Rift can be complicated when it comes to constructing your character. With each class having three of eight souls, there are a lot of combinations. While many might be pretty bad, don't believe that the only good one is the recommended one. The multi-soul system can also be hugely confusing at first as you get spammed with abilities which often don't become useful until later.
These guides are meant to be just that - a description of what each soul is good for, both as a primary soul and a support soul, so that people can make their own decisions as to which combinations to use. It's far more fun than finding the optimum cookie-cutter build, of which there don't appear to be any yet anyway.
WARRIOR
Champion
Reaver
Paladin
Warlord
Paragon
Riftblade
Void Knight
Beastmaster
CLERIC
Purifier
Inquisitor
Sentinel
Justicar
Shaman
Warden
Druid
Cabalist
ROGUE
Nightblade
Ranger
Blade Dancer
Assassin
Riftstalker
Marksman
Saboteur
Bard
MAGE
Elementalist
Warlock
Pyromancer
Stormcaller
Archon
Necromancer
Dominator
Chloromancer
As guides get added I'll link them to the categories here, hopefully with a mini-description of what they do for ease of reference.
Rift - Character Guides
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Rift - Character Guides
Last edited by Dog Pants on May 2nd, 2011, 17:41, edited 2 times in total.
Necromancer
Necromancers are broadly a pet class, one of only two for Mages as far as I'm aware. This gives them reasonable survivability when solo, although as with all pets there's the risk of over-aggroing when your pet goes rogue. Predictably there are a selection pet buffs and damage over time spells, but leave the DoT to the Warlocks.
Obviously the first consideration for a Necro is your pet. You'll start off with just a Skeletal Horror, but before long you'll get your Skeletal Stalwart. The difference is that the Horror is your damage dealer for groups where you have someone tanking for you, and your Stalwart is for solo where you get him to take the aggro for you. Later you'll get upgraded version of both, but the principles are the same.
Your undead minion needs a bit of help before he'll reach his potential. Certain Necro spells will buff him and make him do his job better, but aren't apparent from the description. First up is Necrosis, which is an instant cast damage over time spell which is used by your skeleton to either generate or reduce threat, depending on which type of minion you're using. After that there's Looming Demise, an instant cast debuff which is pretty unremarkable until you realise it can up to triple your minion's damaging ability. Finally there's Deathly Calling. Deathly Calling is a stacking debuff of sorts which is generated by your main damage spells. Your skele will use up these stacks to do extra damage and aggro, so it's important to keep them up. Depending on the situation, you'll want to use either Plague Bolt or Grave Rot. Plague Bolt is good for single targets, and when enhanced through talents generates double Deathly Calling. Grave Rot is an AoE, useful for groups of trash mobs, but on a longer cooldown. Since your skeleton can use Deathly Calling points to area aggro this can be useful to take the attention off you.
Some of the other spells are worth noting. Revivify is a pet heal which can come in handy during the early levels, and Reclaim Power - a spell which converts your Skeleton's health into mana for you is always useful. Out of combat your pet regenerates health so fast you can spam Reclaim Power and be back up to full mana in seconds without affect on the minion. Exhume can also be useful to instant cast your summon spell, if the minion dies in combat. Essence Link is a little debuff for the bad guy that causes your pet to heal you when it damages, but realistically the effect isn't very noticeable and is only really essential for healing mobs as it reduces their hit point regain.
All of this, though, has only led to the star of the show for me so far - Soul Purge. This is the daddy of necro spells for two reasons: it does assloads of damage, and heals both you and your pet. This channeled spell streams pain in one direction and health in the other, but uses up your charge. Don't worry, nothing else so far needs it so all the charge you get can be dropped into this. By the time you've filled the bad guy with necrosis and a few stacks of Deathly Calling you should be ready. An equivalent level monster will probably be on about 75% health by the time your cycle reaches Soul Purge, and you should have at least 50% charge. Let it rip and you'll generally find the bad guy dead and you and your skeleton on full health at the end of it. Of course, since it's a single target spell you may have problems with groups of weaker foes, and you need to take care not to get too cocky and over-aggro (again - combined with an errant pet you'll do this a lot if you're like me).
