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 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 8th, 2010.
Categorized as End Game, Equipment, Minstral, Minstrel, Mirkwood, Raid, Raids and End-game, Skirmishes, Traits, Virtues, gear, legacy, legendary items, lotro, moors.
Shorthand Link: http://combo.mmeow.net/g8c
Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/survivable-minstrels-in-lotro/
As I’ve been dusting off the cob-webs on my minstrel lately I’ve also been hearing (and reading) folks talk about how hard it is to solo as a minstrel, especially in skirmishes. So I figured I’d write a bit about how I’ve built and set up my minstrel as well as how I play him. My minstrel is probably my most rounded end-game character I have as I’ve done Helegrod, the Rift (including a few 1st time kills for groups), all the Moria 6-mans, the Watcher, DN (not the whole thing sadly), and it is also my highest ranked character in the Moors having reached rank 5. I leveled up mostly in the days pre-warspeach and as such am pretty used to chaining ballads and working to maximize their utility.
One of the things about my minstrel is that I do PUG quite a bit and as such I have to be ready for and be able to take a few hits. So I tend to built more towards a vit/morale heavy build and not the will/power build that pure healing minstrels tend to prefer. I’m currently running with 4641 morale and 3679 power with an ICPR of 1000, but my un-buffed common mitigation is 28.4%. Even when I’m raiding, having the extra morale is ALWAYS helpful as there are LOTS of high damage AOEs in the game that can potentially one-shot you if your morale is too low. Even if you are not 1-shotted, you might be low enough that another hit would finish you off – or if nothing else distract you from healing someone more crucial, like the tank. Now I certainly will re-trait depending on what I’m doing, but aside from instruments and legendary items, I rarely will swap out equipment.
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DocHoliday posted this on February 5th, 2010.
Categorized as Equipment, Mirkwood, Raid, Raids and End-game, Skirmishes, crafting, gear, lotro, screenshots, volume 3.
Shorthand Link: http://combo.mmeow.net/g57
Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/02/05/various-volume-3-bullroarer-updates/
So there’s been quite a lot of posting up on the forums regarding the new stuff coming in Volume 3 including stats and screen-shots.
I’ll start with crafting first, there’s a whole bunch of very interesting looking jewelry that’s out that transforms a lot of it to multi-output recipes. This includes many of the Tier 6 recipes and you can find a composite snap with all the crit values here on the live boards. Also, these multi-output recipes do apply for reputation recipes, so I will be off crafting some large guild symbols to stock up
There’s also snap-shots of the new cooking recipes in the following post which also has in it the cookbook in Excel. Of note, the fishing recipes are pretty cool as some are +vitality and +will. Also, the Mirkwood reputation recipes start at +36 for the stats and critical results are +55, which will be very nice for will and fate! I’m sure there will be updates to that spreadsheet once he adds the additional new stuff.
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DocHoliday posted this on February 4th, 2010.
Categorized as Bioware, Dragon Age, End Game, Minstral, Minstrel, RPGs, Raid, Raids and End-game, Single player, expansion, lotro.
Shorthand Link: http://combo.mmeow.net/g1f
Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/02/04/more-single-player-focus-recently/
So I’ve been quiet lately and that’s mainly due to real-life distractions and work getting quite a bit busier for me. I really haven’t had much time to fully devote to a game so I’ve steered more towards single-player games that I can pause
I’ve got a backload of LOTRO items, and will be getting back into a better blogging routine as I”m really itching to get back to Middle-Earth. Especially since there’s a new raiding group that I joined so I’ll have a chance to get back into some more of the end-game stuff that I so enjoy! I’ll be working on my minstrel and as such you’ll probably see some more posts on his progress and how I handle skirmishes as well.
The biggest in-game news for me is that my mule kinship (which was formed with the help of some of the blogging community) reached rank 7 and the kin-house right behind my house was still available. So I’ve been slowly moving things around and filling that up, and working to re-build my bank account . Here’s a shot of my minnie out front of my new and sparsely decorated house. Too bad you can’t mail items across servers as I know Merric and Goldenstar have TONS of household items
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DocHoliday posted this on January 29th, 2010.
