Well, it’s always exciting when new stuff comes out, and Mirkwood is no exception. I’m excited about what I’ve seen in Beta, and I can’t wait to do it all for real.

I have to say, one of the things I’m most excited about is the state of our kinship as we head into the expansion. A year ago, we were just about to take our first steps into Moria (or Eregion at least). I think we had 7 or 8 active members at or near level 50 ready to explore the unknown. The problem was that those 7 or 8 people were all hunters, champs, and Loremasters (and one captain alt). Not one guardian. Not one minstrel. Not one burglar. Of course Wardens and RKs weren’t around yet. Yeah…we headed into Moria with no tanks or healers. It soon became apparent that we were going to need help if we were going to be able to do the things we wanted to do (epic books and instance runs, in particular).

Now, it’s not that we didn’t have friends. We did. We had minstrel and guardian friends. People that were willing to lend us a hand. People that helped us through many, many, many runs in our first several weeks in Moria. We didn’t like having to rely on others, and it was very stressful for us to always be asking for help. After a couple months I got Lod leveled and that helped us finally be able to run some stuff.

A year later…look at our kin! Not only do we have players of every class, we have duplication! Sure, we still have a lot of hunters and champs…but we also have minstrels, guards, captains, RKs, and burgs! We have more active members than we’ve ever had. Of course, many of us have multiple level 60s to switch between as well. So, I’m really happy with where we are at this point in the game.

Best of all, I love the people in this kin. Moria wasn’t exactly kind to small kinships of semi-casual players. There was all sorts of pressure to leave to join a “raiding” kin. Perhaps we failed miserably at our many attempts to be small-kin raiders, but I’m so grateful that we stuck together to get to this point. I’m glad to be here, with my great friends, ready to see where the path leads next. There’s a place for us in Mirkwood, and we are ready to make the most of it!

I’ve been experimenting with making videos of some of my in-game activities.  I was amazed that my computer could handle such an endeavor…which it does, but just barely.  Here’s my first complete video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sElRfcZYmpM

Well, there have been some big changes and even bigger announcements that have a major impact on us “end-gamers”.  In particular, they relate to the activities most of us have been neck deep in for the past several months: obtaining radiance gear and leveling legendary items.  Things are changing and undoubtedly some people will like the changes and others will hate them.  First, let’s take a look at the changes.

I’ll start with the legendary item changes since those are already live in the game.  Basically, level 60 second age legendaries are now craftable.  I imagine this has been in the works for some time.  I wondered why there was no barter system for second ages put in place when they added the first-age barter coins.  I’m guessing they decided to make second ages craftable at that point, but it takes longer to get all those recipes made up than it does to make some barter coins and a new vendor.  That also explains why such a major change was added in a patch rather than with a book.  I imagine that with the frustration that the community has shown recently, Turbine wisely decided to throw us a bone rather than put it off to the next book. 

Along with the new second ages is a nifty set of quests that give massive amounts of IXP so we can level up those sweet legendaries relatively quickly.  They are especially fun since they take you out of the dreary caverns of Moria and back out into old familiar places we may not have visited in a long time (although travel can get tedious without a hunter).  Some sunshine and fresh air is always good for morale.

The next major change is to the system for obtaining radiance gear.  This is still in the works and there’s no ETA at this point, but it sounds like it is definitely on its way in the not-to-distant future.  Instead of current system where you complete a hard-mode instance and get a single barter coin to trade for a specific piece of armour, you will collect medallions which can be turned in for the various armour pieces.  Medallions will drop for every fellowship member and will drop from multiple bosses in the each instance.  Completing hard mode will result in extra medallions dropping.  I imagine medallions can also be exchanges for other rewards for those who have all their radiance gear or don’t want it.

Ultimately, this means two things.  One is that everyone in the fellowship gets something out of a run.  No one has to worry about having bad rolls and not winning their coin after running a zillion times.  More importantly, it means you can run whatever instance or instances you want to get your radiance gear.  It will be faster if you complete hard modes (and probably more medallions will drop from harder instances), but you will not be forever locked out of finishing your radiance set because everyone you know would rather jump off a bridge than do 16th hall again.

So…what is this all really going to mean us?  For me, this is a huge relief.  I’ve been torn the past several months trying to reconcile my goals in this game.  On a personal level, what I want to do more than anything else is get together with my kinmates and friends and work on beating the Watcher.  I also have a responsibility to my kinmates to help enable them to accomplish their goals in the game.  This is something that is very important to me because I want everyone to be able to have fun and enjoy the game.  It’s been very difficult to accomplish both.  On one hand, I have friends and kinmates that are devoted to getting their rad gear.  On the other, I have kinmates and friends that have no interest in raiding and just want to do the quests or just try an instance they’ve never done before.

