Port Scion Besieged

This is a fan created content addition for Rift. I felt motivated enough to write it on the whim of someone posting on the forums about what new "monsters" we'd like to see. This creation involves only one new monster, but is what I would like to see nonetheless. My "idea" for this is three-fold. Two five-mans and a raid.

New Area on the Metamap: Port Scion

Port Scion is divided into two quest hubs, and an "enemy territory" spread throughout the city.  Guardians have a footholds.  Defiant have a foothold.  The rest belongs to the Endless.

Story: Betrayed by Darkness, Port Scion was lost to Regulos' armies, whom wasted little time in fortifying the city with armies of deadly strength. But all is not lost: the Unseen, under the guidance of the Faceless Man, have spied a weakness in the fortifications.

Five man dungeon (40-45), Garden of Tavril:

The dungeon starts outside of Port Scion, near a series of weakened wall areas that have broken away to reveal a weak area the Unseen have excavated in secret. This tunnel leads directly through the outer wall of Port Scion and into an elaborate series of gardens grown by the elves--yet the corruption of Regulos has turned all to decay.
The dungeon is a very simple pull-and-peel type where you work your way to a next boss, whom are playable races serving as Captains of the Endless--Lords and Ladies sworn to Regulos. The goal of the dungeon is to quietly clear the gardens and open a life rift, without alerting the rest of the city. Upon opening the life rift, a new player by the name of Andoria <Lady of the Sidhe> becomes enraged at the decay and death of the gardens. She begins an assault on the Endless, and the dungeon closes.

Five man dungeon (45-50), Gates of Port Scion:

We begin our dungeon at the gates of Port Scion. The <opposite faction> has begun an assault on the city, taking the opening presented by Mistress Andaria.

This is a "wave" style encounter, with waves of mobs coming at the group, interspersed with bosses. The dungeon starts out as a two-boss encounter, with "waves", boss, "waves", and a boss of Endless. As victory nears, the <opposite faction> turns on you, launching three "waves" and three bosses at the group, ending the dungeon fighting <Defiant/Guardian> Captain.

Chronicle, Footsteps of the Masters:

With the gates and bridge secured, Port Scion stands ready to be breached. Two uncertainties remain: the <Unseen/Cyril> have discovered a weapon hidden within the, "Library of the Masters", a high-elf repository constructed by the Bahmi. The Chronicle details assisting the Unseen or Cyril in disrupting any ability for the Endless to use it. Two "Endless Masters" guard the ancient chest. These two "Lords" are Ement and Amant, siblings denied Lordship by an elder brother in life, and promised more in death. Ancient Eth, the two are immensely powerful. The battle itself involves kiting Amant into the magic attacks of Ement. When enough damage is done to Amant, he turns on his brother and they fight each other, allowing the players to steal the artifact without retaliation.

Raid, Reclaiming Port Scion:

This raid is a wing-style map with 3 bosses in 3 "territories", fighting:

<Defiant/Guardian> Sergeant, physical tank and Spank.

<Defiant/Guardian> Lieutenant, Medic-style damage dealer.

<Defiant/Guardian> Captain, Assassin style "magic" infused physical attacks with a stealth/bleed element.

Endless Court:

Amant/Ement <Ethian Lords>, battle where tanks manipulate positioning so the brothers harm each other, shared health.

Apothecary Scony, scarecrow-style model. Heavy debuff-fight involving poisons and diseases. Tankswap.
Scion of Nightmare:

Phase 1: Ability-Thief phase. Scion steals a random class and gets access to 2-3 of it's iconic abilities. Heavy RNG element making up most of the difficulty.

Phase 2: Room goes black, players disappear from sight. Each player is left alone in blackness to fight a "Dark Link" style clone of themselves.

Phase 3: Darkness remains in the instance--Players reappear. Boss shifts forms between Asha, Cyril, and the Harbinger of Regulos. Players are mind controlled and periodically turn on each other.  Removing the mind control involves finding the "light" in the room and running to it.

The last wing consists of Lady Andaria's two Lieutenants and herself.

Sir Dien <Summer Knight>, Tank and Spank with Scarn-style DPS check.

Sir Koros <Spring Knight>, add fight with Koros siring multiple waves of trees and animals.

Lady Andaria: While trash is cleared, the bodies of Koros and Dien have been summoned.

Phase 1: Lady Andaria summons a massive dragon made of flowing water and ice to fight on her behalf. Dragon fight with freezing breath and ice-shard targeted ground aoe.

Phase 2: Lady Andaria summons armor, sword and shield made of flowing ice. Physical DPS fight, random ice cage thrown preventing a player from acting for a duration. Little movement, heavy healing.

Phase 3: Andaria's armor is cast aside and she goes into caster-mode. Andaria becomes untankable and randomly attacks, with a few "death mechanics":

"Blizzard", Massive aoe ice blast, survivable by standing near the Summer Knight's funery pyre; and "Winter's Finality", heavy dot survivable by standing next to Spring Knight's funery pyre.

When reduced to 1% health, Andaria creates an effect "snow blind" and retreats to the Plane of Life.

After the three wings are defeated, the final boss descends from a massive Death Rift: Queen of Sorrow <Corrupted Messenger of the Vigil>.  Using a larger version of the Messenger of the Vigil model, Regulos has twisted a being to prey upon the fear of hopelessness of the Vigil's followers.

