I don’t know what it is, but maybe you’ll know what I’m talking about. You’re leveling in Dunland; maybe it’s your first time or maybe it’s your third. And you’re following all the right steps. You’re letting the Epic Storyline guide you around the zone to different quest hubs, you’re working on quests, killing monsters, and things are going fairly smoothly. Then, all of the sudden BOOM you’re dead. It’s not a slow death either. It’s sudden and it’s unexpected.
“OK,” you think to yourself, “Maybe I just wasn’t paying attention.” So you gather yourself up, maybe you partially or fully remove your Dread, and you head back out to where you were and you start fighting again. And BOOM you’re dead again. Now you’re confused and shaking your head. Why are you suddenly dying so much? Why are things suddenly so much tougher?
Now I can’t say that everyone has experienced this issue. I know for a fact that when I was playing my Guardian through the Dunland areas he didn’t have any problems. But my Champion… Now that’s a different story. Things for my Champion actually started off a bit easier than it did for my Guardian. He swept through most of the content with no issues, but then around level 70 he started to have issues. Suddenly groups of 2 or more mobs on equal level or higher could be an issue for him and signatures could wipe him out in one-on-one fights if I wasn’t watching closely. And dang it, if some of those quests where there are waves of enemies coming at me didn’t have to be attempted several times because I kept dying at the end.
Sure, I could have grouped up for some of it, but a lot of these instances and experiences were in Solo Missions where I couldn’t group up if I wanted to. And besides that, I was fine for the first 5 levels, so what changed? Was there some large difference separating my characters? Well let’s take a look at the primary differences between the characters:
- Classes:
- Guardian in Overpower
- Champion in Fervour
- Gear
- Guardian wore Anuminas gear until 75, but swapped jewelry out as he leveled.
- Champion wore crafted, reputation rewards, and quest reward gear.
- Virtues
- Some overlapping virtues between characters
- Guardian focused on tanking virtues
- Champion focused on those increasing Might first and then vitality
- Guardian had level 10-12 virtues
- Champion had level 4-5 virtues
- Traits & Skills
- Both had traits aimed at solo/DPS experiences
- Both capable of switching into a “tank” stance at any time
So, to me the biggest discrepancies between the characters were their gear and the virtues.
What about gear? Now, I guess I could have gotten some better gear from doing skirmishes or something of the kind, but to me that feels like moving backwards. I didn’t have any Moria or Mirkwood gear because the character was only level 50 when Isengard was released. I wanted to see Isengard, I guess I could have focused more on Vitality than I did Might, but most of the Isengard gear that has Might on it also has Vitality. Really, in my opinion the gear doesn’t seem to me like the likely culprit.
So is it virtues that really make that big of a difference? If I had leveled up my tanking virtues and then sent my Champion through the zones would he have had an easier time? If so, what should I do when I take my other classes through? Should I swap in some virtues that increase their physical mitigation with the possible loss of some DPS? I guess there is some experimenting that could be done to see how effective this would be, but I’m not sure I’m willing to put in even more time into grinding virtues for my alts.
I also think that this brings us to another issue that I seem to have with Dunland which is how the leveling progression seems to be very linear. Sure, you can skip some areas and come back to them, but in many cases if you hit a wall you have no other option to keep running into it full speed or group up to complete quests that were marked as “solo” (which is not a bad thing). I know that we here at CSTM had a writer that had such a horrible time leveling up their Rune-keeper in Dunland that she actually went back to Mirkwood to level because they were tired of dying and had no other options in Dunland.
So what about you? Have you had any problems in Dunland? Did you get to a point where it seemed that you just started dying suddenly? Did you ever leave Dunland to go level in another zone because you had no options in Dunland? And what kind advice would you offer to players who seem to be having a difficult time surviving the Rise of Isengard?
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January 5, 2012 at 11:14 am
My problem with Dunland is that it’s incredibly boring. I don’t want to spend my time here!
January 5, 2012 at 11:28 am
I blame every single creature that uses stuns for my sudden demise. It’s unbelievable how often you get stunned in Dunland. My lore-master used permanent stun protection and never ran into major problems, but my other alts had a difficult time after hitting level 70. Major pain until about level 73 when things went fine again.
I also noticed that keeping my original gear helped a ton, because the new gear focuses on your primary stat + vitality. If you don’t pay attention and only look at main stat + armour value, you can mess up your characters stat balance and experience this sudden death. I’ve seen people boasting that their lore-master had like 1,200 will, but their morale was only 3,900-ish, or people with huge amounts of morale wit low main stats struggling to kill stuff.
January 5, 2012 at 12:17 pm
Yes, I forgot about the stuns. Excellent point. Some of them are extremely long too. I really don’t think anything outside of a major instance should give you a 5 to 10 second stun. For some classes this is basically guaranteed death.
