Discussion: Struggling post-update... Not sure why

Hello, fellow RKs.

I'm hoping to get some pointers out of the collective RK mind. By way of intro, my RK is a newly arrived lvl 75, heavily traited for Solitary Thunder, virtues still need work.

Pre update, I felt good with my RK and would have zero reluctance wading into anything on level. The night before the update I plowed through my first two instances from Bron in Galtrev (Forges of Isengard and Defence of Galtrev).

The morning of the update I was eager to go back into the instances and get more enhancements for my LIs. And I have been getting the stuffing kicked out of me there and ever since. Forges killed me three times that morning. Today, I've died 8 times trying to do Battle of the Ford, Afternoon. On landscape questing is leaving me drained down to about 1/4 of my morale.

I'm not sure what's happened but I definitely feel like I've lost my RK mojo. I'm not RK enough to be able to say anything specific and hope that my experienced fellows can help me out by tossing ideas my way, asking questions to stimulate my thinking, offering pointers and tips, etc.

Please help me save Sigela the RK. If you see me on Nimrodel server, please don't hestitate to give me a shout and an inspection. Thanks in advance for your attention and anyting you can offer me.

Envoyé par Ingiogal

Hello, fellow RKs.

I'm hoping to get some pointers out of the collective RK mind. By way of intro, my RK is a newly arrived lvl 75, heavily traited for Solitary Thunder, virtues still need work.

Pre update, I felt good with my RK and would have zero reluctance wading into anything on level. The night before the update I plowed through my first two instances from Bron in Galtrev (Forges of Isengard and Defence of Galtrev).

The morning of the update I was eager to go back into the instances and get more enhancements for my LIs. And I have been getting the stuffing kicked out of me there and ever since. Forges killed me three times that morning. Today, I've died 8 times trying to do Battle of the Ford, Afternoon. On landscape questing is leaving me drained down to about 1/4 of my morale.

I'm not sure what's happened but I definitely feel like I've lost my RK mojo. I'm not RK enough to be able to say anything specific and hope that my experienced fellows can help me out by tossing ideas my way, asking questions to stimulate my thinking, offering pointers and tips, etc.

Did you respend points on all of your LIs, which took a reset?

Cant help you here without a look at your RK gear, and trait levels. I'll give some general advice though:

1. Go a full 7 solitary thunder

2. Go back and level the virtues you want to at least 10, 12 is prefered.

3. Buy a WSC at the skirm camp and get a 2^nd age flint stone

4. Go to the AH and make sure you have the best riffler/chisel money can buy

5. get trail food that boosts your will

6. don’t use EC unless you get the solitary thunder line buffs up so you can crit.

7. Forges specific: Drop the stone, the slaves will go for it and allow you to burn the Uruks first.

8. inspect other RK’s on your server and emulate the ones who have good gear and builds.

My money is on not ranking up the weapon/satchel again post update.

Thorgurm as always is very wise.


**Edit - To the OP, I was wrong. Do everything Thorgurm said, now. You are extremely undergeared for a 75 RK. If you are questing in the new zones you are suffering from a laundry list of issues (not to be an a$$ about it) including lack or finesse, crit is real low, morale is real low, under level armor (zomg so), jewelry is in need to updating, couldn't get a tooltip for your stone and satchel but you need a lot upgrades.

Link to build: http://my.lotro.com/home/character/2...1412821714446/

Envoyé par Thorgrum

Cant help you here without a look at your RK gear, and trait levels. I'll give some general advice though:

1. Go a full 7 solitary thunder

2. Go back and level the virtues you want to at least 10, 12 is prefered.

3. Buy a WSC at the skirm camp and get a 2^nd age flint stone

4. Go to the AH and make sure you have the best riffler/chisel money can buy

5. get trail food that boosts your will

6. don’t use EC unless you get the solitary thunder line buffs up so you can crit.

7. Forges specific: Drop the stone, the slaves will go for it and allow you to burn the Uruks first.

8. inspect other RK’s on your server and emulate the ones who have good gear and builds.

These are all really good. I'd say work on those virtues too. Virtues can give you a surprising amount of mitigation, which is super-important since RoI.

Envoyé par Ghosttaker

We should have all gotten a morale boost and a small TM boost on login.

thankls for the compliments.

Add another one to my list:

9. make sure you have martial training slotted as a legendary that should bump your morale.


However I think were going to find with you it was legacy issue on your LI. If it was, dont be embarrased things happen, but let us know if that wasnt it. We will help you.

I edited my response with a link to the build.


http://my.lotro.com/home/character/2...1412821714446/

He needs some pointers.

