Today’s 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.

I do think the armor set costs might have been dropped a bit (or maybe not as these match this post on the forums) as the Annuminas pieces only need 1 Annuminas mark and 3 of the level 65 special marks with the Helegrod items being 2 and 5 respectively.  However, the pieces are pricy on the normal marks at 1,896 for the Annuminas pieces and 2,370 for the Helegrod pieces.  Considering I can get a few hundred marks per normal single person skirmish it is looking like a piece or so per run through the appropriate instance.  Which when you compare it to normally getting armor pieces this is a MUCH quicker pace as previously you had to not only complete the instance but get lucky on roles and most groups only allow one piece per run per person.

I already talked about the reputation mounts, but you can buy the normal initial mounts for 695 points which I think is a nice option as I know many folks sometimes struggle to save up enough gold for that purchase.

I didn’t notice any real changes on the stat tomes but the Virtue tomes have been changed to all be a constant cost as opposed to a sliding scale.  In total, to max out a virtue from the store it costs the same as it did previously, but now each rank is 295 points versus a small amount for that first rank.  I know I will be topping off a few levels on my toons so this does make it a tad more expensive but I think it makes sense.

I’m still a bit on the fence with the Morale pots as they’re now 300 points for a stack of 10.  These potions stack with the normal potions and with the duration of 20 seconds combined with a 20 second cooldown you can essentially boost your ICMR (or ICPR) by 3600 or 60 points per second.  I can see these during tough boss fights and in all honesty I’m still not sure these are expensive enough.  These potions will essentially allow you to power through a tough transition or stabilize the group for a couple of minutes.  I do think this will make some fight mechanics much easier for certain groups and the potions could become requirements for certain raiding groups.  I guess I’m seeing these as a “crutch” that could be used for raiders in a similar manner to how the various hope quest turn-ins were used back in the day.  I think requiring groups to have those pots purchased is a bad thing, but I’m on the fence as I do like the idea of providing a not totally game breaking crutch to get groups over the hump in certain areas.  As long as Turbine continues to put out challenging fights like BG, and it sounds like the instance revamp will be even more challenging, these could really help folks speed up the learning curve.  After a run or two, I would imagine these pots wouldn’t be as needed until a new instance was attempted.  Oh, and I’m not even going to touch the moors implications as that will just make my head hurt 🙂  However, I don’t see these as a long term issue but a short term emergency tool.

Other than that, the store seems MUCH faster and responsive and they’ve cleaned things up quite a bit, but granted it could be that I just hopped on during a quiet time 🙂

I am starting to formulate my plan for what I’m going to be using the store for and will have a post on that soon.

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.

I will have a separate page on my blog for this information here, in a similar fashion to how I’m archiving forum posts..

And for comparisons, if you’d like to see what I’m currently wearing you can look at the MyLOTRO pages for my Warden, Captain, and Minstrel.

Most of the information below is from the following thread on the forums – Best in Slot Discussion and there’s also some other good stuff over on the Codemasters Forums. In addition there’s another good resource over on the LOTRO Gear site.

Finally, even though I’ve posted some other items that are coming with the F2P launch, I’ll add those in later in case they tweak them again.

Please let me know what I’ve missed 🙂

Earring

• Glowing Aureate Hoop of Combat – Crafted
• Tolloch – SG 3rd boss
• Bregloch – SG 3rd boss
• Ernil – Dungeons of Dol Guldur
• Certhloch – DN Mistress
• Diamond Stud – Igash in Grand Stairs
• Glowing Aureate Strand of Might – crafted

Bracelet

• Aglar-dor – HoC
• General Talug’s Gift – FG
• Insidious Cuff – Grand Stair
• Ninn-Ranc – Warg Pens
• Manadhechor – DN Mistress
• Lorechor – DN Istum
• Sergeant at Arms’s Armlet – rank 4 in Moors barter
• Peerless Turtle Shell Bracelet – crafted (with drop from Turtle)
• Glowing Aureate Armlet of Morale – crafted

Neck

• Necklace of the Wild Fire – Forges
• Tinc-Iaeth – HoC
• Mor-Gurth – SH HM
• Gond-Barad – BG LT Hardmode
• Warrior’s Greenwood Necklace – Crafted
• Glowing Aureate Strand of Might – crafted

Pocket

• Treasury Stone – Vile Maw
• Black Pearl – Vile Maw
• Memorial Plaque – FG
• Miniature Brass Anvil – HoC
• Painted Vane – GS
• Glass Flask – SG 4th Boss Hard Mode
• Guard’s Charm – Ally Standing with Iron Garrison Guards

