The Glade 4.0

Well, I'm lvl 37 on my highest toon. I think you might be right, in that some days it seems kinda sparse. However, anytime that I've decided to participate in a rift event, we've always managed to get it done. So while they aren't often, they do happen and usually are successful.

That said, it does help to have a friend or two along to start out, preferably a healer. If I'm on my rogue, I generally cheat and go Ranger/Bard so I can mostly solo the rifts if I'm careful.

Holler anytime if you want to hook up. I'm usually playing on Aizle (34) or Kyuri (37).

It's truly hilarious to me to see people trying to talk about how they play stormcallers on the forums.

And then, they complain that it's a lousy soul.

I'm looking forward to curb-stomping with my buffed cloudburst. It already single target outdamages everything anybody else talks about *except* lightning field spam (and it's way more mana efficient; I can run my cloudburst rotation all day compared to that) and it's getting a damage boost tomorrow. Glorious. But no. Stretch of cold is useless because nobody uses water damage. Keep telling everybody that, forum gurus, so the devs continue buffing me. =)

The most hilarious part of it, to me, is that while they're over there obsessed with their air crits, I'm over here critting only slightly less *with improved spell focus* on my water ****. The only time I ever see resists is when I'm using air to AE spam... I can't wait 'till bosses and pvp players start showing some real resistances...

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Anybody interested in trying the game out, speak up. Looks like they're doing a friend code weekend starting tomorrow.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I could be convinced to try it again. I had a really bad beta experience...

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http://www.curse.com/keys/rift-allies-o ... fault.aspx

Get your keys here.

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Holy shitsnacks!

and now... I need to buy a new game.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

Ara and Kaffis, are the codes you are speaking of the same? What's the deal? I've been kicking around the idea of playing, but haven't been able to pull the trigger, as I'm kind of put off by the "jack of all trades" comments.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Yes. The event started this morning, and will run through this weekend. The client's a 7g download so the sooner, the better

And why put off by the JOAT comments? There are still roles to fill, as every build can't do everything. We still have tanks and heals and dps and support. But the flexibility for one person to fill at least 2 of those roles is there if needs be. (Warriors, the least flexible class can only do tank and dps.)

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Holy shitsnacks!

This, very much so. One build will not fulfill every role at once (at least, not in a way you'd want to depend on it in a group. Solo-centric builds can dip into enough to be self-sufficient for solo content, but that doesn't translate to group content well), and the only calling that could be considered to have the option to fulfill any role is cleric, and that's arguable, at best, as they don't have much support.

So, really, you still get most people making pretty decently specialized characters, they just get to choose, on a group-makeup by group-makeup basis, which of the 2, maybe 3 things they specialize in they'll do.

It's nice, in that if you build your roles smartly, you don't have to get turned down by a group because "we already have a tank" or "we're set for damage." I've found that it does a nice job of opening up group options, without diminishing the way the group members interdepend on each other. Well, grouping solo content aside, of course, which is my big issue with pretty much everything that comes out these days, and I've resigned myself to just being a dinosaur in my MMO content preferences.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Did something change in regards to agro recently?

I haven't played in 2 weeks or so, and logged in my level 15ish Ranger/Marksman. Something seems to have changed in regards to his pet and agro. Last time I played I my pet was able to keep agro pretty solid on a single mob. Today, he can't seem to keep agro at all and I Find myself in melee 99% of the time. Not much fun for a character built for ranged DPS.

Also, where do I find the quests to get additional souls? I screwed something up and came out of the tutorial with only two. From what I'm reading, two is probably enough, but I'd like to get a third just to have the additional options.

If you're Defiant, you can get the souls in Meridian @ level 13.

I know nothing about Guardian, but I would assume Sanctum

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Holy shitsnacks!

So I played this to the free weekend level cap (15). Its a good game, and if I didnt have to buy a 40-50 box, Id keep playing...

That box price though at least right now is too much for me

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You assume correctly.

Midgen, they didn't change anything with aggro, but something might have gotten borked resulting in your pet getting autocast turned off on his threat-increasing attacks. Check to see if his two attacks have little yellow sparkles tracing circles around them. If not, right click on the skill in the pet bar, and he'll autocast them the way you're probably used to.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Kaffis squared me away on th agro thing in game. I was just being stupid (didn't realize the role differences for the different pets).

Looks like I'm stuck with that ugly boar :p

Also, Kaffis, that quest issue I was having mysteriously solved itself after I logged out and back in.

Gotta say, I kinda miss WoW's tame the pet of your choice mechanic from a cosmetic viewpoint.

But I have to admit, I'm kinda liking the synergy of having a pet for my primarily melee rogue. I got the ranger soul, intending for it to be the least of the souls for my build where I was going to concentrate on Assassin and Bladedancer, but I wound up throwing more points into Ranger on the fly just to get the Dire Wolf pet to try. Since I'm mostly melee, I'm not all that reliant on the pet to tank...but it works great to stealth, send in the pet, then position for the backstab. After that, if the pet hold aggro or not makes little to no difference.