Here is a link to my build. Not the best (notice the bracer with block on it but hey, I get almost 600 morale out of it ), I built my toon for the moors but you can get some ideas there. Not sure why but my morale, will, and crit are higher than what they show, unbuffed that is too. For pve I generally do swap out a few pieces to boost will and TM.

http://my.lotro.com/home/character/1...2562960885912/

Thanks everyone for all the fast support! You're the BEST!

To cover the points so far:

All my legacies had their points re-applied first thing when I came back into the game after the update.

I've just priced out a WSC at the Skirm camp and it's affordable so I will put my westfold jeweler alt to work on a flint 2d age stone asap. Current stone is a lvl 75 third age with tactical damage maxed and all my other points spent on Fury of Storm Dmg, Fury of Storm Crit Multi and Battle Attuned power cost. That's the goal for my DPS stone and will go that way on the new stone too unless I get better advice. Other stone is a lvl 75 3rd age traited for fire with a similar build. Don't have a good satchel right now for lightning DPS but my Fire DOT satchel has Essence of Flame Dmg, Writ of Fire Dmg and Self-Motivation power return on it.

My chisel and riffler are both top notch critted lvl 75 gear as another of my alts is a westfold metalsmith.

I have Martial Training as one of my legendaries. Other two are Perfect Imagery (or whatever it's called) and Do Not Fall This Day. Right now I have the top row of ST class traits and Master of Tragedy (memory check... It's the one on the bottom right) and two Benedictions of Peace (Master of Allusion and Rune of Endurance)to have a stronger drop-stone. I'll visit the bard and see about changing to pure ST if that's the advice.

I typically pre-buff before a fight that looks like trouble by using Will trailfood, a top-tier cooked food for regens, and pop both flavors of lvl 75 battle lore (because I have westfold scholar and westfold cook as well). If I'm in a high dread area, I always have +5 tokens to burn because of my jeweler.

I'll start grinding virtues. Right now I am Wisdom 8, Charity 12, Loyalty 12, Empathy 9, Idealism 10. I have been stalking other RKs in Galtrev and inspecting and plan to replace at least one of those with Zeal ASAP.

I'll say it again. Thanks, gang! You're the best.

Additional advice based on the build:

1. Where are you with the epic quest line? Some of the rewards from that line would supplement your gear.

2. What’s your rep with the theodreds riders? You can get decent pieces of jeweler from the rep vendors in Galtrev, any of them would be an improvement. If you have low rep you need to say “punctured shields” and turn them in at rohan camps for rep.



3. Join the instance finder as a damage dealer. This is a little shady advice here but you do this so you can tag along in some raids and get some gear and some marks. Put yourself on anonymous so you won’t be inspected and teased and do your best.


4. Use the advice channel: no fear, if you are at a point in the game where you can’t get past it, ask for advice. You will be surprised how many people will actually come to help you. You’ll get ####### too, but were building a better RK here, so you have to put yourself out there.

5. Create a post for your legendaries and let RK’s pull it apart and tell you what you need. This is a general chat here, let’s get those LI’s looked at. The knowledge base in the RK community is pretty high.


If the LI’s check out then for you it’s about gear. That’s just a grind no one is going to be able to help you with that here really, you just have to put in the time.

Edit: posted after you posted above. Looks like you have a handle on the LI’s then.

[QUOTE=Thorgrum;6044358]Additional advice based on the build:

1. Where are you with the epic quest line?

Book 5, Chapter 4: The Prince of Rohan... Battle of the Ford, Afternoon. Dying four and more times a day on it. Stalled there.

2. What’s your rep with the theodreds riders?

I'm about a quarter of the way from Ally to Kindred with the riders. I faithfully turn in 8 tasks a day, typically gained from standing on Dol Baran, pulling Dunlendings and dogs over to let the Rohirrim finish them off and then I raid their corpses for the task loot. A couple of good guys in the kin are harvesting task rep loot for me too. I'll ask them if they'll start running some instances I can survive so I can grind up to some of the RK armour set from the Galtrev Quartermaster.

My plan is to buy bracelets and necklace from the riders to go with my men of dunland rings to do the best I can on jewelry right now. Hopefully starting to pick up pieces of RK armor will come soon too and that should show me some big changes.

I think that with my RK performance at this level, there's no way I can join the Isengard instances. I'm trying to do as many Heathfells/Nan Corunir quests as I can but I'm getting hit hard in them with this build.

I'll post this now and then do an edit with full report on my LI builds, just for completeness.

