I have been a huge advocate of Trion’s MMORPG RIFT on my blog (including two in-depth class guides), on the official forums, in social media, and as a host on GAMEBREAKERTV’s weekly RIFT show The Sanctum.
I have supported the game through the many pendulum balance swings from Patch 1.0 to 1.4, because I thought the degree of balance changes were reasonable for a new game, and I was willing to be patient.
That being said, Patch 1.5 has been a huge turnoff. Trion wanted to buff Rogues in Patch 1.5 to make them stronger. I totally agree with that sentiment. But what Trion delivered was over-the-top and they’ve created a new OP class.
Trion not only buffed Rogue damage and Energy regeneration (both good changes IMO), they also implemented the following huge changes:
- Not only moving Fell Blades (FB) from 32 to 16 points in the root but also making FB siphon a portion of the heal from the debuffed target. Let’s say you heal a FB-debuffed target and the normal heal would be 1200. The debuffed heal amount is 600, and the Rogue is healed 300. Rogues who are beating on a debuffed target who is receiving healing are essentially healing themselves. Vampiric Munitions was introduced as an 18-pt ability in the Marksman tree and it has the same mechanics as FB. So any Rogue can easily reach either FB or VM in a PVP DPS spec
- Providing Rogues with multiple effective healing abilities: Leeching Poison (ticks for 240+ at R8), Enduring Brew (2k heal at R8 on 1-min cooldown). And there is at least one other big-heal cooldown ability available
What’s the big issue with FB and VM? They’re passive procs. Yes, they can be cleansed, but that requires a GCD on the part of the healer, and within a few GCDs the FB or VM debuff will be back on the target again. Competent Rogues have already figured this out, and they’ve been using enemy healers as an HP-battery while burning them down. Most Rogues know that the changes are OP but are trying to keep quiet about it.
Passive procs that both debuff healing received and siphon healing from the debuffed target is as bad an idea as what we saw in 1.1 with Ground of Power providing 100% CC immunity coupled with high burst damage + range for Pyros. That is, this is skill-less PVP all over again.
I was talking to a highly-skilled PVP player that I’ve known since WAR named Telena, and he summed it up perfectly:
Trion has a habit of implementing passive-based procs that have a very powerful effect (e.g. Lingering Wounds, Fell Blades, and Vampiric Munitions), instead of having the procs replaced by abilities with cooldowns that require thought and timing on the part of the player.
Speaking of healing received debuffs, Trion failed to learn what Blizzard finally learned after 4.5 years of PVP and Arena: -50% healing debuffs are bad PVP design. IMO healing debuffs should be no more than -25%, and healing should also be reduced accordingly. The problem with -50% healing debuffs is they force players to spec in particular ways, and when you have DPS with those debuffs healing is hard but when you have DPS without those debuffs then healing is easy.
Remember when WoW Warriors had to spec Arms for PVP or be considered useless? That finally was addressed by Blizzard in Cataclysm when Mortal Strike was reduced from 50% to a fraction of that, healing was balanced accordingly, and for the first time ever, there was a much wider array of viable specs for classes in battlegrounds and Arena. I know, I was there for 2k Arena in Cataclysm in 2v2 and 3v3.
I don’t say all these things because I play a main healer in RIFT PVP. In most games, I’ve either played a DPS (e.g. RIFT Warrior, WAR Bright Wizard, LOTRO Orc Reaver), tank (e.g. WAR Swordmaster, WoW Prot Pally), or off-healer (e.g. LOTRO Captain, Allods Melee Cleric, Aion Chanter). RIFT is the first game where I’ve played a main healer class at endgame. So my perspective is based on what is good for PVP, not based on what is good for my RIFT Cleric.
Here’s a trip down memory lane for RIFT PVP:
- Patch 1.0: Champion-spec’d Warriors were overpowered with Titan’s Strike, Riftblade Warriors did too much ranged damage, Saboteurs did way too much AOE damage. I could tolerate this, the game just launched.
- Patch 1.1: the Dawn of the Pyromancer. Pyros had high ranged burst damage coupled with complete CC immunity. I could tolerate this, the game just launched.