This is as far as I've got with the Necro tree, but it looks like it's not going to change a huge amount by the end. I've found complimentary souls to be Warlock for the mana regen abilities, since the Necro has none of its own apart from Reclaim Power, which is a bit dangerous to use when it damages your tank, and Chloromancer to beef up the health regen and allow you to spam the self-harming abilities from Warlock a bit harder. The bonus of this combination is that you can do a little off-healing in groups and familiarise yourself for a healer off-spec.
As a secondary soul tree, Necromancer has two good selling points - you get a decent pet, and you can use Reclaim Power to reduce your downtime between fights. 8 points will buy you your mana-regen, and 12 will get you a tank too.
Necromancers are broadly a pet class, one of only two for Mages as far as I'm aware. This gives them reasonable survivability when solo, although as with all pets there's the risk of over-aggroing when your pet goes rogue. Predictably there are a selection pet buffs and damage over time spells, but leave the DoT to the Warlocks.
Obviously the first consideration for a Necro is your pet. You'll start off with just a Skeletal Horror, but before long you'll get your Skeletal Stalwart. The difference is that the Horror is your damage dealer for groups where you have someone tanking for you, and your Stalwart is for solo where you get him to take the aggro for you. Later you'll get upgraded version of both, but the principles are the same.
Your undead minion needs a bit of help before he'll reach his potential. Certain Necro spells will buff him and make him do his job better, but aren't apparent from the description. First up is Necrosis, which is an instant cast damage over time spell which is used by your skeleton to either generate or reduce threat, depending on which type of minion you're using. After that there's Looming Demise, an instant cast debuff which is pretty unremarkable until you realise it can up to triple your minion's damaging ability. Finally there's Deathly Calling. Deathly Calling is a stacking debuff of sorts which is generated by your main damage spells. Your skele will use up these stacks to do extra damage and aggro, so it's important to keep them up. Depending on the situation, you'll want to use either Plague Bolt or Grave Rot. Plague Bolt is good for single targets, and when enhanced through talents generates double Deathly Calling. Grave Rot is an AoE, useful for groups of trash mobs, but on a longer cooldown. Since your skeleton can use Deathly Calling points to area aggro this can be useful to take the attention off you.
Some of the other spells are worth noting. Revivify is a pet heal which can come in handy during the early levels, and Reclaim Power - a spell which converts your Skeleton's health into mana for you is always useful. Out of combat your pet regenerates health so fast you can spam Reclaim Power and be back up to full mana in seconds without affect on the minion. Exhume can also be useful to instant cast your summon spell, if the minion dies in combat. Essence Link is a little debuff for the bad guy that causes your pet to heal you when it damages, but realistically the effect isn't very noticeable and is only really essential for healing mobs as it reduces their hit point regain.
All of this, though, has only led to the star of the show for me so far - Soul Purge. This is the daddy of necro spells for two reasons: it does assloads of damage, and heals both you and your pet. This channeled spell streams pain in one direction and health in the other, but uses up your charge. Don't worry, nothing else so far needs it so all the charge you get can be dropped into this. By the time you've filled the bad guy with necrosis and a few stacks of Deathly Calling you should be ready. An equivalent level monster will probably be on about 75% health by the time your cycle reaches Soul Purge, and you should have at least 50% charge. Let it rip and you'll generally find the bad guy dead and you and your skeleton on full health at the end of it. Of course, since it's a single target spell you may have problems with groups of weaker foes, and you need to take care not to get too cocky and over-aggro (again - combined with an errant pet you'll do this a lot if you're like me).
This is as far as I've got with the Necro tree, but it looks like it's not going to change a huge amount by the end. I've found complimentary souls to be Warlock for the mana regen abilities, since the Necro has none of its own apart from Reclaim Power, which is a bit dangerous to use when it damages your tank, and Chloromancer to beef up the health regen and allow you to spam the self-harming abilities from Warlock a bit harder. The bonus of this combination is that you can do a little off-healing in groups and familiarise yourself for a healer off-spec.
As a secondary soul tree, Necromancer has two good selling points - you get a decent pet, and you can use Reclaim Power to reduce your downtime between fights. 8 points will buy you your mana-regen, and 12 will get you a tank too.