EDIT: Here's the rundown on my two major RK LIs

Reavers's Runes - lvl 75 3rd Age 201-224 Lightning 107.0 DPS 51/60 item level
+26 Agility
+608 Tactical Mitigation
+26 Fate
+43.4 Tactical Damage Rating
7 -12% Battle Attuned Skill Power Cost
6 +9.7% Fury of Storm Damage
5 +16% Fury of Storm Critical Multiplier
1 +567 Finesse
1 +1 Vivid Imagery Targets
1 +1% Healing Over Time
Gold Setting of Clear Thought +22 Will +520 Physical Mastery +520 Tactical Mastery
Adamant Gem of the Crags +22 Vitality +520 Critical
Subtle Rune of the Fortress +1040 Incoming Healing +520 Block (Slotted this just to see if the incoming healing would keep me alive longer)

Cauterizer (bag) - Lvl 74 Satchel
Ardent Council I = +300 Tactical Mastery, +608 Physical Mitigation
6 +13.2% Essence of Flame Dmg
6 +13/2% Write of Fire Dmg
1 -2 Self-motivation Cooldown
1 -5 Frozen Epilogue Cooldown
1 +1% Ceaseless Argument Dmg
[lvl 24/60 so still waiting to see what the sixth legacy will be]
Steel Setting of Nobility +170 Max Power, +472 Tactical Mastery, +472 Physical Mastery
Sapphire Gem of the Stars +19 Vitality +472 Critical
Deep Rune of the Forest +96.6 in-combat Power Regen +472 Evade Rating

END OF EDIT

You guys are the best. Thanks to all for reading and posting. I'm not thin-skinned and want to get Sigela back on track so I need to hear the truth.

[QUOTE=Ingiogal;6044437]

Envoyé par Thorgrum

Additional advice based on the build:

1. Where are you with the epic quest line?

Book 5, Chapter 4: The Prince of Rohan... Battle of the Ford, Afternoon. Dying four and more times a day on it. Stalled there.

2. What’s your rep with the theodreds riders?

I'm about a quarter of the way from Ally to Kindred with the riders. I faithfully turn in 8 tasks a day, typically gained from standing on Dol Baran, pulling Dunlendings and dogs over to let the Rohirrim finish them off and then I raid their corpses for the task loot. A couple of good guys in the kin are harvesting task rep loot for me too. I'll ask them if they'll start running some instances I can survive so I can grind up to some of the RK armour set from the Galtrev Quartermaster.

My plan is to buy bracelets and necklace from the riders to go with my men of dunland rings to do the best I can on jewelry right now. Hopefully starting to pick up pieces of RK armor will come soon too and that should show me some big changes.

I think that with my RK performance at this level, there's no way I can join the Isengard instances. I'm trying to do as many Heathfells/Nan Corunir quests as I can but I'm getting hit hard in them with this build.

I'll post this now and then do an edit with full report on my LI builds, just for completeness.

You guys are the best. Thanks to all for reading and posting. I'm not thin-skinned and want to get Sigela back on track so I need to hear the truth.

Looks like you are right where you need to be with the epics.

Tips on the battle: It’s a pain for RK’s I did it before the update should be better now. Let him tank the mobs and do target forwarding (whatever that is called) you simply highlight his image and rattle off your skills so you are both hitting the same mob (most of the time). Kite while you do this because you’ll pull, they constantly appear. If you get low, run, you can run in the middle of that fight and not be touched. The mobs will chase you but Prelude to hope through them back and forth over and over, there is no time limit.

Kindred with the riders will get you access to better gear, that said if you’re a tinker profession you can skip those if you wish and go and buy the new river recipes. Those are pretty sweet although they have a 6day cool down. Make the earring first +63 will +300 morale and tact mastery in there to boot. Id focus your resources on those, you’ll need a cracked sigil but one of those earrings will help, 2 will be out of this world and require no rep grinding. If you want the theo rep though you can supplement the 6day wait with those items.

You can do those instances, you maybe the weak link but gear is your main weakness. You’ll either need to get it from grinding rep and waiting on cool downs or getting into raids and getting the roll. It’s the armor that moves you from the average to good RK. Im still running with draigoch and not having many issues at all.

[QUOTE=Ingiogal;6044437]

Envoyé par Thorgrum

Additional advice based on the build:

1. Where are you with the epic quest line?

Book 5, Chapter 4: The Prince of Rohan... Battle of the Ford, Afternoon. Dying four and more times a day on it. Stalled there.

2. What’s your rep with the theodreds riders?

I'm about a quarter of the way from Ally to Kindred with the riders. I faithfully turn in 8 tasks a day, typically gained from standing on Dol Baran, pulling Dunlendings and dogs over to let the Rohirrim finish them off and then I raid their corpses for the task loot. A couple of good guys in the kin are harvesting task rep loot for me too. I'll ask them if they'll start running some instances I can survive so I can grind up to some of the RK armour set from the Galtrev Quartermaster.

