Rift: Level 30 + Healer Spec + Guild

I checked to see if Rift had fixed the lag issue, and it was fixed miraculously. Hotfix 4? Coincidence? Does it matter? I'm playing again!

In a nutshell, I quested until low-experience level 29, then queued for warfronts the rest of the day. Slow leveling, but fun. I finished my "win 5 Black Garden matches" quest, and finally managed to win my first Codex match. Of course, right as I won the Codex match - and I mean the very moment it ended - I leveled up, taking me to level 30 and a new warfront queue bracket. So now, since I'm level 30 in the 30-39 bracket, I suck at warfronts. Again. Ugh.

In any case, my guild has a shiny-new level 30 on her way to 50, and we could use more 50s. Speaking of which, I've never hit an MMORPG cap, and have only gotten to 30 once... so this is a major milestone for me! The other 30, in case you're wondering, was my Dancer spec in Dream of Mirror Online... bet you didn't guess that one, huh?

Heh.

Well, speaking of which, I finally put my healer spec into practice. It's very strong on the Warden soul (new favorite healing soul!) and almost as strong in the Sentinel soul, with a couple points in Purifier for instant-cast attacks, which I was severely lacking on. While I was questing, I activated it on a whim, and learned a lot about how to effectively organize my skills into my... what, four bars, now? The bars are sorted into attacks, buffs, shields, HoTs (heal over times), instantaneous casts, and non-heals/attacks (Kelari camouflage, mount, etc.), with my crafting, tracking, etc. on an out-of-the-way fourth bar to the side. I figured out that my healer isn't at all a good spec for PvE. But I can deal with it well enough, and it's good to practice.

When I healed for Black Garden, I discovered something amazing: I am nigh invincible, assuming I have a good team. You cannot fell me. I will hold the fang for five minutes before I will die, and even then, it'll be a one-hit K.O. because of fang damage. I am invincible.

Okay, so maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration. But that's okay. Now, in the Codex warfront, on the other hand... well, I can heal, but I die. A lot. I die, and I die, and I die over and over again. Maybe because it was Defiants Suck Day? We declared it this after losing fifteen Codex matches in a row before I finally got that first win ever. Took long enough.

But I now have three good specs: tank based around Justicar, dps (which is really best for 1v1, but feasible) based around Inquisitor and Cabalist, and healer based around Warden and Sentinel.

In the meantime, while I was queuing, I talked a lot more than usual with my guild. Involved myself a bit more, gave out advice that I knew was right, asked questions, answered questions, even sold a ton of iron with a friendly "guild member discount," and got free runes from a person training up his runecrafter skill. In the end, the money loss that I suffered for that iron sale was worth it (and the runes were definitely worth going out of my way for). I made a few friends in good places, kinda got a bit more public, got congratulations on an achievement and got good-byes when I logged off kind of familiarity. I figure the longer I stick with the guild, the more fun it'll get to talk with them, and it never hurts to start early. Right?

This has been Vaethereal/Mnemosyne, signing off at an obscene time of the morning.