SFC1971
05-11-2007, 01:39 PM
The US website got a sticky for each class, what I wish other classes new about X.
I got a slight variation on this, for the often maligned class of hunters. I play 5 classes, including hunter, and I am beginning to understand why hunters are often seen as idiots. Lets face it, we often are.
A hunter is a support class. ALL classes are support classes. LOTRO is a GROUP game, where each class has weaknesses and strengths, setup so that we are at our strongest when we group with others to hide our weaknesses and bring out our strength. The game only has a handfull of TRUE solo quests, the walk with frodo is one, some class quests are others, the rest are NOT solo quests. That you may be able to solo them is another matter but some people do focus overly on the idea that a quest that can be solo'ed must be solo'ed. Solo if you like, this is about group dynamics.
In solo vs solo play, the hunter fights as follows, Focus, place trap, fire quick shot in strength stance, rapid fire before enemy reaches trap, fire some more while enemy deals with trap, then hope you can finish it off while waiting for either your progress bar to fill between being hit OR with melee.
The hunters strength is clear, he deals a lot of damage at range. Our weakness is at close range, we start to do far less damage and take a lot ourselves.
The guardian is totally different, they do lousy damage, but can soak it up.
So the two are natural partners. The two together are more then just the sum of their parts. The hunter can stay at ranged and do maximum damage, the guardian will have a much shorter fight on his hands and therefore get far less damage.
GROUP people, yes even for content you can solo. MMO's are like orgasms, you can solo them, but most of us prefer to team up for them. Try it sometime, I am sure you will find a whole new world open up for you.
That said, in groups a lot of hunters are incredibly bad because they do NOT know how the other classes work.
Lore-masters are the crowd control class, they are at their best when they stun enemies so that the group they are in can deal with them at their own leisure. There are two ways of this. Stun an enemy at the start of the fight AND stun ads.
Hunters are ad magnets. They often stay too far back from the group, making them the first to be hit by a respawn or patrol. What to do when attacked? NOTHING (unless you are certain you can deal with it). A decent lore-master will probably already be casting stun, it just takes sometime, stun maybe on a countdown and it takes time to cast. Do NOT PANIC. In a good group people will notice you are in trouble and come to your aid, but you can survive for some time.
Minstels got a choice of single and group heals, they much prefer to heal a single target, the guardian, then the group or lots of individuals. Agro management and power drain and constantly having to retarget all come into play. They already have a hard enough time with self-damaging classes like captains and lore-masters and pets to deal with hunters who should be able to stay out of harms way. If you need a heal, someone screwed up, probably you.
You probably don't have to worry about burglars to much except to not break their mezzes. My burglar just ain't high enough yet to tell me how they interact with hunters, and in group they are rare. Just that on fellowship moves, there are other colors then red. Learn what you can use at what range and WAIT. You are the most relaxed class, so do NOT spam red the moment it comes up.
Champions are not a difficult class to interact with. Just remember, they like groups of mobs on them, you ain't doing them a favor by pulling an enemy of a champ in full swing, same goes for a guardian.
Captains get their skills from the death of an enemy. This means that the faster an enemy goes down, the faster a captain can do their stuff. This is the ONE situation where a hunter attacks on their own, if everyone else is focussed on the boss, the hunter can often solo a regular quickly enough to allow the captain to use their skills. Captains cannot out agro you however.
Don't attack an attacker automatically, first off, you are making the main target take longer to kill, second you are lousy in close combat, third you just made it impossible to get the enemy of you, because you break stuns and are building agro.
A good hunter is on assist most of the time. This way he is less likely to target wrong and break an effect.
Remember, if you break a stunned, the problem is NOT just that you made the fight more complex, you also will disrupt the battlefield because the enemy is heading straight for you, forcing all the others to come to your aid.
