PB posted this on January 31st, 2012.
Categorized as DPS, End Game, group, hard-mode, instances, Lore-Master, lore-mastery, lotro, Pits of Isengard, Raids and End-game, Rise Of Isengard, threat, Update 5.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidaymmo.com/2012/01/31/lore-mastery-update-5-instances-guide-pits-of-isengard/
DocHoliday's MMO Saloon DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View
I was tossing up whether to do a Riders of Rohan wishlist post this week or continue with the update 5 instance guides, but I figure that the longer I take on these guides the less relevant they become so into the Pits of Isengard it is…
Pits of Isengard
Read the rest of this entry »DocHoliday posted this on January 17th, 2012.
Categorized as Draigoch, End Game, group, instances, isengard, legendary items, lord of the rings online, lotro, Patch Notes, Raid, Raids and End-game, Skirmishes, Update 5.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidaymmo.com/2012/01/17/update-5-1-patch-notes-and-known-issues/
DocHoliday's MMO Saloon DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View
Notice the name change for this update, which makes sense for me as it is a bug-fix patch for Update 5.
The Known issues are up first with a few:
Read the rest of this entry »DocHoliday posted this on December 19th, 2011.
Categorized as Armies of Isengard, End Game, group, instances, lord of the rings online, lotro, Raids and End-game, screenshots, Update 5.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidaymmo.com/2011/12/19/new-lotro-armies-of-isengard-screenshots/
A few new screenshots were released today showing off the new instance spaces. The spaces highlighted in these shots are the Pits of Isengard, Fanghorns Edge, and Dragnakh Unleashed.
Sadly I’m still haven’t had much chance to get into these spaces so I’m living vicariously through these images and what I hear from others 
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PB posted this on December 18th, 2011.
Categorized as End Game, group, hard-mode, instance finder, instances, lotro, Raids and End-game, Update 5.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidaymmo.com/2011/12/18/instance-finder-experiences/
I thought it might be interesting to put up a post for people to share their early experiences with the instance finder. While still in an early iteration, the IF is a pretty big change to the game and could have a big impact on how people play the game.
Personally I usually run groups with kin or friends, but have hit up the IF a few times in the past week when others were busy. My experiences have been generally positive, getting fairly quick 3-person groups three times, all 3 for fangorn strangely enough. Two of those groups cleared T1 while the other failed T2. I felt that group composition was reasonable, though as a lore-master I’m lucky to have some flexibility in retraiting for different roles. The failing T2 group was me a cappy and Hunter which might have been workable but just couldn’t get the tanking happening.
Personally I really like the concept of the tool but strongly suspect that it won’t really have its full impact until it becomes cross server. I also think people shouldn’t expect to be able to do T2c fears with the IF. T1 is designed for pug groups for a reason – keep T2 for groups you trust!
Read the rest of this entry »DocHoliday posted this on December 12th, 2011.
Categorized as Armies of Isengard, End Game, group, instances, lord of the rings online, lotro, Patch Notes, Prince of Rohan, Raid, Raids and End-game, Update 5.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidaymmo.com/2011/12/12/update-5-patch-notes-and-known-issues/
While we’re all waiting for the servers to come back up, you can browse through not only the Patch Notes but also the Known Issues posted today.
The patch notes are pretty extensive with all sorts of things hanging especially for many classes. I highly suggest taking a read for your class of interest to see what’s new as there’s a ton for both the Freep side as well as creep side. A few that jumped out for me:
Read the rest of this entry »DocHoliday posted this on December 9th, 2011.
Categorized as Armies of Isengard, Developer Diaries, End Game, Equipment, gear, group, instances, lord of the rings online, lotro, Prince of Rohan, Raid, Raids and End-game, Skirmishes, Update 5.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidaymmo.com/2011/12/09/update-5-barter-currency-dev-diary/
I know many, including myself, have been wondering how all these marks, medallions, and seals will work out and how our current stuff will transition to the new. Luckily Zombie Columbus puts it all out for us with a nice Q&A section to describe all the new currency changes coming with Update 5.