Chloromancer
The Chloromancer is the Mage's answer to healing. They're not up to the same standard as the dedicated Cleric healers, but they do things in such a way as to be valuable for other reasons.
The Chloromancer abilities tend to revolve around taking damage dealt and returning it as healing. This is done by a variety of buffs and debuffs, as well as a few direct healing spells. It's tricky to get to grips with, as you'll need to be fighting as much as you're healing in order to get the most out of the class, and compared to every other MMO I've played it feels wrong. Not in a bad way though.
Buffs and Debuffs
So, your first spell is Radiant Spores. This is a debuff you put on a target which has a chance of healing anyone who hits it for 100% of the damage done. It's an instant cast and because it does percentage return scales nicely. As a party healer ability it's a doozie and when upgraded with the Photogenesis trait it ups the chance and makes it an AoE heal. With 5 people spamming a 30% chance of healing everyone around it, it can be very effective.
Withering Vines is another quick and dirty light heal. It's a damage over time spell which AoE heals nearby friends. This one doesn't scale like Radiant Spores, it heals an absolute amount, but it can be kept up easily for a decent background heal over time ticking away.
Next up is Lifegiving Veil. This is a personal buff, and arguably embodies the methodology in playing a Chloromancer - the more you damage the bad guy, the more you heal your mates. It lasts for an hour, so there's no excuse to not have it on all the time. The tooltip is long and complicated, but basically boils down to direct damage spells healing well, and AoE or DoT not doing.
Synthesis is a little bit of a diversion from the normal MO of Chloromancy in that it's a dedicated tank heal. In fact it's a buff that you drop on the tank and focuses quite a few of your talents and abilities on him, directing more healing his way.
Natural Conversion is a large heal which is very situation dependent. Debuffing a monster with it will cause their next damage dealing spell to heal the target for 200% of the damage it would have caused. Useful for those big damage abilities bosses use.
Direct Heals
You do have a few regular heals, but their cooldowns are too long for them to be useful as anything more than an 'oh shit' button. First of these is Bloom, which is a decent single target heal. Not a lot more to be said about it other than don't let it distract you from your real job, which is keeping the likes of Radiant Spores and Lifegiving Veil up.
A little later you get Flourish, which is a pretty basic AoE heal. Again, it's on a long cooldown but can be a good panic button to counter a big AoE damage spell.
Wild Growth is a great AoE heal which also slows the bad guys. It's pretty high on the talent tree and has a two minute cooldown, so will probably be a once-per-combat spell.
More interesting are the two resurrection spells, Seed of Life and Soul Tether. Seed of Life is a standard res spell, short cooldown but only used out of combat. Useful to have, and popular with DPS types who over-aggro.
Even better is Soul Tether, which has a longer cooldown but can be used in combat. Combat resurrections make you popular, especially when you avoid a wipe because the other healer sucks.
Damage Spells
People who have played healers in other games and glanced over this guide may well have thought "pfft, noob" when seeing a section about doing damage. Well in a Chloromancer's case the damage you do is also reflected as healing to your allies. Who's the noob now, eh?
Vile Spores is one of your starting spells, and as such is a reasonable basic damage dealer. As you progress this will get demoted to be fired whenever you've nothing better to cast.
Ruin is your second damage dealing spell, doing a decent chunk of instant cast damage, but is on a cooldown.
Nature's Fury is a long cooldown, high damage chain spell. It counts as an AoE spell for Lifegiving Veil, so isn't quite the all-star spell it appears to be, but even so should be popped whenever it's off cooldown.
As you can probably tell, Chloromancer is a tough, complex art. However, the mix of wide angle healing and decent DPS makes it quite attractive if you can get your head around it. I've yet to fully understand it (and as such half of this could be bollocks), but I like the look of it. I mix it with Archon for the personal buffs and Necromancer for the skeleton, used as a mana battery. I may switch out one of the classes for Warlock though for the damage buffs you get.
As a secondary tree Chloromancer has some appeal for DPS classes. By using your damage for self healing you can use it to prolong your life, although using any other type of damage than Life will limit the effectiveness. Radiant Spores alone is worth taking it alone for as a third soul though.
