weekly screenshot: welcome home?

posted this on October 12th, 2011.
Categorized as Dol Guldur, games, lord of the rings online, lotro, Mirkwood, MMO, weekly screenshot.

Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://suzitastarshadow.wordpress.com/2011/10/12/weekly-screenshot-welcome-home/

Dol Guldur

My character is from Mirkwood, so its great to be finally questing here.  My first view of Dol Guldur was suitably terrifying and I finally found a place for a good screenshot ;)

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The Lieutenant of Dol Guldur has been nerfed

posted this on December 21st, 2010.
Categorized as Dol Guldur, Lieutenant.

Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://lotro-fff.blogspot.com/2010/12/lieutenant-of-dol-guldur-has-been.html

We had an (in the end) successfull Hard-Mode run on the Lieutenant yesterday. Somehow, I am not sure, if we really deserved it. On the other hand, it was my first attempt on Lore-Master and I still am happy, to be part of a successfull run.

The Lore-Master is the third class I brought to the LT (after Hunter and Minstrel). My role as Lore-Master? Battery for the Minstrel and healing Rune-Keeper as well as a bit of debuffing, corruption removal and pet-keeper.

After two wipes, the third attempt was a success. Even thought the fight has been nerfed A LOT it still needs some skill and coordination. Positioning is still a problem for a lot of people and whenever possible, I try not to stand still in one place. I think most would be overstrained to do the fight like I do, but I do die less than the rest.

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Update

posted this on December 17th, 2010.
Categorized as Cargaraf und Morgaraf, Dol Guldur, Dûrchest, Lieutenant.

Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://lotro-fff.blogspot.com/2010/12/update.html

I came home late from work yesterday and didn't do much before the Dol Guldur raid. We had a perfect start, as all were online on time and ready to go. The gauntlet went without us even sweating. I brought my Minstrel and even thought I was the only one, I had not too much to do. I did have two Rune-Keepers on healing-duty.

After only a brief bio break before Durchest we entered and veni - vidi - vici he was dead soon afterwards. With all the debuffs working and an experienced group, this fight is no challenge anymore. I won the chest-piece which brings me up to five pieces (missing on the shoulders) on my Minstrel and my Hunter. On my Rune-Keeper, I have four pieces (missing the shoulders and the trousers) and my Lore-Master has only the chest-piece (which is also the prettiest).

Only compaint here, was that the Lore-Master did not keep me powered up... I sent him several tells during the fight, but he was very stingy.

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Sammath Gûl

posted this on September 6th, 2010.
Categorized as deed, Dol Guldur, fellowship, gear, Mirkwood.

Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://tftgb.wordpress.com/2010/09/06/sammath-gul/

Finally!

Since most players in my kin (including myself) is casual players it can be quite hard to get a good group for the 6 and 12-man instances in LOTRO, but yesterday we did get a nice group to do Sammath Gûl. It was my first time and I really liked it.

It also meant i could now get my final rad-piece and I’m now ready for the greater challenges ahead. I also got the Bregloch earring, which sadly enough is really nice compared to my other crappy jewelery, I really have to do something about that.

Besides SG there has been a lot of deed-grinding going on for me lately. Trying to get those virtues up a notch, and fixing my legendary traits. My Hunter is now actually starting to look like a pretty solid build and all I really need is some new jewelery. A second or first age bow would also be nice of course, but my third age will be fine for now.

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Ask Elb: Which Radiance Set is Best for Me?

posted this on August 24th, 2010.
Categorized as Annuminas, Ask Elb, Barad Guldur, Dol Guldur, gear, Helegrod, radiance.

Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cstmfeed/~3/9BQH-h2_7nE/

Merric asks:

With the new upcoming additional radiance gear coming out which set would you recommend the hardcore player focus on?  What about the casual player?

Nice question!

First, let’s address what it is that radiance does for us and how important the radiance number itself is in determining which set is going to best fit which style of player will likely aim for which set. Then we’ll look at other aspects such as Non-radiance stats/bonuses and Attainability to figure out our final answer.

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Old Raiders don’t die…

posted this on May 6th, 2010.
Categorized as Barad Guldur, Dol Guldur, interesting fights, lotro, MMOs, raider, raiding, raids, skills, sociable.

Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://nerfthecat.wordpress.com/2010/05/06/old-raiders-dont-die/

…they just wipe at 1% (with thanks to Spinks for the ending, I was too lazy to think of one).

Or, can you just drop raiding and not worry about it? I know at least one person who’s happily made the transition that way. I’m vacillating about it.

