Advise on how to make playing Guardian easier please

[Rinwen]

Hail and well met, my fellow/fellow'ette Guardians.


I've been playing LOTRO on and off, (more off than on because I like to rotate between MMOs), since Beta.


I was even in the head start when you weren't allowed past level 15 until the official release date.


Having said that I'm back again after an 8 month hiatus, and I'm hoping to find some advice.


My Guardian - Lv 32 - Love/hate here. I love the animations, the visceral feel, the "not dying EVAH," the way gear looks, and I've always been a S&B kinda player... I really do enjoy him... but...


I hate, Hate, HAte, HATe, HATE, playing whack a mole with the reactions. I can't even watch the game play because I'm staring at the reaction bar, trying to figure out which one to use. He was actually more fun at lower levels when he didn't get reactions as often, and had fewer reaction attacks to click, and I could enjoy watching the gameplay/action, lol.


Basically, I look for the AOE parry reaction, (unless it's 1v1of course), otherwise, I just click on whichever reaction is furthest to the left side of the bar, (unless it's the heal and I don't need it). I admit that I really don't know what I'm doing, lol.


Honestly, he's become annoying to play, with too many buttons to click, and an inability on my part to focus on anything other than the reaction bar. I know, I know, I'm not a good player... big reason I don't "inflict" myself on groups/kins.


A big part of why I no longer play in groups with my healers in various MMOs... I tend to be fixated on HP bars... to the point that I often don't realize an encounter is even over... and my PUG has moved on without me... until the HP bars are stabilized.


I like to watch the action, not reaction buttons or HP bars.


Is there a better way? A less complicated way for this now older, (54), player? A UI overlay or something? One button macro, etc?


Or is it time to move on more exclusively to my far easier to play Champion? (Not to mention Brawler once he shows up tomorrow... not sure if he'll actually be easier to play, but he'll be new and shiny, lol).


I even find my Warden more fun, because despite the gambit complexity, the requisite buttons are really just 1, 2, 3, & 4... easy peasy.


Hopefully someone can offer advice on how to make the Guardian easier to play.


I could just not use the reactions, (I just do overland and quest stuff), but then again the reaction visuals are fun to see... out of the corner of my eye, lol.


Yours in brotherhood and honor,
Balthas, Guardian of Middle Earth & NoOb Extraordinaire
Proud member of... well... nothing

[Swanee]

I can’t check the game right now but I believe there is an additional graphic setting you can turn on that will display a flash of color when you parry or block an attack. I turned it on years ago for my guard because I too got tired of staring at my skill bars.

[Rinwen]

I can’t check the game right now but I believe there is an additional graphic setting you can turn on that will display a flash of color when you parry or block an attack. I turned it on years ago for my guard because I too got tired of staring at my skill bars.

Thank you very much. I'll look for that tonight when I login.

I'm also going to look into LOTRO interface site... found something called Kragen's bar.

I've lined up some info & YouTube videos to look into tonight as well.

[Tralfazz]

Rinwen, I love my Guardian, too! Very fun and at least up to his current level (57) I am very satisfied with the damage output and AoE as well as the durability of the character.

You have basically three groups of active attack skills:
1- Skills you can use anytime and which don't open up the opportunity to use additional skills.
2- Shield-blow (which enables the use of skills which otherwise require a block response) and the skills it (and a block response) enables.
3- Force Opening (which enables the use of skills which otherwise require a parry response) and the skills it (and a parry response) enables. Note that you don't get Force Opening if you are specced Blue/Defender of the Free but you still get the parry response skills.

Set up at least three rows of skill buttons, one on top of the other.

Go into OPTIONS->KEY MAPPING and set easy keybinds: 1, 2, 3, etc. for the bottom-most row; F1, F2, F3, etc. for the row above that; and so on.

In the lowest row, populate the most easily-reached/left-most buttons with skills from Group 1. Good choices include Guardian's Ward, Sting, Stagger, and Stamp.

In the next row up, populate the most easily-reached/left-most buttons with skills from Group 2. Button 1=Shield-blow, Button 2=Shield-swipe, Button 3=Bash.

In the next row up, populate the most easily-reached/left-most buttons with skills from Group 3. Button 1=Force Opening (leave it blank in you're currently in Blue spec), Button 2=Retaliation, Button 3=Whirling Retaliation, Button 4=Thrust, Button 5=Overwhelm, Button 6=To The King (If you don't currently have a named skill either because you're not in Red/The Keen Blade spec or haven't earned it yet, leave that button blank.)

