Rift 1.1 New Content

I don't want to focus on class changes here, the sub forums do that just fine, but I do want to talk about the new content coming in 1.1. What do we know about this new content? Will it be available to non-level 50s? How? Can non-50s get the unique items that have been mentioned (spirit mount, self transmogrify, etc), and how? Anyone actually experience any of the content yet (it's early in the day, but I know some of you are on!)

1.1 Hits today. Mar 30th.

Here's the notes relevent to this discussion:

Rift 1.1 - 3/30/11

== FEATURED ==
* The Endless Court launches an unprecedented invasion of Telara. Check out WORLD EVENT below for event details!
* In-game video can now be recorded as well as posted on YouTube! Read more under VIDEO CAPTURE.
* You can now report AFK teammates in Warfronts. Check out PVP/WARFONTS for details.
* Rift events no longer track player contribution against other players. See below under RIFTS AND INVASIONS for more.
* Leaders of merged groups now have the option to Unmerge Group through their portrait menu.
* Many quest fixes below under individual ZONES.

WORLD EVENT
* The Endless Court invades Telara! This worldwide event for all present-day Telara zones and level ranges culminates in the opening of the River of Souls raid zone.
* Events and rewards are available for characters of all levels!
* The new World Event UI keeps you up-to-date on current and future event progress. Check it out to see where your server stands in the fight against the Plane of Death.
* Quest starters in Meridian and Sanctum offer currency rewards for special vendors, including limited-time items only available during this event.

When is 1.1 hitting?

1.1 goes in today I think.

Authenticators go in today as well, Android only so far. IPhone soon, maybe more platforms including pc and keyfob in the future as well.

This morning the launcher patched to have an authenticator box on it. And the game patched about 350k worth of data. But that was it. So you're saying they'll patch tonight 5PM PST, 9PM EST? That's the patching schedule, no?

Its down for 1.1 right now

Why would they patch at 9pm EST? Am I missing something, or isn't that a little bit smack dab in the middle of prime time?

9pm?

They started patching at 8am PST which was 11am EST. Downtime is expected to be 4 hours.

I updated the OP. It appears everyone can participate, and you earn some sort of currency for doing so, with which you can buy the special items.

Shoal07 wrote:

Why would they patch at 9pm EST? Am I missing something, or isn't that a little bit smack dab in the middle of prime time?

For the first 3 or so weeks (and throughout beta) they would always bring servers down for "only" 30 minutes around 9PM. Often they would give 5-10 minute warning messages. That slowly changed to 30 minute messages, and I see they now stopped patching in primetime. Good.

patch notes wrote:

* Pure-Endurance 'Of the Fortress' items will no longer drop above level 13.

Praised be whatever deity is behind this. I shall light a candle for you tonight.

patch notes wrote:

* Fixed an issue where all potions were on the same cooldown. They are now divided into three major groups based on their effects: Healing/Positive, Damage/Negative, and Buffs.

This right here ensures I will stay with my 6 month subscription plan. The fact that they notice, care, and actually fix crap like this on a timely basis is very encouraging indeed. [edit]Although, I'd really like to see some of the buffing potions reset their timer on death. Or have the distinguish between fortification and assault potions.[/edit]

Another interesting change is that Faction crafting recipes will now be Rare and require mats specific to that zone.

Well, riftblade's bread and butter skill got nerfed a bit. Flamespear now has a 6 second cooldown =( I'm not happy about that but in practice, I still feel the soul has adequate DPS. I guess they just made it less of warrior+range and more warrior+elemental attacks.

I've only been playing since last weekend and I've rolled one of every class so the nerfs don't really bother me. I kind of thought the flamespear was a little crazy personally. My warrior is only lvl 11 but being able to spam a high damage ranged attack with only a GCD as a melee character kind of blew my mind.

The entire class system is kind of blowing my mind though, to be honest. I'm loving it.

Right now I am trying to get my wife hooked but it is going to be tough to pull her away from LOTRO. We rolled characters together on the goodjer shard and levelled up to 9. I'll be asking for a guild invite for us as soon as we decide if we like our combo and level up a bit more.

I like that they are actively patching AND adding content to the game so soon after launch though. It bodes well.

