Suddenly, I am concerned about my stay in Middle Earth once more.

The Mines of Moria expansion also raised the original Shadows of Angmar level cap from 50 to 60, which in one fell swoop completely obliterated and trivialized the entire previous world and all its content. Shortly afterwards, I became disenchanted with that sudden abandonment of everything we’d done and enjoyed for two years, and I took a year break from the game as a result.

The Siege of Mirkwood mini-expansion raised the cap by 5 where it’s stayed for the past (almost) year-and-a-half.

Due to type of player I am – more casual (though I jump at every opportunity to raid at every chance I get) and one who takes breaks — I much preferred the +5 increase because it kept the Moria content relevant for a longer period of time. Combine that with how the LOTRO team handled their gear/stat design (as a result of Radiance) where a lot of times the level 60 Moria gear was as good or better than the level 65 gear – even the raid gear sometimes!

I’ve made no secret that I prefer the older MMO design philosophy à la Star Wars Galaxies which put the virtual world and social aspects (including role-play and non-combat activities and professions) first. I hesitate to say I prefer “sandbox” because of the context which that term has come to be known (little to no real developer-made content, and a focus on PvP) but it is firmly my stance that “true” virtual worlds and purely vertical progression are incompatible. The two cannot coexist within the same game, which is why the term most use to describe LOTRO or WoW or any of the other multitudes of EQ-influenced MMOs is “theme park.” I consider that a misnomer because when Disney or Universal unleash a new attraction at their theme parks, the previous attractions are not obsoleted or trivialized. It’s just adding one more equally viable attraction to the mix. But I digress.

As Syncaine just wrote, the so-called “sandbox” games do what I just described – add “more” to the mix – while the “theme park” games replace content instead. Within the four or five days it took to level from 50 to 60, Mines of Moria completely replaced the entirety of Shadows of Angmar. Anyone leveling up now would not experience the former end-game unless their kinship was bored. Need those class items for the level 50 class quests? Go run skirmishes to barter for them! Good luck actually finding a group of people who will “waste” their time running instances that are trivialized (greyed out) and offer nothing to vertically advance our characters.

Today, all the Mines of Moria content (including the Lothlorien content), instances and raids are still relevant. The Siege of Mirkwood content is still relevant. The brand-new instances and raid released last month are relevant, despite the most ludicrous grind I’ve seen in ages from a Western MMO. However, in roughly seven months all of that will be trivialized and obsolete. Everything a LOTRO player is doing today in-game will be obsoleted, forgotten, and especially in the case of the new instances and raid – skipped over entirely. I don’t personally know a single player who has a piece of the new gear yet; not even the hardcore guys (not that I socialize with many of them anymore). It’s been estimated that it would take a single player six weeks to get the entire new gear set if he were able to run every instance after every reset (twice a week) and he was the only person receiving the raid tokens, which we all know is not the case. Therefore, by the time Rise of Isengard arrives, most of us won’t even have the most recent set of gear. Hell, most of us will be lucky to even have a couple pieces of it! Within the week or two it will take to reach level 75, all current content will be trivialized (greyed out) and we’ll have no reason to go there again. We’ll all be stuck in the three zones Isengard has. Due to purely vertical progression, Middle Earth will be reduced all at once to three zones for level-capped characters. At least Moria plus Lothlorien was big enough to entertain us more than three zones’ worth of activity and exploration.

The “answer” seems to be scaling the instances and providing new rewards to keep players involved with “old” content as long as they continue to vertically advance our characters. But from my perspective, if that is the “answer” and one goal is to keep older content as relevant as the new (ie. adding more to the mix rather than replacement) then isn’t this further proof that vertical progression is inherently broken? Why have the particular type of “levels” we have at all if we’re going to scale it anyway? The saddest part is that the most important part – the illusion of the virtual world – is not part of the scaling process. A big part of why we get so immersed into MMOs is something about its world strikes a chord within us and we become invested in exploring and learning that world. But then we vertically progress beyond a certain zone’s level bracket and it becomes trivialized and off we go to the next higher zone. It’s not really a “world” anymore if its inhabitants don’t even know you’re there because they’re grey.

I knew this would be an issue when I decided to go ahead and play LOTRO during beta. At the time, I was coming off an extreme WoW burnout (and subsequent permanent cancelation) and nearly gave up on MMOs altogether. It’s choice and consequence. If I choose to play an MMO with vertical progression, I have to accept that content I enjoy and gear that I invested time and effort to acquire will someday be obsoleted and I’ll have to move to the next higher version. But increasing the level cap by 10 trivializes everything that came before it. New players that came in with the F2P relaunch, many of them are just recently reaching Moria and not even into Mirkwood or Enedwaith yet. Shortly after they finish up the solo content there and get to kindred reputation and want to start grouping, the level cap will increase and no one will be there anymore. We can use gear that is five levels low, but not ten. Monsters five levels low will still give IXP (and XP if you’re not to level cap) but not ten.

Everything we all currently know will get replaced with three zones… I have a feeling 2012 might see me taking another inadvertent break…

tanked Barrows+Eregion instances, all fine till… in the library the Minstrel got aggro over and over (he nuked)!

ridiculous, I can aggro enough with Exultation and War Cry to keep Aggro on a Shing-Shing Champ, but not a Minstrel?