- Patch 1.2: CC DR system was introduced, with a 24-second window for CC immunity for control effects and for movement effects. This proved to be too long, making it very difficult to CC-burst healers and for MDPS to stay within melee range of targets. I could tolerate this, CC immunity was needed and was sure to be tweaked.
- Patch 1.3: CC DR window was reduced to 15 seconds, which made sense. Warrior trees were changed so that the damage-increasing talents were more flexible and stacked. Healing was still too powerful. With the buffs to Warriors, Rogues fell behind. It seemed to me like RIFT was turning the corner with PVP balance and playability.
- Patch 1.4: instant-cast healing was nerfed, which was a great change IMO. Previously it was too easy for healers to bail-out heal. The Warrior damage-increasing talents were capped, which made sense given the magnitude of Warrior burst. And Trion implemented a hugely positive change: Valor Normalization, which removed the unnecessary mitigation advantage that R8 players enjoyed on top of having superior stats and weapons. Finally, PVP was getting to a reasonable state in terms of balance. Rogues still needed work but PVP overall was competitive across classes.
- Patch 1.5: Rogues were buffed to the point of enabling skill-less play. Egad.
It’s such a shame, RIFT had started to turn the corner in terms of PVP balance and playability with Patch 1.4. The new patch has taken PVP in the wrong direction, at a time IMO when Trion call ill-afford to have missteps given the impending launch of multiple big-name games over the next quarter.
Taugrim's MMO Blog 
I agree entirely with this, in addition, I think it is quite disappointing that they did not eventually implement the stat changes for warriors and clerics, meaning for warriors, we will go through another massive teir of content collecting gear from another class or being largely handicapped, and the same for clerics.
The justification for this largely does not make sense, this is a change that will unlikely be applied as a hotfix, and thus largely unlikely to ever happen when there isn’t “…already too much going on/ too many changes”, and if it effects peoples gearing now and they have to change all their gear because of the stat changes, instead of not doing it because the impact will be too large, push it through harder, as the player base is still relatively small, instead of letting the game grow, and then forcing a much larger player base deal with the change.
I think it was good that they delayed the stat changes. Mostly because changing stats like this in the middle of a Raid Tier is terrible for raiding. It means all the gear you just picked up in that raid is likely out of date and needs to be put aside. Likely you would have already spent your DKP, etc.
Sort of, I doubt most guilds are beyond 4 bosses, so not that far in…
So, are you comming back to wow.. lol, patch 4.3 is comming :D
At this point I’m more interested in SWTOR and GW2.
Shame.
With both EU not getting the patch untill last night and a ‘take it as it comes’ aproach I hadn’t really thought about the patch much, but this sounds a huge amount of healing off off a AoE Healer if the Rogue gets FB or VM to proc on multiple enemies. More than the heal the Healer casts (single person, without debuffs). On every heal the healer casts. Which is backwards.
Tbh it is looking like (as suggested on the Sanctum) Trion implements big changes to gauge their effects with the idea that they can always tone the changes down later. To the detriment of the game.
Definitely some food for thought in what you’re saying about -% healing debuffs.
Watched gamebreaker the past few weeks and could see you understood where these changes were going to bring us. I shared the same expectations, pvp was fairly decent in 1.4 but everyone can agree rogues were the ones bringing up the rear but that was more due to their survivability than their damage. I’ve seen rogues of all skill ranges and the rogue scales heavily based on their capabilities. It’s a very specialised class, in codex it’s awesome at hiding and holding flags, in whitefall its awesome at running, in BG it can run round back or pick people off from distance and in scion it can pick loners off of stone runners. Now with both damage and survivability increased without taking a hit in any of their specialties they have become more powerful than warriors in dps stakes, coupled with healing and either range or stealth. I had a port scion earlier with a premade of 4 rogue marksmen farming the entire guardian team at their spawn. They couldnt be hit, they couldnt be killed, heck you couldnt even get close to them cause the rest of their team was protecting them. One of them even started laughing that he was critting somebody for 4.5k. I can only see this getting worse until trion steps in as the players haven’t learnt all the tricks yet. It has skewed pvp to the point that anyone that relies on a healer or melee is the first casualty and will force every melee class to go ranged on tank spec.
Anticipating a hotfix shortly.
