Inspired by a couple of others, here’s my post about the specs I’m currently using in Rift. Since I’m still “just soloing” I’m not showing my group roles like pure dps or healing or tanking, hence the title of “Solo Spec Post.”
1st up is my cleric. I’m swapping a bit between 2 specs with her, trying to get a feel for both, etc. 1st spec you see is a “druidicar” build that I found on the forums. The guy called it “The Just Seer” so I named it that in my window also. When I stopped playing a year ago this would have been laughably bad. But the druid’s got new pets and a few new tricks up its sleeve, so this has been working well for me. I use the ranged dps fairy pet and generally just leave it using single-target attacks. One of the pet buffs makes it do a little AE no matter what, so it still works well in an AE situation even without toggling it over to AE. The basic idea behind it is that one uses the Justicar soul and attacks for maximum self-healing and mitigation, while the druid side gives some nice buffs, a couple of DPS tricks, and of course the pet which adds damage and heals as well. It’s not as fast at killing things as my rogue is, but it’s about the same as the mage and it’s faster than the warrior, so all in all a pretty good balance, I think. Basic rotation is to hit the mob with Bolt of Radiance, then the Thorns of Ire, teleport to the mob, hit Eruption of Life, then the single-target macro which includes Shield of Oak (25% mitigation), Combined Effort (large hit, makes mobs take more damage from you), Bolt of Radiance (does more damage than your regular hit) and finally Strike of Judgment. For AE your macro uses Even Justice instead of SoJ, but is otherwise the same. I’ve started adding points to Shaman now since I don’t have anything else in Druid or Justicar that seems to help the build anymore.
Next up is the solo defiler spec I’m using. It’s also found on the forums, and at 1st blush doesn’t seem to be anything special, but then you play it and find out that dang, it’s amazingly useful. It does solo mob kills in about the same 16-ish seconds that the druidicar does, so it comes down to playstyle preference, really. This is a caster build, where the druidicar is a melee build. When fully solo, it doesn’t make any gameplay difference, but in a rift or onslaught where you need to go from mob group to mob group, the range this build has might be an advantage. But in situations like that you actually need AE and this build doesn’t really have that, so take that for what you will. I mean, yeah it’s got a couple of AE skills, but they’re on 8 and 10 second cooldowns, so they’re helpful but you don’t really want to get into an AE situation if you can avoid it.
Basic rotation is to pre-shield yourself with the Husk of Indifference then cast the Beacon of Despair. Marrow Harvest, Sanction Heretic, Vex, Siphon Vitality, and now Marrow Harvest is available again. Spam out 3 Somatic Desecrations and it’s time for Marrow Harvest again. Now you have 1 GCD available before you need to refresh your dots, so I use that for either another SD or I’ll toss a Hideous Reconstruction on the Beacon (not really necessary, but it’s an option). Usually an SD there will finish the mob off anyway, so you don’t actually need to refresh the dots. Siphon Vitality counts as a heal spell so it auto-refreshes your Husk of Indifference also. And even though you aren’t actually taking damage due to the Husk, the absorbed hits you take through the link to the beacon still proc Blight Rage. Justicar is the 3rd soul since what little damage you do take in spite of the Husk and Beacon is then auto-healed by the Salvation passive. I also keep Loathsome Restoration and Foul Growth on my bars in case I need their heals in a pinch. Not that I have yet, but someday I might.
Next we move on to my rogue. I was trying my own builds using deep Assassin (at least 36 points) for the better poison procs for Leeching Poison, but it didn’t work as well as it used to. I tried something along the lines of the old melee ranger, again using Assassin for bleeds in order to make the wolf pet frenzy, and that worked ok, but not nearly as well as it used to either. Finally I tried a deep Bladedancer build and that seemed to work really well (better than deep Assassin, anyway), but it still wasn’t “doing it” for me either. So I finally turned to the forums. Most solo builds there were deep Riftstalker, which playstyle hasn’t ever “done it” for me either, so even though they were claiming to be able to take down AE groups of 10 mobs in 10 seconds, I didn’t care to really try that.
Then I finally stumbled across a build that does make some use of Riftstalker, but really just for passive buffs, and focuses on the Nightblade soul as its primary. It does a take on it that’s outside the norm, though, in that it eschews the use of the Fiery Spike and Primal Strike abilities. I’d never used NB much when I played before, so I guess I didn’t realize how integral it was considered to be for the build until I suggested the build to someone in-game and sent him the macros and he said he’d figure out the point distribution on his own, then came back a few minutes alter asking if he’s using Dusk Strike in the macro, when does he hit Primal Strike and how does he weave in the Fiery Spike? And I had to explain that the build doesn’t use those skills at all, so he had to go respec again becuz he’d been building toward using those 2 abilities a lot. But anyway… I tried out this build and imagine my surprise when the mobs I was fighting just melted. I couldn’t believe how fast they died.
Here’s the screenie of the build, with the caveat that I’d actually messed up the build when I took the screenie — there should be a point spent in Dusk to Dawn, and I’d also incorrectly put 2 points in a Fiery Spike enhancement. Oops! And I don’t call it “Tank” anymore either. 
