Eventually 4 ranger/bard split specs and 1 full bard spec. My newbie (26 at the moment) will be a ranger/bard split spec. Basically, gives you full pet/DPS abilities while getting most of the healing-via-cadence/Coda of Restoration from Bard.
Eventually 4 ranger/bard split specs and 1 full bard spec. My newbie (26 at the moment) will be a ranger/bard split spec. Basically, gives you full pet/DPS abilities while getting most of the healing-via-cadence/Coda of Restoration from Bard.
Last edited by Ughmahedhurtz : 08-19-2011 at 03:26 PM
Now playing: WoW (Garona)
My question is, what's your DPS like with bards? I imagine 4x cadence spam would make you very hard to kill, even in PvP, but while you're using cadence you're doing next to no damage. So you can really only heal *or* DPS, not both. If that's the case, wouldn't it be better to have 1-2 dedicated healers and 2-3 dedicated DPS?
I'm only going by what I've read, though, I haven't actually played yet. Downloading it this weekend and I can't decide between a tank (Justicar) and either 4x chloro, 4x bard or a mixed group. Seems like stacking classes in this game loses a lot since many heals/buffs don't stack.
Last edited by Apatheist : 08-31-2011 at 02:36 PM
Except bards. Everything stacks with them so far as I can tell. That may get nerfed someday but for now there are no restrictions on codas/etc like there are with chloros and clerics. I LOVE them for rifting and invasions.
like I said, they won't scale as well as holy trinity groups end-game but I'm not caring as I'm not a raider or big PVPer.
Now playing: WoW (Garona)
I sometimes fail to open the bonus rift stage for at-level major rifts, so yes DPS isn't uberness. I'm still not 50 so I'm still in the exploratory stages. We'll see how things go when i'm able to play again (can't really do much as I just got out of back surgery today).
Now playing: WoW (Garona)
I just updated Rift to 1.4 today (I had it installed from about a month after release, when it worked fine) and I can't even run the client now. As soon as I enter my login details and click play, the client screen turns black and stops responding
Been through Trions entire support page and tried everything from updating drivers to tweaking the game .cfg file and nothing fixes it.
My experience with 3x Bards leveling to 50 was this:
3x Ranger/MM until about level 12 or 14. This was before they nerfed Motif or restoration to be much further up in bard spec. Switch to 3x Bard/Ranger.
3x Bard/Ranger until about level 34 or so. The pet stopped leveling with me, and the DPS experience was getting worse. I ran in some warfronts in the late 20s and basically used cadence almost all the time, with motifs cycling through. It was fun, and damage was decent. When I hit the 30s, I stopped being able to get through dps checks on rifts for bonus stages, and leveling was slowing down. I swapped to Saboteur.
3x Saboteur/Bard to 50. I kept enough bard to have Motif of Regeneration and Cadence upgraded for heals. But my primary rotation consisted of loading up charges and detonating. I focused on range of charges/bombs, and making sure I had the AE bombs/charges upgraded as much as I could. I also had Riftstalker in there for the extra survivability at times, but ended with MM or Ranger as the 3rd soul, so that damage was calculated off of the bow damage vs. 1-h weapon damage. Leveling with these guys was very quick, I could ae whole groups of enemies down rather well, and could still heal myself up rather well. I had difficulty with bonus stage rift bosses with these, but I'm sure if I'd gone to 5x characters, they would've been no problem.
All in all, the rogues were fun to level up, and much more survivable and had a lot more dps than the 3x warriors I leveled up previously (that is, after the 1.1 nerfs to reaver).
My 3x cleric team, however, is now level 43 and the damage continues to scale well. Survivability is not an issue yet. I regularly open full bonus stages on rifts and drop the boss without an issue. AE dps is even better than with the Sabo rogues, and I get good heals while doing ae damage, rather than having to spend time using cadence. All in all, the clerics are probably the most fun out of the 3 classes I've leveled thus far.
Great info! That's exactly what I wanted to hear. I was already leaning towards Clerics. I'm thinking cleric x4 plus one mage, now. Mixing in a mage gives me access to all the great archon buffs, and the option to go either Chloro heals or add another ranged DPS for PvE.
For PvP, 4x cab/inq/x and a stormcaller? You could really rip up big groups of enemies very quickly. Check out this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRKA6pfuEg8. If a coordinated group can do this, I don't see why a multiboxer with control over all 5 characters couldn't do even better. The precice control means, if you got really good at it, you could even precast soul drain before using maelstrom. As soon as they landed they'd have a massive storm and 4 crit soul drains in the face.
Here's a question. Are archon or bard buffs worth sacrificing an extra cleric for? Or would I simply be better off going 5x cleric? And have you tried multiple chloros?
Last edited by Apatheist : 09-01-2011 at 04:35 PM
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