This becomes somewhat of a logistical problem.  If we are doing a hard-mode run in an instance that one of my kinmates of lesser talent would like to partake in, and I don’t think that person is really capable of completing hard mode, I’m put in a tough spot.  Do I blow of my friend who wants to go because I think we won’t be able to finish hard mode?  Do I let that person come knowing that we probably won’t get a coin?  If we do end up completing hard mode, do I tell my non-raiding friend he can’t roll on the coin just because I don’t think he’s going to bother getting the rest of the set?  Who am I to be setting all these rules?  What if we are doing GS or Skumfil where completing the quests and completing hard mode are mutually exclusive? 

The other agonizing aspect of the way things have played out over the past few months is simply the inability to get a group together for the Watcher.  Without Watcher runs, there’s no incentive for people to get gear.  Without people with gear, there are no Watcher runs.  We’ve been trying to break out of this conundrum to no avail.  We get almost a full group together, but in the process of getting the last few people we need geared, an equal number of the original people find another avenue to Watcher runs or otherwise take themselves out of the picture.  I can’t blame them, but it is extremely frustrating.

About the third time I rounded this circle…after getting myself and my kinmates geared…and our alts geared….and getting some allies geared…and having the allies go elsewhere…and gearing up friends…and having the friends join different kins…and over and over…I got completely burnt out on doing runs for people.  The pressure of having to go in every time with only two outcomes…pass or fail…is not fun.  I actually liked DD the first few times I ran it.  But you can only leave without a rad coin so many times before you start hating wasting all that time and money on repairs and getting nothing from it.  I’m thrilled that there will be rewards at each stage of the instance.  We may not get all of what we hoped for, but we will at least have something to show for our efforts. 

Finally, I like the fact that we will be able to choose our poison.  Let’s face it, most of the time a fellowship is made up of the first six people that agree to go.  We switch around alts to make sure we’ve got the necessary classes and off we go.  If it happens that we have a strong group that’s up for a challenge, we can do a harder instance.  If it’s a weaker group, we can do an easier one.

One of the arguments I’ve seen is that “everyone” will just farm the easiest and quickest path to the medallions.  I won’t dispute that a lot of medallions will undoubtedly be obtained in the easiest way possible.  When you are faced with something that is “required”, that’s what you do.  You try to get it done and out of the way as fast as possible so you can get on to something that is fun.  What is fun?  Having a full set of radiance gear is not, in itself, fun. The fun part is playing the game!  Are we all going to skip right to the Watcher?  Um…hardly.  Maybe once a week when everyone can be on together for a while to work on it.  The rest of the week we’ll be looking for other things to do.  Things like fun, challenging instances.  That is what we are trying to do, isn’t it?  DD is a lot more fun without the pass/fail requirement.  It’s fun when you aren’t looking to have to do it dozens of times.  It’s fun when you can take along your less-experienced friends and let them learn without risking the utter failure of the expedition. 

Anyway, this is all a complex issue.  I think these changes are for the better.  I hope that it will help get us to where we can have regular watcher runs.  I think the flexibility will really help make running these instances fun again.  I think fun is why we are here. 

Last night in HoC, someone pointed out that, at least amongst our group of friends, there are quite a number of people that have a hunter and a minstrel as their main characters. We thought of at least a half dozen friends off the top of our heads that have level 60 minstrels and hunters. Most of those people had a hunter and a minstrel as their only 60s, although a few have others. I can’t think of another combo that is as common.

I really don’t know how this came to be, but there are a few observations I’ve made.

1) Similarity in solo play: both hunters and minnies are somewhat squishy. You try to use CC when you can (traps and fears for hunters/fear and distract for minstrels). You try to burn something down as fast as possible before it can do too much harm. Healing yourself while soloing is iffy, so dps is almost as important to a minstrel soloing as it is to a hunter. Minstrels are a bit better in terms of surviveability because you can usually get off at least some healing if you need it.

2) Comfort zone in group play: this may seem kind of trivial, but hunters and minstrels tend to stand in about the same places when grouping. In range to help, but (hopefully) out of range to get into too much trouble. That being said, your view of a battle is the same for a hunter or a minstrel. That’s one of the things I have the hardest time getting used to playing melee classes…I can’t see what’s going on!