January 5, 2012 at 11:26 am
I would suggest that the problem is gear, there are some excellent upgrades from MorIa and I have been constantly replacing my gear and especially my weapon. I am still only 59 so not yet reached Dunland. How much health do you have?
January 5, 2012 at 12:16 pm
I think part of the problem there has been noted by others in this thread — the drops in Dunland are notably lopsided.
I went through on a RK and it was extremely difficult to find any light armor that had any sort of vitality buffs on it. You can circumvent this with crafted armor, but if that’s not an option you’ll have a significantly harder time.
January 5, 2012 at 11:27 am
Just hit 70 on my main (Guard) a couple nights ago but haven’t gotten to the higher areas (doing quests in Dunland upper section to clear out my quest log) but I have heard your story over and over.. and over.. and over. A Champion friend of mine was on Teamspeak just last night telling me about a quest/instance where he died 6 times where he usually breezes through these things.. (he’s 71). I know a LOT of people are paying attention to virtues and their LI’s now.. maybe that’s it? I know hearing those stories my husband (who duo’s with me on his Loremaster) has been pouring over data to make sure he’s ready for that area as well. Maybe I should do the same..
January 5, 2012 at 11:28 am
I have taken my main and 4 alts through dunland and I really enjoyed it. Was so easy on my main a captain all the way to 75 but my mini,burg,lm and hunter really was a challenge
January 5, 2012 at 11:28 am
I noticied as one quests thru dunland the gear drops take you to a point where you have a lot of ONE thing and too little of the rest. Like 300000 will and 2 vitality. So you really gotta be careful with those yellow drops, not so good!
January 5, 2012 at 11:54 am
Yep, the ROI gear is heavily main-statted, which can cause a lot of stability problems for DPS classes. RKs will have almost no morale and absolutely little defense for example, more so than usual, to go along with the removal of stat caps.
Plus, it seems that stuns are much more frequent in Dunland, at least it’s something I and others have noticed (but might be observational bias, dunno).
January 5, 2012 at 2:21 pm
No, there are a lot of stuns. And they are loooooooong too.
January 5, 2012 at 2:54 pm
There are a lot of stuns, and I think a good party of the problem with how frequent they seem to be (and how irritating) is the lack of diminishing returns on the stuns.
I think since RoI has been released, the only thing effected by diminishing returns on stuns anymore is the creep CC (not to sound like a whiny creep player, lol). Everywhere else in the game though, there’s absolutely no effect like this in place and this makes for frequent long stuns and very frustrated players.
January 5, 2012 at 2:54 pm
Party, lulz… PART*
January 7, 2012 at 3:44 pm
Dirhallith — all CC, freep and creep, in the Moors is affected by diminishing returns. So you can put your mind at ease
And don’t worry about sounding like a whiny creep player, if I was one I’d have some big gripes too. Even though I am a freep-only player, I’d agree that overall creeps are underpowered and also, I believe, suffering from a crippling bug that drastically lowers their mitigations.
On-topic: While I agree with all the comments in the sense that Dunland is harder, the gear-stats are lopsided, the stuns are longer, etc., in point of contrast, I had an AWESOME time in Dunland on my hunter even though I was dying more than any prior region in the game. Why? I loved the challenge, and I loved maxing out my dps through my agility and trying to kill mobs faster before they killed me. I was forced to use my CC much more effectively and plan out battles and pulls in a way I had never had to before.
January 5, 2012 at 11:30 am
I’ve leveled 3 through Dunland now, and one thing’s for sure in there – if you don’t cure those horrible DoT fire wounds the half-orcs throw, you’ll die in a heartbeat!
I find I do great in Dunland until about level 70-71, and then the pain/damage ratio gets out of hand and I have to say goodbye to my beloved old legendary. I did learn after the first character, though, to get to at least 66 before going down there or I run out of on-level quests around 71.
January 5, 2012 at 11:42 am
Yes! I have been crafting wound removal pots like crazy for kinnies, or offer to run with them using the lore-master for wound removal and DPS.
January 5, 2012 at 12:14 pm
Definitely. I found those to honestly be one of only a handful of wounds/poisons/diseases/etc that I needed to cure in solo play or else. I specifically left and came back with a bunch of wound cures — something I almost never do outside of fellowship raids.
January 6, 2012 at 3:55 am
I agree on the wound curing importance. Luckily, I have always skirmished a lot with my leveling toons and there are a few lieutenants that you really need to cure the dots from immediately or it gets really ugly. So I always have a full stack of level-appropriate cures (each type) handy. Thank heavens I already established the good habit of curing before I ran into those nasty Dunland areas. (plus I hate staying crippled by those darned wargs in Dunland, grrr.)