Nasty surprise; Warden tanking nothing but spamming precise blow, war cry, exultation of battle?

In the first post, I mentioned a few of my basic strategies that I was using last month. Today, not much has changed. I’ve recently been running the Eregion instances that Longasc is having problems with – The School and Library of Tham Mirdain – which are primarily group pulls.

If possible (and it’s not always) I will still start each pull with Javelin of Deadly Force which is an AoE strike to start the fight with some slight dps threat. I usually back up so I can get a running start as I throw JoDF so that by the time I’m in a normal threat radius I am already in a combat state and my gambit masteries are up. I’ll fire off a quick War Cry mastery, then Exultation of Battle mastery which gets all the mobs onto me. At that point most of my masteries are spent and I’m waiting on the cooldowns before I can use the next batch, which I will most likely use to build a Conviction gambit.

The catch with War Cry and Exultation of Battle is that they are only slight threat increase gambits. For a single target, Precise Blow is a Warden’s mainstay, which not only has a direct threat increase but also a moderate threat over time increase. There are no “threat meter” plugins for Lord of the Rings Online that I am aware of, and I wouldn’t use one if there were, so I tank mostly on “feel.” Therefore, I would guesstimate that the moderate threat of a single Precise Blow is approximately equivalent to three War Cries — the difference being that War Cry can affect up to 10 targets at once. In some fights, you may have 6+ mobs on you, and by all means spam some War Cries for threat over time and Exultation of Battle for threat over time plus a self-heal over time.

Just as with any type of tanking, you have to watch for when the dps classes (and occasionally the overhealers) start in. In our post-World of Warcraft generation, the dps players are all about “go go go! faster faster faster! kill kill kill!” which is precisely why so many traditional sword-and-board tank classes in all the MMOs out there have more and more forced taunts. Even Everquest itself has bowed to this and added more taunts than it used to have (according to what I’m told by EQ players). The Warden is the exception – they have only a single forced taunt, Defiant Challenge, which is a Legendary Trait Tier 5 fist gambit. Defiant Challenge can affect up to 10 targets for a 5-second forced taunt, at which point those targets go back to whomever is higher on the threat list than the Warden. So in a sense, while the Warden has its fancy-shmancy gambit system to keep its player busy, it’s also almost old-school in that group needs to let the Warden go in and do his thing for a bit before they start with the dps.

I generally go into every group under the presumption that every dps player in the group is incompetent at group dynamics and has no concept that aggro management is the entire group’s shared responsibility. 99.9% of the time that will be a correct presumption, especially if the dps players play primarily dps classes. I have far fewer problems when the dps players in my group are on an alt but their main is a tank or healer.

On any typical group pull, let’s say I use Javelin of Deadly Force to start the fight with multi-target dps threat, then I hit War Cry for a slight threat over time, then Exultation of Battle for another slight threat over time plus the heal over time provides me a few extra seconds before the healer needs to wake up. I don’t know if that is the “best” combo or not, but it’s what I go with at this stage of my Warden knowledge. At this point I am in the thick of the group of mobs with one dps attack and two slight threat over time gambits. If I have a knowledgeable, mature group they will let me hang there and build a few more gambits. However, that is rarely the case so I plan on the Champions running in with me and spamming every full-dps AoE attack they have, or the Hunter or Rune-keeper blasting and pew-pewing things to death from range. They are going to pull aggro off me on some of the mobs; there’s really nothing I can do about that unless I’m going to waste Power building a Defiant Challenge this early in the fight. It’s their fault for being irresponsible and incompetent players, so while I am doing my best to build my threat and reduce theirs, I am also perfectly happy letting them take some damage for their own incompetence. Choice and consequence. My general rule from monking in Guild Wars six years ago has not changed today: You spank it, you tank it.

With its unique quality of mostly threat over time gambits and only a few direct threat attacks, tanking on a Warden is a dance between building your own direct threat and threat over time and also reducing the fellowship’s threat with gambits such as Conviction, Dance of War or Maddening Strike, while also hopefully keeping your Shield Mastery up to cap your Block, Parry and Evade (BPE). Most Wardens, myself included, swear by Conviction. Many do so because of it’s fellowship-wide heal over time, and while I agree that is an excellent bonus effect, it’s primary usefulness is that it does a moderate fellowship threat reduction. Quite often, a single Conviction gets the mobs right back onto me at which point I can resume my own threat building gambits. Dance of War is also a moderate threat reduction, while also providing a bonus to Evade. It’s also a Tier 4 gambit to Conviction’s Tier 5 level so if you’re building gambits manually, that’s a little bit of Power saved for a similar effect, minus the heal over time. The only real penalty to Dance of War is its lengthy animation. Finally Maddening Strike is a Tier 3 gambit which, while only a slight threat reduction, is nice to use in those situations where either Power is an issue (have I mentioned that Wardens are extremely Power-hungry?) or you feel comfortable that you have enough threat built up that you can relax a bit and use Tier 2 or 3 gambits.

