A few questions about rift

[LordBalkoth]

I am a long time wow player and recently swtor player so I straddle those two at the same time. That being said, one of my guildies decided to try rift lite and it got me thinking. I went to the website and checked out the classes. The whole ascended soul/heroic soul and other stuff got me confused. It seems similar to SWTOR where you pick your general class and then real class after that. Rift seems to have an insane number of classes (reminds me of shadowbane).

I am interested in necromancer and potentially in shaman and druid. Necromancer is seems intuitive enough (although I would appreciate any deeper info on that one). Do rift's version of shaman and druid have anything in common with wow ones? Can you turn into a bear or wolf (or something) as a druid? They seem to have other elementalists there too so what does shaman bring to the table in rift that others don't. How does character progression work in rift?

[g2g591]

I played it off and on for a bit and I think I can at least partially answer your questions. The individual soles are like talent specs, you could go like justicar inquisiter shaman. and then spread around your talent points between those three. The abilities your character gets are determined by how many talent points you have in each tree. ( see http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=00...qeekRR.Vzz.bcd for an example talent build) I recommend you just try the trial and play around for a bit, there are some example builds built into the game that you can follow along as you level up, but you are free to make your own if you want.

[Deleted]

Druids and Shamans are pretty different from their wow counterparts, shamans in rift use 2h weapons and are very melee based, and druids don't have any shapeshifting, that is as much as I can give you about those two as I don't have a cleric.
The character progression is a bit like wow, You have the talents tree for each class, there is like 8 or something, you choose 3 of these to use and then you have a total of 66 points (at max level) to distribute between the 3, you learn new abilities depending on how many points you have in a certain tree, so at 10 points in the shaman tree you might get a stun or something (completely pulled out of my ass). Also you have planar attunement at max level, this is basically a talent hexagon, each talent costs a various amount of points to purchase and you earn 100 points per 500k xp after level 50, when you put points in a talent you make all the talents touching the one you picked become available to put points in. So that was a pretty brief explanation but that is pretty much what character progression is in Rift.

[Tarien]

I am interested in necromancer and potentially in shaman and druid. Necromancer is seems intuitive enough (although I would appreciate any deeper info on that one). Do rift's version of shaman and druid have anything in common with wow ones? Can you turn into a bear or wolf (or something) as a druid? They seem to have other elementalists there too so what does shaman bring to the table in rift that others don't. How does character progression work in rift?

The best way to explain it is that like WoW you have three talent tree's, so in WoW a mage has Frost, Fire and Arcane. In WoW, you choose one tree and fill it with 31pts before you can place the remaining points into the other trees.

However, in RIFT a mage has eight possible talent trees (souls): Necromancer, Warlock, Pyromancer, Stormcaller, Archon, Chloromancer, Dominator and Elementalist. You choose three to be active, these three form your 'spec'. So for instance, in raids I have Pyromancer, Warlock and Archon, three souls that compliment each other well and provide awesome single target DPS. I can spread the points around however I want, creating a hybrid build if I want to or putting up to 51pts into a single soul tree.

In WoW you have 'dual spec', which allows you to create two roles that you can use to swap from being a tank to a dps, or a dps to a healer.

In RIFT you have upto SIX specs, and you can if you want have roles for Tank, Healer, DPS, PvP, Soloing and Support (support is a debuff/buff/heal type role, mostly used in raids).

Necromancer is a lot like Warlock demonology tree from WoW, you turn into a demon, you have demon minions. You generally siphon life from others to heal yourself.

Druid and Shaman are melee souls. I'm not that clue'd up on cleric souls, but they are nothing like in WoW, they play more like a holy paladin afaik.

[LordBalkoth]

The best way to explain it is that like WoW you have three talent tree's, so in WoW a mage has Frost, Fire and Arcane. In WoW, you choose one tree and fill it with 31pts before you can place the remaining points into the other trees.

However, in RIFT a mage has eight possible talent trees (souls): Necromancer, Warlock, Pyromancer, Stormcaller, Archon, Chloromancer, Dominator and Elementalist. You choose three to be active, these three form your 'spec'. So for instance, in raids I have Pyromancer, Warlock and Archon, three souls that compliment each other well and provide awesome single target DPS. I can spread the points around however I want, creating a hybrid build if I want to or putting up to 51pts into a single soul tree.

In WoW you have 'dual spec', which allows you to create two roles that you can use to swap from being a tank to a dps, or a dps to a healer.

In RIFT you have upto SIX specs, and you can if you want have roles for Tank, Healer, DPS, PvP, Soloing and Support (support is a debuff/buff/heal type role, mostly used in raids).

Necromancer is a lot like Warlock demonology tree from WoW, you turn into a demon, you have demon minions. You generally siphon life from others to heal yourself.

Druid and Shaman are melee souls. I'm not that clue'd up on cleric souls, but they are nothing like in WoW, they play more like a holy paladin afaik.

I have always been drawn to evil casters, necromancer specifically. Diablo 2 had a necromancer, Diablo 3 has witch doctor. WoW does not have a proper necromancer. Death Knight is a plated melee char with very limited necromantic powers and warlock dabbles in demons not undead. Thanks for the input. Any good realms to try? I live on East Coast US. I made the mistake of joining a lightly populated realm in SWTOR and raiding wont be happening for me any time soon (server transfer escaped biowares grasp too problematic to do)

[Amnasty]

Druids in rift are fastly different.. they use Fae Creatures *the first being a fairy* who helps heal and such they deal a great amout of damage and healing and because of the healing i have tanked on my rift druid. This however was awhile ago. For me the game seemed amazing.. and then fell short.. Ahem SWTOR *which i hope to be playing again after the legacy patch. Shaman are more dpsy, and use 2h to deal damage empowering strikes useing elements.

[Pachycrocuta]

As for your question on a good shard (server) to try... Depends. Do you like pve server or pvp server? For pve server, go Wolfsbane (highest pop pve shard). Pvp server, go Seastone (highest pop pvp shard). Unfortunately, every single NA server is on Pacific time.

[Primalthirst]

Don't go to Wolfsbane or Seastone, they currently have ability lag issues due to overpopulation.
Log on during your regular playtime and pick a medium pop server imo.

[Tarien]

Try Laethys, Gnarlwood, Briarcliff or Deepstrike, those are very busy medium pop servers, but don't let that fool you - my own server is medium pop and it is jumping with people all day long

[LordBalkoth]

Thanks for all the replies. I will definitely check it out. There is no harm in "playing the field" especially if you can try for free.

[DeltrusDisc]

No screw these guys above me! :P It's all about Deepwood US! ^_<

[Tonystark]

Guess what, realm transfers are free try a couple out. Tarien did an excellent job explaning the soul tree. I didn't figure out you could change your soul tree until after a few weeks of playing.

Soul tree must be reset (no points spent) to change the entire tree. In the begining, don't worry about what which one you pick as you can deviate from them. Unless you want to use the suggested builds (not great but awesome to start).

So example when making a tank in Rift, think of it like creating a character in Warcraft and you can choose three trees from a list of blood, frost, unholy, protection(war), protection(pal). You get six to chose from (I think) and tinker around with what works and what doesn't. It is absolutely mind boggling trying to keep track of everything. But sure is alot of fun tinkering around with builds, respec cost are dirt cheap.

[Queu]

Necro is very fun to level up with. The pet can be very powerful and also tank for you if you are trying to solo. Its fun to offset with Warlock while leveling up. But at 50+ end game Necro is not as viable as the other souls in a 20man raid.