Skirmish Advice, Like, advice for Skirmishing Options

[Bursk]

The best place to start is here (note that if you’ve already done the Skirmish Tutorial you can go straight to post #3):

http://community.codemasters.com/forum/ski...s-spoilers.html

The majority of the information in that thread is accurate, although there are some minor issues e.g. the Herbalist can not only restore morale but also power.

As you’ll see at the bottom of post #3, you speak to the Skirmish Captain to configure your Skirmish Traits (similar to how you speak to a Bard to configure your regular, non-Skirmish Traits).

So, in case it’s not obvious, here’s what the various traits do:

Attribute – Your soldier’s role (e.g. Archer), their race (e.g. Stoopid Dwarf) etc.
Skill – Your soldier’s skills. Using the Sage as an example, you could slot single-target skills, AoE skills, or a combination of both. Your choice of skills will determine how your soldier fights. If you’re a non-tank class and you don’t want your soldier to get aggro from multiple mobs, it’s best not to slot AoE skills.
Training - Gives your soldier buffs, such as more morale, faster in-combat power regen, moar armour etc. Not all training traits are available to all roles. Traits which do not state which soldier(s) they are for can be applied to all soldier types.
Personal - Affects your character while you’re in a Skirmish (but only while you’re in a Skirmish). Some examples are increases to Tactical Offence Rating, Parry Rating, and Outgoing Healing Rating. You will obviously want to traits appropriate to your class e.g. since Hunters can’t block you really shouldn’t be slotting the ‘Strong Block’ (increase to Block Rating) trait.

The Skirmish Trainer is where you spend Skirmish Marks to buy new traits/rank up existing traits for you and your soldier, and also buy a new type of soldier if you fancy a change. When you’re at the Skirmish Trainer, make sure you have unticked the box that says "Only Display Earned Traits".

When you look at a trait you’ll notice that it has a Rank and a Level. Ranks go from 1-20 and are easy enough to understand. What is rather confusing is the whole Level thing. Basically, this is the relative power of the skill. So if your soldier’s role is Rank 2/Level 34 Warrior, he’s the equivalent of a level 34 character. Now the important thing to know about Rank/Level is that to Rank/Level up to something greater than *your* level is more expensive than if you yourself are at or above that level.

So, as an example, if you’re level 30, the number of Skirmish Marks needed to buy Rank 2/Level 34 is higher than it would be if you were, say, level 35. While it is possible to have your soldier at a much higher Rank/Level than you are, the increased Skirmish Mark cost means it’s not really worthwhile. Provided your soldier’s Rank/Level (and the Rank/Level of their skills and training) is similar to your own, you shouldn’t have too much difficulty with the Skirmishes. I hope I’ve managed to explain all that properly.

A couple of traits (skills) are flat out broken or don’t work as intended due to poor AI. The only two I’m currently aware of are Refocus (Archer) and Tanglefoot (Sage). If you have either of these two soldiers, do not assign them these skills.

Speaking of poor AI, your soldier is, essentially, dumb as a rock. I’m talking eats glue dumb. There’ll be times where you’re getting your butt kicked and your soldier just stands there with a smile on their face, nodding knowingly at you as you breathe your last. Fortunately, selecting an enemy (if you don’t already have one selected) and clicking the ‘Direct Soldier’ skill will cause your soldier to start paying attention again. Should your soldier die or lag behind you (they do often get stuck on bits of scenery), click the ‘Summon’ skill (skill name will be your soldier’s name) and they’ll appear next to you. Note that you can’t summon them while in combat.

That’ll have to do for now. I’ll post some suggested soldier builds (skills etc.) tomorrow. Please let me know if there are any questions.

[Aki]

Aha! Armies of minions!

[Bursk]

Another really useful thread for general skirmish info is here:
http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=304965

Scroll down a little to the Roles section for details on the armour type, damage type etc. of each soldier, as well as a description of what they bring to the table e.g. the Bannerguard ‘Concentrates on Supporting You and Allies’. Below this you’ll see the Skill section which shows all the available skills for each soldier. There are more skills than there are skill slots, so it’s advisable to work out which ones you want to use first before buying any skills. Note that you can only have one Ultimate skill equipped at a time (plus they’re really expensive to buy, so you probably won’t want to get both Ultimates anyway).

There’s a list of Training traits here:
http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Training_Skirmish_Traits

And a list of Personal traits here:
http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Personal_Skirmish_Traits

I’ll post some suggested soldier builds soon (no, really).

[Ghostshark]

Level your soldier and soldier skills (not necessary to max 'em all out) and get involved in the tier 3 action; tiers 1 and 2 are for nabs!

[MonkeyFiend]

Level your soldier and soldier skills (not necessary to max 'em all out) and get involved in the tier 3 action; tiers 1 and 2 are for nabs!

definitely.. although some combinations are harder (on solo) than others. For example I find soloing a hunter with a healer pet incredibly easy. Whereas soloing a tank, people usually pick healer or dps pets and that always seems to be trickier.

Would be interesting to time the skirmishes - tier 3 ones take longer, I wonder if you get more overall skirmish marks doing tier 3 once or tier 1 twice (assuming the time spent is similar)?

[Ghostshark]

Hmm, a good idea and I'd do that if I could launch the game; it appears that VM users can't get in (of which I'm one) and there's a massive hue and cry going on on both the LoTRO Tech forum and the VM one. Aaaaaaarrrrgggghhhhhhh!!!

