Hmm, this is a lot of fun. I’ve basically settled on the Hunter and Captain as my go-to guys. I tried the minstrel but I quickly got sick of parties that a) didn’t protect me and in fact expected me to handle any enemies my support pulled and b) yelled at me when m death led to theirs.
So now I’m running my Hunter when I want to go solo, and a captain for skirmish- if I can’t depend on parties to protect the squishies, I can at least play a crunchy support character. 
Captain is an awesome skirmish class - though you do occasionally need to be careful about drawing aggro - while you are quite durable, and your heals can’t be interrupted, it’s hard for you to heal YOURSELF, since your two primary healing skills, Inspire and Words of Courage, are both only usable on OTHERS, and Words of Courage actually costs you some morale. I don’t know what level you (though from the sound of it, you’re probably not working with Legendary Items yet) but if you’re going to be healing in a skirmish, you’ll want to:
Shield Brother whoever you think is going to be taking the most damage (usually the tank, but sometimes a DPS class if your tank isn’t good at holding aggro.) and use inspire whenever it wears off (But don’t spam it. It’s a waste of power to refresh the HoT before it wears off, since there’s no ‘initial’ heal.). Use Revealing Mark on whatever the “primary target” is - this being “the target that the group is currently killing” rather than “the target the tank is currently targetting” since the tank may need to change targets occasionally to maintain aggro on them. Make sure you, at least, are always hitting the revealing mark target, because that and Rallying Cry are going to be the main ways -you- are going to get back any Morale you spend on Words of Courage (or that you lose from being attacked.) with your Morale potions as your backup emergency plan. You’ll also probably want to run a Herald of Hope, though if you start having Power issues, Herald of Victory might work better. Once you get to level 36, you get your party-wide panic button of In Harm’s Way - which causes you to take half the damage dealt to nearby party members. Couple this with Last Stand (preferably with Defiance slotted) and you can seriously slow damage to your entire group for 20 seconds or so, and even have a reasonable chance of still being alive yourself. 
(This can also be used to save individual squishies who just seem to be taking too much damage from one or two enemies, and you likely don’t even need Last Stand for that.)
Good luck! Playing a healing Captain is a lot of fun, but it’s not always easy to persuade random people that, no, really, they don’t need to wait around for a Minstrel/RK.
I’m still trudging along with my burglar, now at L19. I’m developing a love/hate thing for humanoid mobs–burgling is one of the more fun abilities of the class, and it only works on humanoids…but nearly every one of the jerks runs away. Do I eventually get an immobilize of some kind? Maybe I need to try flinging a rock at the next ones head.
I’ve been wandering around in the Old Forest a bit. It’s definitely improved since my last stab at the game–the last time I was in the Forest, every other tree was a mob, and an Elite at that. Oh, and at least one quest made you walk through them carrying a bucket, so you couldn’t use Sneak and if you got hit, you failed and had to start over. I had a quest that called for a bucket of maple syrup, and was dreading it, because I thought it was that one, but I didn’t have to carry anything for it. The area is much more reasonable now. After fighting the haunted oak signature mob, though, I was troubled by a question: How exactly do you sneak up “behind” a tree and backstab it?
On the downside, escort quests continue to piss me off. People complain about escort missions in City of Heroes (with some justification), but I can only think that those complaining have never seen a LotRO escort. In City, escorted NPCs follow you. They keep up. They don’t try to attack things that will eat them (mostly–Fusionette is widely regarded as insane, including by her boyfriend Faultline). They don’t insist on wandering into the middle of a monster house party looking for their walking stick, or false teeth, or whatever. (Seriously. Tell me what it is, and I’ll go back for it or get you another one. For now, stay alive and GTFO.) They’re so stupid they deserve the repeated, ignominious deaths they get while trying to fetch their suppositories from the chest the Balrog is sitting on.
Travel is starting to grate on me, too. I’m spoiled by CoH–travel is really fast there. Not only do you have travel powers that make LotRO mounts look like walkers, you have the train system, base teleporters, and a couple of extradimensional/extratemporal hubs. I’ve taken a flying character (flight is the slowest travel power) from the deepest part of the most remote high-level zone to the first zone-in point in the newbie zone in just over four minutes. Even without travel powers, I’ve taken a level 1 character from the starting zone to the far end of a level 50 zone (City Hall in Atlas to Portal Corp in Peregrine) in under about half an hour, tagging required badge landmarks along the way. LotRO, on the other hand, seems to positively revel in travel delays*.
*This travel plaint brought to you by the Inn League–“Hey, go to the tavern and buy this guy a beer. Then schlep it out of the Shire, all the way across Bree-land, into the Lone Lands, and out to a haunted ruin at the far end of a lich-infested swamp. On foot, since you never had a reason to go talk to the stablemasters before. Oh, you’ve only got an hour, or…it will go flat or something.”
