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Dstini
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re: Comprehensive Lore-master Guide

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THIS IS DRAFT 3, guide is not nearly complete but the information should still be useful.  I'll update as sections become complete or when there are major updates.  Any feedback, suggestions, critiques, requests, corrections, complements, angry trolling, funny trolling etc are appreciated.

 

Part I: Skills (first draft complete)
Part II: Pets (first draft complete)
Part III: Traits and Virtues (first draft complete)
Part IV: Legendary Items
Part V: Rotations
Part VI: How To Be Awesome

Hey all.  This is Dstini/Mapalmia/etc of the Rare Breed kin in Arkenstone.  I'm writing this Loremaster guide because up-to-date conclusive information on this fantastic class is lacking.  In my view, Loremasters are the most useful overall class in Lotro, and hopefully this guide will help people use them more effectively and get more out of their Loremastering experience.

Part I: Know Your Skills
=========================
Like most classes, Loremasters have a mix of extremely useful and barely useful abilities.  In this section, I'll be running over each ability, giving a brief description and an account of its usefulness and best use.


DAMAGE SKILLS

Burning Embers: Burning Embers is the Loremaster's bread and butter ability.  BE followed by Sign of Battle: Wizard's Fire (WF) creates a potent combination of strong initial damage + strong damage over time (DoT).  Many legacies and traits increase the effectiveness of the skill, to the point where you'll want to use all of those, since BE is such an important part of a Loremaster's rotation.  Fully maxed, Burning Embers will be an ability with a high crit rate (25+19=44%), high crit damage (20+48=+68%), and a very strong fully stacking DoT component.  BE has a short 3 second cooldown with a 1s cast, so at end game, your rotation will be BE + WF with other abilities mixed inbetween that combo.

All hits of the DoT crit at the LM's critical chance.  At level 100, BE will hit for 3k, crit for 9k 44% of the time, devastate for 10k 10% of the time, add an additional 500-1000 initial, and apply a DoT that ticks 8 times for 900 damage each non-crit.  Stirred up with Wizard's Fire, the dot ticks 8 times for 2000 each non-crit.


(Improved) Sign of Battle Wizard's Fire: WF is, on its own, a very weak DoT.  But it has a very important ability in tiering up Burning Embers into Searing Embers, which deals significantly more damage.  Fully traited up, WF can affect 3 targets and has a chance to upgrade multiple DoTs, making it even more useful with Sticky Gourd or to play catch-up after missing casts earlier.  It's also useful to aggro enemies or farm for low-level deeds, since it's our only instant-cast damaging attack we can cast on the move.  Wizard's Fire also consumes a pet flank effect to heal the LM for ~500 morale.

Burning Embers is your bread, Wizard's Fire is your butter.


(Improved) Sticky Gourd: Sticky Gourd is a staple Loremaster ability that's really the only rival to BE in terms of usefulness.  It deals a large amount of damage to up to 5 enemies initially, then deals a bit more initial damage, a decent DoT at the spot of the fire for 26 seconds, and applies a stack of BE each 4 seconds to enemies within the fire.  The damage aspects are great, but its ability to apply stacks to BE (traited in red line) is really what makes it shine.  These will stack on the enemy along with your Searing Embers, and allow you much more flexibility to use other abilities while keeping your most important DoTs on the enemy.  Since the ability is active for 26 seconds out of 30, it should be one of your first casts and refreshed whenever possible.


Ring of Fire: This new ability is an AoE ability that's capable of dealing a large amount of damage to a group of enemies.  It doesn't deal damage over time, but deals a large amount of damage to all enemies within 5 yards of the target, in addition to spawning a ring for each enemy hit.  Each ring instantly hits all enemies within its large radius for a smaller but still significant amount.  For example, at current level 100 and five grouped enemies, the initial hit is ~6k noncrit for the five enemies, and another 1000 for up to five rings, dealing 11k to each five enemies, or 55k total for a one-second cast, without any crits.  Clearly a very strong ability.  Ring of Fire also has a sub-component that reduces enemy block/parry/evade by a good amount, making it even more useful in groups and raids.

Traiting it up increases the avoidance debuffs and doubles the radius.  Doubling the radius is great for damage, but you'll also accidentally pull enemies at times if you aren't careful.  You could theoretically take advantage of the rings by running enemies into and out of them for a little extra damage, but I have yet to find a relevant way to take advantage of that.

Unfortunately, lots of people also have lag problems with the multiple rings spawned, making it likely the most hated ability in the game.


