What's new
The latest world event is up and running with a bunch of daily quests to go close death and water rifts. (At level 37, I've yet to encounter a water rift, but the death ones are pretty prevalent.) The easily completed daily quests are good for about 150 tokens, with minipets in the 250-500 range along with some cosmetic armor and gear with actual stats. These quests are also worth a hefty chunk of exp - I gained about half a level during two days worth of them. This is definitely a good thing if you're coming back to the game after stalling out on the leveling curve, or if you want an alt to skip content you did on your first character, though I am starting to wonder if I'm going to outlevel the Moonshade Highlands before I get through the local quests.
I respecced the Cleric yet again, shifting into the Cabalist caster DPS class (one of the last souls I have never used as a primary in a build). I wasn't expecting much because the class uses a fair amount of AOE and channeled spells, which is not necessarily the best bet for soloing. The difference here is that the Cabalist's main channeled spell is cheap and spammable. I threw in some Justicar and Sentinel for durability (passive healing from all my heals, and two instant cast life nukes that give me convictions for the self-healing doctrine), and at a minimum I've come up with yet another build that isn't exactly like anything I've tried in other games. (Current spec link if you're curious.)
Perspective on a return trip
Looking back after spending a few months away from the game, two points stand out.
The first is that the actual rifts are a completely different experience than they were at launch. Between massive crowds, mob scaling, and since-nerfed AOE healing mechanics, I found that rifts and especially zone invasion events frequently felt under-challenging. This may or may not still be true in areas with newbies or level 50's, but the scene in Moonshade Highlands was scattered minor rifts with 1-3 players per. The encounters definitely feel more balanced, and I haven't really missed the zone events - maybe I'll be glad to see one if one finally does pop up, rather than being tired of having them over-run the zone every hour on the hour.
On the flipside, I'm 37 levels into the game, I've tried just about every Cleric soul at some point, and I'm still changing my primary role almost every level. On the plus side, I do enjoy making new builds, and the soul system allows me to do so without losing my progress and starting over. It's also a lot harder to pick a "wrong" calling, because you have so many options.
That said, I identify far more closely with my less flexible characters from other games - or even my WoW and ROM characters who can swap to two very different roles via their respective systems - than my Rift Cleric, who changes so often that I don't really have an identity for her. Also, I chose the Cleric specifically because I wanted versatility, and because I wanted to make sure that I could be willing to use at least some of the non-DPS roles in groups. It seemed like a safe bet because Clerics can do everything, where my experience with Mages and Rogues has been that I like one or two builds but am not that interested in many of the other options, including the group-friendly ones. Perhaps I would have been better off picking a less flexible character with one role I really like for solo play and other utility where I can find it.
Overall, it's not a bad time in the game's life for Trion to host a retrial. Whether I come back for a longer stay remains to be seen.