Trion has a wonderful game. That being said, they don’t know how to balance classes. Either they do nothing to fix a broken PVP mechanic for months or when they do, they over react and nerf the class into oblivion.
Gersh has always been terrible at doing his job. This is no different than any other round of “class balance” tweaks we’ve seen.
I thought that the progression / trajectory in terms of balance with each patch was moving in the right direction…until 1.5 derailed that trajectory.
Give em time, man. Rogues needed a lot of work not only to better what roles existed but sometimes to find one at all. 1.5.0 is a stabby trainwreck but 1.5.X can tweak the numbers to bring concepts into line. I do agree with the heal debuff issue tho. Come packing or don’t come at all. So bad for role diversity.
By what release do you think it is reasonable to expect sensible, incremental changes?
For me that time has come.
I dunno. After all these years both watching and, for a time, working in the industry, I can’t help but to give them time. It’s not that their ideas are bad, it’s just that they lack the ability to grasp the scale of their adjustments. You’d think they would know by now but they have proven that they can fix their mistakes. Often times, overbuffing and tuning down is a faster road than starting weak and slowly buffing. That often leads to something that’s -just- a little too weak. They both piss people off. Either everyone due to an overbuff or the weak individuals just clinging on, waiting to be viable.
They do need to hire someone who can better lead their changes tho. A lot of it smacks of “This is a nice round percentage, lets go with it.” Good for OCD but bad for balancing games.
Been reading the Tao Te Ching again, I always get mellow when I do. I’m cool giving them more time but I forgave companies like Blizzard, SOE and Valve years of error because I had faith that WoW, EQ1 and TF2 would end up in the right places and, at least in terms of internally consistent balance, they have.
Got a lot of years left in life. I get through them easier having faith that things will turn out alright unless I’ve got evidence to the contrary.
I play a Rogue and indeed i feel that the changes made us OP, too many buffs at the same time,
I don’t know what Riot is trying to do here… To be honest i don’t like these changes and hope that Riot will tweak us in the very near future if they don’t want everyone rerolling a Rogue.
IMO Riot should follow Taugrim’s advice more often.
Play a rogue and see. Leeching healing still makes us 2-4 shot material
With Valor Normalization, no one is 2-shot material. Not even close.
just have to wait and see what they do w/ 1.5.x. Agree w/ everything so said Taugrim. You think will see a hot fix before October 3?
Before October 3rd? Is that some special date?
I have no idea when Trion is going to sort this stuff out.
I´m a rogue and I completely agree with Taugrim on this.
Balance is key when it comes to PvP, without it, the interest will go away.
I cannot see why these huge changes were made. We were allmost there in terms of balance.
Why these HUGE buffs when only a minor tweak would have made the final touch?
As a PvP player, I want people to know I have skill. That´’s why I rolled rogue in the first place.
What’s the point in playing rogue now that it shows nothing of how good you are anymore?
With this said, I am confident we will see a nerf bat flying in our direction soon, and I for one will welcome it with open arms.
This is how I look at it as well, but some players would rather win even if it’s faceroll-easy than have a challenge.
I was looking forward to leveling a Rogue alt after my Cleric reached Rank 6, but now I won’t play him. What would be the point?
So Taugrim what’s your next move? Will just continue playing your Cleric and see if they address these issues? Or are you calling it quits and waiting for something like GW2 to come out?
My rogue friend said that these changes make killing feel like killing NPCs… Even with that aside I’ve pretty much wrote this game off. PVP is way too unbalanced. I kind of get the feeling when I log in that I did my last few weeks playing WoW, “Why am I here?” It’s not fun anymore… I’m thankful that SKYRIM is coming out soon at least there will be some kind of distraction before SWTOR comes out.
Taugrim… I appreciate all the articles though :)
I posted this article on the PVP & Warfronts forum on the RIFT forums:
http://forums.riftgame.com/rift-general-discussions/pvp-warfronts/261665-trion-dropped-ball-rift-patch-1-5-pvp.html
Right now, i just suspended my account, they patched the day before it ends…
Playing my cleric is no fun, i can’t dps, i can’t heal since i do not want help to help leechers…
And i’m still an aggro magnet thanks to my blue bar.
