Guest Post: Healing During Mounted Combat, Part 3

Part 1
Part 2

Healing During Mounted Combat, Part 3: Bridle Legacies
by Zetarond of Gladden, Leader of Ars Erthad

Most bridle legacies that affect healing are minor legacies.  Should you gather legacy replacement scrolls and make an all-minor bridle?  Probably not at first.  I do suggest that you review the listings in A Look at Legendary Bridles, Part 1: Overview and Part 2: Legacies.

 

Major Legacies

Each of the three bridle types (Light, Medium, Heavy) has six possible major legacies.  Most have to do with damage or defense but two major legacies are related to healing:  Motivation through Aggression Heal Chance (Light) and Survivability Damage Shield Chance (Medium).  While these healing abilities are great for damage classes (e.g., champion or hunter) they probably aren’t as important for healing classes (mainly minstrel and rune-keeper but also captain and lore-master).  As Pineleaf noted it is possible to use a scroll to replace a major legacy with a minor one but you cannot go back.

 

Minor Legacies

There are two types of minor legacies for bridles, war-steed abilities and discipline-specific improvements.  Both types are useful in healing situations.

Light war-steed riders can benefit from the War-steed Armor legacy; you can further improve armor with relics but that’s a topic for a later posting.  Tactical classes doing damage and healing can run through power in long warband fights (think Bugud) so having the War-steed Maximum Power legacy can help.  If you are going to be healing then there’s not much need for the maximum endurance legacy on the bridle.

While mounted healing skills vary by class, most morale restoration will come from skills when in Rohirrim discipline.  As such I always look for the Rohirrim skill healing bonus minor legacy.  Power can be a problem so I choose the Rohirrim skill power cost reduction if possible.

 

Balanced Legacies

It takes a while to level bridles to 31 so that you can decon them and extract a legacy replacement scroll.  As such your first couple of bridles are going to have legacies for which you have few choices.  Fortunately, that first bridle probably needs to have balanced legacies to make it useful for both DPS and healing and for both solo and group play.  If one of the three starting major legacies is related to healing that’s perfect.  When choosing minor legacies at reforges make sure to pick Rohirrim Skill Healing if available.

Here’s an example bridle.  It’s for a level 75 character so the fury bonus is modest.  Two of the major legacies are for DPS so this bridle is good for solo play.  The remaining major increases the chance for the Motivation through Aggression Heal, also a good one.  During reforges I was fortunate to get the Rohirrim Skill Healing option.  Maximum War-Steed Power is good for both DPS and healing.  I’d prefer War-steed armor over agility but I didn’t get that choice.  This bridle turned out well for general use.  I can run in Red Dawn for higher damage and better chance at Wrath.  In groups I can run in Rohirrim and improve both skill healing as well as the chance for Motivation through Aggression to occur.

 

 

Dedicated DPS and Healing Bridles

As you reach the level cap you can pursue a balanced approach to bridle legacies or you can work up dedicated bridles for DPS and healing.  For quite some time most rune-keepers have used two sets of LIs, one for damage and one for healing.  It’s the same concept here but you don’t have to stop by a bard to retrait!

A DPS LI should start with a couple of major legacies for damage such as Wrath chance and Class Damage over Time for a light bridle.  I’d certainly include the Red Dawn skill direct damage minor and max it out.  Most classes have at least one skill that provides a self-heal so Red Dawn skill healing can be helpful; otherwise, take Red Dawn skill power cost reduction.  I’d finish off with two war-steed improvement legacies like strength and armor.  Yes, that is four minor legacies.

For a healing bridle I’d go for all three Rohirrim minor legacies:  healing, power cost, and direct damage.  Healing and power cost are obvious choices but why direct damage?  Even when you’re in a group, running in Rohirrim, and focusing on healing you will need to do some DPS so the direct damage legacy helps.  I’d pick two war-steed improvements such as armor and strength but maximum power can be good if you run low in long fights.  As mentioned earlier you probably don’t need the endurance legacy as you will be doing some healing.

Here is my current healing bridle.  It’s a level 85 Third Age (my Second Age is dedicated to DPS).  The fury bonus is much more robust than before.  I maxed out Rohirrim Skill Healing and put some points into Rohirrim Skill Power Cost for those long fights.  The number of points in the damage and  war-steed legacies are modest but they do improve steed performance.