCD attacks. Might be slightly slower killing single-target than when I was full on Riftblade, but it's not by much, and my survivability and multi-mob potential are much higher. I was attacking two mobs last night, and thought a friendly mage had decided to join in and help me. It wasn't until after I had killed the two mobs that I noticed it was an enemy caster that had been nuking me the whole time and needed dealing with. I popped Lay on Hands (or whatever it's called in Rift), was back to full health, and then deal with that sucker

Khoram wrote:

Thanks for the sanity check, I was already doing most of what you guys said.

I ended up respeccing last night to something that may be a bit weird: something like Paladin 8, reaver 8, riftblade 4, with a 1-hander/shield. I was worried that I may have spread myself too thin, but actually it works out very nicely. I have about 5 1-hour buffs, life-leach, Lay on Hands, temp shield buff, aoe-dots, a reaction attack, and 2 non-GCD attacks. Might be slightly slower killing single-target than when I was full on Riftblade, but it's not by much, and my survivability and multi-mob potential are much higher. I was attacking two mobs last night, and thought a friendly mage had decided to join in and help me. It wasn't until after I had killed the two mobs that I noticed it was an enemy caster that had been nuking me the whole time and needed dealing with. I popped Lay on Hands (or whatever it's called in Rift), was back to full health, and then deal with that sucker :)

having gone primarily paragon with my warrior i'm not familiar with which soul gives you a life leach ability?

ranalin wrote:
Tobliz wrote:

Also, I try to replicate my setup for every character. The 5 button is reserved for a "finisher" or "activation" skill.

lol i do the same for my finishers... alway 5

You are all wrong, Finishers should always be bound to r

but my binds are
1234rfvcxzqe
Modifying Shift and Alt for other bars.

Reaver's zero point dot can be talented for both aoe and life leach.

ranalin wrote:

having gone primarily paragon with my warrior i'm not familiar with which soul gives you a life leach ability?

Reaver. Tier 2, right most ability, forgot the name. Pair it up with the Plague Spreader (tier 2, left most) and it helps a lot when fighting multiples. Toss in Blood Fever and Necrotic Touch, and there is a lot of agro heading your way

WiredAsylum wrote:
ranalin wrote:
Tobliz wrote:

Also, I try to replicate my setup for every character. The 5 button is reserved for a "finisher" or "activation" skill.

lol i do the same for my finishers... alway 5

You are all wrong, Finishers should always be bound to r

but my binds are
1234rfvcxzqe
Modifying Shift and Alt for other bars.

i use zxcv for my o sh*t or proc abilities.

q is and always will be my autorun key... It was like that in Asherons Call and i cant change it no matter how many times i try. i dont do natural wasd i do wesd

LtWarhound wrote:
ranalin wrote:

having gone primarily paragon with my warrior i'm not familiar with which soul gives you a life leach ability?

Reaver. Tier 2, right most ability, forgot the name. Pair it up with the Plague Spreader (tier 2, left most) and it helps a lot when fighting multiples. Toss in Blood Fever and Necrotic Touch, and there is a lot of agro heading your way :)

I'll have to toss a couple more points that way.

My button functionality is generally congruent across my various chars also.

LtWarhound wrote:
ranalin wrote:

having gone primarily paragon with my warrior i'm not familiar with which soul gives you a life leach ability?

Reaver. Tier 2, right most ability, forgot the name. Pair it up with the Plague Spreader (tier 2, left most) and it helps a lot when fighting multiples. Toss in Blood Fever and Necrotic Touch, and there is a lot of agro heading your way :)

Reaver also gets a wonderful passive that gives you back up to 9% of your health upon mob death. Any mob. Having trouble with a boss? Kill a squirrel that's loitering nearby for an hp boost.

My latest altitis fetish is a Reaver/Champion/Whatever spec. I think Whatever was Paragon or something that's supposed to be a dual-wield soul, which I was going to use only for skill point passives (armour penetration, etc.). But so far ended up putting 0 points into. Maybe I should respec it to Beastmaster or something like it. Don't want a pet though. No time for it. I'm an absolute steam roller + lawn mower with this char. If ever I'm fighting a single target that does not con orange to me, it feels like I'm wasting my time and skills. 2-3 targets is the norm. 4 targets of even level do not bother me, but I have to be more involved in the fight than my 4 button rotation. Just this morning I survived a 4 mob fight, where all of them were 2 levels above me. And all it cost me was one of those HoT pots. And even that was only for insurance, rather than need. Didn't use any of my fears or fanciness. Just beat the snot out of them and had around 20-30% hp left at the end of the fight.

