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Rift: Souls, a love-hate relationship
I love the concept of Souls, but I just cant seem to find happiness with the way they are implemented. I play casually for the most part. I participate in a bit of PvE and instancing with most of my time spent in PvP. I dont mind the way gear is handled nor do I mind leveling slowly through PvP. What I do mind is that almost every thematic sort of build that I entertain almost always ends up being insignificant.
My most recent foray into a thematic build revolved around a tanky melee based healer. I like the idea of getting into the scrum and smashing heads while doing a bit of AoE healing on the side. I like the idea of healing allies without targeting them. I want to focus on the brawl and not on the UI. Sadly, this just does not seem possible. I have had limited success with various builds including bard, justicar, liberator, and chloro but none of the 40 souls seem to allow this concept to work.
There seems to be simply to many limitations as far as soul gifts are concerned. For example, as a justicar you can aoe heal your party but due to gift limitations its hard to spec for any significant damage or healing while also being even moderately tanky. Salvation itself seems hugely limited and its healing seems only affected by talents that modify all healing. I have tested talents that modify aoe healing, single target healing, hot healing, cast time healing, and instant cast healing all of which have zero effect on salvations ability to heal. This leaves you with talents that raise healing globally and spell crit.
In no way am I asking to be super tanky with super heals and super dps. I just want to engage in melee, not be easy to focus, while dealing some damage, and aoe healing those around me. That just doesnt seem possible to me. If anyone has any advice on how this can be done, throw me a bone and post possible specs.
Comments
Rift is your typical MMO. You have dps, healer and tank. The souls are a cool concept, but you have to spec in one of those souls to raid, group or pvp effectively. Sure, you can solo with almost any build.
Trying to tank and heal in PvP won't be possible. The damage output is too high, and your healing output will be too low and slow. You'll survive a smidge longer, but are worthless because your dps is pathetic and your heals, as well. People are hitting 2k-15K. Your heals will be 100-2k? Add the cast time/prep time/etc, and your healing output is pointless. You have to dedicate to one or the other. And tanking in pvp is pointless unless you're gonna hold a relic or carry the flag. Of course, some of the best pvp builds do have some sort of tank soul points spent in their build for survivability. But I don't think that's what you were looking for. NB/RS being one of the most popular.
Group/raid PVE is the same problem unless you severely outgear the content. The mobs hit too hard, and your heals are too low.
Honestly, you can only be creative in solo content. And once past 60 there is little point in soloing. You have to spec in dps, tank or heals if you you want to be effective in group/raid pve.