Rift – heads up?

I started off with a Defiant Cleric on the European region, shard “Argent” (PvE-RP). I’m impressed by the UI, dynamic events and story line so far.
I’m less impressed by the fact that none of those I encountered on the RP server actually roleplayed. After figuring out that a cleric was not quite my playstyle, I decided to roll a new character; This time on a PvE server (Sparkwing).  Now, which calling should I pick? I know I generally don’t like mages, so not going to try that right now. I’ve already tried cleric, so not that either. This leaves Warrior and Rogue.

Warriors seem like a nifty, sturdy, aggressive bunch. From years of playing Anarchy Online, I know that I like tanking classes. But I also know I like ranged, sneaky pet classes.
Rogues, specifically the ranger, have pets, and is ranged (duh). They use bows or guns as ranged weapon, and seems to use mostly daggers as melee weapons, although I’m currently using a  mace + dagger. Okay, so my curiosity is peeled; Does this game manage to make bows “right”, contray to every other game I’ve tried?

It turns out: Yes. Not just by how the bow itself works, but more because of how the special attacks for this calling works. Most of them add  ‘combo points’ (max 5 at a time), which makes a ‘finalizer’ attack more powerful. But that doesn’t sound like being too related to the bow, does it? Well, it isn’t. But the fact that some of these special attacks have a (increasingly) large chance of making the target run slower, and your pet actually being able to hold aggro over you (most of the time!), it makes the bow come to its right. And if the monster for some reason makes it into melee range; Well, start using those daggers.

Depending on your choices of souls, this will be rather inefficient. I am happy I chose the Saboteur soul as secondary; When the target gets too close for me to use my bow, I simply start sticking bombs to them and blowing them up. Over and over. Untill they’re dead. Of course, I do attach bombs to remote targets too, but not as frequently, since I seem to do more damage if I use my ranged attacks, due to their nifty effects.

Norya - Talent Tree

Talent Trees

I really like the talent trees. You can choose three “souls” (trees) out of 10-ish belonging to your Calling (Warrior, Cleric, Mage, Rogue). You distribute points almost freely within these trees. YOU decde if you’re going to be the superawesome ranger, or be a bit of a ‘jack of all trades’ and pick some from all of the trees. I’ve chosen to be a High Elf (gives me a nifty 30m fly-to ability), Rogue, Ranger (specializes in ranged combat and pets- I can currently choose between a Razorbeast and Dire Wolf), Saboteur (specializes in blowing things (enemies) up – really nifty!), and Marksman (improves efficiency of ranged attacks).

Professions (Crafting & Gathering)

You can choose between a magnitude of resource gathering and/or crafting professions. You can only pick three professions though. I’ve chosen Outfitter, Weaponsmith and Butchering. I think it’s kind of cool that the crafters name is applied as a tag to anything she crafts. Note to self: I need to expand this section later.