The Liebster award

Now even shinier than before!

I've been enjoying the personal revelations of fellow bloggers posting their Liebster awards over the past few weeks. I've been both looking forward to and dreading being nominated myself: looking forward because it's an honour and dreading because I don't usually talk all that much about personal things on my blog. Anyway, here it goes!

LOTRO: The failure that is Dale

The other day, we did the new 6-man The Bells of Dale on T2 Challenge mode, and I was baffled. Five random observations.

1) You can solo heal at least up until the final boss with a red line lore-master

Okay, perhaps we were a bit sloppy and accidentally let our poor minstrel die on the first boss because our burg or AoE was hitting the boss too hard --> too many adds, overrun... but why wasn't it a problem? After our minstrel died somewhere at the start, we were like "oh shit, we need to be careful", and when we continued acting properly and killed the adds first, DPS lore-master solo healing was fine (we didn't have a captain). It wasn't even stressful.

We (accidentally) repeated this 'experiment' several times because we missed trash/adds coming around the corner, and it wasn't a problem whatsoever. I can safely say from experience that you can solo heal the first bosses on lore-master without any problem. The last boss I don't know about, that might be tricky (we actually kept our minstrel alive there for a change). Sure, I'm properly equipped with a second age book, the Beacon of Hope HoT and Water-lore pulses set bonuses, but this isn't very exceptional. I was even traited full reds. This was pretty surprising, as the devs have always said they didn't want lore-masters to be able to solo heal 6-mans.

I think the whole thing should be doable solo healing on a yellow or blue traited lore-master. I apologize in advance to our (actually quite capable) minstrel.

You can also do this without the dude with the lute.

2) There is a boss without any mechanics whatsoever

Really, I couldn't discover anything happening on boss nr 3? I mean the guy with the big hammer, don't remember his name. Sure, he does some AoE, I think, but that's hardly boss-specific. Turbine also went through with their trend of less trash: there's barely anything in between the bosses-that-shouldn't-be-called-bosses. But what they forgot was to make the trash in between even vaguely challenging.

3) The lore-masters cheat

I'm talking about the enemy lore-masters, of course! They keep spam summoning pets during the fights, which every greenie lore-master knows we can't do. Luckily they make very poor choices by picking lynxes and... squirrels?

4) I'd buy a house here, if there wasn't so much fire

I wanted to say something positive too before I get totally depressed, so I thought to salute the looks of the town. It's cool to see what they envisioned as Dale, and I always like fighting in a cosy environment (even if it's overrun by enemies). 

A cute little well in the middle of Dale, now announced gorthorog-free.

5) The overall (lack of) difficulty

We ran in without having done the instance before and had no clue whatsoever about the tactics. We were not really trying to play properly and let our minstrel die three times, with only a lore-master left to heal. We were generally just messing around a bit without much thinking. And we still made it as if we were a breeze blowing through town. Really, Turbine?

Sure, we were all seasoned players. T2 Challenge as it stands might be hard for an inexperienced pug. But shouldn't they be doing tier 1 anyway? In my opinion, the Bells of Dale is an all-time low in the recent history of Turbine scaling down the difficulty of our instances.

So what are the capable players in the game supposed to do? Raiding on T2 only? If you think I will keep doing the Bells of Dale just to get the rewards, you are wrong. Instances like Sari-surma and the Lost Temple (before the nerf) where the things I liked to do. They were actually a challenge. I play for fun, not to grind. And getting rewards without having to work for it is grind, not fun.

I understand there is a player base consisting of more casual players than me, and that's fine. But that's what tier 1 is for. Turbine seems to miss the mark with increasing frequency when it comes to balancing the difficulty of group content. The Bells of Dale is the most recent example of this.

LOTRO: Check your stats

The website already exists since 2012, was out of date for a while, but I was pleasantly surprised when I heard that it has been updated: the LOTRO StatCheck by Harkhonen. I want to grab the opportunity to show you this website and talk a bit about the meaning of stats in general.

