I finally caved in and decided to get the game. Now while I'm downloading I'm having a hard time deciding which soul I want to take. In WoW, the main classes i played the most were Hunter, Rogue, and DPS Warrior. Any combinations that stick out that would basically have the same gameplay as those classes? I don't care if they are first hard to level then get better as they progress in level. I also heard that you can pick a different soul down the road if you dont like the combinations you like? is that true? and how do you go about that?

I don't really like posting threads like this, but I appreciate any input. Thanks in advanced.

Hi, and welcome in Rift.

You mix 3 souls to build your class in Rift, but you won't be able to max the 3 of them. Most of the time people have one main soul they try to max during the leveling, put the remaining points in the second, and keep the 3rd at 0 choosing the one that will give a small buff, bonus or pet.

From what you're looking for, you have the following specs to try :

- WoW's Fury warrior is a Warrior in Rift that chooses the Paragon's soul. This one has a good mix with Champion as 2nd, and Beastmaster as 3rd (just for the pet), in my experience. But there are many other possibilities.

- WoW's Arms warrior is known in Rift as a Warrior with the Champion's soul. Many good pairings here too, you can follow the game advices there to start with. I didn't play much with that one.

- WoW's Rogue, is a Rogue with the Assassin's soul. I didn't try that one long, many good combos possible, one would be Bladedancer as a second pick for sustained dps (Bladedancer = Combat Rogue while Assassin would be more a subtelty rogue). And Bard or Ranger are good third choices.

- WoW's Hunter would be a Rogue with the Ranger's soul, or the Marksman one. But Ranger gives the pet + some range attacks, while the Marksman gives mainly range attacks. They can make a good mix too.

- Also you have alot of fun souls to try, like the Riftblade (a range warrior that can kite mobs better than most Mages oddly), or the Bard (dps/healer/buffer Rogue with a musical instrument), or the Saboteur (a Rogue using mainly traps).

Yes you can respec almost freely by talking to a trainer and eventually you'll have 4 different builds at hand. You can switch from one to another as much as you want (think about WoW's dualspec, here it's a quadspec). So you'll be able to try almost everything inside one calling (or main class). The only thing to know is you need to complete some Rift quests to unlock the other souls which arent from the 3 ones you chose in the beginning (you get those quests at lvl 13+ when you reach the Capital City of your faction). This soul system is one of Rift's main strenght with the dynamic content.

But at the creation you must choose your Calling between Warrior and Rogue (also Mage and Cleric available). That means if you choose Warrior you will never be able to develop the Rogue's souls on the same character. Basically to try out all the styles you talked about you would have to make 2 characters and check which one you prefer (you start to get a decent idea about your class/souls choices by level 15+). And most of the picks we talked about level very well. Even if they wouldn't, when your character have a hard time in Rift, you can always pick a pet soul as your 3rd choice that helps alot offtanking adds (Beastmaster, Ranger...).

Have fun in Rift :)

One more thing. At early level some souls have very similar skills. Take marksman and ranger for example. The differientation starts becoming apparent the higher up you move into the trees. You generally don't need to use the tier1 skills of both trees, unless they are somehow tied to talents higher up the tree.

At the moment it seems a bit unbalanced. Some soul combinations have skills that seem very overpowered. You might find that the souls individually are quite weak, but put them together and the skills mesh in a way that makes them strong. So it is very easy to get the wrong combination and do badly.

For example, if a cleric takes Shaman and Purifier, they get a 30 second damage shield from each, which means that they can keep a shield up all the time (as long as the damage taken doesn't overpower them).

One of the nicest things about the soul system is the way in which you don't feel locked into your original choices of souls. While you do have to choose between warrior/cleric/mage/rogue as an archtype, that is really the only permanant choice you make. (aside from race which is really just flavor)

One way to think of it would be this. instead of having to choose between a DK, Warrior, Paladin or Bear tank you simply choose them all  and then can decide how you will build out your much more general warrior, with the option to have specs later on. So if you want to have a two hand dps warrior spec you can, then switch over to a tank that specializes in locking down casters. As a Rogue, you have the choice of ranged, ranged with a pet, melee caster, melee physical damager, buffer/offhealer or tank. Yes, rogues can tank and they are every bit as good as warriors, Warrior just have more tools for specializing between single target, aoe targets or casters. Clerics can tank, melee dps, melee dps with a pet, heal with hots, heal with aoes, direct heals with shields, caster dps with aoe and caster dps with dots and nukes. Very versatile. And remember you get to mix and match these so you can be a healer deep into the hots with some directs or you can be deep into directs with some hots. or half and half.  I don't know as much about mages. havent run one. They have two pet souls. They have a full on healing soul. They can nuke, aoe and dot things up. The point is you can decide how much of what you want to do within the much wider range of your arch type.

http://www.riftjunkies.com

I've been messing around with a few different builds. Currently I have a Ranger/Marksman/Riftstalker basically so far he is like a wow hunter minus the traps that has a shadowstep. Another alt is a warlock/necromance/dominator only level 12 but I am liking the necro pet and my tank is a paladin/warlord/void knight.