Thread: I Realized Burglars are worthless!!!!

of course they are not!

I'm red line/capstone, i was told to be red line for dragon!

What is a good build for burgs for raiding (skirm/ToO/Roots of Fang/3mans), red? blue? yellow?

and Which Class virtues/legendary should i use for each? R B Y or how many Reds, Or How many Yellows or how many blues.

Burg Rotations, burg combos?

While there probably are general things that every burg uses/traits, I believe it will still largely come down to personal play style, if your playstyle does not mesh with a certain traitline/skill rotation then odds are you will not do quite as well using is and you will be less happy using it. My advice is experiment with different things and see what works for you.

All 3 traitlines are viable in certain situations, so it does come down to personal style.

Red line is DPS, which is fine for most content depending on group makeup.
The thing is even when traited red you have some CC and all your debuffs, so you can still perform that role as well.

Gambler ( dont know colour) is something I never tried, so can't really say much about it.
I know some burglars love it, but it IS something you really have to learn how to use.

Misschief: Your CC build, but IMHO feels a bit narrow. Everything you can do in Misschief you can do in Red line, but simply a little better.


I think Red traited is the most versatile, and should get you into most groups.
( For Draigoch it's simply a must. It's all single target DPS in there, and red line gives you Improved Feint Attack to use Trip to start conjunctions.)

Originally Posted by JBomber

While there probably are general things that every burg uses/traits, I believe it will still largely come down to personal play style, if your playstyle does not mesh with a certain traitline/skill rotation then odds are you will not do quite as well using is and you will be less happy using it. My advice is experiment with different things and see what works for you.

If you are a solo/6man/sk raid player play how you want. But if you want to join serious raids, please do your raidmates a favor and play your class at max.

red line+capstone+feint cool+trip cool+ET makes for happy Draigoch FM times. If you're the only Burg in the raid, pulling out all the stops for FMs will make things go much smoother; if you normally trait QK it's fine, no problem there, but I like gambler, so I usually beg the raid leader to bring at least one more burg. Draigoch is very simple, nothing needs to be mezzed, there's not a lot to debuff, so full QK-FM-bonanza if you're the only burg, or whatever you want if you're not, though I strongly reccomend at least slotting ET if you don't already use it.

In Orthanc I run gambler, usually with perplexing and complicated slotted, the reason I do this is becuase while I'm on mezzing duty for some wings and use mischief, in the other wings mezzes are fire-and-forget due to adaptation and I switch back to gambler stance. I like gambler for the extra debuffing and ability to pop a minute mez on something if I have to, or mez two things at once, the bleeds don't hurt either. In Saruman specifically I drop the riddle traits and pick up the RW and either CD or disable. Sometimes I'm asked to mez a clone, but this is usually right at the start to stagger the incoming mobs a bit, my disabling gamble is in the same boat as riddle, not too useful. Sure, I could run QK and do more damage, but when the raid has two hunters, two champs and a dmgRK I become quite unconcerned about maxing my dps and think more about what I can do to facilitate things.

In Roots, mezzing is nice to have at the start, but after that it's spider mini-encounters, which lend themselves to speedy dps and then the spider boss, which is an endurance fight and actually one of the more boring boss-fights right now, at least for burgs (stab spider butt, debuff, interrupt, do not touch little spiders, run to roots, try not to run out of power becuase you're mindlessly mashing through your crit chain).

I still want to be able to change my stances in combat Turbine, there's no excuse for not giving it to us.

Originally Posted by Piff

I still want to be able to change my stances in combat Turbine, there's no excuse for not giving it to us.

I totally agree with that point. 5 blue 2 yellow, (QK)stealth into mischief into gambler, dancing to mischief to riddle things and back to gambler.

Yeah, I trait totally differently depending on what we are doing, more yellows for 3 and 6-person content (Foundry) for the AoE damaging Dust stun.

QK for Draigoch and many Orthanc DPS-race bosses, more yellows for mezzing trash. I found a new trait setup I like for Saruman the other night (might have been four reds and three yellows?)

Originally Posted by Piff

I still want to be able to change my stances in combat Turbine, there's no excuse for not giving it to us.

I'm afraid I disagree, as I don't want the nerfs the stances would have to take if we could swap readily. The ability to chain-mez combined with such a huge amount of threat-free DPS or evasion would be way over-powered. Heck, a LM typically retraits to switch between decent DPS, effective CC, or heals--not just switch a stance.



"Sometimes survival comes down to not being hit. Actually, most times." -the chicken skill, Bob and Weave

Any good burg knows "go QK or go home"

QK for Draigoch. QK or Gambler for everything else. Mischief is too much of a nerf to DPS in return for spammable riddle and dodgy confound.