No more fun = no more Rift for me, i’ll find something else
Im a r6 assassin rogue and i get 3 shotted all the time. Ive been a rogue in every singel mmo ive played and i am pretty good at it. I have sin/nb/inf as my pvp build, and if i get caught with hidden veil and slip away on CD im dead. The only excpetion is if its 1-1 or 2-1, i can usually poison gas and get away, but still getting a heal of 300 when i still get 3k dmg from most void bolts isnt helping a lot. I wouldnt go so far as to call it a skill-less pvp scenario, rogues were irrelevant in rift for 6 months, and could get 1 shotted by most warriors and mages and at best could only annoy a cleric. Now we can kill ppl and make others try harder to kill us. I think that your right about the 50% heal debuff, its pretty excessive, but ive nvr heard any warrior complain about their 50% healing debuff.
Plus remember Sin rogues usually have to burn CD’s and stun to get kills on p6+ players, especially clerics and mages, with CC DR, its incredibly hard at times to stun someone whos immune all the time. Sure we can kill the pve PvP players in warfronts with ease, but hey it happened to everyone starting teh 50 bracket.
I dont get why its ok for rogues to be under powered and irrelevant but its not ok for them to be awesome in pvp. If u cant kill a rogue im sorry u just need to work harder at your class. I have 50 defiant rogue and mage, 50 guardian cleric and war, i pvp on all of them. PvP is more fun for me now thats its a challenge. I had to erase my “O.o that tickles” on my cleric w/e a rogue back stabbed me.
From my perspective what you wrote sounds like an exaggeration.
I’ve never gotten anywhere near close to 1-shotting a target with Valor when playing a DPS spec, but I understand the concern by Rogues (aside from Riftstalkers) who felt too squishy.
Some of the new mechanics (VM in particular) have too many mechanics to make them actually require any conscious thought, cooldown, or resource management.
Fan Out with VM is a good example. MM can 1-button spam Fan Out on the same target from 35m and do the following:
– AOE damage (critting for ~700-800 at R8)
– heal debuff up to 8 people
– heal siphon from up to 8 people
If there are more than 8 targets available the MM tab-targets, they can debuff more.
I’m not saying all the changes were bad – some of them were needed and positive and still require the Rogue to think and act.
But mechanics such as VM are faceroll easy.
They weren’t irrelevant, but as I wrote above they were one of the weaker PVP classes prior to 1.3.
In 1.3 and 1.4 I would agree that Rogues were the weakest PVP class.
Rogues pre-1.5 needed buffs and had it a long time coming.
FWIW: I totally understand this being at the bottom of the barrel has been a frustrating experience for Rogues. I have played underpowered classes in various games and know what it feels like when other classes have been x or y.
FWIW: I have played a Warrior, and when I was asked back in August what was the one thing I’d change about the Soul system, I said that it would be looking at Lingering Wounds, which makes the game difficult to balance.
See 49:56:
http://www.gamebreaker.tv/the-sanctum-30-mastermode/
I’ve advocated and supported other nerfs to classes I’ve played in RIFT. It wasn’t a popular thing to do – I’ve been flamed by players of my own class.
That point is totally valid.
Have things gotten better in 1.5 with the increased damage?
I don’t personally want any class to be underpowered. Reasonable class balance makes for challenging PVP.
The reason I wrote this post wasn’t because I want Rogues nerfed back to being #4 of 4 classes. I wrote because at this point, 6 months post Launch:
1. I very much disagree with Trion’s approach in 1.5 of releasing so many buffs (or nerfs) at once instead of a more incremental approach
2. I disagree with Trion’s approach of implementing silly faceroll passive procs that require no intelligent thought, timing, or resource management
Since 1.5 (im an sin rogue btw) everything has been awesome. I feel like im actually contributing to WF’s, other than ninja cap flags in codex. Our mana drain poison makes it that clerics/mages cant shrug us off anymore. Do u have any idea how frusterating it was to unload all abilities onto a cleric and do ZERO dmg, and then get that “heh heh that tickles” emote. It sucked….Now other classes have to deal with us and not just ignore us. The damage increase is awesome and i dont think it should be touched at all.
I think that Zampiric munitions and such should only be able to be placed on one person instead of 8. Thats excessive.
