Rift: Thoughts on Patch 1.1

Posted by Wolfen in Rift

Patch 1.1 has been live on the Rift servers for awhile now and it brought many changes to the game. I was most concerned with the sweeping changes to the Reaver soul, as I was having a great deal of fun playing it. The patch notes made it seem as though all the fun parts of the Reaver were removed, and to some extent, that is exactly what happened. I am not happy with the changes, but they are not as bad as they could have been.

The biggest change is to the ability called Grisly Works, which is also the ability that made playing a Reaver so much fun. Before the change, if you had three points in the skill, your character would get healed 9% of your maximum health. This made the Reaver an AOE king. In fact, you were wasting your time if you were not AOE’ing as a Reaver. Grisly Works made it damn near impossible to be killed in PVE questing. I would be full health at the end of every fight. That is exactly what Trion wanted to change.

The new description of Grisly Works is this: For 15 seconds after killing an enemy  you have Tagged, healing from Soul Feast is increased by 30/60/90%, depending on how many points you put into it. Soul Feast allows the damage over time spells of Soul Sickness and Creeping Death to heal you for 50% of the damage done. So, no big heals each time you killed an enemy. You do get healed a little while in combat, but you no longer finish fights at full health. It’s back to drinking lots of potions to heal up.

Trion also moved Grisly Works up two tiers on the soul tree. It now requires 25 points in Reaver just to get the ability, plus three more points to get the most out of it. I think the nerf to the ability was enough, and moving it up the tree was unnecessary.

Has the change to Reavers affected how I play the game? Not really. I can still survive an AOE battle with a bunch of mobs around me, I just have to heal up after its done. My survivability has gone down a little bit, and I no longer can run around without a care in the world, but the Reaver is still a viable soul. The changes slowed me down, which is what I believe Trion wanted to happen. The fun factor has definitely been lowered, but I won’t be giving it up.

The Reaver patch notes:

REAVER

* Due to the below changes, characters with soul points spent in Reaver will receive a free soul point respec.
* Soul Sickness, Flesh Rot, Necrotic Wounds, Blood Fever: The damage on additional targets when using Plague Bringer has been lowered. The Threat generation has been increased to keep overall threat gain of the abilities the same.
* Crippling Infestation: Moves down one tier to unlock at 21 points.
* Wasting Away: Moves down one tier to unlock at 16 points.
* Grisly Works: Moves up two tiers, now unlocked at 26 points. Now increases the healing of Soul Feast by 30-90% for 15 seconds after killing a target the Reaver has engaged.
* Soul Devour: Now increases the damage of Soul Feast by 50%, instead of 150%.
* Power from the Masses: Changed to give a stack per nearby party/raid member rather than per nearby enemy.
* Infestation: Cooldown increased to 1 minute, and damage increased based on the new cooldown.