My plan is to buy bracelets and necklace from the riders to go with my men of dunland rings to do the best I can on jewelry right now. Hopefully starting to pick up pieces of RK armor will come soon too and that should show me some big changes.

I think that with my RK performance at this level, there's no way I can join the Isengard instances. I'm trying to do as many Heathfells/Nan Corunir quests as I can but I'm getting hit hard in them with this build.

I'll post this now and then do an edit with full report on my LI builds, just for completeness.

You guys are the best. Thanks to all for reading and posting. I'm not thin-skinned and want to get Sigela back on track so I need to hear the truth.

Just my .02 but if the rest of your kin is doing the Isengard instances (especially Foundry) then you should....be ok in there. Probably get killed during the first boss fight due to the fire and steam jets but that is a quicker way for you to get the armor that you need in order to increase your morale, better your armor so you can take hits a bit better, and increase your Will and Tactical Mastery. Tier 1 Fangorn might be a good one too. Not sure if the Troll in Dragnokh or whatever he is called does that huge aoe on T1 or not, I have never done it that way but that one would be an issue on T2 for sure.

You can also get some crafted armor which will be better than some of the pieces you currently have to help get you through. (Theodred Shoulders and Helm would help). You're in a catch 22 rght now with armor. You need the armor but are going to have some difficulty getting through the instances in order to get it.

Look at the drops too while out killing things, don't let the yellow armor fool you, it's better than alot of the level 65 purple and teal stuff until you can get your 75 pieces.

Envoyé par Ingiogal

I'll start grinding virtues. Right now I am Wisdom 8, Charity 12, Loyalty 12, Empathy 9, Idealism 10. I have been stalking other RKs in Galtrev and inspecting and plan to replace at least one of those with Zeal ASAP.

You don't necessarily need Wisdom, Idealism, or Empathy. Your armor, weapons, jewelry, and miscellaneous other stuff will give you plenty of your core stats. I use my virtues to bump my vitality and tactical mit, and that makes me pretty survivable. I don't worry much about physical mit.; most of the stuff that hits the hardest does tactical damage anyway. Only trash does common ranged/melee damage, which isn't something I need to worry about mitigating.

I am curious why you had no difficulty pre-U6 but difficulty after, given that lightning got very few changes. Are you doing the same content, or do you think you may have just moved into some harder content? Mob density does get higher, so that may be part of the problem you are experiencing.

You can take advantage of those changes to increase your survivability though. Slot for the master of X buff and the winter-storm buff. Pay attention to the Master of X buff, and when it changes color, use your instant-cast WoH to give yourself a bit of extra healing. Also, use your frost skills, Woc to debuff mobs but also because when the Winter-storm buff reaches 4, you can use chilling rhetoric to get the sustaining bolt buff, and know your next lightning skill will crit. Use shocking words for the 50% added crit from the sustaining bolt buff, or maybe EC (especially if you have other damage buffs up). Unfortunately, those buffs are really hard to see and only really differentiate between tiers 1-4 and tier 5, but hopefully they will modify them and make it easier to read the tier on. I assume you are now using your calming verse for a little extra kick while kiting.

Another thing you yourself noted is that your rune-stone is geared for lightning dps, but your satchel is geared for fire. You really won't be using fire skills that much while going all out lightning, so you are better off getting another satchel with CA damage, scribe's spark damage, and shocking word's stun chance, even if it is a temporary one with low tiers that you will replace once you get lucky and get a lightning oriented satchel that does not need too many GSoE. 4% increase to skills you are using is more effective than a 10% increase to skills you don't use. That will not only give you better damage, it will give you a very reliable stun for crowd control. If you are having trouble getting overwhelmed with mobs, you can also consider traiting 2 blue, maybe rune of restoration and writ of well-being, to get WoH to tier down. If you have extra TP sitting around, it is well worth it for an RK to buy the extra LI slots and always keep them full.

Envoyé par Ghosttaker

...

Thorgurm as always is very wise...

Ah kids these days...grow up so fast

As mentioned, let Grimbold tank for you and stick to single target skills - no AOE on this battle. AOE may pull mobs off your tank and they will want to play with you. You could almost stick to just healing and still get thru it.

Once you have Rep w/Riders, the Glimmering Stone Earing will be good until you can get better ones.

For sure swap the 3 traits mentioned, there is better stuff - Resistance, Mittigations. If doing landscape stuff, go with physical and tactical for raids. It only costs a few silver to swap out a trait or 2 for what you are doing.

Envoyé par ShammWoww

Ah kids these days...grow up so fast

Indeed lest anyone be fooled, Im a 2nd generation rune keeper. ShamWoww and delgon the wise were 2 notable people (there were many more) who took the time to help me on the forums as I leveled my RK. With out the help of other RK's in my journey I would have dropped the class.