Overall I like the goal of consolidating and unifying between the new instances, the old scalable ones, and skirmishes. I think the biggest concern so far is with the availability of seals which are needed for the top tier armor sets.
Read the rest of this entry »DocHoliday posted this on December 8th, 2011.
Categorized as beta, instances, lord of the rings online, lotro, Release Date, Update 5.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidaymmo.com/2011/12/08/update-5-armies-of-isengard-launching-december-12th/
Today not only did Turbine announce the date for the Armies of Isengard or Prince of Rohan, if you prefer the story title, update, but also some new screenshots as well. All along this was the week I was thinking (although I was expecting the 13th) but lately I’ve begun to seriously wonder about that date. I will be curious to see if we get any updates to Bullroarer or if we’re going straight to Live. If we don’t go to Bullroarer, I’m sad to admit I expect to run into a fair share of issues like we did with the Isengard Launch.
DocHoliday posted this on December 6th, 2011.
Categorized as Armies of Isengard, Developer Diaries, End Game, group, instances, lord of the rings online, lotro, Prince of Rohan, Raids and End-game, screenshots, Skirmishes, Update 5, update 6.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidaymmo.com/2011/12/06/instance-finder-q-a-with-ransroth/
I know this is technically a Developer Diary, but it didn’t quite flow like the others and while it is pretty comprehensive it isn’t much of a behind the scenes look at the system, it is more of a FAQ for the system. I have a feeling this is pretty much a summary of all the questions from the forums with some in-game shots of the various windows and pop-ups for the system. Some good stuff in there as well as a teaser for Update 6 that you’ll be able to tweak the random part of the system to EXCLUDE instances. Although I guess you could just exclude all but one to “randomly” select the one you want, but I’ll be interested to see what the restrictions are for that exclusion.
Overall nothing earth shattering for me, but if you haven’t been following the forum threads it certainly is a good concise summary of the system.
Read the rest of this entry »PB posted this on December 5th, 2011.
Categorized as cc, Debuff, DPS, End Game, group, instances, Lore-Master, lore-mastery, loremaster, lotro, Raid, Rise Of Isengard, Traits.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidaymmo.com/2011/12/05/lore-mastery-two-is-the-lonliest-number/
As you should know by now, I really like the lore-master class and I think it’s well designed and very useful in both group and solo situations. Today’s column, however, focuses on one of its weaknesses – lore-masters don’t play particularly well with other lore-masters in tougher group content, especially raids. While most other classes can quite happily stack with each other up to a point, a number of features of the lore-master class mean that it’s almost always less than ideal to take more than one lore-master along for a tough large fellowship instance or raid.
I want to be really clear here that what I’m talking about in this post is tougher large group content. In 3-person instances lore-masters play together wonderfully well, being able to simultaneously fill DPS and healing roles is really nice. Some of the best small group runs I’ve done have been with, like, 2 lore-masters and a hunter – stuff just melts and you’re still really survivable. And in easier large group content, including skirmish raids and Draigoch, there’s no harm in taking along a second or third lore-master – the content will get done, absolute efficiency in class makeup is not required.
Read the rest of this entry »DocHoliday posted this on December 2nd, 2011.
Categorized as Armies of Isengard, Developer Diaries, End Game, gear, group, instances, isengard, lord of the rings online, lotro, Raid, Raids and End-game, Rise Of Isengard, Update 5.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidaymmo.com/2011/12/02/update-5-developer-round-table/
Instead of just a single Developer talking about the update, we’re given a healthy dose of the whole crew. The diary focuses on all the new instance spaces and gives some nice background from the team.
They start off with the smaller instances and have some nice fun discussions in there regarding the Ents. Initial discussions focus on the instance spaces in Fangorn and the Pits of Isengard.
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