3) Different enough to make it interesting: unless you are a dps minstrel, a hunter and minstrel have very different roles to play in a fight. As a hunter, I’m very much focused on what the baddies are doing. Which one are we targetting? Is there one shooting the minstrel? What’s that buff this guy’s got? Eek…that one is mezzed…better be careful. The only time I look at the health bars of my team is when I need to watch for poisons. Mostly I’m just watching big numbers float off the top of the baddies’ heads as I pew pew pew. Of course, as a minstrel, just about all I look at is health bars. I always know exactly who is getting hit and how hard. I get a feel for the various wounds/poisons/etc and how urgently they need to be removed. The only time I pay much attention to the baddies is if there are corruptions I can remove. A single battle is almost two completely different things depending on whether I’m minstreling or huntering, and that is fun. It also means that I can understand fights all that much better because I’ve seen them from different perspectives.

4) Flexibility in grouping: Most of the time, we run instances because we pull together 6 people want to go (or are at least willing to.) Usually one or two people need it for a particular character, so those are set. Another person might only have one chracter, so that is set. The rest of us just pick whichever character is the most help for a group. A minstrel is almost a necessity for a group. Having a minstrel available means you never have to call a run off due to a lack of healing. On the other hand, having 2 minstrels in a 6-man group is usually not beneficial. So, having something OTHER than a minstrel to switch to is also really helpful. A hunter can fill an empty spot in any group once the healer and tank are in place. Anywhere from 0 to 3 hunters in a group is fine for just about any instance. So, whether it’s “Get LOD!!!” or “Eh, you can take Sonz, I guess,” there’s a spot for me.

5) Fun to play: ultimately, both Sonz and Lod are great fun to play. Initially I was nervous about getting Lod up to level 60. On one hand, we had no high level minstrels in the kin and we were relying on others to heal for us. This was quite stressful for us, partly because we were often unable to do runs we wanted to do, but also because we felt like we were taking advantage of the generosity of our healer friends. It wasn’t fun begging for help all the time. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure I’d be up to the task of healing. Starting my career as a healer at level 60 in Moria was frightening to say the least. I was really afraid that I’d be awful and we’d be no better off. I was also afraid I wouldn’t enjoy it and would only be doing it because I had to rather than because I wanted to. Luckily that did not turn out to be the case. I’m thankful that I have such awesome friends that were patient and supportive of me while I figured out what the heck I was doing. Once I got my feet under me and stopped feeling like every death or wipe was my fault, I really started to have fun healing. I’d even go as far as to say that playing Lod is more fun in groups than Sonsy is. In fact, sometimes it’s more frustrating on Sonsy when things start getting ugly and there’s not much I can do about it.

So, I can’t speak for all the other hunter-minstrels out there, but that’s my perspective on having these two classes as mains!

-Sonsy

I’ve mentioned before that although Ferg and I are married, we typically don’t play together all that much because we have playstyles that differ quite a bit. I thought I’d expound upon that a bit because our approaches to fights tend to lie at different points on a spectrum of options that face every group that enter battle in this game.

In particular, our difference of opinion tends to revolve around fights that we’ve done several times and we know we can beat relatively easily even if we make some mistakes. If I had my way, every time we did a fight, we’d strive to perfect our strategy and execution. We’d let the tank establish aggro. Have off-tanks pick up adds to protect squishies. Make use of crowd control. Use the best buffs and debuffs we have available to us. Set an FM and try to get it right. All of that stuff. In my way of thinking, doing it by the book not only gives us the best chance of success, but also keeps us sharp for the harder fights that we do have trouble with. If we are already doing all these things normally, we have a great starting point to attempt a new boss. It gives us a strong baseline that we can make adjustments to as needed.

At the other end of the spectrum is the fact that fights get boring after you’ve done them a few times. You get an adrenaline rush when you feel like you are fighting for your life and that the outcome of the fight depends on your quick thinking. The thrill of winning a close fight is what makes playing a game like this fun. Consciously or subconsciously, we try to recreate that feeling in old fights by seeing what corners we can cut and still win. If it’s by the skin of our teeth, then all the better. If we lose, then we laugh at ourselves for being noobs and go back and do it the right way. Although it goes against my typical approach that “perfect practice makes perfect”, I do recognize the value in the fact that playing “on the edge” teaches you to think on your feet and make use of some of those skills you always thought were useless.