Yes, a good hunter is little more then a simple ONE target damage dealer in assitence of the guardian. ONE target? Yes ONE. Hail of Arrows is ONLY to be used rarely, when you are CERTAIN that you will not be messing up the battle with it. Yes it does great damage, has amazing critical abilities and looks cool. But consider it a master shot, until you mastered the craft of using it, DON'T.
Tracking, use it. We can now share targets, it makes live so much easier. Why does it seem that 99% of hunters have to be asked to track a target. It is part of the hunters role.
You can cure poison, use it. Yes it is a pain in the ass, and at times you may feel like you are just hitting that button over and over again. But poisons can really hurt especially for a boss fight. Note that lore-masters often are too lazy too, leaving disease wich takes away 70+ points of agility and might. Ouch.
Playing a good hunter is a thankless task, although it is changing, more people are starting to realise that they are an essential element of a good group, as they provide the group with massively increased damage output. Champions do too, but require massive healing. If a minstrel is missing a hunter is far better since a captain/lore-master can then concentrate on keeping the guardian alive.
If you do work as a hunter well, nobody will notice, if you suck, then you will be another reason so many people express a hatred for hunters. As a class we don't deserve it, but as individuals. Oh boy.
Some random observations:
It makes no sense in a group for the guardian and hunter to fight different targets. The guardian should draw agro from both, then he and the hunter should concentrate on ONE target. Hunters should "NEVER" fight their own enemies.
On stun (and similar) the stunner gets initial agro, so that when the stun wears off, the stunner gets it. The agro is slight, whoever deals damage to the stunned enemy draws the agro away. Important to note is that minstrels seem to be build up agro with stunned enemies when they heal. Do NOT think a stunned enemy is harmless, once they wake up, they tend to go after your weakest party members. A fight is NOT over until everything is dead.
There are three classes that can revive, minstrel, captain and lore-master. Minstrels must obviously be kept alive, captains next (combat revive) and lore-master if possible. Hunters (burglars, guardians, champions) are EXPENDABLE. Desperate Flight is ONLY to be used if there really is no hope left. Revive is better then respawn.
Learn your stances, in almost all hard fights you should be in edurance mode, unless you are a power regenator or are massivly outranked by your guardian.
Strength and precision are very usefull, but you need to know how to deal with the added agro/power drain. KNOW your stances, and what they mean to you and your fellows.
If you are doing your thing, you are probably the most relaxed player in the group, you are one of the few who can afford time to look around, use this, keep an eye out for trouble INCLUDING behind you.
You do NOT do more damage depending on distance, all you need to do is stay out AOE range of the enemy. Dol Dinen is not a place to play the silent hunter who doesn't like to hang out with the rest. Group hug people.
It is the guardians job to keep the minstrel alive, so the minstrel can keep the guardian alive. The hunter should NOT be making this any harder. Yes, this means at times you have to hold back a little. Maybe equip a lesser bow, or choose one with reduced threath. Do NOT make everyones job harder just for sake of dealing a little bit more damage.
Lore-masters can Share the Power, but they already got demands that are far more urgent from the minstrel, guardian and captain. They rank 1, 2 and 3, you are 99, below the pets.
The above text does purposefully not go into what traits to use, or what skills. With the constant changes this is hard to keep track off. But learn the basics well, and you can then work in the more advanced stuff. Learn to crawl before you run.
Who am I who thinks he knows it all? An experienced hunter who actually took time to read about other classes and experience them so I could see how my hunter fits into a group. Too few players do this, of all classes, and then complain when other players do not conform to their ideas of how a class should work. Lets be honest, it not only hunters who often play badly. Just yesterday I was with a burglar who kept pulling everything in sight "because he needed pages and could loose agro quickly anyway". A typical player who only thinks of himself and not how if affect the people in his group.
As a hunter I am sick and tired of having to explain that, yes I know what the stun effect looks like and no I won't be shooting arrows at those. I see a lot of guides on how to maximize your DPS, but none on how to actually play your class well. I hope to get that discussion started. If I am 100% wrong on everything but manage to get a discussion going on how to be an effective hunter in a fellowship then I can take all the flaming I will probably get for being a smartass prat.
