Thread: soldier on landscape 1 month later

I have yet to see a soldier outside of a skirmish. I think they're probably too costly to use much, if at all. I would buy a little time with marks if I ran into something I absolutely couldn't do on my own and couldn't find any help. This game has a great community though and it's very rare that I can't find help.

As someone who's returned after a pretty lengthy break, it took me awhile to even remember that the feature exists. I bought a token with marks for my level 31 Rune-Keeper to help with the Agamaur quests. Having the Herbalist with was great, especially when I needed to deal with the elite humanoid mobs that usually pull with a normal buddy. I was even able to take on two of the elites at once with the help of my soldier. She was a face pulling monster if I tried to nimbly dodge enemies with her out, but that was easily fixed by dismissing her while running around. B+ experience, would use again. Although the tokens seem surprisingly pricy at max level (price in marks that is, I'm never going to spend TP on something like this).

Originally Posted by ShireDweller

When this feature was announced, I made a concerted effort to get my skirmish soldier up to my level in preparation for using it out on the landscape.

Hearing about the cost to use it soured me on the whole idea.

Still, I'm glad I got the skirm soldier leveled, since that's been a big help in the Epic Quest line.

This is precisely what I did too. I even went so far as to buy scrolls of refund for the SM's I'd spent on my soldiers so I could change classes for 3 of my toons.

While they were on sale I bought 5 x Soldier on Landscape tokens for my LM who I switched to using a Warrior soldier. However since I'm largely at range, my soldier rarely engages the mob. After discussing this with some Kinnie's, those that were using Archer or Sage said they were having the same problem.

I'll try it on one of my melee toon's and see how that goes. I suspect it will be better, although neither my Warden nor Guard need any assistance with landscape mobs.

Originally Posted by Jarryd

Even being able to set a soldiers radius of movement would help. If my archer was using a warrior (not my archers choice) I might not mind him being soo far away from me. But my Rk would like him to stay withing the healing radius of my healing stone, rather than run away from it and root fighting a mob out of my range.

Hmm... That may be why I haven't noticed any particular problem with positioning. My Hunter's range exceeds the agro range of his Protector.

--W. H. Heydt

Old Used Programmer

Originally Posted by Killien

While they were on sale I bought 5 x Soldier on Landscape tokens for my LM who I switched to using a Warrior soldier. However since I'm largely at range, my soldier rarely engages the mob.

Interesting. I haven't tried the soldier-on-landscape yet (wait till I get to Limlight Gorge with its 300K Morale spiders!), but my LM has a Warrior and he does fine. I don't do anything with him but bring him up at the beginning of the instance; he goes and attacks whatever he feels like attacking while I direct my attention, and that of my Lynx, at the boss. I find this works.

Originally Posted by djheydt

Interesting. I haven't tried the soldier-on-landscape yet (wait till I get to Limlight Gorge with its 300K Morale spiders!), but my LM has a Warrior and he does fine. I don't do anything with him but bring him up at the beginning of the instance; he goes and attacks whatever he feels like attacking while I direct my attention, and that of my Lynx, at the boss. I find this works.

I'm guessing that Soldiers aggro proximity was reduced for general Landscape use to make sure they don't just go out on a rampage killing everything in sight. Soldiers in general seem much more intelligent within skirmishes, but then that was their design. Engaging everything is usually exactly what they're supposed to do.

Now i finally came around to spend my skirmish points for one hour on a low level twink. (lvl24).
Let's just say they are good enough to help you kill elite Monsters or small fellowship quests alone, and yet add to little so i can not see myself ever buying another hour ever until at least lvl 50+ but then again at that level range i can probably facepalm through content till 75 anyway.