January 5, 2012 at 11:34 am
I never had a problem with Dunland, really. In fact, I loved most of it with the exception of the boring quests. My champ whizzed through practically all of it no problem.
April 24, 2012 at 12:51 am
hi aarow
can you give me some tips
dang the matriach avent (spelling) and the trolls abonimations just nail my champ. i got to be doing something way wrong. where you using pots..which ones..and what level was your champ?
January 5, 2012 at 11:34 am
I’ve gotten two characters through Dunland. My first, Lyono, is a Hobbit Burglar (specced Quiet Knife), who started Dunland AT level 65 (having going through the entirety of Mirkwood and 90% of Enedwaith at that level), so I basically had no options to go back and grind levels… not that it was ever a consideration. I was constantly fighting mobs at or below level, but I honestly didn’t have any issues at all with that… until I reached the Ring of Isengard. Those level 75 Uruk sigs just constantly delivered nasty damage to me, to the point where I couldn’t solo them most of the time – a completely new experience for me. Note that my Virtues weren’t stacked, and all my gear was crafted and/or reward/rep gear (with the occasional good drop).
Now, my human Guardian, Fallon (specced for tanking) went through half of Mirkwood (and the epic in Enedwaith – no longer VIP, and didn’t have the QP) before entering Dunland, but started at level 68. She had ZERO issues with the mobs… until, again, facing those nasty Uruk sigs in the Ring. They had zero business doing the damage they do to me (again, crafted gear and quest/rep rewards, with decent Virtues). I’m thinking those mobs in particular are wound a little… tighter… than other mobs of their ilk. Maybe high mob finesse or something.
I *do* definitely agree that the quest areas there are completely linear, UNLESS you go in above-level (I hit 75 on Fallon while doing quests out of the Rohirrim Scout Camp, a level 71-72 area). It really is a dull, repetitive place.
January 5, 2012 at 1:35 pm
I didn’t have any problems with my Gambler-traited Burg, until I reached 75 and retraited Quiet Knife. Suddenly everything started killing me. I had no time to react when I got an unexpected add, and I was dead. Solo skirmishes were a particular problem.
I retraited Gambler, focused on increasing my evasion, slotted Stick & Move for the first time since Moria, and suddenly everything was fine again. At this point, I only trait Quiet Knife when I know I’m going into a group with a tank.
I think mobs are hitting harder and more often and if you’re not specifically traited and geared for survivability (morale, evasion, etc), there are problems. Traiting for more DPS doesn’t seem to let you kill things fast enough to handle complicated situations.
January 5, 2012 at 11:43 am
The first toon I took through Dunland was my minstrel and I did not have any problems leveling or dying. I think this was in part because in the first incarnation of RoI, minstrels were turned in to AOE DPS machines. I was killing mobs three and four at a time with relative ease. I traited straight red-line and kept my level 65 2nd Age LIs and six-piece Helegrod set. I think some of the patches have nerfed some of the skills that minstrels had back in the first month of RoI.
My second toon through was my captain, and I had a lot of problems with large groups of mobs. I’m mostly a solo player and I run blue-line with a banner. As I got better equipment, I upgraded almost all of my armour as I got better drops (because a lot of gear had might and vitality on it), but kept my LIs until I got to level 75.
My RK has had the most trouble in Dunland. On top of the known issue with RK DPS not scaling as other classes do, it seems that much of the gear costs light-armour wearers about 1000 morale from what they had at level 65, so I have to make up for it with jewelry, legacies and virtues. Fortunately, I had some help from a friend through a bunch of levels, but he’s stuck at 73 for the time being.
All of my toons had virtues in the 9/10 range (with a couple of 11s thrown in) when they started the RoI content, and in some cases they’ve since been maxed out.
My biggest complaint is that they seem to have made each class a one-stat pony, and much of the gear will have Will and Fate or Might and Agility, but it tends not to have Will and Vitality or Agility and Morale.
January 5, 2012 at 11:51 am
Personally I thought Dunland was the best yet. I had decent survivablity compared to leveling in other places with my hunter. The landscape and story were amazing. I tend to have a problem with the rep system for Theodred though. Really, you want me to spend TP to unlock more tasks to move this along? A little sneaky if you ask me.
January 5, 2012 at 11:53 am
I’ve leveled a Warden and a Burg to 75 while keeping the Moria/Helegrod gear and had no big issues except that, with the burg, a couple of solo instances had to be done another way (ex. the one where you remain with the rohirrim near a tree and have to resist 2 mins…),you can’t think of smashing all of the mobs thrown at you. Virtues were almost capped with the warden (it’s my main) and were a bit lower with the burg. Now I’m leveling my RK and I’m trying to swap crafted gear while leveling. Of course you always need to keep an eye on you stat/morale ratio because of the way stats are found on new gear…now I’m at 69 and ran into no big issues with my two 65 LIs. I plan to change them (at least the weapon) at 70, tho, because I saw it makes a big difference.