I am still plugging away. I have had to go back to the drawing board three times. My poor Minstrel and Burglar died, so I booted them off the server and made a Guardian. He is really, really dull, so I started a Captain. The Captain is fun.
The Slayer Deed grinding is going slowly, but if you see Theower on Silverlode, you may say “Hi.” Fortunately, I have almost all the screenies I need.
Again, it seems that the CoH is coloring perceptions here. I would have choked them if they made travel any easier. It’s F-ing Middle Earth. There are no costumed whackos with the ability to bend space here. Seriously. Horses, people. Those are your finest option for travel. Besideswhich, they handwave a ton of stuff with various “Swift travel” skills and routes. Sure, you have to unlock some of them. Does this mean travel is some sort of gruesome nightmare? That’s for you to decide, I suppose, but some people like the idea of the game at least ATTEMPTING to simulate a world rather than just a space to powerlevel in.
I don’t really think you should complain about not having travelled somewhere before. I’ll bet you money that that CoH character you took from point A to point B wasn’t your -first- character to travel those areas.
Escort quests are crap though. No argument from me there. At least occasionally the designers remember to have the NPC take a break to ‘rest’ so you can recover, but half the damn time, they only do this on the quests that are already so easy that you find yourself just tapping your foot thinking “C’mon already, let’s get going.”
No bet–it’s actually kind of a specialty of mine. I have a “challenge” character who I keep permanently level 1 with no stealth, specifically so that I can test my navigation and aggro-avoidance skills by exploring insanely dangerous places with him. All he has is Sprint (an inherent power for all characters that boosts run speed and jump height slightly).
The “not having traveled there before” thing is more a matter of confusion, really. You say that they’re making an attempt to be faithful to the setting (though–hobbits on horses?), but clearly the stablemasters have some sort of U-Haul-like relay arrangement. They let you rent a horse from them, then turn it in to another stablemaster elsewhere. How is it that they don’t know where these stablemasters are until you hoof it out there to meet them? Why do they trust them to return the horses (or otherwise reciprocate) if they don’t already know them?
Like I said up front: I’m spoiled by travel in CoH. There’s still some travel time involved–it takes substantially longer to make the run out to the Storm Palace than it takes to come back, because of the way the zone works, and you have to travel within zones to reach missions–but they’ve cut out a lot of pointless slogging. There’s not so much of the “set autorun and do something else for five minutes, until I have to change direction and run some more”. Once you’ve been over the terrain a few times, it stops entertaining you. “Travel is content” is one of the hoary old paradigms of MMO design, and it’s not one I much care for.
As someone who plays/played CoH and LotRO, I have to agree a bit with Balance. I hate travel in LotRO compared to CoH. It is just sooooooooo slow. Also, the higher level range of things that will aggro you is an annoyance. I don’t need every -7 wolf chasing me. If I want to fight you for components, I’ll start the fight. Leave me alone and don’t knock me off my horse, you pain in the arse. I understand the immersion concept and I don’t want to see flying or superspeed (though LotRO does have teleport), but I don’t go online to spend a quarter of my time travelling from A-to-B either. I want to get to the quest point as quickly as possible and do the quests.
+1, and add open-ended games (like Oblivion or Fallout or even GTA*) to the list.
*Actually my biggest GTAIV gripe was that while I recognized many landmarks and neighborhoods, my own neighborhood and my work office building were not represented in any fashion. BOO!
I use triple traps for that. As a hunter, I’ll usually not bother with a trap for most one-on-one encounters. If it is something that closes distance, I’ll slow it first. If not, Swift Bow to maximize damage and reduce interrupts. Best to fight beasts, because I can usually scare one, trap another while beating the third. Then kill the scared one - if the trapped one breaks, scare him.
My wife and I play a minstrel/hunter duo (I’m the minstrel). Most things don’t get to closing range, and despite what the message boards say, I focus on keeping the green bars topped off while she does as much damage as she can.
Hello, it’s a HORSE. It doesn’t know how to get you to location X in region Y all by itself. If you don’t know where the stablemaster IS, the guy isn’t going to “rent” you a horse to just ride off and try to find him.
Then go play another MMO and leave those of us who enjoy world simulation to our game, thanks. Seriously. If you can’t at least grasp the IDEA, then I think you’re a little close minded about all this. Let me repeat myself:
I have no interest in magical teleporters in Middle Earth. I approve their efforts to keep things as in theme as possible. I have zero issues with the time involved in travel, especially since with a little work, you can unlock swift travel routes that will in fact, oblige your urge to travel from one end of the world to the other in about as long as it takes you to get through a couple of load screens, so… you know. Cut me some slack.
Those don’t show up as an option until level 25 though, and they’re auction house stuff, so new players won’t have access to them initially and then may or may not even discover them later.