As others have mentioned especially in the low level range they do to little if not nothing at all.
- Warrior just stands around not attacking 70% of the time. (He uses his one skill he has and that's it for 10 seconds)
- Archer , see Warrior
- Bannerguard, see Warrior
- Protector, see Warrior
- Sage, See Warrior
- Herbalist, See Warrior (one 300~ heal in 10 seconds ugh, not enough to "heal" and too much for landscape mobs)

I haven't seen a single skirmish soldier on landscape, nor I used one. Badly implemented system imo.

I love my landscape soldier. I hug him and squeeze him and call him George.
He's pulled my butt out of the frying pan a few times.

being a vip, im able to afford the cost, so i tried it out. wasnt worth it to me, so i only tried it once. whats the big deal?

Haven't used it personally. Mostly because I have enough trouble getting them to not screw things up in skirmishes and the thought of letting my lobotomized minion run free in an area full of aggressive elite masters with limited sight distance is just scary. It's the same reason my I never traveled with the pet on my Shadowknight or Death Knight - one wrong step and Stupid would end up aggroing half the zone before he found his way to me with train in tow.

I have seen several used in Vilya. Usually it's people soloing in Limlight where the extra help provides a cushion against mistakes, or classes whose group role isn't dps that use them to make soloing go faster while hunting for a group. Once it was a champion trying to clean all the quests out of North Downs at-level that used their herbalist to reduce the downtime between elite kills and for the two and three-elite fights.

Opinion-wise I could care less if someone uses them or not as long as they don't tell me to use mine. To me they are no different than someone using wound/ poison/ etc potions to remove debuffs their class can't or using morale or health potions. In the later case the player (maybe) bought the advantage with in-game money in the form of coins, in the later they (maybe) bought it with in-game money in the form of Turbine Points. Frankly I'm more pissed about people whose kins take them along on raids to gear them up after power-leveling them, only to turn around and complain about everything being "too easy" and "not enough content". Well duh everything is "easy" when you're in gear that under normal circumstances you wouldn't have when trying that content. ><

I've never used it and have never seen anyone else use it either. (Gladden)

I've never used it , and never seen someone using one ( Evernight ) .

The implementation is incredibly poor .

It should be free to summon .

Seems like a stupid way to sell stuff at the store .

Finally gave in and bought just one on my squishy hunter to tackle the badass devourer in the Pit of Iron (after dying so many times) and I used it a few times on tough Orcs in Isengard. Still have 40 odd minutes left on him.

So all in all he was quite useful when no other players were around - so I am quite glad he is available for very special occasions.

Afternote - saw the tokens were 50% off recently so I bough a couple for "just in case" - good they are bound on account.

I´m using it occasionally on my non-capped characters.
It speeds things up quite a bit. And allows a bit of training/deeding with skills you dont usually use while soloing. For example, my Runekeeper will let the soldier fight while she heals. On the warden, I let the soldier build aggro for a while and then try to get it back as fast as possible. I could do that in skirmishes of course, but this way it also gets quests done.

I consider the price stepping in the skirmish camp OK for its purpose.

Originally Posted by Louvre

...
It should be free to summon . ...

And why?

Originally Posted by Vandervahn

I´m using it occasionally on my non-capped characters.
It speeds things up quite a bit. And allows a bit of training/deeding with skills you dont usually use while soloing. For example, my Runekeeper will let the soldier fight while she heals. On the warden, I let the soldier build aggro for a while and then try to get it back as fast as possible. I could do that in skirmishes of course, but this way it also gets quests done.

I consider the price stepping in the skirmish camp OK for its purpose.


And why?

Why not? Put limits on it in populated areas, hardly an issue when leveling.

Never used one; never saw one used...

I haven't seen anyone using one yet. I considered using it once when I was 73 questing in Dunland clearing the camp above Barnavon because the Dunlending guys spawned faster than my (then) critically undergeared Captain could kill them... By the time I realized I had forgotten to summon him, I had already finished the quests... never thought about doing it since.

Way too expensive for such a infrequently needed bonus. 1500 TP at level 75 is just obnoxiously high for someone who groups pretty much entirely with the same 2 other people.

