DocHoliday posted this on March 10th, 2010.
Categorized as End Game, Equipment, Minstral, Minstrel, Mirkwood, Raid, Raids and End-game, Warden, epic line, gear, legacy, legendary items, lore, lotro, radiance, sto, threat, volume 3.
Shorthand Link: http://combo.mmeow.net/h6f
Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/back-from-a-short-absence/
So real-life has been a bit of a drain lately for me and I’ve been very quiet of late both here on my blog as well as in-game. It is a combination of a bunch of different things, but much of it will pass here soon.
So to re-cap on a few things, I did want to comment on some LOTRO items and also some non-LOTRO ones that were of interest too.
My in-game activities have been rather enjoyable, just limited after my fun in Volume 3. I’ve been playing much more on my Minstrel lately and have quite enjoyed not only soloing through content in war-speech but also running the various Mirkwood instances as a healer. I did notice more of my skills being resisted but really didn’t seem to be too big of a problem, but it was good to see that it has in fact been changed as commented on by CStM and confirmed by the devs on the forums as well. On a more positive note, I think I’m getting pretty close to having enough tokens for the radiance sets on him but will probably take a few more runs through SG. My legendary items still need quite a bit of work although I have a couple that are somewhat promising. I do have some of the legacies that help out on the resists, so I may actually play around with leveling them up instead of just leaving them at rank 1. Sadly, outside of the Volume 3 activity I really haven’t been on my Warden too much outside of an SG run or two. She still is 2 pieces from being eligible for BG, so a few more SG runs are in my future. And for those of you that actually do have your BG armor sets, there will be a change made to the set bonus as commented on the forums. Essentially the current bonus is broken (not that a 5% chance shield mastery will debuf your target was all that exciting) and will be changed to a 10% chance to provide a 10% melee damage bonus for the Warden. I’m glad they’re looking at those bonuses and that is a better bonus, but I would’ve loved a 10% threat bonus!
Up on the Warden boards there a pretty detailed discussion on threat. from precise blow and comparing it to damage done. Essentially numerically comparing how much threat was done to counter a certain amount of damage. The numbers worked out to about 1750 damage (or ~100DPS, which is pretty darn low) to counter the threat from a single precise blow, which does seem to indicate that you do need to work and continually apply our ToTs to keep ahead of DPS classes.
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DocHoliday posted this on February 26th, 2010.
Categorized as End Game, Equipment, Minstral, Minstrel, Mirkwood, Raid, Raids and End-game, Skirmishes, Warden, books, crafting, epic line, gear, legendary items, lotro, pvp, radiance, volume 3.
Shorthand Link: http://combo.mmeow.net/gsk
Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/plans-for-patch-day/
As you may or may not have seen, Monday March 1st is patch day for LOTRO as Turbine releases Volume 3 Book 1. The full official patch notes are up, but I will admit I didn’t see too much different between this version and what was posted to Bullroarer. I’m pretty excited about this patch not only for the content but it actually hits at a good time for me personally such that I’ll have big chunks of un-interrupted time available! So I figured I’d try to plan out a bit what I’ll be up to. I’m sure there will be many other thoughts and/or plans – what’s everyone else excited about doing first?
First up will be a check on my Minstrel for all the crafting changes. He’s my Cook/Jeweler so there are lots of changes I’ll need to absorb and ingredient lists to make (although I may try to do some of that ahead of time). Then I’ll probably have to put up sticky notes to remind myself to re-distribute points to my legendary items 
It is then off to Angmar to finish up Volume 1 Book 15, chapter 12 and get my new horse!
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DocHoliday posted this on February 25th, 2010.
Categorized as End Game, Equipment, Raids and End-game, Warden, crafting, epic line, gear, group, legendary items, lore, lotro, runes, screenshots, volume 3.
Shorthand Link: http://combo.mmeow.net/grf
Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/developer-diary-volume-1-revised-edition/
The much anticipated Dev. Diary on the Volume 1 revamp has been posted by Orion. We already knew many of the details, but I really appreciate the way all of these diaries (and this one is no exception) walk us through the process in how they attempted something particular. I’m all for the changes and not just because I want my pretty horse 
I also appreciate that they were very concerned about not only the balance but the lore and remind us that all throughout the LOTR books there are cases where characters do things they probably shouldn’t normally be able to do. The general idea behind this is when doing quests that would normally be a full fellowship you will get a scalable buff to your morale, power, regen rates, incoming damage, and outgoing damage all of which scale based on how many others are in your fellowship. So this system allows you full flexibility in not only your initial play through but allows you to repeat these quests in any fashion as well, which was a draw-back to the system put in place for the Lone-lands revamp.
