Question from a WoW player

[Andre2807]

Hi guys

So I'm from wow. I played wow for about 3 years and then stopped online gaming for a while. Back when I was playing wow, I basically had one main character and two alts. Please excuse my wow lingo.

Death Knight (tank) (Main) - PVE
Priest (shadow (DPS) for levelling and PVP/discipline (healing) for PVE)
Hunter (Beastmaster Hunter) Pet Focused. (PVP & PVE)

So I really enjoyed playing healer in wow, as well as the damage capabilities of the priest in shadow. I had dual spec, so I would swop spec before going into a dungeon.

Is this possible in rift?
Can I use one Cleric to fulfill both roles?
Must I have two Cleric to do both?

[evantide]

When first coming to Rift, you need to remember one thing: You're a cleric first and foremost, if that's what you pick.

Tank, Heal, DPS, Support (purchase soul). You don't pick just one of the 10 (2 are purchase only) souls and run with it. You learn to do it all and excel at one.

The entire point of Rift is that you'll be swapping between various specs between fights to accommodate new situations. Even if 2 clerics chose to play Purifier (main tank shield healer), they both might still have different specs varying based on teh fight and raid and be able to swap between all their variations at any time out of combat.

Once you have a character of a Calling (Class in WoW) at max and fully geared, you have access to that entire calling (barring the 2 paid souls) at all times.

As for cleric? Yes, you can tank. Yes, you can DPS. Yes, you can heal, though the one that lets you DPS/ +Heal is a paid soul. And finally yes, one cleric can and will be able to do it all at any time they want as long as they have the roles (basically your different specs) and enough bag slots to carry all of the gear.

[Albyr]

Welcome to Telara!

As you could have up to 20 specs on one char, you could stick to only one char and play any role you would like to.
Clerics could be Tanks, Healer and DPS with the basic game. If you would buy the additional souls available you would get a soul called defiler which is a DPS/Healer mixed soul and Oracle which is a Support soul.

As you progress through the game you could have different specs for different purposes AND you can switch roles any time you want if you're out of fight.

Hope this helps.

[Andre2807]

Wow (excuse the pun) Rift certainly looks and sounds amazing. Too bad my download speed is so slow at home.

When I tried creating my character last night, some of the souls weren't available to me. They require to be purchased. Are these purchased in game or is it like buying extra content with actual money?

Alright final question. In terms of community... is there a fair balance between tanks, dps and healers? As with wow, there was an overflow of DPS characters, and during end game raids, it was always a struggle to find tanks and healers. Do you guys experience the same here? Or do players tend to not mind which role they play as?

[evantide]

The "souls" you were looking at are pre-built railroaded specs. Since the last overhaul, most of them are actually pretty decent but you're gonna be better off scrapping them and rebulding your own eventually. (It's pretty cheap at 60. One daily = enough plat for 2-3 resets). Technically, those pre-builts are all called "purpose". I would also highly suggest looking up guides before setting off by yourself cause you can end up in some funy and bad places if you just randomly put something together.

Some of those purposes were locked out because you lacked the paid souls for them. Can't remember which purpose require them for Cleric, but you're missing the Defiler soul.

There's two ways to get the paid souls, which are sectioned into two categories. Big thing though is that you can not pick up individial souls. All of them are in packs of four and must be purchased together. There is no option of going "i only want this soul so I get a discount".

First, the Storm Legion souls. Those are from the first expac. You can either buy the boxed expansion (preferred route if possible) or buy them in store. If you can find a boxed copy that includes the standard game + expac, you'll get a bunch of goodies such as extra inventory space, character slots, and roles slots. Usually costs about 20-30$ but you get roughly a 80$ deal of bonus stuff out of it, more if you make multiple characters. The souls themselves are something like 15$ in the game store, iirc. You can either buy credits from Trion or buy REX in-game for credits and purchase the souls that way. Unlocking the SL souls will give you access to all pre-built specs as well as all of the roles a cleric would need to perform most of the functions in raid. The cleric SL Soul, Defiler, is also the DPS/Healer hybrid that focuses on damage mitigation and emergency spot heals/CDs while putting out high DPS (highest of all healers).

The second is the Dream Souls, part of the next Expac. This ones gives clerics their support class, mainly a raid buff unit that drastically improves performance while pumping out a mixture of solid DPS and heals/shields, though nowhere near the level of actual DPS and healers. This bundle costs 30$ and, again, there's no way to individually purchase this. Unlocked the Dream souls doesn't unlock any extra pre-built specs.