Ring

• Ril-Mir – SG 4th boss
• Toringor – SG 2nd boss
• Glowing Aureate Band – Crafted
• Faeringor – DN Mistress
• Amber Ring – Forgotten Treasury
• Murb-khed – Vile Maw

Cloaks

• Pendevig-clog – Brumbereth on left side of Skumfil
• Cloak of Shadow and Flame – drop from last boss in Volume 2 6.8
• Saelchol – 1st boss of Warg-pens
• High Herald’s Hooded Cloak – crafted
• High Officer’s Hooded Cloak – crafted
• Heroic Noble’s Hooded Cloak – crafted
• Lothlorien Stalker’s Hooded Cloak – crafted
• Lothlorien Sentinel’s Hooded Cloak – crafted

Shields

• Superior Warden’s Shield of the Golden Host – crafted
• Superb Warden’s Shield of Lothlorien – crafted
• Bregram – Sword Halls
• Warden’s Shell Shield – Turtle Raid

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.

In addition check out Carlosjuero’s video showing some of the new UI tweaks over at LOTRO Reporter.  Many I had seen, but I totally missed that you can now color code your quest helper on the map overlay.  Good stuff and really walks through all the new tweaks available.

And finally but certainly not least I’ve been quite enjoying the video podcast published by the Uruk Hunter.  Not only some good information but he also does comment his videos quite well.

Go check those sites out if you haven’t already, and I’ve also updated my Blog roll appropriately.

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.

JWBarry breaks up the diary just like the raid so I’ll cover each wing separately.  Before I dive in too far, I must admit that I can’t wait to run this on my Warden!!!

The Spider wing was a pretty fun wing to begin with but they did shorten up the trash a bit.  They also added a new mob type the Spider-singer that buffs all the nearby spiders to make them more challenging.  Also in order to proceed you need to burn holes through the webs, which does tend to anger a fair number of spiders such that it isn’t just a matter of running through and killing stuff.  The Breosal mini-boss fight was tweaked such that there are more adds at the start and more come when Breosal runs away after the morale trigger.  It sounds as though the normal mode of the final boss fight is pretty much un-changed but the challenge mode sounds quite fun.  Essentially at the last wave of the Silkspinners you need to keep them alive while burning 4 cocoons, the last of which spawns Zaudru.  So you need to finish off all five in order to survive this encounter which sounds rather rough as just Zaudru alone is pretty darn challenging.

The Drake Wing was changed quite a bit to incorporate more mob diversity and better visual intrigue.  Also following what they’ve done in other instances, the lever puzzle has been tweaked to provide more feedback and better information on what needs to be done.  The final boss fight is now 3 stages as opposed to 2 with each having different levels of vulnerabilities and invulnerabilities on the Angmarim, worms, and drakes.  The challenge mode sounds INSANE as you need to pop ALL the eggs in the room to complete.  In the current room I’d say there are probably 50 some odd eggs, but I’m not sure how many will be in the new area.  Each egg popped spawns a handful of worms so this will be an AoE intensive fight for sure, Champs and Wardens get ready for some fun!

I have to agree that the Giant Wing was my least favorite portion of the raid as it just seemed to drag on forever with no real challenge.  I’m very happy about the new mobs and the addition of the min-boss fight.  If JWBarry’s pumped up about it I can’t wait to see it!  As for the main boss fight, it sounds interesting but I will admit I’m a bit worried about the challenge mode mechanics as it sounds like knockbacks could cause you to lose challenge mode.  It does require you to pay more attention which is a good thing, I’m just worried about lag causing you to be in the wrong place even though you think you’re good.

The Dragon Wing still has the three main areas, the drums, Drugoth, and Thorog.  The drums section which includes Coldbear pretty much was untouched and I certainly agree that if you can’t make it through the drums you’re in for a world of hurt.  I love the changes to Drugoth as it was a super easy portion of the raid.  Having the mirror images as you fight similar to Mordirith sounds not only challenging but a lot of fun.  Basically he will form copies at various morale thresholds but it wasn’t clear if they were 1 morale “spirits” like Mordirth or full up copies that you need to burn down.  I’m sad to see the Thorog flying mechanic gone but certainly if it was causing issues I’ll trust the team.  Removing the flying mechanic basically meant they had to re-work the entire fight.  Included in the new version are some of his old tricks plus some new things that JWBarry is saving for us to find.  Challenge mode is being designed to be the most difficult encounter in the game which is intriguing.  There are some pretty tricky parts in BG so I’ll be curious to see what else they come up with.  And I’m encouraged that they are conscious of folks not liking arbitrary or luck as key elements of fights.  Making this the hardest fight seems to be in-line with the recent changes to the radiance gear as the new Helegrod sets are pretty nice!  For those of you who haven’t seen the area or the original version of this fight check out my post on a recent adventure in Helegrod.