Link to the correct build is here.
Why this build works so well is that it’s got so many buffs on itself. From Riftstalker we get the Stalker Phase which bumps damage by 5% all the time and another 15% after you teleport, and then Planar boost gets you up to another 10% bonus. Nightblade then gets you 5% after your weapon effects proc, 10% more on anything you hit with Twilight Force, 6% from Fire and Death Attunement, 10% to Dusk Strike from Eventide, 20% from Dark Malady as you open the fight, 6% from Unstable State, and then Heat Retention gets you another 10% and 30% on a finisher, and Dusk to Dawn buffs up the Blazing Strike finisher by another 15% as well. When the procs and buffs all align, I can see Dusk Strike doing almost 3000 per hit, and Blazing Strike do normal hits for over 4000 damage and crit for 7400. Typical fight time is about 8 seconds. It’s *fast!*
Only downside to the build is that Dusk Strike will make you starve for energy in longer fights (eg vs elite mobs) or if you’re trying to chain pull. Still, my overall impression is 2 thumbs way way up!
Moving on to the mage — 1st build is simply a cookie cutter Harbinger/Chloromancer spec. Nothing really exciting about it other than hey, it’s a melee mage. Who ever thought of such a thing? Basic rotation is lead with Ruin, hit Withering Vines, hit Blazing Light, Piercing Beam, your melee macro, pop Nature’s Touch when Eldritch Armor procs and refesh Ruin and the dots if necessary, though it usually isn’t and that’s how I can gauge the 16s kill speed. Ruin’s always just coming off cooldown then the mob dies. After getting 54 points in to Harbinger, I plan on putting the remainder into Dominator for the Mass Charged Shield. Might as well add that little bit more damage to the mobs when they hit me, right?
Remember that rogue I was talking to earlier about my Nightblade build? His main’s actually a level 60 mage and he’s got a build he told me about that he said he liked even more than the cookie cutter for solo, though he did say that it didn’t really work until level 53. I built it out at my level of 52, and I can see why he’d say that. I took it out for a spin and while the mobs did die and I didn’t, it killed slower than the cookie cutter and was a lot squishier in spite of having the same 16 points in Chloromancer. At 53 I’ll get the next point into Furious Assault and then try it again. According to the guy I was talking to, it does about 15-20% higher damage than the cookie cutter build and has the same self-heals so shouldn’t be any squishier. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m keeping an open mind. Harb does pretty well on its own, after all, so if a necro dps pet adds to that, you’d think it would be quite awesome. Sounds good on paper anyway, and we’ll see about the practice after I hit 53. Here’s the build as I’ve got it so far:
And finally the warrior. Not too much to say other than I tried a few things on my own modeled after my old Paladin/Rifblade solo spec from prior to the 1.11 (more like back in 1.05, really) and it didn’t work so well anymore. Tried a Beastmaster/Champion combo and that was okay, but . . . forum searching for solo builds for warriors kept pointing me to one that several people were calling it “The Perfect Warrior Solo Build,” even though the build’s actual initial poster certainly wasn’t calling it that.
It leverages the mitigation and damage buffs from the Warlord Soul along with the AE dps of the Champion soul and meshes them together into a build that kills a bit slow, but doesn’t have any downtime either. And it can kill a group of mobs as quickly as a single mob. Too bad in SL the mobs are usually so well spaced that it’s hard to pull a bunch in for AE grinding 
It really just uses AE skills becuz with the points allocated in Champion the AE skills cost less energy than ST ones and do roughly the same amount of damage to a single target as well, so there’s no reason not to use them in every situation. I added in the “Quick Death” single target ability to the builder macro, though, as it does finish a mob off faster once it’s below 30% health. Even with that, it’s pretty slow on the kill speed, taking about 20 seconds per kill. The official forums indicate that warriors are getting a pass to look at their damage rates since they’re apparently parsing well below the other classes in group/raid situations, which would bleed over to solo as well.
It will be nice at level 57 when I have enough points to get the Cornered Beast skill. That plus the recovery posture from Warlord is supposedly an “I win” button. I could spec for that now, but I don’t feel the need, and I like what the 41 points in Warlord gives me too. More dps while solo can wait. I’ve got a whole year to worry about it, after all.
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I know this is already long, but. . . I’m adding a little more. In my last post I mentioned that with my new rig I’d discovered a facial tattoo on my cleric, but I didn’t have a screenie of it. I do now, so… from left to right — old graphics (where there’s no tattoo), then new graphics (with it, obviously), and then a final shot after I visited the “stylist” and paid in 28 gold to take it off. And yes, that is the same hammer in each shot. It’s actually still *slightly* better than anything else I’ve found yet. Those old crafted purples were really nice back in the day if it’s still holding up in early SL, doncha think?
I also have rediscovered why I actually prefer the Defiant races as well. The Eth simply look better than the Mathosians. The Mathosians all have this open mouth thing going on that I can’t get to close. And the Bahmi get the best weapon animations of any race to boot, plus I love their look as well. I’ll admit to not really caring for the Kelari, though. But on the Guardian side, Eth are simply “ok,” High Elves are again “merely ok” and I actually can’t stand the dwarves. Arms too long and hands too big. Any time I tried to make one they just gave me the heebie jeebies.
