I talked a little about Rift a few weeks ago, and I wanted to expand on that a bit. I’ve always been interested in Rift’s build-your-own-class mechanics, but in practice, what should be its biggest strength has always been its biggest barrier to entry for me. In most MMOs, I end up trying out every class sooner or later, and I usually don’t truly pick a class until I’ve done them all at least once, but the idea trying all of the “classes” doesn’t make sense in the Rift paradigm. What’s worse is that I feel the urge to reroll characters I don’t like, so I’ve done the starting zone a bunch of times and have never really moved beyond that. I guess I need to give myself permission to fail. After all, if I spend time messing around with a class build that I don’t like, it’s not like I’m out anything other than the cost of a respec, which isn’t much at all.

I think the problem is that, when I drastically switch builds, it’s hard to get a bunch of new skills dumped on me at once and figure out how they all work together best. I think my strategy going forward will be to focus on one soul for a while, then add in things from one or two others when I start to see where this soul’s weak points are. I also like the idea of coming up with a concept for a class, then figuring out how I can make a Rift character do that. After toying with a few ideas, I decided to build my mage to replicate the things I liked about my Rune-Keeper from Lord of the Rings Online; lots of DoTs and HoTs, and, since Rift’s mage lacks anything like totems/runestones, pets will have to do. I’ve come up with a build that is mostly warlock (since this is basically Rift’s version of the WoW ‘lock, as is LotRO’s Rune-Keeper) with a little necromancer (for pets and extra DoTs) and a bit of chloromancer thrown in (for HoTs). Like I said with my rogue, putting those souls together may be an awful idea, but I’m having fun with it right now, so why not? I do wish I had a little more AoE. Maybe I’ll swap out necromancer for elementalist at some point.

Speaking of my rogue, I stumbled upon a build guide out there that uses the strategist and bard together, so I think that means it’s not a completely terrible idea, yay! I’ve officially decided to park him until the expansion hits. No, not because I’m giving up on him, but because I’ve decided to use my 65 boost on him. It’s probably a terrible idea to just skip most of the game and go straight to the new zones, especially since I’ve never seen the parts of the game in between, but that’s what alts are for, right?