January 5, 2012 at 11:54 am
I have no solid info on this, but I believe that mob damage in general increased more than usual from 66 and up. This in combination with the increase in stuns(a lesser cause methinks with a few exceptions), players stacking too high in their main stat at the cost of Morale and the increased fragility of Light and Medium armour classes might explain why Dunland seems more dangerous to quest in.
January 5, 2012 at 12:10 pm
I also leveled my Guard first, and then my champ, and experienced a similar effect. A guard’s focus on Vit and mitigations makes it far more durable than a DPS focused champ. This extra durability can effectively mask any changes in the difficulty of the content. Combined with the guard’s skill set, it becomes easy to underestimate how challenging content truly is. Given a jump in difficulty, as a guard we may find ourselves popping Pledge more often, but on the champ we die more often. As a player we note the deaths, but not the increased use of Pledge.
January 5, 2012 at 12:12 pm
I think a lot of people have noted this in various ways. There are a LOT of situations where a signature version of an enemy is surrounded by 2 or more normal enemies… And for certain squishier classes it makes those quests very difficult to solo, even though those quests are technically marked as solo quests.
I forget the name of the area, but there’s that one village that’s half good NPCs and half evil NPCs. There are a few quests in there that are like that, but they exist all over Dunland.
On a similar note is that quest to kill the huge Avanc in Dunbog. You get a NPC helper, but at least in my case (and maybe this was since fixed), he attacked very slowly and was nearly useless. Again, this made a supposedly solo quest quite difficult.
I guess the biggest question is whether or not this is really a “problem”?
I’m not sure. In some ways I feel the general world content of LOTRO is too easy. Few things outside of appropriately marked instances are really a challenge at all. All of these problematic quests can be completed with a change in tactics, another level gain or even a friend.
Perhaps more balance is needed there, but I’m not totally against this concept.
January 5, 2012 at 12:19 pm
And by “balance” I think some good ideas would be improving armor drops (although as mentioned, the craftable stuff is much better and I think SHOULD be), lessening the frequency and length of stuns in supposedly solo-able areas, spacing some enemies out a bit more, etc.
January 5, 2012 at 12:16 pm
From my experiences leveling my champion in Dunland, its really all about the skill rotation. Until level cap, my gear was almost all quest rewards(except my LIs). My virtues were somewhere within ranks 5-10. The only quest that I REALLY had trouble with was the one where you had to kill Bloodmaw. Leveling through Dunland was more difficult for me than other regions until I got my skill rotation down.
January 5, 2012 at 2:24 pm
What skill rotation did/do you use if you don’t mind me asking
January 5, 2012 at 12:22 pm
I agree.. Stuns are OVERUSED there..
and yes, Gear helps.. I was wearing Moria set. and just got wiped out fast after awhile.. I had to go on the AH and buy some new gear…
January 5, 2012 at 12:38 pm
Level 70 does seem to be an inflection point. When they announced the Rise of Isengard expansion they said the new level cap would be 70. Later they raised it to 75. Maybe they didn’t have enough time to balance everything (stats/mitigations/mob damage/player damage) in the 71-75 range.
I read this theory here: [url]http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?433425-Thesis-RoI-Problems-are-largely-due-to-*change*-in-level-cap-post-start-of-design[/url]
January 5, 2012 at 12:39 pm
I’ve found that gear is a big part of it. I wore full Annuminas on my hunter until I hit 75 (only swap I made was for a ‘Moors cloak) and had few problems once I flexed my CC muscles again. I swapped jewelery pieces once I could start wearing the rep items, but even most of these from quest rewards are a bit one-stat heavy.
LIs can be a big thing, too. I still have my 65 2nd age sword, but I started swapping out my bow for 3rd age on-levels as soon as I hit 70. The DPS on your main weapon, IMO, is key to keep up to date in relation to your level.
I definitely need to agree with others here, the stats on the quest gear is extremely lopsided. I started switching it out as I began to level my lore-master and it was a nightmare. I went through one level like that before I pulled on my old gear and even set her up with the BG armour. Now it’s not an issue (and her virtues are probably about par – level wise – with your champ’s).
January 5, 2012 at 12:42 pm
While I have not entered Dunland yet on my RK, it is interesting to hear about the mobs being difficult. I read so many rants on the forums about ROI in general being too easy. Some people claimed you could kill mobs while being AFK, something I find hard to believe.