So, I tend to get frustrated if, say, we get to a room full of baddies that we know will all aggro on us once we enter and, instead of rooting them like we’ve done successfully the past 10 times, the champs decide to just run in and start blendering things and hope for the best. Inevitibly, I’m playing Lod and the champs are in Fervour…and their decision suddenly becomes MY problem. The hunters and LMs shrug and sigh, knowing they could have made this all much easier if they’d been given 5 seconds to set up and root…but oh well.

Now, in the grand scheme of things, I wouldn’t say that Ferg and I are on the complete opposite sides of this spectrum. There are many people way further off to one side or the other than we are. We’re probably moderates that lean in a particular direction. At the far end of my side are the raid leaders that dictate exactly what each person does at every point in the fight, exactly which skills you must use, exactly how you must be traited, and exactly where you need to stand. Anything less than perfect execution means failure. If one person does something out of line, they call the fight off…leave the instance or whatever…and start over. We’ve had people suggest this on the turtle…if things aren’t going well at the start of the fight we should all drop group and start from the beginning. I don’t agree with this viewpoint at all. There are plenty of opportunities to turn a fight around. A lucky crit or a well-timed FM can give you just enough to pull a victory out of a doomed fight.

Also somewhere on this end of the spectrum are hunters that set a trap before the turtle fight…outside the gate. Just because, well, that’s what they always do before every fight. Nevermind that the turtle isn’t rootable and the gate closes so there’s no way it could even GET to the trap in the first place. It’s valuable to have a routine…but you have to understand why you are doing it and be able to adjust to the circumstances.

On the other end are the hardcore PvPers that despise PvE for its scripted predictability. Doing the same fight twice is bad enough…but doing it a dozen times is unbearable. They see it as merely a typing test rather than actual gameplay. They thrive on not knowing what’s around the corner and living or dying based on their quick-thinking, familiarity with their suite of skills, and trust in their friends.

PvP is just too random for me. I am a problem solver, so puzzling through the solution to beating a boss is fun to me. It’s not fun if I can’t learn from my experience and try to do it better next time, because there is no “next time”. It’s just an exercise in futility in my mind.

Now, I’m in no way saying that any of this is the “right” or “wrong” way to play. In fact, this is a game that we play for fun, and all of these ways of playing are perfectly legitimate. Everyone has the opportunity to find what is the most fun for them. I don’t find either of the extremes to be fun at all, but some people do.

I’m also not saying that there are irreconcilable differences which keep Ferg and I from playing together. We’ve done just about every instance, raid, or quest in the game together at some point or another, and many on a regular basis. In fact, the trio of me, Ferg, and Mal is my favorite core group for doing anything in the game. Mal…a reformed pvper…plays a fair amount further down on that end of the scale than Ferg does. If nothing else, the “why have strategy when you have dps?” strategy keeps life interesting! There are other people we play with regularly that are firmly planted on my end of the spectrum as well. West is definitely an advocate for getting our ducks in a row before we start a fight. Making sure everyone knows what is going to happen, has the right pots, has the raid assist target and FMs set up, eat, Focus, etc. I like having West in my group because Ferg and Mal listen to him better than they listen to me!

Is it any accident that we play the classes we do? West and I both have a hunter and minstrel as our main characters. Hunters require planning before entering any fight. Minstrels are the ones who have to save everyone’s hides when something goes wrong. (Of course, hunters and minstrels are both popular and effective in the moors, so clearly the way we play our classes may be as much of a factor as the classes themselves.)

Mal and Ferg both have champs and RKs…classes that lend themselves to a “kill or be killed” approach.

Then there’s Kenn. He doesn’t care so much which end of the spectrum we tread on, as long as we are doing it together. Is it any coincidence that his two main characters are a loremaster and a captain? Both of those classes have skills that play important parts in a planned fight, but they also have powerful abilities that can be implemented on the fly to save fight gone bad. He’s got all the bases covered.

Anyway…I don’t know that there’s a moral to this story. Just an acknowledgement that people have different ways of playing and there are benefits and virtues to them all. It can be frustrating sometimes to play with others who are too far away from you on the spectrum, but it can also be a learning experience. My comfort zone is with preparing, planning ahead, and then executing that plan. However, I won’t deny that learning to think on my feet has made me a better player.

I guess the best of both worlds is to maintain good habits, plan, and strategize, but also know what all your options are and learn to be flexible and adjust when the unexpected occurs.

-Sonsy

Well, the kin contest is over. We did great, unofficially finishing 9th place on Firefoot out of over 360 participating kins! Gratz to all PotF who created a character and contributed points to the kin.