This actually puzzles me a little. If most things don’t get to close range, then why do you need to top off any green bars? Wouldn’t it be more effective to help with the burn-down in War Speech and then do any topping off afterwards?
Presumably, he knows where the other stable is. Is he not capable of giving directions? “Follow this road to Stock, turn left at the intersection south of town, follow that road across the bridge to Bree.”
I grasp the idea quite well, thank you. I haven’t even suggested that travel in LotRO adopt a free hub-style arrangement like City uses–I actually agree that it would be thematically inappropriate–I just think it could be streamlined somewhat in ways that would improve the play experience without degrading immersion.
You seem to take my negative comments too personally. I am not attacking your game. I am making comparisons, giving praise where it’s due, and pointing out things that I find annoying. This is part of discussing the game from a new player’s perspective. I may quit; I may not. Certainly, I continue to play City as well, and like it better overall, but LotRO has been an interesting change. I’m doing my best to give it a fair shot.
Point taken. With so many alts, I make my own.
I was quick and lazy in posting. I should have said “and when we bite off more than we can chew, like in Goblin-Town”
Actually with the new cash shop system, I remember seeing instant-teleport options at Stable Masters if you are willing to cough up the Turbine Points.
With the new “Instance Join”, you don’t need to travel to the instance area all by yourself anymore. The November patch also allow you to be summoned out from private instances, which is a boon.
The thing is, stupid routes like Stock to Bree are open by default. It’s the ones like “Ride off into the Lone Lands and try to find the old ruin north of the road with some Eglain in it” that, well, I wouldn’t trust a horse to someone who needed to ask ME for directions. 
Such as? Your posts tend to be thin on ideas. Also, for the record, Hobbits (and dwarves) ride ponies, not horses. 100% thematic, except, perhaps, for their speed.
I dunno, it just seems like you pop up, say “X is bothering me, it was so much better in CoH” (Or the occasional “Well, this is less annoying than the last time I played.”) and then shut up again. That’s not really “making comparsons and giving praise where it is due” unless the only place praise is due is City of Heroes. At this point, I’m surprised you’re still playing since you describe your experience as “trudging”. It really just comes across like you’re not enjoying yourself, and are only playing out of some sort of sense of obligation to write “criticism by a new player” or something.
Though going back through your earlier posts and finding you complaining about humanoids running away, I feel obliged to answer your “Do I ever get a slow?” question with “you got one three levels ago”. More specifically, Trick: Dust in the Eyes at level 16 has a 25% runspeed slow, and, if I recall correctly, that slow even persists if you use Mischievous Glee to remove the Trick (which also gives 20% miss chance, I believe, which IS removed when you use Mischievous Glee.)
Also: Crowbar. Thanks for the info about being able to summon people out of private instances. I didn’t know that had changed. Not that my Captain needs to do much summoning now that instance join is worldwide.
Just installed it on two of the house’s three laptops and created three accounts. I and GreenKids #1 and #2 have rolled our characters and tested both machines. They were really jazzed about the idea of multiple WoW accounts and us playing together as a family, but the cash just isn’t there. $45/mo. plus the up front for all the clients!
Well, this thread inspired me and I really like the look of the game. The kids were really excited last night and I have to say I’m looking forward to playing with them. My 6y/o son tanking, my 11y/o daughter bringing the pain with her huntress and me, loremaster, trying to figure out what I need to do to keep them both alive!
Sure you can play around with sports equipment or teach your kids chess and I do. But, in the context of this game, our characters really ARE equal. I’m not kidding when I ask GreenBoy to pull that mob off his Dad before we have a corpserun to do and I think that they will get a real kick out of that.
In the books, hobbits don’t ride. Part of the Bullroarer’s fame was that he actually rode a pony.
As to ideas for improving travel:
List all the available destinations at a given stable, whether you’ve visited any of them or not. Gray out the ones you haven’t visited, if you must, but indicate that they’re accessible.
At stables that don’t include routes to posts in neighboring regions, expand the list to include a centrally located stable at least one of those regions. Feel free to charge more silver for it. This reduces relay points and makes travel smoother.
For long trips–specifically for non-swift-travel trips that carry you between regions, but possibly for in-zone trips as well–switch to a map view, showing your progress on trail. Give you a hotkey to switch the map on and off, so you can choose to stop early. Increase travel speed substantially (say 30%-50%) while in the map view. This would be very cinematic, fit the theme (maps are big in LotR), and speed up travel noticeably without being a “teleport”. If you don’t like it and want to look at the scenery, you can toggle the map off and go more slowly.
Offer an option to rent a horse without a destination stable, but with a time limit. The horse returns to the stable when the time runs out or when you get off early. (You can get off them and send them home in mid-trip anyway, so why not?) This allows you to rent a horse to go to a place that’s not on the stable network directly.
Just some thoughts. I think they all fit with the setting and theme while still making things a bit more convenient.