Ancient Craft: Ancient Craft is both a debuff and adds an additional damage component to Lightning Storm and Lightning Strike.  As a debuff, it reduces armor by a significant amount, which reduces both common/physical mitigation and tactical mitigations by a lesser amount.  It's very important in groups to improve physical damage, very important for the LM to increase Lightning Storm damage, and helpful for other casters to reduce tactical mitigations.  Right now the legacy is adding a very large amount to the debuff in addition to the stated effect, unsure if that's intended or a bug.  The main downside about AC is a short 10 meter range, meaning that in designated long-range fights, it may not be a viable option or take too long to run back and forth within range.


Lightning Storm: Lightning Storm is one of the best known Loremaster attacks because it deals a massive amount of AoE burst damage.  It no longer requires Ancient Craft as a prerequisite, but using Ancient Craft before LS adds a very large cashout.  As an attack, it has three base components and an additional cashout.  At the end of the day, AC + LS deals four strikes, three hits averaging 8k+ each noncrit, and the cashout hitting for over 13k noncrit.  So this attack deals 37k damage minimum, for each of up to seven targets, for a three-second combo that also increases the rest of your damage and everyone else's in the group.  So it's clearly a great combo that should be prioritized in both single target and AoE situations.  Lightning Storm also cashes out burning embers for a very small amount of extra damage.  This is generally a bad thing, so you should mainly use the combo early in a fight, to end a fight, or when Sticky Gourd is on the ground, so you can at least have more BE stacks up sooner.


Lightning Strike: Lightning Strike is a new Loremaster single target ability.  It has a direct damage lightning strike and a 20% chance to deal a second heavy strike as an "improbable lightning strike."  The ability cashes out less Ancient Craft bonus damage than Lightning Storm, so you should always use the single cashout for LS instead.  Additionally, at ~1.8 seconds, the cast is fairly slow for a single target DPS ability.  It will make its way into your single target rotation and is capable of good burst when the improbable lightning hits, but it's far down on the priority list.  Additionally, Lightning Stike consumes a stack of Burning Embers like LS, making it even more unlikely that you'll be wanting to use over other abilities.


Nature's Fury: Nature's Fury is a new unique AoE attack that has quite a few components.  The first component is a ~5k damage noncrit single target attack.  Then, for five seconds, Nature's Fury deals ~900 damage to the target and everyone else around as frost damage, and has a 50% chance each second to deal an extra ~2000 in lightning damage.  This ends up being an excellent amount of AoE damage, and even great single target damage.  One caveat to the ability is that the ability goes away if your target dies, so it's important to cast it on an enemy that will be alive for the five seconds to get the full effect.  But as an example of its damage output, you will deal 5k on the inital hit, 900 x 5 seconds for the frost damage, and 2.5 x 2000 for lightning damage, adding up to 15k for a 1.8 second cast.  This is very good damage by itself, and if any other enemies are around, you'll add another 10k per enemy, with no limit to the number of targets.  Nature's Fury is likely underappreciated due to its complexity, but it's a great ability to use in either single-target or AoE situations, as long as your enemies will still be alive for a few seconds.


Ents go to War: Ents is an AoE ability that deals good damage with an exceptional stun, but the cast and animation is far too long to be useful in most situations.  It has the highest burst number of any ability outside of Lightning Storm, but the full cast seems to take around 4 seconds.  Ents should only be used as a low priority AoE (buffed by staff-swipe) or as a stun ability.  Fully buffed from yellow line, Ents does stun up to 5 enemies for 8.5 seconds, which will severely ruin their day and helps groups plow through a tough instance pull a little easier.


Staff-strike: Staff-strike is a single-target one-handed melee ability that has fallen to the wayside as the game has progressed.  Right now, the main purpose of the ability is for the 10s buff you get from it in red line, and that can only activate once a minute, so it generally should be out of your rotation otherwise.  The buff increases your parry and evade chances by 6%, as well as increasing fire damage by 12% for those ten seconds and applying a stun to your target.  But most of the time, you'll lose more damage adding it to your rotation than you'll gain from the buff.  Staff-strike can also consume a pet flank effect for an additional ~800 damage, not terribly useful.


Staff-swipe: Staff-swipe is a melee AoE dual-wield ability that deals instant melee damage to up to three targets and adds a critical percentage buff to your next fire attack, making it relatively useful to your overall damage if you're in a fight that affords you to melee.  Each enemy hit adds 15% to the critical chance of your next fire skill, and they're consumed upon crit.  The fact that they're consumed upon crit means you'll want to use it on an attack less likely to crit, such as Sticky Gourd or Ring of Fire.  Burning Embers has a legacy that adds 18% critical chance, so you should avoid using it there if possible in your rotation.  The attack itself will deal ~2.5k damage to each of up to three targets, making it fairly useful in an AoE situation, and lower on single-target priority.  But if you have time inbetween BE+WF casts, it's a good option. Staff-swipe can also consume a pet flank effect to restore ~750 power to the LM.  This is actually somewhat useful in long fights, as water-lore burns through power very quickly, and you want to avoid the Power of Knowledge channel if you can avoid it.


