Healing During Mounted Combat

Guest Post: Healing During Mounted Combat, Part 3

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.

Guest Post: Healing During Mounted Combat, Part 2

For Part 1, click here.

Healing During Mounted Combat, Part 2: Traits
by Zetarond of Gladden, Leader of Ars Erthad

If you are going to be healing during mounted combat you’ll need to choose your steed traits carefully. Note that healing can take a lot of power (both yours and the steed’s) so be sure to chose traits, legacies, and relics to help in that area.

Most tactical classes will use a Light steed. In addition to damage traits there are many good choices for healing. Here are the Red Dawn and Rohirrim branches for a Light mount. The traits that are circled are described below.

traits

In the Red Dawn branch the Combat Advantage trait offers improved tactical mastery that adds to healing rating. Deceptive Appearance lowers healing threat, helpful for avoiding aggro from mounted enemies. Feign Injury is a skill that drops aggro for a few seconds, much like the minstrel flop.

The Rohirrim branch has healing rating, power regeneration, power restore, and cooldown traits. Invigorating Presence can have up to +1500 incoming and outgoing healing rating, great for any healing class. Bond of Power boosts mount in-combat power regen. The related trait Invigorate adds a power restoration skill that is life-saving when you run low on power. Quickness shortens the cooldowns on many skills; being able to use a skill more often means more morale and endurance added to the fellowship!

The capstone trait in blue for all steeds is a healing ability. For Light the trait is Motivation through Aggression that, when in Rohirrim discipline, provides a 25% chance to restore 10% morale and steed endurance to all fellowship members. While this skill can be good for non-healing classes (e.g., hunters) it may not be worth investing trait points and bridle legacy points for healing classes.

The Medium steed tree has a couple of traits that are good for healing but not as many as for a Light steed. In the red branch Tactical Genius improves tactical mastery and therefore outgoing healing rating. In the blue branch the Deep Reserves trait improves power regeneration. The capstone trait when in Rohirrim discipline is Survivability, a 25% chance to apply a damage preventing bubble (roughly 800 morale) for several seconds. Medium can be a good choice for a captain but there isn’t much healing support for minstrels, rune-keepers, or lore-masters.

The Heavy steed is largely intended for tanking so there aren’t many healing traits. In the blue branch Battle Tested improves steed endurance and power regeneration. The capstone trait when in Rohirrim discipline is Benevolence that boosts incoming and outgoing healing rating; I see it more as a help for guardians and wardens being healed as opposed to healing classes restoring morale.

In summary it appears that the Light steed will be the choice of most healers. Once you have earned enough points you can trait deeply in both red (DPS) and blue (healing) branches. As noted in the Advanced Techniques guide you can switch disciplines on the fly. With my Lore-Master I often open in Red Dawn to do some damage, change to Rohirrim to do some healing, and even jump into Riddermark for extra power restoration late in a long fight.

Guest Post: Healing During Mounted Combat, Part 1

Healing During Mounted Combat, Part 1: Skills and Discipline
by Zetarond of Gladden, Leader of Ars Erthad

In my kinship we were scratching our heads about how to heal during mounted combat. None of our mounted skills seemed to be for healing such as Words of Courage for a captain. After some investigation I determined that healing is a secondary effect for a few skills. The healing effects are influenced by your current discipline: Red Dawn, Rohirrim, or Riddermark. Think of discipline as a “mounted stance.”

For example, my main is a Lore-Master. While not primarily a healer my LM can always drop a Beacon of Hope or the new skill Water-Lore to keep someone up while the main healer is busy. While mounted I had all kinds of attack skills but no dedicated healing skills. I had been running mounted combat mostly solo so I was in Red Dawn discipline all of the time. One LM attack skill is Bond of the Rider. I had thought of it as the mounted equivalent of Light of the Rising Dawn but noticed a secondary effect after the light damage:

That is a nice self-heal that I can use every 18 seconds! Note that the heal applies to rider and mount.

The Rohirrim discipline is shown as blue, often the “healing color” in LOTRO. Out of curiosity I switched to Rohirrim then checked Bond of the Rider again:

The damage from the attack is slightly lower but the heal is larger and applies to the entire fellowship. So that’s where healing has been hiding! Note that the cooldown changed because I had made other changes to mounted traits. While still in Rohirrim I checked another skill:

In this case, Sign of Power: Inspiration acts like a captain’s Revealing Mark in that a fellowship member who lands a blow on the target has a chance for a heal (rider and mount). I checked these skills in the Riddermark discipline to find that they had power restore secondary effects instead of morale/endurance healing.

I finally thought to check the tool tip for Rohirrim discipline. Sure enough, it increases outgoing and incoming healing by 10%. The increase in mount armor is helpful as well.

I have a captain in Rohan so I tried his mounted skills. Sure enough, when in Rohirrim some of his attacks had group healing secondary effects. I would advise everyone to look at all your mounted skills in each of the three disciplines. Comments from Minstrels and Rune-Keepers about their healing skills would be most welcome.

Editor’s note: This post is a submission from a WARSTEEDS reader. It addresses some of the questions related to group healing from horseback. Note that the specific skills shown in this post are for the Loremaster class and that healing skills for the other healer classes will be different. It is important that you examine the tool-tips for your character’s mounted combat skills to see how they work.