The addition of the “Elf-stones” allows them to tightly control the areas where these massive buffs will be allow during quests that are out in the open. However, maybe my memory is failing me, but I can really only think of one quest that is a fellowship quest out in the open. That quest is the find the rider quest in the Trollshaws, which other then farming trolls, there’s really no reason to go down there.
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DocHoliday posted this on February 24th, 2010.
Categorized as Age of Conan, DAOC, End Game, Equipment, General, Raids and End-game, blog, expansion, gear, legendary items, lotro, moors, pvp.
Shorthand Link: http://combo.mmeow.net/gov
Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/alternate-advancement-paths/
So just a day after posts (and good conversations as well) on both the Epic Slant and Casual Stroll to Mordor blogs, I saw this announcement on MMORPG.com on the upcoming expansion for Age of Conan. Now I did try AoC but I just really couldn’t get into it – however, this new concept is VERY intriguing to me and I will be paying close attention to this as it is rolled on out.
To recap, the discussions on CStM and ES talked about both vertical (raising the level cap) and horizontal progressions and the advantages (and pitfalls) of both. As they talk about the different ideas, I think one of the main points is that there needs to be a diversity in the methods of progression and that just raising the level cap isn’t enough.
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DocHoliday posted this on February 24th, 2010.
Categorized as End Game, Equipment, Guardians, Mirkwood, Raid, Raids and End-game, Warden, captain, crafting, gambits, gear, group, legendary items, lotro, pvp.
Shorthand Link: http://combo.mmeow.net/go5
Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/wardens-in-the-ettenmoors-part-2/
So I really haven’t taken my Warden out in the moors at all, but I am starting to get more of an itch to go check it out. I did quite a bit of PvMP back in the SoA days with my Captain and Minstrel and did enjoy it quite a bit. It is a nice diversion from grinding rep, IXP, or other things you might do at the level cap. I managed to stumble upon a couple of posts on the LOTRO live boards about how to fight as a Warden in the moors with some cool ideas for leveraging other classes.
I did mention the moors a while ago when I saw a thread on this same topic but it wasn’t nearly as intriguing or promising as this more recent post
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DocHoliday posted this on February 22nd, 2010.
Categorized as End Game, Equipment, Minstral, Minstrel, Mirkwood, Raids and End-game, Traits, Virtues, Warden, champions, gambits, gear, group, hard-mode, legendary items, lore, lotro, radiance, threat.
Shorthand Link: http://combo.mmeow.net/gmv
Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/02/22/monday-forum-update/
So I wanted to share a few things I found interesting while checking up on the forums over the weekend.
I’ll start off with a really good informational Lore post by Hakon_Stormbrow that shows a timeline of all the lands and kingdoms throughout the history of Middle-Earth. Pretty helpful as I’m also making my way through the Silmarillion and learning all the early history so seeing how that maps to the “current’ history of LOTRO is quite handy.
I’ll continue first with the warden posts, and then finish with some regarding minstrels.
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DocHoliday posted this on February 18th, 2010.
Categorized as Equipment, Mirkwood, crafting, gear, lotro, reputation, screenshots, volume 3.
Shorthand Link: http://combo.mmeow.net/gj3
Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/developer-diary-crafting-update/
Today Turbine released another developer diary, this one talking about the crafting system updates. Certainly a good read as there are lots of changes – but the main ones for me were the jeweler and cooking/farming changes. I’ll summarize them, but certainly go check out the full notes. A lot of this was evident from the patch notes, but this breaks it down into more detail.
All jewelry items have had not only their stats adjusted but also their looks as well. In addition, they’re also implementing the multi-output option for jewelry just like they did for the armor professions. Because of this, certain recipes, like the various tactics rings, will no longer exist as they are now one of the output options. It is important to note that existing items will NOT change, just newly crafted ones. So, if there are ones you like better make them now For a full listing of the new stats, check out my previous post on this topic.
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DocHoliday posted this on February 18th, 2010.
Categorized as Equipment, gear, legendary items, lotro, radiance.
