Last week RIFT Community Manager Elrar posted that Trion was investigating players who had exploited PVP Rifts. The exploit involved collaboration between players of opposing factions to trade PVP Rift shards without actual combat.
Trion has rolled back players who had exploited the system, and at least 1 player reported that the rollback was accurate.
There had been concern that innocent players would get rolled back, but from what I’ve heard, it was pretty unmistakeable that the shard-trading was exploiting, and it sounds like Trion did a very thorough job in taking away any inappropriate gains.
PVP Rifts were disabled for several days while Trion looked into the issue, but they were re-enabled yesterday, so it looks like Trion has implemented fixes. I’m glad PVP Rifts are back – they add more flavor to the PVP element of the game and have produced some very entertaining fights.
P.S. my Cleric hit level 50 last week and is now Rank 3. I’ve captured sweet PVP footage and will be posting a video of a rather unusual spec (Justicar/Shaman/Warden). I leveled up playing a Justicar/Shaman or Shaman/Justicar and I was curious to see whether I could find a melee spec that still functioned well at 50.
My current spec is highly durable, is very mobile, and provides solid healing capability. I’m sure I’ll get hated on when I post it on the Cleric forums, because it is not cookie-cutter. So far the spec has proven viable and effective even at Rank 3. It’s hard to say how well it will scale, but once I hit Rank 4 (~45k more Prestige) and get the PVP weapon, I should have a better perspective on how it scales.
Taugrim's MMO Blog 
I’m very glad they rolled these people back. There are whole guilds on my cluster that did this and now just dominate the warfronts where they used to be run of the mill. Many of them went from 1-8 over the course of a couple of weeks.
Agree 100%.
As I said on gamebreaker.tv’s 30th RIFT episode (not posted yet AFAIK), people are always going to find ways to exploit the game, in PVP and in PVE. What’s important is that those cheaters do not retain the gains they get from exploiting. And IMO if people persist in various exploits they should have their accounts suspended at the least.
I like your build, and I look forward to seeing you use it in a video! Here is the one I am using right now:
http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=00rnj.EuMooeszo.Ved0tMo0z.V0h
It’s an expansion of what you originally were using, but I liked the Sentinel for the spell power increase, and with only 8 points, I can go max mitigation in Justi. Plus the extra nukes/dot in Sent add some nice conviction building at range. Healing grace has even gotten some use!
I still wish I had more burst DPS capabilities for the occasion when someone is at 10% health, but can’t have it all. I am really enjoying PvP with this build, whereas I was starting to lose interest in my cleric.
If you haven’t tried 12 points in Warden, I highly recommend it. Healing Flood rocks. It’s mana-intensive like Doctrine of Loyalty, but it heals for a lot and is another great insta-cast healing spell.
I stopped at 26 in Justicar – those first 26 points are incredibly well spent, as are 25 of the 26 points in the Shaman tree.
The main downside with the spec I’m running (and yours as well) is that we don’t have Protect the Flock in Sentinel. But Sentinels (especially Senticars) are very popular in PVP and there PtF from different Clerics do not stack AFAIK.
As you said, you can’t have everything :) Specs are all about tradeoffs.
Another varation to your melee healer spec that I have been experiementing with is a 44/22 Shaman/ Justicar. You lose a little of the nice bits from Justicar but you gain an incredible synergy with Vengance of the Primal North. This ability is quickly becoming my favorite cleric buff. It does 29 air damage when you strike in melee, but also strikes 2 more nearby enemies. The thing is it does with with each enemy you hit with an attack. So your melee aoe attacks proc this buff an insane amount of times. It will be common to see up to 5 procs (with my SP it does a 100 dm a proc) per enemy hit. This with reperation and salvation means loads of raid heals. You also still do functional ST damage with jolt and massive bow and strike of the Maelstrom can really pump out the damage and heals.
I cant wait to try this spec in the Whitefall escalation or Port Scion games.
If you go 44 in Shaman, that means you probably took the Crushing Blow and Massive Blow talents, which means you will be favoring those abilities in your rotation, which means your Conviction generation and therefore on-demand healing will also be much lower compared to Justicar. I’m sure it’s fun to play though, Shaman can blow targets up :)
I’m definitely spec’ing and using rotations for healing over DPS.
Convictions are not a problem in large melee swirls like Escalation and Port Scion. THis build is designed to do a lot of heavy raid heals in large battle royals. Even Justice talented to 4 enemies is usually enough w/ Strike of the Maelstrom can really do significant damage, while still building convictions. I have two ST melee macros: One with Censure and Strike of judgement replacing Crushing Blow, and another featuring the Shaman abilities. That gives me 5 conviction builders in the rotation and still getting massive blow and Jolt for a quick burst when needed. The weakness is my ability to close gaps outside of Battle Charge, but this build is intended for target rich envrioments.
Understood. It’s good that you have a separate single-target melee macro for generating Convictions.
The only catch is if you are spamming EJ or using the Censure/SoJ macro, the points you put into Shaman for Crushing Blow and Massive Blow aren’t leveraged.
Then again, any spec has limitations.
My spec lacks the heavy burst that yours can put out with Rage of the North, Massive Blow cooldown re-sets, and the Physical damage crit mechanics of Shaman.
If you’re mainly looking for survivability and healing, you could also try mixing justicar with inquisitor. I had tons of fun with a build like this http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=00jrd.V0x.AuMo0xszo.Exkb0t0a .
Conviction generation is great thanks to BoJ, SH and the Light Makes Right talent. Also, you have Aggressive Renewal as a ranged power restore if you’re being kitet or drained by a mage or warrior and can’t activate melee skills to proc purpose.
Although it’s mainly a ranged build, you’re very competitive in melee as well since you can take a lot of hits. Also, you have 40% crit bonus which greatly improves your healing, as well as the burst being bigger if you pair fanaticism with an instant cast BoD. Not to mention Soul Drain, which is probably one of the most damaging spells in the game.
Yes, Inquisitor synergizes really well with Justicar for a ranged playstyle. What I’ve been trying to sort out is whether a melee-oriented Justicar/Shaman build is still viable.
Initially at Rank 1 I tried Justicar/Shaman/Inquisitor, which provides dispel and to boost my ranged capability. But I felt that my healing output was not enough.
I think the most questionable decision in my spec is putting the 26 points into Shaman, but I love the crit mechanics (Endless Winter) and mobility (Battle Charge).
Sweet build, Taugrim. I’m going to use this as inspiration for my own shaman/warden/sentinel build. I was planning on switching out sentinel for justicar anyways, but I do like the warden options for instant spell boosts and the pvp snare break.
Also, you’re great on The Sanctum!
Thanks, it’s been fun and a learning experience.
Hey Taugrim, awesome blog you’re maintaining here. Been a log time fan of your warrior material and it’s awesome to find out you’re PvPing with my class now as well :)
I run a build very similar to yours, but I wanted to point out the fact that getting 2/2 into Supremacy is a very nice addition. I get these points from warden, where I run 12 points (up to Dissolution and 1/2 Restorative Tide.
The stun on Sovereignty might seem lackluster for large engages in warfronts, because of people going immune to stuns very fast nowadays, but for me it provides a vital tool in dealing with smaller scale fights, and dealing with spellcasters a bit better. The 14 points in warden would give a small boost to your aoe healing HoT, but I hardly find myself using Deluge.
My two cents, keep up the awesome work :)
Thundrisad