I don't understand...

[misles]

Back when Rift came out, it was: Play the game YOUR way. Tons of souls to choose from! But it seems like right now, from what I'm reading (and believe me I've been reading quite a few posts), that one of the Callings is now..not useless but far underpar from the rest, and its souls are practically useless. Save for maybe one or two.

I don't play this game with this mindset: "OMFG! I R HAZ TO B3 L33TZORZ! **** N00BZ! U R STUPD 4 BM/VK! L2PNUB!"

*puts head down* Ouch...I think I just hurt my brain typing that....IQ...falling....

Am I wrong to play the game the way I want? To play a different mix of souls and damned be the cookie cutters?

I don't PvP because I suck at it. Yes, I just said it. Let me type it slower for those that can't read sentences. I....SUCK....AT....PVP.

I don't raid because I don't have the time to raid. Real life and all that. Hard to believe I know. I also can't deal with certain types of people. Enough said with that. Thank god for Chronicles.

But what are your thoughts?

Juliesa
BM/Void Knight

[Lilun]

Hey, so you don't do the instanced raids... or PvP?

Seriously, if you do Non-EI Raid Rifts and T2s... you can pretty much damn well be what you want to be as long as you meet the minimum in DPS...
What is the minimum? I want to say 400-500... The bars for these things ain't terribly high...
(Its really painful to see people doing under 500 when they are geared... cause ya know, faster kills = done faster.)

If you are off-heals, as long as you as you can do your job keeping the group up and throw extra heals on tank as needed.
If you are support(Bard/Archon), as long as you can keep your fancy buffs and debuffs up.
If you are tank, as long as you can take enough hits for the heals to keep you up and keep threat on things. (Shouldn't be terribly hard unless you are partied with way overgeared people...)
If you are heals, as long as you can do your job keeping the tank and/or group up. (Its their own fault if they get killed by avoidable mechanics though...)


As for the red-headed step child callings? Yea... every class has one or 2 of those... As I said, if you meet the minimum, there is no reason you can't play what you like, but, of course you can try to tweek and improve it to work for you.
If you don't use a skill you put skill points in... try to find another place to put those points where it would buff something that you actually use... and so on...

[Swiftspell]

Back when Rift came out, it was: Play the game YOUR way. Tons of souls to choose from! But it seems like right now, from what I'm reading (and believe me I've been reading quite a few posts), that one of the Callings is now..not useless but far underpar from the rest, and its souls are practically useless. Save for maybe one or two.

I don't play this game with this mindset: "OMFG! I R HAZ TO B3 L33TZORZ! **** N00BZ! U R STUPD 4 BM/VK! L2PNUB!"

*puts head down* Ouch...I think I just hurt my brain typing that....IQ...falling....

Am I wrong to play the game the way I want? To play a different mix of souls and damned be the cookie cutters?

I don't PvP because I suck at it. Yes, I just said it. Let me type it slower for those that can't read sentences. I....SUCK....AT....PVP.

I don't raid because I don't have the time to raid. Real life and all that. Hard to believe I know. I also can't deal with certain types of people. Enough said with that. Thank god for Chronicles.

But what are your thoughts?

Juliesa
BM/Void Knight

Your not enjoying your time in rift as much as you would wanted.
I personally think that the Changes that were made for PvP in all callings should not had affected PvE in general.
I allways been thinking that if Trion kept PvP and PvE separrated game would had been much better and easier to ballance out.
As it is now Players in Rift are in 2 camps, The PvE playerbase and the PvP players and i would say that both side suffering due to this just as much.

[Jeremiahcp]

Back when Rift came out, it was: Play the game YOUR way. Tons of souls to choose from! But it seems like right now, from what I'm reading (and believe me I've been reading quite a few posts), that one of the Callings is now..not useless but far underpar from the rest, and its souls are practically useless. Save for maybe one or two.

I don't play this game with this mindset: "OMFG! I R HAZ TO B3 L33TZORZ! **** N00BZ! U R STUPD 4 BM/VK! L2PNUB!"

*puts head down* Ouch...I think I just hurt my brain typing that....IQ...falling....

Am I wrong to play the game the way I want? To play a different mix of souls and damned be the cookie cutters?

