One thing I will miss about Rift is the viability of the Role system, where you had different speccs you could equip with the press of a few buttons, virtually anytime and anywhere. My cleric was a perfectly capable tank and DPS if the need arose.
If you compare it with, say, WAR, the different spec trees leave a lot to be desired. I'm not saying there isn't a way for a healer to be a respected DPSer but you need to have spent a very long time studying a good gear set, spec and rotation. Not to mention you better be a high enough renown rank (for the gear and the renown passive skills) and have enough money to be respecing around as needed.For example, I have a rr30 DoK I love to play in Sacrifice spec. I've heard Sacrifice isn't really viable, that you should pick either pure heal or pure DPS if it's a DoK you rolled but Sacrifice speaks to me. Same thing with my Shaman. He's currently around rr30 as well and, until T4 I always played a pure Da Green spec which was impactful in any battle. But when you reach the major leagues you're expected to be useful, even if against a premade of >rr90s. How are you supposed to do that? Just last night I heard bitching about a DPS DoK.
Before 1.4 I had respeced them both into pure healers just to get them to rr50 so they'd be able to wear a mix of Conqueror and Invader. Needless to say I didn't get there, mostly because that's not the play style I was looking for in alternative healers. When I want to heal I'll use my main. But I made the effort. Now, with the gear shifting, they're both able to wear at least Conqueror. But now we're up against even higher renowned players and going to battle with a character in its 30s just seems a bit underwhelming.
Nobody seems to want a healer that isn't there mainly to heal in their parties. Groups will ask for tanks and groups will ask for healers. They might even ask for Magi. But they'll rarely ask for a damage dealing healer. For PvP at least. PvE is another story entirely. Which is a shame because exploring other ways of playing our characters would increase the longevity of the game. Or maybe I just suck at DPS healers and am just making excuses for it. :)
I was asked to log in my Shaman once.
Although I did play as a Squig Herder for most of the night I was asked to log in my Shaman at some point (I'm pretty sure that's me at the bottom left corner at 0:35). Why? Well, we were all going to die anyway and we might as well have someone there to insta rez a few gits.
You get a pretty accurate remark about bombing warbands in the last 10 seconds of the video.
