This month’s LOTRO Store Staff Picks has my mind boggled. The theme is “5 Most Critical Items to Bring to a Raid” and I have to say, it had Elb and I laughing our heads off. I’m sorry, I’m sure a lot of thought went into the original article, but I just don’t see most of these items as being very useful in the context of raiding. Let me tell you why, and then I can give you my picks instead.
The Staff Picks:
Bard Services 1-hour
Ever come to a raid with the wrong traits on? I have. It’s really embarassing. Sometimes, you just forget. It happens to the best of us. However, instead of taking the “Long Walk of Shame” back to the Bard consider grabbing this instead. This way you can continue onwards with the right traits without causing a delay.
Store Location: Goods & Services > Town Services > NPC Services
75
KETANI’S RECOMMENDATION: This isn’t exactly a bad pick, but it’s certainly not a “critical” item to use every time you raid. Many times a group will take a while getting started (likely checking GLFF for another raid member), and that’s the time to be checking your traits. Ask the raid leader for advice if you have to. But don’t waste your points on an item that will expire in an hour–you know, right around the time when you’re likely to need to re-trait to try a new strategy or different wing of a raid.
Note: This item disappears from your inventory 1 hour after you buy it.
Travel Maps
Getting there is half the fun, right? Wrong. You should be on-time, or early, if you’re going to a raid. Don’t hold up everyone by being late. That said, if you need to move across the world rapidly, a Travel Map is a great choice.
Store Location: Travel & Housing >Maps & Skills > Travel Maps
50
KETANI’S RECOMMENDATION: No. Just no. Instance Join will get you into the instance, so you should not EVER need to trek your way to a raid these days. If you need to leave the raid to visit the bard or something, just leave the instance by selecting that option from the drop down menu found by right clicking your character’s portrait on the vitals bar. Of you can use your map home. (Just try not to abandon your group in the middle of a boss fight, even though those maps do work in combat now…)
Remove Dread
No one likes to wipe, but it’s a fact of raiding life. Wiping excessively though may slow things down thanks to the addition of dread. Keep one of these tomes on hand and wipe the shadow of anxiety off of your face before it affects everyone else.
Store Location: Buffs & Boosts >Dread & Defeat
100-450
KETANI’S RECOMMENDATION: Minstrels have a skill that can remove dread. It’s called Chorus of Restoration and it will remove dread from your entire group. No need to spend Turbine Points, just ask one of the minstrels in the group to help you out! Another alternative to the store dread removal is to use your Destiny Points to purchase the dread removal perk (VIP only).
Vault Upgrades
While not entirely specific to raiding, you can never say no to more storage. You always need to put your epic raid loot somewhere!
Store Location: Character > Vault Storage
195-995
KETANI’S RECOMMENDATION: I fully endorse the purchasing of more storage. My raiding main has purchased as much as she can get. However, it has nothing to do with raiding, but more with the fact that I also do a lot of crafting on that toon. Buy more storage if you need space to keep your stuff, but not because you think it’ll make you a better raider.
Repair & Sell Services 1-hour
Finally, I’m electing this item almost exclusively for the repair aspect. Dying means gear damage and you shouldn’t be running around in a raid with broken equipment. Of course, you should have fully repaired before even beginning the raid, but this item is certainly great if you’ve suffered a few wipes, or want to get some trash out of your inventory.
Store Location: Goods & Services > Town Services > NPC Services
75
KETANI’S RECOMMENDATION: I’ve used this from time to time while raiding. It can be helpful, but more often than not, if your raid has wiped often enough that your gear is starting to break, chances are you aren’t the only one in that situation. Typically this will lead to the raid taking a break between attempts at killing that one pesky boss, and then everyone can go take a moment to visit a vendor.
Note: This item disappears from your inventory 1 hour after you buy it.
Ketani’s Picks:
Bear in mind, while I’d say that these are more critical than the LOTRO Staff Picks suggestions, I wouldn’t say that you absolutely need these items to be successful in a raid. I’m just saying that they’d be a lot more useful than maps and store dread removal…
Morale and Power Potions
Store Location > Buffs & Boosts > Potions > Morale/Power
95-330 (Prices based on the level 75 potions. I don’t know if the prices are different at other levels/tiers.)