Flash back to my noob RK thread..... Never be afraid to ask questions

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...%92ll-ask-here

I am a lvl 75 rk haing the same problem, not impressed by the developers ideas at all.

Hi again, Rks!

You guys and gals have been super to give your time to support me. Many kudos to you all! It's nice to have been adopted by the RK family. So I wanted to give an update and some answers to questions posed since my last post. I'm going to save this entire thread to a file and create Sig's "treatment plan."

As for changing content after the update. No, not really. I was stuck at Grimbold's camp before but then it wasn't involving such spectacular deaths for me. I figured that the instance at Battle of the Ford, Afternoon was going to be tough, and it was. I thought it was the usual "never seen this instance before" mistakes of standing in the wrong place at the wrong time and so on. I was going down but the enemy was paying a high cost to take me out. Post-update, I feel like Sigela was simply getting cut down where she stood.

I've heard rune-keepers called "glass cannons." We are reasonably less hardy than most other classes physically but we make up for that with sheer awesomeness at dealing damage. Pre update I felt like Sig was more cannon than glass. Post update, she feels wrong and like she's mostly glass and very little cannon opportunity before death takes her.

Regarding my missing bag for lightning/DPS. It's been a roll of the dice thing on that front. The bags I've gotten so far have been primarily fire or healing heavy in their legacies and I wasn't interested in making a lot of throwaway bags. So I've got a good fire bag (and there's a reasonably good healing bag in my LI pool) and I've just been waiting for a better set of lightning legacies to come around while I've been grinding primarily to level and rider's rep. I've got time to farm more mats for CRH sigils to build some background bags and harvest more legacies. New bag is now a priority.

On the good news front, I took the advice to run a Foundry with a good friend who understands my frustration and built the rest of the party around creating a Foundry to grow and develop Sig. It was a really good experience both in terms of experience and marks/medallions/seals payout. The run let me make progress realigning my playing style to the new RK design. I got to broaden my skill set considerably and I felt like my deaths were primarily my own fault than because my RK wasn't there for me. Stupid stuff like running into the wall of fire because I was running off the purple eye but still trying to see if another member had died and such. I rolled a bit fat zero for loot but another party member said he had plenty of WSC so he gave me his. I see a 2d age lightning stone in my very near future.

I'm going to bite the bullet and drop back from Dunland content until I get my virtues lined up properly. I'll drop in for my daily rider's rep but then follow the virtue trail all over the map. I will take the advice to focus on vitality and tac mitigation in my virtues and leave my gear to cover my will needs. At least I'll become a very wealthy RK from vendor trash. lol

Thanks again to all. You're a great crew.

Sigela, et al.

looks to be gear related, you still have some yellow items, do skraids with friends and try to win some pieces, and also get some crafted gear

See if you can get a Tailor to make you the Theodred's Vibrant Pauldrons and Helm. Will give you a bunch of morale, tactical mastery, and some more armor. They are Tailor Guild items but hopefully the tailors have some patterns saved up as these items are not in such high demand atm.

Those crafted items will give you an immediate boost and help you complete the things you need to complete in order to get your on level gear more quickly.

IMO your issues are more gear related than virtue related. If you got your virtues maxed you would spend hours and hours doing so and would not be much* better off than you are now with what you are currently wearing for armor. You have no set bonuses to fall back on at all at this point.

Envoyé par Ghosttaker

I edited my response with a link to the build.


http://my.lotro.com/home/character/2...1412821714446/

He needs some pointers.

Here is a link to my build. Not the best (notice the bracer with block on it but hey, I get almost 600 morale out of it ), I built my toon for the moors but you can get some ideas there. Not sure why but my morale, will, and crit are higher than what they show, unbuffed that is too. For pve I generally do swap out a few pieces to boost will and TM.

http://my.lotro.com/home/character/1...2562960885912/

For all the PVMP RKs out there, bump your tactical mitigation up!!!!
I usually swap jewelery/gear to cap my tactical mit and get to about 8300 morale with 20k tactical offense for pvmp build, see below

http://my.lotro.com/home/character/6...1412820547084/

Anyways,

Soloing content:

1. Consider rolling 6-deep in lightning line with Writ of Well being as your single healing trait.
- You will have a reduced cd on writ of health along with tier down effect instead of complete wipe off after duration expires.
- Ensure Master of Tragedy is traited as you will need the "insta-cast" writ after 5 lightning skills.

