lvl 30+ lvling as rogue (nightblade main, bard off (healing), rift off (+dmg +endur)

[mucky]

so our free pet is useless into our 30s, here is what I am thinking about for solo leveling (I have leveled up doing the bard main / 0pt ranger for pet / few pts in nb and love the build, no danger of ever dying, no downtime, kill stuff fast enough to not feel slow)

spec at lvl 30 - main nb off bard off rifstalker

lvl 30 http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0Mcip.Acz.VhxM0V.Vh_

rotation at any level after 30:
put up bard motifs - stealth -

(1) malady (2cp) -> 3 fiery spikes (3cp) = 5cp (the mob is now in melee range) ->finisher Blazing strike (resets fiery strikes timer) ->

(2) dusk strike (2cp) -> cadence (3cp) *heals you up a bit with the above build and passives* = 5cp ->finisher Blazing strike (reapplies fiery strikes timer) ->

(3) cadence (3cp) -> cadence (only 2 cp) *heals you up to full?* = 5cp -> finisher Blazing strike (reapplies fiery strikes timer)

You probably won't ever even need to get to (3) because the mob will be dead in (2), but if you do get to (3) you will probably kill it with just your cadences.

Advantages of build:
(1) survivability, you have a ton of heals with regen motif and cadence and the other skills that beef up your cadence dmg/heals + the +30% heals from the riftstalker tree and the + health from bard and rifstalker trees...
(2) you *should* be able to do plenty of dmg with the above build killing single targets (strong finisher, dots stay up)

Disadvantages of build:
(1) aoe fights: you can probably tank quite a few mobs at same time using above build and rotation, but it will take you longer to kill aoe.
*I guess you could do a different rotation with wep flares thrown in which will probably revolve around cadences for healing and wep flares for dmg.

lvl 35 http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0Mcip.Ecz.VhxM0V.Vhh

only difference here is that you now have +4% health and +12% endurance

lvl 40 http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0Mcip.Ecz.VhxM0Vx.Vhh

you now do 30% more dmg on your finisher and 2% more on your cadence

***you can switch the lvl 35 and lvl 40 around if you want to get the +dmg at 35 and +health at 40

lvl 45 http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0M...VhxM0VxM0c.Vhh
+30 % to wep enchants
+30% more to your finisher when mob under 30% health.


******************
what do you guys think? did anyone lvl up with a similar build? Thanks

[sano]

While I think your idea will work adequately and is probably worth a shot, my personal experience has been negative with trying to weave bard abilities into melee heavy builds. One thing I think you should consider is a build like this -- Level 30 NB. The strength of this build being Boosted Recovery (tier 2, RS) + Rift Scavenger (tier 3, RS) synergy. Now, for your 3rd tree, I put in assassin but at this level it will do you no good, but once you round out your NB tree (I'd recommend to 31 points if you never pvp and to 32 points if you do pvp) I started putting points into assassin to work up to Serrated Blades (tier 2, sin) to get that and the crit poison.

Personally, I've found this build to work better than trying to heal with cadence and rather healing by killing a guy with 5 combo points up which will heal you for 30% of your health and with a 30% bonus on top of that (not additive).

Lastly, I'd highly recommend doing a build similar to this but looking at Blade Dancer being your main tree, as the defensive skills it offers + the absurd CP gen it offers synergizing nicely with your RS tree, but NB works very efficiently as well.

[Eep]

I disagree with the above.

Bard with power cord and cadence healing for builders then NB finishers works amazingly well. Its crap for fighting players but as a grind/pve dps monster its amazing. Anyone who says any different hasnt tried it yet

[sano]

I disagree with the above.

Bard with power cord and cadence healing for builders then NB finishers works amazingly well. Its crap for fighting players but as a grind/pve dps monster its amazing. Anyone who says any different hasnt tried it yet

I've done some pretty extensive testing of each version, and they're definitely both viable for pve grinding (but, really, 0/0/0 would work for pve grinding) -- it's a matter of efficiency. I find BD/RS/Sin to be unbeatable in that realm for the 30+ bracket as yet.

But as you point out, they all work. Just wanted to offer a secondary route.

PS. Looking deeper into your builds, skipping Ebon Fury and Dusk to Dawn I think is a mistake no matter what your intention for your secondary skills, these cooldowns are incredible and 1 point each, whereas, most pve mobs (outside of dungeons and rift elites) never will benefit from Lingering Flame to any consequence.

[Rykin]

Works even better with an Assassin main spec. 12 in bard for MoRegen the rest in assassin up to 32. Stuff dies in under 10 seconds and you have perma-stealth, which is a big deal on a PVP server.

[Eep]

I've done some pretty extensive testing of each version, and they're definitely both viable for pve grinding (but, really, 0/0/0 would work for pve grinding) -- it's a matter of efficiency. I find BD/RS/Sin to be unbeatable in that realm for the 30+ bracket as yet.

But as you point out, they all work. Just wanted to offer a secondary route.

Well to see what i mean try
http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0Mcip.gc0o.ihxR0V0Mc

Use power cord and Cadence to build then blazing fury drop the odd firey spike and finish at 4 cp. its bonkers. you know those specs where people would jsut use it to raid. its one of those. btw i disagreed with your bard sskills comment heh :P

[Smags]

The absolute, bar-none, holy moley look at that fastest killing/leveling spec post level 32 is Assassin main soul, with a few options off-soul. Trust me, if you're not using Assassin as your main soul, you have no idea how much faster you could be mowing down mobs. You do crazy bleed and direct damage, and you crit like a monkey on crack. (I personally enjoy Nightblade as the main offspec for Lost Hope to give you a second CC, and Bladedancer for the dodge skill.)

