LOTRO Tanking Guide

Here is a Lotro Tanking Guide for Lotro players ,hope this guide can give you some help!

Concept 1) Hate/Threat/Arggo

The three terms are all interchangable. Each time you fight a monster (mob) he generates a hate list per combat. Whoever has the most hate the mob attacks.

Hate is quite complex because of how the game works. The best way of understanding it is by thinking as if you were the monster (mob) you are attacking.

If a hunter “pulls” (the act of initiating the combat) the mob will attack whoever is closest first. And by the time other people run in to attack, the mob will be focused on the first person and positioned to attack the person who “pulled” him. So whoever starts the combat start at the top of the mobs hate list. You should wait till at least the healer has full power before pulling (unless the healer asks you to go.)
For this reason you should alway ask to pull, and always do the pulling. If someone else pulls its makes it harder for you to be top of the hate list.

A simple test will show you that if a guardian and hunter auto attack 1 mob, the hunters DPS will be higher than the guardians. A High DPS class will create a high amount of hate. If you think like the mob this is quite simple why he would attack the hunter. The logic is that if someone is hitting you very hard, you try to kill them first

Guardians lack high DPS of say hunters, however we do have hate increasing moves. Such as shield swipe, Challenge and vexing blow are just a few to name. Hate increasing moves can be best thought as annoying moves on the mob. For example challenge makes your guardian laugh at the mob. If i was fighting a thingyy dwarf who started laughing at me, i would be very tempted to give him a slap! Same with Shield swipe. Someone smacking you with a shield is not exactly pleasant.
For these reasons you should focus on doing your best increased hate moves. This will in essence **** the mob off so he attacks you.

Other than your fellowship members gaining hate via DPS, Minstrels generate hate via healing. Again using the idea of thinking as if you were the mob. If you nearly kill someone, and then someone restores them to full health that would make you want to attack the healer.
Because of this you need to constantly keep an eye on your healer. If a mob isnt hitting you, then he is probally going to hit the minstrel.

So when tanking, you need to be aware of:
The pull
aka who starts the combat off
your own hate levels
aka how much you are ****ing off the mob.
your fellowships hate levels
aka how much DPS they are doing.
your healers hate levels
aka how much healing they are doing.

Concept 2) KEEP THE HEALER ALIVE

As far as I am concerned the number 1 priority for a tank is to keep the healer alive. Without healing your fellowship will die very quickly. It is my opinion that if a DPS class pulls hate onto themselves its basically there own fault - for over DPSing. However when a healer pulls hate onto him its probally because you have not tanked well or the healer needed to heal alot (aka doing his/her job).

For this reason you should try to save your taunt moves for the occasion IF your healer gets hate. If a DPS class gains hate by all means get the hate back but use normal + hate moves rather than taunts. Always priorise saving the healers before anyone else.

Concept 3) Group organization

It is usually the case that Guardians have to organize the group.
This is because you are at the front and it is much harder to lead from the back - say if a minstrel lead. With a Guardian at the front leading if you accidentally pull the mobs will start hitting you.

Also as a Guardian you need to organize Off tanks (OT) and Crowd Control (CC). OT is a player who takes a mob away to one side. This can be done for various reasons, such as the mob has a cleave attack and making him fight away from the main group means less damage done by the cleave. Or to share damage done by mobs over a few tanks.

For CC you need to organize as being the tank you need to know which mobs you can safely hit. You can set up targets to CC via the assist function. Select a target you want to be CC ( eg a Undead mob) then ask whoever u want to do the CC (a minstrel) to click the assist button next to your name in the fellowship bar.

Concept 4) Main Assist/Focus Fire

It is almost always the case that you want to Focus fire (all damage directed at one mob.) For this reason it is wise to assign a Main Assist (MA). The MA job is to decide what mob to kill and in what order. The reason why this is important for a tank is that you must know who the DPS is going to be on, so you can get lots of hate on this mob. Always know what mob is being targeted so you can focus most of your attacks/hate moves on this mob too.

Concept 5) Multiple Tanking

There will usually be alot of mobs to fight, and you are expected to tank them all. This is where AoE moves are useful. You should pull as normal, and then let loose your AoE moves asap. This AoE attack will give you some hate on all the mobs you hit. Then go on to gaining high hate with the MA target. You should continuously AoE the other mobs (not the one being focus fired on.)

The reason you need to tank all the mobs is that if you do not, the healer will develop hate from the other mobs ( not the one being focus fire on.) Naturally if the minstrel gets more hate than the tank from healing, the mobs will attack the minstrel. This can lead to the healer dying, and then the fellowship dying too. If the healer gets more hate, use your taunts/AoE Taunts (shield taunt/challenge.)

Other than AoE moves you can use what i call Tab+Swipe! Select 1 mob, and give him a +hate move (eg. shield swipe), then press tab and give another +hate move (eg.Vexing blow). Tabbing between mobs and hitting them all will help u keep hate on mobs well.

Concept 6) Pulling

It is not uncommon for the tank to need to time his/her pulls. Perhaps a mob patrols a area. For these occasions you will need to time your pull. Take your time and pull the mobs in as smaller groups possible

Concept 7) Positioning

As the tank you decide where the fight happens as the mobs should be hitting you. Remember that some mobs can run away when nearly dead. This can lead to a fleeing mob pulling more groups and they will be too many to handle. This is why you should pull a mob to a place to fight that is safe. A Safe place is somewhere where you are out of the way of any patrols, and far enough away so u can kill a mob before it flees to a ally.

Some mobs use ranged weapons, which can cause a problem when positioning. However we can manipulate these mobs in a number of ways. By using Line of Sight (LoS). Arrows cannot fly around corners, the attacker must be able to see you. So you can easily hide around a corner, wait for a mob to run up to the corner and then this will force the ranged mob to engage in melee with you.

If the ranged mob can fire around corners, you can move them by using range. If you run far enough away they will need to move towards you so they can get in range of attacking you. When they are in the right place, run at them and they will be positioned where u want them.

Finally you can try to move them via melee. Most ranged mobs will change to melee attacks if u get really close. You can slowly walk backwards whilst in melee and the mob will follow you. However this needs to be done slowly.

With all the methods above in this section it is best to make sure your group know your method of moving the mob. If you use LoS and the fellowship run in they will get top of the hate list and the mob will not run to you.

Hope this can help you get more Lotro gold !

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