How tough is raiding LM?

So... you solo in blue line or redline, and you group in yellow line...

Fair enough. The problem is that yellow line is a whole different skill set and they skills and responsibilities of the LM in the raid are many. As a tank or healer, you often get a kind of tunnel vision... you have a job. You do the job.

I am returning to my LOTRO after a several year hiatus. My other classes look easy enough, but I look at my LMs yellow line toolbar and despair. He's only level fifty, but three bars are filled with skills, most of which I will never use outside of a group. Any suggestions for skill priority, learning to group effectively at "mid-levels"?

No player in serious raiding can have tunnel vision or it makes runs way worse. Everyone must be aware of everything what is happening. Who are dead, whats dps like, how tanking goes, who needs healing, positioning etc. No matter of role or class you playing situational awareness is extremely important for raiding and having tunnel vision simply do not exist on good groups.

You get only better by grouping. Not overly important at mid levels though. You cant practice group role solo so must group for that.

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Originally Posted by seyahat

So... you solo in blue line or redline, and you group in yellow line...

Fair enough. The problem is that yellow line is a whole different skill set and they skills and responsibilities of the LM in the raid are many. As a tank or healer, you often get a kind of tunnel vision... you have a job. You do the job.

I am returning to my LOTRO after a several year hiatus. My other classes look easy enough, but I look at my LMs yellow line toolbar and despair. He's only level fifty, but three bars are filled with skills, most of which I will never use outside of a group. Any suggestions for skill priority, learning to group effectively at "mid-levels"?

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After you reach mordor trait yellow red and you'll get to train in some of your group skills.
Basically you'll stun 1 mob and then use burning embers while its stunned , POOF .

Lm is mostly about the debuffs , firelore/frostlore/windlore are all important.
Then ancient craft , benediction of the raven ( raven skill ) , warding lore , sticky tar.
You'll spend most of your time buffing your groups fire damage and debuffing enemy outgoing damage.
Loremaster debuffs are arguably the most powerful in the game.
Every now and then , you have to daze with blinding flash.

Those are the basics , advanced loremasters propably spam more buttons and macros than wardens : D

Basically , once you get in a group , you only use the skills that you don't use in solo ^^

I believe the best training would be doing instances on your level solo. E.g. Fornost*. This way you will learn the importance of debuffs and cc.


Nevertheless, you are also responsible for power distribution for the raid and you can help with off-healing.



*the idea isn´t to finish the whole instance but to keep the battlefield in check and to minimize the incoming damage.

The most important things to keep up on a boss are Fire Lore (maybe Frost Lore depending who it is) and Ancient Craft. That helps your group take a lot less damage and deal a lot more. If there's a lot of adds around, use Ancient Master before Fire/Frost Lore so you can debuff everything.

After that, Sticky Tar and the warding circle are nice to keep up, though trickier since the boss can move out of them. In fights where the tank has to drag the boss all over the place, you may not want to worry about them.

After that, Water Lore the tank to help with healing. Glance at everyone's power bar and boost anyone below 50%, unless the fight's almost over.

Sometimes it's helpful to cure disease/etc on fights where a lot of debuffs get thrown around. If there's a lot of stuns, put immunity on the tank or healer as required.

For pets, usually you'll want the raven for fire mit debuffs. Sometimes I prefer the ghost pet to put a healing mark on the boss. The bear's incoming damage debuff can be handy too.

Thanks all for the very helpful responses!

Familiriazing yourself with the rest of the classes,their gameplay and learning the mechanics, the flow of the fights.
As it was already mentioned, you need to try and be aware of several things and have a good picture (a quick mental "screenshot" could I say?) of the fight. Then it all comes down to decision making based on your priorities. That is why you need to know both the fight but also how the other classes and mostly your group plays, in order to set the right priorities. I dont want to make it sound perplex or confusing, it just takes some time because the more you play a specific fight the easier to break it down becomes. In my opinion you dont have to play the class for long to manage but it all comes down to knowing specific parts of the game, fight mechanics and class gameplay. This is the step to take for raiding.
If you are still inexperienced with the class or rather want to start contributing more, developing your gameplay soloing instances - like it was suggested - I believe it to be the best call, before moving on to raiding.

Provided you are trully interested, ask other LMs who raid. Often new things to learn or old to question and revise out of such convos.

A lot of the rather important things have been mentioned already (did we talk about stun immunity? not sure right now...if not: that's your job, too, if applicable to the specific fight). Think of waterlore not only in terms of your direct heals, but also as bursting main healers' effectiveness via the incoming healing buff on your target. This is the real reason why throwing in some waterlore if you can spare the time will generally not go unappreciated.

About the pets:

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Originally Posted by Vilan

For pets, usually you'll want the raven for fire mit debuffs. Sometimes I prefer the ghost pet to put a healing mark on the boss. The bear's incoming damage debuff can be handy too.

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While this is true, many groups will expect you to rotate pets to keep the fire mit debuff of the raven, the armour debuff of the bear and the ranged crit buff of the bog up at all times as the bare minimum (sometimes miss chances, bear taunts for initial tank support or dead tank substitute, but that's another thing entirely). This obviously only applies to targets with enough hp to be worth the effort, so mainly bosses and side bosses.