KETANI’S RECOMMENDATION: These potions are nice because they use a different cooldown than the crafted versions, and because they have an “over time” aspect to them. They will give you an initial burst of power or morale and then weaker pulses of more for a few seconds afterward. It can be helpful in situations where you’ll be taking damage over time to have a potion that will replenish your morale (or power) over time, too.
These potions have a 20 second cooldown (compared to the 2 minute cooldown on a crafted potions) and the heal over time effect lasts 10 seconds.
5% Attack Damage
Store Location: Buffs & Boosts > Combat > Damage
9-195 or
3,000-5,000 Destiny Points (VIP only)
KETANI’S RECOMMENDATION: This buff will let you do an extra 5% ranged, melee or tactical damage for between 60 and 90 minutes. The buff will not be cleared upon defeat. These are especially good for those boss fights that are DPS races where you need to kill the boss in a certain time limit.
Tome of Defence
Store Location: Buffs & Boosts > Combat > Armour & Defence
75
KETANI’S RECOMMENDATION: This buff reduces the amount of damage you take from ranged, melee or tactical sources by 5%. A very nice buff to have in your arsenal, especially if you’re feeling that your character is a little week for the encounter you’re facing. It’s a benefit to your whole group in that the less damage taken by you is less healing your healers need to do, and therefore more effort that can be redirected to keeping everyone alive.
The tome lasts 90 minutes and the buff will not go away upon defeat.
Tactical and Physical Mitigation Tomes
Store Location: Buffs & Boosts > Combat > Armour & Defence
50 or
4,500 Destiny Points (VIP only)
KETANI’S RECOMMENDATION: These tomes will give you +450 mitigation to either Tactical or Physical damage types (depending on which you buy). At this price you’ll get 5 of these tomes with 90 minutes duration each and as with other similar tomes, the buff persists through defeat.
Item Wear Reduction Tome
Store Location: Buffs & Boosts > Combat >Item Durability
40-75 or
2,250-7,500 Destiny Points (VIP only)
KETANI’S RECOMMENDATION: These tomes will protect your armour and other equipment from being damaged by combat and defeat. They will greatly reduce (and in some cases, completely prevent) a large repair bill after lots of raid wipes. I like to use these when going up against a boss I’m not very familiar with, because that usually means lots of death, and with heavy armour on, that usually means repair bills that are close to a gold or more. These tomes won’t help you fight any better, but they do save time needing to repair. 40 TP will get you a single 60 minute tome and 75 TP will give you five 60 minute tomes. By preventing damage for longer periods of time, they’re more effective in my opinion than the previously mentioned Repair and Sell Services that expires after it’s been in your bag for an hour.
As I mentioned earlier, these store items are certainly not necessary in order to raid successfully, but they can help a lot. I don’t use all of these every time I raid, but I will use many of these when learning a new part of a tier 2 raid. I know a lot of people don’t like the store potions because they feel they take business away from in-game crafters, but for myself, I use both types of pots. If a situation is dire enough to need a store pot, I’ve likely already got a crafted pot on cool-down. I also keep my local crafters busy with my need for food, defence and offence scrolls, and hope tokens.
February 8, 2012 at 8:22 am
It just shows how important sites like this one are to casual gamers. If Turbine was the first and best source for gamers, people would actually fall for their less than genuine “helpful advice” and guides (like the Draigoch one that mentioned curative potions). I am glad I saw a post, because I had considered submitting my own!
February 8, 2012 at 8:22 am
/me looks at the travel maps and starts laughing like the Joker.
February 8, 2012 at 8:39 am
If you need repair services just have a Metalsmith make you a repair anvil. They are a rarely used Artisan level recipe from Thorins Hall that lets everyone repair their items for 5 minutes. Repairs on the regular version cost slightly more than normal, but a crit one costs the same as a normal vendor.
