I'm soooooo confused!

[Triniti]

First off, I've not played beta and until I went to the soul creator thingie, I had onl Rift's website to use as reference for the different souls per class.......therefore, I had no idea what a Bard soul was, or that they offered the Beastmaster soul in the Warrior class. NOW I'm starting to get it! lol That said, I'm more confused than ever when it comes to what class/souls to roll. Maybe you guys can give me some insight?

In WoW my last main was a beastmaster hunter......and I loved her. Liked my priest, liked my lock, liked my deathknight, but LOVED my hunter. In Aion I started with a cleric....ran with a good friend that had a tank....so we lvled em together........again, I liked the cleric, liked hanging back and letting the tank take the damage, liked having the least amount of downtime, liked the fact she was in chain so she could deal dps if needed....all was right with the world UNTIL I rolled a sin. Loved her.....had never even glanced at rogues in WoW....always played a castor/ranged........but I loved that "in your face" of the sin and the rotations were easy enough....above everything, I really liked the animations that the sins in Aion display (shallow, I know.....but I'm a girl and it was important to me). Ok, tried every other class in Aion (except the gladiator - made no sense to me to dps without being able to heal like the Templar could)...some were ok (both mage classes, the melee chanter) some I didn't care for(archer/ranger.....just never could get the jump and shoot at the same time thing). Then, out of boredom....I rolled a Templar while waiting for 2.1 to come out. OHH, that made me stop playing my sin......cuz I had a inch-high private eye size female tanking machine! As much as I enjoyed her.......I don't know that I was great tank....I was ok, I could get through the instance, etc.....but all the things that I found funny when I played m sin (like how I had to watch my dps becuz she was so powerful she's steal aggro from the tank) was not so funny when I was in the tank shoes. Had enough of my story yet??? lol

Bottom line........what do I roll? How complicated are the sin/rogue rotations? From what I see on the Rift forums, I'm bucking the system by wanting to go super heavy in the Ranger tree and use Marksman second(Bard or Rift third....the advice is to go Marksman primary.....but they keep missing the point that the pet is important to me.

Or, I could go cleric and heal away.......do some damage on the way. I don't know. Some of you that have played....can you give me some feedback here?

Oh, and it might be important to know that I plan to do much more PvE, as opposed to PvP.

Thanks!

[LordMacabre]

I wouldn't worry too much about people telling you how to spec your ranger/marksman. If you want a WoW hunter style character, I think that's probably the closest you'll get in Rift. You use bows and have a pet.

The "how" you spec them is something you'll have plenty of time to work on (before and even after release). Re-specs seemed cheap to me, and you have 4 "roles" (think WoW dual spec, but with 4) which can each be a different combination of 3 souls from your archtype. You can literally make one rogue and be a Bard healing buffing support character, hit a button and switch to your assassin to play melee damage, hit another button and be in your ranger/marksman role (just have to be out of combat to change).

So I wouldn't worry too much on the exact "5 points here, 10 there" part of it. That's all stuff you can change easy enough later.

In the meantime, a good soul builder is: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14031925/rift/index.html

[Triniti]

Wait........you mean the same toon can actually have 4 different builds? Just one toon? How the heck did I miss that? That will surely cut down on the alts. Thanks!!!!

[LordMacabre]

Wait........you mean the same toon can actually have 4 different builds? Just one toon? How the heck did I miss that? That will surely cut down on the alts. Thanks!!!!

Yep, it's pretty neat stuff. Especially when you consider a Rogue has support & utility souls like the Bard, melee DPS, ranged DPS, even a tank soul. And one toon can have up to 4 "roles". So yeah, you'll only need an alt if you decide you want to play some of the other archtypes.

But the combinations available to your rogue alone should keep you busy for a while.

[Pops]

I would recommend trying out the different roles first. See which mechanics you like the best and then choose your favorite role. Then start tooling around with the souls.
I foresee myself with many alts to start until I pick the one I like best.

[Foubia]

I basically did this in the previous beta (Beta 4) and now I know that I don't want to roll a Rogue as my main like I thought I did. I'm going with a warrior now.
You'll find that with each different spec build, or class you choose, you'll have different opinions on what you like more or less, as you would most games. This game has more of a testing period for it's classes and specs though, and you have plenty of time to figure them out. Even if you get your rogue to a high level and don't like their classes or specs, you can either do a spec reset and fix up your tree, or you can do a spec reset and then choose a totally different class set for your trees. Nothing is indefinite in this game (Except how much you will love the game), so don't worry about figuring out what to roll because it won't matter too much. If you mess up, you have an eraser.

[Caledonia]

I Beta 4 I played with Marksman very Primary, then a dose of Riftstalker and then just a 0 point in Ranger (enough to just get the pet) (I bounced a lot of different things in that Ranger slot).
Even though the game may recommend Marksman and Ranger together, what I see is a lot of Ranged overlap with those 2 souls.
If you are very Pet Focused and want to also be Ranged focus, then I would try heavy in Ranger then mix up whatever else suits you after that. If you'd rather spend more time mixing it up in melee range, you may want to actually try a Beastmaster (Warrior line), then maybe toss Paragon in there for dual-wielding goodness and then something else that is fun (I'm tried Beastmaster and it was a lot of fun).
Best advice, get in beta and then try as much as you can; in other words, don't worry about "OMG I need to level" right away...bounce around the classes, try on various souls and see what's the most fun. In the long run, as far as a "Main Character" goes, really, the only true decision to make is between Warrior, Cleric, Rogue and Mage; aka Plate, Chain, Leather or Cloth. Everything else after that can be swapped about to your hearts content (well, once you earn all the souls for the class, which isn't too hard).
Just my 2 pence...