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Women are from Hoboken, men are from Trenton. ~ Jimmy Kimmel

I've been idly pondering whether I could make a riftblade/ranger build where I tank for my pet. I think I probably could, but I'd have to drop points in bladedancer to the point that the damage would really suffer and the wolf wouldn't make up for it, I don't think. It's an amusing thought, though.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Lol, the character is my 5th, and a gatherer to feed the other 4's crafting needs. It's also my second rogue, so I'm experimenting with the build on the fly without too much worrying about min/maxing.

Not that I'm actually worrying too much about builds...the only build I pay much attention to is my warrior tank build. I'm just having fun at the moment. If I need to respec, I'll drop the coin.

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Women are from Hoboken, men are from Trenton. ~ Jimmy Kimmel

I just made a second character, for gathering etc...

Going to be a Druid/Shaman/Justicar... I hope it works out =)

This is what I came up with.

http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0MNpc ... uozRzoR.Vc

Quick Shot then Head Shot immediately to buff your pets damage, then tank as Riftstalker.

Points in Bard to get Cadence to be a heal.

As an aside, let me just say how freaking AWESOME memory capture is.

okay, now I want to make a riftstalker marksman, lol.

Something like this might be fun to try.

Takes the mobile kiting from the marksman, and adds in the riftstalker plane shifting for even more mobility... you've got shadow shift, shadow warp, and flashback, all on 30 second cooldowns, as panic buttons for when your target closes. Also, I imagine that the three of them can be used cunningly to reduce the effective footprint of your kiting path, which I find particularly attractive in this game, as mob spawns tend to be pretty dense.

I skipped some of the crit stuff in marksman, just because flashback (the real jewel of the rifstalker contribution for this build) is pretty deep, and so I chose to focus on consistent damage rather than a crit build.

I imagine something like this (a plane shifting marksman) would be utterly bewildering to try to face in PvP, as it isn't a typical use of the plane shifting (which, being attached to a melee soul, is usually used to shift TOWARDS the enemy), and you could play all kinds of havoc with flashing back to somewhere behind the target to disorient them. It also might be fun to use for world PvP on a PvP server, since it's probably the closest I can think of to something that can literally disengage at will, between marksman jacking up its speed (swift and hasted shot, plus hasty departure and on the double on top of that) and riftstalker offering a good 60+ meters of rapid-fire shifting when used at a burst.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Man, that's the first time I've seen that Soul Tree Calculator.

The choices are... overwhelming....

Up to this point, on my Ranger/Marksman, I've pretty much just spent my points on whatever looked interesting at the time, with no prior knowledge of what comes later in that tree.

I guess I need to spend some time planning talent points going forward, now that I know a little bit more about how the game works....

Respecs are pretty cheap, Midgen. Don't sweat it too hard.

What gets expensive is speccing a new role into completely different souls. I just did that on my 33 mage (I'm toying with trying to pick up archon/chloro to play hardcore support, since it seems pretty rare), and it ate up a good 10 plat or so to train it up, I think. Sobering.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Where do you get the vindicator soul?

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

Each calling has a PvP soul. You get it by earning whatever the PvP vendor currency is (favor? I don't mess much with it).

The ability tiers are gated by PvP rank, so, from what I understand, it takes level 50 to get beyond the first tier.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Oh, one other thing, Midgen -- I find that playing with the soul calculator (or looking far ahead in the tree) is a little deceptive, since all the tooltips are for rank 1, which varies wildly in effective level based on the placement in the tree. I.e., if you're comparing a 0 point ability with a 5th tier ability (thus requiring 21 points, and thus a minimum level 21), you need to consider that the 0 point ability will be on rank 5 or 6 by the earliest point you can get that 5th tier ability.

Also, it can take a lot of effort to get a feel for a build if you haven't played with a given soul before. Looking at a level 50 build fresh is essentially trying to absorb, sort, and organize a good 60 abilities in total. Unless you've got experience with the soul, you're not going to immediately arrive at the way that build should be played, and it can be quite daunting to try to puzzle it out.

That's actually where I'm at with my archon/chloro. I've got a role with all the abilities on the hotbar, and I'm about 2/3s of the way through sorting them into *categories* of "self-buff, cooldown damage, charge conuming, etc...." so I can even begin to wrap my head around it. But all the names are unfamiliar, the icons mean nothing to me yet, etc.

Of course, it doesn't help that archon/chloro is all about weird combinations of buffs and stuff. "So, wait. This ability debuffs me to buff my allies, and then I can mitigate the debuff to myself by counteracting it with this ability that self-buffs and does a little damage..." Lol.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades