DocHoliday posted this on August 31st, 2010.
Categorized as BG, End Game, Enedwaith, Free to Play, Guardians, Raids and End-game, beta, captain, champion, champions, gear, group, hard-mode, lotro, moors, pvp, reputation, screenshots.
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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, End Game, Equipment, Guardians, Minstral, Minstrel, Mirkwood, Raid, Raids and End-game, Warden, captain, champion, champions, crafting, gear, group, hard-mode, lotro, moors, radiance.
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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 End Game, Guardians, Raids and End-game, Warden, captain, champion, champions, group, lotro, threat.
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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 August 26th, 2010.
Categorized as BG, End Game, Free to Play, Raid, Raids and End-game, blog, expansion, hard-mode, lotro, podcast, video.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/08/26/more-lotro-video-resources/
There’s been a number of new (or maybe just new to me) videos posted over the past few days that I wanted to comment on and share.
First up, I know many of you are interested in the Lua scripting so in addition to the video and information I posted previously Merric from a Casual Stroll to Mordor has put up a great video. His video focuses on just a couple plugins and seems to hint that he’ll be doing more of them, this review touches on the Plugin Manager and Hunter Travel Window. I think the Hunter Travel window will definitely be one of the must-haves for any Hunter or Warden.
Next up for those of you looking for tips or hints from running the various Instances, Middle Earth Chronicles has started a new section of the blog with a good collection of videos. Go check out their Instance page and make sure to send in any videos you may have.
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DocHoliday posted this on August 16th, 2010.
Categorized as End Game, Enedwaith, Equipment, Free to Play, Minstral, Minstrel, Raids and End-game, Warden, beta, captain, champion, champions, expansion, gear, group, lotro, screenshots.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/new-treasure-category-on-the-classic-skirmish-vendors/
I saw a thread on the Minstrel Board about these new items and figured I’d go check them out. The way it works is that each instance “cluster” now has a Treasure category for it that has various weapons, shields, and jewelry available for barter. I’m a bit torn by this honestly as I do like the chance of randomness in instances but this does give a reliable way to achieve what you’re looking for. For the most part, I’m ok with this split implementation they’re rolling out with F2P in that the current instances will be “random” and the level scaled instances will be more deterministic in their loot. The other nice thing about this implementation is that you do have a list of what’s available as opposed to wondering if/where something drops.
There’s a bunch of drops there, so I’m just going to post some of the higher end gear. I’m also not posting the various weapons as honestly I just don’t know if they’re viable compared to others since I haven’t looked at off-hand items at all. I’ll have to do some more checking on the comparisons to my current gear but there are some nifty items.
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DocHoliday posted this on August 13th, 2010.
Categorized as End Game, Enedwaith, Equipment, Free to Play, Raids and End-game, Warden, beta, expansion, gear, group, lore, lotro, moria, screenshots.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/08/13/beta-event-and-instance-join/
This week a bunch of my playtime was actually over on Bullroarer and I enjoyed it quite a bit for a number of reasons. I did get in a partial DN run on my Warden but that was relatively routine.
First up was the Beta Stress test on Wednesday which after some initial bumps got off to a pretty decent start. A bunch of us were chatting over Twitter so we were able to join up in game. This was pretty fun as I got a chance to run around with folks I don’t normally get to play with but talk with frequently. They briefly pulled the servers down but only for a few minutes and then left them up for the duration of the event. Nothing too interactive from the devs as I think they were mainly trying to stress test the store and work any of the kinks out of that. It does seem like they’ve worked some things out as it does seem to be more responsive and a bit smoother, but I still think there’s some work to be done. One very cool thing they were testing out was the “Ripcord” capability which allows Turbine disable all Lua scripts globally from the server side. This allows them to maintain control and quickly disable things if they find a loophole or some undesirable script floating around.
After some of the “scheduled” stuff, the group of us just roamed around Enedwaith for a bit checking out the areas.
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DocHoliday posted this on August 11th, 2010.
Categorized as BG, End Game, Enedwaith, Equipment, Free to Play, Raid, Raids and End-game, Warden, beta, expansion, gear, group, hard-mode, lotro, radiance, video.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/developer-diary-instances-part-4-helegrod/
For me this was the most highly anticipated part of the instance scaling diaries to date as not only do I love Helegrod but I’m curious to see what they have planned for the space. There’s a lot of good information in the Diary so check out the latest from JWBarry.
To start off, three of the wings will be 12-man spaces with the Thorog wing being a full 24-man raid. There are no locks at all, but before being able to tackle Thorog you must complete the other three wings at least once. So essentially, clear the first 3 and you can farm Thorog to your hearts content.
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DocHoliday posted this on August 11th, 2010.
Categorized as End Game, Enedwaith, Equipment, Free to Play, Minstral, Minstrel, Raids and End-game, Skirmishes, Warden, beta, captain, gear, group, lotro, radiance.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/new-radiance-sets-tweaked-in-recent-bullroarer-patch/
This was a bit of a stealth update that wasn’t mentioned at all in the patch notes but all the new radiance sets were upgraded with the most recent patch. The Annuminas sets didn’t change all that much, just a point or two here or there. The Helegrod sets though were buffed quite a bit and in many cases are some of the best pieces around. I’m pretty happy about this for two reasons as it shows they’re still tweaking things as well as making sure the amount of effort matches the rewards. The appearances of them haven’t changed but if you’re interested in the stats they’re worth a look. If you need a refresher on the looks check out the Minstrel sets and the Warden and Captain sets.
I’ve updated my spreadsheets for the Warden, Captain, and Minstrel sets so check those out if you’re a number geek like me.
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DocHoliday posted this on August 10th, 2010.
Categorized as Enedwaith, Raid, Raids and End-game, Traits, beta, captain, group, legacy, legendary items, lotro, threat.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/captain-healing-present-and-future/
With the big changes coming down the pipes for Captains I decided to do a little number crunching to see how the different lines stacked up. Part of my motivation was to see just how good the Hands of Healing line is and if there are ways to compensate for the trait line. I also don’t like having to play a captain as a “heal-bot” so I wanted to see if it was possible to use different traits but still be effective as a healer. I also thought it would be a good opportunity to see how the various captain legacies varied these results to see if my assumptions about good and bad legacies were correct, and I must say I was pretty surprised.
Really what I wanted to look at was how the tweaks to the Leader of Men line stack up against the Hands of Healing line. For those of you who haven’t heard, with the upcoming F2P changes the various Shield Brother skills apply to the entire fellowship albeit with a reduced effectiveness if you trait fully down the Leader of Men line with the Capstone Legendary. For Inspire the fellowship gets HoT ticks of 25-40 morale and a flat healing boost of 4% for Strength of Will that’s not boosted by legacies. To get a feel for the changes you can look at my previous post as well as the side-by-side visual comparisons over on LOTRO Weekly.
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