Lore-master

Overview

This guide is a basic description of the lore-master class in Lord of the Rings Online for those who want to get a better look at this amazing class.

This guide is obsolete as of Update 12 – Helm’s Deep

This guide was written in reference to the Lore-master before Update 12 – Helm’s Deep on November 20th, 2013. Due to the skill and trait changes (the switch to trait trees) with Update 12, this guide is now obsolete.

What’s the lore-master and what does she do?

*Due to unavailability of time I have not yet been able to fully update this guide to the changes of Update 13. I have however been able to write a summary of the changes on the Lore-master and have posted this in the Lore-master-specific forum on lotro.com. It is stickied and the top thread of the forum. Alterations to this guide will come at an unspecified time in the future.*

The lore-master is LotRO’s main debuffer and crowd-controller. Though she has many offensive skills that – when traited – can deal high dps, her many many stuns, dazes, roots and debuffs are usually the most wanted skills in group play. In addition to that, her great AoE can also be of great value when large groups of mobs have to be attacked. Also, her many pets can be of great value, when soloing as an additional tank/debuffer/dps-er, and in groups as debuffers/buffer/off-healers.

The class’ difficulty is advanced, which means that with this class there has been taken greater care of the nature of the skills and that one must know what each skill does in order to play it correctly. Many people cease to play the LM simply because they don’t know how the class’ combat mechanics work.

This class may seem difficult at first, especially under level 30. If you really want the Undying title (getting to level 20 without being defeated) then I greatly discourage the lore-master, because you will certainly be defeated multiple times until you get less squishy. However, if the mere inability of achieving this title does not put you off, then please read on and try this class out!

Lore-master combat mechanics 101

Lore-masters are probably best-known for their pets, of which they have many different species, most of them again with many different appearances. As of Update 2 part 2, LMs have seven different combat-pets (the raven you get at level 2, the bear at level 14, the lynx at level 30, the eagle – a legendary trait – at level 45, the sabercat at level 56, the bog-guardian – another legendary trait – at level 58, and the spirit of nature at level 70) and nine cosmetic pets (bird, cat, dog, fox, frog, rabbit, snake, squirrel and turtle) which are all usable after 29, though you must get them either from tomes that are a rare world drop, or from certain reputation factions.

• Raven – the raven is a (de)buffer and the first pet the lore-master gets. Its three pet-skills are for a fire incoming damage debuff, a DoT + ranged damage debuff and a self-defence buff. The raven causes Shield of the Raven’s Wing to occur on all fellowship members within range, which is a tactical mitigation buff
• Bear – the bear is a tank and the second pet the lore-master gets. Its three skills are a stun + damage, a forced attack on the bear (useful if you want to get an unintentionally aggroed mob to move its attention off you) and an incoming melee/incoming ranged damage debuff + damage.
• Lynx – the lynx is a burglar (assassin in normal mmo terms) and the third pet. Its three skills are a stealth attack that, when carried out mistakelessly, does an automatic, amazingly high critical damage, usually bringing the foe’s morale down by at least a half to two-thirds. The other two are pretty good AoE attacks, but don’t nearly come close to the utility of the first skill.
• Eagle – the eagle is an optional pet that you can get from a class quest at level 45, and needs to be traited as a legendary trait. The pet is known for having the only auto-interrupt in the game. Its three skills consist of a fire damage + fear, an AoE + self-heal and a rez. The last skill will only commence when this skill is auto-cast and will rez the lore-master if she has been defeated. The eagle causes the Nobility buff to occur on all fellowship members within range, which is a small power regen.
• Friend of Feline Hunters – the sabertooth cat is an AoE dealer and debuffer and has a small chance of initiating a fellowship manoeuvre (a.k.a. conjunction). Its three skills are a frost-damage AoE + frost defence debuff, a frost-damage AoE with an improved critical magnitude, causing Flanked! to appear on a crit, and a frost-damage AoE that initiates a FM when the target has been Flanked!
• Friend of Nature – the bog-guardian is the second optional pet which you can get from successfully reading a book purchased from the Iron Garrison Guards and must be equipped as a legendary trait. Its three skills are a powerful DoT, a damage + ranged crit debuff, and a damage + FM chance.
• Commune with Nature – the spirit of nature is, as of now, the last pet the LM can get in the game. It does no damage whatsoever, but can be used as an off-healer. Its three skills are a guaranteed Flanked! event, a debuff that reflects part of your dealt damage as morale, and an AoE heal.

