How LOTRO Made Me a Killing Machine

I have been a player of the MMORPG Lord of The Rings Online since before the game launched, but haven’t played much in the last year or so. A new release, however, has changed things so much that I am back in with a vengeance.

Why? Because it has turned my somewhat gimped character into a virtual death god.

My main character in LOTRO, as it is known, is a class called a Champion, essentially the game’s equivalent of a warrior. The Champion can dual wield weapons or use a two-handed weapon. The class is intended to not need much in the way of healing abilities because it should kill so efficiently that it isn’t required.

In reality, unless you are a Champion that is loaded up on raid gear or other forms of difficult to get end-game gear, you are likely going to die if you get more than a couple of enemies attacking you at one time that are the same level as you. It didn’t help that LOTRO equipped the Champion with stances, and the one that most quickly built up the energy pips you needed to fire off special attacks (called Fervour in LOTRO) also eliminated your ability to block, evade or parry incoming attacks. You took every bit of damage directed at you, always.

That wasn’t the reason I slowed down playing, however. That came when LOTRO introduced mounted combat in the expansion that added the Eastern region of Rohan. Mounted combat was a great concept that was poorly implemented to begin with. The idea was that you chased down your enemies on horseback and smote them.

Of course that meant that you would aggro every creature in the region as you chased down this enemy, and if you didn’t die it was because you used every trick to flee from the dozen or so add-ons that were trying to kill you. You could eliminate this problem by staying one place and letting the enemy come to you, swinging as it passed like a stationary knight in a joust. And then wait … and wait … and wait some more as it rode over half of the region you were in.

Even a gimped solo player Champion like my character was a much more efficient killing machine than that. Oh, I hear your question — why not just chase after them (assuming it isn’t a region crowded with creatures.) Because trying to steer the war horses used in mounted combat is like trying to steer a pirate ship in a fight against PT boats. That would just slow things down even more.

So I would check in every few months to pay the upkeep on my elvish house and that was about it.

Then when I logged in a couple of weeks ago I realized I had forgot about the expansion for Western Rohan, which included Edoras and Helm’s Deep. I quickly found out almost half my special attack icons were gone completely from the quickslot bar. It turns out LOTRO had changed from the previous system of stances and limited specialization to a more standard MMO spec tree system where a Champion could choose the Berserker path, the Martial Champion path (for off-tanking) or the Deadly Storm (AOE attacks for group roles).

Since my pre-patch Champion had sought out every piece of gear that would give me bonuses to do critical damage, I went almost entirely down the Berserker path. Imagine my surprise when, upon first testing it out, I killed an equivalent-level enemy in three swings.

The new traits in the Berserker tree, added to all of my critical chances and damage gear, now meant that my Champion would deal critical damage in almost 50 percent of all swings. In some cases, when using the attack called Ferocious Strikes, all three swings that were part of the dynamo attack would be critical hits, with one being a Devastating Critical hit — wiping out more than have of the enemy’s hit points in one skill.

That means that now, in right around one out of every three fights, my combat goes like; one Fervour-building special attack then another, then Ferocious Strikes and the enemy’s death. Or; swing, swing, murder. And since the Fervour stance was gone, my Champion now actually blocked, parried or evaded some of the damage dealt against him.

I now can pull in three, four or five equivalent level enemies to fight at the same time, because I kill just so damn fast.

Oh, and about that mounted combat — LOTRO added a skill called Coax, which forces most mounted enemies to ride alongside you (or sit on their mounts right in front of you if you don’t move, like my Champion) so you can attack continuously without all that riding and chasing.

Don’t get me wrong — prior to the new expansion I did all the quests in Eastern Rohan I could find and reached the level cap of 85 at that time, mainly because the game design continues to be one of the most beautiful in any MMO on the market. Seeing the Wold, the Entwash and the gorgeous Seat of Seeing atop Amon Hen was worth just riding around not fighting anything.

But being a nearly unstoppable death machine makes the new quests even that much more fun, whether it’s Eowyn sending me out to prepare Dunharrow for the Edoras evacuees, or Gandalf sending me out to fight the Wild Men of the Stonedeans.

Thanks, Turbine, for making Lord of The Rings Online not just fun again, but lots of fun.