I'm too pressed for time to create/liink a build at the moment, but basically you go 32 points into Assassin to get Jagged Strike, and pretty much all the fun damage and combo point boosting talents. And here's how you kill stuff:

Stealth (if there are 2 or 3 mobs together, Lost Hope one, Incapacitate the other, and voila you're 1v1)
Jagged Strike (3 combo points built up)
Puncture (2 more combo points)
Final Blow
Savage Strike x whatever, most stuff your level or higher will die within the next 2-3 Savage Strikes

Most of the time, you'll kill the mob before Stealth is ready to be used again.

Stealth has a 10 second cooldown. You'll kill the mob in 6-7 seconds.

Have fun.

[sano]

The absolute, bar-none, holy moley look at that fastest killing/leveling spec post level 32 is Assassin main soul, with a few options off-soul. Trust me, if you're not using Assassin as your main soul, you have no idea how much faster you could be mowing down mobs. You do crazy bleed and direct damage, and you crit like a monkey on crack. (I personally enjoy Nightblade as the main offspec for Lost Hope to give you a second CC, and Bladedancer for the dodge skill.)

I'm too pressed for time to create/liink a build at the moment, but basically you go 32 points into Assassin to get Jagged Strike, and pretty much all the fun damage and combo point boosting talents. And here's how you kill stuff:

Stealth (if there are 2 or 3 mobs together, Lost Hope one, Incapacitate the other, and voila you're 1v1)
Jagged Strike (3 combo points built up)
Puncture (2 more combo points)
Final Blow
Savage Strike x whatever, most stuff your level or higher will die within the next 2-3 Savage Strikes

Most of the time, you'll kill the mob before Stealth is ready to be used again.

Stealth has a 10 second cooldown. You'll kill the mob in 6-7 seconds.

Have fun.

I need to give this a try, been too in love with bladedance lately, flash of steel + the awesome combo point building keen strike + followup attack rotation are just too fun.

[pinchz]

I disagree with the above.

Bard with power cord and cadence healing for builders then NB finishers works amazingly well. Its crap for fighting players but as a grind/pve dps monster its amazing. Anyone who says any different hasnt tried it yet

Power chord isn't ever worth using unless you're moving. You could simply channel another 2 combo points from Cadence after the first in the same time (1 instant hit and the second hit is 1 second later) as the power chord & gcd would cause you to wait, and would do more damage + additional healing.

edit: this may actually only work in the situation where you're using anthem of fervor because energy isn't an issue with it

[RukusIX]

You can't Lost Hope/Incapacitate 2 mobs at the same time as far as I know.

[wolfpaq777]

The absolute, bar-none, holy moley look at that fastest killing/leveling spec post level 32 is Assassin main soul, with a few options off-soul. Trust me, if you're not using Assassin as your main soul, you have no idea how much faster you could be mowing down mobs. You do crazy bleed and direct damage, and you crit like a monkey on crack. (I personally enjoy Nightblade as the main offspec for Lost Hope to give you a second CC, and Bladedancer for the dodge skill.)

I'm too pressed for time to create/liink a build at the moment, but basically you go 32 points into Assassin to get Jagged Strike, and pretty much all the fun damage and combo point boosting talents. And here's how you kill stuff:

Stealth (if there are 2 or 3 mobs together, Lost Hope one, Incapacitate the other, and voila you're 1v1)
Jagged Strike (3 combo points built up)
Puncture (2 more combo points)
Final Blow
Savage Strike x whatever, most stuff your level or higher will die within the next 2-3 Savage Strikes

Most of the time, you'll kill the mob before Stealth is ready to be used again.

Stealth has a 10 second cooldown. You'll kill the mob in 6-7 seconds.

Have fun.

Agreed. Only thing I'd add is casting expose weakness before the opener for even more damage.

I love that every DoT tic of jagged strike gets the 50%+ chance to crit.

You could also take riftstalker as your secondary in case something accidentally deals damage to you, you get healed right up when they die with combo points on!

[Dreamtheatre]

Im 36 level right now and I use http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0Mcip.qI.ihxMhc.VIb, with this PvE build I can go non stop. I can easily take on 4 or 5 mobs at a time using Cadence and Regen Motif, solo rifts footholds or whatever. If its just one on one I use the NB abilities.

[Shadowvail]

I can throw in my sense that Sab is definitely not a very viable spec if you are looking to level quickly.

This soul doesn't leave you with much of a cushion for error. I notice that when I die in pve it's because I am fighting 3+ mobs that BAF(brought a friend) when I pulled something.

Yeah we get shrapnel charges and frag bomb to aoe with, but to be honest, they don't work all that well. Depending on the situation, throwing down an adhesive bomb, then a frag bomb, then maxing out shrapnel charges, finally detonating, seems to leave me with applying that technique about 2 to 3 times max (depending on the level of the mobs) to take down a small group of 2 -3 mobs.

I noticed in beta when I was leveling as assassin, it seemed to be a lot more viable for maxing out your level quickly. It also left for a bit more of a cushion for error. You could accidentally pull a few more mobs than you really wanted and actually stay alive.

All in all I agree with the person who posted about the assassin build as being a pretty great pve leveling build.

[Bril]

"You can't Lost Hope/Incapacitate 2 mobs at the same time as far as I know. "

Actually, you can. You can not any one of them upon more than one mob at a time but they are not upon the same cool down as one another.

[mucky]

was thinking that between 30 - 35 you can get twilight/improved twilight and the 2pt buff to your wep enchants instead of 5/5 lingering flame. the reason is for the snare (I play on pvp server) and I can see where a snare would be handy defensively or offensively, and as a poster stated most likely things will die too fast for lingering flame to be worth 5 pts *non dungeon mobs I should say* - even though most of your attacks are ranged, your big finisher is melee range and that could keep peeps from escaping you.

thanks for everyone posting in topic and thinking about this build.