That final sentence is my ultimate objective while tanking: to build enough of my own threat while reducing the fellowship’s threat that I can take it easy and auto-attack for awhile to regenerate some Power and hopefully only be required to use a mastery such as Precise Blow, War Cry, whatever to build threat, then Conviction mastery to keep reducing the fellowship’s threat. Masteries have a 15-second cooldown and possibly 5 seconds or so between a Precise Blow mastery to a Conviction mastery plus throwing in a Shield Mastery once per minute in place of Conviction (it uses 2 of the same masteries that Conviction uses). I don’t always achieve that goal, depending on the length of the fight, but usually on boss encounters I will get there relatively quickly. A hectic, Power-draining first several seconds (or longer…) but finally towards the end I’m usually able to hang back and relax and every 15 seconds fire off a threat over time gambit then a threat reduction gambit which should pretty much maintain status quo with the overall threat levels. If I see or sense that the group is doing several of their heavy-hitter attacks in rapid sequence then I’ll go back to manually building those gambits in between masteries for a bit. Sometimes it may take a few back-to-back Convictions or other threat reduction gambits to either pull the mobs or boss off the group (if the group exceeded my threat) or just to ease my threat Spidey sense to keep me feeling that I am in a comfort zone. Whatever it takes!

• The Flight power from Champions Online so we can avoid all the pesky trash mobs on our way to save Middle-earth from [insert quest objective here]. Barring full-on flight, I’ll take a jetpack ala Global Agenda. Oh, and of course, a new critical gambit: Death From Above!
• Bullet Time slow-motion power from F.E.A.R. Naturally, this will be called Javelin Time in Lord of the Rings Online. This super-gambit will be used in lieu of Ambush and allow me to engage the boss from range, hit Javelin Time to shift into him into slow-motion so the rest of my group can kill him in real-time before he even reaches me, because I’m AFK refilling my drink…

@Longasc is in the process of leveling his, just having reached Moria yesterday, so I thought I’d jot down a few thoughts for him and any other Wardens out there to offer input. It’ll also be nice for me to come back and visit this someday to see if my perspective on tactics has changed down the road.

Moria

The obvious route is still to get the first four pieces of the Moria armour, as that is what you’ll see most Wardens (and other characters) wearing. That will work until 65 where you can optionally swap it out for the new Helegrod set, then continue on to the upcoming Enedwaith set which will appear in Update 2 next week.

I won’t cover Moria instance loot drops because honestly I don’t know them well and don’t feel like looking them up, but each instance does have at least one drop that may be useful for Longasc, depending on what his current gear is, especially jewelry.

More importantly, the Moria instances will give Longasc plenty of opportunities to practice tanking on the Warden. The way the game currently is set up, players can reach level cap completely solo, only skipping a handful of fellowship quests. But starting at level 54 he can jump into the under-appreciated (probably because it doesn’t reward any Medallions of Moria) Forgotten Treasury for a fun time and good tanking practice – especially at the end with the two trolls – then at level 56 he can move into the Grand Stair then the other Moria instances. I typically lead my Grand Stair challenge runs because I know it so well, but there’s always been a Guardian with me so it doesn’t matter who tanks the first part of the run. At Igash I will usually grab the archers while the Guardian tanks Igash simply because it’s much easier for a Warden to tank multiple targets, and with War Cry, Exultation of Battle, Conviction, etc. I can do minimal damage to the archers while applying a few light heal-over-time gambits to help lighten the healer’s load.

After Moria, the next zone and reputation progression – Lothlorien, Mirkwood, Enedwaith – will give both bartered and crafted gear that is easily obtainable and therefore highly recommended to acquire.

Lothlorien

At level 56 or 57, start heading out to Lothlorien to work on the first set of quests to get your reputation to Acquaintance so the Galledhrim archers will allow you past and into Lothlorien proper. The quests are level 59 and 60 so they will reward a lot of XP and IXP making the leveling go a bit faster.

A good shield is one of the more valuable assets a Warden seeks, and there are a few choices in Lothlorien immediately after reaching Acquaintance reputation:

• Warden’s Shield of Lothlorien is easily obtainable at a barter NPC. If you don’t have a crafter handy or short on funds to purchase a crafted Lothlorien shield from the Auction House, this shield will probably be a decent upgrade from most Moria shields until you can get a crafted shield.
• Exquisite Warden’s Shield of Lothlorien is the non-critical crafted shield. Better than the bartered shield above, and if your crafters or Auction House do not have the critical crafted shield, this makes a good alternative.
• Superb Warden’s Shield of Lothlorien is the shield you’ll want for quite some time. Even if you have to spend a few gold on it from the Auction House, you’ll more than earn your gold back while continuing to level and the benefits of this shield make it more than worth the cost.

