DocHoliday posted this on July 8th, 2010.
Categorized as beta, End Game, Enedwaith, epic line, Equipment, expansion, Free to Play, General, legendary items, lore, lotro, Mirkwood, radiance, Raid, Raids and End-game, runes, Skirmishes, volume 3.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/07/08/enedwaith-beta-and-subscription-news/
Well in some cases it does help to be a bit delayed in getting news out as sometimes numbers do change and fluctuate especially when subscription numbers are mentioned. Yesterday, Mordor or Bust posted an article from the PatriotLedger which originally stated 200K new LOTRO subscribers since the F2P announcement – but that has since been clarified to be 100K-200K beta applicants, via Turbine. Now, while not quite as impressive as new subs, when you consider that subscribers were automatically signed-up (and hopefully not counted in this number) that’s still a pretty good sign of new blood to the game. So my thoughts are this will be a pretty substantial influx of new folks to the game and some portion of those will certainly transfer over to subscriptions, or buy things through the cash shop, which will bring new revenue and resources to Turbine. Most people peg the current subscription base around 250K to 500K for LOTRO (still hard to figure out) this will most likely mean about a community twice the size it currently is. Which yes, will bring some annoyances but will all the tools we have to get around those, I’m more excited for all the cool people who will be joining us!
The other piece of news lately that has stirred some commotion was the article over on Massively where they get to sit and chat with the Turbine folks about the new toys and such coming with Enedwaith. If you haven’t read the article, I highly suggest it but I figured I’d share my thoughts on what we’ve learned so far.
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DocHoliday posted this on June 2nd, 2010.
Categorized as blog, gambits, legacy, legendary items, lotro, Mirkwood, runes, Skirmishes, threat, Traits, Virtues, Warden.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/06/02/wardens-grabbing-even-more-attention/
So I’m stealing the title from my post over on LOTRO Reporter in which I walk through the basics of tanking for a Warden. I wanted to link to that over here as well as refresh a couple other previous posts I’ve made along those lines.
There were significant combat system changes with the launch of Mirkwood, so I took some time in this post to walk through all the changes.
For more specifics on tanking gambits you can check out my entire series over on the LOTRO Reporter, but also I posted in significant length on this subject back in November.
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DocHoliday posted this on May 26th, 2010.
Categorized as Equipment, legendary items, lotro, Mirkwood, runes, Warden.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/legendary-relic-farming/
After my recent issues (or concerns is probably more accurate) while raiding BG I’ve been taking a closer look at my Warden and trying to make her stronger. Some of them I posted about the other day but I also wanted to work on my runes for my legendary items. Luckily I happened to be chatting with an in-game friend about this and he tipped me on to a pretty nice method. So I’ve spend the past day or so running the numbers and figured I’d post the results I have so far, which do seem to line up with his.
Previously I would save up or buy off the auction hall a bunch of crummy legendary items, equip them, kill a couple mobs, and then deconstruct them at level 2. This is a pretty effective method but can become quite tedious. A variation on this theme is to complete a bunch of Mirkwood quests (or the Moria mirror quests) that reward LI experience and in-between turn-ins visit the Relic Master to deconstruct a newly leveled legendary item. Many of the deconstructs will result in just a couple of Tier 1 relics, but critical results will yield multiple tier 4’s so this can be very effective.
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DocHoliday posted this on May 23rd, 2010.
Categorized as BG, crafting, End Game, Equipment, gear, group, hard-mode, legendary items, lotro, Mirkwood, radiance, Raid, Raids and End-game, runes, screenshots, Traits, video, Virtues, Warden.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/05/23/my-week-in-lotro/
I didn’t get too much time in this week but was able to get into some raiding and group fun. I also did some re-working of my Warden which I’ll get to at the bottom.
On Wednesday I JUST missed getting into a BG raid, which was just as well as I was already committed to one on Thursday 
so I ended up just messing around in game chatting with folks while waiting to see what was going to happen. I did end up doing a quick run of DD with one of my kin-mates to finish off her class legendaries, which did have some interesting moments as you’ll see from the pictures below:
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DocHoliday posted this on May 6th, 2010.
Categorized as BG, End Game, Equipment, gear, legacy, legendary items, lotro, Mirkwood, moors, pvp, radiance, Raid, Raids and End-game, runes, screenshots, Warden.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/05/06/my-latest-in-game-accomplishments/
So I”m a bit of a list maker and enjoy crossing things off, so I figure I’d share my most recent ones. I was pretty excited last week when I main-tanked a couple areas that I hadn’t before but this week I hit a couple other big milestones for me.