But silly passive procs? Really? U know how to make macros im sure….My warrior uses 3 buttons in PVP, all i have to do is hit a spam, finish, and Breakfree. I use no intelligent thought in that process. My chloro use 4 buttons to pvp with, and every single cast has a Breakfree added in just in case i get feared or what not.
In rift i can make any class an unintellegent 3 button mashing pvp competitor.
Pre 1.5 i couldnt do anything with rogue..(at least melee wise, seeing as how MM had a nice purge) but still thats a pretty boring job to just spam purge so others can get kills.
Ill agree they did throw a lot on us, but being a player who has War50, Mage50 and Rogue50, and i pvp on them all, i have never had so much fun pvping in rift. Its challenging now and it never was before.
ATM the class system needs an entire rework for pvp.
People look too much at 1v1 comparisons when discussing pvp. The issue in pvp for me as a warrior is that unless I use a shield I now take way too much damage to accomplish anything. People do not even have to target me, they just hit me with their Fan Out spam which takes no skill. I am taking too much random damage. The entire game now feels unskill-ful.
I imagine this is the same issue for lots of people. Taking too much random damage.
Its sad because 1.4 saw PVP looking pretty good. Now I have moved onto League of Legends till they fix things.
Name one class that takes skill in rift?
Cleric-Spam heal and never die
Mage-Chololock and never die
Warrior-RB or para/dw and kill everything
Rogue……”oh great we have 4 rogues on our team….gg”
After 1.5 clerics have to try, mages have to try and warriors have to try.
Ill admit warriors got shafted a bit, i totally agree that they need their firepower back, but leave rogues alone were finally relevent in pvp
It takes as much skill as any MMO.
My objection is to taking too much AOE damage in general. Damage that is just being spammed in there, often from a distance and may or may not even be targeted at me. There is no skill in that. You really come to notice damage increases and decreases when your in the frontline.
AOE = bad pvp. I find it absurd that AOE damage should be on par with ST for any class.
That’s not the class’ fault, that’s the problem of the Warfront. In my opinion, “Martyrdom” warfronts need to be gotten rid of or changed drastically.
On my rogue i can attest that leeching poisons and enduring brew are good but I dont think they are over the top by any means. I Havent coupled it with fb yet nor have i been using vm as it doesnt work with melee and thats where im mostly at. I agree that vm or fb combined with fan out or any other easily spamable aoe is too much negation/self healing. Tone those two abilities down and I think that would would make a big impact in terms of balance.
The issue is not balancing classes for PvP, that’s not so difficult in itself. The issue is balancing the classes while keeping PvE possible and competitive. Rift is a PvE-centric game after all. Most class changes cannot be made without considering their PvE ramifications, even if the change is made towards balancing PvP. As far as world PvP goes, rogues should be able to take down most targets unless said target outgears the rogue. There is no reason a rogue shouldn’t be able to stun a target to death in the world, that seems fair and balanced because as soon as the cooldowns and stealth abilities are done, the rogue is useless and survivability is very limited. In my opinion, a rogue should be able to put out more damage than other classes, except for possibly a mage, because our survivability is just that limited. When we have spec combos that don’t rely on stealth, burst damage is very reduced and as a rogue I do notice that. Besides being a rogue, I also play a warrior and a cleric. Warriors needed some of the changes they got, and as for clerics I’m indifferent. Most people are just angry and complaining that now after the patch, they can’t kill a rogue 100% of the time. The AoE needs to change, I agree with that, but across the board for all classes. I don’t think it’s really the classes, though. In my opinion it’s the warfront that calls the need for the use of AoE abilities. For example, Black Garden and that new warfront, Library of the Runemasters or something. These warfronts need to be fixed or something, and I do agree with the fact that VM should be limited, but Marksman rogues are in fact the squishiest of the rogues. Fell Blades can generally only be applied to one person, but the ability for a NB to survive is much better.Anyway, that’s my two cents.
looks like someone is mad because they’re not a rogue. if you really feel this way then just roll a rogue but please don’t rage.
Looks like someone is unable or unwilling to read a thread. Instead prefers to scroll to the bottom and post a stupid remark. The thread is more about the way trion chooses to go after the all-elusive pvp balance. Swinging the bat wildly from one direction to another. RS/NB, and MM roguea are OP atm…..however, that is fine, because they will get put back in line….or this game will be full of nothing but rogues.