I guess if you do a lot of raid skirmishes and dungeons and such, you're going to have more currency to summon one... but then you're not really the type that needs it at that point...

Yeah, chalking this one up to another shameless money grab to get solo-ish players to spend 100tp repeatedly.

I don't really care so much about the TP... Turbine lives to gouge us (think 100 tp for a letter carrier badge during the anniversary festival). But what I hate is no control once you forked over your TP.

Was running my 56 Champ going to Lothlorien so I could level quickly and needed to toss in my healer for a little back up on the warg quest. Instead of healing me, stupid wanders 50m away and draws the 4 mobs I was trying not to attract or at the very least attract with him BEHIND me healing me.

Instead he dies (waste of 3min of the hour), draws the mobs to me (four 60th on my 56) and I die.

Forget the cost, forget not being unlimited... just let me position the stupid ally where it helps instead of hurting the character.

Originally Posted by Arasul123

I don't really care so much about the TP... Turbine lives to gouge us (think 100 tp for a letter carrier badge during the anniversary festival). But what I hate is no control once you forked over your TP.

Was running my 56 Champ going to Lothlorien so I could level quickly and needed to toss in my healer for a little back up on the warg quest. Instead of healing me, stupid wanders 50m away and draws the 4 mobs I was trying not to attract or at the very least attract with him BEHIND me healing me.

Instead he dies (waste of 3min of the hour), draws the mobs to me (four 60th on my 56) and I die.

Forget the cost, forget not being unlimited... just let me position the stupid ally where it helps instead of hurting the character.

I tried one when the sale 30% off was going on. Thought for that price I wanna see how well this works. Went to an orc camp & that was a mistake. Could not even lay a trap down cause the solider just kept moving forward & having orcs attack her & then move on to me. So in this type of setting using this is a joke & needs fixing.

I've used a Soldier with my Hunter a few times, for help in crowded camps.

I'd like to see tokens that grant various amounts of Soldier time added to the loot tables. Like, +10 minutes, +20 mins, 30, 40, etc.

Reality may be otherwise, but I thought it was an addition made in response to the coming of SWTORs pet system. Playing SWTOR AS i have, that system is handy and required. But also annoying and a piss poor way to avoid the need to add better grouping and server mechanics. In LOTRO the asking price is too high, but then any price in TP may be too much. Most folks grind out their pets, the idea of having to pay money to use them seems absurd.

leveled a champ during the anniversary. was very cheap to get a couple of them in the skirmish camp so I decided to give it a try to make leveling faster. It actually helped because I was able to gather more mobs and use less consumables I have never used one at max level but some parts of the world during leveling they can come in handy.

I still have yet to see a soldier outside of a skirmish. Admittedly I can only be in one place at any given time, but I would expect to see at least one somewhere. Maybe they should be a little cheaper, or maybe landscape stuff is just too easy to need them.

I hate features where you have to spend some form of credits and theres a time-out. It makes me anxious and spoils my game experience.

Even the slayer deed accelerators (the ones that have dropped I'd never actually buy one) have made me enjoy deeding even less. I'd rather just put on some nice music or chat in vent while calmly working on a deed and finish it tomorrow if I cant finish it today.

I'm glad the landscape hasnt been filled with pets and soldiers yet, but it does worry me about what they will try next.

As a Hunter, I've found the landscape soldier tremendously useful. Particularly during parts of Volume III.

I would like to see it a bit cheaper in terms of marks & medallions. But still, I've had the same soldier for damn near a month and have like 30 minutes left on him. Pretty good deal.

Overall I think adding them has been a positive.

I bought one because I have no friends.
Now I feel better.

Originally Posted by TiNdA-LoS

I bought one because I have no friends.
Now I feel better.

Id feel worse if I had to pay someone to be my friend.

The only time I have used mine is when I encounter elites with way higher moral. My herbalist has come in handy.