LOTRO StatCheck

LOTRO StatCheck indexes information from MyLotro when a website visitor enters their character, and shows their stats in neat little graphs. To use it, you simply select the server you are on, type the first name of your character, then hit "Submit". To show, I did a test with my poor neglected lore-master, which I haven't actively played in about two months. I'm not expecting too much because I couldn't be bothered to grind skirmishes again for gear (she's still wearing the Limlight stuff). To the right you see what the poor thing looks like on MyLotro. 

The wristlets and ring don't show up because their icons haven't been uploaded to the website, yet I am wearing them and they do count for the total stats.

It's important to know that the stats for MyLotro and thus for LOTRO StatCheck are taken from the last time you logged out on your character. The gear you were wearing and the virtues you had equipped etc all count, so don't log off wearing a pitchfork! My lore-master was wearing her usual virtues and DPS gear - so let's see how she does on those accounts.

Graphs explained

Stats shown are for lore-master Ravanel of the Gilrain server on 28/02/2013:

As you can see, Ravanel is being compared with 799 'similar characters'. This doesn't mean there are 799 level 85 lore-masters on Gilrain, this means there are 799 level 85 lore-masters on Gilrain who entered their character on this website. The more people participate, the larger the pool becomes.

First of all, you see three differently coloured bars: the blue one representing your stats, the red one the average of your class and level, the yellow one the maximum seen by your class and level. I recommend to forget about the yellow one, because it's mostly for fluff. The lore-master above with 17945 morale obviously doesn't run around in a viable build, but changed their gear so they would show up in the graph on this website. Since people do this for practically each stat, the yellow bar is pretty much meaningless. So, what do we see here?

• Morale: Ravanel scores ever so slightly lower than average. I'm not bothered by this, because this is my DPS build, in which morale doesn't play (much of) a role. It would be a different story if I would be in my raiding/Ancient Master build.
• Power: In-combat power regeneration is more important than your total power pool by general rule. The reason lore-masters have a high power pool is (hopefully) not because they aim for it, but because they aim for high amounts of willpower, which automatically gives them raw power as well.
• Armour: Armour mostly negates common damage (with thanks to Cory, 100% common, 20% tactical damage). You know, the damage those landscape mobs deal that don't really hurt you in the first place. Lore-masters generally have a low amount of this, and that's fine.

• Might & Agility: These stats are more or less irrelevant for lore-masters, or at least not worth stacking at the cost of more useful stats. Most lore-masters seem to understand this. Again, we see some lore-masters stacking for the fun of ending up in the graphs.
• Vitality: Apart from giving you morale, vitality gives you tactical mitigation. Fairly useful, but not something to aim for in a DPS build.
• Fate: Fate currently has steep diminishing returns on the in-combat power regeneration and critical rating it bestows, although this will change soon. You will still get higher numbers of these by stacking raw crit rating instead of fate on items, though.
• Will: Together with critical rating, this is the most important stat for the lore-master. Ravanel can be happy with her result.

• Critical Hit: This is the stat I try to aim for on my lore-master, since it's harder to get than will/tactical mastery, which is on basically every lore-master gear piece. Ravanel seems to be doing okay, but I'd like to have more of this. The average lore-master seems to neglect their crit too much.
• Finesse: I didn't really try to get much finesse, but apparently it came with my gear either way. It's good to have at least some finesse to be able to land your attacks. Nothing to complain here.
• Block: A lore-master cannot block. Even the jester (I hope!) with the yellow bar didn't get far.
• Parry/Evade: Parry rating gives a chance to prevent hits from melee attacks, evade rating a chance to prevent hits from both melee and ranged attacks. I'm not a tank, so I'm not really aiming for these two, but in a perfect world, Ravanel could use a bit more evade.