Also don’t pass up some of the crafted cloaks in Lothlorien. There are several available and I still see a lot of Wardens using them raiding at level 65. The cloaks require Friend reputation with the Galledhrim and you have a few choices depending on how you are building and traiting your Warden. At level 60 there are also the teal bartered two-piece jewelry sets, one piece requires Ally reputation, the second requires Kindred. Depending on your other jewelry and/or which attributes you are trying to build, consider possibly obtaining the pieces that seem more appropriate for other classes. For example, Protector’s Reproach is the obvious tanking set, but the Lethal Strikes set can be useful while solo or traited for dps. Even the Deadly Aim set, which is quite obviously intended for Hunters, can be useful especially for Wardens in the Ettenmoors where they are primarily on the move and using their javelins at range.

If you have crafters or can find these on the Auction House, by all means grab one or two of the critical crafted Glowing Aureate Hoop earrings, whichever would best suit your build.

Mirkwood

After completing one quest in the Mirk-eaves, you will be at Neutral reputation with the Malledhrim, which opens up the barter NPC’s at Echad Sirion. Depending on the earrings you already wear, Thaliollos may be a good upgrade at this point. After completing the Mirk-eaves introduction instance and entering the real Mirkwood, head up to the Haunted Inn where some more barter NPC’s await with goodies that still only require Neutral reputation. Filegor comes to mind, as does Angechor, if they are upgrades to your current wrist items though I opted for two Ranger’s Greenwood Bracelets for the added morale and ICPR. Two pocket items are also available, the Charm of Avoidance and Charm of Defence. Either can be a viable option depending on how you are building your Warden, and will likely last you until Enedwaith. For necklaces, Thalionhigil or Brechigil are good choices unless you have a crafter (or Auction House) able to make the Warrior’s Greenwood Necklace which has good stats and also provides a boost to your incoming healing, which means a few more morale points per pulse on your heal-over-time gambits. At Friend reputation, some cloaks are available at Thangúlhad. I was a fan of Thaliongol and still keep it as my primary cosmetic cloak.

Now let’s look at more shields!

First and foremost, if you have the Superb Warden’s Shield of Lothlorien, keep it! From here on out, I keep two shields: one for grouping with a Captain, and one with in-combat power regeneration (ICPR) for soloing or grouping without a Captain. The Lothlorien shield is my go-to shield when I have a Captain. For ICPR, look at:

• Faeram which is bartered in Ost Galadh and only requires Acquaintance reputation with the Malledhrim. Similar to the Lothlorien bartered shield above, this is a decent option if you do not have crafters available for a better shield.
• Warden’s Shield of the Golden Host is the normal crafted shield and still a good choice if the critical version is unavailable to you.
• Superior Warden’s Shield of the Golden Host is the critical crafted shield and the one I still use while solo or with no Captain in the fellowship. Wardens are power-hungry beasts, so any bit of ICPR you can get is helpful.

Enedwaith

Off the top of my head, I can only think of a few bartered items in Enedwaith that I specifically sought after. Your ultimate goal will likely be the Unity of Warding set, which requires Kindred standing with both the Grey Company and the Men of Algraig. This set gets you the Ranger’s Token of Warding pocket item, and the Algraig Shield of Warding. Used together, there is a set bonus of +51 to Block, Parry and Evade. This is the shield I finally replaced the Superb Warden’s Shield of Lothlorien with though again, I only equip it when I have a Captain in my fellowship. Otherwise I still solo or group without a Captain with the Superior Warden’s Shield of the Golden Host for its slight ICPR boost. However, at Friend standing with the Algraig I recommend Egnïon-clustus if it’s an upgrade to one of your earrings, and Egnïon-clog if it’s a cloak upgrade for you.

Naturally, better items can be obtained from some instances and raids, though Longasc specifically stated he was no longer interested in raiding. But for standard 6-man instances, Ril-Mir is a popular ring and drops often in Sammath Gul, and the Miniature Brass Anvil is still one of the most highly sought-after pocket items, though I find it very rarely drops in the Halls of Crafting. All the times I’ve ran Hall of Crafting on both my Lore-master and Warden, I have never seen the damned thing drop yet, so while it may be a worthy goal, I don’t know that it’s worth all the grinding that it might require, whereas you’re more likely to end up with Kindred reputation with the Grey Company to get their pocket item.

Strategies and Tactics

Tanking with a Warden requires not only a good player, but also a good group familiar with the Warden and one who allows the Warden to do his role. The Warden doesn’t have a good reputation with a lot of players because of this. It’s a two-way street: a lot of Warden players simply do not know their gambits nor how to properly tank, and everyone else has been spoiled by the “easy mode” of having any random, mediocre Guardian blowing all his forced attack (ie. “taunt”) skills while they go full-out dps the moment combat begins.

I cannot stress enough the importance of learning your gambits, what they do and when to use them, and also the gambit masteries. Two community-written guides to live by are the Warden Tanking Guide and Mastering Mastery Rotations.

Pulls. If you are making the pull on the Warden, consider your situation. Often an Ambush will be the go-to choice; sometimes doing an Ambush while stealthed in your Careful Step stance even. One trick we use on the Brutes in Sammath Gul is I will go into Careful Step, then another player will walk into a room and proximity-aggro the Brute. The moment the Brute aggros I hit him with Ambush which prevents him from putting up his melee resistance buff. When he stands up, I already have the dps threat from the Ambush so he will come to me, then I start my threat-builder gambits.

