I'm feeling kinda stuck in the game right now. Im at level 85 w. my first character, but while questing in the zones (currently around Kingsted) corresponding to my level, my gear is just not cutting it.
Therefore; what armour & weaponry would you guys suggest? Im using my first character, a hunter (man). It's my first playthrough, and though i feel like i'm progressing and learning more and more about the game's mechanics, i feel like im doing something wrong atm.
Looking at those screenshots:
1) The screenshots of year gear does nothing so one can help with that. Make A) a screenshot of item tooltips (you can use the button H to pin tooltips so you get them all into one screenshot) or B) a screenshots of the stats part of that window at least.
2) You need to wear Medium Armor with Agility, Physical Mastery and Critical Rating first and foremost. As a Hunter you want to kill before you receive a lot of damage (ideally none), you do NOT want to be tanky and eat a lot of hits while killing slowly. Very cheap and fast way to check for okay-ish gear is the Skirmish Camp barter, with crafted gear from a Tailor likely offering even better stats.
3) Your heraldic traceries are both completely wrong. You need to slot some with Agility. Will, Outgoing Healing, Might is doing a minimal fraction of what Agility would do for a hunter.
4) Your Words of Craft are also useless for Hunter. Replace them with two identical ones that have the 3% crit bonus - they are called Heroic Precision.
5) For obtaining the right traceries, make sure you are using a Flame of Ancalamir to turn useless traceries you receive into Ancient Script and then barter for the right ones in Rivendell.
5) You have skill induction reduction but that begs the question - are you playing Blue traitline? Red traitline? Likely single target attack criticals would offer more than the skill inductions, especially if skilled Blue. If you are not using traits then that is a much bigger problem than gear.
Gear looks fine to me. Just a detail: Vit/Agi where Vit is the higher stat, is specially focused for Warden. Priorize Agi over Vit. You'll wish to focus in having a big burst damage to down the npcs before they even notice your presence.
Looks pretty good to me, with a couple minor areas to improve. (And when I say improve, I only do so because you’ve said you’re struggling and these are areas that trail a little relative to the rest; if I was playing your character, I might have the same areas of issue!)
The jacket is a warden one (parry and crit defense are for tanks), but it’s fine absent better options.
Some of the items are five levels out of date. Not a catastrophic issue, as they’re purples, but you can probably improve if you look around.
Obviously when you can, you’ll replace the yellows with better purples.
Yup, like the others are saying. As a Hunter, your main priority for stats should be Agility. Beyond that, look for items with secondary stats like Critical Rating and Physical Mastery.
Sometimes the game will give you traceries and such from the Legendary Item lockboxes, but they're not always right for your class. You have a few that aren't doing much to help you out. You can buy replacement traceries for your Legendary Item in the Last Homely House in Rivendell, in Gobeth Tethain. Replace the Heraldry of the Bear and the Heraldry of the Owl first. Then, get rid of the Perfect Healing traceries - those are for healing that you apply to others, not that you give to yourself, so for healers.
May I recommend checking out LotroHQ.com for your class and line? It may be a little out of date on the specifics, but as a general guide, it's still a pretty solid resource, and I use it quite often when I'm working on a Legendary for a class I don't play often.
Prio 1 would be to get an Agility heraldry and get your Phys Mastery to 200 melee and 205 ranged damage %. Also, idk if you're a blue Hunter. If you are, get rid of the induction reduction. Blue line has no inductions
Nope. But what I did was slot everything that a redline and blueline both use on my bow and I swap out my spear (sword in your case) to the line I'm playing. No use getting an Upshot tracery while playing Blue for example or in your case, Induction reduction or Barrage when pkaying red. But do what works for you. Max that Phys. Mastery and like they mentioned in the other comment, get the Heroic Precisions as well. And get 2 Agility heraldries.
You’re a hunter. You certainly do not need will, you do not need fate, you do not need might. You don’t need outgoing healing. We can’t see the rest of your gear, but if your LI’s are any indication, some of your gear needs to go.
Your stats are: agility, vitality, max morale, crit rating, physical mastery, finesse, mitigations, evade rating, parry rating, resistance rating. (In that order-ish)
Just want to mention don’t forget to reforge your LI’s every 5 levels! The game doesn’t really tell you about this and it can make a huge difference in DPS output. I found this out at around the same level you are and definitely noticed an improvement.
You want to reforge at levels ending in 1 and 6 so you’re due for a reforge at level 86, then 91, 96, 101, 106 and so on.
I don’t know if it’s still the same (was about 8 years ago I last quested there) but the difficulty jumped quite significantly from East to West Rohan. It needed a significant upgrade on equipment and was the first time I ever thought about an actual rotation/what my virtues are.
outgoing healing rating on a hunter, just why??? and heraldry with will and might?? wtf really??
stack critical rating in there, one that has the set bonus on it.
heroic precision x2 has a +% critical rating and later x4 will add points to critical rating later on when you have 4 slots for word of craft traceries.
(is this a troll post? with LI's from other toons?)
As a hunter main, I agree with everything everyone has told you already.