I don't PvP because I suck at it. Yes, I just said it. Let me type it slower for those that can't read sentences. I....SUCK....AT....PVP.

I don't raid because I don't have the time to raid. Real life and all that. Hard to believe I know. I also can't deal with certain types of people. Enough said with that. Thank god for Chronicles.

But what are your thoughts?

Juliesa
BM/Void Knight

I would say do what you want, it is your game and if anyone gives you grief then use the ignore feature.

[Rozel]

But...but!

What do you do besides chronicles?

signed,
~My thoughts

[Rozel]

grah, my previous post is a bit trolly, it was unfinished :<

Anyways I don't really mind so long as I enjoy playing, and I do very much. Mostly because of as even though some souls aren't even touched anymore, trying to come up with something reasonable complicated and finishing makes you feel great, but then trying it out in some tests just to face roll does not.

People aim to be efficient. If not, then then they taking up space. Isn't that how life works?

[Marikhen]

Play however you want, that's my philosophy. Just so long as you don't expect everyone to accept, and cope, with however you care to play it's all good.

I queue Support with a Nightblade/Bard hybrid, I tanked some 5-mans while leveling using a Reaver/Riftblade build and a two-handed axe, my cleric does most of her healing with Even Justice and Reparation, and my mage is a melee-range Chloro-lock spamming Corrosion every time it's off CD along with whatever else needs to get cast.

Before Planar Vortex was implemented for rogues, and the rest of the general boosts to rogue tanking, I put 13 points into Saboteur for the free 5 point Rift Guard before fights started and the boost to initial aggro. Before Void Knights got rebalanced, or perhaps nerfed depending on your point of view, I tanked with 44 Paladin and 22 Reaver because 51 Void Knight was ugly and felt clunky as hell.

Heck, at the moment I'm playing around with http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0c...z.VgzbVzu0z.Vc because of someone suggesting something similar on another message forum and pondering whether or not it might actually work, not necessarily work well but work period, in regular 50s and T1 5-mans.

For that matter I'm playing around with a DPS/healing-oriented AoE/solo rogue farming build as opposed to the mitigation/healing oriented builds currently favored. http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0M...dGhsR00b.V0x0c

If I can ever get either a 5th role slot fo rmy mage I'll be looking into a Pyro-heavy "for fun" build for solo work and, perhaps, DPS and/or Support in 5-mans if solo testing indicates it might actually be useful. http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0z...VRq.V0Iso.xdhh or http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0z...Vo.uMesRf.xdhh, or some variation of either of them.

Still, if ever my cleric's method of healing holds the party back I'll bow out. If those mage builds I'm looking at flat out suck for 5-mans I'll pull up something I know works. When people had issues with Sabo-tanking as a rogue I had two other tanking builds to choose from, though neither were as good in my opinion. /shrugs.

Really in the end that's all that matters. Play to have fun, but just remember that while you have the right to play in order to have fun you don't have the right to play in a way that ruins someone else's fun. This means that bringing a snowflake build that has tons of cute but minimal DPS to a raid fight with an enrage timer is something you shouldn't do. By the same token the flip side is that if the fight goes well, nobody dies (or dies often,and never the tank) and nobody on the DPS end is doing horrible numbers (i.e. half of the second lowest person's DPS despite being there in a DPS role) folks with non-standard builds really shouldn't get any grief over it. Perhaps good-natured joking, but not any of the serious grief I see on various boards of various MMOs from people who are too uptight to ever believe that good enough can be good enough.

[Magipants]

Yes, play however you wish, just not whilst in organized groups. While your 44 Druid/11Just/11Inq build may tickle your fancy in the naughtiest of ways in open world PvP, it's downright godawful in any other setting. While in these organized groups, your actions affect the outcome and enjoyment of the other party members. As such, the expectation is that you run a coherent, effective, and up-to-date build. Sure, you may not enjoy your <Insert FotM DPS spec here>, but it's also unreasonable to expect other players to carry you through instances. Yes, you are being carried when your DPS is easily being doubled or tripled by the other DPS.

In short, run what you want in guild groups or in trivial content. However, don't bring your "creations" into any sort of random dungeon or raiding content.