Light of the Rising Dawn: Light is a single target ability that deals good damage and applies a stun, with a fast cast.  This should be one of your higher priorities to weave inbetween BE+WF combos in single-target situations.  Unfortunately, it has a fairly long 45 second cooldown, meaning you won't be using it very many times on each fight.


Gust of Wind: Like Cracked Earth, this has gone from priority ability to basically useless.  Originally a fast AoE attack, we now have a slow single target ability that deals very low damage.  The only purpose is the added ability that gives it a chance to spread Burning Embers to other enemies.  That could be useful in some situations, but Improved Sticky Gourd has replaced its entire purpose for living.  Honestly this could probably be taken off your bar, especially in red line.



CROWD CONTROL
-------------
Blinding Flash: This is your primary lockdown ability.  It's a single target, 40-yard-range, omni-directional, 30 second daze with a 15 second cooldown.  That affords you a resist or the ability to keep two enemies locked down if need be.

Bane Flare: This is an emergency or secondary lockdown ability.  Bane Flare dazes up to five nearby enemies within a 10 meter radius.  If a mob is running by or something broke loose, you can use this to daze them for 15 seconds (on a one minute cooldown) while Blinding Flash refreshes.

Test of Will: Test of Will is a yellow line exclusive ability that used to be standard on all LMs.  It deals low single target damage, but has a long stun and good bonuses to its critical chance and critical magnitude.  The damage component is still not very relevant, so, along with its 1 minute cooldown, this should generally only be used as an extra crowd control ability.

Cracked Earth: Cracked Earth has gone to one of the best Loremaster abilities to purely a situational gimmick, otherwise replaced by newer, more powerful AoE abilities.  Cracked Earth deals low AoE fire damage to up to five targets, and applies a root after three seconds.  The root is the only interesting part of the ability and is useful at times while leveling or soloing, but doesn't have huge utility in most situations.  Not really a damage ability, but go ahead and use the root if you can.  The root has a 25% chance to break on any damage, so be sure to leave them alone.

Storm Lore: Storm Lore stuns up to three nearby enemies, along with dealing a small amount of lightning damage.  This is also more of an emergency/temporary crowd control ability.  It has a long two minute cooldown.

Herb-lore: Herb-lore is a yellow line exclusive ability ranged ability that roots up to three enemies in place for up to 30 seconds.  It's basically an instant, more useful version of Cracked Earth.  However, it does have a long two minute cooldown and is very situational in the first place.  You're not going to be in yellow line while soloing, and most of the time while grouped you won't need to keep physical enemies away from the rest of the party.


BUFFS/DEBUFFS
--------
Fire-lore: Fire-lore is a fantastic debuff that reduces enemy physical damage by 35%.  This comes in handy during a huge amount of situations, from soloing to raids.  Fire-lore is now a single target ability, but it can be spread to nearby enemies by using Wind-lore.  Fire-lore lasts 30 seconds, or 45 seconds in yellow line.

Frost-lore: Frost-lore is like Fire-lore for tactical damage, reducing enemy tactical damage by 30%.  Again, very useful in a variety of situations.

The Ancient Master: This yellow line ability allows Fire-Lore and Frost-Lore to affect up to six enemies without needing to spread them with Wind-Lore.  Additionally, it releases some power back to the group after the 25 second duration has ended.  If you're going to be in yellow line, you may as well use this and take advantage of the easier AoE.

Wind-lore: Wind-lore used to have a separate useful effect, but now its only real purpose is to spread Fire-lore and Frost-lore to multiple enemies.

Sign of Power - Command: Sign of Power - Command reduces the attack speed of up to five enemies by 15%.  Along with Fire-lore, this is very useful to reducing physical damage output of all kinds of enemies.  It casts quickly and lasts a full minute with no real cooldown.

Ancient Craft: See above description in Damage skills section.

Dispel Corruption: Dispel Corruption is the Loremaster's only tool to remove corruptions.  It removes one tier of up to three different corruptions from the enemy.  Unfortunately, the cooldown is thirty seconds, so you can't use it often like many other classes.

Sticky Tar: Sticky Tar creates a large pool of tar on the ground, which decreases enemy movement speed by half and also decreases enemy fire mitigation by 10%.  This is extremely useful in groups for the extra damage and to kite enemies.  You won't use it incredibly often as it's a bit slow to use, but you should definitely keep it in the back of your mind.

Sign of Power - See All Ends: Sign of Power See All Ends reduces enemy critical rating.  Generally it's not very useful since tanks should have a large amount of critical defense already, although it can be boosted to 100% uptime with the Sign of Power duration legacy and the yellow exclusive capstone.