The first one was probably more just a matter of me not focusing on it but I did finally finish off my non-BG radiance set (so I now have 120 radiance) as I got in a couple of final runs through Sword Halls to get my last 6 Mirkwood tokens. It is nice to now not need to focus on those tokens buy more on my legendary items and maybe even get a 2nd age weapon
The other accomplishment was getting to Rank 4 in the Ettenmoors, for the real reason of getting the 30 minute cool-down map. I’ve done a bunch of that ranking solo as I really do enjoy smaller battles and find the Warden to be a fun and diverse class out in the Moors. As for raid groups, it can be fun and at times more productive then solo but does require me to dedicate a bit more time. Below is a snap from Mirkwood showing my PvMP stats:
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DocHoliday posted this on March 15th, 2010.
Categorized as BG, champions, End Game, Equipment, expansion, gambits, gear, Guardians, hard-mode, legacy, legendary items, lotro, Mirkwood, Raid, Raids and End-game, runes, threat, Traits, Virtues, Warden.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/03/15/warden-forum-nuggets/
As usual, the Warden boards of late have been filled with quite a few really good posts, so I wanted to make sure everyone saw them. And at the bottom, there’s a pretty good in-game champ quote that I couldn’t resist re-posting 
The first post is centered around Warden DPS, not that we should ever be mistaken for a DPS class but what’re some ways to get a higher output. Long post short, trait spear line, high might, high melee offense rating/critical rating, and good legacies on your weapons. Personally I am leaning towards having some DPS weapons as opposed to just tanking ones as it is easier, quicker, and cheaper to swap weapons then it is to completely re-trait. Also a refresher on what good DPS rotations are, which essentially are the spear line gambits
After that, we go to our main role of tanking. The first post primarily discusses the difference between the Fist line and the Shield line and when each are preferred. The thread does start with the excitement over Perceived Threat being recently fixed, which does make the First line more viable. The general consensus is that Shield is slightly better for the overall healing abilities but there are cases (BG for one) when you won’t be using your HoTs and there’s lots of –threat debuffs tossed around – making the Fist line pretty appealing. Following a similar line of thought there’s a thread on setups for BG which not only follows the trait line from above, but also has some good ideas for BG in general. If you’re a Warden planning to run BG, I’d highly recommend those posts and probably a conversation or 2 with a couple of the posters there that have actually run that raid. And actually, there’s some good tanking posts in those the would be of use for everyone running that raid.
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DocHoliday posted this on February 25th, 2010.
Categorized as crafting, End Game, epic line, Equipment, gear, group, legendary items, lore, lotro, Raids and End-game, runes, screenshots, volume 3, Warden.
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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 20th, 2010.
Categorized as Awakening, Bioware, Dragon Age, expansion, RPGs, runes, Single player.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/more-awakening/
And the news from Bioware keeps on coming Some of it is good, and some is not so exciting (for me at least)
They’ve released on their wiki site information about some of the new Mage spells which do sounds pretty darn cool! This is coupled with the announcement that one of the new specialization lines for mages is the Battlemage. But one of my concerns from my previous post was confirmed in that many of the Battlemage spells (which were showed in the videos) can in fact create friendly fire incidents and as such careful positioning will be required. Basically this line allows the mage to create a pulsating ring of various kinds of damage depending on the spell used. Certainly some cool stuff, but will be a bit tricky.
The Friday update also released info on Sigrun, and there’s a blog from one of the lead writer’s going into more detail on her story. Not a whole lot of new information but nice to fill out the back-story of this character. Also, I might have missed this somewhere else, but they talk about runes that can be added to weapons (I’m guessing a similar concept to how LOTRO does it for legendary items), which will be a nice way to further customize things.
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DocHoliday posted this on February 15th, 2010.
Categorized as End Game, Equipment, gambits, gear, legacy, legendary items, lotro, Mirkwood, Raids and End-game, runes, threat, Traits, Virtues, Warden.
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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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DocHoliday posted this on December 22nd, 2009.
Categorized as End Game, Equipment, legendary items, lotro, Mirkwood, Raids and End-game, runes, Traits, Warden.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2009/12/22/cstats-take-2/
Ok, so I realized what I was doing wrong and why my DPS numbers from yesterday were off. If you don’t run Cstats while playing, it has no concept of time and is just crunching on pure damage (still helpful, don’t get me wrong) but I wanted to get some more comparable numbers so I ran it again. So the workflow is similar to what I said yesterday, but once you turn on the combat tab logging you then need to alt-tab to cstats and start parsing. Then return to LOTRO and fight stuff.
So the snap below shows me checking out my archer DPS – notice each “encounter” has a separate folder so it will show all the mobs you fought during that section of combat. As you can see my archer is at least better then the mobs, but still no where near my DPS – which is fine as she’s still pretty weak. The batch there under Moria is another log file that I opened such that I could easily compare Tier 1 skirmishes to Tier 2 and now that I can see DPS it is very clear that for Tier 2 mine decrease and the mobs increase.
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