Flanked! is a very confusing part of LM combat, but most necessary for your survival, especially when soloing.

Every pet has a certain chance to cause Flanked! to occur on a target. Some pets have a higher chance than others. You can notice when Flanked! has occured on a target by a “ding”-sound, two purple arrows that briefly appear on the target’s flanks (hence the name Flanked!) and by a debuff icon that shows bared teeth.

When Flanked! has occured, you have seven seconds to do either of the following:

• you can attack your foe with (Improved) Staff-strike, which will increase said skill’s damage output
• attack it with Sign of Battle: (Improved) Wizard’s Fire, which will give you back a portion of your morale
• or attack it with (Improved) Staff-sweep, which will give you back a portion of your power.

It is virtually impossible for a lore-master not to debuff or cc when in combat, since every (yes, literally) every skill has a debuff or cc-element, whether it be a daze, stun, AoE, DoT, run speed debuff or another debuff of some kind. Even the LMs biggest dps attack, Lightning-storm, kind of has a debuff effect as it can only be used if Ancient Craft – an armour value debuff – is applied.

Many young lore-masters believe that these elements are enough to guarantee your survival and fully ignore skills that are debuff-only, therefore not dps.

DO NOT IGNORE THOSE SKILLS, EVEN WHEN SOLOING!!!
Especially Fire-lore and Wind-lore are useful, as they place, respectively, a melee damage debuff and ranged damage debuff on multiple targets simultaneously. A 30% melee debuff may not seem impressive at first, but when you’re fighting five mobs at the same time and each deals 100 damage – placing the total damage on 500 – this debuff will reduce this to 350 damage. That is nearly two mobs’ worth of damage taken away! So use this skill as much as you can, because it greatly enhances your survivability, especially when combined with morale regen by Flanked! usage!

Skills

In this part I will be focussing on the most important skills other than the pets.

A lore-master has couple of healing skills, and those can be greatly improved by traiting in the blue trait-line to decrease cooldowns, increase healing magnitudes, make fellowship-wide heals and reduce threat. However, under no circumstances is a lore-master a main-healer! Even the blue (healing) trait-line is meant only to trait the lore-master as an off-healer, and the spirit of nature as the off-healer’s pet off-healer.

An important trait, especially in groups, is Cure against All Ills, which makes the lore-master’s wound-removal skill fellowship-wide and is a must-have in any big group projects.

The Fury of Nature skills are a lore-master’s main dps source. Of these skills, Burning Embers (BE) is the most important skill (a fire initial damage + DoT + slow), followed closely by Light of the Rising Dawn (LoRD). The biggest dps-bomb from these skills though is Lightning-storm, but this one doesn’t add up to sustained dps due to its 5 minutes long cooldown.

Nevertheless, every lore-master who has reached level 50 (when you get this skill) will say that it’s the best and most epic skill the lore-master has. It has a very high damage rating with a heightened crit chance, and because it consists of three separate attacks – each with very good damage – it is that threefold. At level 60, a devastating attack of Lightning-storm can easily count up to nearly 2,000 damage without traits!

Appreciation of LS’s animation varies from adoration by lore-masters to annoyance and complaints from other players, who mainly complain that it blinds them and makes their computer lag.

The skills in the Lore of the Second Age skill cluster are mainly debuffs and cc, with but one buff of which the usefulness is negligible.

• Fire-lore is a melee damage debuff that decreases a foe’s melee damage by 30% and increases its miss chance by 2%.
• Wind-lore is a ranged damage debuff that decreases a foe’s ranged damage by 50% and increases its attack duration by 10%.
• Knowledge of the Lore-master is a skill that lore-masters can use to inspect a mob to analyze its combat effectiveness, its resistances and its mitigations. When cast out of combat it also puts a debuff on the mob that decreases its resistances.
• Herb-lore is a strong AoE root.
• Frost-lore is a tactical damage debuff that decreases a foe’s tactical damage by 20%.
• (Continual Air-lore is a buff that negates and reflects some damage from whom it is cast on.
• Storm-lore is an AoE stun that does some damage. This one is very useful when surrounded by mobs and you need to run, effectively putting several mobs out of combat, giving you time to run.