Air-lore: Air-lore is a yellow line exclusive ability that puts a reflect shield on the grouped ally of your choosing, generally the tank.  It reflects 15% of damage and has a 5% chance to negate 15% of damage.  Although running main yellow is rare these days, if you do, this ability should definitely be on the tank, and it would be at least somewhat useful.  There is also a legacy that increases the reflect damage by a good amount, I've been wondering if there's any good use for that.

Warding-lore: A yellow line exclusive ability, this places a ward on the ground that increases incoming tactical damage by 10% and increases enemy miss chance by 2%.  If you are running yellow, this is a huge damage boost to fellowships and especially raids.

Sign of Power - Vigilance: Increases stealth detection.  Not much of a use of this outside PvMP or questing to find stealthed enemies.



HEALS AND OTHER
---------------
Beacon of Hope: This is a fairly fast single-target heal that restores a moderate amount of morale.  The main downfall is a long 30 second cooldown.  With yellow line, this ability also offers a small heal over time component to allies within four yards of the target.  Not a huge addition.

Water-lore: This is a fantastic newer ability that applies a stackable heal over time on your target, along with an incoming healing buff.  This is a great ability to use on a tank, to use on yourself, or to use on NPCs.  It's extremely versatile and the incoming healing component can be buffed all the way up to 13%, allowing you to stack three times up to 39% on an ally or tank.  This ability really adds to the all-around versatility of the class.
 
Share the Power: Gives an ally some power.  Not as useful anymore, but some classes can run low at times, especially during chain-pulls, long fights, or periods of being otherwise stuck in combat.

Share the Power - Fellowship: This yellow line exclusive ability gives power to all members of your fellowship within range.

Pleasant Breeze: A yellow line ability that allows you to send power to allies within 7 meters after critting with Gust of Wind.  You won't be using Gust of Wind often, much less crit with it, and most allies won't need power at any given time anyway.  Not generally useful.

Knowledge of Cures: A standard dispel effect ability.  Can target allies and is generally useful.  15 second cooldown.

Wisdom of the Council: Your personal emergency heal.  This ability is Immediate (cancelling other abilities) and gives a large heal to the Loremaster along with a buff that gives a 25% chance to reflect a stun, a 5% chance to negate 100% of damage, and reflects 35 damage on most damage types taken.  This is a very useful emergency heal that you'll probably be using on a fairly regular basis.  It has a five minute cooldown.

Hasten Sticky Gourd/Ents go to War: This is a red line exclusive ability that allows you to reduce the active cooldown of Sticky Gourd or Ents go to War whenever your pet flanks the enemy.  This is a very useful side effect buff, and you'll want to hit one of them whenever it pops.

Call to the Valar: An ability that causes you to be immune to induction setback for 10 seconds, on a 1 minute cooldown.  Generally, most Loremaster abilities are fairly fast with no real chance of interruption anyway, so this is definitely one of the least useful spells in our repertoire.



PART II: Love Your Pets
========================
Loremaster pets are commonly thought of as a tank while leveling or perhaps, a distraction at best.  But even at end-game, they have significant abilities to help both the Loremaster and the entire group.  In blue line, they become boosted substantially and become very competent buffers in addition to a moderate damage gain.  But no matter what you do, pets will never reach endgame-significant level damage outputs, so their damage alone should never be prioritized ahead of LM damage.  Pets are also a large liability, as a (generally) melee assistant that's difficult to control, maneuver, and keep alive.

Flank rates were determined by number of "flanking manoeuver" attacks on a target dummy for a continous five minutes.  They are approximate with a small sample size, and I hope to find a better repeatable way to get these rates.  Flanks offer a consumable buff to Hasten (red line exclusive), Staff-Strike, Staff-Swipe, and Wizard's Fire.
Pet Food are pet consumables created by Cooks that increase your pets abilities and stats for 10 minutes, on a 30 second cooldown.

Catmint is an blue line ability that boosts your pet's abilities for 12 seconds with a 45s cooldown, giving it a 27% overall uptime.
Feral is a blue line capstone that is a permanent LM buff while the pet is alive.
Fellowship Friend is a blue line exclusive ability that buffs the fellowship for 12 seconds after your pet crits.  As long as your pet can stay on the target, it should be near-100% uptime.

Bear
----
The Bear has some of the slowest and worst attacks for damage of any pet, but it had many useful abilities for a group or solo play, and could even substitute for a tank in a desperate situation.