January 5, 2012 at 12:54 pm
Oh yes, the stuns are really a pain in the ***…
I leveled a loremaster and a champion through the isengard, and this was a really different experience. The champion was quite easy (Moria set, virtues on 10, lvl 65 leg. sword, yellow trait line), whenever a situation seemed to be challenging, is used Controlled burn, one of the two bubbles, human race heal, the champion “heal” (sorry, don’t know the skill word in english ^^ /me hasn’t english client). So only the Nan curunir part was really anoying, but when I hit 75 I crafted a second age 75 2hand sword, max’ed it and it was going a lot better (enemys were dying very fast! maybe this is the problem of the author ?).
Well with my loremaster it was really anoying (moria set, virtues to 10, lvl 65 equip, red trait line), it took much longer to kill anything, I was dying to fast and it was not really fun. Well of course it helped at 75 to craft a second age 75, but really… with light amour it wasn’t rally fun for me. Just wanted to join the isengard raid, where my kin needs a loremaster…
So, maybe it is only my opinion, but i think with getting better weapons the game goes a little smoother. Also have a look at the action house, lvl 70 crafted armour is a help as well as the armour from the isengard raid cluster that can be sold (well, if you are already 75).
Good look and enjoy the game ! Never forget, you play to have fun and enjoy it
January 5, 2012 at 1:12 pm
I just recently leveled an RK through Dunland and my major problem was the mobs (usually elite) that would be immune to stun!
Also, lack of vitality on light armour also hurts!
January 5, 2012 at 1:27 pm
I’ve on my 4th character to run through Dunland. My first toon to go through(hunter) had the most trouble in the Isengard area. I had to be careful and use a lot of cc. When bumping up my agility while leveling, lost about 700 morale. Didn’t get it back till lvl 75 and started getting the Riders kindred gear and skirmish raid gear.
My Burg had no trouble except book 5 where there’s all those waves of orcs in front of Orthanc- died 4 times. Having the great cc, higher morale than my hunter and knowing the quest/land/mob lay out helped.
Had no issues on my Captain going through. Traited LoM on early levels then HoH at 72+ and used the archer for the dps and bladebrother heals.
Working on my minstrel now. Level 69 so far. Traited warriors scald 4 deep and have 5k morale. No issues so far but only in dunning so far.
As someone mentioned about, seems like we get stunned a lot more than any other area. I’ve been trying to be more careful on my pulls at higher levels. Plus I keep a couple pieces of my gear that I swap out if it had a lot of Vitality/morale. That way I can swap between higher dps or higher morale. There’s some really nice crafted necklaces, bracelets and pocket items in the 66-72 range that has a lot of morale/vitality for those tough area if need be
January 5, 2012 at 1:52 pm
Yeah, I have the same problem… EVERYTHING a Hunter can use which adds Agility removes Vitality (i.e. the piece adding to Agility had NO Vitality and was replacing an item which did). I’m stuck at 72 (can’t successfully solo three different quest hubs) and am down about 550 Morale from entry at level 65.
January 7, 2012 at 8:52 pm
I had the same: light armour is heavy on will/fate, so I started with vitality around 650 when I entered Dunland, and lost about 100 vitality while swapping gear. It’s only in the Barnavon mines where you get jewellery with high vitality, but that’s only around lv 73.
January 5, 2012 at 1:55 pm
I changed my gear little by little according to the loots, and also (very important imho) i went for a lvl 71/72 3rd age weapon as soon as i reached the level. And no problem (levelled a RK, a Captain, A hunter and a burglar..)
January 5, 2012 at 2:25 pm
My main is a LM, and he’s the only high-level toon I have (my champ is 56). It was right around Barnavon that I really started having issues with survivability. I replaced a good bit of my Moria set with Quest armour, along with several pieces of jewelry.
What I noticed immediately for me (and what I see happen with a lot of light armour wearers) is that equipping the dunland gear caused my morale and power to fall through the floor. I don’t really understand all the business with the stats, but it seemed like I could deal decent damage, but just couldn’t take a hit.
Like others have said, I could deal well with 1 landscape MoB, but two was stretching it, and three was almost certain death. However, in instances, things weren’t so bad – I seemed to be able to withstand hits and deal damage.
Things really didn’t start going easier until recently. What I suspect to have happened:
1. I didn’t toss anything, so I contunually mixed and matched in an attempt to keep my stats balanced. As a result, I was able to force my way through skirm raids and Draigoch to get a good bit of the end-game gear.
2. I got a “new” second Age Staff, and stacked it with vit and damage output. This thing is amazing. I still need to replace my book with a second age item (actually, I need 2 – one for DPS and one for Support).
3. U5 included some tweaks to the LM skills and traits
I now feel like my LM is balanced again. He’s got around 6200 morale + 6000 power. I never dropped below 4500 on either, and only when I replaced the purple stuff with end-game gear did I finally start to see increases.