Now I have a lot of sleep and maintenance on my characters to work on. I pushed Bell through her next level in crafting just so she could learn some of the recipes I sent to her from Pwnie. Bell had so many that she couldn’t even get the last dozen or so out of her mailbox! Sunn and Tenn will need similar attention, I think.

Sonsy and Lod mainly need to restock on consumables and money after running several weeks of turtle runs with no other income.

Right now it’s just getting everyone ready for whatever book 8 has to throw at us. From the previews, I really love what they are doing to many things. Crafting, Bree, and the First-age LI barter system are great improvements.

Sadly, it looks like the raiding situation is not going to be much different than it is now. It may end up being even worse. It appears that getting radiance gear from the new instances will require each person to run each one 4-6 times to collect enough tokens. I think that makes it even harder for the people with limited time to get their gear. Of course, it might not even matter….

If we ever do get to the Watcher, we are facing an increase of 10 to 20 gloom. Sure, the Watcher’s dread is going down by 10, but the Balrog chain is having its radiance decreased by 20! That puts us 10 in the hole already. If we decide that it’s just not worth running the Rift for 10 radiance, that gets us 20 in the hole. Somehow I just don’t think having a longer transition from phase 2 to phase 3 is going to make up for the collective hit to our health and dps.

Oh, and the turtle is going to be harder too with no Enrage and Champs not being able to use Fervour (I don’t know about anyone else, but I just can’t make up the 30% healing penalty).

I dunno…I’m just not dealing with this situation very well at all. I really had so much fun doing the Rift and I really miss it. They’ve wiped out my opportunities to raid with the way things are set up. I met so many great people on Firefoot doing the Rift. It’s just not the same in a 5 minute turtle fight. I barely even get to know the names of the people in the raid before it’s over.

The sad part is that I like so many aspects of the game, and so many of the people I know here. I don’t want to let this one thing ruin it for me. Wanting to raid and not being able to has been taking its toll on me. I really dread getting all excited about the new instances and opportunities in book 8 only to end up with even more radiance gear, but still on the outside looking in on the raids.

Is it even worth bothering with? I have nothing to show for the hundreds of hardmode runs I’ve done. How much more do I really want to put into this if nothing will ever come of it? If all the future raids require radiance gear from the previous raid, will I ever have a chance? If I can’t get from step 1 to step 2, is there any point in even pursuing this any further? It’s hard to let go…but being frustrated all the time is no good. Is it time to officially take my name off the list of people who want to raid? There’s just no point in getting so worked up about something I can’t get, no matter how much I want it.

-Sonsy

I remember back in October in the weeks before Moria came out. I was part of a multi-kin raiding group, that although new, was really starting to gel in our weekly Rift runs. We were having a blast learning to work together as a group, with the veterans doing a fantastic job bringing along us noobs. We were eagerly looking forward to the Moria release and getting together for the radiance instances and the Watcher.

But, somehow on the way from level 50 to level 60, the group lost focus and dissolved. I hit level 60 in mid-December, less than a month after Moria opened. With few around that were ready to do radiance runs, I switched to leveling Lod and picked up rad runs where I could.

January and February were really busy for rad runs as people started to trickle in at level 60 and wanted a shot at the Watcher. We were in a kin alliance at that point and we were all helping gear everyone up. Once the ball was rolling, it didn’t take too long to get 6/6 radiance on both Sonz and Lod.

Just when we were on the cusp of being able to get a Watcher group together, that alliance dissolved.

Since then, it’s been an endless battle just trying to get together 12 people at any given time that have enough radiance to even attempt the Watcher. It seems like just when we get someone geared up, they either join a new kin that does their own raids, or run into real-life obligations that prevent them from raiding. So, while I’ve probably done well over a hundred radiance runs, I somehow never seem to have more than 8 or so people available for a Watcher attempt. Even then, there’s probably only 5 or so that would be able to make a weekly run on a regular basis. The rest rotate and wander in and out of the picture.

This is further compounded by the fact that we need to run the Rift to get the hope chain every time we do the Watcher. That adds several hours to each attempt and further cuts the number of people that have enough time to commit to this thing. I think that cuts us down to 3 people that are on together enough to even try this thing.

Interestingly, all of these hurdles have nothing to do with how hard the watcher is itself. Since Moria was released, I’ve only had 2 opportunities to even try it. One was on Watcher 1.0 that usually runs kin-only raids and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to fill a spot for them. The other was with SuperPUG a few weeks back. Both events ended in utter failure and massive repair bills.

