Let’s Look at Lieutenants: Brothers of Destruction

Role:                               Damage

Group Settings:            Duo and higher

You are in a raid that is fending off a counterattack in Assault on the Ringwraiths’ Lair and everything appears to be going fine. Then you see sixteen giants running straight for your group.

The Brothers of Destruction are giants (well, the game says “ogre” but they look like a giants to me). What’s worse than fighting a giant? Fighting a pack of them. Alas, that is just what you will be doing as when this lieutenant enters combat, it bifurcates.

Wait, you say, how do you get 16 giants from “bifurcate”? The number of giants you get actually depends on the size of the run. In a duo or small fellowship, you only face two brothers. In a full fellowship, you face three. Finally in a raid, you face four. (This lieutenant does not appear in solo skirmishes).

The key to fighting the brothers is to concentrate on one of them. Which one? It doesn’t matter as long as you all attack the same one (Target Assist will come in handy here). This is because when one of the brothers is defeated, the remaining ones flee the battle (the game shows them all dying but I see that as just a game mechanic).

That’s all well and good but if there are only four in a raid, why did I say 16 at the start? I did say Assault on the Ringwraiths’ Lair, which includes a counterattack that features two lieutenants. Very well, that’s eight. Finally, in a raid, a lieutenant spawn sometimes includes two lieutenants instead of one. Therefore, if both spawns include two Brothers of Destruction, they will all quadfurcate to create 16 giants in all. Oh Brother!

Well, they will all disappear when you kill one, right? Not quite. Those are four sets of brothers, so killing one will only get rid of one of the sets. Ouch.

How do you handle this? In a smaller group (with only two or three brothers), tanking should be fine. With more, the general solution is to have someone kite the brothers while everyone else picks a target and fights it alone.

Have I ever really faced four at a time. Thankfully no. So far, I haven’t faced more than two sets at a time (in a raid for a total of eight) and my specialty was to be the off tank that kite the brothers around while the rest of the raid cleared out their targets.

Next time, we will take a look at our first full fellowship lieutenant: the Chaos Fiend.

May your shield protect you and your spear never break,

Pineleaf Needles