Overall it sounds like a very fun raid and I like the way they’re broken things up.  There are some areas of concern as I can imagine folks farming Thorog repeatedly for marks and the armor pieces.  Granted, it does require 24 people to complete so that is a bit more challenging but if you have that number ready I can see folks going for a couple runs at a time.  I’m also not sure about the knockback portion of the Giant Wing but will have to see how that plays out.  If definitely is good to see they are listening to the community and incorporating aspects of fights that we enjoy and not relying on things we don’t.  I was encouraged to see JWBarry talk about the Rift and the reasons why it hasn’t been tackled yet.  From what we’ve seen so far, that does sound like a big task but I can’t wait to see what they have planned for the Rift.  I’m also quite happy that he acknowledges that the Balrog fight is quite broken and will require work 😉

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Preparing to Raid – Radiance Gear

A combination of a few things got me thinking that it might be a good idea to actually post some of the specifics on how to prepare for raiding.  I cover some of the general topics on Episode 47 of the LOTRO Reporter Podcast but didn’t go into too many of the specifics.  The other piece that got me thinking on this subject was listening to the View from the Top Podcast (Episode 12 to be specific) where they were talking about gear progression in Everquest 2.  I’ve posted on armor sets previously (Warden and Captain Post and Minstrel Sets) but that was covering their stats, this post will purely talk about the radiance aspects of the sets and how you obtain them.

There is actually a pretty good page on the Lorebook covering the Radiance Armour which has many of the same specifics I’ll be posting here.  Also on the Lorebook you can find all the non-set pieces that have Radiance on them.  The nice part about sticking to just the Radiance aspect as it applies to everyone who wants to run the 12-man content and works exactly the same for every class.

You’ll want to start working on these sets as you get into your 50s and will most likely find it easiest to find groups for the Moria instance “The Grand Stairs” or GS as it is usually called.  However, now with the Meta-deed rewards for completing all of the instances there are incentives for folks to run all the instances so you may get lucky.  All of the boss chests from all of the Moria instances contain Medallions of Moria which can be bartered for the first available Radiance set.  This set is not only desirable because of the Radiance, but it is also still some of the best armour in the game for the stats.  Below I’ll break out how many coins you can get from each instance as well as how many coins are required for each piece.  You can also chat with your class trainer in the main towns in Moria, Lothlorien, and Mirkwood to see what sets are available and their associated costs.  Now the last two pieces of the set, the helm and shoulders, are obtained a little differently in that their barter piece only drops from the Watcher raid.

• Grand Stairs – 7 Medallions of Moria (10 for a full clear)
• Fil Gashan – 9 Medallions of Moria
• Forges of Khazad-Dum – 10 Medallions of Moria
• 16th Hall – 10 Medallions of Moria
• Skumfil – 10 Medallions of Moria
• Dark Delvings – 10 Medallions of Moria
• Turtle Raid – 3 Medallions of Moria

The armour set pieces are bartered in the following way:

• Gauntlets and Boots (+10 Radiance) – 10 Medallions of Moria
• Jacket and Leggings (+10 Radiance) – 25 Medallions of Moria
• Non Set Shoulders and Helm (+10 Radiance) – 15 Medallions of Moria
• Set Shoulders and Helm (+20 Radiance) – Platinum Coin of Spirit from the Watcher

To clarify this a bit, the Medallions are rewarded to every player in the group but the the Coins are a reward that you’ll have to win the roll on to get.  Usually for the Watcher a couple of Coins will drop, but for the raids going forward usually it is one coin for easy mode and a second coin for Hard (or challenge) mode.