Originally Posted by Jarnos

Gambler ( dont know colour) is something I never tried, so can't really say much about it.
I know some burglars love it, but it IS something you really have to learn how to use.

If QK is the dps line, MM the cc-line, then Gambler is something in between. It's probably the most versatile traitline, with argumentable better survivability then the other lines.

Since the dps and debuffs is not dependent on positioning, its a very popular build for lvling and "heads on"-encounters such as draigoch

Originally Posted by Evendale

Any good burg knows "go QK or go home"

so true

Originally Posted by sdf-blarelius

so true

Yes, Qk is the only line you should be going most of the time in pve. Still, many burgs fail to see past their own egos.

Originally Posted by jakeprecision123

Yes, Qk is the only line you should be going most of the time in pve. Still, many burgs fail to see past their own egos.

You remind me of those people who tried to argue that Hunters should never trait anything other than 5 red. I can't even laugh, becuase it's just too sad.

I have a QK (level 70) and TG (level 75).

I enjoy playing both styles, but in no way is my TG burg gimped. He relies more on bleeds and gambles than direct damage.

I use MM stance a lot in group instances where I did not need to go into stealth. Don't think I trait many MMs though.

So all stances are useful.

Originally Posted by Piff

You remind me of those people who tried to argue that Hunters should never trait anything other than 5 red. I can't even laugh, becuase it's just too sad.

Completely different situation. Red and blue are both damage related trait lines in the Hunter class. Easy to compare with each other. Parse DPS. Find out that they are equally viable. Laugh at those who deny statistical data.

In the case of Burglars... Well, they are not as easy to compare as it is with Hunters. Lets just say that the three trait lines have three seperate focuses, yet they are not isolated enough from each other. Very context dependent. If a Burglar can reliably chain daze and adequately debuff the majority of end game content while traited no more than 3MM, I would say there is something wrong there. Either with the content or with the Burglar. Seems more like the latter though.

Accepting that there is a problem is the first step in getting it fixed. With all the Burglars thinking that MM and TG are not imbalanced and grossly irrelevant in our current state, it is no wonder this class has not yet gotten the much needed treatment that half the other classes received in the last year.

I would love to trait 5MM without feeling like it is a waste. Been looking forward to that day ever since the release of MoM. I will probably be waiting forever.

Rotations then for non Red lines????? and stances?????

i don't understand these acronyms you guys keep using, like mm, qk.

i need to know pros and cons for 5 yellow and 5blue, what rotation to use on yellow and blue.

I will try out 5B 2 yellow. what stance should i be in?

what are my gambler skills?

Originally Posted by MoonwalkIntoMordor

I would love to trait 5MM without feeling like it is a waste. Been looking forward to that day ever since the release of MoM. I will probably be waiting forever.

I second this whole heartedly .. and to some extent, I feel the same way about Gambler (are any Gambler traits chosen by Quiet Knife traited Burgs?).

Grain of salt time. Here's what I run as a Gambler Burg .. and a rundown of my basic rotation (solo).
Traits:
Ambidextrous (Quiet Knife)
Side Step (Gambler)
Swift & Subtle (G)
Honed Wit (G)
Footpad (G)
Trickster (Mischief)
Leafwalker (G)

Legendary (for the moment):
Expose Throat (I opt for this for the chance to stun over the better damage dealing Flashing Blades .. and change often)
Stick & Move (solo only)
Dealings Done


From stealth :
Reveal Weakness
Burgle (if mob is Burgle-able)
Location is Everything (if up .. and not worth the time on generic landscape mob)
Surprise strike (again, solo choice, I avoid bleeds when taking on Elites)
Counter Defence
Subtle Stab
Burglar's Advantage
Gambler's Strike
Double Edged Strike
Expose Throat / Flashing Blades (If flashing, Addle)
Mischievous Glee (move behind on stun)
Subtle Stab
Counter Defence
Burg's Adv
Gambler's Strike (Move behind again)
Double Edged Strike
Expose Throat / Flashing Blades
Addle
Starling Twist
Subtle Stab
etc.,

This is all solo .. when Subtle isn't up, I choose Provoke or Surprise (And I always addle following the crit enders)
I've been moved to always use a "fast" skill following a Melee (Tricks, trick removals, Burg Adv & Double Edged are all fast .. Addle being immediate)

It may not be optimal, and I'd love for other Gambler Burg's to let me know what they find optimal, but works ok for me.
Why no Cunning Attack or Well Placed Strike? Because I'm always stunning, mezzing, and dazing .. again, this is solo.

