LotRO - Isengard

It has been some time, over four months actually, since I last posted. Even thought I have been away from here, I haven’t been away from LotRO. I did spend some more time in World of Tanks, but haven't touched that game for some weeks.

There have been a lot of posts regarding Isengard, so much I will write here, you might have heard somewhere else.

What have I done in the expansion? First I have leveled my Hunter, Minstrel and Captain to level 75. Triple-boxing has been a less positive experience with Rise of Isengard, as the amount of client-crashes has exploded. These crashes mostly happen in high-traffic areas, say Galtrev, or when moving from one part of the world to an other (say, entering the vault in Galtrev or an instance on three characters at the same time.

Even thought I had taken some days off, I didn’t hit level-cap as fast as I had planned. I did like most regions of the expansion and the Epic Book, the parts I didn’t like were Dunbog and the Pit of Iron, the latter mostly because of the buggy tracks and the missing map.

My favorite parts were in the Epic Story as well as the Gap of Rohan quests.

After getting three characters to level-cap, I started gearing my Hunter and my Minstrel. I did some twelve-man skirmishes and some of the upgraded three- and six-mans. I really like them and they seem to be a bit easier than they have been before. I am looking forward to triple-boxing the school and library again.
I started leveling my next two characters, Burglar and Rune-Keeper. They are at level 69ish and Champion and Lore-Master will be next.

Hunter seems to play more or less the same as before the update. Minstrel and Captain have changed a lot. I didn’t spend a lot of time on my Captain but like the changes for my Minstrel a lot.
We also visited Draigoch, the big, bad (?) dragon. The raid well done. I sadly was always too late for the first few 'failed' attempts but was lucky enough to bring my Hunter to the first Tier 2 and Challenge run. I even won the coin for the head-piece.

Draigoch fights in his pit which has three levels. A small part of the raid does the tanking on the upper level, whilst the rest fights the paws on the lower and central levels. After ‚killing’ the paws, Draigoch falls to the ground whilst the raid hits his body. Fellowship movements are important, as a specific series of twelve FMs weakens the paws. After a bit, the dragon wakes up again and this repeats over and over again. Withe the FMs weakening the paws, less time is needed to ‚kill’ these and the phase to attack the body will start sooner.

There are three phases, as I have only been on the dps team, and the first and second phase seem to be different mainly for the tanking team. I also think that a Rune-Keeper is a better healer for the tanking team as a Minstrel should be in line-of-sight with the boss to play ballads, which is not recommended with Draigoch.

The third team is quite easy if you have lots of ranged dps. Even though melee dps get a better buff than the ranged dps, the Hunters and Lore-Masters don’t suffer from the distributed attacks of the paws.

After a long time, the fight takes about 90 minutes, he was finally dead. I was very happy to be on an other server-first. Four chests spawn. Most sought after were the scales, three of which are needed to craft an epic cloak. Three scales dropped on the first run, four on the second. Then we had two coins fort he set on the first run and three on the second run and on the first run, we got an Worn Symbol of Celebrimbor. Some teal items (jewelery and amour) and some runes and settings completed the loot.

With three accounts, I spent around US$ 150.00 for the Rise of Isengard expansion. Money well spent? Yes, I think so. Even with the buggy Pit of Iron and the failure to have enough quests to get to level-cap without having to do repeatables and tasks, I like the expansion.