Now you can ignore your parry/block response popups 95% of the time. Because you're going to create the block and parry responses yourself, with Shield-blow and Force Opening. And then all you have to do is push one button after another as each successive skill opens up the next one in the chain. Note that your parry response skills are slightly more complicated than that: After you use Force Opening to generate a parry response, you can use either Retaliation (single target) or Whirling Retaliation (AoE). After you use Retaliation or Whirling Retaliation you can use Thrust or Overwhelm – use Thrust first, Overwhelm the next time you can use one or the other on the same target because Overwhelm upgrades the bleed from a previous use of Thrust on the same target. Then after Thrust or Overwhelm, push the next button (6) for To The King. But it's still basically press 1, then press 2, then press 3, etc. I'll note that everything after Whirling Retaliation is for Red spec only.

You can ignore the popups because you should be able to go through an entire block response chain, followed by an entire parry response chain, and by the time you're done with the last skill in your parry response chain the Shield-blow skill should be off cooldown and you will be ready to start the block response chain again. If you need to use another skill, or you need to wait an extra second or three before Shield-blow comes off cooldown, use one of the skills on your lower-most bar – the ones that aren't part of either of your response chains.

Now, of course, you will be a more efficient fighter if you pay some attention to your block and parry responses which are generated by actual blocks and parries because that will allow you to use your response chain skills more often. But most of the time it won't matter, you'll be running through your response chain skills well enough by triggering the responses yourself and have plenty of other non-response skills to use if you need to wait for one of your response chain openers to come off cooldown. The openers do plenty of damage, too, so it's not as if you're wasting an attack by using one instead of waiting for a "natural" response to open the subsequent attacks for you.

[Bothketbog]

Hail and well met, my fellow/fellow'ette Guardians.


I've been playing LOTRO on and off, (more off than on because I like to rotate between MMOs), since Beta.


I was even in the head start when you weren't allowed past level 15 until the official release date.


Having said that I'm back again after an 8 month hiatus, and I'm hoping to find some advice.


My Guardian - Lv 32 - Love/hate here. I love the animations, the visceral feel, the "not dying EVAH," the way gear looks, and I've always been a S&B kinda player... I really do enjoy him... but...


I hate, Hate, HAte, HATe, HATE, playing whack a mole with the reactions. I can't even watch the game play because I'm staring at the reaction bar, trying to figure out which one to use. He was actually more fun at lower levels when he didn't get reactions as often, and had fewer reaction attacks to click, and I could enjoy watching the gameplay/action, lol.

I will assume you are running blue line; I had a fairly easy time leveling in red. Just a thought and if you're already using it, my apologies.

[Rinwen]

Thank you all so far.

To clarify, I'm running Red line.

It's not that I'm having a difficult time with content at all, it's that I'm finding the whack mole playstyle of staring at my reaction bar annoying, and not enjoyable.

I want to watch the action so to speak, I want to watch my Guardian fight, and see the very cool animations.

[StinkyGreene]

I love playing Guardian, well at least I’ve enjoyed the first 9 years and 60 levels I’ve played a Guardian. Wish I could help you enjoy it, but I generally only play NOT solo and have zero clue what a reaction bar is, never heard of that.

[Murf_NZ]

Thank you very much. I'll look for that tonight when I login.

I'm also going to look into LOTRO interface site... found something called Kragen's bar.

I've lined up some info & YouTube videos to look into tonight as well.

If you click more than using shortcut keys, plugins can be great.

Sequence Bars is another plugin that you might like, with features such as:
- allowing clicking on just one slot, with the skills appearing underneath the cursor according to what you have preset
- the skills only appearing when usable (parry/block reactives)
- easily swapping between sword+board and 2H (my pref on my guard)


I'm a very similar age, with similar playing history, and one of the ways I like to make life "easier" is to spend far too much time customizing the UI to do what I like.

I mostly play on a large screen, which helps provide the real estate to see the UI and action pretty clearly, but I've found that a good quickslot layout can also help declutter and simplify. I'll redo mine now that there is no in-combat weapon swapping. I also bring the self and target vital bars down to just above the quickslots and have the target's target in between the two. Helpful when tanking and looking to round up stray mobs.

Quickslot and Hotkey setups are very personalized things, but here's some things that work for me:
I group my AOE and single target skills separately, so I generally don't have to move much (fingers or mouse). Now that power is not an issue I maybe overuse AOE.
I have emergency skills on the easier to reach keys (middle mouse button, LCtrl, Alt, Space [yes - jump is remapped to RCtrl]).
I have /follow and move backwards on extra mouse buttons, as I find those very useful on all characters.

Good luck.