I finally hit 60 with my hobbit burglar the other day. First thing I did was train up and the second thing I did was get to the bank to equip the new level 60 burglar gloves a kinship mate sent me. Since then, I’ve been milling around the game a bit seeing what other 60s have been up to.
Turbine’s LotRO: Shadows of Angmar (SoA) contained raid instances. One of the great things about the old content was that it was not particularly gear-intensive. Purple gear (excellent quality – the equivalent of WoW’s blue gear), good trait selections and perhaps some scroll or food buffs would be sufficient for most roles in a raid. You probably wouldn’t want to be the main tank in purple gear, but being DPS or crowd-control would be fine.
Raiding in the Mines of Moria expansion is a bit different. There are several instances (four to six of them, I’m not sure the total count) where players can run in either “easy” mode – where they can complete quests, get deeds, and get some alright gear – or “hard” mode where players can follow certain criteria to complete the instance. Hard mode may include timing (down the second boss ten minutes after downing the first), special skills (not being detected by any guards) or only killing certain mobs. The point of running instances on “hard mode” is to get a special gear drop at the end of the run.
The special gear is gear which adds to a player’s hope (radiance) rating. Radiance keeps a player’s health up and reduces effects of dread. The Watcher, the final raid boss in MoM, has so much dread that players without buffed hope ratings will be at a severe disadvantage.
I’m ambivalent about the new system. One the one hand, it’s neat that the same content can be seen by both raiders (working in hard mode) and casual players (running in normal mode). Fights in either case are the same; it’s the way players go about accomplishing them that differs. I also like the idea of smaller groups in these instances to get some potentially really nice gear.
On the downside, I don’t like some of the class requirements for some of the fights. One fight I was in had so many high damage disease debuffs that to attempt it without a lore master with a certain spec was crazy. Prior to MoM, most instances could be accomplished with a fairly eclectic set of classes. Not having a tank or even a minstrel wasn’t necessarily a deal-breaker as long as some other classes would fill in the gaps with more crowd control or healing. In SoA, a captain, a lore master and a burglar could effect the same outcome as a guardian and a minstrel in addition to putting some other options on the table (burglar conjunctions at will, captain healing or power restoration, lore master chain mezzes, etc).
The renewed emphasis on gear and the focus on certain classes with certain specs give me flashbacks to my days in WoW’s raiding scene – a scene I no longer intend to be part of. I’m hoping future patches with reemphasize teamwork over player spec and reduce the need for raid gear farming to play with ones friends.
February 12, 2009 at 1:25 pm
I totally agree. I don’t want this game to become another gear based treadmill. That said, The watcher is jsut one boss and if you are obsessed with fighting it then its fine as an Icing on the cake kind of thing if you have mastered all the other content along with all your 11 friends. This was really put into the game just to keep ADD people busy until the new raid comes out with book 7 however. (wink)
February 12, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Haha! I certainly hope so. I don’t much care if I don’t see the Watcher. If this is all just a blip on the radar until Book 7, then I can live with it. I was also encouraged to see there will be more three-person instances in the upcoming book. Saweet!
February 13, 2009 at 4:17 am
No one class is essential for those hard mode runs. You can use debuffs pots and salves to manage lack of Lore-master etc. There are now a few classes that can tank and heal well enough, and minimum CC is required for the most part. A group should probably have:
1 tank – Guardian, Champion, Warden
1 healer – Minstrel, Rune Keeper, healing specced Captain
1 support – Lore-master, Captain
1 pure DPS – Hunter, Champion, maybe Rune Keeper
1 class to ineffectually flail about and amuse the others – Burglar
1 random
And yes, I play a Burglar and yes, we need a buff.
February 13, 2009 at 10:08 am
@unwise: “1 class to ineffectually flail about and amuse the others – Burglar”
LOL! That’s why I keep Stoop for a Stone slotted. Nothing says comedy like our ranged group doing massive dps and me running up and “helping” by throwing a rock. That 12.5 dps really adds up.
I don’t think burgs are as broken as some on the official forums say, but I think we could use help in some areas.
On the disease fight I mentioned, we did have potions to use but they were subject to cooldowns while I think the LM slotted trait has none (or a fairly low cooldown).
Since writing the original post, I’ve backed off a bit from the class-centric concerns I have. This week, a group I was in managed a forges hard mode run (I think it was the forges … lots of forges in the instance, anyway) without a tank. We had two minis and two burgs though and between our massive healing and enrage, we managed to get through without any combat deaths. (Two folks went over the edge into the lava.)
February 17, 2009 at 5:31 am
Interesting concept. I’ve been thinking about getting into LotRO for a while as I have heard great things about its PvE.
However, I’d to see if it does turn into a heavily gear-centric system as you have mentioned, since I agree that it’s not something that would be particularly fun to endure.