I got a slight variation on this, for the often maligned class of hunters. I play 5 classes, including hunter, and I am beginning to understand why hunters are often seen as idiots. Lets face it, we often are.
A hunter is a support class. ALL classes are support classes. LOTRO is a GROUP game, where each class has weaknesses and strengths, setup so that we are at our strongest when we group with others to hide our weaknesses and bring out our strength. The game only has a handfull of TRUE solo quests, the walk with frodo is one, some class quests are others, the rest are NOT solo quests. That you may be able to solo them is another matter but some people do focus overly on the idea that a quest that can be solo'ed must be solo'ed. Solo if you like, this is about group dynamics.
In solo vs solo play, the hunter fights as follows, Focus, place trap, fire quick shot in strength stance, rapid fire before enemy reaches trap, fire some more while enemy deals with trap, then hope you can finish it off while waiting for either your progress bar to fill between being hit OR with melee.
The hunters strength is clear, he deals a lot of damage at range. Our weakness is at close range, we start to do far less damage and take a lot ourselves.
The guardian is totally different, they do lousy damage, but can soak it up.
So the two are natural partners. The two together are more then just the sum of their parts. The hunter can stay at ranged and do maximum damage, the guardian will have a much shorter fight on his hands and therefore get far less damage.
GROUP people, yes even for content you can solo. MMO's are like orgasms, you can solo them, but most of us prefer to team up for them. Try it sometime, I am sure you will find a whole new world open up for you.
That said, in groups a lot of hunters are incredibly bad because they do NOT know how the other classes work.
Lore-masters are the crowd control class, they are at their best when they stun enemies so that the group they are in can deal with them at their own leisure. There are two ways of this. Stun an enemy at the start of the fight AND stun ads.
Hunters are ad magnets. They often stay too far back from the group, making them the first to be hit by a respawn or patrol. What to do when attacked? NOTHING (unless you are certain you can deal with it). A decent lore-master will probably already be casting stun, it just takes sometime, stun maybe on a countdown and it takes time to cast. Do NOT PANIC. In a good group people will notice you are in trouble and come to your aid, but you can survive for some time.
Minstels got a choice of single and group heals, they much prefer to heal a single target, the guardian, then the group or lots of individuals. Agro management and power drain and constantly having to retarget all come into play. They already have a hard enough time with self-damaging classes like captains and lore-masters and pets to deal with hunters who should be able to stay out of harms way. If you need a heal, someone screwed up, probably you.
You probably don't have to worry about burglars to much except to not break their mezzes. My burglar just ain't high enough yet to tell me how they interact with hunters, and in group they are rare. Just that on fellowship moves, there are other colors then red. Learn what you can use at what range and WAIT. You are the most relaxed class, so do NOT spam red the moment it comes up.
Champions are not a difficult class to interact with. Just remember, they like groups of mobs on them, you ain't doing them a favor by pulling an enemy of a champ in full swing, same goes for a guardian.
Captains get their skills from the death of an enemy. This means that the faster an enemy goes down, the faster a captain can do their stuff. This is the ONE situation where a hunter attacks on their own, if everyone else is focussed on the boss, the hunter can often solo a regular quickly enough to allow the captain to use their skills. Captains cannot out agro you however.
Don't attack an attacker automatically, first off, you are making the main target take longer to kill, second you are lousy in close combat, third you just made it impossible to get the enemy of you, because you break stuns and are building agro.
A good hunter is on assist most of the time. This way he is less likely to target wrong and break an effect.
Remember, if you break a stunned, the problem is NOT just that you made the fight more complex, you also will disrupt the battlefield because the enemy is heading straight for you, forcing all the others to come to your aid.
Yes, a good hunter is little more then a simple ONE target damage dealer in assitence of the guardian. ONE target? Yes ONE. Hail of Arrows is ONLY to be used rarely, when you are CERTAIN that you will not be messing up the battle with it. Yes it does great damage, has amazing critical abilities and looks cool. But consider it a master shot, until you mastered the craft of using it, DON'T.
