Rift: Warrior Experiences

Posted by Wolfen in Rift

I never choose a warrior in the MMO’s that I play. I suppose that comes from my early Everquest days where a warrior did nothing but swing a sword, kick, and taunt. I found that to be rather boring. I usually play a DPS class of one kind or other. Rift, however, changes everything when it comes to how a tank class plays. The soul system allows me to experiment with many different styles of play. Because of this, I decided to play a warrior as my main character.

Just as the byline of this blog suggests, I am a casual player, so I wanted to make sure that I created a character that can solo efficiently. After combing through message boards, looking at other player’s warrior builds, I decided to start the game as a Paladin. My second soul would be Riftblade and my third would be a zero point Beastmaster. My thinking was that the Beastmaster pet would add extra DPS to the tanking soul of the Paladin. Click here to see the build I followed.

This combination served me well for most of my early life in Rift. My pet died more than I liked, but that was usually when I had multiple mobs attacking me. My survivability was very good, due in part because once you spend eight points in the Paladin soul, you get a complete heal that you can cast every 10 minutes. It saved my bacon many times. I would need to switch things around once I hit level 30 because the pet stops growing with me unless enough points are added to the Beastmaster soul.

Life got a bit more difficult as I approached level 30. I was needing to use a drink after many fights because I would get beat down so much. It slowed down my quest grinding. So, I decided to look around for another build that might work better for me. I am so glad that I did.

I switched to equal parts Paladin and Reaver with zero points in Warlord. My entire gaming experience changed with this build. It combines the tanking and direct damage abilities of the Paladin with the damage over time and AOE abilities of the Reaver. My killing ability went through the roof and my downtime was virtually non-existent.  The reason for this is the Reaver ability called Grisly Works. Once you put three points in it, you get healed 9% of your max health each time a mob dies. Add that to the fact that because of the exceptional AOE abilities of the Reaver, I am wasting my time unless I have at least three mobs on me. I kill them all and I am completely healed by the end of the fight. I love it. Click here to see this build.

It is a strange combination, with the Paladin’s life damage and the Reaver’s death damage, but they compliment each other very well. Along with questing, I have also tanked a few instances while using this build with very good results. Playing a tank has never been so much fun.