June 3rd, 2010

[Morreion]

We made it up to Book 3 Chapter 7 and paused to do a skirmish to level up some more. That skirmish was fun but HARD!

[ariesel]

That was ouchie

So several good thoughts over on the LOTRO board:

Group skirmishes get tougher in a few different ways:

1) Mobs move up the scale...Normals become sigs...sigs become elites. Not only does this increase their morale, but it also means that mobs that can be CC'd in a solo skirmish can't be in a group skirmish.

2) Lieutenants get more skills. As the group size goes up, lieutenants gain more ways of messing up your life. However, if you know how to deal with them from solo or smaller group skirmishes, it will work in larger skirmishes.

3) New types of lieutenants. Some lieutenants only appear in selected size skirmishes. You'll have to figure these ones out as you go, which is another reason why it's nice to have some of them figured out already.

4) Multiple lieutenants. This happens very rarely in solo skirmishes (possibly only at higher tier). However this is common in group skirmishes. Learning how they interact with each other is key.

5) Timing of waves of mobs changes. In solo and duo skirmishes, you have to complete one wave before the next will come. In larger skirmishes, they are on a timer...they can come whether you are ready or not.


I can't emphasize how important it is to learn each of the lieutenants. Some of them can be dealt with in a standard "take out the weenies first" approach. They'll cause you problems, but not so much that you can't fight through it. Others will absolutely tear you up if you don't handle them properly. Bloodrooks are probably the most common of these. If you don't find a way to get them out of the mass of trash mobs, they will eat you alive.

Finally, don't get too discouraged. Skirmishes are hard, but they are fun. Tuckborough is one of the longest and most challenging (the courtyard pull is especially tricky to time). It's a learning curve even for the most experienced players.

- Sonsy

I've seen quite a few posts about the courtyard pull, we didn't have a problem there. I did the initial pull with a mez on one of the roaming guards, and only got 3 adds and one lieutenant. Clearing it out was the easy part. The end fight where the boss keeps summoning lieutenant after lieutenant is what got us. Even after killing the boss, if you don't kill all of his summoned lieutenants before dying, it resets the entire fight. We had 3 lieutenants running around that couldn't be CC'd, plus the boss, against 4 players. I'm sure it's doable, it's just really tough.

- Cedwin

For the last boss you need to pace your timing on taking him down, if you focus only on the boss you will be overwhelmed by the 3 LTs. They spawn at certain points in the boss's health, and with the heal aura you need to be very coordinated if you try to take all 4.

Normally, we take down each LT as it spawns, if we don't they'll eventually get the best of us. Also, try to keep the boss from the LTs as he will heal and sometime the interactions between the two can be quite detrimental. Siege of G. generally is a little easier overall, as you have less mobs per wave and there are only 2 bosses at the end to deal with. For defensive skirmishes, food with high non-combat regens can help quite a bit.

- robnkarla

It was said, but CC classes and aoe soldiers dont mix well. Try archers for dps, and herbalists, and maybe one protector without his aoe skill slotted. I know you said some of them were ranked, but definately reconsider the types as well!

You were 4 manning a 6 man skirm with weak soldiers, with no tanks/heavies at all. This is going to be a hard fight no matter what, but take an inexperienced group with suboptimal class makeup and unranked soldiers, and you are really, if you count a ranked soldier as 1/2 a player, doing a 9 man skirmish with 4 people!

Its doable, and doing this will teach you a lot about grouping and playing together, and all that. Its also going to be tough and be ready for a repair bill. But before you try again, do them solo and rank your soldiers to rank 4 or 5 in their level and skills, and reconsider the soldier types. It will go a lot better by doing these simple things. Also, if you do tuckbourough, watch out for large pulls, a simple mistake can get you 2 LTs and 10+ mobs because you pulled 2 groups, and its also easy to get the encouter guy in the mix, esp the one thats burning the house.

Gondoman can be easier, actually, if you want to cheat a little. Stay up by mathi, let the NPC guards die, and you lose a few marks but mathi will help each pull, and he is rather powerful for an NPC (but heal him!). Its boring, but it would be a good way to refine your strats and practice, and you cannot get a bad pull in this type of skirm, since it spawns a wave that comes to you, rather than you running around aggroing existing mobs.

- Draegon

So after playing more of the skirmishes, I've realized that the problem wasn't the skirmish difficulty, it's how we were trying to complete the last fight in Tuckborough.

I haven't seen anyone else mention "how" to handle that last fight on Full Fellowship, so here is what I've found.

The boss in the courtyard, summons additional LTs at 3/4 morale, 1/2 morale, and 1/4 morale. Our first few runs we thought it was timed, so we killed the main boss as quick as possible, then tried to take out the adds. This lead to many many deaths.

So, what we did was pull the boss over to the left side of the courtyard, and had one person tank him while everyone else waited on the right side of the courtyard to intercept the LTs. Once an LT is summoned, the tank only auto attacks until we kill the LT, which gives us plenty of time.

We've done several 4 man full fellowship runs of this quest now, with no deaths.

So again, the difficulty is fine, we just needed to adjust our tactics.

- cedwin

Wew! Guess I'm going to be getting my protector up to par! Btw, I bypassed the aoe skills for him, thinking that a certain elf wouldn't like it too much if he got crazy

[ariesel]

And this is AWESOME!

lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Skirmish_Lieutenants

;D