Thread: Roots of Fangorn Post Update 6.1 - Changes good or bad?

So Roots of Fangorn has been updated in Update 6.1. Has anyone had a chance to run it and see whether or not it makes it easier or more difficult?

I've been tanking everything on my guardian at the final boss (Big spider + 6 little venemous ones). With the update this makes it much more dangerous to do that:

http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Updat...ots_of_Fangorn

Roots of Fangorn

Wiping on the web-tender fights will no longer cause the fights to trigger prematurely, which could block progress.
Quests of Limlight Gorge Deed now rewards limlight gorge rep.
Quest status will no longer reset when you leave the instance and return (unless the instance closes, of course).
Web tender doors should no longer risk becoming stuck in event of a wipe.
Venomous spiderlings can now re-apply Hideous poison(!)
Hideous poison can now stack in T2(!!!)
Venomous spiderlings HP reduced substantially.
Spiderling spawn rate in boss room reduced slightly in T2.
Venomous Spiderlings are now swarm statted, and their spawn rate has been slowed modestly in T1 & T2.

So.. is the reduction in morale on the venemous spiderlings making it much easier? Or is the multiple applications of the poison making it much harder?

Also, if we end up having to kill the venemous spiderlings ASAP, is it still first two spawn at the entrance, second 2 spawn at the waterfall, last 2 spawn in the middle...and then does it repeat or do they spawn in random places?

They have 3K morale now, on my champ I kill them with one brutal strikes skill.

It's a walk in the park now

Sweet! I'm going to be honest and say that when on 'spiderling duty' balancing aggroing the adds, AoEing the spiders to keep them off the healer but still keeping the spiders alive and bubbling or potting when picking up the dot of death was not something I found easy... cue many wipes with group nice enough to not point the finger at my fail.

Following that I'd put a set of off-tank gear in one of my bags for the next run, but this is even better - kill 'em ASAP - now that's Happy Champ duty. Even better for the hunters as they can pew pew 'em down before they even touch anything. I'm looking forward to running Roots now and trying out the new boss fight.

Did it today on my warden. Since the changes left me unable to hold aggro off the champ he tanked the boss and i went into assailment. Ranged dps on the move takes care of the spiders easy enough. Its pretty easy. No problems at all or even scares with this method

only 3k for the spiders? That's much better. As a hunter I can actually handle one of those in 1 or 2 shots depending on how I crit. Before I had to be really careful about aggro because I might not be able to kill it before it gets to me. I think this will make the instance much easier with just one real tank rather than sometimes wanting two tanks.

Originally Posted by Erasluindor

Did it today on my warden. Since the changes left me unable to hold aggro off the champ he tanked the boss and i went into assailment. Ranged dps on the move takes care of the spiders easy enough. Its pretty easy. No problems at all or even scares with this method

How is it possible not to hold aggro on high morale single target against anyone?
As I understand the changes were only for combination of TV+EoB. And there are so many other tools for threat building.
And champ's tools to transfer aggro too, if needed...

3K morale? Hah. With the new Great River crafted bow, I'm getting ~1500 Let Fly devs on my champ. Even without any real ranged dps classes, 3k morale is so low that they should be easy to kill before they reach anyone. With a hunter or RK this should be a walk in the park now. 1st boss will wind up being much harder for most people on T2.

Edit: I can AoE now! The saddest words a champ can ever hear are "NO AOE'S".

Stupidly easy now. Did it today and had the last boss tanked by a Fervour champ in dps gear. Rest of the instance he was in glory with tanking stuff but was just as easy as doing it with a "regular" tank.

Those venomous spiders go *squish* now. In U6, I tanked T2 with moderate success up to the boss fight, but once 3+ spiders were out I just couldn't kite them. Now I expect a successful run with me tanking some time soon.

It's a shame the pendulum swung too far in that regard. Sounds like they should have been left as "standard" mobs instead of "swarm" mobs? (standard would have close to 7k health). Or do they start dropping a lot towards the end of the fight?


Doesn't sound like it's even going to come up as an issue due to how easy it is now, but has anyone happened to test if the challenge resets on T2 if you fail it once?

This just sounds pathetic. As a Guard I loved this instance! It was a lot of fun to try to hold aggro on all 6 little spiders without necessarily killing them and generally not needing to kite. Now it's just another boring instance with the same basic "kill the adds" mechanic as dozens of other instances in the game. I can respect that it was probably extremely difficult to do without a Guard but it sounds like they've sucked out most of the originality of the instance. I'll give it a try, but it doesn't sound like much fun now.