Reaver/Champion? So you're a dual wielding Reaver? Interesting. My baby warrior has been playing around as a Reaver/Paladin/Riftblade and while he's sturdy, he's no steam roller.

Champion is all about 2h. They get lots of bonuses for 2h wielding.

I was just toying around the soul tree calculator and I have a question.

Champion's Two-hander Specialization passive. It says that it boosts physical ability damage up to 40%. Considering that just about all of Champion's abilities inflict base physical damage + bonus physical damage, this seems to me too good to be true. It can't possibly boost your dps by 40%. What's the catch?

I could be completely wrong, but if I had to guess, I would say that 1) it is only a bonus to your abilities that do *physical* damage (so it's not a straight dps increase, if you have, say, riftblade/fire attacks or reaver/death attacks mixed in), and 2) at high level I would image many a mob, and bosses especially, will have high physical damage resistance (this is generally true in other RPGs/MMOs). So, yeah, it is good (hey, you're a Champion, after all!) but it's not like it's a flat out +40% dps increase, either.

I just made all that up with nothing to back it up. Feel free to ignore.

Khoram wrote:

I could be completely wrong, but if I had to guess, I would say that 1) it is only a bonus to your abilities that do *physical* damage (so it's not a straight dps increase, if you have, say, riftblade/fire attacks or reaver/death attacks mixed in), and 2) at high level I would image many a mob, and bosses especially, will have high physical damage resistance (this is generally true in other RPGs/MMOs). So, yeah, it is good (hey, you're a Champion, after all!) but it's not like it's a flat out +40% dps increase, either.

I just made all that up with nothing to back it up. Feel free to ignore.

Well, even majority of riftblade and reaver skills say they do weapon damage worth of physical damage + their elemental skill bonus damage. It's just that champion's bonus skill damage is all physical. So even if just the basic portion of elemental damage skills is increased by 40%, that's like having a weapon that does 40% more dps (except for the auto-attack).

MoonDragon wrote:

I'm fairly even split level 36 Reaver/Champion going for 2h AoE build. I could never take on 5-7 mobs at one time. Granted, I never tried taking on mobs 2-3 levels below me. Before patch, I could comfortably take on 2-3 mobs my level or possibly up to 2 levels higher, depending on the mob. With 1 add, I had to work for it, 2 adds was a fight for my life with pots and various risky abilities like fear having to be used. So clearly either I was doing something wrong, or tanking 10 even level mobs is not a function of a Reaver.

After I logged back in and reassigned my points, my first single even mob fight left me at -15% health. Subsequent fights I put more effort in and I could end a fight with perhaps 5-10% hp off my bar. We are talking single target even level fight. The trash that mages can kill before it gets to them and rogues can stunlock kill before taking a single point of damage. Anyways... took on a couple of even level mobs and ended up the fight with 60% hp. While walking around, I aggroed a 2 level higher mob and an even level helper, while having about 75% hp on me. I literally had to run from the fight and barely made it away with 5% hp after fearing both of them and popping a dmg absorb potion.

So yeah. You can tell me I'm playing it wrong. But that's not making me wanna come back. From being a super fun character to play, I feel like my mage felt in beta when I quit playing that character for good. I am not going to be respeccing to Paladin just so that I can survive an add when fighting single yellow con mobs. If that's what I need to do to play, well then I'm not going to be playing. Even though I really wanted to play a Pally tank as an alternate role. I don't think that'll be happening for a while now.

To take on the largest number of adds, you'll prolly want reaver/pally/warlord (or VK). Champ is not tough enough to do it. You need the mitigation from block. The 2h route with reaver is interesting if you wanna do dps, but I don't think it's the way you want to go if your goal is to solo 5-6 mobs. Also, remember that because of the way soul feast/plague bringer, master of the abyss, and creeping death work, you're better off facing lots of weak mobs than a single tough mob. The more mobs you're fighting, the more healing you're getting. A single, even level mob fight isn't necessarily the best way to judge a reaver's abilities.

