almazar posted this on August 30th, 2010.
Categorized as General, Traits, captain, hands of healing, lead the charge, leader of men, lord of the rings online, lord of the rings online reporter, lotro, lotro reporter.
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Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LordOfTheRingsOnlineReporter/~3/PUwGTKDKUAY/
Many of the classes in Lord of the Rings online are going through some changes, as mentioned both in the forums, and in the Beta Players Journals released a few weeks ago. One of the classes that is going through a drastic change is the captain class. This class is having it’s Class Traits re-worked to make each of the three options viable in game, and is having a pretty significant change to Standards.
Ken “Graalx2″ Burd wrote a great Dev Diary about these upcoming changes, mentioning all of these changes, and summarizing the reasons for theses changes.
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Omsi posted this on August 26th, 2010.
Categorized as Deeds and Traits, General, Rune-keeper, Traits, lord of the rings online, lord of the rings online reporter, lotro, lotro reporter, rk.
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Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LordOfTheRingsOnlineReporter/~3/lCW0tfjuo4c/
Well, it’s been a little while, hasn’t it? I hope you’ve all been perfecting your craft as a Rune-keeper since last I wrote. We’re finally getting around to talking about a very important component of any class: traits. Thankfully, Rune-keeper traits are generally pretty cut-and-dry. If you want to heal, you fill most of your slots with Benediction of Peace traits. If you like to DPS, you pick either Solitary Thunder or Cleansing Fire traits. And then you cross-pollinate a little with traits from other sets to suit your playstyle. If you’re having trouble deciding on which traits to choose, read on! What follows is my personal take on every individual trait in our major trait sets: which ones shouldn’t be missed, which ones fit more specific situations, and which can be safely ignored.
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DocHoliday posted this on August 16th, 2010.
Categorized as End Game, Free to Play, Minstral, Minstrel, Traits, Virtues, Warden, alts, blog, champion, champions, legacy, legendary items, lotro, podcast, threat.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/a-couple-other-place-to-find-me/
Just a quick update this Monday morning, but I should have another post out today with some new goodies on the Skirmish vendors over on Bullroarer.
I posted a new version of my traits discussion over on the LOTRO Reporter which took a slightly different approach from the post I did here a while back. The one over on LOTRO Reporter is a bit more high-level while the post on this blog is more detail oriented.
I also joined @Theobor on his latest episode of the Gondor Awaits Podcast chatting about Minstrels, so if you’re interested in my take on that class head on over there.
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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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DocHoliday posted this on August 2nd, 2010.
Categorized as End Game, Enedwaith, Equipment, Free to Play, Minstral, Minstrel, Raid, Raids and End-game, Skirmishes, Traits, Warden, beta, captain, expansion, gear, group, lotro, radiance, volume 3.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/08/02/lotro-f2p-beta-initial-details/
As Sapience has posted, the NDA on the LOTRO Beta has been lifted. I’m pretty surprised they did it this early, but I’m not going to complain if they decide to release this sooner as opposed to later. There are tons of posts up on the boards but if you don’t want to sift through those I will share my thoughts so far. I will admit that I haven’t done everything but will break my post up in a few different topics as well as spread them out a bit. I’ve already talked a bunch about the store so I’m not going to talk about that. Once the servers come back up I will be posting some screen shots as well but I’m sure others will have them up shortly too 
Also, if you have any specific questions let me know and I’ll see what I can do to answer them.
Starting off with my main class, the Wardens have gotten some nice bumps at the cost of a potentially nasty bruise. The biggest change is that our various carvings now apply to not only the gambits but the builders themselves. For me this not only made a significant difference in my power usage, but since I didn’t have to pull back as much I also had a nice DPS boost. Also Wardens will be getting a Muster to Forochel which while not game breaking is nice to fill out the skills. The biggest “nerf” is that our Gambit recovery skills are now “fast” skills as opposed to immediate which means you can’t use them to interrupt long animations like Defiant Challenge. I’m a bit on the fence about this one as Defiant Challenge really is now back to a crappy legendary but I understand that they need to be careful as it could be overpowered. Not much else changed, but for other thoughts and ideas, check out the live boards for other reactions.
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DocHoliday posted this on July 24th, 2010.
Categorized as End Game, Equipment, Raids and End-game, Traits, Virtues, gear, group, lotro, podcast, radiance.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/07/24/guest-spot-on-lotro-reporter-end-game/
In case you missed the notification, you can catch me as a guest on episode 47 of the LOTRO Reporter podcast. We focus mainly on the End-game content as we go through what you should do to prepare and run the various instances and raids. I’m going to follow that up with a more detailed post on Radiance gear either tomorrow or Monday.