Moving on from Moria to Lothlorien there are 2 sets that you can barter for here.  The instances that drop the Medallions of Lothlorien are the Mirror-halls (3-man), the Water Wheels (3-man) and the Halls of Crafting (6-man).  I believe the first 2 instances can drop a maximum of 6 coins but I’m not 100% sure on that, but I do know that the Halls of Crafting yields 10 Medallions upon completing Hard mode.  All three of these instances are part of the Epic Quest line (Volume 2 Book 8) so you will not only want to do them but should be able to find groups running the instances as well.  Also, HoC is a pretty popular instance to run as it does have some nice jewelry drops in it.  The first armor set from Lothlorien is just a 3 piece set with each piece providing +15 Radiance.

• Jacket – 25 Medallions of Lothlorien
• Leggings – 15 Medallions of Lothlorien
• Gloves – 10 Medallions of Lothlorien

There is also a Barter Exchange Trader up on the main flet in Lothlorien that will trade 10 Medallions of Moria for 1 Medallion of Lothlorien if you find yourself with left-overs.  This also provides people with incentives to run the Moria instances as they can trade in for more useful Medallions for characters already at the level cap.  Now the second set is a full six piece set with each piece providing +20 radiance but those barter coins only drop from the 12 man raid Dar Narbugud.

Finally we’ll move on to Mirkwood where there are again 2 different sets you can barter for.  However, you do also have the option to barter for the same 3-piece set from Lothlorien using the Medallions of Dol-Guldur if you find those are easier to obtain.  There are 3 3-man instances in Mirkwood which I believe all drop 6 Medallions for Hard mode completion.  Those instances are Sword Halls, the Warg Pens, and the Dungeons of Dol Guldur but like Moria you will find that most people with mainly do Sword Halls as it is quite easy and quick.  You can also get 10 tokens from the 6-man instance Sammuth Gul if you can complete that in Hard mode with the added benefit of some nice jewelry drops and the Symbol required for crafting level 65 second age Legendary Items.  There also is a pair of heavy armor gloves (Rochben) that drop from SG with +25 Radiance so you might keep your eyes out for them if you’re a heavy armor wearing class.  The cost for the Lothlorien 3-piece set is the same as I mentioned above with the other 3-piece set providing +25 Radiance:

• Boots – 15 Medallions of Dul Guldur
• Shoulders – 20 Medallions of Dul Guldur
• Helm – 25 Medallions of Dul Guldur

The 6 piece set is similar to the Lothlorien 6 piece set in that it only drops from the 12-man raid Barad Guldur with each piece providing +30 radiance.

As it stands currently, only the 3 12-man raids require radiance:

• the Watcher – +60 required, +80 desired
• Dar Narbugud – +80 required, +100 desired
• Barad Guldur – +120 required, +140 desired

Now 2 things to keep in mind with regards to Radiance:

• Gloom (the opposite of Radiance) rounds down so if you have +75 Radiance that’s equivalent to +80.
• Both DN and BG do have places where the gloom will start to increase so the more Radiance you have the better off you’ll be.  If you’re sitting at the minimum it is usually a good idea to buy another +10 Radiance (well technically Hope) using Destiny points but remember those can only be purchased while out of combat.

Hopefully this provides a pretty good idea of what Radiance gear is out there, where and how much is needed, and the various ways to obtain it.  Feel free to let me know if you have any questions or other things to add to this topic.

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Captains Roundtable Live Tonight!

In case you missed the post from a Casual Stroll to Mordor I will be participating in another roundtable tonight, this time focusing on Captains. If you can join us live at 9pm Eastern (-5GMT) there will be a live chat room where you can participate.  The link for the chat room information is either on CStM’s live page or on the LOTRO Network. Or you can feel free to post questions here or on their thread, or email one of us if you have specific questions or topics you’d like us to cover.  It will be a similar format to the Warden roundtable.

And if you can’t make it live, we’ll both be posting when it it released.

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My first encounter with the Lieutenant

So I ended up getting a rare Sunday evening play time and was able to fill in for my kinship’s BG raid.  Now this was the second day, so they had already cleared out Durchest and the Twins, so sadly I still have yet to successfully defeat those two encounters.  However, the LT was an interesting and very fun battle.  I probably ended up making a few mistakes, but I will admit there’s just so much stuff going on in that fight.  I’ve read up on the fight, but there’s only so much that will help until you actually get a chance to see the fight live.

Leading up to the top of the tower there is quite a bit of trash, most of it is similar to previous encounters with the Mace and Axe guys.  The only real tricky part there is not getting stunned around the same time as the Fire Axe does his death explosion as that’s just rather nasty.  However, that hopefully only takes out one or two people and the others should be able to take out the Mace relatively easily.

