Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 8:00 AM |  
1.5 is here. I have a brief wrap up of what you can expect, what you should do and what works and doesn't in PvE and PvP. First, the obvious:

Planar Attunement

AKA "So you thought you were done leveling" this basically requires you to earn tons of experience to get marginal upgrades that are nonetheless necessary for min/maxers. I'm not thrilled with the system and before you ask, no one has seen the 2nd/3rd tiers. There are 6 elements and you have to max the first tier in an element before you can unlock the 2nd tier. My guess is the 2nd tier isn't even implemented yet. Its a very long grind.

Chronicles

You got that chronic-what? -cles of hammerknell! Hooray for 2 player instances. They're easy and although I hated the idea of them, they're actually pretty entertaining and give Attunement points, yeah! Good for running with a noob friend that you just forced to level to 50. Gogo casual content.

Sourcestones

All your Crystal Sourcestones were just converted to Inscribed. Grats. Prices were tweaked and so were rewards for Rift dailies. Experts give 6 inscribed, Raids give 10 and there's a new weekly for 25. Costs were increased as well and you can now buy gear and synergy crystals with Inscribed (60 each) which work with your Raid 1 gear.

PvE Specs

Whet your whistle, your DPS just went up. Here are the parses I made. All parses were 5 min with fervor and the same gear (no greater essences or synergy crystals) unless otherwise noted. No other buffs or stones, etc. Bear in mind that some talents have changed, but the points are in the correct location. Just waitin on Zam to update. Thanks to Geriatrix and Bloatality for theorycrafting and Woetoyou for bardbotting it up after he went to bed.

Deep Nightblade - 1550 DPS
38 NB / 18 Sin / 10 MM
This is a relatively fun spec, and the synergy crystal is pretty good for it. Run the macro and Scourge every CD. Make sure to use Dusk to Dawn right after a finisher. You need the time to regen energy while it channels.


cast Dusk Strike
cast Puncture
cast Twilight Force
cast Primal Strike
cast Fiery Spike

Full Marksman - 1650 DPS
51 MM / 15 Rang / 0 whatever
Finally, a viable ranged spec. The Shadow Fire greater essence (100 AP) is amazing for this and so is the synergy crystal. This is more than likely what I will be raiding as. The reason for no Head Shot is you basically have to choose between 2/2 Head Shot and 3/3 Exposure, and if you don't max Exposure, you will overwrite the warrior's armor debuff with your inferior one. With 3/3 yours is better. This also simplifies the rotation, as you no longer have to mess with Head Shots for the 5% damage. Use Bull's Eye with Deadeye Shot.


cast Empowered Shot
cast Shadow Fire
cast Crippling Shot
cast Piercing Shot
cast Quick Shot

cast Rapid Fire Shot
cast Deadeye Shot

Blinkblade - 1650 DPS
25 Sin / 21 BD / 20 RS
This is a fairly complex spec and with skill, patience and practice it may be tops. However its simply too complex to run successfully in raids, especially since I am raid leader. It likely won't be used on much progression by anyone but will top meters on Murdantix, so people will claim its good. If you're interested, check out the thread by the spec's creator.

Dundancer - 1600 DPS
26 Sab / 20 BD / 20 Sin
If you fear change, fear not. Dundancer still rocks the house and is solidly competitive. You need to make a few changes though, to grab improved blast charge. You'll also need another macro or two, since Expose Weakness is now off the GCD. Otherwise, your rotation and skills are largely unchanged. Swap in Shrapnel for AOE (and prepare to be disappointed).

cast Blast Charge
cast Expose Weakness
start attack

cast Precision Strike
cast Keen Strike
cast Expose Weakness

PvP Specs

Marksman may not prove viable in its new form, but that's not stopping me from rockin' out. We'll see how NB does too. Gunblade variants could be promising as well. Followup posts are a certainty.

Full Marksman
51 MM / 15 Inf / 0 whatever
The spec hasn't changed, but the play style has. Gone is Improved Hit and Run. We'll see how bursty the spec can be without the go-to burst ability. Damage is up overall and Silver Tip Munitions go nicely with Focused Intent. New strafe aint bad either. *Not responsible for deaths by warrior when mashing Hit and Run fails to produce results.*

Nightstalker
38 NB / 18 RS / 10 Inf
Nightblade is back. I think this spec will kick ass, but I haven't been able to test it. I also think every damn person in the universe is going to have RS in their builds. Joy.

cast Dusk Strike
cast Twilight Force
cast Primal Strike
cast Fiery Spike

Teleporting Sniper
38 MM / 18 RS / 10 Inf
I almost wish I was joking. This build could annoy the crap out of people, and has better survivability than 51 MM. Not sure if the burst will be there, but you have a lot of tools at your disposal. Didn't I see this in the Rogue preview for Rift like 5 months ago?
Posted by Dunsparrow Labels: , ,

19 comments:

Igorok said...