So much time and effort put in…and for what? Nuthin. At least in the Rift if you wiped on the Balrog, you still had all the goodies from the rest of the bosses to bring home! Geez, even if you wiped on Barz you had a few silver and some vendor trash from the mobs leading up to him, and maybe even a mushroom to turn in for the quest. With the Watcher it’s absolutely nothing. Just back to the Rift the following week to get another hope chain and cry that we are having to trash Rift coins because no one needs them anymore.

So…what started with a lot of excitement and optimism has really just turned into a lot of frustration. Book 8 looks like more of them same. Watcher is rumored to be getting easier…but I still don’t have enough people to go. Then there’s the new raid that needs even more radiance gear.

I dunno…this gear gating thing has really closed the door on me completely as far as raiding goes. I just can’t see that I’ll ever get to the point where we have enough people with enough radiance gear to give any of this a serious go.

The thing is, I’m not the only one with this problem. There’s a list on the forums of the kins that down the Watcher on a regular basis. The list is up to 37 last time I looked. The only one on Firefoot is Revs. There are a few others that have taken the Watcher 2.0 down once or twice, and a few others who are still actively trying. I don’t know how many kins there are on Firefoot. There are about 260 kins that show up on the contest list, but that only includes kins with new characters created since the contest began. There are probably well over 1000 kins on Firefoot. Even if we say that the 260 is somewhat representative of the number of active kinships…one out of 260 can beat the watcher, and maybe 10-12 others are even trying? That is simply absurd. There are a LOT of us that would like the opportunity to work at beating the Watcher, but SO many of us are barred from it not because of the level of difficulty, but because of logistical issues.

I dunno…I’m sure Turbine has the numbers on how many people are attempting this and how many are succeeding. I don’t know that they can determine how many of us are ready and willing to go, but can’t. (Er…and screw all the a$$holes that say we shouldn’t be even given the chance cuz we’re not leet enough. Sorry, but that has SERIOUSLY gotten under my skin lately.)

I guess I just don’t know where to go from here. Except for turtle runs, I haven’t been doing anything with Sonsy or Lod lately other than the occasional radiance run. I got burnt out on repeatable quests for Lothlorien rep, and I imagine there will be more new quests in book 8 that give rep. Repeatable crafting and item XP quests have also gotten old. How long before I run through the new quests and am left with nothing but impossible raids and boring repeatables?

OMG! Can you believe it! Minstrels in warspeech can do almost the same dps as a hunter!! The world is coming to an end!! Hunters will be obsolete!!

It seems like that (or variations thereof with the classes changed around) is the main idea of about 80 percent of the posts on the forums. Are these people serious?

OK…there is one thing that is a fact. Minstrels, and every other class for that matter CAN DPS ON PAR WITH A HUNTER! What’s more…THAT’S THE WAY IT SHOULD BE! I can see the Heartseeker crosshairs glowing on my chest already. I am hereby disowned by the hunter community, and so be it.

What possible reason could I have for my ridiculous insinuation? Do I want hunters to fail? Hardly. The reason is very simple: every class needs to be able to be playable solo. The vast majority of this game is solo content. There are thousands of wonderful, fun quests that can be done all on your own without having to LFF or coordinate with your friends to do at a time convenient for everyone. Virtually all of them center around killing something or somethings. These quests are meant to be done by any player of any class at the appropriate level. How the heck is a minstrel or guard or LM or anyone supposed to be able to do this without being able to deal damage? Should minstrels have to find groups for quests that champs and hunters can breeze through?

Similarly, it’s important for all classes to have roughly the SAME amount of dps. Because of inductions, minstrels cannot effectively heal themselves when soloing. We have very little crowd control. We are fairly squishy. We need to have dps in order to kill things off before they kill us. Even without worrying about dying, if it takes significantly longer for a non-dps to kill things solo than a dps class, people will simply not want to bring up other classes because it would be slow, tedious, and boring. Then no one would be able to enjoy any of the group content because all we’d have are dpsers and no tanks, healers, buffers, debuffers, or CC.

As it turns out, each of the classes has a primary and secondary role. The primary role is typically what you use in groups. Guards are tanks, minstrels are healers, hunters are dps, etc. Secondary roles are what helps make it possible and fun to solo with them. Guards and minstrels both have a dps-mode to go into (overpower for guards and warspeech for minstrels). These come at a price though, since guardians lose a great deal of defense as well as the opportunity to use some of their most powerful skills. Similarly, a minstrel in warspeech is a terrible healer. RKs are similar in that they can either dps well or heal well…but not both. LMs have a variety of pets they can choose…some are better for soloing and others are better for groups. Champs have Fervour/Ardour/Glory that allow them to switch gears between all-out-dps and quasi-tanking. Hunters have CC skills that are a lifesaver when soloing.