2. Rotation:
a. Grab up to 5-6 normal mobs or up to three signature mobs
b. use 5 lighting skills
c. double pop Writ of Health followed by prelude of hope to get to tier 2 writ of health + PoH Hots
d. pop enamel if necessary (not required)
e. 5 more lightning skills and double pop writ of health again (if necessary). Get to tier 3 writ of health. Single pop writ of health should be OK too.
Finish off mobs.
f. Armour of storm might be necessary for survival. Perfect imagery is good too at some point if needed.
g. If u get in alot of trouble, pop distracting winds and calming verse and open up distance for kiting if required
h. If you can keep writ of health up going into the next fight, it makes this process a lot easier.

The new ability to self heal is epic. Thanks ZC, lovin it.

I almost never trait more than 5 in any given line. I'm using 5y2b solo. I'm still playing with the 5Y, but it's always gonna have the traits for CA, SS, and EC. I've been experimenting with Master of Tragedy and Winterstorm, but honestly, you probably only want one or the other, but not both. I'd recommend Confounding Principles is you're having a lot of problems handling extra mobs, or whatever floats your boat. Tale of the Storm or even Icy Discourse could work, but I haven't played around with the new versions yet.

The 2 blue traits are Rune of Endurance (the extra stone HP comes in handy for crowd control), and the newly reworked Linnod of Peace. Both just scream "I can help you survive longer fights solo!" to me. I used to use Prophetic word solo to decrease the cooldowns of Fall to X and FTOW, which helped shorten the length of fights, but now I don't think it's as much a big deal.

As far as some of the lv75 content goes, I found that I had a hard time until I did a bunch of Isens and Skirm raids to improve my gear. Having 2 of the Draigoch items (requires medallions or seals, traded from the Adventurer's Quartermaster in Galtrev) plus a 2nd Age Lightning Stone (I always preferred lightning stones for Fall to Storm, but now that dynamic has changed) made a ton of difference for me in doing the Ring of Orthanc and Galtrev lv75 repeatables. Learn the tricks to Fangorn and try to find a couple peeps to farm it with you for medallions. I've seen others get by with the ToO Raid sets, or even the instance sets if you'd rather go that route instead, but until I get ToO done, I'm happy with my 4 Draigoch pieces.

Envoyé par Ingiogal

I will take the advice to focus on vitality and tac mitigation in my virtues and leave my gear to cover my will needs. At least I'll become a very wealthy RK from vendor trash. lol

Thanks again to all. You're a great crew.

Sigela, et al.

Hi Sig,

Vitality and tactical mit are epic for the raid content and PVP so keep some gear around that supports that build. I more that encourage you to drop some will to boost up your mitigation.

For solo content where mobs do mainly common damage, try to focus on a physical mitigation build as well ie. innocence and compassion are great virtues for this.

Envoyé par Thorgrum

1. Go a full 7 solitary thunder

Envoyé par 87_Suited

1. Consider rolling 6-deep in lightning line with Writ of Well being as your single healing trait.

What is the added benefit of slotting more than 5?

Envoyé par rilvandir

What is the added benefit of slotting more than 5?

That would be the +3% lightning and frost damage per storm trait.

Hey, RKs!

I thought I'd give an update. I apologize in advance for being depressing.

I'm STILL stuck at Battle of the Ford, Afternoon. I've died at least 10 more times there. No matter what I do, even just walking in, sticking to Grimbold like glue and hitting only CV, Distracting Winds and dropping my stone, I end up with 3-7 mobs on me within 15 seconds of entrance. So I start running. And I pass dear Grimbold with one mob on him that I can't hit in passing and that never seems to have taken any damage from Grimbold on each of my laps through the battlefield.

By comparison, I took my lvl 75 minstrel in and he made it through the whole thing--all the parts of Battle of the Ford--first time through.

By comparison, I've done three Foundry runs successfully. I went on a Fangorn 3-man with a guardian, me and another inexperience RK and we still made it to the very last fight before wiping.

What's an RK to do? I've been giving a lot of thought to just not playing her again and I don't want to do that but where's the fun in getting obliterated every time I open a quest I can't skip?

Apologies again for being a whiner baby. I just want Sigela back!


UPDATE: Well, I did what any RK who is a real-life mom to a teenaged son should have done long ago. I let my son run me through the instance and I finished it off. YAY ME! MY SON FOR THE WIN!

Moving forward now that I've got that albatross off of my neck.

Envoyé par Ingiogal

UPDATE: Well, I did what any RK who is a real-life mom to a teenaged son should have done long ago. I let my son run me through the instance and I finished it off. YAY ME! MY SON FOR THE WIN!

Not to be mean, but thanks for the laugh - I hope you were watching what your son was doing. Sounds like you just need some practice dealing with multiple mobs quickly.

I suggest you practice on the Galtrev Daily from Bron "Defence of Galtrev"

Once in the instance, food/scroll if you think you need them before clicking the ring. DO NOT set a rock. Click the quest ring and head toward the path to the Left, take out the torch bearer and then back to the start for two more adds. (NO rock is because the two adds will just stand by the hut until you are in agro range.)