Auto-attacks: Weak swipe, swipe, strong swipe.  These deal ~85%, 100%, and 115% damage of each other.
Abilities: Bear Hug - Stuns the enemy for 3 seconds and deals light damage, 1 minute cooldown.
    Roaring Challenge - This is a theat copy & leap plus force taunt for five seconds.  Very useful if you need to get an enemy off a healer or yourself.
    Shatter Arms - Deals light damage and applies a debuff that increases melee and range incoming damage by 10%.  30 second duration with 1 minute cooldown, 50% uptime.

Tested flank rate: ~2 per minute. (Exact test: 8 over 5 minutes).
Pet Food: +2300 fire mitigation, +750 shadow mitigation, +2700 armor, +15% threat.

Catmint buff: Increases armor and damage.  You generally won't have the bear tanking, so it's not terribly useful.
Feral buff: +5% morale, +5% mitigations.
Fellowship Friend: -5% incoming damage to the group.


Raven
-----
The Raven has quick, medium damage attacks, with a variety of buffs and debuffs at your disposal, making it one of the most useful overall pets.

Auto-attacks: Quick strike, strike.  ~66, 33% chance of happening.  Strike deals ~25% more damage.
Abilities: Benediction of the Raven: Decreases enemy fire mitigation by 10%.  On crit, 50% chance to increases enemy miss chance by 15% for 15 seconds.  Extremely nice for Loremasters and Runekeepers in the group.
    Distraction: Channelled attack that decreases an enemy's ranged attack damage by 50%, increases their miss by 10%, and causes very light damage.  Very nice potential for hard-hitting enemies, especially archer-type.  Distraction also stops the enemy's ability to use ranged attacks whatsoever, allowing you to pull them into melee range of the highest threat target.
    Evasion: A non-toggleable ability that raises the Raven's evade chance by 50%, armor by 300, and shadow mitigation by 30% for 15 seconds.  1 minute cooldown.  Very good if your Raven will be getting hit, or if you need to use it to safely pull a group momentarily.
Extra abilities: Raises fellowship tactical mitigation rating by ~1850, blue line exclusive.  Also causes a 15 second 15% miss chance debuff on the enemy upon critical hit, which is absolutely amazing.  This can fairly easily have near 100% uptime, especially in blue line.

Tested flank rate: ~2 per minute. (Exact test: 11 over 5 minutes).
Pet Food: +2300 fire mitigation, +750 shadow mitigation, +808 melee offence rating, +1212 evade rating.

Catmint buff: Increases Benediction of the Raven enemy fire mitigation reduction from 10% to 20%.  This increased buff can have 100% uptime.  Also increases damage.
Feral buff: +50% Gust of Wind damage, +5% critical chance.  Gust of Wind is generally not very useful anymore, but may very well have a rotation spot with faster casts, instant casts, and significantly improved damage.
Fellowship Friend: -7.5% incoming tactical damage to the group.

Eagle (Blue Line ability)
-----
My long-time favorite pet that I wish wasn't trapped in Blue line, the Eagle deals moderate damage and has great support characteristics, most notably an interrupt and LM resurrect.

Auto-attacks: Quick strike (45%), strike (35%), powerful strike (20%). 85%, 100%, 115% damage each.
Abilities: Fan the Flames - Deals heavy damage to enemies debuffed with Burning Embers.  Also causes the enemy to run in fear and disallows skill use for 15 seconds, broken by damage after the fear begins. 1 minute cooldown.
    Beak Rend - Drains damage to up to three enemies in melee range.  Helpful little heal.  90 second cooldown.
    Sacrifice - When the Loremaster dies, the Eagle sacrifices itself to auto-resurrect its owner.  10 minute recently revived debuff effective cooldown.
"Hidden" Abilities: It interrupts enemies with its autoattacks.  Very useful.  Also increases fellowship in-combat power regen by 611.

Tested flank rate: ~3 per minute (Exact test: 15 over 5 minutes)
Pet Food: +2300 fire mitigation, +750 shadow mitigation, +808 melee offence rating, +1212 evade rating.

Catmint buff: Increases Beak Rend morale tap slightly.  Also increases damage by 5%.
Feral buff: +50% Gust of Wind damage, +5% critical chance.  Gust of Wind is generally not very useful anymore, but may very well have a rotation spot with faster casts, instant casts, and significantly improved damage.
Fellowship Friend: NOTHING (I sent a bug report...)

Lynx
----
The Lynx's benefits is that it's permanently stealthed outside of combat (significantly reducing accidental enemy aggro), its strong burst damage, and the highest autoattack damage along with one of the better overall Fellowship Friend buffs.  The downside is that its hard-hitting abilities are on long cooldowns, and it doesn't offer the same kind of unique group buffs as the other pets.