If you’re pulling multiple targets at once, consider using Javelin of Deadly Force. One important thing to know about this skill is that it does not require a target; it simply throws in the direction you are facing, so make sure you are facing directly at the group of mobs you want to pull. This gives you dps threat on all the mobs you hit so they will rush you rather than your fellowship.

Gambit Rotations

For single targets, I’m all over Precise Blow. Mastery first, then build it until the mastery refreshes again. I may occasionally build up a Spear of Virtue, as it provides more threat in that single strike, though Precise Blow is a threat-over-time and always handy no matter what. Once the group starts in on heavy dps I will throw in a mastery Conviction to reduce their threat every time the masteries are available. I may build up a Dance of War or Conviction manually if I think they are catching up to my threat but this isn’t usually the case. Don’t forget Shield Mastery and help out the healer by applying some of your self-heal-over-time gambits, some of which provide additional threat such as War Cry or any of the Fierce Resolve line.

For group pulls, my preference is to start with Javelin of Deadly Force as I’m running toward the group of mobs. When we come together, I’ll hit them with a War Cry mastery then an Exultation of Battle mastery, at which point I tell the group to start dpsing while I build a Conviction to lower their threat. From there on out I’m alternating any area threat-reduction + heal-over-time I can, such as Conviction, Dance of War, War Cry, and the entire Fierce Resolve gambit line. If a mob happens to get away, I’ll nail them with a Precise Blow or two to pull them back onto me then resume my Conviction, etc. rotations. Again, don’t forget to keep Shield Mastery up!

Power

Wardens are very power-hungry! Always keep a stack of the best Celebrant Salve available – you will need them! Do anything you can to boost your ICPR. When grouped with a Captain, make sure he gives you the Tactic: Focus buff for increased ICPR! A lot of Captains who are unfamiliar with Wardens tend to give you the increased Parry, etc. (or possibly the melee crit) buff out of habit because that’s what Guardians use. You will have your Shield Mastery gambit up during boss fights (and probably trash fights too) so that buff does you absolutely no good considering Shield Mastery will probably exceed the cap for Block, Parry, Evade anyway. Focus, focus, focus!

Woodworkers can make the consumable Rallying Hymn of the White Council. Do yourself a favor and keep a stack of these on your for boss fights! Fist gambits are your primary threat builders and you’ll be spamming a lot of Precise Blow gambits especially. The hymn will give you 20 seconds where your fist gambits won’t use any Power at all plus +10% damage on fist gambits. It has a 3-minute cooldown period but it’s usually the first few seconds that Wardens have the most problems keeping threat on them so between gambit builders and gambit masteries, you can build quite a bit of Power-free threat in the 20 seconds the hymn provides you. Use them! There are also hymns for spear and shield gambits which you may situationally find useful.

Woodworkers can also make fist, spear and shield carvings. Get the best you can for each gambit line. For fist and shield I use the ones that give melee defense and provide a –10% power cost for that gambit line, while for spear I use the +5% light damage (ie. tactical) carving. Early on, I made it a habit to plan out which gambit rotation I was going to use on a certain fight, and swap carvings as appropriate. The carvings do not save power on the gambit builders, unfortunately, but –10% power cost on the gambit is still power saved. For example, if I’m on a boss I’ll have my fist carving equipped for –10% power to my fist gambits such as Precise Blow and +500 melee defense. If I need to use Conviction, Dance of War or some other shield gambit, I will swap to my shield carving where I still get the +500 melee defense but now receive –10% power on whichever shield gambit I’m using. Ditto if I’m planning on using a spear gambit.

Wardens do have a single power regeneration gambit, The Dark Before Dawn, however it requires you to be half or less morale. This is fine in trash fights, and some boss fights, however the Warden is currently vulnerable to critical damage spikes and on those fights I would not recommend spending too much time at low morale where a single spike could one-shot you. The upcoming armour set from the new Enedwaith cluster aims to fix that vulnerability but until then, be wary of bosses or fights that tend to hit you with damage spikes.

I will also divulge a secret weapon for the Gorothul fight in Sammath Gul. To complete the challenge, no fell spirits must be defeated so you want to get them on you. Area-effect tanking is a Warden’s specialty with Conviction or Dance of War lowering the threat of your fellowship while increasing your own, then War Cry, or any of the Fierce Resolve line gambits providing additional threat and heal-over-time for yourself. However, spamming all those gambits can quickly drain you of Power unless you first swap to the Tawarwaith Gloves of the Gloaming. Yes, it’s light armour, not medium but it’s only a single piece. The secret to those gloves is the 15% chance to receive Power every time you take any damage whatsoever. You have (or you should have) a metric ton of mobs hitting you on that fight, so those gloves are constantly recharging your Power! I’m spamming every area threat+heal gambit I have as fast as I can and my Power is always at 100% during that fight thanks to those gloves! That is the primary use for the gloves, so it’s debatable if you want to keep them on you all the time. There are a handful of other cases where they come in useful while you’re keeping a lot of mobs on you but the Gorothul fight is my primary use for them. You should not need them during a Barrow Downs Survival run because during that you are kiting the mobs and should not be taking much damage.

