Rift - Class Theorycrafting

Hey, So I need something new, bored as hell in WoW and, since som eof my friends are making the change, and trying something new, I thought I would do some theory-crafting on Rift, taking all I can tell from the class talent trees and break it down, making notes on the important (boxer-friendly) talents to try and figure out what class / soul combo is the best.

This is my start, I started with the cleric class, because as they can tank, heal and DPS, I wanted to see if I could make a 5x identical soul combo (since I can change them whenever I want) to get them started, and be flexible enough for instances and stuff if I needed to.

I will work on this, and ass the rogue and the mage classes, probably, but for now, this is what I have.

Take a look, and we can draw some conclusions about it after people check it out and see what they think, as well as bring other perspectives from their experience in the game or from their research.

rift theory crafting

this is an excel spreadsheet.

The values I give abilities, are just for abilities and how they seem to affect boxing, and they are not accurate, just my feelings about how they will fare from a boxer perspective, and I don't pay much attention to the base melee / caster abilities, as they have no bearing on boxer friendliness, we know a caster is going to have ranged, cast time DPS..




EDIT: added the rogue class, but only the ranged souls.. and I think I have found a winning combo =)

Bards are the master buffers, and they offer a TON of different buffs to their raid, and there are lots of them, which means you can stack them easily. Also, they have some good passive healing, similar to vampiric embrace, but it heals for 100% of the dmg done.. which is GREAT.
they also have instant aoe heals, and channeled DPS.. which makes for good dps. There are lots of clicky-type things for use that they can use in a pinch to really kill / heal a lot better.

and.. Saboteur... omG they look so fun, bombs, landmines, sticky grenades, OH MY!! =) that looks like a fun class...

so, what are peoples thoughts? Keep in mind this is early, its still beta and its not released, but I am interested to see what people have experienced so far, or what they can resolve about the other souls like mage, I have no covered yet.

Im hearing generally positive things about rift, wish i knew more about it, might have to revisit this threat later so commeting for easy find heh

what have you found is the best and most accurate site for doing tree research?

I have been just on http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html and then comparing dmg and healing values to their position (ie level) on a tree, and then some visiting on the official forums to get a sense of the class balance (so far its mostly whining about healer OPness)