DocHoliday posted this on July 24th, 2010.
Categorized as End Game, Enedwaith, Equipment, Free to Play, Mirkwood, Raids and End-game, Skirmishes, Traits, Virtues, epic line, expansion, gear, group, hard-mode, legendary items, lore, lotro, screenshots, volume 3.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/07/24/the-news-pours-in-about-beta-and-enedwaith/
This past week has been quite busy on the news front for LOTRO and I will admit I’ve been quite behind. This has just been a pretty long week for me with my job and as such I’ve barely been able to keep up on the news, let alone comment on it. However, I wanted to touch on a few of the releases as there’s some good (and not so good) updates of late.
First up is the HUGE Developer Diary covering the new region Enedwaith which covers pretty well the new zones, their history and influences, their general storylines, and some of the kinds of enemies you’ll face. I’m looking forward to not only exploring all of the new spaces, but I really like the idea of pulling from Medieval Welsh and Briton influences. I’m also very impressed by the size (bigger and more quests then the North Downs) and all the new artwork as I will admit I’m getting a little tired of not only the darkness of Mirkwood but goblins and orcs There are lots of new screenshots in the diary, but these were 2 of my favorites:
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DocHoliday posted this on July 16th, 2010.
Categorized as End Game, Equipment, Mirkwood, Raid, Skirmishes, Traits, Virtues, captain, gear, group, legacy, legendary items, lotro, moors, podcast, pvp, radiance, threat.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/07/16/captain-roundtable/
If you missed it live (or want to listen to it again), a Casual Stroll to Mordor’s Captain Roundtable is now posted both on their site and on iTunes. I participated but definitely Elb and Geiri really do know their stuff and they do play their captains slightly different. If you have a captain or want to learn more about the class, it is certainly well worth the listen. It is a little long (a shade over 2 hours) but we do also cover a bunch of other group related topics as well. The build-up and recording of it certainly has gotten me more fired up about the class and I’m actually working on my captain again as well as working on his radiance. I did finally hit 65 and realized that I really do miss the class I’m not saying he’s going to become my main again, but certainly not banished to the Thorin’s Hall Homestead either.
DocHoliday posted this on July 14th, 2010.
Categorized as End Game, Enedwaith, Free to Play, Raid, Traits, Virtues, beta, epic line, expansion, gear, group, lore, lotro, screenshots, volume 3.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/beta-and-enedwaith-re-cap/
There’s been a rush of news lately with quite a few putting out updates on the beta, new zone, and Turbine Store. Folks have covered some of these already but I will include my take on them as well.
First up is the interview Mordor of Bust conducted with Kate Paiz, LOTRO’s new Executive Producer who was also part of DDO’s transition to the Free to play model. A couple things that jumped out at me but certainly take a read for yourself:
- Since DDO went F2P (Sept. 2009) they’ve released 5 updates and they’re expecting similar frequency with LOTRO. Now we’ll see how big those updates are but 5 updates in 9 months is pretty darn nice.
- She does mention that they’ve already made changes due to Beta feedback, and that the stat tomes from the Turbine Store are also world drops which is nice to know.
- It is nice to see how much Middle-Earth Enterprises is engaged with the entire process, so I feel comfortable that things will still remain close to the lore.
- Interesting to note the LOTRO hasn’t released in China yet and that they’re still looking for a business model that will work over there. That should provide a nice revenue stream for Turbine when that kicks in.
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DocHoliday posted this on July 9th, 2010.
Categorized as Free to Play, Traits, Virtues, expansion, festival, lotro, reputation.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/07/09/latest-f2p-update-from-massively/
So part 2 of Massively’s coverage of the new fall content and F2P switch (Part 1) was posted this morning and it covers both the new festival and the store.
The haunted cellar sounds really cool and very fall-like I’m actually quite intrigued about not only how it will look but the themed decorations that will be available with the token rewards Hopefully they’ll use the fear logic from BG such that you can be feared and randomly run around and trigger more fun!
The meat of what I wanted to write about was the info on the store. Now I realize this is all subject to change as we’re still in the beta, but I’m sure there will be LOTS of upset folks over the addition of items to reduce the in-game grind. In certain cases I’m all for it, but I see them handling it two separate ways, one I like and the other I don’t.
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