Don't group or raid enough to comment (and I often simply switch to Quiet Knife anyhow).

Originally Posted by Yoohooham

i don't understand these acronyms you guys keep using, like mm, qk.

... what are my gambler skills?

QK is the Quiet Knife -- your DPS trait-line. As you go deep in red traits, your ability to do more damage goes way up, especially from stealth and from behind. With five red traits you can slot your Practiced Bluff legendary, which changes Feint Attack to Improved Feint Attack (IFA), which allows even more skills to be used as if from stealth. It also reduces the cool-down of IFA from 5 minutes to 1 minute (or 15 seconds with a legendary item legacy), greatly increasing the number of giant stealth/attack-from-behind hits. In my opinion this is one of the best trait lines for group play, since you spend so much time behind the mob when someone else tanks.

TG is The Gambler -- your trick release bonus trait-line. As you go deep in blue traits, your trick releases have a chance to get very powerful additional bonus effects. Starting Twist still stuns your target, but now it frequently puts a powerful bleed on it, as well. Mischievous Glee still heals you, but now it has a chance to mez that target, as well. Clever Retort still does whatever it does, but now it has a chance to apply the most powerful defense de-buff in the game, as well. When you go five deep in TG, all of these are available to you, and you can trait the Dealings Done legendary trait to turn Lucky Strike into Gambler's Strike ... which automatically changes the power of whatever gamble is currently active to Tier 6, the most power gamble level. You can do this every 15 seconds with proper legacies on your legendary. TG does require a five-deep build and the special Gambler legacies on your legendary item to be maxed out. I consider Gambler to be the best solo build, and I find it a lot more fun than QK. Your mileage may vary.

A bit out of date, but you can get you Gambler info here:
http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Gambler_Guide
http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...43#post5228543

MM is the Mischief Maker -- your tricks and crowd control trait-line. As you go deep in yellow traits, the duration, power consumption and strength of your tricks improve. At five yellow traits, you can slot your Little Annoyances legendary trait, changing Small Snag to Quite a Snag. MM is generally considered the weakest trait line for three reasons. The first is that the best benefits of the yellow traits are from the traits themselves. You don't need to go deep in yellow to get Dust in the Eyes to become AOE, for example, just use the trait by itself. The same is true for other yellow traits, so you just use only the one or two yellows that you need at any given time. The second reason the line is weak is that Quite a Snag is extremely tricky to get a lot of value out of, since there's an art to rooting in Melee that most of us don't have. (The recent change that allows this to be applied outside of the crit chain has helped a lot, however.) The third reason is that each of the other lines can be configured to have crowd control options that are in many ways better than MM (60 second mezzes, mezzes every 15 seconds), even though MM is supposed to specialize in this with Riddle and Confound improvements.

So, all this being said, some common builds are (R=Red, Y=Yellow, B=Blue):

RRRRRYY + Practiced Bluff (Legendary) = A full DPS build with the yellow skill improvements that will help you with specific content.

RRRRRB + Leaf Walker (Blue) + Practiced Bluff (Legendary) = A full DPS build, but the Leaf Walker build allows a 60% likelihood of getting a mezzing gamble when using Provoke from stealth. Improved Feint Attack counts as stealth in this case, so with the Feint Attack cool-down legacies on your weapon, you can try to mez something every 15 seconds. Side-step is nice as your other blue to improve your evade, which I find QK desperately needs.

BBBBBYY + Dealings Done = A full Gambler build with the yellow skill improvements that will help you with specific content.

RRRRYYY = A nice blend of very good damage plus lots of trick value.

My favorite review of traits and trait-lines is here:

http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Burglar_Traits

Hope this helps!

Originally Posted by MoonwalkIntoMordor

Parse DPS.

lol

Though you are correct about MM, but then I thought the general feeling amongst burgs today was that MM has very limited use and it needed to be completly re-evaluated, but that's the consenus we got to way back during Moria after the new combat was introduced. I didn't think it had changed.

Comparing speeds and builds with friends has convinced me that currently QK and TG are not as far apart as people think, yes, TG is slower, this comes part-in-parcel with the fact that a significant percentage of damage done in TG is done via bleeds from WPS, CA and dmgGamble, but most of the time the person running TG was only finishing perhaps 10 seconds later than the person using QK, sometimes not even that. In damage race fights like the T2 bosses in Orthanc, this would be a significant difference and couldn't be ignored, except that speed and damage are not the only factors in most of those fights (with the exception perhaps being Lightning T2, but even there, there's the Shock) and time will be spent on mezzing duty, debuffing and add control.

