Rift

Rift Announces Their Veteran Rewards #RiftGame

Honored veterans

Starting with update 1.5, being a veteran Ascended means honor, respect, and awesome rewards for subscribing to RIFT. Earn a full Guardian or Defiant guard uniform for your wardrobe, a personal vendor, an on-the-go mailbox, and more!

Your well-earned rewards

Every time you reach a reward milestone, you unlock another reward.

18 months includes Tricorne of the Drowned Thief / Endless Skull Helm – and a mobile mailbox to send and receive your important parcels anywhere. I find it a little odd that the rewards do NOT include any potions – but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s just not what I expected. On the plus side, I’m looking forward to the 6 month reward. Having a personal vendor to summon is always handy!

What are your thoughts on these veteran rewards?

Cleric Macros #RiftGame

Last week I made a post about my different cleric builds, and this week I want to talk about macros. To start off, I decided to change my tank build to the one suggested by pkudude99 in the comments section, so far I’m really liking it. I have almost 10k hp in my tank build now, and I’m eager to test my hand at some T1 dungeons and perhaps eventually some T2. We’ll see how it goes. I have a LOT of macros in game, I think that they can make playing a lot easier and Trion gives players the tools to use them. By not taking advantage of them I think we’re under playing the potential of our characters. To make a macro in Rift you can simply type /macro, and copy and then paste the macro into the window. Or you can create them from scratch, which is something I’ve been trying my hand at. It’s very important to have the suppressmacrofailures line in there, as other wise you’ll get spammed with a lot of ‘out of range’ errors.

In my melee dps spec I have three macros, the first one is for single target encounters. The spec is built for AoE damage, so my single target dps is relatively low, around 700-800.

#show crushing blow
suppressmacrofailures
cast rage of the north
cast jolt
cast glory of the chosen
cast fated blow
cast sanction heretic
cast strike of the maelstrom
cast lightning hammer
cast massive blow
cast sovereignty
cast bolt of radiance
cast crushing blow

The second one I have is for AoE / multi target encounters. I’ve been parsing anywhere from 1.2-2.3k with this macro (remember, mixture of T1-T2 and crafted gear) as long as there are 2+ mobs.

#show strike of the maelstrom
suppressmacrofailures
cast rage of the north
cast jolt
cast glory of the chosen
cast fated blow
cast soul drain
cast strike of the maelstrom
cast even justice

My third macro is just for my two mana regen abilities, it saves hotbar space.

#show Ageless Ice
suppressmacrofailures
cast Purpose
cast Ageless Ice

For my tank spec I have five macros, although one is not really a macro so much as just a reminder for me to switch into my gear. If you want to change your gear all at once, you’ll want to /saveequip # (where # equals whatever set you want to name it, for example /saveequip 1 for your first set). The macro I created is a simple /loadequip 1 so that my tank gear is actually on. Next I have the two usual macros, one for single target and one for AoE encounters.

#show Strike of Judgment
suppressmacrofailures
cast Fated Blow
cast sovereignty
cast Precept of Refuge
cast sanction heretic
cast massive blow
cast strike of judgment

and then the multi target:

#show Even Justice
suppressmacrofailures
cast Fated Blow
cast Precept of Refuge
cast sovereignty
cast Even Justice

It’s really important when you’re creating macros that you keep only one ability in it with no cool down, and it’s at the bottom of the list so that you’re not constantly spamming that one skill (unless it’s a skill that procs off of another skill, that’s different). For example even justice has no cool down, if none of my other abilities are up, it will cast that one (over and over until something else is up).

I also have a macro for aggro, I keep my aggro abilities both in the macro and out of the macro, the macro is meant for snap aggro when someone has pulled off of me:

#show Bolt of Radiance
suppressmacrofailures
cast righteous imperative
cast rebuke
cast Bolt of Radiance
cast Sanction Heretic
cast Bolt of Judgment

and then I also have an emergency button for situations where my health is dropping uncomfortably low.

#show Reprieve
suppressmacrofailures
cast resplendent embrace
cast reprieve

I spent some time this weekend working and tweaking my heal spec, and not the 34/32 spec that I had grown so comfortable using. I played around with the macros for the 34 sentinel, 27 warden, 5 purifier build I’ve been using – and it made a HUGE difference in my comfort playing the class. To start things off I created a macro for cures that works on mouse over, so all I need to do is mouse over a name in the raid window. The first two cures have cool downs, the third one is my instant cast cure with no cool down. I’ve also kept these skills out of the macro for when the situation calls for it. I don’t want to be fumbling during battle for keys.

#show cleansing prayer
suppressmacrofailures
cast @mouseoverui empowering light
cast @mouseoverui sterilize
cast @mouseoverui cleansing prayer

The next macro I use is to target myself with my mana regen spell. This will regen 15% of my mana over three seconds, combined with mana regen tonics this is incredibly handy.

#show Cascade
cast @self Cascade

Some times I want spells to always be cast together when possible, so I’ve combined those heals into macros to make better use of this. For example my largest single target heal is also the heal that takes the most amount of time to cast – so in this situation (if available) I’d like my instant cast skill to be used, so that this large heal can be applied asap.