So, with secondary roles, we now have some overlap. If minstrels and guards can dps, why have hunters and champs? First of all, we have hutners and champs because they are fun to play. Secondly, hunters and champs do the dps job better than any minstrel or guardian. Hunters have wonderful ways of lowering their threat and power consumption. A minstrel wouild be generating a ton more threat and burning through a lot more power than a hunter, even if they were doing the same amount of damage. After a short time, the minstrel would be OOP and have aggro while they hunter was healthy and with plenty of power. Not to mention, it’s unlikely that a minstrel could keep up with a hunter’s dps, as the cooldowns are long enough on minstrel dps skills that you have times when all of them are on cooldown. A hunter is completely unique in the ability to effectively and efficiently dps for long battles.

Similarly, no one is going to be able to match a champ in long-term melee dps or massive AoE damage. Yeah, minnies have a couple of nifty AoEs. They do a fair amount of damage to a couple of nearby enemies, but only a couple and they have decently long cooldowns.

So…let’s look at one last aspect of this…the theory that hunters and champs won’t be able to get a group because they are “obsolete”. To me, this is absurd. I can see the conversation.

Champ: OK, we’ve got a mins, champ, guard, capt, RK, and hunter…looks like we’re ready to go!
RK: Better get a healer, I’m dps
Champ: It’s ok, we’ve got a minstrel
Minstrel: No, I’m dpsing, too!
Champ: Can’t one of you heal? The captain can help too…
Captain: I can’t heal, I’m tanking!
Champ: Tanking? Isn’t the Guard tanking?
Guard: No, I’m dpsing
Champ: Well, neither me nor the hunter can heal, so one of you has to!
Minstrel: Sorry chump…I mean champ…we’re booting you and finding a minstrel
Guard: Better drop the hunter too and get two minstrels…our dpsing minstrel will get all the aggro and we’ll need two more minstrels healing to keep her up
Hunter: Um…wouldn’t it be better if we had the guard tank, the champ and hunter dps…
RK: Shut up huntard! You are obsolete! Let’s find a couple minstrels…
Minstrel: We better get a loremaster too…I’m gonna run out of power fast dpsing
Champ: That’s 7 people, you can only have 6
Captain: Get LOST! Who invited you anyway??

Is this the future of LotRO? Hardly.

-Sonsy

Well, geez.  I’m up to 4 characters now, and I have to say I like them all.  I like that each class is so different to play.  Here’s a breakdown of my characters and my impressions from playing them.

Sonsy, elf, level 60 hunter
Sonsy’s my main and will always be my main.  There’s just nothing like the sheer power of dps burning down a big boss.  The steady stream of decently large numbers floating off the heads of enemies is ever so satisfying.  Soloing can be somewhat tedious…finding a good spot to aggro as few mobs as possible, setting traps, focusing, rooting, and taking down baddies one-by-one can be slow.  However, I like the challenge of infiltrating an enemy camp methodically and sniping them one by one before the alarm is raised.  It’s not so much fun getting out though when you get caught by the respawns.  Melee one on one is usually ok.  Having two guys on you is dangerous.  Three is usually certain death.  Luckily hunters have lots of neat tricks to separate themselves from mobs.  Traps, fears, slows, and of course DF at last resort are all key to a hunter’s survival.  All very fun when you can have the last laugh!

Lodellee, hobbit, level 60 minstrel
Lod started as my “fun” character to play with Bougie, Ferg’s burglar.  As we progressed, the group became Lod, Hammarr, Kennebec, Wizro, Manstrel, and a few others that joined from time to time and it was a blast.  When Moria came out, the group dispersed.  Hamm and Kenn continued forward into Moria.  The rest were left behind for a time.  When I resumed working on Lod, I found myself soloing for the first time…with places like Angmar, Forochel, Eregion, and Moria on my itinerary.  It was a struggle at first, but Lod was surprisingly tough (being able to heal yourself helps a lot).  In fact, many areas in Moria I struggled with on Sonsy, I was able to do easily with Lod.  I’d still say soloing a minstrel is harder than with a hunter; they are both able to do pretty much the same things.  Of course, the reason I brought Lod up wasn’t for soloing or exploring…it was to make a much-needed minstrel available to the kin for all those Moria instances and raids.  I was a bit worried that minstreling wouldn’t be fun, and it would become a chore.  After minstreling in every instance in Moria, I have to say I really have fun with it.  I’m as happy bringing Lod into an instance as I am taking Sonz.  It’s kinda fun having the job of keeping everyone propped up so they can do their jobs!

