Petition to have Riftstalker Guarded Steel and Rift Guard buffs more visible

[Ascain]

Afternoon all, I was wondering if I could garner your support for a thread I've started in the Suggestions Forum in regards to the displaying of our critical Rift Guard and Guarded Steel buffs. (Thread here: http://forums.riftgame.com/showthrea...fs-and-display)

In Short, I am petitioning to have the Guarded Steel and Rift Guard buffs moved to the same type of display that clerics enjoy for doctrines, void knights enjoy for pacts, and necromancers enjoy for deathly calling stacks.

We all know that maintaining these buffs are critical for Riftstalker performance, and trying to easily identify them in a sea of 20 buffs constantly shifting is tedious to say the least. A simple quality of life change moving these two key buffs to the unique player buff frame would go a long way to alleviate stress, and allow us to more efficiently maintain our awareness in the hectic raiding environment.

I've read that many of the progression guild Riftstalker tanks have resorted to using utilities such as Chronos to tackle this issue, but do you not think that this is extreme for something that really should be included in the default UI? I know of several Rogues who've tried Riftstalker tanking and simply given up on it over the stress of trying to optimize their self buffs, and the identification of when these two buffs are about to expire is always first or second on their list of complaints.

If you would like to support this initiative, I ask that you navigate to the support forum thread: http://forums.riftgame.com/showthrea...fs-and-display and post a comment or bump.

I thank the community in advance for any support you may have.

[Fakemessiah]

give it time...there will be a buff addon soon

personally i dont find it hard to see my buffs. also, just think to yourself...i just did 3 RG's...time to refresh GS, FB, and annihilate (i keep up for added threat)

[Sweatybetty]

guess im just used to seeing them, usually not hard to find. And after tanking for long time, you get the hang of how long you still have left on your buffs....would be nice to have it made easier, but then again, RS tanking is not about easymode hehe....

you can do somethings t help, like move your buff bar right above your hotbars or near your centre screen, get rid of crafting and gathering things, turn off other people's buffs, etc.

[ZaiaTruthSeeker]

Yeah if you turn off others buffs under interface->combat you can watch your buffs quite easily, or you can use this add-on which is pretty smooth. It's called Chronos.

What you need to do is run the game in fullscreen windowed mode and turn on the overlay in Chronos. Basically what it does is gives you a window that shows the buffs you have specified for it to keep track of up and shows their remaining durations and you can even have it show graphical bars that shorten as the duration begins to run down that give you a great idea of what is going to run out first with less than half a glance. Very easy to time last second minute refreshes on phantom blow too etc so you dont have to sacrifice the better threat and damage of planar strike. The mod seems a little overwhelming at first, but you just need to really point it at your combat log and put that file where he says to. Also you have to type /combatlog in game to create the file for it to work from as well as turn on recording of your combat log each time you want to use such a mod. The same thing you would do when running a combat parser. Anyway, here it is:

Chronos Personal Timer Config File:
Chronos Download Link: http://chronosdev.blogspot.com/p/download.html
To install, replace the file in the ChronosClient folder with this one:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14673264/Chr...erlist.chronos

All credit to Isomalt and his excellent Riftstalker tanking guide. It can be found here. If you are new to riftstalker tanking or even an old hand, you'll probably learn a trick or two from this guide:

http://unstablerift.com/?q=node/171

[bitnine]

Honestly, RG seems integral enough to the class that it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to add it to the "Player Class Mechanic" pane in the UI. As a parallel, Sabs could probably just look at their enemy's debuffs to see how many changes are currently stacked on, but having charges displayed separately is nice to have.

[Fakemessiah]

i forgot about chronos

[Ascain]

Thanks for the responses so far all.

I can appreciate the abilities of a tool such as Chronos, I've actually tried it out personally. The point of this thread however is to try to add some quality of life changes for the Riftstalker class that might ease the burden during tanking.

The simple fact of the matter is that you shouldn't have to resort to a third party tool to optimally perform your role. I also realize I could disable other player buffs from being displayed, but then you can't see the number of Hot's you've got rolling on you, whether you were in LoS of the bard during his motiff rounds, etc. The ability to see other players buffs on you can assist in dictating if you need to blow that cooldown, etc.

I don't think it's too much to ask for a little parity between class buff display is all I'm saying.

[ZaiaTruthSeeker]

I totally agree with you Ascain. I had to turn off non-"my buffs" the other night so I could monitor the other tanks debuff stacks on Anrak in target of target. There were so many buffs on him it wouldn't even display everything. Since then I definitely have been a bit bitter about the problems you mentioned- like does the chloro have synthesis on me? They need more options to filter buffs in different ways or SOMETHING. Class mechanic bar is an idea, or maybe add a whole different buff display for personal buffs which you could of course turn off if you wanted like any other ui element.

[Sez]

When I Riftstalk, I actually have some macros to help

This macro is above my finisher, and I only use it for Rift Guard

/wait 25
/p THIS IS A REMINDER TO MYSELF TO RE-APPLY RIFT GUARD


I usually hit the button three times.

[GummiBear]

agreed... shouldn't be to hard to do like with the debuffs, where it sorts our own buffs at one end of buf bar and give them a slightly bigger icon

[Ascain]

Giving this a quick bump for the weekend folks. If you support this initiative, please leave a short comment.

[Noburu]

I agree. I would like a separate bar for just MY finishers so i can see how much time is left on them. I havent raided yet (getting close), but even in 5mans you can easily have 15+ buff icons, making it really hard to see how much time if I have left on my buffs. Especially when non class ones are constantly being added and dropped. I have just started refreshing my buffs constantly in rotation (rift guard>guarded steel>false blade).

Hell always displaying my buffs at the beginning of the bar would help a ton. This could be applied to across all four callings.

[Pyrah]

/signed

But till this issue gets resolved...
My solution to this problem was to move the buffs close to the center of my screen. Also in the interface menu, tick the option to only see my buff on the target. This way its quite easy to tell what I need to refresh and what not.

[tibot]

/signed

But till this issue gets resolved...
My solution to this problem was to move the buffs close to the center of my screen. Also in the interface menu, tick the option to only see my buff on the target. This way its quite easy to tell what I need to refresh and what not.

by the time they fix it some way, riftsatalker arn't going to care, the way the buffs work out you can endlessly cycle with no regard to what 'needs' refreshing.



i still want it +1

[Anominous]

It would be nice to have those Riftstalker buffs show up on the class mechanics box instead of the main buff area.