New lotro boxer - Managing multiple mobs/adds.

[StabbyJoe]

I personally stay away from skirms while boxing coz i have problems with my slaves selecting the soldiers instead of the Leader.

I think I solved this problem myself on with my captain. If you hit F2 while already having the group leader selected, it selectes his pet if one exists. All my slaves kept selecting the herald so I changed my target group leader key to a sequence of two presses in ISBoxer, F1 followed by F2. The F1 press is to select themselves first so that it ensures that the second press of F2 selects the group leader not the group leaders pet. I just have to double tap my target group leader key and everything is fine.

I am assuming its the same with the skirmish soldiers? I didn't notice any problems when I did trouble with tuckborough in my 3 man group after making this change.

[StabbyJoe]

Got my 5 man group to 20 and tried the first GB instance. Tanking and threat just seems totally broken in this game, it's the same if not worse with warden than with the guardian. The first boss summons adds which despite me using goad and war cry, run off and kill the minstrel the second I cast a single heal. On the rare occasion I manage to grab the adds my dps target runs off and kills my hunters because I'm using to many aoe moves and haven't generated enough single target threat.

I really want to like this game, the world is fantasic, but the group mechanics seem terrible so far . What's the point of letting you into instances at that level if you haven't got the proper tools to complete them?

I'm going to try the guardian and run caster in the 5 man group instead of warden/minstrel and see if it helps.

[Dezeral]

Most classes do not have enough of their "core" skills to evaluate how they play below level 40ish. Things change again in Moria where you can get your capstone abilities. Guardians and wardens both can hold agro very well at 50+. Guardians are much more boxer friendly and are almost easy mode compared to wardens. You also have to work at each role in Lotro: tank, healer, cc, etc. I did a 3 man group with a gurdian, hunter, and minstrel and had very few problems with agro. One of the first things you'll want to do is get vexing blow traited to be AE using the Harasser trait. This will help grab and hold agro on multiple mobs.

There is more art to playing classes in Lotro than in WoW. This is in part to do with obscure tooltips and less tools available to measure performance. You don't have the option to try a spec and rotation at a training dummy and then break down your test run to measure performance.

Visit http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Guardian for more information on traits and other info.

[StabbyJoe]

I think I have been spoiled by how easy wow is and that was the source of my frustration, I was expecting the first instance to be easy mode like wailing cavern or rfc but its bloody hard and the bosses are really nasty. It does make it loads more satisfying when I finally get something down though.

I swapped my guardian and rune keeper back in for the warden and minstrel, and it seems a lot easier. I got the first boss down in GB maze after a few tries but I think I'm going to leave the dungeons for a while and level up more as suggested. I'll keep the warden and minstrel in a three man team so I have them ready to swap back at a higher level if I want to try them again.

I did also did the full fellowship version of the tuckborough skirmish, and managed to only wipe once. That was due to not knowing the lieutenants abilites yet more than anything (a priestess of flame set 3 of my team on fire when I wasn't looking ). Skirmishes seem the way to go for now until I get more levels/practice at things, the bosses in the dungeons are way too demanding at the moment. At least I can get my group content fix by doing the skirmishes as I level, even if I'm not up to the proper dungeons yet.