Arwellyn finally reached Kindred status with the Grey Company in Enedwaith this morning!

What a grind, though. Once you (quickly) run out of actual quests to do, there are only 4 repeatable quests you can do daily — 3 normally, then a choice during one of the standard quests will open either a Grey Company repeatable or an Algraig one. It just so happened I made the right choice for both my Lore-master and Warden before I even knew there was a way to botch it and end up with only the 3 dailies.

But still… Algraig have 7 repeatables (8 if you choose the other option) while Grey Company only have 4 (or 3)? What the hell?

Now I have to do it all over again on my Warden. He’s already Ally with both factions and I’m more fired-up to get him Kindred for the two-piece jewelry set, whereas the only things the Lore-master is interested in are the Return to Enedwaith skill and the two faction mounts.

The two primary things we know are that all post-Update 2 Legendary Items will have three legacies, whereas currently they may occasionally come with four. So, saving any LIs with four legacy slots sounds like a good idea from the start.

Secondly, the new "decon me now!" level will be 30 (or possibly 31) in order to receive a scroll that will let us remove a legacy that we can place on a different item. Currently, most players seem to level a LI to 11 then deconstruct it for the relics.

Suggested strategies I’ve seen include:

• Save all your un-identified LIs until after Update 2. This one honestly makes no sense to me. Assuming the goal was potentially having some LIs with four Major legacy slots, that will be impossible once Update 2 goes live – provided that legacies are assigned via random number generator at the moment of identification, that is. To my recollection, Turbine has never stated when legacies are assigned so the possibility does exist that they are assigned to unidentified LIs but I suspect that is not the case. What I’ll be doing: identify them all, save the ones with four slots and legacies I will want to keep.
• Level as many LIs as you can to 30 now then deconstruct after Update 2. I’m torn on this one, but mainly because I am very short on storage space. If I had the space – or if I felt like taking the time and effort to creating an LI mule character and shuffling LIs back and forth through shared storage – I might be tempted to go this route just so I would immediately have a pool of legacies and scrolls to use. My time and patience is limited, so while I won’t absolutely rule out doing this, odds are that I won’t bother.
• Deconstruct as many LIs as you can now and combine relics into high tiers. This has been my normal playstyle with the current LI system anyway, so I could easily continue doing this fairly mindlessly. The assumption is that Update 2 will automatically alter all relics in your pool to fit the new system so having many high-level relics will give you more options to play with immediately.
• Deconstruct as many LIs as you can now but do not combine the relics. This one came up primarily after the most recent dev diary where we learned about the new melding system where we will be able to save relic combinations for future use (at least I think that’s what it was?) so it may potentially be more advantageous to have a massive pool of Tier 1 relics to start combining after Update 2 then save a meld that works for the LI you are trying to build. Until I learn more specifics, this is what I’ve been doing the past few days since the publication of the dev diary. If nothing else, I may end up building a pool of relics from the first few tiers then leaving them until Update 2.

Have you read about or thought of other strategies to handle your current LIs in preparation for Update 2? Post them in the comments, I’d love to hear them!

Other than my brief stint with a Dread Knight in Vanguard, I’ll admit to being a few years out of practice. I have been getting a lot of great comments about my performance thus far on the Warden class but there is one area I’ve always had difficulty in MMO’s: group pulls where the mobs run chaotically.

I grew accustomed to selecting targets with the Tab key years ago rather than clicking it with the mouse, and that’s a difficult habit to break. In  Lord of the Rings Online the Tab targeting never quite works the way one would expect. I could have 5 mobs directly in front of me, with one of them targeted, yet I press Tab expecting it to target one of the other mobs in front of me but instead it targets one all the way across the room that we haven’t even started fighting yet. Clicking, for me anyway, is equally frustrating and time-consuming because most of the time the other melee classes (especially Champions) are bouncing around in front of me and I end up clicking them instead of a mob.

I did my first run of the small fellowship instances The Library of Tham Mirdain and The School of Tham Mirdain a few days ago with another Warden and a Bug-zapper Rune-keeper. Several pulls in each were of the "initial chaos" variety and I had one hell of a time getting to the target I wanted within what I consider an acceptable time. (Hint: it would take an atomic microscope to measure my level of patience.) One of the fights involved the other Warden kiting a whole train of mobs while we picked one of and killed it. Aside from the whole "getting aggro off the Warden" problem anyway, it frustrates the hell out of me when I’m chasing a mob to within melee range, my melee icons light up saying it’s all good, but when I click them the server says I’m in fact not in range. That’s the same reason I abhor playing melee in PvP. (Yes, the Warden has its javelin for ranged attacks, but gambits can only be built while in melee.)

Any melee or tank players out there (Wardens specifically would be great) have advice for better, easier, or less-frustrating targeting techniques that I should consider? If I’m the tank, I can eventually get a group on me with "Conviction" and the other threat leach gambits but when someone else is tanking and I’m chasing a mob running all over the place, my temper starts flaring up in short order. I’m always up for learning new techniques and tricks.

