Rift Dungeon Impressions - Foul Cascade

Last night I had an opportunity to run Foul Cascade with a couple of guild members and a couple of random players.  We had two mages, two warriors, and a rogue (me), which means we didn't have a cleric or a "proper" healer.  One of the mages was specced into Chloromancer, and I switched to a full Bard build, so we had two support/dps healers instead of a pure cleric healer.  Other than the occasional squishy mage death and two wipes due to patrols, we did just fine, and I don't think having a pure healing cleric would have made much difference.  This is probably the greatest strength of Rift -- the ability to make functional, successful groups without being dependent on a single class type.


Death Rift in Foul Cascade

Foul Cascade
Foul Cascade is a level 30ish dungeon on the north side of Scarlet Gorge.  Although Scarlet Gorge is not technically a Guardian zone, I'd be surprised if too many Defiant ever make it up to this one.

Foul Cascade is an outdoor zone, set under a starry night sky.  Considering it was supposed to be night I would have liked the zone to be darker, but I suppose they decided visibility was more important.  I also wish if they're going to keep making outdoor zones that they'd make it possible to mount up for long runs back from the zone entrance.  The night sky is quite striking, but otherwise the visuals of this dungeon are pretty bland.  It gets the job done though, and I found it more interesting than Darkening Deeps.

The enemies in this dungeon are minions of Regulos, the dragon of death.  This meant plenty of undead, warlocks, necromancers, bat swarms, rabid wolves, and abominations.  All but one of the boss fights were very straightforward, though the one that wasn't could have been big trouble if one of the other players hadn't done it before.  Oddly we had more trouble with the patrols than the bosses, with only one death in all four boss fights and no wipes.  Whereas the Darkening Deeps bosses mostly seem quite hard, the Foul Cascade bosses mostly seemed fairly easy.  I think the first and second bosses especially could be made a bit tougher.

Loot was good, and I think everyone except the tanking warrior managed to snag at least one nice item which is always a plus.

Conclusions
Foul Cascade wasn't bad, but it didn't blow me away either.  It was reasonably fun though, and not too long (took about an hour) so I'd certainly be willing to run it again.  Especially since it's currently the guild quest for my guild . . .

If I were to rank the dungeons I've done so far, it'd look like this:

1. Realm of the Fae
2. Foul Cascade
3. Darkening Deeps

So far each zone has had it's own dungeon, and each has focused on a specific element.  Realm of the Fae was life, Foul Cascade was death, and Darkening Deeps was fire.  Hopefully they continue this trend, with a new dungeon in the next zone based around either water, earth, or air.  Water would be nice . . .