The Grey Area

I find myself writing the same responses to a lot of rate my build threads. I figured I would consolidate a lot of the info into a format more easily perused. My first entry is going to be a bit generic, but please bear with me because I plan on hitting the rogue souls in depth.

What Trion has done with the soul system is truly amazing. The amount of customization available is almost unheard of. With this comes the ability to create some really powerful builds. However, on the flip side I have seen some extremely conflicted (and some rather bad) role setups. What I aim to do is to provide you with enough insight into creating something that works for you and is still a viable enough build that you aren't going to be a drag on the rest of the group. I cannot teach you to be good as a rogue, hence the name of the blog. What I can do is allow you to make smart decisions. You can only become good as a rogue once you understand the talents you've chosen and use them effectively when the situation arises.

I know everyone likes to think they're special, but I'm now entering my second decade of MMO gaming (man that's a depressing thought). In this time I've come to the conclusion that most people start clueless and then tend to gravitate to one of three camps. I even provided this handy little diagram.

Hardcore Casual: This camp wants to play their own way. In here you find people who believe clicking every ability and keyboard turning are acceptable ways to play. DPS meters, armories, or any other way to measure their character or performance are an anathema to them. They're on nearly as much as the other hardcore players, but don't accomplish raids or PvP because they don't want to conform. In other MMO's you would expect them to have a swarm of alts.

Hardcore PvE: The next generation of chess nerds. This group thrives on knowing exactly what they're supposed to be doing every second of the night. They have spreadsheets, meters, cookie cutter specs and set rotations. They study the encounters, they research their class, and they obsess over their own build and gear trying to squeeze 1 more DPS out of it. The plus side is this group does the math for you and if they say that X/X/X build is the theoretical highest DPS class then they're probably right. Doesn't mean you'll enjoy playing the spec, but at least you know the benchmark.

Hardcore PvP: This camp is usually where you find people with the best understanding of game mechanics and the abilities of all the classes. Instead of studying the static PvE encounters they study their opponents. The way to win in PvP is to know, by looking at the spells he casts, the build of your opponent and how to counter it. They record their play sessions and watch the playback to find things they can fix.

But Greyanna, what does this have to do with my marksman/bladedancer/bard build you ask? Allow me to explain further.

These people are your competition. They're the ones you have to fight against in warfronts or fight with in dungeons and raids. Personally I sit about 2/3 of the way up the right edge of that triangle. The amount of customization in Rift allows for a wide variety of playstyles. However, the ease at which you gain a second, and third, role mandates hyper specialization in your builds. If you go into a battleground with a PvE spec you are probably going to get stomped and that makes for a less than enjoyable playing experience. On the flip side if you go into a dungeon, or raid, with a spec that has terrible sustained DPS you will be a drag on the rest of the group. The fights will take longer and the healer (who is also probably using a bad setup) is likely to run out of mana.

I'm not advocating cookie cutter builds, but what I am trying to do is make sure that you understand how to make your build effective. My hunter's build in WoW is anything but cookiecutter, but it is what my raid group needed and it works. The keyword to a good rogue, or just about any, build in Rift is synergy. Your secondary and, if you have one, tertiary souls provide a couple of abilities that compliment your primary soul and the bonuses provide benefits to the attacks gained from the primary soul.

In my opinion setting up a role should follow a process something like this.

1.) Choose a plan for the role.
2.) Find a playstyle you like and a primary soul.
3.) Decide on what finishers best support #1.
4.) Decide on what you are going to use to generate combo points.
5.) Pick points in your secondary and tertiary soul that aid what you chose in 3 and 4.
and if you have points left over
6.) spend points in flavor abilities that can help your chosen playstyle

To break this down a bit:
1.) PvE or PvP? Tank, DPS, or support? Do you prefer ranged or melee? Solo or group play? These are just some of the questions you need to establish before you even look at a soul choice. They will narrow down your choices for #2

2.) Now that you've decided whether this role is going to pwn monsters or people, and how you are going to go about it, you need to find a primary soul for the build. This is really a matter of choice since most souls work in most situations if specced properly. However some are just extremely sub-optimal. For example a bard, by design, will not be able to put out the DPS numbers you get from other souls using primarily bardic abilities. Even if you forgo a lot of the healing buffs to put those points into synergistic second and third souls that buff your damage. The same can be said about heavy ranger specs in warfronts. Sure they might own nubs, but they get rocked by the optimized builds. This step requires a bit of research into how each class stacks up and is probably going to be the next topic I tackle. I'm not saying you shouldn't DPS as a bard because the buffs do help your group a lot. You need to go into the fight acknowledging ahead of time that you aren't going to be putting out the same numbers as you could have been if you had chosen a primary damage soul.

3.) As a rogue you're going to end up with a bunch of finishing moves. You get them from every tree you take and some might be useful while others have no place on your hotbar. You can realistically reach 6 keys, can theoretically rebind 11 non-movement keys (but who really does that), and can leave the rest of them to click. What you need to focus on is what is going to be in your primary rotation. As an assassin, or marksman, I only use 2 finishers. Playing as a riftstalker I'm frequently juggling 4-5 buffs all powered by combo points and use no pure damage finishers. A lot of finishers are copies of each other, while some provide a slight benefit one way or another. What you need to decide is which ones potentially receive the most buffs from your build and work best with what you're trying to do. Finishers tend to be a big part of your damage so you are going to want to go with ones that either buff your other abilities or are buffed by the talents you choose e.g. MM passive buffs don't help bard finishers and vise versa

4.) If you thought that finishers were repetitive wait until you see combo generators. With very few exceptions the initial combo generation skill for rogues does the exact same damage. By the second or third tier most get a higher energy cost slightly harder hitting attack. A couple souls get DoTs or other class specific debuffs. Except in a few rare cases you should usually stick with the combo point generation skills from your primary soul.

5.) Once you've established which of the myriad abilities you are going to use to deal pixilated death to your chosen prey you are going to need to climb the trees in each spec to get these abilities. This is where the concept of build synergy comes into play. If at all possible you should avoid putting points into any talent that does not buff the overall ability of your chosen role (-damage / +damage / +healing) or the specific skills you chose to accomplish these ends in steps 3 and 4. If you find yourself having to put points into abilities you aren't ever going to use to get at something higher in the tree, or deeper in the roots, you need to take another look at whether this ability is worth going for. If it is then take a look at your choices from 3 and 4. If you're going to be buffing an ability you didn't initially choose does this make that ability better than one you did choose. If so consider replacing it in your rotation. I see this problem a lot when trying to get to some of the talents deep in assassin.

6.) By now you've established the point of your setup, you know what abilities you're planning on using to build and use combo points and you spent a bunch of points to make these, and only these, abilities better. This is where you decide on flavor abilities. PvP specs will favor CC or CC escapes. PvE builds pick up damage cooldowns or things that aren't critical but just can be useful "just in case".

TLDR/Summary
If I can so anything to sum this up in a short version it would have to be:
Don't try to do everything in one bulid. Specialize your roles and switch between them for the biggest benefit.
Do Synergize your builds. Every point you invest in a talent should be helping you at least 80% of the time.
Don't take talents that are counter to your role choice. No dps talents in a tank build, heal buffs in a group DPS build, etc.
Don't get overwhelmed by the number of abilities you get as a rogue and try to use them all.
Do consider a rotation that works when you are making the role and stick with it.
Do revisit your build. If you find yourself not using an ability consider why and if necessary reallocate your points.