Categorized as Book 9, End Game, Mirkwood, Raid, Raids and End-game, Skirmishes, Warden, crafting, epic line, expansion, lotro, rohan, volume 3.
Shorthand Link: http://combo.mmeow.net/fuq
Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/lotro-volume-3-oath-of-the-rangers/
So yes, I’m a little late on this one but it has been a long week for me. Turbine released the first bit of news on the upcoming new content that continues the epic story. Certainly there’s more info coming but it appears that one of my early predictions is already wrong as it doesn’t look like there’s any new area to explore. Don’t get me wrong, there are some good things in the update but I’m a little worried that this seems a bit light.
By far, the most exciting thing is the Rift (Nurz Ghashu) skirmish that is the first attempt to revive older group/raid content. I’m not only looking forward to getting back in there – but it does sound like an interesting story line as you’re called to help one of the rangers and his daughter from the depths and evils of the area. Although I do find this to be a very similar storyline to Goldir and Amarthiel but we shall see how it plays out. Since they’re doing this via the skirmish system, it does bring a faint glimmer of hope that we may see similar ideas (and raids) in places like Fornost, Garth Agarwen, and Helegrod.
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arbitrary posted this on January 29th, 2010.
Categorized as Barad Guldur, Dol Guldur, Raid, lotro, raids.
Shorthand Link: http://combo.mmeow.net/ft7
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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Tony posted this on January 27th, 2010.
Categorized as Barad Guldur, Bugs, Instance, News, Patch, Raid.
Shorthand Link: http://combo.mmeow.net/frq
Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/mmeow/~3/yIbsPVaMhoM/
This morning, LiuTsieng posted a brief explanation on how the gauntlet system for Barad Guldur is supposed to work. After the bug fix for the gate issue in this area, some things have been adjusted.
We don’t do a great job of communicating the way the gauntlet works, so here’s what’s happening in that pic:
— You have 40 minutes from the time you kill the last two armored guards at the end of the gauntlet to kill Durchest without having to reclear the gauntlet.
— 39 minutes after you’ve killed those guards, you’ll get a warning message. Something to the effect of, “You hear the sound of reinforcements in the halls, they are coming..“
— A minute after that warning message, you’ll receive a message stating something to effect of, “Reinforcements have arrived, this is your last chance.“
— At this point you’ve had 40 minutes of free attempts on Durchest. Any current attempts will need to be finished up, after which the gauntlet will reset.
If you’ve been trying to prevent a respawn of the gauntlet, you’ll see the situation in that picture. Simply walk to the entrance (you don’t need to leave the instance, just walk to the door). You should see the front gate raise, an instance billboard indicating that you will have to reclear the gauntlet, and then the gate should lower.
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DocHoliday posted this on January 18th, 2010.
Categorized as End Game, Equipment, Minstral, Minstrel, Raid, Raids and End-game, Warden, books, captain, legacy, legendary items, lotro, podcast, radiance, reputation.
Shorthand Link: http://combo.mmeow.net/ff3
Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/patch-thoughts-and-other-ramblings/
I’ll have a few updates today, but the main LOTRO news is the first Siege of Mirkwood patch which rolls live tomorrow. In addition I wanted to mention a new release of a handy in-game tool and an update on my progress so far.
First off, the patch. Check out the release notes, as there really aren’t that many but some very significant ones:
- Incoming healing has been fixed to not be defended by tactical crit rating!
- The skirmish exploit has been fixed
- The Survival – Barrow Downs skirmish is back up
- Skirmish kill XP now has a buff icon. I didn’t even realize this XP was buffed
- Non Siege of Mirkwood players are no longer limited to 3 skirmishes
- Summoning a pet (or banner) will no longer wipe soldier vitals!
- Item wear on defeat has been decreased inside skirmishes
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