Rift Beta Warfronts: Thoughts and Screenshots

 Yeah, its been quiet around here lately. Lots of stuff going on personally (nothing terrible mind you, just busy), and the lack of subs makes for a lack of content. I guess I could cover the TOR Friday Updates, but there’s not really anything there to cover (oooh, low blow!). But I am loving me some time in the Beta.

I spent this go round with the Cleric. I’ve spent previous Betas fooling around with the Rogue and Warrior and found them both fun and appealing. But I think I found my character this time around. Its been awhile since I played a full time healer – CoX to be specific (shout out to the wonderful boys and girls of LoJ who took care of me for my short time in game). And this gives you a good insight into my character planning process: I started out looking at the Warden – I love the instant cast spells, despite the disadvantages. I have a hard time keeping up in large group battles, and I thought that might help me be more effective. I paired it with Sentinel to get the early access resurrection skill and snaring direct damage spell. But soul number three was trickier. I finally settled on Justicar, for no reason other than I could put a few points into it and gain some survivability with better armor and plop yet another instant cast spell on my action bar. I quickly realized what a nice combo attack skills and instant cast spells are. And that the Justicar’s Conviction heals are also instant cast and one of them is raid wide. I immediately went fiddling with my build, basing it around that instead of the Warden, and it fits me like a glove.

I also have to give a shout out to whoever designed the dwarves. I usually can’t stand playing dwarves. But these dwarves are different. Well, at least the female ones are:

And the bonus is that dagger looks like a sword in her hands!

And I guess that drives home the real win the Rift picks up. I’m playing a Dwarven Cleric. Is there anything more cliché in all of fantasy gaming? Okay, well, Elf Ranger, but still…this is right up there.

And yet, it doesn’t feel that way at all. It plays like a class out of my dreams, as if I had custom designed it for me. And in a way, I did.

 

Lastly, I got a chance to finally participate in one of those giant dynamic events. The devs opened the skies and Silverwood was flooded with Life rifts and invasion mobs. I ran around like a mad man with my raid group from place to place. At one point, we were defending an advance on a log bridge, and I was healing my little tush off. In another place, we caught the mobs off guard and undermanned and I was able to switch to offensive mode completely.

And I have to tell you this: the raid interface was very intuitive and very nice. I was quickly able to identify who was under fire, who had aggro, where to heal at, etc. The map interface also does a great job of tracking the raid so you can keep tabs on everyone. For someone who doesn’t normally get into raiding, this ended up being very fun and quite a treat. 

Note the raid interface and the number of rifts we have to close!

The only downside to all this is that I feel a little guilty. I didn’t report and glitches and gave no feedback. But it has to be said that the primary reason for this is that there just weren’t any glitches to speak of. And the best feedback I can come up with this article. The game, already good, continues to get better, and we continue to see great things from the developers and the play itself. Next Beta – it will be time to get a handle on all those wild Mage souls…