My Will is around 1500, and my vit is around 750. However, I still have a few pieces of gear to replace (I’m still wearing on of the Greenwood rings).
I’m hoping to get involved in more raiding this year, so hopefully I’ll see more and more increases in my stats (and will get a good 1st ager one day).
January 7, 2012 at 8:44 pm
Yes, I noticed most of the quest reward gear is heavy on will and fate. It is VERY hard to find items with decent vitality. As soon as my tailor was able to craft the guild set at level 75 I found I could balance my stats out again.
They fixed the lore-master’s bear with RoI, it’s back to awesomeness here. What I did at one point is retrait to a hybrid of yellow (CC) and blue (healing) and two reds plus the bear when soloing. That made my life better and having the longer stun protection is really nice to have in Dunland.
January 5, 2012 at 3:02 pm
Finally someone else understands my pain! I’ve been whinning about this for a while, and I thought I was one of a few, because a lot folks in my kin have leveled multiple alts through already.
So far I leveled my RK through there, and it was like once I hit Dunbog things were super hard from there on out, and I was even 1 or 2 levels above most of the mobs (I leveled a bit in Mirkwood before heading down so I was like 67 when I started Dunland) and I had decent/utd gear! It was super frustrating!
I’ve finally leveled my RK to 75 but still have barely started Gap of Rohan, and I don’t know if I even want to bother, its still hard to solo. Its not bad at all if I have at least one other person with me to deflect some of the hits to! Next toon I’m taking to 75 is my hunter, I only hope it goes better!
January 5, 2012 at 3:09 pm
For my hunter and LM I have had problems finding lvl 69-70 and 72-73 LI. I have gotten drops and buy them at the AH and have only found them from 66-68 (and not many at 68)then none until lvl 71, then none till lvl 74 and 75. Has anyone else had this problem or is it just my bad luck?
Have noticed both are squishier although it isn’t as bad for my LM since he has significant self heals and hunter doesn’t. Also power on hunter disappears much faster than I ever noticed before. The solo instances are definitely the worst when you get hit by the groups that you are unable to prepare for.
January 5, 2012 at 3:21 pm
Hi, Merric! I had a similar experience with my main, an RK. However, I don’t feel virtues are to blame, considering that when RoI launched, all 20 of my virtues went from 10 to 12, so I had my pick of what to use when I began tackling the new content. As I progressed through the areas, I did all of the quests, and even finished most of the slayer deeds along the way, so I leveled to 75 without doing repeatables or skirmishes. I had to be very careful of on-level mobs, just like most of the other people who’ve experienced the defeat issues, especially once I reached the area around Orthanc, where more than 1 mob attacking me would kill me more often than not.
No, the real issue was my gear. Despite having Annuminas/Helegrod/BG pieces, the best level 65 jewelry, and really nice LIs, I kept being defeated. Once I swapped to a level 75 3rd Age Stone/Satchel, purchased a couple of Dunland/Rohan reputation jewelry pieces, and acquired 2 pieces of new armour (pre-U5 pieces), I returned to annihilating landscape mobs with aplomb, including the 35k morale trolls around Orthanc. What is even better, I saw my stats rise significantly: to 7500 morale, 6k power, almost 20k tactical mastery, 6500 crit, 4500 finesse, etc. The best part is that all of those upgrades can be acquired through reputation barter and medallions – no raiding required (for those who have trouble finding a group larger than a 3-person instance). I can only imagine how much better my character will be stat-wise should I ever somehow own the raid gear (including the Draigoch cloak)!
I agree that virtues are important, and everyone should strive to raise their 5 favourites, at the least, to 12. But in RoI, I have found that new gear is an absolute must.
Hope this helps!
January 6, 2012 at 3:46 pm
Interesting. Thanks Dragon, I will keep that in mind on the next character.
January 5, 2012 at 3:42 pm
I would say its got to be gear, you played guard at 65 cap and got nice gear but you didn’t on your champ. I had 0 probs on my champ in Dunland but I did have 7k Morale and lots of melee offence due to being cap at 65 for months. I kept my Moria gear on all the way to 75 so i could keep my morale high
too many people are too quick to swap out for yellow gear because it has lots of your main stat, I did the same on my first char and had a much tougher time.
Just my 2 cents!
January 5, 2012 at 4:33 pm
Being a guardian, I didn’t have much trouble getting all the way to 75aside from replacing my Moria gear with yellow quest rewards. The biggest problem I have now is the insane AOE damage the instance bosses are doing on tier 1! Should I need a full gear loadout to make that survivable? I’m taking damage in the first 5 seconds that would faceplant 2 hunters.
January 5, 2012 at 5:03 pm
I had zero problems on my Guard and few on my mini. Leveling my mini took a very long time though because I had to be very careful when soloing.