February 8, 2012 at 9:06 am
The repair anvil is bound to whoever makes it. So you can’t exactly hand them out, they also have a 1 day cool down.
February 8, 2012 at 9:52 am
Also don’t burgs have a Summon Peddler skill to vendor trash? Like the anvil, I’m not sure if it is usable by others or only the summoning burg, though.
February 8, 2012 at 3:06 pm
The burg skill Contact Peddler can only be used at a campfire site, and does not work when a Hunter their own.
February 8, 2012 at 1:13 pm
It is bound, but once the anvil is placed down by the owner, anyone can use it to repair. At least that is the case with the weaponsmith version.
February 10, 2012 at 8:41 pm
Yes and no. My metalsmith makes supreme repair anvils. Yes, they are bound to me, but last week we tried to do Watcher Raid with some new people and we wiped a number of times. I just put down my repair anvil and everyone in the raid could use it. It stays there for about 5 minutes.
It has a CD of 24 hours, but I rare use these things. I only pick them up from my vault when I am entering a long and complicated raid.
February 8, 2012 at 11:14 am
Weaponsmiths have a version of this recipe, too. I believe it’s also Artisan tier, and it comes from the Men of Bree rep vendor. One of my kinmates will use these on occasion if the raid has taken a serious beating, but do keep in mind that repairs from an anvil typically cost more than those from a vendor.
Certain vendors will give a discount on repair bills, too. I used to go to the housing vendors in my neighborhood all the time after a raid for their discount (up to 15% depending on house type), but since you can’t use instance join while in housing, I don’t use that for my between wipes repairs. Reputation vendors (the ones that you need to be Ally or better with to talk to) will also give a discount. The easiest one for me to get to is in Michel Delving in the down stairs portion of the Mathom House.
February 10, 2012 at 8:45 pm
Repairs using regular repair anvils cost more, but the superior ones charge the same rate as the vendors. I always trash my regular anvils, I only keep the critted ones.
February 8, 2012 at 8:48 am
It seems like the writer of these guides does not play lotro.
February 8, 2012 at 8:59 am
Celestrata was actually put in a really tricky situation. She was asked what items are “critical” for a raid. She did not have the option of picking any but the last of Ketani’s picks.
Why? Because if she did, people would start shouting about store items being billed as “necessary” for raiding, which, of course they’re not.
The past couple of weeks they’ve been trying to work with the player base to help alleviate the push-back against the store after the low level armour came out. They’re making a number of “store exclusives” considerably more acquirable via lockboxes which they’re making easier to get (as well as the keys).
If Celestrata were to say store pots or buffs were raid “critical” then that would be doing exactly the opposite of what they’ve been trying to do. For the situation she found herself in, she did a good job.
February 8, 2012 at 9:29 am
I tip my hat to you for this observation, good sir!
February 8, 2012 at 11:19 am
You make a good point. I do think that it would have been better to make a post about “Critical Time Savers” rather than items “critical for raiding”, though. In almost any other context, those items are very useful. They just don’t apply much to raiding. I did mean to (and somehow failed to do so) make a note of how well most of the items on the list did follow the theme of saving time for the raid. They just weren’t often very practical compared to some of their non-store alternatives.
February 8, 2012 at 9:24 am
Sorry Turbine, but the majority of the staff picks were a joke. Kudos to Ketani for the way relevant and more useful recommendations.
February 8, 2012 at 10:07 am
As far as the dread removal, I concur about the minstrel dread removal skill, but to my knowlege it is not a group skill. The minstrel can only use it on an single target and can not use it on themselves, iirc. An even better solution is just to pop a +5 Hope token, which SHOULD be part of everyones required raid gear, and if the group is huddled up within 10 meters or so, it will affect the whole fellowship. Add to that a +1 hope buff that can be had for a pittance in the DP wallet and you have a essentially all the hope management needed.
February 8, 2012 at 10:16 am
I think at about level 74 the minstrel dread removal skill becomes group dread removal, which includes the minstrel.