Shorthand Link: http://combo.mmeow.net/giz
Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/tell-the-community-team-surveys/
There’s a new survey up that is mainly focused on gear and radiance. If you have thoughts or ideas I’d highly suggest you posting on the boards. For those of you who care, here’s my response:
Question 1
You are given the opportunity to make two changes to Radiance Gear. What are the two most important changes you would make?
a) remove the buff from armor and make it a trait. This would allow those of us who want to min/max the options to wear whatever sets we wanted to no matter where we are or what we’re doing
b) continue to provide other options outside of raiding to obtain it. I certainly don’t mean for these to be easy but some quest/grinding/crit craftable, or something that could be done by another means.
Question 2
How do you feel about the pace of leveling? Is it too fast, too slow, or just right?
Overall I think it feels pretty good but also very dependent on where on the curve you are. For instance, the 60-65 speed was VERY quick as there are tons of quests in Mirkwood that all provide very good XP. Now other areas that aren’t as packed with quests seem slower and harder to level – high 30s for example.
Question 3
What cosmetic item do you really want, but have never seen in the game?
Aside from cosmetic weapons/shields (which I know will be a ways off) I’d love to see kinship cloaks or custom blankets for you horse.
Question 4
How do you feel about the itemization (the items, armor, gear, weapons, etc) in Lord of the Rings Online? Please be specific, but brief!
Overall I think there’s now pretty good diversity between all the various options. Certainly I think there could be more options available but at least now there are various options for all classes as you level as opposed to just one. This is especially prevalent and the level cap as with Moria there were desirable 2 armor sets, but now (radiance aside) there are at least 7 comparable sets.
Now I didn’t post about the first survey but I did find it amusing that I managed to get in the last word
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DocHoliday posted this on February 16th, 2010.
Categorized as Book 9, End Game, Equipment, Minstral, Minstrel, Mirkwood, Raids and End-game, Skirmishes, Warden, epic line, expansion, gear, legendary items, lotro, radiance, video.
Shorthand Link: http://combo.mmeow.net/ghm
Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/my-minstrel-and-his-boomstick/
Ok, so it isn’t quite a lore appropriate name for my sage soldier – but I was reminiscing the other day with a couple of folks on Twitter about the movie Army of Darkness. So in following some of the epic one-liners from that movie I decided to give my sage the nickname Boomstick. Now she’s still not quite on level, but I’m pretty happy with her damage. I ended up working on finishing off Book 9 (hit 65 last week) so I had a few skirmishes to run to round out the book. I’m really looking forward to how the sage will grow once I get her on level and an Ultimate skill under her belt. I actually think the scarier thought is how fun a similar sage will be on my warden As you’ll see from the following videos – my minstrel does tend to get in a bit of trouble. I also captured a bunch of fights in CStats just to see how my minstrel parsed Tops was 600 for a crit loaded fight with Mazog (9000 damage in 15 seconds!!), but average was mid to high 300s. Which for those of you keeping score, that’s about double my warden And Boomstick is right around 70-90 DPS, which isn’t too shabby considering her level – only 60, with no skill above tier 4 (level 50ish).
I captured a couple of fights, including the encounters and last boss fight for those who are interested. Kufit the troll was a little dicey, but part of that is due to me being a lazy cook and not having any food on me…
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DocHoliday posted this on February 15th, 2010.
Categorized as End Game, Equipment, Mirkwood, Raids and End-game, Traits, Virtues, Warden, gambits, gear, legacy, legendary items, lotro, runes, threat.
Shorthand Link: http://combo.mmeow.net/ggb
Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/wardens-marching-through-the-forums/
I’m a little behind in working on my warden as I have lots of things I need to take a more in-depth look at. However, there are quite a few of these that are debated on the forums. I’m gong to paraphrase them with my own thoughts, but also provide the threads for you to read and digest yourselves.
I’ll start off with a neat chart from a fellow blogger, who I didn’t realize even had a warden But once again, Harparelle has come up with another great post graphically breaking down the various gambits. I’ve seen a few of these around, and each one helps reinforce the gambit progression for me as they’re all from a slightly different point of view.
For those of you like me who were a bit concerned by the double spear at the end of our new gambit, graalx2 has posted that it is indeed fixed and should end with a shield. There’s some debate in the rest of the thread as to whether it should be fist or shield and while fist would be nicer from a mastery perspective I don’t think it matters all that much as there are a number of ways to build it with masteries no matter what the last builder is.
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