Reading these two latest Dev Diaries (as well as the two from November’s Update 1) I’ll see if I can glean any common threads as to what to expect from the new LOTRO Live Team. (I get the impression none of them were around for pre-launch development; in fact, Tim Lang specifically said he was not.)

• Information clean-up – Tooltips will be more informative and easier to understand. The new team believes in making as much information as possible readily available to the players, which in turn will lead to players having a better understanding of the nuances of each skill.
• Improved skill organization – Related to the above bullet point, there seems to be a focus on cleaning up skills that have similar effects or purposes but are scattered all over the place. Tim’s mention of putting all Minstrel healing songs under one group, for example. I would also like to see the Warden’s various Muster skills listed in their own category on the skill list, much like Hunter’s have all their Guide skills in its own category, "Wayfaring."
• Long cool downs are not fun – Tim’s Minstrel Diary mentions his dislike for long cool downs several times, so I would eventually expect all abilities and skills that have extraordinarily lengthy cool downs to be looked at and likely have their cool downs reduced to something that still requires a tactical decision on the player’s part, deciding when or if a skill should be used, without being overly punished for using it.
• Skill rotations should be fun – While many skill rotations have a great end result, the rotations themselves can be quite bland. The new team wishes to address this so that even the rotations – which by definition can be repetitive – have more variety and are entertaining and fun to play through during combat.
• Identify and correct weak abilities – From skills to legacies to trait lines, the new team wants to identify abilities that are weak or unused and bring them, at a bare minimum, to a state of being useful situationaly, if not better. This is great, as each class has at least one trait, etc. that falls in the "do not take under any circumstance" category and needs to be addressed to give everyone more viable build options.
• Reduced restrictions on certain skills – Just like Update 1 removed restrictions on a few Lore-master skills (Fire Lore and Wards), the new team seems to be expressing a desire to continue doing so with other classes where it makes sense. For instance, the Minstrel skill "Chord of Salvation," which is a "panic button" skill, will be castable while moving. One of the things that has always bothered me about Lord of the Rings Online is its insistence that we completely stop for nearly all aspects of combat, so giving us a few more abilities to pull off while on the move will certainly improve my mood.
• Stackable buffs – Buffs cast by multiple members of the same class in a fellowship often don’t stack; the team has expressed a belief that they should in most cases, barring a situation where allowing that would become overpowering. Meaning that, say your fellowship has two Minstrels or Captains, often their buffs will not stack. In fact, there have been a few cases (being fixed as they find them) where not only would they not stack, but the weaker character’s buff would potentially overwrite the stronger one’s buff. An example I experienced recently was the all-Warden Dark Delvings run I participated in. Our Light damage-over-times stacked perfectly fine (boy, did they!) but our Conviction fellowship heal-over-times (which I would consider a tactical buff not a cast heal with an induction) did not, so despite several of us spamming Conviction for group heals, only one was ever active at a time.

One area that is not being addressed at all in Update 2 is Power regeneration. Tim Lang mentions in his Minstrel Diary a few considerations for implementing a Power regen with the Soliloquy of Spirit but is leaving it alone for now until a decision is finalized later. Ken Burd, in his Burglar Diary, delivers sad news to players asking for more Power regen:

On this one you will just have to get used to disappointment. Almost every class in the game wants more power regen. The combat changes in Siege of Mirkwood allow most classes to spend way more power than they can regenerate. We rather like the choice players must make about burning up your power quickly or playing at a more reasonable rate for a long battle. There are no changes to power costs or regen in this update.

He is absolutely correct about the combat changes Mirkwood brought about, though from my PUG experience I can’t say the general masses really "get" the whole concept of thinking about their Power usage. At least the DPS classes certainly do not. But look at the Minstrel. If I’m in full healer mode, I no longer have that tactical choice about using high-Power DPS skills or being more conservative. If someone is being beaten on, I have to heal them. Period. Even healing Grand Stair I often find myself in sticky situations (and I’m not one of those who spams "Bolster Courage" and nothing else; I’m a real healer and I use ever tool at my disposal) and without a Lore-master to share Power with me I quickly find myself out of Power and unable to heal, which means the tank will be going down next, then a wipe. I can use a Steeped Celebrant Salve to restore 900-1000 Power but it has a 2-minute cool down. If the cool down on the potions were reduced that alone would be a huge help, but since Turbine has created Store-only potions on a separate cool down, I don’t foresee them reducing the cool downs of the in-game potions when they create an incentive to spend Turbine Points. Barring extenuating circumstances such as a known critical attack or critical scripted event during a boss fight, I normally don’t subscribe to necessarily keeping the tank (in this context, the classic heavy armor, sword-and-shield tank) topped off on health because that will drain my Power faster as well as raising my threat level unnecessarily. But some fights there is no choice in the matter. The Warden class has its "Dark Before Dawn" gambit but that requires being at half- or less morale and in a boss fight I’m not seeing that as a viable option with a Warden because they are very vulnerable to spike damage. So if I can’t afford to let the Warden get below half-morale to regain his own Power, now we’re both going to be in trouble again eventually.

Reading both on and between the lines of what each designer is saying, I’d hazard a guess that Power regen is something on the table for consideration but the key phrase in Burd’s statement is that there are no changes to Power regen in this update.

