Rift: Cabalist

This is built for optimum duoing.  It heals you and one other party member.  It can be used for grouping or soloing, but I built it for 2-person Chronicles.  I’ve hit 40k dps in Intrepid Hammerknell with it, and enough healing to keep a reasonable tank alive healthy.

• Cabalist
• 61 points, whole tree
• Justicar
• 6 points
• Armor of Virtue: 5
• Reparation: 1
• You can add more to this to make it fit a larger group size, you just have to take some off of Purifier to make room for it
• Purifier
• 9 points
• Spirit Guidance: 5
• Caregiver’s Blessing: 1
• Intensity: 3
• If you want more Reparation (above), this is the easiest place to steal points from

Macros:

• Cabalist
• any equipment for this build (synergy crystal, etc.)
• Spam

#show Bound Fate
suppressmacrofailures
cast Break Free
cast Mass Reversal
cast Reversal of Fortune
cast Howling Death
cast Symbol of the Torch
cast Ravaging Darkness
cast Unleash Oblivion
cast Disintegration
cast Bound Fate

• Heal

#show Healing Flare
suppressmacrofailures
cast Bolt of Radiance
cast Hammer of Duty
cast Strike of Judgment
cast Healing Flare

• Sigils

#show Sigil of Catastrophe
suppressmacrofailures
cast Maelstrom
cast Sigil of Catastrophe
cast Sigil of Spirits
cast Sigil of Secrecy
cast Sigil of Ruin
cast Sigil of Binding
cast Sigil of Woe

 

First make sure you’re in the right “mode” with Focused, Condensed, or Unbounded Obliteration, for the number of mobs you’re currently fighting.

For groups of mobs, I open with the Sigils macro.  Maelstrom gets stuff nicely group together.  Cast it on a mob that’s standing next to your tank.

I follow that with Well of Souls, followed by Tyranny of Death, then Curse of Solitude and Curse of Anarchy.  Then it’s just beat on the Spam macro till everything is dead.

As mobs die, you can swap down from Unbounded to Condensed, and then finally to Focused, if you need to.

For single mobs, make sure you’re in Focused Obliteration, then start with Well of Souls, Tyranny of Death, Curse of Discord, 3 stacks of Dark Water, and then the Spam macro till it’s dead.  You can refresh Curse of Discord and Dark Water periodically.  That really helps keep single-target DPS in acceptable ranges.

Keep in mind, with the same gear, a good Shaman build will do about 50% more single-target DPS, and a good Inquisitor build will do about 10% more.  Cabalist is okay for single-target, but really designed for 3-10 targets.  Boss fights against a single boss, you’re probably better off in Shaman or Inquisitor.

But don’t let that discourage you from Cabalist.  It can really rock against lots of mobs.  In Intrepid Hammerknell, my tank runs around the room and gets a whole collection of mobs, and then we burn them down FAST!

Rift: New Pyrochloro Setup

New patch today modified pyromancer in Rift.

This is a solo build that relies on self-healing for survivability.  It can group well, but you may want to swap 1 Circle of Life for Synthesis if you will spend more time grouping than soloing.

Untested as a PvP build, but I doubt it’s very good at that.

Build:

• 61 Pyromancer (whole tree)
• 0 Arbiter (for Aqueous Blessing, 3% less incoming damage)
• 15 Chloromancer
• 5 Accelerated Growth
• 1 Bloom
• 2 Healing Slipstream
• 2 Empowered Veil
• 3 Phytogenesis
• 2 Circle of Life

Macros:

• Prep (use to open)

#show Burning Bonds
suppressmacrofailures
cast Burning Bonds
cast Radiant Spores
cast Withering Vine

• Fireball

#show Heat Wave
suppressmacrofailures
cast Break Free
cast Fulminate
cast Internalize Charge
cast Heat Wave
cast Fireball

• Spam

#show Flame Bolt
suppressmacrofailures
cast Break Free
cast Burning Shield
cast Radiant Spores
cast Fulminate
cast Internalize Charge
cast Countdown
cast Searing Bolt
cast Inferno
cast Flame Bolt
cast Burn
cast Scorch
cast Natural Conversion
cast Fireball