[nemecis]

I don't understand.

You don't Raid.
You don't PvP.

Why would your spec matter if not in one of those situations?

As long as you're just dps, your performance in just about any setting really is irrelevant. If you're solo, it matters even less. If instance grps are mocking you for your class combo choice, well that's what every unique snowflake runs the risk of enduring.

Play how you want, no one is stopping you from being a BM/VK ~ however, I'm sure many will eagerly point out how such a build isn't very good (but clearly you don't care so, why care when they point it out?).

[Marikhen]

As such, the expectation is that you run a coherent, effective, and up-to-date build. Sure, you may not enjoy your <Insert FotM DPS spec here>, but it's also unreasonable to expect other players to carry you through instances. Yes, you are being carried when your DPS is easily being doubled or tripled by the other DPS.

So what, in your opinion, is the cutoff for being carried? When the next lowest DPS is doing 5% more DPS than you? When the average of all (other) DPS members of the raid is 50% higher than what you're doing?

In short, run what you want in guild groups or in trivial content. However, don't bring your "creations" into any sort of random dungeon or raiding content.

What if your "creation" is only 10% behind the "optimal" FotP (why do people still use FotM when it's per patch and (major balance-changing) patches come out in longer intervals ) DPS build?

http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0M...gMcs.VIzoR.i0x would almost certainly be horrible for DPS, but http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0M...A0soMhbz.0VkcL might do fairly well. If it came within even 20% of what the best rogue DPS build does would you be getting "carried" for using it?

There should be room for personal freedom in raids. There should be room for creativity and individuality. There should not, however, be any room for stupidity unless you're doing something like a "for fun" clear of RoS with a full HK-geared raid, and probably not even a lot of room for stupid then. I'm simply trying to establish how much room there is, at least in your opinion, for people to tweak things to suit their abilities and preferred play styles.

[Nonsensei436]

Its your right to play the game the way you want.

Up to the point where it starts to keep me from playing the game the way i want.

At that point i reserve the right to votekick you so we can both get back to playing the game the way we want, respectively.

[Calibrex]

From what I have kept from DAoC is somewhat along the lines of that normalized specs set the bar. If you want to do some farfetched spec that either has been proven to be a bad choice or seriously lacks utility, dps, tanking, etc, then you are sending others a potentially bad message. Don't expect to be welcomed from everyone.

[nocks]

Unless you are in a raiding guild who is really pushing to be elite and clear through content, it doesn't really matter that much. If you're a Warrior tank for instance, you can pretty well put your points into any random selection of the four tanking souls and do fine on any T1 or T2 instance.

It's only when you get to raids, when everyone is really pushing to their limit, that the min/maxing matters.

That said - yes, there are a few souls that overpower the rest so much that you might feel a little silly NOT to use them, like Reaver for tanking in Warriors.

[elenny]

Haven't you seen all the "look at this spec lol" posts on the class forums? There's so many options and people are constantly posting specs that appeal to niche crowds. Ranged warriors? Sure! Clerics healing with 1 heal tree and 2 DPS ones? Why not. You find what works for you.

The specs might be more cookie-cutter for raiding and perhaps for PVP but that's because they're optimized for the absolute best DPS or mitigation or whatever.

If you're soloing stuff or PVPing, heck yeah make some goofy spec that makes no sense to anyone but yourself and blow everyone away with WTF moments.

[Faids]

I was in an dungeon today and noticed this mage doing 120 dps about halfway through. I look at his name thinking maybe it was the support, nope DPS. I look at my "meter" and it reports he has cast "void bolt" 95% of the time even during trash packs. I ask:

"Excuse me Mr Mage, why are you only casting void bolt and doing so low dps?"

Mage: Oh god is this going to be one of the groups that tells you how to play your class? I play the game how I want.

So because this player wants to have a rotation that involves no thought and play how he wants to play, I should have carried him instead of vote kicking him from the instance? I am not saying you have to spec into the exact top tier raiding spec to do all of the content but at least consider when "playing the game how you like" your decisions are affecting at least 4 other people. Play how you want by all means but please make sure its at least semi efficient.