Bellamee, hobbit, level 27 guardian
Ever since I realized hobbits could be guards, I wanted to make one.  I created Bell to give me a break from leveling Sonsy and Lod in Moria (which can get frustrating).  Delivering mail in the Shire was a welcome distraction.  A big challenge for me in playing Bell is that she’s my first true melee class.  Seriously, the only ranged attack I have is Stoop for a Stone.  It’s got a 15 m range, which is peanuts compared to a hunter’s 40 m range.  Even minnies have a collection of ranged attacks.  With Bell it’s just run in and start whacking!  Another challenge for me, particularly in group play, is getting used to moving around in a battle.  Hunters and minstrels are pretty much stuck where they are due to inductions.  Guards have to move around, at least to some degree.  I’ve really only done a couple group instances with her, and I have a lot to learn.  Soloing with Bell is pretty easy.  I can have a bunch of guys whacking on me and survive just fine until I can get them all down.  So, doing things like a camp full of goblins goes pretty fast since I don’t have to worry so much about aggroing too much at once, and I’ve got a couple AoE attacks.  Doing lots of individual mobs (kill 15 boars) can be a little on the slow side since her attacks aren’t real powerful.

Tennac, elf, level 19 Champion
When I first started this game, the difference between a champ and a guard was lost on me.  They are both melee.  They both wear heavy armour.  Champs often take a tanking role in a group.  As I progressed, I came to understand how their skill sets were different, so guards were defense oriented and champs were dps.  Ok, fine.  It wasn’t until I started healing with Lod that I really came to understand the difference…champs are squishy!  Playing Tenn has confirmed my suspicions.  Shortly after my first death by a group of goblins it dawned on me that Tenn was pretty much the same as Sonz was at that level (although I think Sonz had light armour instead of medium).  Using Fervour to eliminate parry and evade sure doesn’t help the squishiness factor.  Then running into a group of goblins with no crowd control…ouch.  Well, I’ve come a long way since then and added a lot more skills to my repertoire, so she is definitely able to overcome the squishiness with some major offense.  Offense is her only tool though, with very little to fall back on if things start to go bad. 

In any case, it would be really tough for me to pick my favorite character or my favorite class.  They are all very different.  I’m looking forward to more group play with Bell and Tenn to see how they do.  Tenn’s first group was last night in Othrongroth.  I think I even did a pretty good job as off-tank picking up things that made their way to the squishies or whacking on archers.  Thank goodness we had a minstrel so I didn’t die!

-Sonsy

Well, things change quickly.  I’ve now taken down the turtle twice with SuperPUG.  Yay!  All we needed was some extra coordination and for everyone to look just a little deeper into their skills, traits, and gear to eke out those last few drops of whatever it was we needed.  Oh, and having a burg use Enrage is a huge help.  Nice little trick there!

I have to say, the turtle was really a good learning experience.  Not only did I find out things about my own classes I never knew, I learned a lot about the other classes and how the different class skills can work together.  Sure, there were some things I knew…Heartseeker + Oathbreakers = good.  Who knew throwing in a minstrel’s Song of Aid would help at that juncture as well?  It turns out everyone had something they could contribute in that window of opportunity, and getting it all coordinated was really helpful!  Also, playing the classes I do, I never really thought much about debuffs, but in coordinating the attack it was important to schedule in time for people to buff/debuff before the oathbreakers/HS/Song of Aid/etc.

Now…I could rant about all the people on the forums who just say the fight is SOOOO easy and it’s just a “dps” fight.  Seems like there’s a little more to it than that…but oh well. 

Personally, I think it was a well-designed fight.  Yes, it is basic…there are no phases, no wounds/diseases/etc., no dread, nothing to interrupt, and no corruptions.  And yet it still requires a certain level of coordination between team members.  It’s not good enough to have the most uber people in your raid with the best gear and maxed traits.  Without communication and coordination, you are not going to beat it.  Similarly, communication and coordination will allow you to overcome a certain amount of weakness in gear and traits.  I think that is absolutely fantastic.  It rewards great team-work over great gear or being “great” at your own class.  It’s a great alternative to the Watcher, which at the very least, requires that every member of the raid have a specific set of armour to even be able to walk in the door!

So…that’s my take on the turtle…from the winning side (instead of the whining side). 

-Sonsy