DocHoliday posted this on August 30th, 2011.
Categorized as beta, Developer Diaries, ettenmoors, Guardians, isengard, lord of the rings online, lotro, moors, PvMP, Rise Of Isengard, threat, Traits.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidaymmo.com/2011/08/30/guardian-isengard-developer-diary/
I have to admit, I was expecting a little more from this Diary as we really haven’t heard anything regarding threat changes with regards to all the DPS changes. I guess we’ll have to wait and hope they scaled them both appropriately as we progress to 75. Graalx2 gets the privilege of sharing this diary with us on the upcoming changes to the Guardians. He does try to ease the crowd by saying Guardians and Wardens will be able to tank just as effectively as Champions, and again to re-iterate my fears, I’m just not sure they’ll be able to out threat the DPS.
For the most part it seems like Guardians are getting a similar treatment to Burglars in that the class is pretty well set up. The main change they’re getting is a boost in DPS, but not in an obvious way:
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DocHoliday posted this on February 9th, 2011.
Categorized as beta, captain, champion, champions, End Game, Equipment, gear, group, Guardians, legacy, legendary items, lotro, Minstral, Minstrel, Raid, Raids and End-game, screenshots, Warden.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidaymmo.com/2011/02/09/initial-testing-on-lotro-echoes-of-the-dead/
A few things to note that I checked out already on Bullroarer:
- Legacy Scrolls currently become Tier 2
- All relics are in fact removed from existing LIs
- Existing relics stay the same, just tiers shifted as there are only 6 tiers
- Combination amounts totally reduced
- 5 Tier 1s
- 4 Tier 2s
- 3 Tier 3s
- 2 Tier 4s and above
And as a teaser, here are the shots of the new armor sets (sorry, something wonky with my Loremaster snap – will get that soon), stats coming later when I can make them pretty. But some interesting looking stuff in addition to the way you can obtain them.
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DocHoliday posted this on December 29th, 2010.
Categorized as End Game, group, Guardians, lotro, Raid, Raids and End-game, threat, Warden, Wardens 101.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DocholidaysLotroBlog/~3/6lzpgcFE2nQ/
A comment I made in a recent podcast interview touched off a tad bit of a twitter explosion as folks argued about tanking and crowd control. I believe what I said was something along the lines of tanking can be a form of crowd control. I tried to explain what I meant via twitter, but in 140 characters replying to a handful of people it gets very hard. So, I figured I’d step back and explain what I meant as well as provide a few examples of my logic. Notice I mention “my logic” such that I’m not claiming it is right or the best way to do it, but how I look at it.
Tanking usually refers to the practice of making a mob (or many) so mad at you or believe you are the most threatening person in the group that they attack you and not your friends. Crowd control (CC) typically refers to some sort of knockout that keeps a mob out of a fight for a period of time. In LOTRO, typically the tanks are Guardians or Wardens while usually Loremasters and Burglars excel at CC. I’m pretty sure most in the discussion were in agreement with these loose definitions.
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DocHoliday posted this on October 23rd, 2010.
Categorized as group, Guardians, lotro, Skirmishes, tank, Warden.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DocholidaysLotroBlog/~3/zjWHTv9PdRw/
In theory this could apply to Guardians as well, but I put together an article walking through the various ways you can learn how to tank in LOTRO. Go check it out over on the LOTRO Reporter.
DocHoliday posted this on August 31st, 2010.
Categorized as beta, BG, captain, champion, champions, End Game, Enedwaith, Free to Play, gear, group, Guardians, hard-mode, lotro, moors, pvp, Raids and End-game, reputation, screenshots.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/08/31/todays-update-to-bullroarer/
As I quoted yesterday, Sapience indicated that some of the items in the store have been tweaked. Now granted, I will admit I may be a build or two behind on some of these but I did want to talk about a couple of them as there was a new patch up today. However, nothing earth shattering on the patch with only a few notes in total.
First up, I’m happy that they did add in a helm to the Annuminas Heavy Armor set. I’m not super excited about the look, but it is nice to have another option including the cloak to get the full 6/6 bonus which this set really needs to be comparable. I’ve updated my spreadsheet but am really struggling with Google Docs so I’ll probably wait until launch and post a final version. But certainly take a look below for the stats and looks of it.
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DocHoliday posted this on August 30th, 2010.
Categorized as BG, captain, champion, champions, crafting, End Game, Equipment, gear, group, Guardians, hard-mode, lotro, Minstral, Minstrel, Mirkwood, moors, radiance, Raid, Raids and End-game, Warden.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/good-warden-end-game-gear/
This will probably have some spill-over for the other classes as well but I wanted to start keeping track of not only some of the better gear options but where some of these things drop. The forums are a great resource for this kind of information but sometimes it can be hard to find and even lost due to forum wipes.
The armor sets are a little easier to keep up with and follow, but I do have some spreadsheets for Wardens, Captains, and Minstrels comparing the various sets statistically and visually.