I'm sure there were many factors we were missing, none of us have lv 75 FA weapons, nor did any of us have 5 pieces of Orthanc gear, both of which would have aided a QK burg more than a TG burg and possibly widen the gap enough to change our opinions; we were also using the elite skirmish enounter mobs instead of combat dummies or raid bosses.

...Now that I'm thinking about it, LG would be a nice place to test 1 mob survivability.

MM got some decent updates in RoI with 0s tricks and 0s RW. It's still pretty much pointless traiting more than 2 (occasionally 3) MM traits, but it's not that far away from being a usable traitline. If a dev would just spend 5m making some minor improvements (ie: line bonuses improving tricks, slightly better QaS, etc) ...

Gambler on the other hand needs a considerable revamp to be of any real use outside PvP/soloing, and even then its extra reliance on luck means its unlikely to ever be a smart choice for good players.

If you think the DPS gap between QK and Gambler is small ... /facepalm

Originally Posted by Evendale

If you think the DPS gap between QK and Gambler is small ... /facepalm

Using DPS as the measure of what is best for a hybrid class whose primary focus is not DPS is foolishness.

I've been saying it for five years now, I'll probably be saying it for five more. Is it so bad that I want my fights to last long enough for my stealth cooldown to be finished, becuase right now they aren't and it's so boring.

I Realized Burglars are worthless!!!!

I would not go that far:

-Gimped
-Squishy
-Past their prime

Would be better choices

Originally Posted by Piff

Using DPS as the measure of what is best for a hybrid class whose primary focus is not DPS is foolishness.

I've been saying it for five years now, I'll probably be saying it for five more. Is it so bad that I want my fights to last long enough for my stealth cooldown to be finished, becuase right now they aren't and it's so boring.

No one is stoping you from playing in quest armor and using your original quest reward 3rd age legendery.

Have fun out there? remember to trait all yellow and put QaS on the weapon. somthing tells me you will need all the cc you can get. PS good luck with power. maybe auto attack and save the power for the cc.

And i will never seek out a burg for foundry and defently not RoF. I may take one but i would never make it my first choice. Would anyone?

Originally Posted by ifreborn1

I would not go that far:

-Gimped
-Squishy
-Past their prime

Would be better choices




No one is stoping you from playing in quest armor and using your original quest reward 3rd age legendery.

Have fun out there? remember to trait all yellow and put QaS on the weapon. somthing tells me you will need all the cc you can get. PS good luck with power. maybe auto attack and save the power for the cc.

And i will never seek out a burg for foundry and defently not RoF. I may take one but i would never make it my first choice. Would anyone?

well of course they are past their prime. they will never be as godly as they were during SoA.

as for foundry/RoF. well foundry i kinda agree, although i have only run 1 or 2 foundries with burgs. but for RoF. did a 3 burg, guard, mini, cappy. easiest run i have ever had. true this was pre-nerf(yes the change was a nerf), but i would imagine it would still be very easy with that make-up.

Originally Posted by 0987654321

well of course they are past their prime. they will never be as godly as they were during SoA.

as for foundry/RoF. well foundry i kinda agree, although i have only run 1 or 2 foundries with burgs. but for RoF. did a 3 burg, guard, mini, cappy. easiest run i have ever had. true this was pre-nerf(yes the change was a nerf), but i would imagine it would still be very easy with that make-up.

change favor range attacks. pre burg was nice.

I've played as a hunter, burg and minnie in foundry, and while my main is a hunter I never had a problem with my lil burgie once the tank got (provoke-aided) aggro. Burgs in roots make the second boss fight MUCH easier but tend to have problems in the first, getting minced by Frushkul's AOE. My burg tends to concentrate on CCing and DPSing adds in that fight while debuffing the boss.

I think that both Gambler and MM need a rework to be comparable to QK especially with the current gear available. Personally I think the new gear sets benefit QK traited burgs more than Gambler. With the legacy reduction of IFA and the damage boost from it not to mention the auto-crit from stealth I find it hard pressed to run Gambler. I have tried it and have noticed a significant difference in DPS. With the addition of Audacity in the moors added to the mix and the -X% cc duration it hurts Gambler traited burgs even more, hopefully with the next update we will see some great changes to help combat some of these problems because I miss running Gambler.

Originally Posted by Elranduri

With the legacy reduction of IFA and the damage boost from it not to mention the auto-crit from stealth I find it hard pressed to run Gambler..

The legacy also excists for Lucky/Gamblers Strike. I think it's a minor instead of a Mayor ( like IFA and Small Snag cooldown reductions legacies)
Also the auto crit from stealth only applies when in stealth and not when using IFA.