The other nasty mob are the lights, which aren’t too bad, they’re just annoying.  They bring extra dread as well as periodic AoEs that are preceded by big stuns.  They also have AoE fears which cause you to run off in random directions, and I’ll admit this is quite strange the first time it happens to you 🙂

So it does take quite a while to get up to the top, but once you do it actually is a breath-taking view.  Unfortunately the forest and such below doesn’t have quite the high-quality texture that the rest of the game does but I still thought it was a pretty nifty view.   We did also get a chance for a group pose while we waited for the GM 🙂

Now technically we didn’t get him down as we had a few fill-ins (including myself) but did end up killing the fell-beast as for some reason the Lt. never dismounted like he is supposed to.  That’s how I was able to get the snaps, as we sorta broke the instance and had time before a GM could reset things for us.  I must say, it really didn’t take all that long for them to respond which was pretty nice.

As for the fight itself, it is pretty chaotic to say the least.  The main things to worry about are the dreaded eye-balls on top of your head.  There’s a purple one that is a nasty DoT that can also spread so you need to get away from the group.  There’s also a yellow one which is the fell-beast hits you while that mark is on you it will heal for 10-20K morale for each hit.  So, if you get the purple mark you just run away to the edge of healing radius but you shouldn’t have to worry too much.  But, for the yellow you’ll need to kite around such that the fell-beast doesn’t get near you.  There are also a few slows that can be annoying as well as areas of purple poo that are additional DoTs and just general not fun areas to be around.  Now the real fun is when you get both eyes, but luckily that doesn’t happen all that much.  There’s there’s also the frontal AoE “roar” the fell-beast does that’s pretty nasty as well so you really need to pay attention to where you’re standing and what’s going on.  The other mechanic is there’s a huge ICPR reduction from the Lt, but hitting the fell-beast does also return some power so there’s the potential to maintain a healthy power pool

Another important thing is right by where we posed as a group there’s actually a hidden “wall” that blocks you from hugging the wall to run around, and it is mirrored on the other side of the door too.  We’re thinking this is due to the chests, but just be aware that if you’re kiting around the wall you’ll need to move a bit towards the center to avoid that blockage.

I did end up parsing this fight, but it is a bit hard to get through as each time he flies up (about every 30-50K of morale) is split out as a separate encounter.  So for the times I was chilling in melee range I was up between 150 and 200 DPS, but that drops off dramatically to around 80 or so when I’m just using ranged attacks.

I’m really looking forward to running this some more, and I’d love to get in there with a bit more radiance (I just have 120) as that makes a big difference.  I also hope to get my minstrel and Captain geared up but that’s another post 🙂

Warden hopes and dreams

So with all the Tell the Community Threads of late (Captains, and today’s Guardian), I figured I’d get ahead of the game here and post what I’d like to see for our beloved class.  Most likely these ideas aren’t new or original, but I thought I’d toss out some ideas and provide a means for others to share as well.  I will also be adding these when they post the Warden TtCT, but figured I’d get people’s juices flowing ahead of time.

First up for me is power reduction.  I think the main area is with our builders so any mechanism that can cut down on those costs would be quite welcome.  We have a number of ways to reduce the power costs of gambits, but they’re just a small portion of our overall usage.  If any (or all) of these would apply to the builders as well as the gambits it would make a HUGE difference as I rip through power even with 1400 ICPR, critted Tier 6 food, and sucking power pots whenever possible.  I realize the masteries do help cut down some but I will admit there are quite a few times when all my masteries are on cool-down, granted I only slot 2 so that might be part of it.  I just don’t think we should be forced to slot masteries to remain power efficient.  And yes, I know probably I should slow down some but I don’t see any class having to throttle down nearly as much as we do to not run out of power.

Another area I’d like to see tweaked are our legacies in that most of our legacies (except for the welcome new ones with Mirkwood) are single gambit legacies.  Now while these are good, I’d really like to see them apply the gambit line logic they introduced with Mirkwood to damage and threat legacies in place now.  Sadly this may require a complete overhaul of the legacies, but I can still dream can’t I?

Another area that I feel needs to be addressed is that I’d like to have the same travel options as the hunter.  And I don’t mean a group port, I just want a muster to places like Forochel 🙂  I don’t think there are that many places we don’t have, and in all honesty Forochel may be the only one I really care about – well, that and Angmar.

We really need to get rid of the Skill and Power trait as for the most part I like our traits, but this one serves absolutely zero purpose.  I’m of the opinion that if you’re using the Gambit Default (or not a valid gambit built) you’re doing it wrong.  Something like increased DoT damage on the Power Line would be MUCH better and still not terribly overpowered.