I read flamespear's dps was increased to compensate. Now that it has a cooldown, flamespear can be bound inside an attack macro to "twist" it with other attacks.

I'm personally more concerned with major changes to Reaver. I made a mistake of going on the official boards... oh brother. You'd think Trion was sending refrigerator sized guys named Bruno to peoples' houses to cut off their winkies. But behind some serious mouthfoaming rage and insane spewing, there are some worrying ideas. Has anybody had a chance to try out Reaver changes yet?

The Trion boards are acid, and not conducive to rational thought.

alexicacon wrote:

The Trion boards are acid, and not conducive to rational thought.

All MMO boards are.

So... Anyone have any experience with the new content yet?

I will once I get home.

Starting it up now.

--Edit--

O..M..G...

They absolutely butchered Reaver for solo PvE. Two ordinary mobs my own level can kick my ass now. And I'm supposed to be an AoE class. Wow... I mean I've been nerfed before, but this... this is like a kick in the stomach. I went from being eager to go home from work so I can play, to not even wanting to fire up the game now.

That was very unnecessary. I'll try playing something else for a while and hope it'll keep my verve going. Maybe they put out a patch soon and fix this. But damn if this didn't leave a bad taste in my mouth.

I mean, obviously that sucks, but the reaver tank build was pushing out a ridiculous amount of DPS in raids and instances. They had to correct it and the reaver's solo capability obviously took a hit. It's not like it's unusual, though. Try soloing with a warden main, for an example. There are souls better suited for soloing and others for group play.

MoonDragon wrote:

Starting it up now.

--Edit--

O..M..G...

They absolutely butchered Reaver for solo PvE. Two ordinary mobs my own level can kick my ass now. And I'm supposed to be an AoE class. Wow... I mean I've been nerfed before, but this... this is like a kick in the stomach. I went from being eager to go home from work so I can play, to not even wanting to fire up the game now.

That was very unnecessary. I'll try playing something else for a while and hope it'll keep my verve going. Maybe they put out a patch soon and fix this. But damn if this didn't leave a bad taste in my mouth.

What level/build are you Moon?

I've been leveling a reaver/warlord/pally build since launch and I was concerned about the reaver nerfs when I saw the 1.1 notes. Before the patch I could pull 5-7 even con mobs and come out full health by spamming dots via plague bringer. I checked it out (anecdotally) after the patch and to be honest, I'm fine with the changes. I'm level 42 and I tried pulling 3 even con mobs to start and came out full health, tried 4 mobs and came out with 75% health (probably because my hard-hitting aoes were on cool down) and then tried 5 mobs and ended up around 50% health.

Bottom line is that it seems at level 42, reavers are still effective but have been brought in line with some of the other souls. Maybe try messing with your build or take heart that it gets better as you level up!

Yeah, MoonDragon, I think you might wanna reconsider. If you could do absurd things before the patch (i.e. pull 5-7 mobs and end up with full health), you weren't "nerfed." You were fixed.

In Alpha as reaver, I regularly pulled as many mobs and I possibly could before they leashed and would end the fight with full health. My standard routine was to get on my horse and pull entire rift stages (sometimes 10 mobs at a time). That's broken. They reduced that before launch, but clearly not enough if Trashi could do what he says he could do.

Reconsider your spec. I'm sure you'll learn how to compensate and be able to take on adds again.

TrashiDawa wrote:

What level/build are you Moon?

I've been leveling a reaver/warlord/pally build since launch and I was concerned about the reaver nerfs when I saw the 1.1 notes. Before the patch I could pull 5-7 even con mobs and come out full health by spamming dots via plague bringer. I checked it out (anecdotally) after the patch and to be honest, I'm fine with the changes. I'm level 42 and I tried pulling 3 even con mobs to start and came out full health, tried 4 mobs and came out with 75% health (probably because my hard-hitting aoes were on cool down) and then tried 5 mobs and ended up around 50% health.

Bottom line is that it seems at level 42, reavers are still effective but have been brought in line with some of the other souls. Maybe try messing with your build or take heart that it gets better as you level up!

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.

Reaver/Warlord/Pally have pretty good synergy and are able to to do what it sounds like you want to do, but whatever floats your boat man!