And it is a shame that they have made such a move with SWTOR looming around the corner…I personally wasnt even looking at it until 1.5.
Also, for anyone saying “just reroll a rogue” to act like you get Rank8 overnight. 50 yes, but that means nothing in pvp. Some people have wives, children, jobs that also need attention. Personally, i used my vacation to P8 my mage, and wont be able to do the same to another char. for a year. i like to log on for an hour here or 2 there and actually be able to compete.
Exactly.
A lot of the people I talk to and play with in-game are looking at other games: BF3, Diablo 3, and SWTOR and GW2.
I won’t play a Rogue in 50 PVP until they get toned down.
Even Rogues know it’s faceroll easy. Look at this thread, people talk about handling 1 vs multiples with ease:
http://forums.riftgame.com/rift-general-discussions/classes-telara/rogue-discussion/264919-1-5-guide-44-nb-22-rs-pvp.html
Just thought I would chime in here again.I decided to work on my Guardian Mage (level 22) and test through the level 20, 30 and 40’s war front bracket. I wanted to test out playing against other classes, especially rogues to get a feel what was going on.
Here are my findings.
In the level 20 brackets, everything was pretty good. Nice balance.
In the 30 brackets, it started to get really interesting, especially when fighting rogues in the higher 30’s.
It was a pretty constant theme. About 99% of the melee rogues I would encounter were running a NB/RS spec and it is ridiculously over powered. It literally would take several people to beat on a NB/RS Rogue to bring him down, but not before he would take out 1 or 2 people before being killed. What I found disappointing is that, Warriors were much less difficult to fight and take out and NB/RS rogues are significantly tougher to fight in melee.
In the level 40’s, it is the same thing as in the 30’s. Same spec, but this time, Rogues at level 42 were extremely hard to beat and when Rogues were above level 45, they were almost invincible. Even at level 48, I would lose 1v1’s vs rogues who were level 45 and below. Not saying I should win them all, but at the very end of the fight, I would expect them to be pretty significantly damaged. Needless to say, it was frustrating at the very end, to click on them at see they had 75% health still. I will also say, I know how to play my class very well. I would pull every trick I had in my arsenal when fighting and more often than not, I would lose.
With Rogues plane shifting continuously and getting the rift barrier up, it was impossible to really damage them. The barrier would absorb about 3000 points of damage. The problem is, they keep shifting and refreshing the barrier.
In the very end, it was incredibly frustrating to say the least.
Fighting against other classes my same level, above or slightly below, was very challenging and entertaining. Win some, lose some. Fighting a NB/RS rogue was not enjoyable at all and when you join a WF with nothing but NB/RS rogues, it is not fun at all.
Very similar with Marksmen as well. (I swear, 95% of the WF I join lately are nothing but Rogues, with a sprinkle of mages and clerics and no warriors in sight at all….bad sign.)
Not sure what/if Trion has any plans to fix this (and they really really need to), but it needs to be corrected and balance needs to be brought back. In the end, it really could be a game changer for me regarding Rift.
Where as I felt the same way Taugrim did about Rift and patches 1.0 to 1.4, patch 1.5 has me considering TOR now.
I really hope Trion fixes this while building a open world PvP zone as well.
Just thought I would share my experiences.
Cheers,
Jason
Hi Jason,
Some of the 2-min survivability cooldowns in NB that are causing balance issues are getting toned down in 1.6:
http://forums.riftgame.com/public-test-shard/276864-1-6-progress-set-1-11-8-11-a.html
So Blackout is being changed from all damaging attacks missing for 6 seconds to a damage-related buff.
I’m not clear on how significant the nerfs are to TS and TT in 1.6, but at least Trion recognizes that these abilities in their current state are too much.
[…] you may know, I’ve been critical of RIFT’s 1.5 and 1.6 patches – IMO they’ve derailed the great progress being made for PVP from 1.0 […]
[…] getting a sense of déjà vu: the sweeping changes in SWTOR 1.2 remind me of the sweeping changes in RIFT 1.5 and 1.6, in terms of having a negative impact on the quality of PVP. Yes, I know 1.2 went live […]