• Resistance: This stat gives you a higher chance to resist any attack from a tactical source. However, this sounds nicer than it is: because it would be too easy to stack resistance and circumvent the dangerous tactical attacks of raid bosses, the devs disabled it there. Thus in effect, resistance only gives you a chance to resist a tick from a negative effect such as a disease or wound. You know, those things that you pot/cure anyway if they're dangerous - most of these negative effects don't do much at all in LotRO. In the Ettenmoors, the devs didn't disable resistance on tactical attacks, so there it does give you the chance to completely negate such an attack. For a (landscape) DPS lore-master this is a pretty pointless stat, though.
• Critical defense: Nowadays, this stat reduces the magnitude of critical hits you receive. It's useful in raids for everyone (and tanks in particular), but not something I'm making a priority as a (landscape) DPS lore-master.
• Physical mitigation: This stat mitigates common damage (mostly landscape mobs). I don't really aim for it as a lore-master.
• Tactical mitigation: This stat mitigates tactical damage (mostly instance/raid mobs and creeps). I don't aim for it as a DPS lore-master, but it is an important stat for the Ettenmoors enthusiast and the PvE raiding lore-master.

So what does this say?

Some things you cannot tell:

• How well your character exactly does: In this case, I would want to compare Ravanel to other DPS built lore-masters, but I can only compare to the average lore-master that participated in this website, including Ancient Master raiding lore-masters and PvP Ettenmoors lore-masters with different stat priorities.

However, the graphs might give you an idea about:

• What stats you might want to aim for if you're still unfamiliar with a class. 
• Whether you are falling behind on a specific stat that is important or not. Or, more vaguely:
• How awareness of builds fares on your server. For instance, when the Rise of Isengard hit and stat caps where 'removed', many people stayed in their old pattern of stacking morale. They were uncomfortable to give up morale for DPS, while this was a viable strategy. Nowadays, the graphs show that people generally don't stack that amount of morale at the expense of damage anymore.

Overall, the LOTRO StatCheck is a fun tool, but it's also a bit like reading tealeaves. It helps to have an idea about what each stats means generally and for your build to interpret what you see. I think it's pretty cool that a player put in all the effort to make us this tool. If you have not done so yet, you should definitely look up your character and add it to the testing pool:

LOTRO StatCheck

Have fun with the tealeaves!

LOTRO: Bear tanking

Busy studies

As you may have noticed, my blog has been a bit more quiet lately than it used to be. This is not due to a lack of enthusiasm, but rather due to an overflow of study load. I've just started a new master in September, and I love it, but it does mean less frequent posts. Don't worry, I promise I won't disappear: a one post a week minimum should be doable.

Because I've been so busy studying, I haven't been able to play much either. At the same time, the "final days before the expansion" are very present in the general atmosphere in LotRO: not everyone is as enthusiastic about raiding ToO anymore, and we sometimes struggle for the right numbers or classes. In a weird way, this is actually positive for me: I wouldn't be able to keep up with raiding four days a week with the amount of homework I got. 

Bear tanking

Some failed raids resulted with very fun stuff, for instance the realization of an old dream of me: bear tanking the Twins fight in Barad Guldur ("BG"). As expected, six-manning BG wasn't that challenging, but it was a blast. We went right through the gauntlet, and after that I plus a captain had to "off-tank" Durchest. Lore-master tanks for the win! After that it was off to the Twins, probably the hardest of the three boss fights for over-leveled characters. Stress when it turned out my bear food stock was depleted! So I went out and quickly made some, and then the fun began. It was actually a bit challenging, and I had to be main DPS on Cargaraf (traited reds), while the captain was tanking it.

Advantages of bear tanking:

• No tank player needed, so it opens up a spot in your raid, which can be filled with an extra DPS class (not relevant here in BG, as we were under-manning, but I guess we were actually effectively 7-manning instead of 6-manning it, if you include the bear)
• The bear might not take all negative effects (in this case the Immolate effect from Morgaraf, so it didn't have to run away every so many seconds), which sometimes makes up for having inferior sturdyness compared to a real tank

How to bear tank:

• Feed the bear pots of Honey and Oats for +15% perceived threat
• Use a legacied Sign of the Wild: Rage on the bear for + 25% perceived threat
• Damage the target yourself and use Inner Flame to transfer your threat to the bear
• Burglars use traited Provoke on the bear
• Champions use Rising Ire on the bear
• Optional: also use a legacied Sign of the Wild: Protection on the bear for extra survivability (Master of Beasts trait needed to be able to apply both signs)

To the right: Zwartje moaning about having the aggro of an imaginary fabricated nazgûl (he's such a whimp!).