I’m not sure if it is raid-wide or just the minstrel’s group.
February 8, 2012 at 11:22 am
At 65+ (before that, I’m sure, but I don’t have a mini myself to check on it) dread removal is raid wide. I think it has been so since the days of Ost Dunhoth. I remember our raids being very glad of that, especially after wiping on the Wound Wing gauntlet. And since it was a “boss fight” skills reset each time and we didn’t have to worry about dread removal being on cooldown.
February 8, 2012 at 11:32 am
Ah, you’re right. I looked up the skill on lotro-wiki, which is Song of Restoration. At level 62 it becomes an ‘Improved’ skill which grants group-wide dread removal including the casting minstrel. And with only a 10 minute CD as opposed to the 15 CD for tokens, it is indeed a good dread removal solution. My only familiarity with the skill is on my mid-50′s mini where the base skill is largely useless when soloing – can’t us it on myself – and in groups – “Sorry, only one person gets dread removal”.
As far as raid-wide coverage, I don’t know either, but I would think not, since most group skills and FM’s are restricted to whichever fellowship within the raid initiated them. No experience with that so can’t say for sure.
February 8, 2012 at 11:39 am
This is one of the exceptions to the “for your fellowship only” skill trend. Chorus of Restoration will remove dread for the whole raid. Most of the time, my raiding group runs with two minstrels, so they alternate dread removal for the raid so we don’t have to worry about cooldowns. If we’re dying too frequently for either minstrel’s dread removal, we’ll usually take a break and re-visit our strategy to make it work better.
February 8, 2012 at 2:03 pm
Its not just raid-wide, its huge-frickin AoE wide to anyone in the vicinity. Sometime I’ll do a “Bilbo Baggins Exit” at Ales and Tales by using this skill at the end of the show. The lights around 30+ characters will totally blind everyone while you make your stealthy getaway!
–Harper
February 8, 2012 at 4:49 pm
ohhh, s that’s how you did it
(/makes a mental note to watch the exits and aoe zones carefully)
February 8, 2012 at 4:57 pm
Ha! I’ll be eagerly expecting that next Monday, Miss Harper
February 8, 2012 at 11:09 am
Actually it’s at level 62, minstrels get Improved Song of Restoration which removes dread from the whole fellowship. It does have a ten minute cooldown, so if a group is wiping very frequently, or if somebody was out of the 10 meter range when the minstrel played it, they’re going to need a second minstrel or some of these other dread-removal options.
February 8, 2012 at 4:02 pm
As a raider, the only items that would be “preferred” and beneficial to raiding is the last sector after the store pots. All of those buffs you shouldn’t even bother with unless you are F2P (F2P can’t use DP). You can buy all of those buffs in-game via Destiny Points. You can earn DP by leveling, running instances (particularly Moria), or PvP.
Dread removal could be nice if you don’t have a mini, but the alternative is to use DP to clear it OR pop a hope token and just deal with it.
February 9, 2012 at 9:46 am
In some cases, it’s easier and cheaper to use the store versions of those buffs. Destiny points can be hard to come by if you’re not regularly PvP-ing or running older instances. However, if you’re VIP, you’re getting 50 Turbine Points a month anyway, and many of those buffs are relatively cheap compared to the prices of their Destiny Point counterparts.
February 8, 2012 at 6:10 pm
The dread removal has absolutely no place in the raiding category. If what you are doing is a full 12 (or 24) man raid that was added after Ost Dunhoth, including OD, (with the exception of skirmish spaces) all class cooldowns of two minutes or longer reset upon a boss reset (wipe) or when a boss engages.
February 8, 2012 at 8:27 pm
There are some occasions where you have to visit the location to unlock a raid or at least instances. If someone hasn’t been there, then the maps could be useful…. Or if they need to get a non-shareable quest. Rare but not impossible.
February 9, 2012 at 9:33 am
Repair & Sell Services 1-hour- : Have your weaponsmiths make repair anvils. Rotate them throughout your raid period, you can have 2 on different cooldowns. Odds are you have more than 1 WS in a raid.