Trion has announced the first of the new souls for the four archetypal base classes of Rift. The Harbinger is a melee, summoned weapon based soul for the mage class. The MMORPG intro live stream video featuring Trion staff gives a demo of the class in action in combination with a few different other souls and gives some other hints of changes coming in the expansion. Harbinger soul preview video
The video showcases some gameplay for the harbinger soul, how it synergises with two other souls and a few different weapons styles. I do wonder if it will be possible to build a tank of sorts using this soul and the chloromancer for self healing (which will help with aggro-generation as well)? There was some mention of mage shields so maybe there will be one that will help with at least a short-time off tanking option.
I’ll be waiting eagerly for the new cleric soul reveal as I was mainly a cleric player in Rift (in order of most time played: cleric, warrior, mage, rogue). I really liked the game’s attempt at messing with archetypes (cleric tank, rogue tank, mage healer), although it was a shame they didn’t go the whole distance and give the mage class a proper tanking soul or give the warrior a healing soul.
Very interestingly they mention one of the issues affecting melee characters in Rift and a lot of other MMOs, especially World of Warcraft, that of boss fights that disadvantage melee characters over ranged. This was often a problem my WoW guild encountered. Having melee dps characters along generally meant more damage to heal for the healer and a greater chance of a wipe. I’ve read this was also an issue in Rift, let’s hope the devs do a good job of making encounters more varied so melee dps characters aren’t always at a disadvantage.
I suspect I’ll have to resub to Rift at some point after the expansion launches. Not straight away as I’ll probably be too busy in GW2. But at some point I’ll want to experience the large amount of new content in the two new continents.