With all these buffs, the bear should be able to tank sufficiently. You don't need its force taunt Roaring Challenge unless there's an emergency. This skill doesn't give the bear any aggro, but just forces the target to attack the bear for a set amount of time. It doesn't have much to do with actual (permanent) tanking.

A debated tactic

In the past, bear tanking has been looked at with mistrust. The tricky part is in the "bear might not take all negative effects" part. If the bear is able to avoid a total game mechanic and ridicules the fight, you might speak of an exploit. This happened in Moria times, when a lore-master and a minstrel were able to duo the Turtle with a bear tank. The bear didn't get the acid dot that would force real tanks to swap aggro. Thus a fight designed for twelve could be completed by two. 

It must've been a very long fight, mind you. They had no champions or burglars to give the bear aggro, so the players weren't able to deal much damage to the Turtle, otherwise it would loose it. The bear would be main DPS. Meanwhile, the lore-master would be pulling power to supply the minstrel, who had to heal the bear with an increasing intensity. Seriously, it must've taken ages!

In the case of the Turtle, I can can understand how this was considered an exploit and why they changed it so it cannot be done anymore: people were using this to farm for first age symbols without having to roll against many others. However, bear tanking is usually harmless, as most people take the bear with them as a tank to approach fights in a different way and have some fun. Bear tanking isn't something you can do mindlessly: you need to make up a tactic and people need to coordinate and put effort in to let the bear keep having aggro. Also, healers will have to heal the bear more than they would a normal tank, because it's just a bit more squishy. Bear tanking in BG doesn't make the fights easier, rather harder. It did make it faster, though. If done the right way, bear tanking can be very much fun, like it was for us.

Finally, hurray for Zwartje, proud tank of Morgaraf!

LOTRO: Lore-master legendary items

Recently, H asked me for advice on how to customize his lore-master's legendary items (LI's). Since I get this question more often, and that particular thread is starting to get a bit lengthy, I thought it best to give the subject the space it deserves and write a post.

First off, I don't consider myself "the expert on LI's" or something, I'll just go with what I found to be effective myself. I should also tell you that I built my lore-master mainly for PvE (and specifically for raiding), and my LI's reflect this. My optimal choice might not be the best for you if you have a different playstyle (EM comes to mind).

Warning: nerdy content follows! I assume that you to know how the legendary item system in LotRO works. If you don't, it might be an idea to read an external guide like Legendary Items 101 first. You'll probably be bored to death by this post anyway.

My setup

I use five different LI's while playing. Five?! But I thought you can only equip two at a time? That's correct, but I like going for maximum efficiency, and there simply were more legacies than would fit on two items. I also like to get crazy and swap staves and books mid-fight. That doesn't mean you can't get away with a (slightly less efficient) build of just one staff and one book, don't worry. And while I do recommend at least a separate raiding book if you're serious about raiding, you certainly don't have to swap LI's mid-fight.

Lore-master books

I have three of these, mainly because I'm crazy and the legacies I wanted didn't fit on two. To the left my support book, to the right my DPS book.

Priorities

Support book
Tactical healing rating maxed out
Signs of power durations
Healing from Beacon of Hope
Target resistance (debuffing skills)

DPS book
+5% fire skill damage title
Fire damage over time
Pulses legacies
Target resistance (damaging/fire skills)

While the Target resistance legacies are no more than an extra bunch of skill type specific finesse, lore-masters don't get that much finesse from gear, so I do recommend to take those legacies if you can. For raids, it is important to have so much finesse that your debuffs never get resisted.

A common misunderstanding  is the the thought that the legacy Signs of Power durations only prolongs the duration of your stun immunity. However, it prolongs the duration of all Signs of Power buffs. The main reason why this legacy is absolutely vital on a raid book is because it allows you to keep up Sign of Power: See All Ends on the target 100% of the time (in combination with Force of Will, the Ancient Master capstone). A must for every serious raiding lore-master.