Tracking, use it. We can now share targets, it makes live so much easier. Why does it seem that 99% of hunters have to be asked to track a target. It is part of the hunters role.
You can cure poison, use it. Yes it is a pain in the ass, and at times you may feel like you are just hitting that button over and over again. But poisons can really hurt especially for a boss fight. Note that lore-masters often are too lazy too, leaving disease wich takes away 70+ points of agility and might. Ouch.
Playing a good hunter is a thankless task, although it is changing, more people are starting to realise that they are an essential element of a good group, as they provide the group with massively increased damage output. Champions do too, but require massive healing. If a minstrel is missing a hunter is far better since a captain/lore-master can then concentrate on keeping the guardian alive.
If you do work as a hunter well, nobody will notice, if you suck, then you will be another reason so many people express a hatred for hunters. As a class we don't deserve it, but as individuals. Oh boy.
Some random observations:
It makes no sense in a group for the guardian and hunter to fight different targets. The guardian should draw agro from both, then he and the hunter should concentrate on ONE target. Hunters should "NEVER" fight their own enemies.
On stun (and similar) the stunner gets initial agro, so that when the stun wears off, the stunner gets it. The agro is slight, whoever deals damage to the stunned enemy draws the agro away. Important to note is that minstrels seem to be build up agro with stunned enemies when they heal. Do NOT think a stunned enemy is harmless, once they wake up, they tend to go after your weakest party members. A fight is NOT over until everything is dead.
There are three classes that can revive, minstrel, captain and lore-master. Minstrels must obviously be kept alive, captains next (combat revive) and lore-master if possible. Hunters (burglars, guardians, champions) are EXPENDABLE. Desperate Flight is ONLY to be used if there really is no hope left. Revive is better then respawn.
Learn your stances, in almost all hard fights you should be in edurance mode, unless you are a power regenator or are massivly outranked by your guardian.
Strength and precision are very usefull, but you need to know how to deal with the added agro/power drain. KNOW your stances, and what they mean to you and your fellows.
If you are doing your thing, you are probably the most relaxed player in the group, you are one of the few who can afford time to look around, use this, keep an eye out for trouble INCLUDING behind you.
You do NOT do more damage depending on distance, all you need to do is stay out AOE range of the enemy. Dol Dinen is not a place to play the silent hunter who doesn't like to hang out with the rest. Group hug people.
It is the guardians job to keep the minstrel alive, so the minstrel can keep the guardian alive. The hunter should NOT be making this any harder. Yes, this means at times you have to hold back a little. Maybe equip a lesser bow, or choose one with reduced threath. Do NOT make everyones job harder just for sake of dealing a little bit more damage.
Lore-masters can Share the Power, but they already got demands that are far more urgent from the minstrel, guardian and captain. They rank 1, 2 and 3, you are 99, below the pets.
The above text does purposefully not go into what traits to use, or what skills. With the constant changes this is hard to keep track off. But learn the basics well, and you can then work in the more advanced stuff. Learn to crawl before you run.
Who am I who thinks he knows it all? An experienced hunter who actually took time to read about other classes and experience them so I could see how my hunter fits into a group. Too few players do this, of all classes, and then complain when other players do not conform to their ideas of how a class should work. Lets be honest, it not only hunters who often play badly. Just yesterday I was with a burglar who kept pulling everything in sight "because he needed pages and could loose agro quickly anyway". A typical player who only thinks of himself and not how if affect the people in his group.
As a hunter I am sick and tired of having to explain that, yes I know what the stun effect looks like and no I won't be shooting arrows at those. I see a lot of guides on how to maximize your DPS, but none on how to actually play your class well. I hope to get that discussion started. If I am 100% wrong on everything but manage to get a discussion going on how to be an effective hunter in a fellowship then I can take all the flaming I will probably get for being a smartass prat.