• Channel

#show Fusillade
suppressmacrofailures
cast Break Free
cast Radiant Spores
cast Internalize Charge
cast Countdown
cast Flame Volley
cast Fusillade
cast Fireball

• AoE

#show Fire Storm
suppressmacrofailures
cast Countdown
cast @gtae Fire Storm

• Heal

#show Bloom
suppressmacrofailures
cast @mouseoverui Bloom
cast Bloom

• Pyromancer
• equip Gilded Pyromancer Crystal
• Break Free

#show Bloom
suppressmacrofailures
cast @mouseoverui Bloom
cast Bloom

Use Channel for bigger mobs.  It does a lot of damage (I’ve run 15k+ dps on elites in Steppes of Infinity with it).

Use Fireball when Heat Wave is up (button will show it).  Lots of damage, fun to watch!

Heal for when you need it or someone in your group needs it (mouse-over their portrait in your group/raid list).  Can be modified to use @focus or @mark tank, or whatever other targeting you like.

Prep first followed by hitting Spam as frequently as possible is just “hit ‘em with everythin’ you gots!”  It takes a bit of button smashing before you start doing real damage (because it leads with self-buffs, etc.), but then it does very well.  I’m usually around 7k dps on elites in Steppes with this combo.  Not as good as the Channel and Fireball macros, but it’s great for when those aren’t recycled yet!  This one will always fire off something (unless you’re disabled, and even then it tries to break it for you).

Note: I’ll post the rest of my builds here later.  Posted this one by request.

Movie Review: Divergent

Divergent.  Saw it Friday night.  Short version, it’s not very good.
The main character is unbelievable (and not in a good way), and played poorly by Shailene Woodley.  The whole point of the character is that she has control over her fear, but she spends most of the movie acting like she’s terrified of her own shadow and pretty much everything else in her environment.  Except heights.  She’s apparently not afraid of heights.  She’s supposed to be bright, but she never shows this, and she’s supposed to be selfless and helpful and have empathy for others, but she also never shows this.  “Bright” seems to equate to “mildly curious when things are seriously weird” and “selfless” seems to boil down to “willing to not hurt someone in some circumstances”.
I haven’t read the books (I hear they’re good, which is why I even gave this a chance), but I sincerely hope they do a better job of describing the society this takes place in.  It doesn’t make sense on any level in the movie.  The people who designed it are supposedly geniuses, we’re told in the opening exposition, but they’ve gone and designed a social order that would actively cripple their own purposes.  And they’re willing to die to defend this idiotic order.  It’s not even a convincing dystopia.  It’s “they’re the bad guys because … well … we’re not sure, but they must be the bad guys because they’re nerds and the good guys are jocks!” I guess.
The male love-interest (Hollywood seems to think that “strong female lead” = “even stronger male object-of-lust for her”), played convincingly by Theo James, is seven years older than the female lead.  This is awkward because they have a (PG-13) semi-make-out, and it looks like it’s an adult man hitting on a 16-year-old girl.  The actress is older than that, but looks years younger than her age.  It’s a little creepy in the movie.
Theo’s role as Four (yes, that’s his name, and it’s not clear to me if this is some sort of tribute/parody/whatever of I am Number Four, or is oblivious to it) is well-played, as is Jai Courtney’s portrayal of “bad guy” Eric.  Both are poorly written, but well-played.  Or at least well-enough played to stand out as good in this movie.
Again, Eric’s the bad guy because, well, he must be because he’s a “meanie”.  Stupid and petty and profoundly ignorant of how to train soldiers (despite that being his job), and that makes him the villain, of course. 
I don’t know how much of the incoherence is from the conversion to a movie, and how much comes from the Veronica Roth books.  Either way, the style reminds me of the juvenile style that made Eragon such a miserable book and movie.
I’ve had very good experiences with “young adult fiction” movies recently.  More so than with a lot of more “adult” fare.  Hunger Games, the movie version of I Am Number Four (the books sucked, the movie rocked), and a few others, have been very, very good.  This one doesn’t live up to that at all.
3 on a 1-10 scale.

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