My third book is a pet book ("Creatures of Middle-earth"), which I use to to apply a Sign of the Wild to my pet. When I equip either my support or DPS book, the improved buff on the pet stays. I also swap it in if I need to use Bane Flare.

Tips: if you're making a separate DPS and support book, you don't have to spend any points in tactical healing rating on your DPS book (= more points to spend on legacies). If you have the luxury of a first age symbol that you don't need to spend on something else (I would spend one on a staff first), your book will get an extra amount of tactical damage (1-5%) as a passive. Otherwise the age doesn't matter apart from the available amount of points to spend. If you have a second age symbol available, I would prioritize a second age book for your support book over that of your DPS book, as second age books (and first age books) have a higher outgoing healing rating than third age books. Tactical healing rating affects your healing (including Beacon of Hope and Share the Power) more than any legacy. 

Lore-master staves

I have two staves: a support staff (left) and a DPS staff (right). As there's only one legacy important for a support staff, you can combine it all on one staff as well, if you wish to do so (but you'll have less points to spend on DPS).

Priorities

Support staff
Share the Power Increase
Nice passives

DPS staff
Damage title (e.g. Beleriand)
Tactical Skills Direct Damage
Fire Skills Critical Multiplier
Burning Embers Initial Damage

Sometimes someone comes to me and says something along the lines of: Hey, look at my new legendary item, it's great! It got Ents go to War and Lightning Storm all maxed out. Uhm, yeah. Thing is, Ents and Lightning Storm are great burst damage skills, but they got long cooldowns. If you want to increase your sustained DPS, and arguably even your burst DPS (because often, these skills will be on cooldown), you're better off with the other legacies I've posted above. Another thing to remember, is that your fire damage gets insane buffs from both the Master of Nature's Fury traits line and legacies. Since the vast majority of lore-master damaging skills consists of fire skills with short cooldowns, it rewards your DPS to focus your legacies on these. That's why I like buffing fire skills through legacies more than, say, taking Light of the Rising Dawn damage (light damage doesn't get many buffs, reasonably long cooldown, mostly useful for the stun) or Storm-lore damage (lightning damage doesn't get many buffs, long cooldown, weak damage).

It's a different story in the Ettenmoors (PvP), were the fights are short and burst damage is great. This article is aimed at a PvE reader public.

Tip: if you're making a separate support staff, it doesn't matter what age it is, because you don't have to spend many points, nor will do DPS with it. You can see that I even kept my level 65 third age staff, because it doesn't matter that much (apart from not being able to use good relics if it's really low level) and I haven't been able to find a level 75 one with equal passives so far. For your DPS staff, though, you do want the earliest age you can afford of the maximum available level, because these have a higher DPS rating, plus more points to spend. Just like with the books, the DPS rating pretty much affects your damage output more than any legacy.

Relics

There are different needs to be served depending on if you provide support or if you DPS. In hard (T2) raids, everyone will take damage, and it will often be tactical. That's why I look for tactical mitigation (tip: title on your book), in-combat power regen and morale on my support relics. In normal group content, the lore-master is usually the lowest on the threat list, so you don't need to stack loads of morale. That's why I go for crit and tactical mastery on my DPS items. If you suddenly do need morale while DPS'ing (e.g. soloing), you can always slot mitigation and morale virtues and swap in jewellery with more morale - all much easier than swapping your relics.

DPS lore-master tip: I like the Settings of Ending: it's the only thing that increases your devastate magnitude, and crit is pretty good for a DPS lore-master.  

Updates

I've looked at the upcoming lore-master changes with Riders of Rohan and don't expect many changes on how to build your lore-master legendary items - apart from that we'll have to get them up to level 85, of course. I might keep this post up to date with my new LI's when the time is there.

I hope this was helpful. If you have any questions or did I do it all wrong, feel free to write below and I'll try to answer. Let's talk lore-master!

LOTRO: Should you play a lore-master?

A kinnie asked for advice on whether or not to start a lore-master today. He has been raiding on his main for years and was looking for a raiding alt. Here is a slightly altered version of what I told him. Use it to your advantage if you consider rolling one.

How is the lore-master to level? Does it take a long time solo?

