Branick, Mysteri, and Krorain are once again joined by master skirmisher, Pineleaf Needles, to continue our series on Skirmishes in Lord of the Rings Online™. In addition to in-depth coverage of the Mines of Moria™ skirmishes, Battle of the Deep-way, Battle of the Way of Smiths, and Battle of the 21st Hall, Pineleaf also explains how some of the changes to LOTRO in the past few months have affected skirmishes. Thanks for listening!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (37.4MB)
- Pineleaf’s Pictorial Primer to Skirmishing Index
- Our Previous Skirmish Episodes: Pineleaf’s Skirmisher of Middle-earth Video Series
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I am SO glad to hear I’m not the only hunter getting ‘punched in the face’ when running skirmishes. I actually quit running them because after ROI, I died far more than it was worth to run them. Very sad about that and still not sure if it’s just that I stink as a hunter or if something changed and I haven’t found it yet.
Anyway, if Pineleaf’s hunter had problems, Ranni the Hunter feels better about her lack of ability now.
One comment I hear a lot from hunters I know that have returned to the game after the updates is that they are lost and confused about their class. The changes were not that vast at first glance, but they really changed how the class plays, as I understand it. So if you haven’t figured something out, then you are certainly not alone.
As for skirmish soldiers, protectors have never worked right for me so I just do not use them. Makes it more exciting and I learn to play better if I have to handle multiple mobs on a squishy class without a tank in between me and them anyhow. My main’s warrior works well most of the time, but let’s just say that there is a reason I renamed him Bonehead.
Pineleaf read my comment – that makes it about the best show ever! Interestingly enough, I had also run 21st hall a couple of hours before listening to the show. In all seriousness though, his guides are fantastic and have almost become ‘must reads’ for anyone getting started in this area of the game.
Great show and guest… as always, looking forward to the next one.
Thanks Pineleaf for coming on and doing a discussion on these particular skirmishes – there were many little tips and details that I was totally oblivious about (like the defenders in Way of Smiths), and they should help me in future skirmishing.
In the age of skirmish raids being more popular, I’d have to suggest that you should definitely take a look at possibly changing your overall graphics quality (by hitting Esc key, going to Options, and under the Graphics options you can change the “Overall Graphics Quality” to a lower setting), especially if you are playing on a laptop or older machine. Certain skirmishes seem to be more prone to lag issues (in raid mode, at least), like Amon Sul (especially difficult in raid-mode, where a player is usually denoted as the torchbearer to keep all fires lit…you want to stay close to the central fire for the most efficient buff, so the battle arena is small, and there are many adds, especially in the final Cargul fight).
Specifically for the Moria skirmishes, another lag issue can spike in the final boss, if you decide to pop the rest of your usable flag buffs all at once. Each one has a kind of circular ripple animation, and can get really laggy on some machines, when you may need to be targeting something specific or responding to some boss mechanic.
Dear Academicians,
I might be an episode behind on feedback. If so pardon my tardiness. I enjoyed PineLeaf’s guest hosting stint on Moria skirmishes very much. He always has a new factoid that you might not have known from just running the skirmish umpteen times. Normally, I am most interested in the boss mechanics as this is typically one of the few points in most skirmishes where you can fail. Especially new wrinkles that are added for raids since the rewards in Update-5 have made these much more popular. When discussing the 21st hall, Pineleaf mentioned that on the final troll boss, there was a corruption which you should remove immediately. I ran that skirmish in a raid fairly recently, and the leader of that raid who SEEMED fairly knowledgeable told everyone very specifically that they should NOT remove the corruption on the troll, because doing so would spawn an immediate additional wave of adds. I had never heard that before, but it would explain why that stage can sometimes be difficult if most people were not aware of that mechanic.
I wanted to see if you could get PineLeaf to clarify if he meant that the corruption removal should only be done when in smaller groups then raids or if perhaps he can refute or corroborate the guidance I was given on this boss.
Cheers! Braag