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re: When a Hunter groups with a...

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Originally posted by Kalegar

Original content created by community member: SaintBass

First of all, with the way LOTRO is balanced, any class goes well with a Hunter, even another Hunter. Here is a basic rundown of simple tactics that will be useful for a duo with each class.

Hunter + Guardian: First of all, a Guardian is a Tank before anything else, can DPS respectably later on but is most proficient in taking hits. If you expect the Guardian to tank for you, pulling is not your job, let the tank be the first to engage before you rain down death from above.

Hunter + Champion: This is a very DPS heavy group, you are both pretty squishy until later levels but much like the Guardian, the Champ is better suited to tank for you than to tank on your own. This is also a very fast paced pair so expect things to die fast.

Hunter + Captain: The Captain can only reliably tank one mob but the buffs the Capt. brings to the table can more than make up for that. With this group, you must do your best to systematically kill things. This can either be done with Focus Firing so that the Captain is constantly tanking something, or by methodically killing what the captain is not tanking. Most importantly, stay close to The Captain. Hunters are good at killing things, Captains are good at keeping people alive. All Captain buffs, protections and heals have a relatively short usage distance. If things start getting ugly, DO NOT RUN AWAY. If you run, a Captain cannot heal/bubble you.

Lastly, there are two big weaknesses to this combo. 1. Healing. Yes, a Captain can heal you well, but they cannot heal themselves very well. Captain heals also drain lot of power AND morale, to make things more complicated. Eating food and placing campfires will help tremendously with the downtime in between fights to regen. 2. Lack of crowd control. Captains have one AOE stunning shout with a long cooldown and have basically no crowd control ability whatsoever. If you know you're gonna be facing lots of tricky mobs, consider slotting your trap traits.


Hunter + Lore Master: Lore Masters are arguably one of the most versatile and powerful classes in the game. A well play Lore Master can solo quite a bit of content because of the sheer amount of crowd control and debuffs they bring to the table... However, they lack DPS. Here your job is to kill anything that isn't rooted or mezed. A competent Lore Master can keep the battle field controlled almost indefinitely... in other words, the LM sets the table, you bring the meat and potatoes.

Hunter + Burglar: Burglars kill slow. Not because they lack DPS, but because to unleash their burst damage they have to stealth and line up their shots. They have several debuffs at the ready that can make your shots hit harder and the enemy hit less often or less hard. They can provide healing or extra damage as needed with Coordinated Attacks (AKA Conjunctions or Fellowship Maneuvers) and can mez from time to time.

Hunter + Minstrel: The Minstrel is another dynamic class that can heal A LOT, buff a bit and has reasonable DPS. You can generally be a bit less cautious with a Minstrel around since as long as the minstrel has power and not being attacked by too many mobs, both of you can be healed. In a lot of cases, you will be tanking for the Minstrel, but keep in mind that your squishy little healing friend isn't as squishy as he looks and has a few tricks up his sleeve.

Hunter + Hunter: The primary weakness of this group is that there is no healing outside of expendables and racial traits. The primary strengths are that massive damage can be dealt out at range, agro can be managed fairly easily and that you both have traps that you can use to control the field a little. If you focus fire on a mob, nothing less dangerous than a signature should be able to touch you... even then, a signature closing to melee range will be rare. Elites and Elite Masters can be managed by the Hunters spreading out and throwing out max damage and slowing the Mob with Quick Shot (in Strength Stance) or low cut. The Hunter with the agro can then run around for a little bit till the other hunter grabs agro. Rinse and repeat. It is important that you let the mob get a hit in from time to time, otherwise it will anti-exploit and reset.


Larger Groups: -Let the tank do his job. If you can't solo it, don't pull it or peel it. Some minstrels are lazy and won't heal you, they may be looking for an excuse to work on their rez trait or they very well may have better things to do... like heal the tank, where the agro should be in the first place.

-If you get agro, move over to the tank and let your group know, you will have to take a few hits, you may or may not get heals.

-Shoot from the pocket. The pocket is one of three places near the tank. Just behind and to the left or right or just behind the mob(s) being tanked. This way, if you pull agro, you don't have to run a mile to get the mob back to the tank and the tank simply has to turn around or move a step or two to hit the mob you peeled

-Don't break mez. Some Lore Masters and Burglars get a little mez happy at times and probably end up mezzing things more than they need to. Sometimes they will mez what you are shooting at, but if they mez an add or a ranged mob, that is not your que to dump all your DPS on them.

-Choose your targets wisely. Assist the Guardian, Champion or Captain, peel mobs from the Minstrel as needed, burn down mobs that are running around uncontrolled (as long as you can solo said mob).

-Cleanse Poison on your group. At higher levels, there are three kinds of poison that can cause big problems for your group. One looks like the eye of Sauron in the status section of your Fellowship window. This is only seen in Helegrod while fighting Zadru (big nasty spider). This poison will kill whoever it is on when it expires, in fact, when that person dies, they will explode and infect surrounding players with that poison. Another deadly poison looks like an eye that has been plucked out of somebodies skull, this will simply kill that one player when it expires. The last, and most common looks like a clock with a green background, this will stun the target when it expires... which can be bad if it lands on the minstrel but not always bad if it lands on a burglar or guardian as they have skills on a five minute cooldown which will counter the Stun in some way either opening a conjunction (Guardian) or resetting a number of their skills and providing a nice heal (Burglar).

-At later levels, the skill beneath notice can become one of the most powerful Hunter skills that is probably underused. If you ever pull aggro (in any sized group), you can simply pop Beneath Notice and switch to Stance:Endurance for the next 10 seconds. By that time you should be able to go back to Stance:Strength or Stance:Precision and resume unleashing your full dps. A group of three hunters can comically ping pong aggro by well timed use of Beneath Notice, but in general its main use is a temporary reduction in your threat level.


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