Having trouble off-tanking elites at lev 47

[redwoodtreesprite]

I was helping a friend and his fellowship in Dol Dinen recently. The evil place I swore I would never return to after bad pug experiences there on my champ.

I can create threat pretty fast, but can't take the poundings from more than 2 mobs there. And if there is a bone speaker, ugh. I can't break more than half it's inductions.

Anything I can do to both break inductions and get enough healing as well? Or should I focus on getting up more levels before attempting being in fellowships in places like DD?

[head0nfire]

If you don't have a healer, then focus on keeping yourself alive (after holding aggro of course). If you die, everyone dies. For interupts, there should be a champ, burg, LM or somebody that can help with those. The only time you can really hope to get every induction while trying to keep yourself alive is if it's a mob that follows a pattern with its skills, so to say. Like the morroval boss in SH, which summons bats every 45 seconds or so and heals about 10 seconds after that. I don't think the Bone-speakers do this, so leave the majority of the interupts to the others. Hope this helped. Enjoy the class, and stick with it!

[Regero]

make sure you always have your way of the shield (or whatever that sh-sp-ft-sh gambit is called) buff on. i also suggest using wall of steel. this will max out your block, parry, and evade ratings. use your AoE leech skills whenever fighting multiple opponents, that will help you hold aggro and survive the beating. finally: make sure you always have a heal going on yourself. even if its just perservere, a heal makes a huge difference.

but if you cant even survive the attack of two mobs, ask yourself: "am i pulling more than i can handle?" (be honest!). and ask your healer: "are you incompetent, or do you just not like me and want me to die?" both are valid questions and should be kept in mind throughout a run.

[SashaPayneDiaz]

Dol Dinen is one of my favorite places in Lotro. But you really can't go in there intending to pull groups of Mobs without someone to heal. Do you have a healer? If you're good at keeping the aggro and there's a healer... your group should be in pretty good shape. If you don't have a traditional healer (an RK or a mini), a captain or a Loremaster *might* work if you're very careful about pulls and have a full group that's at least on-level (35 - 38).

It's hard to interrupt all Bonespeaker inductions, they tend to induct for a big heal and if you interrupt that they immediately pull a short induction for a smaller heal. You have to get right on it and start building The Boot after you interrupt their big heal and even then it's iffy to stop that second one. Still if you have a lot of Dps in your group you can kill him fairly quickly even if he gets a couple of heals in. It's a good idea to take the bonespeaker down first as he'll heal the other Mobs somewhat.

In regard to healing yourself vs interrupting. I usually try to solo the bonespeakers out on the ramp to the fort at DD, just to keep myself sharp. At lvl 38 I can usually beat them about 1/2 the time. Bonespeakers won't attempt to heal until you get their morale down a little bit, so set your heals up early, start off with stacking your best heals then switch over to building the interrupt skills: The Boot; Onslaught; Wall of Steel. If you get to WoS and no inductions yet, fire it and build them up again, that way you have an interrupt ready when you first see that green or red haze indicating an induction. It's not the most power-efficient way to do damage, but you can interrupt a lot of stuff.

Also bonespeakers will hit you with an attack slowdown disease/poison (can't remember which) that will make it harder to get your skills off to interrupt them. You should remove that when you see it (I think they go through a damage induction before they put that on you, so you can interrupt that too).

You'll have to heal yourself at some point later in the fight, so you'll probably miss an induction or two... you can't get em all. If you miss a big heal you might be out of luck...

[Telcharan]

One thing you should keep in mind is that at level 48 you get Exultation of Battle, which is an excellent source of healing in multi-mob situations, and helps with your aggro too. You'll find tanking to be rather easier after you get that.

[redwoodtreesprite]

One thing you should keep in mind is that at level 48 you get Exultation of Battle, which is an excellent source of healing in multi-mob situations, and helps with your aggro too. You'll find tanking to be rather easier after you get that.

Just hit lev 48 too.

[Lohi]

Hmm, the bone-speakers were easy for me to interrupt when they were still green to me. The trick is to never wait until they start an induction, but get an interrupt gambit building up constantly. Ie, Wall of Steel which is spear/shield/spear/shield/gambit, then repeat. If they start inducting then use whatever length 2, 3, or 4 gambit you've got so far since they all interrupt. Just keep spamming it and you can keep them locked down. Even if they start inducting again immediately you can usually get off the length 2 interrupt in time. If you miss just one, that's ok.

That makes you the best off-tank in the game for the bone-speakers and other types of defilers. Champions and rogues won't be able to keep up with your interrupt rate, even at high level with maxed out legendaries, you can interrupt more often (though not as quickly if the induction was a surprise). Also when off-tanking the defilers they're generally not damaging you since they're too busy trying to get off an induction. Off-tanking means you're only tanking the one enemy, not trying to handle 2 or 3.

At level 47 you shouldn't have problems even main tanking there, as the enemies are lower level than you. If you are taking a lot of damage, maybe you need newer armor closer to your level? At least the level 42 gear trio from Tal Bruinen should be enough. If you are main-tanking, then don't worry about trying to interrupt the defilers at the same time, let some other fellowship member do it. If the party all focuses on the same enemy, you don't need a lot of aoe threat gambits either. If you've got a healer, then you won't need that many self heal gambits either; if you don't have a healer, then the rest of the fellowship absolutely has to focus on the same enemy. (this is where Dol Dinen with a PUG is hard, as so many players have not done any grouping before this and don't know some simple basics of groups)