Soul searching

I bet that title has already been used by someone else talking about RIFT, but meh whatever! On with the post I go... So then the problem and cause of my soul searching is the fact that I am having a huge dilemma deciding which class to play when RIFT goes live. I just can’t bloody decide and oh me oh my, it’s so wonderfully frustrating.

Personally I always think it’s a good sign for a game when I’ve got plenty of options I like the look of and I just can’t choose what to play. Re-playability for yourself with alts and diversity amongst the playerbase all stem from having different class options that appeal to players. WAR is much the same in that regard and it’s why I have so many level 40s, there are just so many cool careers in WAR. RIFT of course mixes this up considerably with the soul and role system where you can pick one class, but actually be able to dramatically change the role you fill with the click of a button. It’s a bit like dual speccing in WoW, but taken to a whole new extreme. It’s a wonderfully flexible system and something that MMO developers should be taking note of.

And as I said at the start, it has got me really torn on what to go with at launch. I was thinking of going with a Cleric as this provides the most flexibility of all classes; by swapping souls it can switch between Tank, Healer, Melee Healer, MDPS and RDPS. It also with the Shaman soul gets to wield big hammers with lightning effects and I am a sucker for melee and lightning effects. However then I played a Marksman based rogue and that was a lot of fun, plus I’ve had some very interesting ideas for my old favourite stealth archer and with the Rogue the option of playing as a Riftstalker Rogue tank is extremely interesting. But the Rogue doesn’t have much of a healer soul to use, I suppose there is the bard but that is more support based. Plus the music annoys me.

I’ve ruled out playing as a Warrior as over my long MMO playing past my main characters have almost always been Warrior plate armour types, with only a couple of stealth based ranged characters breaking things up. So I want to do something different from the Warrior archetype. I’ve never played a healer or a mage as my main and whilst I am extremely tempted by the Stormcallers lightning effects, I don’t think mage is the one for me, I think I would regret not having a melee option. So cleric or rogue it is, but which?! The incredible flexibility (and lightning!) of the cleric is battling with my concern about the class being overplayed, where as the rogue gives me less flexibility and I’m not so sure about the looks of them, but would provide my 3 long term favourite play styles; stealth archer, melee DPS and tank.

Oh decisions, decisions…