There’s things I don’t like about the current raiding I do, solely in LotRO, in the Dol Guldur cluster. I’m not overly keen on the radiance gating, I’d rather it was trait-based, or .. hrrm many other proposed systems. I prefer a closed-ish raiding group, but our kin has opted to go for rotations, and a much more broad brush approach.

There’s things I do like about raids in general, and the current one is included in that. I like the social side, the larger group size and chance to group with people I may not group with every night of the week. I like the more interesting fights a raid can bring in (though to be fair, lots of the 3-man instances have some fairly interesting fights in them which probably allow me to display my ‘leet skillz’ more obviously than in the current raid.

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Barad Guldur – Second Peek

posted this on January 29th, 2010.
Categorized as Barad Guldur, Dol Guldur, lotro, Raid, raids.

Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://nerfthecat.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/barad-guldur-second-peek/

A week or so ago, 8 brave (or foolish) adventurers of assorted classes popped into Barad Guldur, the 12-man raid in Mirkwood, to have a look. We killed a very few things and got over-run. But then, there were only 8 of us.

Now the kin is ready to send in reinforcements, and last night we had our first 12-man foray. We made progress, we got up some stairs! This is harder than it sounds, but makes me laugh cos it ties in with my general reticence about stairs vs escalators. The repair bills were high, but it was new, and fun.

I won’t write too much about it, again, I don’t want to spoiler people. It’s just nice to have had a look, and I’m sure I’ll occasionally reference our progress through it.

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Captains can heal?

posted this on January 5th, 2010.
Categorized as captains, class forums, confidence, Dol Guldur, dungeons, faith in class, forums, healing, instances, lotro, main healing, Mirkwood, sammath gul, sword halls, turbine, warg pens.

Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://nerfthecat.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/captains-can-heal/

I say this, tongue firmly in cheek, as an unapologetic healing Captain. Without bragging, I’d say we’re up there as primary healer if specced the right way and playing with a sympathetic group that understands how to make things easier for me (ie. assisting with the on-defeat heals, understanding I can barely heal myself and that healing them costs my morale).

I assume most Captains know they have this capability and those that don’t need to spec as main healers have a more hybrid approach to tackling back-up healing. Which is why it surprised me to read this thread over on the Turbine Captain forums. It starts with a simple enough question about the Dol Guldur cluster of instances – how does Captain healing fare in them?

It’s even a good question. Siege of Mirkwood brought some changes, new legacies, combat and power things to get used to. We know how we managed in the Mines of Moria and Shadows of Angmar content, with a new expansion, we want to know what’s changed with regard to healing.

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The Boss of Many Typos

posted this on December 24th, 2009.
Categorized as 6-man, challenge, Dol Guldur, gorothul, gorthorul, gorthul, hardmode, Instance, lotro, Mirkwood, sammath gul, siege of mirkwood, typos.

Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://nerfthecat.wordpress.com/2009/12/24/the-boss-of-many-typos/

Sammath Gul – the dungeon I’m specifically missing an accent on because I’m lazy (in a post about typos, what next??!).

It stands as the 6-man jewel in the Dol Guldur cluster and I’m not going to do a spoilery post. Not about tactics, placement, fights, loot, etc. Well, a little about loot. So stop reading here if you don’t want to know how many medallions it’s worth.

With that out the way, it’s worth 10 medallions when run-through on hard-mode. There’s nice loot. There’s a chance to drop the item needed to craft second age level 65 items. A smallish chance. An annoyingly small chance, considering the lottery of Legendary Items.

It’s also quite a learning curve. Which is good. It means even us die-hard ‘run in and kill’ people have had to learn tactics. It means, I, as our traditionally captain-y main healer, have died a LOT in these hallowed halls. But it’s still a good romp.

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Sword Halls

posted this on December 23rd, 2009.
Categorized as Dol Guldur, fellowship, Hunter.

Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://tftgb.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/sword-halls/

My kinship has way too many hunters, me being one of them. So getting a good group for SH can be hard. But I’ve run it twice now, with a group of three hunters(!) and it’s not been so bad.

The first two bosses are usually no big problem. So here comes a small “guide” for thoose who wants to try it out with three hunters.

  • Stay in strength stance
  • Bring power pots
  • The hunter that gets aggro – kite
  • The hunters that don’t have aggro – DPS
  • When you get aggro – start running
  • When you’re nearing the end of the fight – Burn hot & Heart seeker

The only thing you’ll really be missing (except for some descent healing) will be the lack of interuptions and corruption removals (before the target hits <50% morale)…

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