When it comes to jewelry and cloaks it gets a little bit harder for 2 main reasons. First off there’s just a lot more variety in these areas with crafted, drops, quest rewards, etc that all can be viable in certain cases. But probably the tougher part is that many of these are random boss drops that don’t always drop so it can be hard to not only track them but remember where they dropped from.
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DocHoliday posted this on August 29th, 2010.
Categorized as captain, champion, champions, End Game, group, Guardians, lotro, Raids and End-game, threat, Warden.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/good-off-tanking-post/
There’s a really good post on the Guard forums outlining not only the idea of what off-tanking is but good tips and suggestions for actually doing it. Chazcon from the forums does a great job of explaining things and I’ll admit I do struggle with this at times as I think in many cases it is easier for me to main tank as opposed to off-tanking. Now this is a bit more focused on the Guardian, but there are a number of parts of it that are quite general in nature.
One of the big issues with this for me is communication. I’m sure if I was in a “static” group and knew the other tanks better this would be easier and of course being on voice chat also makes this even easier still. But while PUG’ing, I’ll usually error on the side of more threat as opposed to sitting back and focusing on our other roles.
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DocHoliday posted this on June 25th, 2010.
Categorized as BG, captain, End Game, Enedwaith, gambits, Guardians, legacy, legendary items, lotro, Mirkwood, threat, Traits, Warden.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/warden-hopes-and-dreams/
So with all the Tell the Community Threads of late (Captains, and today’s Guardian), I figured I’d get ahead of the game here and post what I’d like to see for our beloved class. Most likely these ideas aren’t new or original, but I thought I’d toss out some ideas and provide a means for others to share as well. I will also be adding these when they post the Warden TtCT, but figured I’d get people’s juices flowing ahead of time.
First up for me is power reduction. I think the main area is with our builders so any mechanism that can cut down on those costs would be quite welcome. We have a number of ways to reduce the power costs of gambits, but they’re just a small portion of our overall usage. If any (or all) of these would apply to the builders as well as the gambits it would make a HUGE difference as I rip through power even with 1400 ICPR, critted Tier 6 food, and sucking power pots whenever possible. I realize the masteries do help cut down some but I will admit there are quite a few times when all my masteries are on cool-down, granted I only slot 2 so that might be part of it. I just don’t think we should be forced to slot masteries to remain power efficient. And yes, I know probably I should slow down some but I don’t see any class having to throttle down nearly as much as we do to not run out of power.
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DocHoliday posted this on June 21st, 2010.
Categorized as End Game, Equipment, expansion, gambits, gear, group, Guardians, legendary items, lotro, Minstral, Minstrel, Mirkwood, moors, podcast, pvp, radiance, Raid, Raids and End-game, Traits, Virtues, Warden.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/06/21/podcast-re-cap-and-updates/
The Casual Stroll to Mordor folks have been running a series of class specific round-tables, the first of which being for the Minstrels. All sorts of good information as they had a good mix of play-styles represented. So if you’re interested in learning about the class or how to better group with Minstrels it is a great listen.
The second of the classes they’ve covered is the Warden and I had a blast as one of the participants on that episode. It hasn’t been released, but as soon as it is I will put up the link. I will admit, in hindsight I might’ve been a tad on the confident (or cocky) side but as a tank I do think you need to have a bit of that mentality. Again we did have a good mix of playstyles like the Minstrel roundtable so that made for some great discussions.
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DocHoliday posted this on May 26th, 2010.
Categorized as captain, champions, crafting, End Game, Equipment, gambits, gear, group, Guardians, hard-mode, legendary items, lotro, Minstral, Minstrel, Mirkwood, Raids and End-game, screenshots, SG, threat, Warden.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/fun-times-in-sammuth-gul/
I ended up getting in a late night Sammuth Gul run last night with a couple of friends. Our group wasn’t quite optimal as we were lacking a traited healer and didn’t have any crowd control. I think I was more worried about the CC then I was the healing (as you’ll see later on) as the loremasters in there are just downright nasty. However, we had lots of DPS, and lots of interrupts which made this a fun and exciting run. I was on my Warden along with a guard, captain, champion, DPS spec’d runekeeper, and a full warrior skald traited minstrel. The trash really wasn’t too bad as we essentially had 4 off-healers in the group and with all the heavies we had lots of spare morale. Our Minstrel was able to stay in War-speech for a good deal of the fights and only towards the end or if we got an unlucky pull did he have to drop out. We had a couple of marathon fights with summoners and unlucky punts onto bone piles, but the ability of our guard to get conjunctions off was key to us being able to move as quickly as we did.
The only part that really worried me was the Gorothol fight as there’s just SO many mobs and things get very crazy in there. As the adds started to pile up we were able to just grab everything in the middle with the guard and myself trying to grab all the agro and the champ and runekeeper doing as much AoE damage as possible. Our minnie was watching out for the loremasters to keep them occupied, trying to keep alive, and trying to toss us the occasional heal. Although, as the following log will show I did a pretty darn good job of keeping myself alive as all the adds are a Warden’s dream 
After a while I think the guard and I had the agro shared pretty well but my morale bar wasn’t moving much at all as I just kept cycling through our life-taps and conviction.
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