Casual Raiding and PuGs in RIFT

[Deleted]

OK, as some of you may know, I just started playing Rift on a fairly casual basis.

WoW was my first MMO, and I played it for over 5 years on a fairly demanding schedule. I was raid leading for my guild 2-3 days a week and regularly organising PuGs with a close friend, there have been many times where I have raided 5 or 6 nights a week. As time went by my attitude, dedication and time investment became more and more casual, perhaps thanks to the reduced difficulty of raids in the latter part of Cataclysm.

My attitude towards gaming has changed considerably due to real life commitments, so Rift can and will only ever be a casual venture for me.

So far I've seen a LOT of things I like in Rift, especially the wide range of group activities which seem to provide almost instant gratification. As I get deeper into the game however, even at level 25, wait times are starting to increase slightly. I completely appreciate that this is due to the release of the new expansion and that people are focusing on fresh, high-end content, this is not my issue and perfectly understandable.

It has however lead to concerns about potential raiding in Rift. From reading articles and opinions of former WoW players, I'm lead to believe that the level of difficulty is best compared to that of TBC raids, which from what I remember had a considerably reduced PuG community when compared to Wrath or Cata. I remember anonymous PuGs were a lot harder to get into back then, especially on a fresh character, mostly due to specific class/talent/role/gear requirements (...which granted, dual specs and homogenisation made less of an issue).

Naturally, as a raider who intends to play this game on a casual level, I'm a little worried that PuGs might be tricky to get into as a total noob. Even once I have experience, is it really a realistic concept to raid in Rift as a strictly casual player or am I screwed without a regular guild/raid-group??

Any input is appreciated*

*...well, almost any, please don't turn this into a WoW raiding vs. Rift raiding thread, I have no interest in playing WoW any more for reasons I'm not willing to discuss outside the appropriate threads! Cheers guys!

[Marc7]

There are PUG raids, and will be, especially a bit later into the expansion. However, your position towards RIFT is by no means unique. A considerable portion of the player base are ex-hardcore raiders who no longer can/want to do that. I would say your best bet would be finding a social raiding guild: one that organizes raids on regular basis but underestands people in your situation. Judging by my expirience there are a lot of these. You may not be able to take part in your guild's progression raids, get shard firsts and such, but you should be able to get your fill of raiding-expirience every now and then. RIFT raids are more difficult than those WoW offers now, but they are not exactly brutal, often excluding the current top tier (which usually gets nerfed a notch before the next tier is released). Even very late in the game in Classic RIFT you could quite easily find a guild that was regularly running lower tier raids or even progressing through them, and you could join them without too much commitment or gear requirements, as long as you met the minimum stat requirements to participate (enough hit rating to be able to do any DPS, for example).

I've been in a very similar situation as you for quite some time now: I used to raid HC in WoW during vanilla and TBC but have a life and responsibilities now, and I am quite satisfied with the possibilities of casual raiding this community offers. As long as you underestand that "casual raiding" doesn't quite mean pushover stuff with easy loots and no mechanics, but I'd guess you won't mind that.

Hit shift+g and start scrolling trhough the possibilities.

[Antipathy]

As someone who has rarely raided in Rift, I would say you're in luck. A majority of guilds raid very casually on the EU side, I'm on Blightweald, which is the home to the number 1 and 2 world guilds in rift, and it is populated with casual raiding guilds with huge numbers of players (several in excess of 200 players) who generally take players to raids on a "First sign up, first come" approach. Weekly raid quests are pugged heavily, btw, and due to the large playerbase of each guild, you are in the position to sign up based on your priorities, and not those of your guild without being made to feel guilty if you can't show up for RL commitments.

[potis]

To answer you properly.

The rumors you heard are/were true, Rift raiding is the vanilla/TBC type, the damage you take from raid bosses is bursty and usually ends up in 1-2 shot combos, hence why raiding has the Vanilla/TBC feeling, aka the average cleric/mage had 4-5k HP some 5.5k which increased to 6k in ID (Tier 3)gear or so, the bosses in HK (Tier 2) as example, all had abilities that would hit for 3k+ the bosses in ID had as example, pool abilities hitting for 2-3k per second and instant abilities for 3-4k, aka a combo of two and bad healing or slow reactions = wipes, no many open windows for "Heal it up" or "stand in the fire for 5 seconds while the healer saves you".

The Pugs exist, but dont expect them there the first few months of the game, i havent played for the last 7 months since i quit at May, but generally the pugs appear when the SERVER has the instance on farm, or most of the server does, randoms or alts cant just walk in the instance and pug it.

After the first 6-8 months, Rift became a closed community game, but it usually works like this:

The instance becomes pugable, whenever the raiders of the guilds feel like they want to raid it with their alts which usually happened when they were sure they could clear enough of it. And every server was a completely different story, as example US generally has way more players than EU, therefor the amount of pugs and guilds that cleared the instance and were comfortable was much higher than EU servers, hence more pugs.

I have no idea how it might have changed now, or how the players mentality changed or how the expansion is, but that was generally the way it worked but frankly people didnt care to pug until they added the weekly quests so that could have been an issue also when the weekly quests appeared, pug density easily went up by 1000% ;p.

[Deleted]

So far I think I'd be comfortable enough at end game to play the way I want, providing I can find like-minded people. Only time will tell really I guess, but at least I know before I invest the time in my toon that my ideal role in the game isn't exactly unrealistic.

Thanks for all your input so far guys, nice to see there are a couple of different views here already, hopefully we can get lot more tales of personal PuG experiences in the thread (good and bad) so myself and others like me can make a more informed decision.

[Fencers]

Yea, you can raid casually. Keep in mind that a lot of high end and even raid gear can be acquired without directly raiding. So the player base as a whole eventually gets to the point where even Johnny "First time here guys" Casual is several power tiers above content.

[LonestarHero]

If the first installment of Rift is a guide, there will not be skips of entire tiers of content like post-TBC.

The lower tiers of raids will be doable by PuGs in a few months, but there probably won't be new five-man dungeon releases that drop stuff on par with gear equivalent to the previous cutting-edge raid content. For example you won't be able to ding 80, do ten Icecrown instances, and then be geared up enough to get in a Lich King raid PuG all in one day.

However for doing daily expert dungeons, you do get "badges" (marks) which you can trade in for gear on par with the newest raid content. It would take a while to go this route though.