Rifts - Marksman

[Worba]

So I tried this on trial mode. Since I usually segue into new things by starting with whatever is most familiar, I rolled a ranger - but that was a mistake as I was constantly making comparisons and missing wow features etc.

So I rolled a new toon as a marksman - I figured this (a petless hunter) was something I wished they did in wow, so why not give Rift a chance to make it happen since wow never did.

Well it's kind of neat, but (from what I can see) you are required to choose 3 different soul trees - so for tree #2 I went with saboteur. This worked ok - it was nice to have a freeze trap - although the bomb charges / marks shots seemed (somewhat) overlapping... but now I'm being asked to choose a 3rd tree - and the only "companions" I can see for a marksman are ranger (which I don't want but the game recommends) or bard (which is at least ranged but I'm not sure how well it would really "mesh").

Can any rift players tell me if there is an effective companion tree for a marksman, other than rangers, and which lends itself at least reasonably well to solo'ing? Or if it is possible to go with less than 3 soul trees and just plow the extra points into the ones you do go with?

[Cryptography]

I prefer Saboteur to marksman. The ranger pet is a nice addon if you chose that as the third soul but you've said you dont want it. Bard is ranged and gives buffs/healing so is probably the next best choice.

Lots of builds suggest putting as many as possible of your points in your first soul, the rest in your second, and none at all in the third soul. This means that your third soul gives only the most basic abilities.

You can collect all 8 available souls, usually by about level 14 or so. each "build" contains three souls, but you can "dual talent" up to 4 times and use any combination of souls there. I've given my rogue two seperate builds: Sab/Ranger/Bard for ranged, and .. er, forgotten what souls i have for the melee - riftblade or something is the tanking spec for rogues, then assassin and nightblade as the other souls. Its occasionaly handy to swap between them.

[Poesje]

Like Cryptography says, the third three doesnt really matter, since you wont spec into it at all. Hwen I tried Rift, I had a saboteur / marksman with bard as the third spec, and it was really no different from if it had been just saboteur / marksman.

[Worba]

Ok, thanks.