Take them out and go to the path on the Right. Torch bearer, then back to start for the two adds.

Repeat to the Left.

Repeat to the Right.

You will then get one of the two mobs that stand with the Boss. After that one is down you will get the other and finally the Boss. (you can set a rock for these three if you like)

The instance is on a timer and you only have a set time to kill mobs before the next set comes. This should give you some good practice in fast killing and you will get your choice of some nice weapon/sack scrolls.

Envoyé par Ixinix

That would be the +3% lightning and frost damage per storm trait.

After doing a little unscientific experimentation, my opinion is that the damage boost from slotting 2 extra yellow traits seems to be trivial.

First, I traited my usual 5Y2B (TW, HD, CR, Tale of Storm, Master of Tragedy, Rune of Endurance, Linnod of Peace), and found a cappy to give me a Crit buff. I then wailed on the Galtrev training dummies. I waited for Harsh Debate, Thunderous Words, the Tale of the Storm buffs to stack, and fired Closing Remarks. I recorded the first two Crits that Epic Conclusion did under essentially perfect conditions.

I repeated the above with 7Y traits instead.

At 5Y2B, my EC did 5885 and 6148 damage.

At 7Y, my EC did 6062, twice. As an aside, it seemed to take longer to get both TW and HD to stack, and it took more Epic Conclusion attempts to get a crit.

I'm sure if I actually parsed my overall damage, I might see a wider difference. But looking at my EC spike damage, I'm not completely sold on 7Y for solo.

My experience is that traiting two Blue traits will help increase solo survivablity. Rune of Endurance provides more HP on your stone, which means it can hold a mob longer before it breaks, and Linnod of Peace's ICMR, evasion, and Incoming Healing should help you survive longer solo fights against harder mobs.

It could be that the 5+ trait bonuses aren't working, and given the state of so many other things in the recent update, this would not surprise me (the typos in our traits, the fact that people seem to think that the new CA damage legacy isn't working, the Minstrel bugs that were fixed in 5.1 but re-introduced in U6 but not fixed in 6.0.1)...

Some great ideas and recommendations in this thread, thanks for them. I'll be using them as well. I just recently came back, and basically powered my RK from 65 to 75, just got 75 last night actually.

Oddly I've had the opposite experience since the update. Some of that may be due to me re-learning how to play an RK (swtor deadened my skills), other may be re-specing. Pre-U5, I had soloed fine with 5B-2Y, but when I came back pre-U6 I was having problems. 2 normal mobs would kill me sometimes. I've respeced to 5Y-2B (I think), and I've facerolled since U6. I think I've died once solo. I completed the Battle of the Ford first try, the galtrav instances, etc.

I'm still learning how to time the EC on the winterstorm countdown, and the insta-cast WoH.... And my EC crits are only up to the 3.7k-4k range, my morale 4800, and all the gear needs upgrades. But I've learned that on the RK to go hard and fast. The best way not to die is to kill them first. I will admit that I've used heal potions and Elf Parry skill to live through some fights that I wouldn't have otherwise though....

Now to get the Kinnies to babysit me through some instances to get some upgrades.

Envoyé par Moefaux

After doing a little unscientific experimentation, my opinion is that the damage boost from slotting 2 extra yellow traits seems to be trivial.

First, I traited my usual 5Y2B (TW, HD, CR, Tale of Storm, Master of Tragedy, Rune of Endurance, Linnod of Peace), and found a cappy to give me a Crit buff. I then wailed on the Galtrev training dummies. I waited for Harsh Debate, Thunderous Words, the Tale of the Storm buffs to stack, and fired Closing Remarks. I recorded the first two Crits that Epic Conclusion did under essentially perfect conditions.

I repeated the above with 7Y traits instead.

At 5Y2B, my EC did 5885 and 6148 damage.

At 7Y, my EC did 6062, twice. As an aside, it seemed to take longer to get both TW and HD to stack, and it took more Epic Conclusion attempts to get a crit.

I'm sure if I actually parsed my overall damage, I might see a wider difference. But looking at my EC spike damage, I'm not completely sold on 7Y for solo.

My experience is that traiting two Blue traits will help increase solo survivablity. Rune of Endurance provides more HP on your stone, which means it can hold a mob longer before it breaks, and Linnod of Peace's ICMR, evasion, and Incoming Healing should help you survive longer solo fights against harder mobs.

It could be that the 5+ trait bonuses aren't working, and given the state of so many other things in the recent update, this would not surprise me (the typos in our traits, the fact that people seem to think that the new CA damage legacy isn't working, the Minstrel bugs that were fixed in 5.1 but re-introduced in U6 but not fixed in 6.0.1)...

