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Rift or WoW
MertzaSkertz
Member UncommonPosts: 161
Currently I have been looking for a raid end game mmo. I still do enjoy WoW and I tend to play as the healer class. I have been busy with classes not having time to play mmos, but now I am ready to get back in. Of these two, rift and wow, which would you all recommend? Even though I am consider wow, I would be playing with another class, faction, and even on a different server for a somewhat new experience that what I am use to. Also despite the popular belief, I actually think MoP looks interesting. In terms of Rift I know that the end game is suppose to be similar to WoW in terms of gear progress, but nothing of the actual raids and dungeons. Is there a good variety? Are they difficult? Are their achievements? Is there anything else different? Thanks!
PS: In disregard to my previous thread about a mature community, I think I will attempt to find a mature guild. So I understand that WoW has a very immature community, you do not have to remind me of that.
Comments
Rift's progression is easy to plot.
At max level, you can choose two main routes: PvP or PvE. Obviously, you seem to be interested in the PvE, so we'll start there.
You get normal dungeons starting at around level 18, when Realm of the Fae opens up. These go all the way to 50, and are basically normal difficulty. Even in greens, you should be able to do these.
You get a 'random bonus' that stacks up to 7 times, regenerating once per day. Performing a random queue while you have a bonus gives you extra XP, gold, and gear / gear tokens as a reward. Random normal dungeons completed when you have the bonus give you a cache that opens up to reveal a blue item that scales to your level and class. At 50, they also give you dungeon tokens (Justice Points).
At 50, Expert dungeons ('Heroic') are available. There are expert modes for all the instances. Random rewards can include a choice of dungeon tokens, tier 1 raid tokens, or a tier 2 raid tokens (Valor Points).
There are Master mode dungeons, but only for Darkening Deeps / Deepstrike Mines right now.
Gearing through Expert dungeons and expert rifts (5-man) attempts to get you in shape for Tier 1 raids. Slivers like Gilded Prophecy and Drowned Halls give you your first taste of 10-man raiding. 20-mans at Tier 1 include River of Souls and Greenscale's Blight.
Rise of the Phoenix is the 10-man, Tier 2 sliver. Hammerknell is the 20-man Tier 2, and considered the current end.
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There are achievements for the raids and dungeons and they ask you to do various things, some challenging you quite a bit.
You said you played a healer before, but you wanted to try something new. If you're thinking on a healer, you should be rolling Cleric - they have three healing souls while Mages have one. If you want to tank, Warriors, Rogues, and Clerics can tank, but Warriors have three tanking souls which will give you more build variety. The soul system is interesting to play around with and even though there are a few guides that have laid out the cookie cutter math, you will be happy to see the interesting spec system. Parsers are available.
Expect some pretty interesting mechanics in the dungeons leading up to 50 - they work well in teaching you about encounters and preparing you for raiding. Don't stand in the fire is overused but the game does take a few variations on it once in a while.
WoW gave you dual specs, but Rift allows you to have six. If you are serious about raiding, you should have multiple soul builds for certain roles so that you can tune your builds to the encounters at hand. For example, attempting to use Purifier / Sentinel to heal a raid isn't much fun at all - Warden has the tools that make it bearable.
Why not try for free up to level 20?
Rift is a good game and certainly worth a look.
You level up and grind for gear at max level in both. Neither one is really superior to the other in that aspect.
Like the previous guy said, try Rift out and see if you like the feel of it. Up to level 20 will give you an idea on whether you like the casting, fighting, movements, etc... Other than that, they are both the same treadmill.
Leveling up to 20 will not give me an idea about the end game.
I also understood that the progression was very similar, but I was curious if the mechanics where the same in the actual dungoen itself. If they do not offer anything different, then I will just go back to wow.
I found Rift to be painfully boring, repetitive and extremely linear, WoW was much more fun for me.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
level up and grind end-game in both games. Although Rift's raiding and dungeons are 100x more fun and challenging that anything in Cata right now.
Played WoW for 3 months when The Burning Crusade was released and I loved the game. Played wow recently and I don't like the changes at all. Rift is more like wow now then wow back in the days so Rift is not a good game to me presonally.
Differences I see in WoW and Rift is: WoW is way bigger world with different starting zone for each race versus same starting zone per faction in rift, the lore in WoW is based on the warcraft trilogy which was great versus rifts shallow lore.
Verdict for me is I don't like any of the games but if I was to chose between them I would go with wow.
I do not care about the world in regards to this thread. I am just interested in specifics of the raid content that rift might have better than wow and visa versa.
Never played WoW, but I've played Rift long enough to give you a good idea of it. Since you enjoy healing then Rift definitely is a good MMORPG for that, because it offers so many different ways to heal. Like shielded-burst healing, raid HoT healing, healing by dealing damage. My personal fave is this spec for 5 & 10-mans.
As for Endgame Raiding, Rift is a solid raiding MMORPG and has a decent raiding community. There are currently 2 Tiers of Raiding. Tier 1 contains two 10-mans and two 20-mans. The 10-mans are quite easily puggable, but only 1 of the 20-mans can be really pugged (GSB). The other 20-man has a particular difficult execution boss halfway through, that even now can halt a typical pug's progress.
Now for for Tier 2, there's currently one 10-man and one 20-man. Both are very difficult and unpuggable. I've only done one of the bosses in the 10-man (Internet problems at the time), so not sure how difficult it gets. But I know it's hard enough that the guild I was a part of only got to 3/4 completion. As for HK (Tier 2 20-man), it's known as the Raid killer, because so many raiding guilds quit because of it's difficulty. Back when I was playing Rift I only got to see the 1st half of HK. Funny thing is that even the trash mobs were quite difficult and had odd mechanics, let a lone the bosses. Shame I never got to see Akylios.
But in what makes Rift a really good Raiding MMORPG is Trion. Because they release Rift with only one 10-man and one 20-man and less than a year later they tripled that. There's already a new 10-man and 20-man in the works.
thats wow on the left and rift on the right
Sorry I can't help you with your Rift or WoW problem but can give some general advice completly unrelated.
If I am walking down the street and on the left side of the pavement there is a hot steaming pile of crap and on the right a cold sloppy pile of crap I do my best not to step in either of them.