New to Rift

[Leonard McCoy]

On the advice of a couple college buddies I decided to shoot trion 50 bucks and give rift a try. It's nice they give you a month with the expansion and the original game for free so I was pretty happy when I read that. I have a couple of questions though.

1. Recommendations on servers?
2. Recommended mods? I played wow as a healer for years and would like to heal in rift as well. I used several mods to assist in me in this (clique/grid and then eventually heal bot)
3. Recommended class? Same as above. I healed on paladin/druid/and shaman and would be interested to know if anything in rift approximates any of those classes?
4. Tips for lvling. Any and all are welcome

In general any other advice you could give for new players is also welcome. I'm keen to start networking with people and making new associations in this game but I'm not really sure where to begin and wouldn't mind some help or advice in that regard as well. Thank you advance!

[Acquiesce of Telara]

1. EU or NA? Honestly, pick any server you want. Low, Medium and High are misleading, server capacities are pretty high after numerous upgrades to the tech.
2. Mods aren't really essential in Rift, and the basic UI offers a wealth of opportunities for customization out of the box. I'd practice with the regular UI, then patch in addons from http://www.curse.com/addons/rift to fit your needs.
3. The most healing options goes to the Cleric. Depending on spec, you can play a HoT healer, a preventative (disc) healer, a straight up reactive ST healer, or any combination of.
4. Level up to ten or fourteen and then try Instant Adventures, which are zerg group/raid quests you'll automatically be grouped up for. They can speed up the leveling process, but you'll still want to travel about and pick up porticulums (aka flight paths, waypoints, etc) for easier travel in the future.

General Advice: Spend some time on the official Rift forums. Unlike WoW, the most pertinent information available for specs are right there in the class forums. Just spend a day or two acclimating to the game before you worry too much about optimizing a build or playing power-gamer. Once the familiarity sinks in, go full throttle and start preparing for whatever you'd like. Also, you can have up to 6 specs, as opposed to only a dual spec in WoW. Don't try to accomplish everything with a single build. Find a spec that excels at one particular thing, then eventually purchase additional specs to focus on other priorities.

[Lathais]

On the advice of a couple college buddies I decided to shoot trion 50 bucks and give rift a try. It's nice they give you a month with the expansion and the original game for free so I was pretty happy when I read that. I have a couple of questions though.

1. Recommendations on servers?
2. Recommended mods? I played wow as a healer for years and would like to heal in rift as well. I used several mods to assist in me in this (clique/grid and then eventually heal bot)
3. Recommended class? Same as above. I healed on paladin/druid/and shaman and would be interested to know if anything in rift approximates any of those classes?
4. Tips for lvling. Any and all are welcome

In general any other advice you could give for new players is also welcome. I'm keen to start networking with people and making new associations in this game but I'm not really sure where to behind and wouldn't mind some help or advice in that regard as well. Thank you advance!

1. Doesn't matter much, try one, see if you like it. If you don't, you can transfer, for free, once per week, from the char select screen. A lot of the NA posters here play on Deepwood and a couple on Faeblight as well. EU is Blighweald and Icewatch(?) I think.

2. There are not as many mods for Rift as WoW, though I would check out Gadgets.

3. Either a Cleric or Mage if you want to heal, Warriors and Rogues do not have healing choices, though Cleric has several, and melee DPS, and Ranged DPS and Tank. Mage cannot tank, but does have a support choice.

4. Once you hit level 10, IA, IA, IA.

Any other questions feel free to ask, here or in game. The Rift community in-game chat is very nice and helpful.

[Leonard McCoy]

Thanks for the advice guys. The game is downloading now I can't wait to start. Is their an elitist jerks type resource for this game? I know theirs a zam wowhead equivalent.

[RoninaThorstone]

Thanks for the advice guys. The game is downloading now I can't wait to start. Is their an elitist jerks type resource for this game? I know theirs a zam wowhead equivalent.

The games actual forums are really good.

Which... Is the first time I've ever seen that happen.

The community is amazing. When I hit 50 some guy noticed that I wasn't guild'd and invited me to a set of t1 raids despite the fact I was in the planar 45 set. They were like "gear is important, but not as important as the ability to learn mechanics quickly. And you were able to do the water safety dance."
Really awesome community.

[Deepone]

Thanks for the advice guys. The game is downloading now I can't wait to start. Is their an elitist jerks type resource for this game? I know theirs a zam wowhead equivalent.

A few notes:

1) If you know MMOs, you might be tempted to go the questing route from 1 to 60 (or the dungeon route). One thing that Rift doesn't cater to well is the expectation that one activity will suit you well from 1 to 60. This is true in the original game (sometimes called "chocolate Rift") and it's even more true in SL (50-60). Try everything. Do some instant adventures, do some quests, do some rifts, do some zone events, do some dungeons, do some PvP warfronts (they're great leveling XP in this game)... all of these are viable XP. In the 50-60 range, go do some onslaughts too (basically go to an area that invasions are swarming on your map and tag things as waves come in to attack... it's EQ style grinding where the mobs come to you, and you get decent loot).

2) Be social. The automatic grouping feature that comes with rifts, invasions and zone events really encourages this, and you'll find the Rift playerbase much more willing to be social than most MMOs.

3) Experiment with souls. You can afford two build slots early on, and since there are 9 different souls that you can put into the 3 slots, assuming that there's only one 61 and 54 point build that's useful for each combination, that's 1008 (9 x 8 x 7 x 2) different, potentially useful builds for each of the 4 callings (144 if you only count the first two souls, but the number of builds that take advantage of at least 5 points in a third soul is large)! Get to playing!