This first question was right away the hardest for me to answer, as I leveled mine in Shadows of Angmar, when it was one of the slowest classes to level. Much has changed since then, as we now have a viable DPS trait line. Don't expect the lore-master to be the fastest class ever to level, but it should now be fairly quick. You are also very survivable once you know how to use your tricks. If you want to know more about leveling a lore-master, the official forums are a good place to start. There are always some threads on this topic.

Are most skills induction based?

Yes.

How is the DPS? Can I just explode stuff?

Yes, blowing things up is what lore-masters do best, that is, if they are traited in the red line. Most of our skills deal fire damage, and some of them have utterly cool animations. Think of Ents go to War and Lightning Storm.

Strong points: Lore-masters traited down the Master of Nature's Fury ("red") line, have amazing AoE burst DPS. This is great for soloing, burning everything left and right. It's also great for raid skirmishes, certain instances and such. Sustained AoE damage is also pretty good.

Downside: Sustained lore-master single-target DPS is crap, even with reds traited. Arguably, even captains can deal more damage. Also note that traiting DPS will to a certain extent gimp your support and crowd-control skills.

In any serious raid, you will be playing as a support class (most times traited in the Ancient Master line) with limited DPS.

Are there good "oh shit"-skills?

Lore-masters have one reasonably big self heal with a five minute cooldown, but that's about it. We are squishy and are expected to plan ahead for what we do, using dazes, roots or slowing and kiting. A lore-master is a master with these tools, and if you use them correctly, there is little you cannot solo.

What do you like the most about the lore-master?

• You need to use your brains.
For some classes, it's fine to pretty much stick to one way of traiting and repeat the same thing you're good at all the time. Not so with the lore-master. In my opinion, each (group) situation requires different traits and pets. You'll be changing these around depending on what dangers you're facing and what classes you play with. Pro-tip 1: if you're lazy and just want to repeat the same trick over and over, this is not the class for you. 

• It's a multitasking support class.
Lore-masters are pretty much indispensible for any hard raid. They are the multitaskers in the group: debuffing, healing, leeching/sharing power, managing crowd-control, removing corruptions, providing stun immunity, curing wounds/diseases, bossing their pets around... and this all at the same time. This will be chaotic from time to time and you really have to be on your toes, but this is what makes the class fun for me, even after many years. Being support does have to suit you, though. Pro-tip 2: if you just want to blow things up, stick to soloing and the Ettenmoors. 

• Crowd-control.
Lore-masters arguably have the best crowd-control of all classes - my eyes sparkle when asked to daze something, or even better, daze two things! I once made a list of crowd-control sorted by class and published it on the Lotro-wiki. The constant reoccurring of the LM class should speak for itself: stun (6 skills, 1 pet skill), daze (2 skills), root (2 skills), slow (2 skills) and fear (1 pet skill). The current main raid the Tower of Orthanc demands a lot of crowd-control. Pro-tip 3: if you strongly dislike crowd-control, avoid the Tower of Orthanc.

Overall, the lore-master is a lovely versatile class that won't easily bore you. I do think you have to have certain characteristics, though, in order to be able to like it.

Already playing a lore-master?

Let me know what you like about it most! Also, feel free to comment if you believe I have been incorrect anywhere. Finally, I made a compilation of lore-master animations, including the ones above (yes, I admit it, I couldn't stop taking fun lore-master screenshots, they just look so cool!). Are you able to you recognize all the animations depicted in this article?

Note: the pictures above will be counted as 1-4, counting from top to bottom. Below will continue with 5.

Answers

1 Gust of Wind
2 Power return (Knowledge of the Past required)
3 Test of Will
4 Ents go to War
5 Burning Embers
6 Effect on self after using Wisdom of the Council
7 Air-lore
8 Induction of Lightning Storm
9 Lightning Storm

 Let me know what you think of the lore-master class!

LOTRO: Saruman contemplations

Why is it so hard to take a good Saruman screenshot? There's always someone jumping in front of your screen, red damage numbers above a Saruman, tanks running away from clouds and after that the squishies running away because there have been brought Sarumans close to them... On top of that I can't put my settings on high because my computer dies from the special effects in the second phase.