Doesn't look like cleric dps changed much if any. I am still able to pull 2-3 even leveled mobs and win, as long as I through some hots on myself during the fight.

So, about the content... I'm not overly impressed yet. It's mostly "go fight death rifts". There are some new rifts. The new "traditional" rifts are a lot of fun, with BIG bosses. But there's also a new rift that requires a bit of thinking (you have to cleanse the mobs, then kill them). Too many idiots were just killing everything, and that doesn't advance the rift. Pretty annoying. Also pretty annoying that most of the "idiots" were level 50, and the 20s there would just sit there and talk trash about how stupid they were even after people explained to them what they needed to do. I sent one a whisper, and I saw the toon pause, like they were thinking, then after about 10 seconds go right back to killing everything and not advancing the rift.

Well... there were dracoliches in stillmoor last night.

The new content will be ramping up for a month ... comparing day 1 to the sum of the new stuff is going to be like comparing a little plastic kiddie pool to surfing 10' waves ...(or so I hope).

Clerics were most assuredly NOT unchanged ... the one, primary, keynote ability I've used to quietly level 2 clerics to 50 was nerfed into near uselessness yesterday.

Divine cascade. I used to be able to drop it on my justicar and every hit he made would do standard ability damage, plus proc divine cascade's AoE "blast wave" doing another 250 pts per blast to nearby mobs. Plus it was essentially fire and forget in that I could still dps on both clerics and divine cascade would just do it's thing and magnify that dps with essentially zero effort.

Now ... the DC proc only fires when the one who cast it actively casts heals on the Target, and only does 65 point in the blast wave. So 1/4 the damage, and to make it proc, I have to stop dps'ing on one char.

But, I can see Trion's logic. Prior to this patch, I was running both clerics in shimmersand actively seeking out packs of lvl 50 elites to solo at once. I know better than to go gripe about that change though ... as a general rule, any single ability that can make me grin like divine cascade was, is probably suspect.

alexicacon wrote:

Clerics were most assuredly NOT unchanged ... the one, primary, keynote ability I've used to quietly level 2 clerics to 50 was nerfed into near uselessness yesterday.

You leveled two clerics to 50 already? You are a crazy man :)!

TrashiDawa wrote:
alexicacon wrote:

Clerics were most assuredly NOT unchanged ... the one, primary, keynote ability I've used to quietly level 2 clerics to 50 was nerfed into near uselessness yesterday.

You leveled two clerics to 50 already? You are a crazy man :)!

Why two clerics, when you can change your build to whatever you want at any time?

Because I could dual box them alongside one another, and explicitly because they are that flexible that each one could be basically anything. Tank + dps/healer with cross rezzing capability if needed so I only ever had to soul walk on 1, and always had res/soulwalk provided I find't die more then every 30 min.

But more importantly, because my son would play one when he's in town, and I wanted to play one too.

alexicacon wrote:

Because I could dual box them alongside one another, and explicitly because they are that flexible that each one could be basically anything. Tank + dps/healer with cross rezzing capability if needed so I only ever had to soul walk on 1, and always had res/soulwalk provided I find't die more then every 30 min.

But more importantly, because my son would play one when he's in town, and I wanted to play one too.

I figured that's what you were doing, but you put it forth very logically. I might have given up on the dual cleric to have a cleric/mage - as a chloro can heal & rez, and then you have other roles for DPS and pet-tank.

I thought of a cleric/mage combo too - but frankly I also was thinking down the road and I have a rogue, mage, and tank I'm also planning to level on my main account, and when I do those, it won't be a cleric/cleric team anymore , but I'll still have a lvl 50 cleric to dual alongside my lowbie for rezzing, heals and dps. So looking at it from a near term approach, sure it's 2 clerics, but long-term I think you can see how the perspective starts to change a bit. Now when I level my mage and pet-tank, I've already done the grunt-work and have a cleric there for solid PL'ing ...

except Trion gutted Divine Cascade, so now it'll just be a little more work ... but oh well. I'll still bite.

How does XP distribution work in this game? People don't seem to care what level they group with. Do higher levels not leech more xp, reduce xp for lower level mobs, or anything like that, etc?