Originally Posted by Valiant_Turtle

This just sounds pathetic. As a Guard I loved this instance! It was a lot of fun to try to hold aggro on all 6 little spiders without necessarily killing them and generally not needing to kite. Now it's just another boring instance with the same basic "kill the adds" mechanic as dozens of other instances in the game. I can respect that it was probably extremely difficult to do without a Guard but it sounds like they've sucked out most of the originality of the instance. I'll give it a try, but it doesn't sound like much fun now.

We have several wardens in kin who enjoyed it as well. As it was it really was a good test of a tank.

Just completed it for the first time since the change. Far, far, far too easy. It's quite sad. For a little while, that instance actually felt like a challenge and now it's a bit of a joke. :/

I've got the opposite reaction to most of the people above. Previously, the fight was silly easy if you went with a dedicated spider tank and a boss off-tank. Provided you had enough heal output to keep both of those alive (which wasn't that hard), it was just a single target DPS burn with no real pressure. Now at least there's some target switching and when the huge mass of spiders spawns at like 5% morale, there's definitely the potential for things to go pear shaped.

All in all, I much prefer the new version.

It's just moved the stress from the tank to the ranged dps.

I haven't tried it since the update, but it sounds like i won't have that much fun with my grd. I loved to tank all those spiders and the boss at once, while the others kill the boss. Oh well, when an instance is a bit too hard for casual players you can expect Turbine to make it easymode.

Did it on my hunter with a regular kin group we grinded this instance many times pre-6.1. It was a faceroll to the point of boredom. At no point the group had a feeling we may somewhat fail. Me and a DPS mini were on venomous spiders and we got absolutely no issue with them.

Did it on my warden in a mixed kin/pug group and last boss was a disaster. LM and RK failed hard to kill Venomous spiders in time resulting in them or the healer getting dots and dying. After the 3d wipe I called it off.

Different groups, different results.

Have these changes changed the group setup that people are running this with?
Is guard,champ-warden,mini,cappy,2 dpsers-randoms still viable for t2 or should the cappy be switched for more dps or one of the dpsers for an off-heal?

So far I have done it once after update and I like it. Before, it was only difficult for a tank and a healer. Now it might be overall easier but at least dps classes have something more to do, than just nuke the boss. And if a group is short of ranged dps, it will require some skill from champs etc, to kill the adds without being touched.

And some additional information for people who hasn't done it yet after update:
In the last 1/3 of the fight 3 venomous spiders spawn simultaneously (one near the entrance, waterfall and middle of the room) every 30s (or something about it; next groups spawned just before cooldown on burg riddle wore off).
It's not that hard to manage but some coordination and skill within a group (dps and cc in particular) is necessary.

have run it twice since the update (been more preoccupied with festival stuff :P)

tanked it the other night on my warden with a group also containing champx2, burg, capt, rk heals, and it was surprisingly easy. no LM (which did lead to dead healer on 1st pull when i got stunned, but no wipe or other deaths, and the 1st boss wasn't particularly stressful even that i recall once we got into a groove), and no ranged dps.

since we had no ranged, i tried to get 1st aggro on as many of the adds as possible (when we had multiples spawning at once, wasn't always possible, but usually managed) which led to turning the boss a bit more than i would have liked, but only one aoe really got the group low, and that was actually fairly early in the fight iirc. probably didn't even need to worry about getting aggro (except on one of two when they dropped in pairs), as quickly as the melee dps managed to dispatch them. was worried that not having ranged dps would be a problem with the changes, but it proved not to be (granted, these were very, very well geared champs and burg)

the other time i was on my minstrel and my internet died with 75-150k left on the last boss, and they still managed to complete it.

not sure what i think of the changes. certainly makes it less stressful on the tank and healer, but it was usually a good stress (well, on my tank moreso than my healer :P). although i've not run it a ton since the update, the last boss seems easier than the rest of the instance (though I've had runs where that seemed to be the case pre-update too). think they may have dialed it back a bit too much, but given the changed mechanics, an increase in add morale or spawn would probably be multiplicative, making it more difficult than the original. an increase in boss dmg or the small dot dmg might make the difficulty about right.

One strong point in particular has NOT changed in regards to the general 'speed' of the fight, allowing a previous method to be used and working just fine with no stress.

As for...what I can only presume is now the intended way this is to be run - there is of course still room for error. The "delays on venomous respawns" seems to be essentially relating to the phases. Namely:
1st part - 1 spider - every 30s or so.
2nd part - 2 spiders - every 30s or so.
3rd part - 3 spiders - every 30s or so.

