So after my fun on Thursday in the Rift, I decided to really push my luck 😉  I ended up running the RIft skirmish as a Tier 3 on my Warden, and again as a Tier 2 on my Minstrel.

I’ll start with the Minstrel and pretty much admit that this may be the last time I run that skirmish as a Tier 2 on that toon 🙂  I ended up getting the 2 AOE Flame Encounters that just ate my poor soldier up almost instantly – and I’m using a ranged soldier!  I was able to finally kill the Dragon, but I’m pretty sure the way I did it was an exploit and will not be doing that again.  I was just really frustrated and annoyed, luckily you can’t go negative on the skirmish marks 😉  The normal pulls weren’t that bad, but holy cow those 2 encounters roasted my poor Minnie’s butt.

Before that run with my Minstrel (which probably added to my frustration) was trying the Rift on Tier 3.  Now I’m not sure if it is just the Rift as this was my first attempt at Tier 3, but holy crap is there a HUGE jump in difficulty between tier 2 and tier 3.  I barely got past the first wave and ended up calling it a day after way too many deaths to count. – I had almost a 1 gold repair bill if that’s any indication 🙁  I’m thinking part of the problem with the Warden with Tier 3 is that now with the higher mob resists, coupled with the boost to mitigations in Tier 3 make our transfers and DoTs MUCH less effective.  Perhaps it is time to re-think my traits again and go back to more of a mix of traits as opposed to full shield line.  I probably should parse things using CStats, but I didn’t think about it at the time.  In addition to those issues, these mobs were hitting for crazy amount – LTs critting for over 2K at a time, and critting quite frequently really make it a totally different fighting experience.  So I’m curious if others have tried other Tier 3’s or have experiences doing the RIft at higher difficulties.

I did capture some of it in Fraps, but sadly I rage deleted it as I was just so frustrated with the whole experience 🙁  I’m not down on the system, I was just upset that I played so poorly.  I probably will dust myself of and re-attempt these again with a slightly modified strategy but for now I will be licking my wounds for a little bit 😉