Leveling with a partner or a few kin members definitely helps. I have heard the complaints though that by yourself, you get squished pretty quickly.
January 5, 2012 at 5:14 pm
I would guess that Merric’s problem stemmed from a lack of finesse on his gear in general. As I was reading the main article I kept waiting for the punch line stating that the problems were all rooted in not having any finesse rating, and was a little surprised when that observation was not made. I must confess, however, that I do not have any direct experience with finesse – currently my highest level toon is 53 – nor do I profess to know exactly how it works. My only experience is indirect, in the realm of crafting. I have Westfold guild-kinned alts in all seven crafting guilds, and do a fair amount of crafting for kinmates. One of the biggest requests for crafted gear for level 70+ toons is gear with finesse. They complain about not being able to stand toe-to-toe against anything without it. Also another popular item is lvl 75 crafted 3rd age LI’s, to replace lvl 65 1st agers. Again, they complain that their 65′s don’t work against the mobs of RoI. Why? I couldn’t tell you exactly, but that is my limited, indirect experience, for what it’s worth. I would suggest lots of finesse and the highest level 3rd or 2nd age LI’s you can use.
January 5, 2012 at 8:37 pm
That’s possible, but it was stated that very few landscape mobs would make use of Finesse. I actually ran with around 1700 finesse at the least on both characters the whole time though.
The LI’s might have been an issue though.
January 5, 2012 at 9:58 pm
The big thing, ESPECIALLY for Champs, is that your DPS will very rapidly drop off if you stick with your old weapon. Since a Fervour-spec Champ is about killing before you die the reduction in your ability to kill is a big problem. Part of it, I think, is its very easy to say “Well I was at level cap so I’ll wait until the next level cap to upgrade weapons” … its what we did when cap went from 60 to 65. However with a 10 level jump, and in particular after you get to mobs Lvl 71+ your old DPS is simply too low to knock them down. Upgrading to a L70 or near level drop weapon as an interim before hitting 75 and grinding out a 2A or 1A “perfect” weapon would well repay the effort. I remember realizing with some shock that a Lvl 71 mob drop would out-DPS my 2H 1A Greatsword…and it was a 1 hander. That’s when I dropped my old weapons picked up some mob drops and used them as interim weapons until I hit 75 and could work on a 2A sword.
Rune…not so important but weapon is critical to upgrade for a Champ (probably Hunter as well).
January 6, 2012 at 4:30 am
Having a Burg and a Guard in RoI, I agree completely with Cedrowald. For weapon-based damage classes (champ, burg, hunter and to a lesser extent champ and warden due to their tankiness) it is *imperative* to pickup a new LI every few levels to keep your DPS top-notch so you can burn mobs down fast enough to live. Going from 65-75 with lvl65 weapons is death to these classes in the latter half of the level range.
Melee DPS classes and hunters are utterly dependent on the base-damage of a weapon for their DPS, since that is what is used to determine the damage for their skills. It may be hard to let go of that lvl 65 2nd or first age due to the effort you put into it, but you really need to. The extra points from a 1st/2nd age 65 to get modifiers on some of your skills is not equal to having the general DPS increase on *all* of your skills + autoattacks while leveling by picking up new 3rd age weapons every few levels.
January 6, 2012 at 4:35 am
“to a lesser extent *guard* and warden” is how that should have read. Forgot to mention cappies too. Some of their damage is shout-based, but weapon upgrades are still important for them too in DPS/leveling mode.
January 6, 2012 at 9:18 am
I want to stress this as well Merric. Depending on what type of weapon you go into dunland with, I believe you should upgrade at least once if not twice before 75. When leveling my guardian, i upgraded my 75 2nd age 2h weapon to a lvl 70 third age. However, if u start out with a third age, perhaps a sooner upgrade. I have seen some people with 65 first ages keep them until 75, but I would personally choose to upgrade even if I had a first ager. My guardian was extremely easy to level through Isengard, at least compared to the hunter. Since I was leveling in Overpower, I opted for all the might centered quest rewards, and switched over to a vitality centered build once I hit 75. However… ( and this is a big however).. I have found, since ROI, that if I want to do much of anything useful in Overpower, I have to switch around a lot of my gear, not just my LIs and traits like I used to at the 65 cap, and stack for more might. I would suggest trying this, and making sure you have dps on your LIs that is keeping up with the mobs you are fighting – there is no harm in upgrading more often then you have to – it just may mean slightly more work. I would also recommend, if you do not already, trying out some different foods, or perhaps some Destiny Point buffs. If I may ask, where exactly are you having these problems of dying so often? If it is in southern GravenWood then I feel your pain. The mobs in the Slade of Shadows just simply hit very hard. If not, then hopefully this is of some help.