Auto-attacks: Quick claw slash, claw slash.  Claw slash deals ~25% more damage than quick claw slash but only happens 1/2 as often.
Abilities: Surprise Attack - Large hit coming out of stealth, deals more damage from behind.  Only works once a fight due to stealth requirement.
    Feral Strike - 90 degree frontal arc attack large attack, to up to three enemies.  2 minute cooldown.
    Slashing Claws - 180 degree frontal arc attack for good damage, to up to five targets.  1 minute cooldown.

Tested flank rate: 1 or less per minute (Exact test: 3 over 5 minutes).
Pet Food: +2300 fire mitigation, +750 shadow mitigation, +808 melee critical rating, +808 melee defence rating.

Catmint buff: -20% attack duration, +5% outgoing damage.
Feral buff: -10% skill inductions, +15% fire damage over time.
Fellowship Friend: +5% outgoing damage

Sabre-tooth
-----------
The Sabre-tooth is a pet that deals AoE frost damage with each autoattack, and has abilities that deal AoE frost damage.  Generally speaking, frost damage has very little use or synergy in this game, but the Sabre-tooth likely has highest damage of any pet in extended AoE situations.

Auto-attacks: Minor strike 66% of the time, strike 33% of the time, strong strike very rarely.  Strike deals ~25% more damage.
Abilities: Frostbite - Deals moderate frost damage to up to three targets in a forward arc along with reducing frost mitigation by 10%.
    Fury of Winter - Moderate frost damage to up to three targets in a forward arc.  Also has a heightened critical magnitude and creates a flank upon crit.
    Throat Slash - Moderate frost damage to up to three targets in a frontal arc.  If an enemy is flanked, this ability has a chance to stun and create a fellowship maneuver.

Tested flank rate: 1 or less per minute (Exact test: 3 over 5 minutes).
Pet Food: +2300 fire mitigation, +750 shadow mitigation, +808 melee critical rating, +808 melee defence rating.

Catmint buff:-20% attack duration, +5% outgoing damage.
Feral buff: -10% skill inductions, +15% fire damage over time.
Fellowship Friend: +5% outgoing damage (tooltip actually called Fellowship Friend: Lynx, they obviously copy>pasted this).


Bog-guardian
------------
The Bog-guardian is a pet with a very high flank rate, some unique abilities, a few interesting buffs, and definitely has use as a situational or even full-time group pet.  Hunters are especially buffed by the Bog-guardian.  The Bog-guardian is the only pet who can attack at range, significantly reducing the chance to be damaged, but also decides to run into melee range at inopportune times.

Auto-attacks: Weak melee attack 75%, strong melee attack 25%.  Strong deals ~30% more damage.
Abilities: Angry Bees - Deals good damage and a light damage over time.  30 second cooldown.
    Root Strike - Deals moderate damage and applies a 5% increased ranged critical chance debuff. With a 30 second debuff on a 30 second cooldown, the uptime is 100%.
    Bursting Root - Deals strong damage and has a 20% chance to apply a 6 second stun and starts a fellowship maneuver.  1 minute cooldown.

Tested flank rate: ~3 per minute (Exact test: 14 over 5 minutes).
Pet Food: +2300 fire mitigation, +750 shadow mitigation, +808 ranged offence rating, +823 maximum power.

Catmint buff: Bursting Root stun chance increased to 40%.  Also increases damage by 55.
Feral buff: +10% tactical damage, +2 second stun duration.
Fellowship Friend: +5% ranged damage, +5% ranged critical chance

Spirit of Nature
----------------
The Spirit of Nature is a healing/support pet incapable of attacking.  It's most useful during raids and where attacking pets would die from AoE damage.

Abilities: Flashing Flank - Ranged ability that causes a flank on the target.  45 second cooldown.
    Nature's Light - Places a debuff on the enemy that heals attackers for 5% of the damage they deal.  Extremely nice in group fights, especially where group take a lot of damage.  30 second duration vs 1 minute cooldown, 50% uptime.
    Nature's Gift - Restores 10% of morale to all friendly character nearby.  This heals all nearby players and NPCs within a 20 meter range.  Extremely nice for big battles.  1 minute cooldown.

Effective flank rate: 1.33 per minute with Flashing Flank.

Catmint buff: Nature's Gift restores 15% of morale, up from 10%.  Nature's Light reflects 10% of damage as morale, up from 5%.  Nature's Light heal is especially useful to buff if you're playing a blue support role.
Feral buff: +15% incoming healing, +15% outgoing healing.
Fellowship Friend: None (cannot attack)



So.... WHICH PET SHOULD I USE?

Generally, unless you're in a very gimmicky situation, Raven, Lynx, Eagle, or Bog-guardian are your best options.  Personally, I would say Raven for most situations.