Stuns
The lore-master skills that do damage and have an additional stun are Test of Will (ToW) and Ents Go to War (EGW). ToW is single-target based and EGW has a maximum of six targets for the stun and damage to take effect on. Both have a high crit rating.

Dazes
The lore-master skills that daze are Blinding Flash and Bane Flare (the two BFs). Blinding Flash is single-target based and dazes an enemy for 30 seconds, although the length of this time is decreased when traited deeper into the Master of Nature’s Fury trait line. Bane Flare has a 15 seconds daze but can be applied to multiple targets (three). This number can be increased with legendary legacies and by traiting into the The Ancient Master trait line.

Power
The lore-master has the biggest power-stealing skill of all classes and is the only class who can share her power with other players. With Power of Knowledge (PoK) she can steal power from any mob and transfer it to her own power pool, effectively regenerating a large amount of power and at the same time preventing her foe of having enough power to cast certain skills or abilities that would otherwise greatly enhance the fight’s difficulty.
With Share the Power she can give away some of her own power to other players, increasing their power pool whilst at the same time decreasing her own.

Sticky Gourd
Sticky Gourd is pretty useless when untraited for it. If traited, Sticky Gourd becomes Improved Sticky Gourd, which is a very powerful fire damage AoE DoT with a high-damage initial damage impact and a factual cooldown of only four seconds.
In order to get the improved version you have to have traited deeply into the Master of Nature’s Fury trait line and you must have finished the first six books of Volume II of the Epic Quests.

Many players initially hesitate to trait deep into the MoNF trait line because they don’t want to lose the length of time the two BFs are applied. However, the two BFs are hardly useful when your damage has been so increased and when you have this massive fire AoE burst + AoE DoT. It is definitely worth the red traits.

Other skills
The lore-master’s other Lost Knowledge skills are a rez, an AoE debuff, a fire resistance debuff + slow, a corruption removal and an armour value debuff which is also the prerequisite of Lightning-storm.

The Signs of Ancient Magics are a lore-master’s most important skills in group play and also have the only buffs she can apply to her pets.

• (Improved) Sign of Power: Command is a debuff that decreases your enemy’s parry rating and increases attack duration by 20%. The improved version makes this an AoE debuff, which can be very useful to cc multiple targets in groups.
• (Improved) Sign of Battle: Wizard’s Fire is a skill that does a small amount of fire DoT and gives you back a tiny bit of morale when your enemy has been Flanked! The improved version completely diminishes this skill’s cooldown.
• (Improved) Sign of the Wild: Rage* is a buff that can be put on your pet which increases your pet’s threat generation by 10% and decreases its attack duration by 5%. The improved version also increases its damage output by 10%.
• Sign of the Wild: Protection* is a buff that can be put on your pet which increases your pet’s parry rating and decreases its incoming damage with 5%.
• Sign of Power: Righteousness can be put on one of your allies to cure him or her from stuns, dazes, knock-backs and knock-outs – or, of course, you can apply it to yourself. It also grants immunity to all those for 30 seconds, which can be increased to 60 seconds with a fully levelled up legendary legacy. Very useful to keep the tank, healer and yourself (who else will cast Righteousness, eh?) uninterrupted during group play.
• Sign of Power: Vigiliance is a fellowship-wide buff that increases stealth detection by 3.
• Sign of Power: See All Ends significantly decreases an enemy’s critical rating, which means that the chance to give a critical hit is much smaller and that the damage dealt were a critical hit still cast would be much lower.

The lore-master has only two melee skills: (Improved) Staff-strike and (Improved) Staff-sweep. The first one is a single-target attack. The improved version can only be obtained by equipping a trait and does +25% damage and has a chance to apply a stun. The second one is a multiple-target attack. The improved version is obtained at a higher level and gives +15% fire skills crit chance.

The lore-master has a separate set of war-steed skills.