The Chloromancer is the Mage's answer to healing. They're not up to the same standard as the dedicated Cleric healers, but they do things in such a way as to be valuable for other reasons.
The Chloromancer abilities tend to revolve around taking damage dealt and returning it as healing. This is done by a variety of buffs and debuffs, as well as a few direct healing spells. It's tricky to get to grips with, as you'll need to be fighting as much as you're healing in order to get the most out of the class, and compared to every other MMO I've played it feels wrong. Not in a bad way though.
Buffs and Debuffs
So, your first spell is Radiant Spores. This is a debuff you put on a target which has a chance of healing anyone who hits it for 100% of the damage done. It's an instant cast and because it does percentage return scales nicely. As a party healer ability it's a doozie and when upgraded with the Photogenesis trait it ups the chance and makes it an AoE heal. With 5 people spamming a 30% chance of healing everyone around it, it can be very effective.
Withering Vines is another quick and dirty light heal. It's a damage over time spell which AoE heals nearby friends. This one doesn't scale like Radiant Spores, it heals an absolute amount, but it can be kept up easily for a decent background heal over time ticking away.
Next up is Lifegiving Veil. This is a personal buff, and arguably embodies the methodology in playing a Chloromancer - the more you damage the bad guy, the more you heal your mates. It lasts for an hour, so there's no excuse to not have it on all the time. The tooltip is long and complicated, but basically boils down to direct damage spells healing well, and AoE or DoT not doing.
Synthesis is a little bit of a diversion from the normal MO of Chloromancy in that it's a dedicated tank heal. In fact it's a buff that you drop on the tank and focuses quite a few of your talents and abilities on him, directing more healing his way.
Natural Conversion is a large heal which is very situation dependent. Debuffing a monster with it will cause their next damage dealing spell to heal the target for 200% of the damage it would have caused. Useful for those big damage abilities bosses use.
Direct Heals
You do have a few regular heals, but their cooldowns are too long for them to be useful as anything more than an 'oh shit' button. First of these is Bloom, which is a decent single target heal. Not a lot more to be said about it other than don't let it distract you from your real job, which is keeping the likes of Radiant Spores and Lifegiving Veil up.
A little later you get Flourish, which is a pretty basic AoE heal. Again, it's on a long cooldown but can be a good panic button to counter a big AoE damage spell.
Wild Growth is a great AoE heal which also slows the bad guys. It's pretty high on the talent tree and has a two minute cooldown, so will probably be a once-per-combat spell.
More interesting are the two resurrection spells, Seed of Life and Soul Tether. Seed of Life is a standard res spell, short cooldown but only used out of combat. Useful to have, and popular with DPS types who over-aggro.
Even better is Soul Tether, which has a longer cooldown but can be used in combat. Combat resurrections make you popular, especially when you avoid a wipe because the other healer sucks.
Damage Spells
People who have played healers in other games and glanced over this guide may well have thought "pfft, noob" when seeing a section about doing damage. Well in a Chloromancer's case the damage you do is also reflected as healing to your allies. Who's the noob now, eh?
Vile Spores is one of your starting spells, and as such is a reasonable basic damage dealer. As you progress this will get demoted to be fired whenever you've nothing better to cast.
Ruin is your second damage dealing spell, doing a decent chunk of instant cast damage, but is on a cooldown.
Nature's Fury is a long cooldown, high damage chain spell. It counts as an AoE spell for Lifegiving Veil, so isn't quite the all-star spell it appears to be, but even so should be popped whenever it's off cooldown.
As you can probably tell, Chloromancer is a tough, complex art. However, the mix of wide angle healing and decent DPS makes it quite attractive if you can get your head around it. I've yet to fully understand it (and as such half of this could be bollocks), but I like the look of it. I mix it with Archon for the personal buffs and Necromancer for the skeleton, used as a mana battery. I may switch out one of the classes for Warlock though for the damage buffs you get.
As a secondary tree Chloromancer has some appeal for DPS classes. By using your damage for self healing you can use it to prolong your life, although using any other type of damage than Life will limit the effectiveness. Radiant Spores alone is worth taking it alone for as a third soul though.