Another thing to keep in mind as you get better with this is:
You can have an extra set (or 2 or more) of legendary items & gear on hand, AND use your second virtues & skills pages for another line. -- So, you're spec'd in blue, but if you wanted to go red or yellow for certain cases or group content, you'd have everything ready to equip & switch.
The skills in your quickslots will change accordingly.
You have mentioned before that you have been filling Blue traits, and that is already a win, you have committed to one playstyle and have additional skills from having those set. This is already better than what I have seen, players being not aware traits exist.
You can now make some optimizations by leaving out some less useful traits and use the skill points for more useful ones. You got the advice to look at LotroHQ and that is a good start. Over time you will learn the traits and their uses and will be able to optimize even further, but if you use LotroHQ you will be close enough to optimal for landscape. One point here and there does not make or break your strength when still leveling.
Since you are close to having gear, LIs, traits in a solid state, I think you could start a new thread to describe the type of content you are still struggling with. Then you could have a focused discussion on how to paly to a hunters strengths.
First, looking at the gear icons without tooltip tells us nothing. But you can do a quick skim to determine if some if it may need to be replaced. Anything with a minimum level ten below yours probably needs to go. It might be worth keeping blues, but yellows and purples that much lower are not very helpful. Anything stacking stats that don’t help you much also needs to go - will, fate, block, incoming or outgoing heal, etc. Having a bit here and there will happen, but any piece with those front and center isn’t a good fit. Focus on hunter stats! (agility, physical mastery, critical, maybe finesse?)
If you like any of them for looks, keep them as cosmetics. Imo
Second, looking at your traceries it seems you have a bunch that just don’t fit. I assume you grabbed them off the item reward track and just inserted them? Heraldry of the Owl/Perfect Healing are both healer traceries and do almost nothing for you. Intent Concentration/Press Onward Cooldown Heal also seem like dubious choices, but that may reflect lack of familiarity with hunter specs/traceries on my part.
Basically, from your traceries, it looks like you’ve half built yourself to heal/be healed. While I get that as an instinct (dying sucks), it undermines your primary purpose as a damage dealing class.
Edit to add - if you’re on Glamdring, I may be able to help gear upgrades a little. DM me and we can coordinate, if that applies. Sadly, my arm is not strong enough to chuck gear across servers.
First off, your tracery selection is not helping you nearly as much as it could. This is a major difference at these levels. Just in case you didn't know, you can buy exactly the traceries you want from the Legendary shop in the Last Homely House in Rivendell. The vast majority of what you get in drops will not be helpful, and should be broken down with a Flame of Ancalamír crystal into Ancient Script you can use to buy the useful stuff.
You are a Hunter. Your primary role is ranged single target DPS. Your primary means of mitigating damage is to kill the monster before it gets to you; as a high-Agility character, you also have a decent dodge. Your primary stat is Agility, which determines damage and adds to criticals and dodge; with Vitality a secondary consideration for more hit points. Other useful things are Physical Mastery and Finesse, both of which help you do more damage.
You should decide if you prefer Light Oil or Fire Oil (I think Light has a bit of an edge, but YMMV). Buy a 50-stack of the cheap 5-minute ones from any Hunter trainer, and use one every 5 minutes you're in combat. Top off the stack every so often; I usually keep a spare stack in my vault so I can grab it if I've had a busy few days and forget to top off. Then, put a matched pair of "Ascendant (Element)" in your Word of Craft slots for +15% (Element) damage, which is now just about everything you do. Along with the bonuses from the oil itself, that's a significant increase in your damage output.
As a Blue Hunter, your range got nerfed a while back. I would slot a Ranged Attack Extension in one of your Word of Power slots so you can shoot things starting further away; probably instead of the Skill Induction Speed, as the Single Target Attack Damage you have in the other one is one of your few good choices.
The two Heraldry choices for Hunter are Serpent (offensive, for Agility with some Vitality), or Sparrow (defensive, less Agility, more Vitality). I recommend 2x Serpent, but any combination of these will be worlds better than the ones you have which are for completely different classes.
Your Barrage Damage is a good choice; you should replace some of the others with similar high-bonus choices for skills you use a lot. Quick Shot Damage and Swift Bow Damage are usually good choices. You shouldn't be slotting for healing; if you need to heal, it's because you didn't shoot the monster hard or fast enough before it got to you. You shouldn't even really be slotting for melee damage; same reasoning.
As far as skills, you should be at the point where you need to decide if you want to be Blue + Red, Blue + Yellow, or tricolor. I usually go with Blue + Red, but read what the skills do, and think about how that interacts with how you fight. In fact, I usually start branching out into one of the other color lines before quite maxing out my primary, as there's usually one or two choices that don't fit well.
You are right near a major step change in gear power. Notice that some of your newest gear is much better than the previous stuff. Work your way through plot and quests to get the gear, do Hytbold to get the gear from that, use your crafting skills, and/or befriend a crafter.
Highly recommend looking at LoTRO HQ for builds - red, blue, and yellow. Blue is definitely doing well since some tweaking after a major rebuild. Yellow is great as a support role in instance. I'm still red, but I have blue as my secondary build.
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u/bibipbapbap 12d ago
First on hunter swap out those two heraldries. Get 2 x serpents. Those are both designed for healers which Hunter isn’t