Oddly, I don’t think the Mathosians look *bad, just that the Eth look *better.* Compare my Mathosian Warrior to my Eth Mage (Mathosian on the left):
The Mathosian I think looks just fine, but the Eth looks better to me. I can’t really define why, it simply does. Go figure. And to repeat shots you’ve already seen, but in a different juxtaposition, here’s a comparison of my Eth Cleric to my Mathosian Cleric. Again… the Mathosian looks fine, but the Eth is simply better looking. Mathosian’s on the right this time:
Finally, the funny screenshot of the post — The armor dye bug is still alive and well. I’ve seen it on all of my characters with dyed pieces at some point, but usually it just goes to a plain white color with a blue or green trim and doesn’t actually look all that bad, simply not the color I made them. Re-logging always fixes it, but I usually don’t care. At least until this hideous color combo appeared. It’s Christmas colors, so it’s at least seasonally appropriate, but it’s not a very good green to go with the deep red:
Yeah, I re-logged to fix that one right quick.
Neverwinter’s been sucking up all my gaming oxygen since my last post. I’ve managed a bit more playtime than I probably should (Sleep? Who needs it?), plus I was sick for a couple of days, so I had them off of work which ended up being a lot more playtime as well. 1st off — I gotta say that I enjoy the Gateway as a method of being able to do crafting while not actively logged into the game. Since it’s time-based, it’s very useful to be able to simply hit up the gateway every 4-ish hours and set the next round of tasks. It takes just a few seconds, so it’s quite convenient.
I’ve ended up dropping the $5 for 500 zen to get 2 more character slots, so I now also have a Trickster Rogue and a Guardian Fighter. I tried a Great Weapon Fighter 1st, but went with a dwarf for the race and I just couldn’t take the running animation and how completely over-sized the sword looked, so I deleted it at level 2 and swapped to a Human GF instead. The 1st few levels I didn’t care much for, but after reaching level 10 and learning how to more effectively use my shield…. every queue I’ve joined has been instant, so far. Interestingly enough, though, this game doesn’t really require a tank in the levels I’ve seen so far. And unless fighting a boss mob, or actually managing to grab 4+ mobs in a dungeon trash group, a GF really doesn’t take much in the way of damage. The shield is that effective. Combat’s not terribly exciting, as you’re mostly just standing there with your shield up and either stabbing over the top of it (fighting multiple mobs), or using the shield itself as a weapon (to recover stamina), with occasional cooldowns thrown in as needed. It also means that when soloing I’m thinking I want to get myself a dps companion instead of the cleric. I barely take any damage anyway, so the cleric doesn’t really need to heal me, so something to add a bit more punch sounds better, methinks. I’ll get on that the next time I get to play.
I also tried out a Trickster Rogue and am quite enjoying it as well. I’ve got it to level 25 now. It’s pure dps, so it’s very fun to make mobs simply melt. Add in the stun and movement powers, plus your dodging capabilities and even Elite mobs really are no trouble at all to solo. I also took a cleric companion on this character, and since I do tend to play a bit recklessly with this toon, it gets more use as a healer than on my tank. Of course, the other day I was doing a skirmish and I ended up being the tank since the GF in the group wasn’t ever using his taunts or his “stab over the top of the shield” strike that acts as a taunt on each hit. So since my damage dealt was more than the next 2 people combined… yeah, I had aggro the whole time. Fortunately we had a good healer, plus my cleric companion, plus I was able to dodge a lot of the damage that should have hit me as well, so it worked out.
My Devoted Cleric is now level 26, but I haven’t really played it since about level 18 or so. I got to level 25 from 18 by using some of the Foundry’s “grinder exploit” maps a few times, but they were really boring, so I stopped doing it.. and then the dev’s capped the XP you can get from a Foundry mission, so there’s no point to trying to play like that anymore anyway. But I also find myself very much preferring the CW and TR playstyle, so I’ve really only been logging to it for brief seconds to do the daily invocation for Celestial Coins. Still, between that and the crafting on the gateway, I’ve gotten enough xp to hit level 26. . . . For this character I took the wizard “controller” companion, as it does a bit more dps than anything, and while solo I can generally either heal myself, knock enemies back, or dodge out of the way well enough. Even elite mobs really aren’t any trouble.
The Control Wizard is 34 now. I played it into the mid-20′s and did “the Foundry thing” up to about 30, then played “legit” again until 33, and since I’ve been focused on the TR and the GF lately, it’s leveled to 34 on crafting and invocation as well. This one’s still my favorite to play, so I’ll be focusing on this toon going forward now that I’ve gotten the GF to 20 and thus used the last of the 3 human bonus feats and can get a mount for it if I want. This toon has the “man at arms” tank pet to help keeps mobs off me when there are swarms. I can handle 1-2 mobs myself no problem, but 3-4 little ones can be a bit of trouble as of yet. I’m told that past 35 I get a lot more AE capability and so it won’t be as much of an issue. Almost there. . . .
