Sunday, June 12, 2011

Best Warrior Leveling Souls in Rift (In My Opinion)

I'm sure many players in Rift are still leveling as quickly as possible.  I have my warrior at level 47 on the brink of 48. (Two bars away).  Having leveled through, I have played around with the souls a lot.  While I'm certain that this will change a little when we get start raiding,  (FYI Conquest of Emberlord is recruiting all classes and roles for raids, rifts, and warfronts.) I think I have found the best souls for leveling if doing PvE with a little PvP on the side.  Again, this is just my personal experience and may just be my observation more than anything.

When leveling, I think of a few requirements.  First, the soul should be able to put out as high of DPS as possible.  Second, they should have some mechanic to help if you pull multiple mobs.  Third, they should be able to have a mechanic to decrease downtime.  Finally, it should be able to be used in instances or warfronts.

Looking at these requirements, some souls would be out.  Clearly, anything that is focused on tanking would not in and of itself be a good solo leveling soul.  Those tend to focus on threat and mitigation but does very little for high DPS output.  And while Paladin does have a self heal, there are no real good mechanics to decrease downtime.  However, I would recommend one of your specs to be a defensive spec, especially when fighting elite mobs. (Also, I should add in that Hazeed in Shimmersand is a bastard and should burn in hell for all eternity.)

So now, we turn our attention to the offensive souls.  Champion, who is probably the heaviest of damage but also the most vulnerable of the offensive souls;  Paragon, who uses duel weapons and has ranged abilities; Riftblade, who has elemental buffs and more crowd control than the other offensive souls; and Beastmaster, which is the only offensive soul to have a companion and self heals in combat.  So with these four choices for offensive roles, which would be the best ones for leveling.

In my personal opinion, Beastmaster is an absolute requirement for leveling.  It gives you a companion who could potentially tank if you pull multiple mobs.  It also gives you two different self heals, one that can be cast on cooldown and a bigger heal that cost attack points but heals for 150% of weapon damage.  In addition, it offers 3 different buffs for while you are leveling and you can switch your pet to tank or damage.

This leaves room for the two other souls in your leveling spec.  The second choice should be really based on your playstyle.  You could make an argument for Paragon; however, I think the Champion soul is the best second choice.  One, it puts up huge damage with two handed weapons.  Second, it has an attack power ability that is a "kill" ability, Deathblow.  In other words, when you get an enemy to 30%, you have a way to finish them quickly.  The quicker you kill an enemy, the less time you have to recover.  Add in the fact that you get heals from Beastmaster and you are talking very little down time.  Plus, you get higher damage the faster you move with Bloodlust.

Since I don't see much of a point in taking the other high damage tree, Paragon, since you are going to be focusing on two handed weapons, this means the final soul is kind of chosen for us.  Even if you go deep into Beastmaster and Champion, you can still get the Flaming Spears in Riftblade and have a decent ranged attack.

In order of preference, while leveling, I would get Beastmaster to 31 points to pick up the bigger heal that requires attack points.  From there, I would get Champion up to 31 points.  Then go to Riftblade to get the Flaming Spheres.  This should be enough points to get to level 50 which at that point, you would go for more mitigation or damage based on your role in raids.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

The Single Meanest, Cruelest Technique to Use on the Auction House

Itty Bitty Poker Kitty

I have seen a lot of crazy stuff at the AH.  I have seen massive undercutting.  I have seen people trying to drive markets down.  I have even seen people for insanely high prices.  However, I would like to think that I have come up with the single cruelist technique to use on the AH.  This technique actually punishes people for not using addons like Auctioneer.  It also punishes people who use the remote AH.  But the biggest people it screws over is people who don't pay attention.