• Bond of the Rider is a skill that increases your own morale and your mount’s endurance. When in the Rohirrim discipline it applies to your fellowship within forty metres. In the Riddermark discipline it increases your power instead. It also does mediocre till good light damage.
• Enduring Embers is your Burning Embers, but from horseback!
• Mereas-lore decreases your enemy’s tactical and physical mitigations by 10%. When in the Rohirrim discipline it increases your enemy’s attack duration by 10% whilst decreasing its damage output by the same percentage – but into the negative of course. In the Riddermark discipline it decreases your enemy’s armour and movement speed by 10%.
• Metal and Mettle does an acceptable amount of common melee damage.
• Radiant Burst is a skill that causes your enemy to be unable to move for 6 seconds, during which he also has a +50% miss chance. After expiration a murder of crows will focus around your enemy, reducing mounted movement speed by 10% and applying a +10% miss chance. It also has a 5% chance to dismount an enemy.
• Sign of Power: Inspiration gives you a 20% chance to give a very damaging light damage effect. In the Rohirrim discipline it gives you back morale and mount endurance. In the Riddermark discipline it does exactly that, but then with power. This skill applies to anyone within 40 metres from you.

Traits

The Keeper of Animals (KoA) trait line is the one that makes the lore-master an off-healer and increases its buffs’ usability. Its cap trait is the legendary trait Nature-friend, which gives you access to your bog-guardian pet.

• Dúnadan-learning – very useful during (sk)raids and bigger instances. Lengthens your Signs of Power: Righteousness and Vigilance by a significant amount of time, so useful if you want to be able to have your focus on something else for a longer stretch of time.
• Master of Beasts – not very useful. Makes your Signs of the Wild a bit better, but generally not really necessary for about anything.
• Improved Flanking – can be useful, but should only be equipped when there’s a trait slot left after all necessary traits have been slotted.
• Hardy Companion – especially useful at lower levels as it greatly improves your pet’s survivability, which is important in your survival in combat. Its usefulness deteriorates as you level.
• Beacon of Hope – a must-equip when you have been assigned the role of an off-healer. It greatly decreases Beacon of Hope’s morale cost, cooldown and induction time.
• Healer – useful if you have been assigned the role of an off-healer, as it greatly decreases your healing skills’ power cost and cooldown and nicely increases the outgoing healing. Also useful if you’re not the healer but you’re still expected to give away power.
• Proof Against All Ills – an all-time must-equip, as it is an easy way of unwounding your entire fellowship when necessary.
• Improved Inner Flame – pretty useful if you’re assigned the role of an off-healer and you need to top off your entire fellowship’s morale.

Traiting into this line will increase your outgoing healing and reduce your cooldowns.

The Master of Nature’s Fury (MoNF or Nature’s Fury) trait line is the one that gives the lore-master considerable and respectable dps. Very useful when soloing or when it is requested that you do great AoE damage. Traiting the deepest into this trait-line will get you Improved Sticky Gourd, one of the best AoE DoTs of the game, if not the very best.

• Flame of Anor – increases your fire damage by +10%. Very useful for soloing and general dps.
• Tactically Adept – not very necessary, because your Sticky Gourd induction already is quite short. Should only be traited if requested by the group leader.
• Master of the Staff – a great trait. It increases your morale by +5%, increases Staff-strike’s damage by +25%, increases the crit chance by +20% and increases crit damage by +50%, and will put a stun on your enemy when it crits. Very useful when soloing, especially in earlier levels.
• Harmony with Nature – always useful because it decreases your power cost by 40% for quite a lot of your damage skills.
• Knowledge of the Past – not quite useful in my opinion. The +20% chance it gives you to restore power is far too low, and the amount of power restored is so small that it is not worth the trait slot – Staff-sweep restores your power far better.
• Improved Sign of Battle – increases your Sign of Battle: Wizard’s Fire damage by +25%, which can be very useful, especially when you start to use it more often.
• Knowledge of Storms – my personal favourite because it increases your lightning skills’ damage by +25%, making Lightning-storm even more powerful.

Traiting into this line will increase your fire and tactical damage but decreases your Blinding Flash duration. At the end your fire damage will have increased by +35% and your tactical damage by +15%. Your EGW will have its cooldown decreased by 180 seconds, and LoRD by 15 seconds, whilst Blinding Flash duration is decreased by 25 seconds.

The Ancient Master (AM) trait line makes your lore-master a true mistress of crowd control as only the lore-master can be. Traiting deepest into this line will get you Force of Will, which greatly improves your Sign of Power: See All Ends.