Totally disagree and I would recomend that all RKs regardless of Fire, Lightning, or Heals always trait 7 deep!

Do this same test using lightning and frost skills (specifically a rotation that uses 5 frost in a row prior to EC). You will find that everytime EC is off CD, you can fire off 5 frost spells in succession (takes about 8 seconds) and then your EC is automatically a crit!

By going 5&2, you loose 6% DPS! That is huge, if your rotation is all lightning/frost (which it should be in this build).

Also without winterstorm traited you have to hope EC crits, rather then knowing it will everytime. You add to the auto crit any other lightning buffs, and EC hits for from 6k- 10k everytime it is up!

The U6 changes to RKs have made you excellent if you go all out in a direction, and we get considerably less effective as we split our traits. That is the biggest culture difference to the class. All of our traits now build off of each other in a wonderful way within the same trait line, but provide little to no advantage outside of the primary trait line.

Go deep or go home.

Loki the Black, Successor SoS

And I'll totally disagree with the above.

The extra 6% DPS doesn't matter if you're dead.

It might take a little longer to whittle down a lv75 elite mob (by like a few seconds lol), but the added insurance of not dying as easily if I eat a few crits or devs is something I'll take any day.

Envoyé par Moefaux

After doing a little unscientific experimentation, my opinion is that the damage boost from slotting 2 extra yellow traits seems to be trivial.

First, I traited my usual 5Y2B (TW, HD, CR, Tale of Storm, Master of Tragedy, Rune of Endurance, Linnod of Peace), and found a cappy to give me a Crit buff. I then wailed on the Galtrev training dummies. I waited for Harsh Debate, Thunderous Words, the Tale of the Storm buffs to stack, and fired Closing Remarks. I recorded the first two Crits that Epic Conclusion did under essentially perfect conditions.

I repeated the above with 7Y traits instead.

At 5Y2B, my EC did 5885 and 6148 damage.

At 7Y, my EC did 6062, twice. As an aside, it seemed to take longer to get both TW and HD to stack, and it took more Epic Conclusion attempts to get a crit.

I'm sure if I actually parsed my overall damage, I might see a wider difference. But looking at my EC spike damage, I'm not completely sold on 7Y for solo.

My experience is that traiting two Blue traits will help increase solo survivablity. Rune of Endurance provides more HP on your stone, which means it can hold a mob longer before it breaks, and Linnod of Peace's ICMR, evasion, and Incoming Healing should help you survive longer solo fights against harder mobs.

It could be that the 5+ trait bonuses aren't working, and given the state of so many other things in the recent update, this would not surprise me (the typos in our traits, the fact that people seem to think that the new CA damage legacy isn't working, the Minstrel bugs that were fixed in 5.1 but re-introduced in U6 but not fixed in 6.0.1)...

Just equip 5 yellow traits and check the numbers in your bar. Then equip 7 and check again. It´s easy . On targets, numbers will change depending on luck and mitigations of the target. On tooltips you can find the difference. I personally do.

I did a lot of testing with 5/2, 6/1 and 7/0

The best way for soloing, whether it´s soloing in the Moors, against the Limlight Gorge Mobs or old Instances (Angmar/Moria), is to go 5/2:

Trait Harsh Debate, Thunderous Words, Closing Remarks, Tale of the Storm, Master of Tragedy, Linnod of Peace, Writ of Well-Being

Yeah you loose 6% DPS, but you gain a lot more surviveability.
Linnod of Peace:
It´s +5% Evade, raw +percent, not +rating, meaning it isn´t affected by enemy Finesse.
+5% Incoming Healing, doesn´t sound like much, but it adds up over the time, with WoH, PtH and a Stone

Writ of Well-Being:
WoH is too important to loose it, because of a stun in the wrong moment
It´s more effective to let it tier down and then tier it up again straight away, while it tiers down, you get an extra heal

2 Blue:
Allows you to drop your Stone all the time, preferably while your opponent is mezzed, Don´t trait Rune of Endurance, +health of your stone is worthless, these 2 blues actually help, if your stone is dead, place a new one


Winterstorm isn´t worth it, WoC is always the second option, if you don´t need your Master of Tragedy buff for WoH. Essence of Winter has a long cooldown and should only be used in PvP, Flurry of Words is very situational (to pop Wargs out of Stealth), Frozen Epilogue has a long cd, and Chilling Rhetoric shouldn´t be wasted for the Winterstorm buff

I´m not talking about PvE Raids, I trait 7 Lightning there too, and use WoC more, but solo or in the Moors, anyone going 7/0 shouldn´t complain about dying, as he willingly sacrifices a lot of surviveability