Have only done this a couple of times since the update, but did one wherein the spiders were killed very close to each other, and as an experiment a test with 1 (per drop) being cc'ed and killed ~15s later. Regardless of this, it would always be on the same mark 1, 2 or 3 spiders (depending on boss health).

Which means that all the group bar healer/tank is on add duty and must know the best way for each group makeup to achieve that - and I quite like that idea. DPS ISN'T just a blunt instrument...but sometimes people do play as if they are. This forces to a degree SOME strategy within "how to DPS hard, but not accidentally take the big hit".
Admittedly, 3k health...DOESN'T necessarily allow this IF the DPS in the group is well kitted out. A DPS group with 'average' gear would likely have to plan more carefully.

Still a fun fight, certainly less difficult in one sense...but with dangerous repercussions if over-estimated or not approached correctly.

I ran it once after the update and found it to be much easier and pretty boring to be honest. The last fight used be interesting for the tank and the healer, since the tank had to pick up the spiders and the healer had to heal through the poison. Now the tank just stand there for the whole fight, and none gets hit by the poison, so the healer doesn't have much to do either. It's more interesting for the dps since they have to kill the spiders now, but all they have to do is sneeze in the general direction of the spiders and they die.

What I don't understand is why the update notes was written to give people the impression that they were going to make the instance harder, when they made it much easier. What's wrong with simply writing "We found the instance to be too hard, and we have made it easier"? Misleading official information annoys me.

Ran it last night with:
Guard, Rk(healer), Cappy, LM, Hunter, RK(dps).

We had plenty of ranged dps to take care of the spiders and the run seemed alot easier now with the changes. Basically, we assigned 1 dps to each spider and the spiders died fairly quick when they spawned.

This fight is MUCH easier.

4 champs cbr
2 cappy

15 min farming commence.

Originally Posted by Shadeslayer_withywindle

Have these changes changed the group setup that people are running this with?
Is guard,champ-warden,mini,cappy,2 dpsers-randoms still viable for t2 or should the cappy be switched for more dps or one of the dpsers for an off-heal?

If your 1 cappy is using War Cry, Blade Brother, Telling Mark, and is traited LtC, you'll be losing overall dps if you swap out for a champ. At least for single target dps. Since this is such a faceroll the cappy should probably trait or at least experiment with traiting extra damage; off heals to the max aren't so necessary in here.

Originally Posted by mrfigglesworth

This fight is MUCH easier.

4 champs cbr
2 cappy

15 min farming commence.

I approve.

Hate the changes. They made this instance rely far more on ranged dps to kill the spiders away from the group. Im sure to you could do it with a mostly melee group provided everyone kept their high dps attack for the spiders, but putting a melee class next to a spider always has a chance to go wrong and the dots still hurt. We preferred to use only one tank and every one else hitting the boss (before the update), which made this instance a great test for the tank, but now its a joke and if you bring a ranged dps you can destroy it with little effort.

Finally, an instance that prefers hunters.

To be fair, hunters were real good in this instance before the change anyway. Quick CC + burst DPS on gobbies and ranged to stay out of 1st boss AoE and high single-target damage on the spider boss without risking AoE (as a DW champ I have to gimp my DPS slightly on the boss by not using BW, and I know fire RK's and LM's are at even more of a disadvantage).

Originally Posted by Nakiami

Finally, an instance that prefers hunters.

Hunters are definitely welcome in any roots run, because they provide great dps and cc, but so do champs, lms, and burgs. I don't think this instance requires any one class. After the update, you don't even need a hardcore tank.

Originally Posted by Valiant_Turtle

....As a Guard I loved this instance! It was a lot of fun to try to hold aggro on all 6 little spiders without necessarily killing them and generally not needing to kite....

That was kind of the problem the GRD was the only one that had some fun before^^

gah do I ever hate that instance now. It's super easy but the bracelet I want on RK never drops. Done it about 15 times in last few days and still not dropping. Reminds me of HoC and tanks going for the anvil.

Originally Posted by Vandervahn

That was kind of the problem the GRD was the only one that had some fun before^^

^Truth.

The problem was T1 is meant to be puggable or run on under-geared characters, and previously with a 'raiding'* tank it was a cake walk, with a 'casual'* tank is could quickly dissolve into chaos. It was too dependent on one class.

* Slightly OT - please forgive my over-simplistic pigeon holing of player types, but I wanted to make my explanation clear. I've run with plenty of non-raiding players who are truly capable and use their skills to best effect, overcoming the lack of top tier gear through skill and experience. These are the players I always look to learn from to improve myself.