• Deep Lore – increases the number of targets affected by your lore-skills by 5. Thus, when normally only three are affected, with this trait that number is increased to eight. Very useful when cc’ing in a group.
• Power and Wisdom – makes you drain more power when using Power of Knowledge, as well as increasing its channelling duration. A personal favourite, as it can always be used against a boss fight or rare elite when necessary, as to take away your enemy’s power so that it can’t execute its special skills. Also very useful in the Ettenmoors against the elite masters.
• Fast Loader – decreases your target’s resistance and takes away Blinding Flash’s induction, making it useful for interrupting your enemy’s inductions. Very useful in groups.
• The Secret of Tar – the induction time reduction is not really very useful, but the cooldown reduction comes in very handy when you need Sticky Tar up all the time.
• The Study of Wind-lore – increases Wind-lore’s ranged damage debuff with an additional +10% to cause ranged attackers to do -60% less damage. Also Gust of Wind’s miss chance debuff increases from +7% to +10%. A must-equip when you are going to face many ranged adds.
• Improved Sign of Power: Command – adds an evade and block rating debuff to your Sign of Power: Command.
• The Study of Frost-lore – adds an extra -5% tactical damage and a +50% attack duration to the debuff.

Traiting deep into this trait-line does not really have very useful extra skill buffs, but the cap trait is definitely worth it.

March of the Ents
This legendary trait gives you the Ents Go to War skill. A very good dps skill, but its usefulness is subjective and fully depends on your gameplay preferences.

Noble Savage
Increases your pet’s survivability. Generally not very useful because your pet often has a better chance to survive than you do yourself.

Sword and Staff – Legendary
This trait greatly increases your morale and your parry rating, as well as letting you deal +15% melee damage. Useful if you need higher morale, but not the most important one.

Back in ye olden days, that is before Update 10 part 1, you had to equip this trait in order to be able to dual-wield a sword as a lore-master. Nowadays you get the passive skill to dual-wield a sword at level 40, but back then, the extra benefits that a sword could give you were so important that – as an unwritten rule – you were practically not allowed to unslot this trait. A lore-master would rearrange her traits as many times as the group leader requested, but you would never have been able to find a lore-master willing to get rid of this trait.

Nowadays you won’t need this trait anymore, so it’s only useful if you want to have some extra morale at hand.

Eagle-friend
Gives you the Eagle pet. Would only be useful if you like using the eagle, otherwise just don’t bother with this one.

Nature-friend
Gives you the Bog-guardian pet. Would only be useful if you like using the bog-guardian as an off-healer. The pet is good, but not worth the deep traiting. This legendary trait is only usable when traiting deep into the KoA trait line.

Improved Sticky Gourd
Changes Sticky Gourd into Improved Sticky Gourd, a very powerful fire AoE DoT. The most useful trait to have equipped when soloing and having to attack multiple mobs. This legendary trait is only usable when traiting deep into the MoNF trait line.

Force of Will
This makes your lore- and Sign of Power skills last 30 seconds langer and increases Sign of Power: See All Ends’ magnitude.

Races

The lore-master can be played by two races: Men and Elves.

If you choose to play as a Man, you will start with -7 will to begin with, and will is the most important stat for a lore-master. However, this is compensated by the +15 fate, which gives you great power regeneration.

From level 13 on you can deed for your Man of the Fourth Age racial trait, which gives you +20 will.

If you want to be an Elf, you will have to accept that you will start of with -7 fate and -20 morale combined with a -60 non-combat morale regeneration. The pro though is the fact that you have better disease and poison resistance.

From level 13 on you can deed for your Friend of Man racial trait, which gives you +20 fate.

It must be said though that these passive skills and traits only affect you at lower levels. At the moment that you get above level 20 the differences start to fade and at higher levels they don’t even matter. Thus, in the end it does not matter greatly which race you choose.

Conclusion

So, in conclusion, the lore-master is a class that needs some time to be mastered. If you like doing dps or your preferences lie in melee combat, this class is definitely not meant for you. If you like playing mages, then this class is perfect. Traited accordingly, this class can be a good off-healer, a great dps dealer or an awesome crowd-controller. Its pets become endearing when you get to know them a little better, so even when you’re playing alone you will still have some sort of “friend” with you, whether it is a fearsome sabercat or a cute kitty. The skill animations often are cool, and the skills themselves are pretty awesome as well. Thus, when looking at it, even when you’re not a lore-master, you will have to have some respect for this class, as well as love their skills.

Namárië