Finished working on my new Rune-Stone

Here is my new lvl 85 2nd age Rune-stone I’ve just finished working on. This is going to be a great all purpose DPS stone. Now I just got to work on replacing my current DPS bag.

The servers are back online!!!

After a long grueling downtime the LOTRO severs are back online. I would like to say a special thanks to all the people who worked tirelessly to get us back in game. Now let’s get out there and hunt some Orcs!!!!!!

I’m back!!!!!!!

Well after taking a long break from LOTRO I decided to come back. I had gotten bored having two toons at level cap and didn’t have much to do in game. Since I’ve been back I’ve gotten Dramorian my Rune-Keeper from lvl 66 to 85 and 6 pieces of Hytbold gear an a shiny new 2nd age lvl 85 Rune Stone. I just recently started leveling  Thamorian my currently lvl 66 Guardian. So needless to say I’v been very busy lately trying to get back up to speed after taking two years off. I have to say reading about mounted combat was really what brought me back to the game. Stay tuned, more posts to come.

Welcome to 2011!

I hope everyone had a great holiday season this year. So far my start to 2011 has been a very busy one at work but I thought I’d push the work aside for a bit so I could write up a small blog post. I’ve been running solely on my RK lately.  I really  hope with the next update they give us some more options to pick up the superior third marks. Since my raiding has  been put on the back burner from lack of finding a group, I decided I’d jump over to the Moors and have some fun there. So far, I’ve got my RK up to rank 4 and having a blast doing so. I’ve been tweaking my RK to get the most burst dps I can out of him which is needed in the Moors, since you need to hit fast and hit hard if ya want to live. Just picked up a new 2nd age lvl 65 satchel which should work well for replacing my 1st age I was using. Tomorrow I’ll post up a pic of the stats on it so far.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Just wanted to take the time to wish everyone in the LOTRO community a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.  Hope everyone is enjoying themselves at the Yule Festival this year.

Tham

Stuff I’m working on before the holidays take over

I’ve been really busy in RL getting ready for the Holidays but I’ve managed to get some good gaming in. I’ve been concentrating on my RK and I’d like to get him some new LIs but I’m nervous about the upcoming changes and that kind of has me in a holding pattern to see what will happen. I’ve been diligently working on trying to get my full Helegrod gear on Dram my RK but have been having trouble lately getting school/library runs to get the superior 3rd marks. I’ve done a few DN runs lately and managed to pick up the gloves and the boots on my RK but have been very disappointed in  the stats. I’m also very grateful that the lotro lotteries are back and I’ve already won one of them so far. I’m trying to decided on which toon I should level to 65 next. My choices are Hunter, Minstrel or Warden. I’ve been leaning towards the Warden after watching @docholidayj’s awesome video he posted doing death from below. My Hobbit Warden is lvl 43 but it’s been so long since I played him i forget all the gambits. Well enough ranting for the night. Take care everyone.

Tham

Getting into the Spirit of Yule-Fest

Since the launch of this years Yule-Fest my  first order of business was to get a good holiday outfit going to get into the spirit of things. After checking the NPCs handing out the new items I came across this new outfit  which is perfect. Now I just need to make some fresh pipeweed to hand out to the locals. If ya happen to be on Silverlode make sure ya say hi and I’ll give ya some.  I’ve been busy decorating my 4 houses for the Holidays. Once I’m done I’ll post up some more pics. In the meantime Happy Yule-Fest everyone!!!!!

Tham

My Rune-Keeper is on fire now

So since the November update fixed/updated the Cleansing Fires trait line I figured I would give it a shot to see how I liked it. I’ve always been a full spec’d Solitary Thunder RK for solo and raiding purposes if I wasn’t healing. The first thing that shocked me was how quick mobs went down. Once fully battle attuned drop an Essay of Fire (One of the new RK skills) which puts a tier 3 Writ of Fire on the mob. When traited for fire, it does 186-265 initial damage and 192 – 274 damage every 4 seconds for 20 seconds when that expires it hits again for 159-227 and 165 – 236 every 4 seconds for 20 seconds. While this is on the mob hit them with Essence of Flame 173 -247 then 182- 260 every 2 seconds for 6 seconds + 60% more damage for having a tier 3 writ of fire on them. While this is burning on them nail em with Smouldering Wrath which hits for 243 – 347 initial and 256 – 365 every second for 8 seconds. Just looking at average numbers, that comes out to about 6761.8 damage for just using 3 skills. Of course there are other fires DoTs you can stack on top of that. Needless to say I’m having a lot of fun trying out the Cleansing Fires line and the different traits in that line trying to get the best setup.