The great thing about rifts class system is there's no one way to do it. But if you have a particular result in mind, some combinations are going to work better than others. All I'm saying is that you might want to experiment with some different options.

Keep in mind that designers don't like adjusting class abilities. If they have to nerf something, it means they made a mistake somewhere and now have to publicly admit they were wrong. You can be sure that they're doing it because it's definitely broken, not because they want to spoil your fun.

Tyagaraja wrote:
MoonDragon wrote:

I'm fairly even split level 36 Reaver/Champion going for 2h AoE build. I could never take on 5-7 mobs at one time. Granted, I never tried taking on mobs 2-3 levels below me. Before patch, I could comfortably take on 2-3 mobs my level or possibly up to 2 levels higher, depending on the mob. With 1 add, I had to work for it, 2 adds was a fight for my life with pots and various risky abilities like fear having to be used. So clearly either I was doing something wrong, or tanking 10 even level mobs is not a function of a Reaver.

After I logged back in and reassigned my points, my first single even mob fight left me at -15% health. Subsequent fights I put more effort in and I could end a fight with perhaps 5-10% hp off my bar. We are talking single target even level fight. The trash that mages can kill before it gets to them and rogues can stunlock kill before taking a single point of damage. Anyways... took on a couple of even level mobs and ended up the fight with 60% hp. While walking around, I aggroed a 2 level higher mob and an even level helper, while having about 75% hp on me. I literally had to run from the fight and barely made it away with 5% hp after fearing both of them and popping a dmg absorb potion.

So yeah. You can tell me I'm playing it wrong. But that's not making me wanna come back. From being a super fun character to play, I feel like my mage felt in beta when I quit playing that character for good. I am not going to be respeccing to Paladin just so that I can survive an add when fighting single yellow con mobs. If that's what I need to do to play, well then I'm not going to be playing. Even though I really wanted to play a Pally tank as an alternate role. I don't think that'll be happening for a while now.

To take on the largest number of adds, you'll prolly want reaver/pally/warlord (or VK). Champ is not tough enough to do it. You need the mitigation from block. The 2h route with reaver is interesting if you wanna do dps, but I don't think it's the way you want to go if your goal is to solo 5-6 mobs. Also, remember that because of the way soul feast/plague bringer, master of the abyss, and creeping death work, you're better off facing lots of weak mobs than a single tough mob. The more mobs you're fighting, the more healing you're getting. A single, even level mob fight isn't necessarily the best way to judge a reaver's abilities.

The great thing about rifts class system is there's no one way to do it. But if you have a particular result in mind, some combinations are going to work better than others. All I'm saying is that you might want to experiment with some different options.

Keep in mind that designers don't like adjusting class abilities. If they have to nerf something, it means they made a mistake somewhere and now have to publicly admit they were wrong. You can be sure that they're doing it because it's definitely broken, not because they want to spoil your fun.

I also think the classes in general are overpowered. There's little need to group outside of a dungeon, and an even level mob or 2 should be an even fight (you will struggle a bit). Having the ability to kill 3-7 even con mobs is OP, IMO, no matter the class. That's just my thoughts, based on years of MMOs that aren't WoW.

Given that, it sounds like the designers are bringing some balance to Rift. Warriors should not be a class that can out DPS and out Tank everyone. The best warrior build shouldn't out DPS the best rogue or mage build. In fact, IMO, the best warrior DPS build should be on par with a moderate mage or rogue. Afterall, you're armor is 10x theirs, so given that advantage, why should you also have the same DPS? I wouldn't call for a mage to have the same survivability as a warrior.

Chloro/warlock - nothing to see here move along.

Anyone have a good warrior build out for a permanent partner to a cleric? I imagine the main role is hold aggro and DPS. Survivability isn't that important considering a healer will follow the war around. Focus on the first 1-10 and 10-20 levels of the builds, as there are plenty of endgame builds but starting out is the tricky part.

For example, is there a high DPS 2-hander or DW build that has a few taunts (preferably an AOE taunt eventually).