Taking a break today from my regularly scheduled “Why You Should Be Playing Rift” series, in part because my screenshots just are not ready for the next piece, and part because I felt like writing about something else. A good deal has happened since I last did a non-series post. Namely as you should be able to tell from the recent content, and the slow transformation of the website, I have been playing Rift. It has been amazingly fun, and extremely refreshing. As I have commented in recent series posts, I has made me remember what playing mmo’s used to feel like.
More shockingly however than me starting another MMO, is the fact that after six and a half years I have cancelled World of Warcraft. If you’ve read any of my older posts, you know that my guild, House Stalwart, holds an almost childlike position for me. Leaving WoW has been easy, after 6 years the game is really tired, and I’ve come to the realization that it has been a long time since I last really enjoyed playing it. Leaving my guild however, that has been fairly heart wrenching. As I sit back and watch it being transformed in many directions I tried hard never to take it, I keep having to tell myself that I am no longer in the picture.
Let’s Do The Time Warp Again
Last Saturday I hit level 50, the cap in rift. It took me 6 days 6 hours and 26 minutes to get there, roughly 3 times the amount of time it took me to level my last character from 1 to 85 in World of Warcraft. Throughout the process there was not a point for me at least where the content got stale, or the zones ceased to be compelling. All in all I was extremely impressed with the experience, and look forward to running up additional characters once Belghast has been appropriately geared.
To achieve said gearing, I’ve encountered one of the great traps in Rift. Namely that for tanks like myself and casters, our entry point into expert dungeons is paved with gear that includes stats that simply do not exist prior to level 50. This seems like a design flaw to me, if you can imagine during the early days of wow that if defense gear simply did not exist prior to level 60. The equivalent stat to defense in Rift is that of Toughness, which is scattered throughout precious few items that will be readily obtainable by players who have just hit 50.
I managed to suffer through my first expert without the required 50 toughness, but it was extremely painful. Last night I attempted to run Fall of Lantern Hook starting far too late for my own sanity. Having 49 toughness certainly increased my survival, but having never run the zone even on normal before made it equally frustrating. Initially I was pretty frustrated by my performance, in that it took a few attempts per boss to get them, and we had more wipes that I care to count on the crystal boss. However, after reviewing the run with a more seasoned friend, seems like we had a less than optimal group, and he was amazed we did that well with two off-heals instead of a cleric.
Difficulty or Distraction
Across the board the two “entry level” expert dungeons that I have run seem considerably more difficult than WoW heroics. They are definitely more difficult than Cataclysm heroics, but the jury is out on how they stack compared to the Burning Crusade era ones. Truth is I am not sure how much harder they truly are, as Rift is a new game, with new mechanics and completely new dungeons I am not nearly as familiar with. I actually leveled in Rift without running that many dungeons, whereas in WoW I was grinding dungeons over and over to exhaustion.
The biggest adjustment I have had to get used to is the fact that since I am one of the first players in the guild to hit 50, I will be pugging a lot of my groups. I have been spoiled by voice communication with guild groups for far too long, and as a result I am simply not as good about watching the chat window during fights. I realize that we raided for years, throughout many different games without having a voice server to rely on but at this point it boggles the mind to think how we were ever efficient doing it. One thing I have learned for certain, a sleepy Belghast is not an effective Belghast.
Though it was a rough run, I did manage to finally get my first post 50 dungeon drop. With it I have gotten my toughness up to 60, so here is hoping that expert number three will go considerably smoother. Also hoping to try one of the ones I have already done, to see if now that I know the pulls, and boss strategies I can maybe get through it without looking like a complete and total noob. It is a shock to the ego to go from Bel, the tank of tanks, to that crappy pug guy. The consolation is, that everyone for the most part on Shadefallen has been great, and we are all learning together.
Yeah, they are rough. There is very little margin for error in the experts. I’ve seen it first hand. Last week myself and another from guild were in Foul Cascade. We wiped on nearly every pull with more than 3 mobs in it, why you ask? We had an epic failure of a mage with us. They were not paying any attention at all. They wouldn’t CC in time with the other CC’er if they even CC’ed at all and you know you better give them a damn good reason to re-cc a mob and let them break away from sitting on their ass again. Might have been lucky if they noticed the tank pulled 30 seconds later and finally started to attack, if they were even at the keyboard and hadn’t wandered away again without telling any of us.
Why were we needing to cc two? Well for one we were effectively down 1 dps due to the lack of attention from this mage. Two I was still figuring out healing rotations/specs and needed a tad more gear for the spec I was trying that night. Three, I am unsure what the tank’s gear level was at, but they seemed to take more damage than I was used to other tanks taking.
How do I know that that one person was the failure of our group? They later DC’ed and we replaced them and cleared the rest of the instance save the spider due to it being late and people not on their best game by that point and she is a gear check.
What also confirmed this theory that 1 person can ruin the expert group happened this past weekend. It was on Belghasts first expert run. I brought the mage in from the other night, a) because I was having a hell of a time finding DPS people at the time and b) I figure everyone deserves a second chance – we all have off nights and I would only want the same courtesy extended to me. It was the same problems over and over again, lack of attention, minimal dps out of the person, etc. We kicked them, replaced them and then proceeded to clear from there. A few other bumps in the road, but then that other person dc’ed and things got smoother.
I guess my point here as I ramble on is that 1 person can ruin the expert group, which just goes to show how hard they really are.