What started as a joke ended up being one hell of a smooth Dark Delvings run — an all-Warden fellowship!

Not only did the six of us complete the class quest, we also continued and did the Dark Delvings Challenge successfully. All in 25 minutes!

Enough of us were traited Way of the Shield for tanking that we were able to continuously spam Conviction to heal the entire group. The others traited Way of the Spear for extra damage and bleeds. I believe the initial phrase at seeing so many Warden’s on the first boss was “Holy bleeds, Batman!”

I’ve ran Dark Delvings a couple times on my Lore-master, and I don’t have an issue with the dungeon but my kinship leader absolutely despises it so I wasn’t holding my breath for the kin to run that with me. Even then, we did the entire Challenge in 25 minutes! That’s less time than a Grand Stair Challenge, which is by far the most-run Moria dungeon.

Yeah, Wardens suck, eh?

For those unfamiliar with the class, the Warden is… complex. Rather that hotbars upon hotbars of predesignated skills, the Warden primarily relies upon Gambits, which are in many ways analogous to “combos” of old fighting games. You chain gambit “builders” until you create the gambit skill you want, then execute it. The role of the class is a tank, but not the typical sword-and-board, heavy armor, stand there and take a beating type of tank. It’s an evasion tank, which is precisely why I chose the class.

Many players prefer to play the exact same role from MMO to MMO. I can’t do that. I did the sword-and-board Protection Warrior tank back in vanilla World of Warcraft and I did it well. I see no reason to do it again. When I played Vanguard I chose the Dread Knight class, which is a two-handed tank. In a pinch, he could toss on a shield and one-handed weapon for extra armor protection, but doing so cost him the majority of his aggro generation. He tanked the best with a two-handed weapon; that’s simply how the class was designed, and I liked it that way. Similarly, in Lord of the Rings Online I have avoided the tanking role for years because originally the only one was the Guardian class, a straight-up standard heavy armor and shield tank. The Warden class, with it’s focus on evasion (he’s a medium armour-wearer) and gambits which require a great degree of skill on the player’s part, well that’s right up my alley! When it comes to tanking, the Warden is almost old-school — rather than several forced attack (“snap aggro”) skills like most heavy armor-wearing tanks do in post-WoW MMO’s, the Warden relies on threat leaching, slowly building up his threat. It does have a single area-effect forced attack gambit, but it’s a 5-gambit skill which takes a few seconds to build, and it has to be specifically traited as part of your character build.

The problem is, now that over the past few weeks I’ve gotten the Warden into the level 60-ish range to run the various Moria instances, I’ve been too scared to do so. The Warden class seemingly has a very bad reputation among the players, and is a source of daily complaining trolling on the user-created “GLFF” chat. [Note: I've been sitting on a post shedding light on why for a couple weeks now. I'll get to it...] Despite knowing my gambits I’ve often had a much more difficult time staying alive while solo with more than three mobs on me than the stories I read about. I was very concerned that my ability with the class was much lower than I thought it was, which made me nervous about joining groups, but hearing people complain about Wardens — both as a class and the people who play them (poorly, more often than not) — I have been downright terrified to join any instance groups. Tanking is already a high-pressure role, and I’m playing the underdog tank class. Last thing my fragile ego needs is the entire server saying how much I suck over global chat. My server (specifically the global chat community) is small enough that reputation matters.

Last night, I decided the only way I was ever going to find out how the class and I performed was to just do it. Sink or swim. I joined a group forming for Grand Stair, one of the premier Moria instances that are run almost constantly. Rather than being a Challenge (what some call “hard mode”) run, this was a full-clear, which would be good to get some first-hand experience tanking every boss in the instance. Surprisingly, the group behaved much better than I thought it would, especially with two Champions and one Hunter handling the dps. There were a few times where I was unable to get aggro on the entire group of mobs, but they were trash mobs so tanking quite frankly is optional, and often better to just ball them up and let the Champions burn all their area-effect skills. For my part, starting off the boss fights with the proper gambits (Precise Blow mastery, then Precise Blow builder) got the boss on me immediately then I switched over to heavy threat leach gambits — Conviction is a great one because it’s not only a massive threat leach but also a 9-second group heal-over-time — occasionally switching back to Precise Blow. Once I had aggro, they couldn’t get it off me, and that was a great feeling. There were several times I had the boss so locked down I just sat back auto-attacking to conserve power with no worries about the dps classes pulling aggro.

There were two wipes, one on Glothrok the warg-rider because our Lore-master wasn’t using his Share Power skill to keep the Rune-keeper healer and myself with a power pool. Then again during the final fight with Igash. I was tanking the two archers that The Devoted spawns while one of the Champions tanked Igash. The rune-keeper was too distracted healing the Champion and forgot to heal me in time. I was defeated and the two archers charged in and wiped the group. Second time was successful, however.

All in all, I was very pleased with both the Warden class and my ability with it. I have a few ideas for altering gambit rotations but overall one positive thing people say about Wardens is true: they might take longer to build threat, but once they have it, you can’t get it off them.