Yesterday, Syp posted his Massively interview with Turbine’s Aaron Campbell and Adam Mersky, who dropped the bomb that the upcoming Rise of Isengard expansion to Lord of the Rings Online would raise the level cap by 10, not 5 as had previously been announced.

Suddenly, I am concerned about my stay in Middle Earth once more.

I’ve been having so much fun playing my Warden that I have officially decided to make him my second “main” character alongside my Lore-master.

@Longasc is in the process of leveling his, just having reached Moria yesterday, so I thought I’d jot down a few thoughts for him and any other Wardens out there to offer input. It’ll also be nice for me to come back and visit this someday to see if my perspective on tactics has changed down the road.

Moria

Or perhaps “it’s about #@#%-ing time!” would be more appropriate.

Arwellyn finally reached Kindred status with the Grey Company in Enedwaith this morning!

What a grind, though. Once you (quickly) run out of actual quests to do, there are only 4 repeatable quests you can do daily — 3 normally, then a choice during one of the standard quests will open either a Grey Company repeatable or an Algraig one. It just so happened I made the right choice for both my Lore-master and Warden before I even knew there was a way to botch it and end up with only the 3 dailies.

But still… Algraig have 7 repeatables (8 if you choose the other option) while Grey Company only have 4 (or 3)? What the hell?

It seems almost every day I’m seeing people in global chat stating new strategies as to how "best" to handle your Legendary Items now in preparation for the changes coming in Update 2.

The two primary things we know are that all post-Update 2 Legendary Items will have three legacies, whereas currently they may occasionally come with four. So, saving any LIs with four legacy slots sounds like a good idea from the start.

Secondly, the new "decon me now!" level will be 30 (or possibly 31) in order to receive a scroll that will let us remove a legacy that we can place on a different item. Currently, most players seem to level a LI to 11 then deconstruct it for the relics.

I think I’ve previously mentioned that my Warden in Lord of the Rings Online is my first tank in several years. My first experience was in World of Warcraft when I rolled a Protection Warrior for the sole purpose of providing an extra tank for my raid alliance. We had some of the best tanks on the server at the time who taught many good lessons and tricks of the trade, and I still smile remembering some of the congratulatory comments at successfully pulling off unconventional stunts that saved the day in a tight spot which they claimed they never thought I should have been able to, since I was the under-geared one. I do feel tanking is the highest-pressure role in the Trinity setting, but it’s one that I usually enjoy.

Other than my brief stint with a Dread Knight in Vanguard, I’ll admit to being a few years out of practice. I have been getting a lot of great comments about my performance thus far on the Warden class but there is one area I’ve always had difficulty in MMO’s: group pulls where the mobs run chaotically.

This week, two of Turbine’s newer system designers wrote their latest Dev Diaries detailing upcoming changes in Update 2 for both the Burglar and Minstrel classes. Both Dev Diaries were well-written, especially the Minstrel one by designer Tim Lang. That was an exceptional piece that described not only the changes but the thought processes of why they were made, and overall the article really felt like Tim was speaking to us rather than at us. I would recommend reading his Minstrel Dev Diary even if you’re not a LOTRO player.

Reading these two latest Dev Diaries (as well as the two from November’s Update 1) I’ll see if I can glean any common threads as to what to expect from the new LOTRO Live Team. (I get the impression none of them were around for pre-launch development; in fact, Tim Lang specifically said he was not.)

Ah, class quests. Aren’t those a pain in the butt? My Warden is still working on his level 50 class quests, skirmishing for the final piece, and the level 60 class quest is in Dark Delvings, an unfortunately unpopular Moria dungeon.

What started as a joke ended up being one hell of a smooth Dark Delvings run — an all-Warden fellowship!

Not only did the six of us complete the class quest, we also continued and did the Dark Delvings Challenge successfully. All in 25 minutes!

Other than the minstrel I used to raid the Rift with back in the Shadows of Angmar days (whom I have recently dusted off after two years and leveled to 60 so far) my only alt in Lord of the Rings Online is a Warden, currently level 63.

For those unfamiliar with the class, the Warden is… complex. Rather that hotbars upon hotbars of predesignated skills, the Warden primarily relies upon Gambits, which are in many ways analogous to “combos” of old fighting games. You chain gambit “builders” until you create the gambit skill you want, then execute it. The role of the class is a tank, but not the typical sword-and-board, heavy armor, stand there and take a beating type of tank. It’s an evasion tank, which is precisely why I chose the class.

Many players prefer to play the exact same role from MMO to MMO. I can’t do that. I did the sword-and-board Protection Warrior tank back in vanilla World of Warcraft and I did it well. I see no reason to do it again. When I played Vanguard I chose the Dread Knight class, which is a two-handed tank. In a pinch, he could toss on a shield and one-handed weapon for extra armor protection, but doing so cost him the majority of his aggro generation. He tanked the best with a two-handed weapon; that’s simply how the class was designed, and I liked it that way. Similarly, in Lord of the Rings Online I have avoided the tanking role for years because originally the only one was the Guardian class, a straight-up standard heavy armor and shield tank. The Warden class, with it’s focus on evasion (he’s a medium armour-wearer) and gambits which require a great degree of skill on the player’s part, well that’s right up my alley! When it comes to tanking, the Warden is almost old-school — rather than several forced attack (“snap aggro”) skills like most heavy armor-wearing tanks do in post-WoW MMO’s, the Warden relies on threat leaching, slowly building up his threat. It does have a single area-effect forced attack gambit, but it’s a 5-gambit skill which takes a few seconds to build, and it has to be specifically traited as part of your character build.