Part III: Traits and Virtues
===================================
Lore-masters are a very versatile class and have several viable trait tree setups to use.  At the current cap of 79 points, you have several options.

Red/yellow for good single target damage/great aoe/good support.
Yellow/blue for top-tier support.
Blue/red for great single target damage/good support.
Blue/yellow for good single target damage/great support.
Red/blue for great personal damage.

I tend to run red/yellow for its great damage and versatility, but other builds are entirely viable based on the situation.  Generally speaking, Yellow as pure support isn't as useful as it used to be, but if you're in a large raid where damage mitigation would be a great help or if the situation calls for it, go ahead.

Here are examples of the builds I would choose, and important characteristics of each:


Red/yellow: Fantastic all-around

http://www.lotrottp.lotrostatus.com/l.php?c=4kn

This is certainly the best all-around build for the vast majority of situations, as it combines strong single-target damage with top-tier aoe and solid support and debuff characteristics.

How the build looks: In this build, we take all the important damage traits from the red tree and then head over to yellow for some great debuffs, additional damage, and utility.  In yellow, we're taking Fire-lore for the great melee damage debuff, and all of its trait dependents, which basically restores the rest of old Fire-lore and Wind-lore debuffs and allow you to further damage an enemy's ability to deal physical damage as you attack it.  We also take Storm-lore for a useful aoe stun and more lightning damage (comes in more useful than you think when spawned enemies pile on your healer, or there's an aggro drop etc).  Improved Water-lore helps that ability greatly, increasing the amount healed and the important incoming healing buff.  Ancient Craft adds a significant amount to your armor debuff from that skill, as well as adding a large additional burst component to your Lightning Storm.  And lastly, a large reason I like going down here is to pick up the extra 2.5 seconds of stun from Disable.  This allows you much more time of preventing yourself or your group from being hit by enemies that you don't want to be hit by?  Particularly nasty pull?  Use Ents for a 8.5 second stun on all of them, and most will be dead by the time they're back.  An enemy with a dot on your healer?  Shoot a quick Light of the Rising Dawn at them, then start nuking to take back aggro yourself.  I find it very useful and a great part of this build, at least.  One could argue to go down to Eagle on blue line, but that drops far too much utility via Ancient Craft and stuns for my taste.  Some may want to use more points in red, but those seem useless to me, considering other abilities.


Yellow/blue: Top-tier support

http://www.lotrottp.lotrostatus.com/l.php?c=4wm

This full support tier may be considered a relic of an older age where anti-stun and debuffs were mandatory, but it still could have its use for 12 or 24-man raids on very difficult content.  Flight to the Lonely Mountain is probably the best current instance to showcase this build, and really the last time Loremasters were considered necessary.  

How the build looks: The build grabs every useful ability in yellow, then hops to red for -induction and spends the rest in blue for increased survivability and catmint.  Catmint is mainly used here for the raven or spirit animal situational boosts.  Some of the points in blue could be moved around without a huge impact, although this specific build is technically best.  In yellow, we fully max out the major debuffs, which severely damage the enemy's ability to deal damage.  The new Fire and Frost-lore abilities require the Loremaster to be aware of and use other elemental abilities to maximize uptime of all the powerful effects.  One capstone, The Ancient Master, is most useful to make Fire and Frost-lore AoE again, most beneficial to pop at the beginning of fights.  The other capstone, Enfeeble, has been constantly bugged with negative interactions, but intends to double the strength of Ancient Craft, Sign of Power: See all ends (enemy crit rating), and Sign of Power: Command for the first 10 seconds.  The Ancient Craft bonus is very nice although limited, and seems to actually work correctly.  But both See all ends and Command ignore their increased Legacy duration while using Enfeeble, although the effect doubling does actually work.  Hopefully this gets fixed soon.

Some of the yellow locked exclusive abilities are extremely cool as well.  The first tier gives you Warding Lore, which increases enemy miss by 2% and all incoming tactical damage by 10%.  Tier 2 adds an interesting but fairly useless 4-meter range aoe heal over time component to Beacon of Hope.  The heal lasts 28 seconds, essentially the entire duration of the cooldown, but the tiny range and fairly low heal makes it barely useful outside of maybe 3-man purposes.  Tier 3 grants you a fellowship version of Share the Power, which can be useful in longer fights.  Tier 4 gives Herb-Lore, rooting multiple enemies in place for a long duration.  Tier 5 gives Air-Lore, which is marginally useful, but interesting if you decide to go full yellow and add the legacy to tier it up.  Tier 6 gives an instant-cast Knowledge of Cures, meh.  Tier 7 increases your major debuffs by 15 seconds each and buffs Ancient Master to give its useful aoe nature.