4) As for Web sites... actually, the forums are pretty good. There's a section for each class and then there's a section for guides for each of the four classes.

5) Rift is all about content. There's so much content to see that you'll probably never get to all of it, and the game is only a year and a half old! Explore. Run dungeons. Once you're 50, see if you can get in some old world pug raids. Just enjoy the heck out of the game!

[Antipathy]

On the advice of a couple college buddies I decided to shoot trion 50 bucks and give rift a try. It's nice they give you a month with the expansion and the original game for free so I was pretty happy when I read that. I have a couple of questions though.

1. Recommendations on servers?
2. Recommended mods? I played wow as a healer for years and would like to heal in rift as well. I used several mods to assist in me in this (clique/grid and then eventually heal bot)
3. Recommended class? Same as above. I healed on paladin/druid/and shaman and would be interested to know if anything in rift approximates any of those classes?
4. Tips for lvling. Any and all are welcome

In general any other advice you could give for new players is also welcome. I'm keen to start networking with people and making new associations in this game but I'm not really sure where to begin and wouldn't mind some help or advice in that regard as well. Thank you advance!

just thought everyone addressed most of your comments, but on healing: cleric. you can play all three styles (hots, AOE heals, and ST shielding) in that class - and if you play around with talents, you can get a battle res too to suit whichever style you like.

Mage healers have the ability to heal through dps (chloromancers channel all life damage into heals) which makes for a new healing style you really should try.

also, try to expand a little bit to try the pure support classes, mages, warriors and rogues have some really interesting support souls which honestly are a lot of fun.

bottom line, do not be afraid to experiment and try new things, the game rewards that style of play

[Jaronicity]

For mods, I'd check out Riftmeter if you want a damage/heal meter type mod and KaruulAlert for keeping track of dots, hots, buffs, debuffs, etc. Definitely a relief for when I Necro things.

[Deleted]

I'm going to play Rift soon. And i have a question. Playing Rift do i need Time Cards? Because playing wow we need Time Cards.

[theWocky]

No, you don't need time cards. You can sub as per the way you do in WoW. Puzzled as to the question.

[Leonard McCoy]

Are forums really the best way to go about finding a guild? I've look through them but it doesn't seem like to many are recruiting new players or up and coming players.

[Acquiesce of Telara]

Are forums really the best way to go about finding a guild? I've look through them but it doesn't seem like to many are recruiting new players or up and coming players.

Using the forums is really hit or miss. From my experience, the guilds who focus on recruiting through forums in Rift are looking for the players who study builds and play semi-hardcore. It's akin to only recruiting through Elite Jerks. Those who invest most in the game are generally using the forums, so most of the recruit spam revolves around raiders looking for the best.

Just use the LFGuild tool in game. You can find a guild to match any playstyle and quite a few of them accommodate new and returning players.

[Slipmat]

Are forums really the best way to go about finding a guild?

There's a Guild finder built into the game, simply press 'G' (it might ne shift+G) and up pops a list of Guilds who are recruiting, you can filter by casual, your class, role, times available, casual, hardcore etc

[Ighox]

Just don't play on PvP servers because they're really dead.

[Lathais]

Are forums really the best way to go about finding a guild? I've look through them but it doesn't seem like to many are recruiting new players or up and coming players.

In my experience, even though there is a guild finder in game that works, I have found it is best to spam whichever level xx-xx chat is available to you. State that you are a xx level <class>, new to the game and looking for a guild with people leveling in it.

[Arkamenitas]

but on healing: cleric. you can play all three styles (hots, AOE heals, and ST shielding) in that class - and if you play around with talents, you can get a battle res too to suit whichever style you like.

what is this? no defiler love?

[zito]

what is this? no defiler love?

Since the majority people think 61 defiler is a support spec, no there will be no defiler love.

TBH zin needs to redo defiler. It lacks aoe healing, has low synergy with warden and you can't have more then 1 in a raid because of its mechanics. It's damaging moves need a chance to apply fowl growth on a low health target (not just links). Links also need some kind of visual either ascetically or on raid frames, seriously that's a basic should of been implemented when they decided to make links.

[Deleted]

So which server are you recommending?

[Antipathy]

what is this? no defiler love?

Well, there is definitely Defiler love from my end, but the OP specifically indicated that he had played specific healing styles in WoW and I wanted to point which of these he/she would be able to relate to the most in Rift.

Defiler is the kind of soul I've never seen before in an MMO and really have nothing to compare it against, and while several people have been building very effective Defiler/warden healing builds, I do agree with Zito that a few details would go a LONG way to improve the management aspects of the soul. (i.e, links showing up on raid frames, etc.)

[zito]

and while several people have been building very effective Defiler/warden healing builds

I was looking at defiler being the more dominate part. If we go 44/36 def/ward or even 40/40 warden takes up the majority of casts that the only thing the defiler is doing is the link on the tank and explosive growth emergency tank heal.

I would like defiler to have some kind of effective aoe healing which is needed since we already have sent and purifier. I think it would benefit if it had some decent aoe in the low tiers to synergize with others. Right now its pigeon hold into warden for any and all aoe.

And I hate fowl growth stacks when attacking for your link targets only.

Hate it. When it was released I was hoping for a DoL kinda thing that's not restricted to the amount of links you have.