I love the assumption that everyone seems to be making that just because you have 3 slots, that you HAVE to use them.
Sounds to me like the majority of this thread is people trying to recreate their favorite class from their favorite MMO and being pissed that they can't have their cake and eat it too. What i mean by that is they want keep that classes mechanics and then be able to add in and the fun and exciting stuff from 2 other souls.
Its not mean to work that way. Its an inherently balancing system.
If you reaaaaally want a stealth mechanic, then you're going to have to give up something from another soul in order to get it. Maybe you give up a duel wielding damage bonus. Or you give up a snare type ability, etc.
An example scott gave is that when they start introducing the "heroic" souls, basically the more specialized ones. You will be able to super focus a class to the point where it would be borderline unsoloable. An example was a shaman style buff soul. If you dumped your points into, you would be a group or a raids best friend, but you would give up so much from the other souls you would be very ineffective at solo play.
This system really allows people to create their own class. Some people enjoy group mechanics so creating a mega healer or mega buffer or mega crowd controller might be something they would want to do.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
Another assumption some folks are making is that there will be some magic build which will boost dps/healing to the max or an ultimate tanking build.
In all truth, the best of each of these categories are going to be those that actually survive to end end of an encounter without croaking it at all and having to be combat rezzed, whilst performing at near peak efficiency.
This is going to be the beauty of multi-classing, hence why pure single class builds may suit rifting, 3 class builds for raids and duo class builds for 5 man dungeons (these are very subjective assumptions and very general).
I'm hedging towards the survivablity build as being the holy grail for this game....generally
Those of you playing around with the rolebuilder, try out the cleric tree's as they are currently giving a reasonable field of possibilities due to there being more alpha data on them.
Not sure about all of the abilities (I don't follow the news for this game that closely), but this would appear to be a somewhat synergistic build heavily tilted towards a melee cleric:
Just offered as an example. Looking deep into a full Shaman tree, this hybrid build (includes Justicar) seems better for melee damage than a pure Shaman (which has mixes of healing with melee damage). The few root skills that a pure Shaman build would have (2 attack skills) seems like they could be outweighed by the gain of several skills from the Justicar tree.
I think it may be more difficult to tell until the game is released, but, on the surface at least, it looks like hybrids could indeed be viable. Keep in mind that viable does not always mean optimal...
There was a fun game I played a couple years ago called Fury (it's been shut down unfortunately). This game had 12 "classes", and each class had 15 or so abilites each of which costed some number of points. Your character gained more skill points as he leveled up and thus could get more abilities I had a build where I had 2 charge attacks, 2 roots and some a lot of heals.
I'm surprised more MMO's haven't incorporated multi-classing recently (all that comes to mind is this and FFXIV). I also really enjoy the build diversity as I hate in most MMO's there's a definitive end-all-be-all spec that is decided on each patch day.
I have a concern about the choice to multiclass. It may not be much of a choice if putting all of your points into a single class results in a significantly more powerful character. The only way I could see multiclassing being viable is if multiclassed skills had the potential to synergize in ways that had the potential to make up for the power gap. But I don't know if that will be the case.
edit:
Based on the replies, and from playing with the character builder, my conclusion is that hybrid builds (as far as point spending goes) are pointless. Chest thumping ftw!
Your post is the absolute perfect reason a game NEEDs to be group oriented.When you bring grouping into play it doesn't matter how strong you are solo,the sum of the parts make the group strong enough to challenge the content.If games allow solo play then yes it will be every single person running to play the msot powerful class,this forces a developer to make perfect balance or everyone starts to complain.
This is also why PVP in any game needs to be relegated to certain areas so that groups of people can go in organized and ready to over come certain classes that might be over powered solo.
I think Rift has an interesting setup and shows me they at least have a design/ direction,i await to see how well the content/combat is done.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Comments
I love the assumption that everyone seems to be making that just because you have 3 slots, that you HAVE to use them.
Sounds to me like the majority of this thread is people trying to recreate their favorite class from their favorite MMO and being pissed that they can't have their cake and eat it too. What i mean by that is they want keep that classes mechanics and then be able to add in and the fun and exciting stuff from 2 other souls.
Its not mean to work that way. Its an inherently balancing system.
If you reaaaaally want a stealth mechanic, then you're going to have to give up something from another soul in order to get it. Maybe you give up a duel wielding damage bonus. Or you give up a snare type ability, etc.
An example scott gave is that when they start introducing the "heroic" souls, basically the more specialized ones. You will be able to super focus a class to the point where it would be borderline unsoloable. An example was a shaman style buff soul. If you dumped your points into, you would be a group or a raids best friend, but you would give up so much from the other souls you would be very ineffective at solo play.
This system really allows people to create their own class. Some people enjoy group mechanics so creating a mega healer or mega buffer or mega crowd controller might be something they would want to do.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Another assumption some folks are making is that there will be some magic build which will boost dps/healing to the max or an ultimate tanking build.
In all truth, the best of each of these categories are going to be those that actually survive to end end of an encounter without croaking it at all and having to be combat rezzed, whilst performing at near peak efficiency.
This is going to be the beauty of multi-classing, hence why pure single class builds may suit rifting, 3 class builds for raids and duo class builds for 5 man dungeons (these are very subjective assumptions and very general).
I'm hedging towards the survivablity build as being the holy grail for this game....generally
Those of you playing around with the rolebuilder, try out the cleric tree's as they are currently giving a reasonable field of possibilities due to there being more alpha data on them.
Not sure about all of the abilities (I don't follow the news for this game that closely), but this would appear to be a somewhat synergistic build heavily tilted towards a melee cleric:
http://www.riftrolebuilder.com/builder/?calling=cleric&build=shaman.100100300330030000500500550:justicar.1000203010000540
Just offered as an example. Looking deep into a full Shaman tree, this hybrid build (includes Justicar) seems better for melee damage than a pure Shaman (which has mixes of healing with melee damage). The few root skills that a pure Shaman build would have (2 attack skills) seems like they could be outweighed by the gain of several skills from the Justicar tree.
I think it may be more difficult to tell until the game is released, but, on the surface at least, it looks like hybrids could indeed be viable. Keep in mind that viable does not always mean optimal...
There was a fun game I played a couple years ago called Fury (it's been shut down unfortunately). This game had 12 "classes", and each class had 15 or so abilites each of which costed some number of points. Your character gained more skill points as he leveled up and thus could get more abilities I had a build where I had 2 charge attacks, 2 roots and some a lot of heals.
I'm surprised more MMO's haven't incorporated multi-classing recently (all that comes to mind is this and FFXIV). I also really enjoy the build diversity as I hate in most MMO's there's a definitive end-all-be-all spec that is decided on each patch day.
Your post is the absolute perfect reason a game NEEDs to be group oriented.When you bring grouping into play it doesn't matter how strong you are solo,the sum of the parts make the group strong enough to challenge the content.If games allow solo play then yes it will be every single person running to play the msot powerful class,this forces a developer to make perfect balance or everyone starts to complain.
This is also why PVP in any game needs to be relegated to certain areas so that groups of people can go in organized and ready to over come certain classes that might be over powered solo.
I think Rift has an interesting setup and shows me they at least have a design/ direction,i await to see how well the content/combat is done.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.