While in yellow, you'll be generally spending most of your time focusing on applying debuffs, tiering up Fire and Frost-lore skills, and keeping Water-lore on the tank while throwing out other heals/power restores.  It's definitely one of the more interesting and unique and useful builds in the game, but has unfortunately went a bit by the wayside as things have gotten a bit more zergy.


Blue/red: Single-target/Support

http://www.lotrottp.lotrostatus.com/l.php?c=4x5

This offense-oriented blue-line build offers valuable group buffs along with surprisingly high single-target damage that even beats out red line.  Its weaknesses are that it sacrifices utility and the ability to sustain any kind of aoe, and it similarly relies on your pets to be able to survive well.  The main single-target damage buffs come from instant-casts and guaranteed crits granted by your pet criticals, along with general faster casting.  You should use Raven for large group or difficult content, Eagle to interrupt inductions or if you're worried about personal deaths, Lynx for all-out personal and group damage, or Bog-guardian if your pet can only survive at range.  Spirit of Nature could be used if you need to take on a healing role, although you should probably go blue/yellow in that case.  Pet damage is now a significant factor in your overall damage, but not major, and it's important that they stay alive and keep attacking for personal and group buffs.

How the build looks: You first head down blue, grabbing the abilities that increase pet attack speed, critical rate, survivability, Loremaster damage, and utility.  Once finished in blue, we head down red, focusing on maximizing LM personal damage.  Lightning Storm is a must as it works beautifully with Coordination/Critical Coordination.  Any long-cast, high damage abilities should be used with that combo if possible, but Lightning Storm is clearly the top of the heap.  Unfortunately, Catmint does not work on your Sic Em pets, so there's no reason to be saving it for that cast.


Blue/yellow: Single-target/Support

http://www.lotrottp.lotrostatus.com/l.php?c=4yL

This single-target damage/support pet build focuses on single-target damage along with grabbing the strong debuffing abilities in yellow.  I've already explained the abilities and mechanics in the earlier build descriptions, but this build more or less copies the previous blue build while completely foregoing red in favor of fully maxed Fire-Lore, Frost-Lore, Water-lore and Ancient Craft traits.  While blue/red can be a fantastic dps line on its own, this sacrifices a bit of its damage for fully upgraded debuffs, more or less assuming you'll be the only Loremaster in the raid, yet don't need to completely sacrifice your damage for a primary yellow build.

How the build looks: Copy the standard blue build from the previous guide, then max out Fire-Lore, Frost-Lore (and their advanced traits), Water-lore and Ancient Craft.


Red/blue: Max damage

http://www.lotrottp.lotrostatus.com/l.php?c=4yM

This max damage build basically ignores supporting skills in lieu of pure damage additions from blue line.  In all, the damage additions from blue may only add up to an extra ~1000 total, while making yourself much less useful to groups and raids, but for certain situations or those who don't want to do anything else, this is the best you can do.

How the build looks: Head down red, grabbing the primary damage skills, then two ranks in yellow's storm-lore.  In blue, take all the damage skills down to Catmint, including Eagle pet.


Virtues: Mathematically, primary stats and resistance by far have the highest value as virtue stats, so those need to be prioritized.  Of the primary stats, Will is disproportionately most useful, so the main virtues you'll want have Will and/or Resistance.  You have some options here, but technically some are better than others.  Thus...

Wisdom - Primary Will, secondary in-combat power regen, tertiary Resistance
Confidence - Primary Resistance, secondary Will, tertiary in-combat power regen
Idealism - Primary Fate, secondary Resistance, tertiary Will
Charity - Primary Resistance, secondary Physical Mitigation, tertiary non-combat power regen
Honour - Primary Resistance, secondary Tactical Mitigation, tertiary Vitality



Last edited by Dstini on Tue Mar 22, 2016 8:30 pm; edited 5 times in total


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*claps* Great thing! Looking forward to read about animals :-) Dont forget to write about Spirit of Nature's usefullnes on the walls in BBs!! (group heals)



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This is really great! Thanks for putting it together for us.



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Yeah, pet section is definitely coming next.  Shouldn't take too long, but I need to do a few tests of everything first.



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Initial draft of pet section is now up.



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Initial draft of Trait/Virtue section is now up.



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I haven't seen Dstiny in a while...



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There is also a pre imbue legacy for LM book which bumps fire lore to -40% instead of -35%.

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I am most likely finished with this game, very sorry that I haven't said anything. But you really never know. The worst part is that they implemented a level cap after I wrote all that stuff, but seems like most of the game and class is identical, so most of it should still be helpful at least.


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I know a few really keen loremasters if you would like to grab someone in game. Look for Hay, Kobi or Hnoss. There are others but those are the three I know play theirs regularly and take the time to set them up properly.



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Sereda is also very knowledgeable.

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