November Update is Live

Yesterday was the release of the new November update. I had been doing a lot of RK testing on Bullroarer so for weeks I had been getting myself prepared for the new update by collecting the lvl 60 single-shot chisel recipes and SM Metalworkers journals so I could start crafting my new chisels right away. My first order of business when the update went live was to organize my vaults on my Rune-Keeper and Guardian. I came up with some great categories to name my vaults, I choose the following.

1. Crafting Mats
2. Armour
3. Bling
4. Legendary
5. Barter
6. Misc.
7. Recipes
8. Housing

After getting my vaults organized I moved on to picking up the new rep mounts on my Guardian which cost me about 15 gold. Moving on to the new chisels. After I crafted my new chisels (all crits) I was very disappointed to see better chisels for sale in the lotro store and also single shot recipes for lvl 65 chisels and rifflers. I really wish they would have put that in the patch notes so I wouldn’t have wasted all my SM metalworker journals I crafted not to mention the mithril flakes. Oh well, ya live and ya learn. I took my RK on a few runs last night traited full lightning with the new lightning chisel. I got a group together to run 2.6.8 to finish off the Moria book and get my last legendary trait Mystifying Flame and also did a turtle run. I was still hitting hard on both of them traited for lightning. Today I need to wrap up Algraig rep on my Guardian. Take care everyone and have a great day.

Tham

 

Upcoming Rune-Keeper changes or getting hit in the face with the nerf bat. It’s all a matter of opinion.

The LOTRO servers will be brought down this Monday the 29th from 6:00 – 10:00am EST for the new update. When I first heard that RKs were getting an update I was very psyched since we had so many issues with our cleansing fires trait line. I patiently waited until the release notes were released and I opened them with great excitement and then  BOOM right in the face with a big ol’ nerf bat. I jumped right on the bandwagon with most of the other RKs crying foul at the changes. After about a week of complaining I decided to spend some quality time on Bullroarer and see how this was all going to work out. I quickly went to the trainer and picked up the three new skills; 1. Sustaining Bolt 2. Master of Writs and 3. Essay of Flame. I was also lucky enough to find some of the new chisels on the AH to test them out. I’ve always traited lightning so I equiped the new lightning chisel which offers +1200 tactical offense rating and while using it you quite frequently become what they call charged which increases your tactical damage and makes the Sustaining Bolt skill cost 0 power. Every time you use Sustaining bolt you get -10% power usage for 15 seconds which takes the place of the power decrease we use to get from equipping the Tale of the Storm trait. Scribes Spark was nerfed but they did increase damage on Essence of Storm and give it a shorter cool down. The Master of Writs skill is just pure awesome. What is allows you to do, is go into battle against a mob and start pounding out the damage or healing  then hit Master of Writs which for 15 seconds allows you to use any of the writs regardless of your attunement at a +50% power cost increase at first this sounds bad but it’s not. I was able to solo a 20k Olag-Hai while using Master of Writs I was able to keep a tier 3 Writ of Health on me while taking it down. I finished with 3/4 of my morale and 1/2 my power. It also works the other way with healing. When you trait at least 4 deep in the benedictions of Peace line Master of Writs becomes a toggle skill you can turn on and off. While this is on and your fully healing attuned you can cast Writ of fire and Writ of Cold at will. Only problem is your using those writs at a +50% power increase. But, there is a solution to that, just equip your Riffler of Writs and the power usage is decreased by -30% and you get a +416 to your outgoing healing. I haven’t had a chance to test out the changes to the Cleansing Fires line but the new skill Essay of Flame applies a tier 3 writ of fire on the target with one skill. Once I get a chance to try the changes to fire line I’ll put up a new post on that. So in conclusion after all my testing I’m pretty happy with the changes and think everything will be just fine if not maybe a little better.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Tham