LOTRO

So the European servers are different from american? Oh well, I'll find someone else to join in orc-hunting.
Cool about your kin though. Its got some sort of Special-Forces-squad-esque to it .
good luck with your kin's questing .

I'm in Arkenstone on the American servers.
I've had a bit of alt-itus as well just starting to level up my Dwarf Champion.
Is there anyone who has played Captain and can tell me what they are like I have been thinking about deleting my Hobbit Minstrel and starting a man Captain (i'd use a Dwarf Captain if I could).
I have found that 75% of my server play Hunters (most elf) the bulk of the rest play Dwarf Guardians

That doesn't seem really diverse. Where's the Loremasters, burglars, etc.

I thought I read somewhere that Hunters and Guardians are the best classes to fool around with while trying to get the hang of the game, when first starting out. And Loremasters require the most attention to detail so to speak.

I really need to get this game though.

Edited by Downfall, 13 August 2007 - 04:19 PM.

I've got a level 30 captain, really enjoying it.

They share in all abilities. They can off-tank well due to high armour (although they'll struggle to generate threat), have the herald for crowd control (i.e. send him to tank 2 mobs while you kill the first one), nice DPS and heals. They also have excellent buffs. Captains make the battles go smoothly basically. On several occasions I've completed Great Barrows with a way underpowered group (i.e. unbalanced and low leveled), only to see people comment on the easyness of it, which I take as being a compliment to my captaining abilities . We're unsung heroes, if we do our job well no one will notice (not like guardian/minstrel/hunter, where you can tell how well they've done their job).

Hunters and champions are fooling around classes I'd say, because their roles in the fellowship aren't that important. A guardian that doesn't know how to get attacked (i.e. a fooling around one) will be utterly useless in a group, just like a minstrel would who couldn't heal or a hunter who didn't have a weapon .

Loremasters do require attention to play well. In all my playing (which is a lot!) I've seen 1 good loremaster. Most seem to think of themselves as a dps class, just standing at the back throwing fireballs, not worrying about crowd control/heals/debuffs. Even end game you can't be guaranteed quality players, infact if anything there is less quality players late game, as all the good players stick to kinship/friend quests.

I've got a level 30 captain, really enjoying it.

They share in all abilities. They can off-tank well due to high armour (although they'll struggle to generate threat), have the herald for crowd control (i.e. send him to tank 2 mobs while you kill the first one), nice DPS and heals. They also have excellent buffs. Captains make the battles go smoothly basically. On several occasions I've completed Great Barrows with a way underpowered group (i.e. unbalanced and low leveled), only to see people comment on the easyness of it, which I take as being a compliment to my captaining abilities . We're unsung heroes, if we do our job well no one will notice (not like guardian/minstrel/hunter, where you can tell how well they've done their job).

Hunters and champions are fooling around classes I'd say, because their roles in the fellowship aren't that important. A guardian that doesn't know how to get attacked (i.e. a fooling around one) will be utterly useless in a group, just like a minstrel would who couldn't heal or a hunter who didn't have a weapon .

Loremasters do require attention to play well. In all my playing (which is a lot!) I've seen 1 good loremaster. Most seem to think of themselves as a dps class, just standing at the back throwing fireballs, not worrying about crowd control/heals/debuffs. Even end game you can't be guaranteed quality players, infact if anything there is less quality players late game, as all the good players stick to kinship/friend quests.

So, let me get this straight:
Guardians-soak up damage to leave the hunter and other party members free
Hunter-Pure death-dealer in open combat, can also scpout and set up ambushes
Loremaster-back of the pack party specialist w/buffs/debuffs and healing
Captains-leadership and general combat
Champions-Death-dealers, like berserkers, do mosty damage(?)
Minstrels-healing????
Burglars-?????

Is that sorta how groups/parties more or less "should" work? Or did I miss something?

