Ever since Trion updated the Storm Legion official site with a placeholder page for the new souls, RIFT players have been speculating about the class silhouettes. The Warrior figure looks to be holding a bow, which seems to imply the new soul will be at least partially ranged (and have a teleportation/stealth ability as seen in the dev diary). The Rogue figure seems to be holding two daggers, which supports the melee theory (healer/support perhaps?). And the Cleric… has a shield and one-handed mace. This caught a few Cleric players by surprise.
Why, exactly? Well, we’re pretty accustomed to only seeing shields on Justicar tanking Clerics, and although we could maybe use a second tanking soul, Justicar is actually in a very solid spot right now. Adding a second viable tanking option may result in some odd rebalancing issues. Most players feel that Clerics, overall, would gain much more use from a soul that provides overall synergy to our DPS and healing souls (DPS especially).
Daglar made an appearance in one thread where players were questioning the future Cleric soul reveal. When questions started arising regarding the shield image, Daglar replied with the following:
Originally posted by Daglar (Source)
I will confirm right now that the new cleric soul is not a tank soul.
That’s one question mark we can un-check. Interestingly enough, in the original RIFT character designs, the Sentinel wields a shield, which kind of throws off our speculation in the first place. It now seems possible that we’re back on track to seeing a ranged DPS/synergy soul that seemed the most likely from the dev diary video and from the E3 video.
The dev diary video depicted a staff-wielder casting some sort of grey-colored magic that almost seemed like it was from the death or water planes. The Cleric silhouette on the Storm Legion page has little cross shapes surrounding it, as if the soul is quite religious or has the intention of assisting others. Perhaps it’s capable of performing a couple different roles, or receives a special defensive boost when using a shield.
Or, thinking a bit outside the box, since the Mage has some awesome weapon-transformation abilities, maybe the Cleric shield in that image is a spiritual “summon” that aids the Cleric or group in times of need. We’ll have to see. It would, admittedly, be a little disappointing to not see some cool, impressive Cleric abilities after watching last week’s Mage reveal. For now, I guess it’s back to the speculation drawing board.