And finally, I was originally advocating something like a threat catch-up skill for if we happen to die mid-fight (Durchest fight for example).  I put this last as I can sort of understand why we don’t have it, as this provides an area where Guardians shine, and this problem can be mitigated with good champions dumping agro to you.  However, I’d like to see some sort of a compromise where maybe we don’t just to the top of the threat list but perhaps a threat regeneration where we sacrifice some amount of damage output or power to get us back to the threat level we were at before we died.

What about the rest of you, what do you wish for our class?

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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:

I ended up getting punted into the sticky walls and hanging out there for a bit 🙂  Since we were all well over-leveled it didn’t really matter but I can imagine for an on-level group that could be a bit of a problem.

Thursday was back into BG for another run at Durchest.  We’re still struggling with him and are trying to figure out what’s going on.  It may be something we’re doing (or not doing) on the tanking side, but that appears to be working properly for the most part until one of us dies.  I’ve looked at a couple of videos including this one showing hard mode but nothing terribly obvious has jumped out at us.  Maybe we’re just missing a combination of small things that when build up cause serious issues.  The other forum post I noticed which I thought was interesting was the following on Durchest’s heal. He has a heal that happens when someone in the raid dies, but he can actually store those up and save them for when he hits 100K.  Rather annoying, but does account for some seemingly random healing.

But all the struggles in BG have caused me to check out my Warden to make sure she’s at least properly geared out.  I ended up switching out Tolerance as looking at my logs I really don’t take that much tactical damage for Valor which gives me a pretty nice morale boost.  I then switched over to the Lothlorien Stalker’s cloak from the Lothlorien Preserver’s Cloak which cost me a bit of Might in exchange for power and fate.  I’m then going to see if I can get lucky and crit on the Greenwood necklace on my jeweler as that will be another morale booster plus some incoming healing, in exchange for some agility.  I also was checking out the various crafted relics and realize I need to find a supreme master cook who has kindred reputation with the crafting guild to make me the +100 morale rune as mine currently aren’t all that great.  I prefer that over the +20 vitality ones (which for tanks provide the same morale boost) as with my current stats I get real close to the stat cap when fully buffed.  I also need to get some more work in on relic grinding as the ones I’m using could stand to be a bit better.  With all these changes, I should be able to get my morale around 7400 and power at 2350 without buffs and without sacrificing my other stats too much.  Feel free to check out my character page and let me know if you see anything I could swap out.

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LOTRO Community Projects and News

So there’s been a number of new (or maybe just new to me) projects and updates from the various community outlets and I wanted to highlight a few of them.

First up is another video from the EveNArtworkS folks I mentioned in a previous post with their amazing Warden video, this time highlighting one of my favorite classes to group with – the Loremaster! If you haven’t seen either of these, I highly recommend them as they do a great job of mixing the beauty of LOTRO with the music and the uniqueness of each class.

@Veneration has been pretty active of late not only putting together good forum resources for new players but also in launching and updating the LOTRO Network. This is a community site for sharing all sorts of LOTRO related videos as well as the site for the live stream of the LOTRO Reporter. @Veneration also has been streaming various in-game events like runs through the MIrkwood instance Sammath Gul.  All of the live streaming events are usually announced through twitter so it might be worth following those guys if you want to catch things live.  I usually try to catch the live cast of the LOTRO Reporter as its a good time with the folks in the chat-room.

I’ve talked numerous times about the tool CStats including recently on my post about my BG raid experience and there’s now a community resource not only for the continuation of the tool but also for sharing your logs.  If you’re interested in looking at others logs or in posting your own head over to the Lord of the Logs site. I’ve posted a couple and will be posting more as I get in a better habit of parsing my fights 🙂

The folks over at LOTRO Weekly continue to put out high quality stuff, and this is no exception as they’ve released the beta of a LOTRO Crafting Calculator.  This will allow you to see exactly how many materials you will need to craft whatever you’re working on.  There are some tricky things as there’s no way to account for crits or the way Farming works, but it really is a handy resource.  They’re still finishing it off, so it might not have every tier for every profession but I wish something like this was around when I started crafting!

And last but certainly not least, for all you fellow bloggers and podcasters you might want to check out Lunna’s forums post titled “Advice for new bloggers” as there’s not only good advice in her post but the thread has quite a few good nuggets in it.

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