You're pretty much correct there, the way I see them is:

Guardian - Take all the punishment
Champion - AOE (are of effect) damage and occasional off-tanking
Captain - Buffs, off-tanking, backup heals and decent damage
Burglars - Debuffs, fellowship conjunctions (devastating, normally opened randomly. Burglars can open them whenever they want), crowd control
Hunters - Single target damage, plus tracking/minor crowd control
Loremasters - Debuffs, crowd control, heals, batteries (replenish power)
Minstrels - Healing, minor crowd control

You're pretty much correct there, the way I see them is:

Guardian - Take all the punishment
Champion - AOE (are of effect) damage and occasional off-tanking
Captain - Buffs, off-tanking, backup heals and decent damage
Burglars - Debuffs, fellowship conjunctions (devastating, normally opened randomly. Burglars can open them whenever they want), crowd control
Hunters - Single target damage, plus tracking/minor crowd control
Loremasters - Debuffs, crowd control, heals, batteries (replenish power)
Minstrels - Healing, minor crowd control

Now, what sorts of things use up "power" for lets say, the hunter?

Special attacks use power. If you just auto-attack you lose no power, but the higher damage skills all cost power to use.

I have a couple chars on Nimrodel.

• Calaglin- lvl16 Elf Hunter
• Melengil- lvl20 Elf Guardian

Mel was originally created to mine for Calaglin, but I found I enjoyed playing with the Guardian more. I don't think Calaglin ever got those ingots he wanted. :'( And now all I use him for is to boil leather for Mel. Poor poor Calaglin.

I thought that elves couldn't be guardians.

@zimoo
So the hunters could individually pick out the tougher and leader type enemies and take them out while the rest could take out the grunts, right?

Elves can be anything but burglars and captains.

Oh, ok. Then I'll have an elf hunter and an elf guardian .
What kind of powers do hunters and guardians have? Also, does the armor in the game look cool for these guys? Whats your favorite type?

I found I enjoyed playing with the Guardian more.

Hehe I feel the same. Guardian is ever changing, based on the responsives you get (block/parry). Hunter is just the same 2 skills repeated over and over. After 48 levels of this it kind of gets old . There are of course other ways to do things, but this way yields the most efficient kills

I thought that elves couldn't be guardians.

I'd go mental if they couldn't be guardians. Was it not an elf who once tanked Morgoth himself? . But yes LOG is right, they can be anything but burglars and captains.

As for powers, hunters main attacks are arrow attacks. They have things like swift bow (fires 2 arrows in quick succession), penetrating shot (ignores a large percentage of enemies armour) and barbed arrow (poisons enemy over time). They also then have backup melee attacks, including a very useful area of effect slowing strike (i.e. you use it, 4 enemies are slowed by 50% thus you get away easily).

Guardians are about generating threat with the enemy, rather than pure damage (although my guardian occassionally takes out a 2-hander and goes damage crazy ). They have things like shield bash (nice damage melee attack, generates lots of threat) and guardian's ward (temporarily increases block and parry chances by a small amount). The main fun with them comes from the block/parry responses though, which can only be used after a successful block/parry. Example:

- Blocks attack
- Uses a double shield bash skill which gnereates lot of threat
- Uses another shield bash which generates threat and stuns the enemy for a few seconds

There's several different versions of this you can do, and it's fun to work out which is right for the situation (i.e. an area of effect threat generator will be useless while soloing, whereas a single target stun will be very useful).

So the hunters could individually pick out the tougher and leader type enemies and take them out while the rest could take out the grunts, right?

No, completely the opposite. They should pick out the weakest mobs to kill them off quickly, otherwise they're just left bashing freely at you while you bring down the main enemy. These mobs aren't dangerous alone, but when left to attack freely can be annoying.

Also, does the armor in the game look cool for these guys? Whats your favorite type?

Personally, I like the mid game heavy armour the best. Chain mail

Edited by zimoo, 14 August 2007 - 04:42 PM.

Cool. Thanks a lot.

Guardians are great fun I use my Guardian to go to all the dangerous levels because they are hard for enemies to kill.
So far I've taken my Guardian almost everywhere except Angmar.Fun

I really want to get back into LOTRO, but the new patch is just so darn big :(

Edited by HunterGXO, 15 August 2007 - 02:00 PM.

How big is it actually?

And, is there a cap on how many heroes you can create?

You can create 5 at the most on 1 account, but of course you could have 5 characters on each server, and thus test out all the classes that way.

Burglars and pet classes are best for exploring high level areas. Burglars for their stealth, pet classes to send them in as bait to get killed by the mob while you harvest the precious ore

Edited by zimoo, 15 August 2007 - 07:19 PM.

I have LOTRO working again I was worried for a while because I couldn't remember my COG Account password and AOL didn't seem to want to receive
any e-mails from Codemasters :( So yeah, I'm playing again

Played it a while too, 36 man guardian ^^