Do note that the only thing you need to experience the expansions is a game account. Souls are the only thing you would purchase that can change gameplay experience. Trion has a point of not selling current top-tier gear and major gameplay alterations, outside of time savers such as exp boosts.

The community spread is... lacking would be a good word for it. Tanks and Healers get the fastest queues for dungeons because of short supply. Standard 20-man raids have about 5 healers, 2 tanks, 2 supports, and rest DPS as a general benchmark, with most fights actually requiring less healers and tanks when possible. So the game inherently requires more DPS on top of most people wanting or needing to be able to DPS due to raid comp changes between very boss. So while every class can tank, heal, DPS, and support, not everyone is willing to or wants to. Majority want to DPS.

If you see a really good player, they'll have a main preference but not really care what they do and will be able to swap and function competently in any role, but those are few and far between.

[Andre2807]

I'm not sure if it's then even nearly as beneficial for me to buy any soul packs. I'm not a hardcore gamer, but I do take my role seriously when playing the game. So therefore I won't need additional souls and make do with the souls available.

With wow of course you chose which class you want to be, and then as you level up, you decide in which spec you spend your points.

Correct me if I'm wrong, so in Rift, you choose your soul in the beginning such as... Purifier. Then as you level up, you go up the Purifier tree, then later on you can respec if you want to.

Well basically WoW had the same problem. Take for example a regular 5-man dungeon. Setup is: One tank, one healer and three DPS. Then the next thing happens (especially levels 10 - 50): DPS gets filled first, I queue for Healer/DPS... now we short a tank. When I played a Warrior. DPS fills first, I queue for Tank... now we short a healer.

Enough of the rant, but I'm likely going to try and build a Cleric where I can switch between DPS/Heals and a Mage to switch between Support and DPS.

[Tollwutig]

I'm not sure if it's then even nearly as beneficial for me to buy any soul packs. I'm not a hardcore gamer, but I do take my role seriously when playing the game. So therefore I won't need additional souls and make do with the souls available.

With wow of course you chose which class you want to be, and then as you level up, you decide in which spec you spend your points.

Correct me if I'm wrong, so in Rift, you choose your soul in the beginning such as... Purifier. Then as you level up, you go up the Purifier tree, then later on you can respec if you want to.

Well basically WoW had the same problem. Take for example a regular 5-man dungeon. Setup is: One tank, one healer and three DPS. Then the next thing happens (especially levels 10 - 50): DPS gets filled first, I queue for Healer/DPS... now we short a tank. When I played a Warrior. DPS fills first, I queue for Tank... now we short a healer.

Enough of the rant, but I'm likely going to try and build a Cleric where I can switch between DPS/Heals and a Mage to switch between Support and DPS.

Actually at any time once you get out of the entry zone you can go to your Class trainer and purchase a new role. Once you activate that role all of the soul points you have earned will be available for that Role. Each Role you purchase costs more than the previous. It really doesn't start stinging until your 5th or 6th Role, and you can easily level with 1-2 Roles.

Each Role is comprised of 3 souls. The Pre-mades you see are designed to help you learn the Soul tree system but you can cancel them and build your own Role. (Not recommended unless you are using guide or have learned the system) Most Roles use a single primary soul with just a few points placed in the others. Some Hybrids spend points in all three to higher levels. The Pre-mades are mostly hybrids which are best used for soloing or lower level group.

You can also at any time go to your trainer and Reset your souls of any given Role. (affects only the active Role) the fee is based on your level (number of soul points actually) and caps at 1 plat at level 50 so it is nominal.

As you level you probably want:

- Solo Role - mixture of damage mitigation (tank), dps, and heals. Although for Clerics this can done with Druid currently

DPS - role - when doing group content and a tank is taking the hits
Heal - role - when doing healing groups

Unless you start leveling in dungeons the Heal and pure dps role won't be needed until your 30s and you could get by with a solo build for dps in the earlier dungeons.

Once you get level 60 you may want to consider getting the Storm Legion souls. This can be done by earning ~2000 plat (price varies as market fluctuates by shard) and purchasing a REX - you can consume the REX and gain the credits needed to purchase roles. 2 REX needed to purchase those the SLE souls with some left over.