Let me set up the scenario I like to use.  Let's say that Fortune Cookies are the following on the AH:

Seller 1: Fortune Cookies X 20 for 400 g (5 stacks)
Seller 2: Fortune Cookies X 20 for 399 g, 99 s, 99c (3 stacks)
Seller 3: Fortune Cookies X 20 for 390 g (10 stacks)

Now, most normal people playing the AH would set up a stack of 20 Fortune Cookies for 389 g, 99 s, 99 c.  If you sell it, you would be getting approximately 19 gold per 1 Fortune Cookie.  Not bad in any market.  But how can you improve it.  You can't post it for higher without buying the other 18 stacks which let's be honest gets expensive.  Plus, you know more than likely all the sellers will come back and undercut you.

This is where the single meanest, cruelest AH technique comes into play.  What if you were to sell only 5 Fortune Cookies for 389 g, 99 s, 99 c?  You just increased the price for one Fortune Cookie up to approximately 77 gold per 1 Fortune Cookie. 

But the biggest advantage is how you played your hand.  If this was a game of poker, this would be equivalent to a bluff.  Someone who uses Auctioneer would see that your price to market price percentage is too high and would not buy it.  However, someone who doesn't have addons, like weekend players, or someone who is using the remote AH may buy it thinking they are getting a stack of 20 since your price lines up with the other stacks of 20.  When they buy it, they will realize they were bluffed out of 15 Fortune Cookies and you are walking away with the money.

And in this case, the best thing in the world could somebody come in and undercut you.  If you are posting stacks of heavy savage leather or bolts of embersilk cloth, you will be surrounded by both higher and lower by people posting stacks of 20, which means they are even more likely to click yours thinking it is a stack of 20.

Is this applicable to other MMOs?  Well, the Rift AH is kind of messed up right now.  However, as more people are getting to level 50 and having established characters, this technique would probably work even better since they don't have addons yet.  When they get addons, it would only be punishing people who don't use the addons.

So, I would encourage you to try.  It feels a little dirty and a little underhanded, but it is a technique that can make your profit margin higher.  Much higher.  And if you feel really bad about it, think of it as playing poker and you just pulled off a really great bluff.

Friday, June 10, 2011

Redhawks Gaze Season 2 - Electric Bugaloo

Redhawks Gaze 2: Electric Bugaloo

Ok, yes.  It has been a long while.  I haven't forgotten about all of you.  I hope you didn't forget about me.  So you are probably wondering where the hell I have been all of this time.  Well, I have had a lot of exciting life changes going on right now.

First,  I got married.  I have been engaged since December 2010 where I got engaged in Charleston, SC during a snow storm. (Thinking geographically, you should see how unique that really is.)  We originally were going to get married in late 2011 or early 2012.  My second big life event changed that completely.  We found out in May that we are expecting.  This made it where we had to push up the wedding a little so that we can accomodate the new baby on the way.  Plus, she needed healthcare to be able to take care of the baby.  We are going to have an actual wedding for all our friends and family in July, but we had to go ahead and get married.

So, the big question you are probably wondering is what is going to happen to Redhawks Gaze.  First off, I am going to keep blogging.  Will it be as frequent as it once was?  No.  Will it still be as informative as it once was? Yes.  Will is just be WoW?  No. 

Since all of this started happening, I have also formed my own Rift guild on Emberlord-US called (no surprise on the name) Conquest.  You can find the site here. (We are recruiting for all classes, callings, etc. for PvE and PvP.)  Also since I am having a lot of these life changes, I actually have a co-GM by the name of Lilstick.  Do I know what the future holds?  No.  Will I be MMOing forever?  Probably not.

So this brings me to part 2 of this blog post.  How will this site change?  First off, I realized that updating two seperate blogs is next to impossible and I'm not going to even try to.  So, as of this post, Redhawks Ascension will be deleted.  This also means that Redhawks Gaze will now cover both WoW and Rift.  I will make it clear as to which is being covered in the title.  In addition, you will probably see some general gaming post as well to add a little spreading out, especially if it is news related to MMOs.

So, as I mentioned in the title, welcome to Season 2 of Redhawks Gaze.  Hopefully, you will enjoy the new content you will be seeing coming up.