January 6, 2012 at 3:54 pm
Thanks all for the advice. I wish I could remember how often it was that I upgraded my weapons and such on both characters, but maybe it wasn’t often enough.
Also, as far as when I started dying… It was probably the worst around Barnavon and onwards.
January 5, 2012 at 7:12 pm
so far i’ve gone through RoI with two toons, a warden and a champ. both were a breeze. The warden was a bit harder then my champ because the medium armour and the unscaled hots but it slotted down shield line and things were a bit closer to being on par with the champ.
There were times when it was tough on the champ but as soon as i would upgrade my weapons i was fine again. my armour was all quest rewards as was my jeweller. Little ashamed to say but my Virtues on my champ were all lower then 5. it seemed to me whenever i started having the slightest amount of trouble upgrading my weapons would solve it.
January 5, 2012 at 7:21 pm
I had no trouble whatsoever when I was questing in Dunland. The only time I died was once in the village where there are two unfriendly gate keepers. That one time, the 13K signature spawned only when you approached the hut, so I could not two-shot him with Heartseeker
. My alt is a Warden (can’t live without ports) and as you know they NEVER die. Really, holding the whole wolf den north of Lagtrev (about 11 wolves) and killing them all, without a second person and on level, is a bit over-powered. The one question that remains- “Why haven’t all Guardians re-rolled as Wardens yet?”
January 6, 2012 at 4:02 am
Guardians re-rolling as a Warden, don’t think so. I am very happy with my guard and the Lagtrev warg den was no problem on the guard either.
ReD
KOFACME
January 6, 2012 at 4:06 am
Took my Guardian through first and other than changing out some of my armour/baubles for drops/rewards I kept the same L65 2nd age weapon and belt. Only noticible effect was the time it was taking to kill stuff at level 73-74 onwards.
Only other toon I have taken through was my Captain, did the same with him but decided to upgrade his weapon at L70 as he did not dish out much DPS as he was and that proved to be a good move.
ReD
KOFACME
January 6, 2012 at 6:44 am
I had no real trouble with my Loremaster, but I did keep lots of my existing armour, as the new stuff had loads of Will but no vit/morale, and I don’t like to lower my morale if I can help it.
Also, my lvl-65 LIs were maxed before I started, I’d been 65 for a long time, and I also had several ‘junk’ LIs maxed, which I could deconstruct for the LI experience as soon as I got a higher level LI. I really think that having a maxed on level LI makes a difference.
I have a Guardian who’s just reached level 60, and still hasn’t maxed his first LI, I’m interested to see how he fairs.
January 6, 2012 at 8:57 am
I definitely started dying. Glad to read this because I thought it was just me. =p I always assumed it was because I was still using my lvl 65 Legendaries (I love my bow too much!). It was kind of fun for it to be so challenging, if you didn’t mind dying a lot more than usual.
January 6, 2012 at 8:46 pm
Have you tried running?
January 7, 2012 at 6:15 am
I only started dieing at 71 on my warden, I went to isengard to solo a bit but it went terrible. I had just finished the book 5 instances and thought i was ready, then suddenly my ass gets kicked by 1 half-orc sentry with only 6K health
January 9, 2012 at 1:16 pm
I haven’t played in Dunland yet, but with my champion I started having problems like that around level 50. I explored the Champ forums and asked around about what I was doing wrong, and then set to work specializing my gear more and upping my virtues. I think the virtues made all the difference, I felt squishier than my minstrel for most of the game, I couldn’t solo anything, then I chose the right virtues and leveled them up and I feel like a real Champion again.
January 9, 2012 at 2:04 pm
My hunter has gone into semi-retirement at 71. Didn’t find the stuns to be as much of an issue as the multitude of quests that required item A to be placed on table B so sigmob C can appear and twat you before you can get to a more workable range which is quickly negated as said sigmob will be immune to almost every cc you can think of.
Regular ranged combat situations where I can pick and choose my targets and kill order are fine, the stuff dies before it can touch me 9/10 times. It’s just the quests that by design dump a harder mob right on top of what is a fairly squishy class for melee combat.
Would have been nice if the mob had a rant or something when they spawned to allow a bit of wriggle room before combat was started properly.
April 14, 2012 at 5:48 am
I’m just starting Dunland now, with a 66 captain, but honestly, this whole game, even over-leveled skirmishes, has felt SO mind-numbingly easy (solo; watcher and helegrod got rough)… This talk of solo death in Dunland makes me excited! If I have to trait back to Hands of Healing, I will be amazed, and very happy. I know captains may be the exception, with ridiculous morale and plenty of self heals (and I roll with an off-tank pet) – but even the notion of upping the challenge to where I’m not watching a movie while I play and clicking somewhere in my periphery. I hope they haven’t tuned this down at all!