Now the question is, is there a dps increase? You did 1650 with dundancer how much dps under same condition you had before the 1.5? I just wanna see the difference. Thx

September 28, 2011 at 10:46 AM  
Jonirado said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
September 28, 2011 at 12:59 PM  
Anonymous said...

The Weekly Inscribed Sourcestone quest only gives 10, Daily Raid Rift still just gives 6, and Experts now give 3. (or thats what it showed on live server just a bit ago.)

September 28, 2011 at 6:15 PM  
Mags said...

I saw an overall increase, single target of about 300dps on the average between my melee spec and MM spec on raids tonight. This was pretty standard for all our better rogues.Most our rogues are running 1 fabled and almost full Durns just to give you an idea. We really didnt lose much for AE imo either, at least with the MM spec clearing RoS trash, if anything I gained a little. Keep in mind I wasn't at 100% tonight thanks to beer and mastering my new rotations / macro's. Overall I think they did a decent job.. We also had a rogue tanking HK a bit again.. fun times.

September 29, 2011 at 1:09 AM  
Mags said...

FYI.. single target on RoS bosses for me, in MM spec, was around 1800 average.

September 29, 2011 at 1:09 AM  
Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
September 29, 2011 at 6:16 AM  
Anonymous said...

Sabdancer takes a nerf in the AoE aspect of it and we finally get a viable ranged build in 51 MM, AND, AND, we can even use the same build and stand in melee if we need to? Almost sounds to good to be true, same gear as prior to 1.5 and my single target dps in MM is a good 300 higher than dundancer was. The best part is my AoE as MM (fan out spam) is equal to or greater than the old sabdancer AoE! Plus we get interrupt and oh yea, a purge! BTW this purge makes the werewolf boss in Master Mode DD seem like normal mode.

September 29, 2011 at 6:28 AM  
Dunsparrow said...

Yep. MM is truly awesome. Fan Out spam is now 1300+ DPS per target, with Silver Tip Munitions and Electrified Munitions.

September 29, 2011 at 10:56 AM  
Daniel Chou said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
September 29, 2011 at 12:36 PM  
Daniel Chou said...

Last night my guild Trinity we did epic invasion in stillmore, Shimmeringsand, IP.

I got 60+ inscribed sourcestones in a night. Without doing any DRR/DER.

Each bosses in the Invasion drops a sourcestones, each ward position you kill drops a sourcestones, and when you finish with the invasion you get 5 to 11 stones.

Incribes are dropping like candies.

September 29, 2011 at 12:36 PM  
Mags said...

Yea Dun on AE pulls in RoS I was bringing in from 2500 dps to 3k tops.. no idea why they nerfed Sab however because those are similar to what i did before as well. Oh well I guess now I have a great melee dps and a great range dps both with items to help out the raid more as well.

September 29, 2011 at 4:15 PM  
JBorq said...

I'm wondering about a Gunblade variant.

September 29, 2011 at 5:54 PM  
tripeX said...

Any chance to contact you Dun for some questions about some other builds? Exspecially some tankbuilds that came into my mind. I know you do not have tankbuilds here, but maybe we can have a talk about my ideas. :/

September 29, 2011 at 8:32 PM  
Vanity said...

http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=1Mfib.EMxoVzVzdo.Vht0G0TRs

^^this is what I'm using for PvP currently. Use electrified munitions and fel blades (Fel blades > Vampiric munitions) Same general Idea with the old gunblade spec except you don't have to have melee attacks/finishers in your macros. I'm still working out what exactly is best for the rotation but I just treat it like a normal MM build with Scourge in the finisher macro and using Twilight force to snare. I might grab D2D and Flame thrust and try that combo with this build.

September 30, 2011 at 3:40 PM  
Vanity said...

One other spec I've been running is 51sin/15mm/0inf The joy of sin with a lil range and dmg (yes, 15 inf you get this this and this) Heal debuffs are everywhere so anethema is kinda "meh". With this you get 5% dmg 25% ap and 25% armor ignore, and Rapid fire shot for when they're out of range.

October 1, 2011 at 1:31 AM  
Anonymous said...

At the moment would u recommend the varient guneblade spec over the new
38 NB / 18 RS / 10 Inf ?

Also which build would u suggest out of the two to use if your only p2/p3

October 12, 2011 at 12:05 AM  
Anonymous said...

Pvp Builds:I would like add ,if them two arnt the best pvp nightblade specs u offer compared to another u may have, what/which build is it?

And out of all your great pvp builds u offer , what build do u think is best to use for p2/p3 items/eq

Thanks

October 13, 2011 at 11:00 PM  
Anonymous said...

Dun,
In the MM pve spec why put the 15th point in ranger instead of nb for 3% cp damage or sab for 3% dex?

October 21, 2011 at 10:59 PM  
Anonymous said...

On the Teleporting Sniper what's the spell rotation? start with riftstalker spells?

October 27, 2011 at 7:55 AM