[Bursk]

It's my understanding that if you're going for 'marks per hour', Tier 1 is, unfortunately, the way to go. I say unfortunately because Tier 1 is obviously piss-easy and never more than you just going through the motions till you've got it over with. When soloing I'll almost always do Tier 1, but I usually try and do group skirms these days, where I'll ask what Rank everyone's soldiers are, and provided they're decent, we'll do a Tier 2. It takes longer, sure, but it's a lot more fun. Content should be fun, and I'd rather spend an hour doing harder skirmishes for less 'marks per hour' if that's more enjoyable overall.

Regarding Tier 3, I can't say I've ever tried this, but I've read some posts on the Hobbit forums that say the main difference between this and the other Tiers is that T3 is all about surviving. Because of this, a lot of people have said "If you want to do Tier 3, use a Herbalist". Maybe this is true (perhaps Ghostmutt can confirm or deny), but would it be fun? I dunno, maybe. I can't really comment on this since, like I say, I've never tried Tier 3. It'd be interesting to see what others have to say about this.

In other news, I know it's taken fucking ages (aka "Bursk Time"), but I've almost finshed trawling through all my notes/forum posts re soldier advice. For those of you who don't already know, the majority of skirmish marks spent on soldiers will be refunded to us once Free to Play starts i.e. bought skills, traits etc. will remain bought, but any marks spent on ranking them will be given back. This is a great opportunity for anyone who has a soldier, skills, traits etc. they don't like to start over. Your Warrior a bit lame? Maybe an Archer would be better. Group a lot and want something that would really benefit the whole group? How about a Bannerguard? Now's a great time to think about what has and hasn't worked for you so far.

So, with the refund of marks on the way, I'll try to get some stuff posted this weekend.

[Ghostshark]

It's my understanding that if you're going for 'marks per hour', Tier 1 is, unfortunately, the way to go. I say unfortunately because Tier 1 is obviously piss-easy and never more than you just going through the motions till you've got it over with. When soloing I'll almost always do Tier 1, but I usually try and do group skirms these days, where I'll ask what Rank everyone's soldiers are, and provided they're decent, we'll do a Tier 2. It takes longer, sure, but it's a lot more fun. Content should be fun, and I'd rather spend an hour doing harder skirmishes for less 'marks per hour' if that's more enjoyable overall.

Regarding Tier 3, I can't say I've ever tried this, but I've read some posts on the Hobbit forums that say the main difference between this and the other Tiers is that T3 is all about surviving. Because of this, a lot of people have said "If you want to do Tier 3, use a Herbalist". Maybe this is true (perhaps Ghostmutt can confirm or deny), but would it be fun? I dunno, maybe. I can't really comment on this since, like I say, I've never tried Tier 3. It'd be interesting to see what others have to say about this.

In other news, I know it's taken fucking ages (aka "Bursk Time"), but I've almost finshed trawling through all my notes/forum posts re soldier advice. For those of you who don't already know, the majority of skirmish marks spent on soldiers will be refunded to us once Free to Play starts i.e. bought skills, traits etc. will remain bought, but any marks spent on ranking them will be given back. This is a great opportunity for anyone who has a soldier, skills, traits etc. they don't like to start over. Your Warrior a bit lame? Maybe an Archer would be better. Group a lot and want something that would really benefit the whole group? How about a Bannerguard? Now's a great time to think about what has and hasn't worked for you so far.

So, with the refund of marks on the way, I'll try to get some stuff posted this weekend.

"Ghostmutt"????!?!?

[Bursk]

Will be posting an update at some point tomorrow.

[Bursk]

Sorry, this'll have to wait. Will do Archer and Sage updates soon.

[Bursk]

One thing I discovered during both my testing and research (i.e. reading lots of threads both on EU and US forums) is that ICPR/ICMR is a much better choice that +Power/+Morale, which is why I'll always pick "Resurgent" over "Boundless". Also, Defensive Training (i.e. Block/Parry/Evade) works unbelievably well and is so much better for keeping your Soldier alive than Armour Training.

Here’s my setup on my Hunter and Herbalist (note that I allow my Herby to grab aggro through her healing then pick off the enemies one at a time):

Skills:

Ultimate: Words of Healing
Nature's Power
Herbs of Boundless Endurance
Nature's Cure

Since Soldier AI isn’t too great, I decided to go for the Over Time skills since that way even if a skill isn’t used at the ideal time, I’ll hopefully still get some benefit from it when I need it most. As for the Ultimate, I gave serious consideration to both the HoT and the PoT, and just picked the one I felt would be more useful overall. Since then I’ve played with people using the PoT and have to say that both are really great. You probably can’t go wrong with whichever one you choose.

Training:

Healing Done (for obvious reasons!)
Defensive Training (it’s better they avoid getting hit at all than get hit and take a little less damage)
Resurgent Power (you’ll be getting an Ultimate Skill either at level 50 or 60, and without RP slotted they’ll soon run out of power - this is true for all Soldiers)
Resurgent Morale (she’s tanking for me so this makes sense)

Personal:

Eagle's Flight
Piercing Might
Defender's Bane

Two Personals that I considered and rejected are Bow-master and Invigoration. I didn’t see how Bow-master would benefit me all that much since I’m already at the Ranged Critical Rating cap (and even +1200 to my RCR only gives an extra 1.2% to my Dev Crit Chance, so I felt something else would be more useful here). With Invigoration, the increase to Incoming Healing Rating appears small, so I'd have thought that the difference it makes is minimal.

Archers are especially good for Burgs and Captains, and this is a good setup:

Skills:

Ultimate: Bold Arrow
Pinpoint Shot
Deadly Shot
Marking Arrow

Training:

Sharp Eye
Sharpened Arrows
Resurgent Power
Armour Penetration

Sage update is coming soon!