Have you watched a hobbit walk? They definitely trudge. 
(This is just how I write/speak, really. “Trudging” was not a complaint about the game,I just meant that I was making slow but steady progress with him.)
I have said that some things are improved, and that some things are reasonable. I haven’t praised anything lavishly because, frankly, I haven’t yet found anything worthy of lavish praise. (Except, perhaps, for burgling. I like burgling quite a bit. Burgle, burgle, burgle.) The game is a WoW clone; it has better source material, and it does do away with a few of WoW’s warts, but it still has the WoW nature. There are fundamental mechanics that I find clunky, and which I feel detract from the game. This isn’t the “Praise LotRO” thread, it’s “Tell me about LotRO”; criticism falls under that heading as well.
So, why am I still playing? Simple enough: I know from experience that some games have a really distinct break point, a place where they go from “Meh” to “Awesome”. I’m still tooling around areas that aren’t particularly epic, and I’m prepared to acknowledge that LotRO may well have such a break point once I get into more interesting areas. Like I said repeatedly, I’m trying to give the game a fair shot–that means playing more of it and looking for that break point. I want to like the game. It just needs to give me a reason beyond its association with source material I love.
Joking. Runners are (if you’ll pardon the expression) a running joke in City. They’re a little less common, percentage-wise, but since you deal with more mobs, they probably come out about even. And I asked about an “immobilize”, not a slow. Fortunately, I got Shocking Twist–a stun serves well enough for the purpose, and the recharge on it is pretty good. It’s definitely made burglar combat more interesting.
I re-downloaded the game yesterday and started playing again after about 6 months away. I need a bit of advice.
I have a dwarf guardian, level 35, and am having some trouble figuring out where to go at this point. I am currently in North Downs. The quests I have right now are all a bit too hard for me - one is to destroy Drake eggs to the north (near Angmar), and I can kill the young drakes and cold worms there, but the regular drakes are too hard for me to kill. Another quest requires me to kill trolls in Dol Dinen (sp? it’s the area in the southeast of North Downs), and again, this is a bit too hard. I can kill the Ongburgz warg-masters in the area, but can’t kill even one Ongburgz combatant . Is there another area that would be good for a 35 dwarf guardian?
I also have an Elf Hunter level 22, which I really like. I don’t usually like ranged combat characters in single character rpg’s but hunters in LOTRO are really cool. You can stalk enemies, set a trap in front of you, and let loose with the bow. If they make it close to you they will set off the trap, which allows you to get a few extra shots in before they close for melee combat. The only thing that kinda sucks is facing multiple enemies, since you can usually only take out one before they get to melee range, and you have to fight the rest in melee with them having full health.
No, he rode a horse. Bilbo and the dwarves all ride ponies in The Hobbit until they lose them, similarly, Frodo and Company ride ponies across the Barrow downs until the animals flee during the Wight attack, and then, ponies restored by Tom Bombadil, they cheerfully ride on to Bree where they lose the ponies AGAIN. Hobbits normally ride ponies.
Interesting, but I’m not really sure who this helps. Unlike some games, horse routes in LotRO tend to be at least vaguely rational, so it’s not hard to figure out where you can get to point B from. Also, Swift Travel routes that need to be unlocked by reputation or quests are always displayed so you know what you need to do in order to unlock them.
I…guess this is an improvement. Doesn’t seem a big deal when you can just travel to the central hub of your current area for 1 silver and go from there, but I guess it’s less clicking and one less load screen.
Thematically interesting, but sounds like a comparatively lot of code for comparatively not much gain.
This is what purchased mounts are for, if you ask me.
Apocalypso, at level 35 you can do some quests out of Evendim (Tinnundir?, Isle in center of zone with bridge connecting to south shore, major encampment with class trainers) and the Trollshaws (Golead? to start).
Whoops. Apocalypso’s post must’ve snuck in during the time I was posting my own. Mid high 30’s is an awkward time unfortunately; As mentioned, there’s a lot of content for it, but it’s somewhat scattered and you’ll need to bounce around between several quest hubs. Places you can try are:
Trollshaws - there are two quests hubs here, and both names escape me. One is a bit north of the road to the West of the Ford of Bruinen. Quests from here might be a little low for you. The other is in the southern trollshaws and may take a little finding, and the quests there might be a bit high. =/
Misty Mountains - quests out of Gloin’s Camp should be about right.
Angmar - the earth kin village just at the entrance to Angmar may have some manageable quests.
Evendim - Tinnundir, and the ruin settlement to the NE of there might be in your level range.
Now is also a good time to start exploring skirmishes, if you haven’t already. They can give you some valuable XP to help push you out of the awkward 30s, and you can use the marks you acquire to help patch up any real weak spots in your gear. They can also be a nice change of pace, but I advise you not lean on them too heavily or you’ll burn out on them.