#show healing invocation
suppressmacrofailures
cast touch the light
cast healing invocation

The same can be said for my orbs spell, I’d like them to do the most amount of healing possible, so I’ve got my tidal surge skill bound to them, and since they are both on a 45 second cool down it works out fantastic.

#show orbs of the stream
suppressmacrofailures
cast tidal surge
cast orbs of the stream

Then I’ve got an ‘oh shit’ macro, that will cast my instant cast skill, then tidal surge, and then my largest heal. So it will in essence cast my largest heal instantly, after adding an extra 56% to the heal.

#show Healing Invocation
cast Touch the Light
cast Tidal Surge
cast Healing Invocation

Macros should be created based on your play style, adjusted and tweaked until you feel comfortable with them. If you’re not comfortable playing your character in a particular spec, then adjust and change things until you are. It’s no fun playing a class you’re not 100% at ease with and since there are SO many soul combinations in Rift this is a fairly common issue.

As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself! Hopefully a few clerics out there find the macros useful. You can find these and other macros on the cleric section of the Rift forums, but you may have to do a bit of digging and wading through the sludge to get to the good bits.

 

 

 

 

The Responsibilities of Having a Main #RiftGame

I’ve picked up a new single target / aoe spec for the cleric that I’m simply in love with. It’s a caster spec, and it’s fantastic for dungeons. So now I have an AoE heal build, single target heal build, solo melee build, and dungeon caster build. My new thought stems from the fact that I am having so much fun playing a caster I’m debating whether or not I should switch my main to a mage. Sounds like an easy decision, if I enjoy playing a caster why not be a mage – but there’s so much work that goes into a character in Rift, it’s not something I can take lightly. For example I’m almost glorified with Icewatch Keep – this is faction I’ve been working on daily for almost a month now, pounding away at quests that give never enough notoriety. Then there’s all of the pieces of set gear I’ve managed to collect (via crafting) that I’d hate to see wasted, and the time spent working on various saga quests. So do I want to start over with my 37 mage? I haven’t decided yet.

In Rift more so then most games I feel that it’s important to have a main because there’s just SO MUCH to do in game. If you’re left without focusing on a particular character you can easily feel that you’re ‘behind’ the curve.

I’m really pleased that the game has been holding my attention fairly steadily. I haven’t been playing any EQ2, I’ve been relaxing and doing some RL crafting, loads of reading, and some single player games (ok it’s just Sims 3 but it counts, and I love it).

I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend, and happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

RIFT 1.4.1 Hotfix 4 #RiftGame

* The RIFT Half-Birthday celebration draws to a close – we hope everyone got some cake!

GENERAL
* Dragon Quintessences are now Bind to Account and can be sent to your other characters. [Most excited about this change, I’ve been storing up the quintessences for no reason since my main already has her mount. Nice to make use of them even though there was a huge debate yesterday on channels about how it’s too easy to obtain this mount and they wanted it to be more special. Thoughts?]
* Player pets now handle auto-attacking on their own when aggroing on a mob or commanded to attack a mob target. They also auto-attack at a more consistent rate now.
* More Planar Essences are now Salvageable.
* Soothsayer’s Synergy Crystal: Updated the tooltip so it now lists both Spell Power and Vengeance bonuses.
* More general server stability fixes!

HAMMERKNELL
* Fixed a case where some nameplates were not properly displaying.
* Mana Pinch should no longer target players under the effect of Mien of Leadership.
* Akylios: Fixed an issue where players could be killed while standing between platform locations.

Figuring Out My Mage Builds #RiftGame

Determined to take advantage of the bonuses remaining from the 6 month anniversary celebration I decided to play my mage a little, and got her to level 37 while working on her mining. I tend to really enjoy achievements even though they don’t really do a whole lot for my characters, and I ended up completing a bunch of them in Stonefield, including dances with squirrels, plop, and a mountain achievement (plus I got the puzzle completed for that zone). It was fun and easy which is exactly what I was looking to do for the evening in-game. I also took her to a few warfronts where I played around with my specs until I found something that was comfortable. When I’m out soloing my spec tends to be an elementalist / chloro spec so I have an awesome tank pet, some nukes, and a few heals. In dungeons I’m either dps which is a stormcaller / elementalist build or I’m support and I use an archon / chloromancer build. My mage isn’t 50 yet so I have no idea what’s best for ‘end game’ but I’m sure I’ll have fun figuring it out. I really like how the dominator plays, and I tried a dominator / choloromancer build for PvP but I couldn’t really get the hang of it. I’m not sure if dungeons even use dominators, it’s a shame if they don’t because I think the class is fantastic.

If you have suggestions on mage builds that work for you at 50, please don’t hesitate to let me know! I’m always eager to learn more and try new specs. Aside from playing around with different builds I spent most of my evening running around after red shinies, quantum sight is fantastic, except there are just WAY TOO MANY shinies in game! I think at this point I’ve only completed 20 collections or so – granted I don’t purchase any from the broker, so they’re all collections I’ve completed myself.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

 

 

Nomadic Gamer