I don't have much of an idea for what the Queen of Sorrow fight should be like. I'll have to think on it more. And as I am writing this from my phone, I expect I shall re-edit it when I get home. But hopefully it brought up some fun ideas for you readers, and it answers the question, "What monster would I like to see next?".

Riftstalker: How I settled on a subpar-soul.

I want to start this post with a firm declaration of my intentions:  I am a Rift player.  I recently put down a year's subscription as a show of faith in the company Trion.  I have no intent of quitting the game anytime soon, and if my class isn't brought up to how I want it?  I'll reroll.  This isn't "my" game, but that of a company filled with hundreds of different minds, and ideas, and processes.  What I view as the "best" thing for Trion to do in any given situation is, by that measure, inconsequential.  That being said, as all belief's should be, they are important to me.

Whether or not others agree with me, what I believe in is simply that.

I started playing Rift about two weeks before 1.3 hit--I think it was March or May?  Hard to say.  My original character was a Mage, is it happens.  I found Faeblight (having already established itself as having an amazing community) and never questioned my choice.  The first week was spent leveling, a process some of my friends would consider eccentric.  Although I was still raiding on WoW at the time (Paladin Tank, you can see her pictures up top), I put extra time into the Mage.  Then, getting an itch at level 44, I rerolled a Warrior--More out of disdain for "another" desert zone to quest in than anything else.

And, once again against the norms of our great min-maxing community, I leveled as a Tank.  I fell in love with the Paladin tree, and spent my game time running 32Paly, Warlord, and some VK.  I did "fine", by my own measure, and eventually got to Expert DSM where I simply took too much damage.  On a suggestive whim from someone in my party, I rerolled 51VK ... and practically napped through the fight.  Everything was fantastic... until my WoW guild started struggling with attendance.  While they've since returned to raiding (Good guild called Wolf Pack--Look 'em up on Duskwood and tell them Soliari sent you), most of our "core" fell by the wayside and, after I gave one of them a trial to Rift, fell in love with the game.

And rolled Defiant, despite my high level Guardian (something they also blame on me and an offhand comment that I wanted to roll a Defiant alt).

So, I was given the choice of rerolling a Warrior (sorry, not again), a Justicar, or a Riftstalker.

At first I chose Justicar, and the class actually felt more like my WoW Paladin than Paladin in Warrior felt.  But, for the most part, I grew bored very quickly and lost interest.  Instead, I rolled a Riftstalker, and LOVED it.  Teleporting?  Awesome.  Super-crazy move-through-space/time-backstab, and the ability to Tank?  I can dig it.

Another few weeks of grinding, and I was ready to take on the Expert dungeons.  Around this time it became apparent that my so-favored guild on Faeblight (Gaiscioch) had a Defiant-side guild as well, and I joined alongside them until such a point that my friends asked we make our own guild.  This didn't hurt so much, as I was happy to see a guild where I had a better voice in how it was run, and it turns out Gaiscioch is a gaming network of such infrastructure we could become an extended alliance member guild, getting access to everything they had.  Fantastic!

Thus, <Mirage> was born on Faeblight.

And so began my foray onto the Rift Forums regarding the Riftstalker, and thanks to math from the likes of Muffin et al., I was shown just how poorly I compare to Warriors.  This is paramount to the fact one of my friends started offtanking for me, as a Warrior, and in gear that netted him 2,000 less health, STILL was easier to heal for my Healing friend.

So now, I'm one of many Riftstalkers fighting the uphill battle for role equality.  Not Tank Domination by the Riftstalkers... I want equality.  Absolute equality.  If our mitigation goes up, take some of our CDs away, if it makes us "balanced" against each other.  I've no issue against that.

In the end, we'll see how Trion plays the cards.  Maybe my vision of role equality (I'm even cool with making Riftblade a Ranged DPS Warrior-soul) will come to fruition.  Maybe not... if not, I always have the chance to reroll another Warrior.

And, I suspect this won't be the last post I write about this.  Sorry in advance.

A little bit of history...

My name's Scott.  I started gaming when I was four years old.  I was raised in front of the TV, watching my father whittle away hours upon hours playing video games such as Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Blades of Steel, and Castlevania II: Simon's Quest.

My own start in video gaming came the year I got the Pox.  I spent the days "recovering" by living in these 8bit, fabricated worlds that, at the time, seemed a great deal more interesting than my own.  All of these years culminated one night when I came downstairs, having awoken from sleep, to find my father playing Super Mario Bros. 3.  He was on the ice level where you get the Hammer Bros. suit.  It was awesome.  And there we played until morning.

And my fate was sealed.

Fast forward from 1989 to 2011, and not a lot has changed.  I watched the world of video games go from living room antics to world-wide entertainment in an industry that seemingly has more money than could be imagined.  In my travels through my pixelated worlds, I forged relationships with some of the best friends I've ever had, one of which is now my roommate, and met some of the best and worst women of my life. 

Now, while my video game worlds have been surpassed by a world of necessity and function, I cling to my entertainment as any child would struggling against the current of self-responsibility that lead me into adulthood years back.  But, I mourn those childhood gaming sessions only slightly, and forge new paths in my favored worlds, balanced against a full time job and the ever-changing aspirations of my adulthood.  But this is not a story of why life has so many new interests for me; these pages are dedicated to the new adventures and happenings of my friends and me, on the various video games we play, and the enrichment of life they seed for us.

Welcome.  :)