Ah well, I should not complain. It's already hard enough to complete the fight without all sorts of silly things (of which you in most cases can't do much about) going wrong. Here's my top five:

1. Ring-bearers getting blown off the tower and not being able to get back inside, thereby making it impossible to complete the fight (luckily they've fixed this now by letting those rings spawn after that phase)
2. The interface thing of newly spawned rings getting stuck behind people's raid panel so they're not in time to use it - preferably at the last transition after fighting ten Sarumans without having any rezzes left, just before the end of the fight
3. Blade of Elendil. I don't have to say anything more, the lore-masters among us know what I'm talking about
4. Any ring-bearer DC'ing, making you to stretch the current phase while only being able to hope that they will return
5. Specifically a tank DC'ing for ten minutes in the phase before the ten Sarumans phase, causing someone to run around in circles kiting the remaining Sarumans - preferably with the whole raid on follow on the tank while blasting "Benny Hill" over vent (as depicted)

Mind you, no. 2 to 5 actually happened to us within the last two weeks! Don't get me wrong, I do like this fight - it's a great design overall. It can just be really unforgiving for unforeseen events such as DCs. I don't even want to think about the amount of concentration and luck needed for the tier 2 fight. My advice: whatever happens, Benny Hill is a good remedy for all!

LOTRO: Duoing the Limlight Gorges

My boyfriend (champion) and I (lore-master) finished the introduction quests in the Limlight Gorge yesterday, and it was much fun! The Limlight Gorge stands out from the other areas because you actually have to fight reasonably powerful enemies. The creatures are as dangerous as the landscape looks ominous. The quests are meant for a small fellowship and I had been looking forward to more challenging quests for some time. It's intriguing how eager people are to gather more people in order to make content trivial again, though. If you really want to have fun you should not do them with six (as many people on my server seem to do), but duo, like we did.

Warning - Lore-master talk - Warning

As a lore-master, I found four reds and three blues (Healer, Light of Hope and Improved Flanking) plus eagle a great combination. Swapping in OD-set in for the Beacon of Hope HoT and AoE flank heals (macros <3) gave great healing. Alternatively, full Ancient Master would probably have worked well too, but reds speed things up and some of the harder parts were more of a challenge without that extra bit of crowd-control.

/End of lore-master talk - it's safe now

So what sort of stuff did we run into?

Trolls

The trolls weren't much of a problem to duo. You do have to know that they get stacking unremovable buffs over time that make them hit like hell, so the faster you kill them, the easier it is. We started with crazy DPS right away (Ancient Craft!), waited a bit with Fire-lore so it was on at the end of the fight (when the damage taken is the highest), kept stun immunity up and made sure only the champion was facing the troll (frontal AoE). For the introduction quests you had to fight several at once. Two was fine (I kept one rooted), but for the last part with three trolls I have to admit that a full Blinding Flash would have made it a lot easier. Without the fast daze, one of the two rooted trolls was bound to hit me when he got out of his root, and - oh my - I felt so squishy then.

Huorns

These were fine to duo. Keeping the champion up was easy: the main danger was me getting killed myself by the DoT and roots that the big ones randomly call upon you. Lore-masters with their light armour are a lot squishier than heavy armour classes, and I received less heals than the champion (no Beacon of Hope nor double flank heal from Air-lore/OD-set on yourself). Wisdom of the Council was my friend.

Spiders

Now these were scary things. The normal ones were fine, but the huge ones spawn these venomous widow adds that put a horrible unremovable DoT on you if they reach you (just like in the Roots six-man) - and then you're basically screwed. Crowd-controlling these and then stunning + letting the champion AoE them down seemed the way to deal with them. I must admit we did not make these duo though, we had a kinnie (captain) coming over who also needed the quest and we did those spiders with the three of us. I would very much like to try this again though, this time with Blinding Flash traited: hopefully that will give me a bit more time to heal the champion (this is hard when you're forced to kite venomous spiders all the time). To be continued!

Who knows, next time you see "[LFF]: need healer for Limlight", you might just think "No you don't!" and try something adventurous yourself.