Level 69 Hunter, Need Some Help Regarding Squishiness and Lower Threat

[redwoodtreesprite]

Here's my gal's current stats and such, seems up to date:
http://my.lotro.com/home/character/8...2562960418189/
(Does not show, but my bow has Induction Bow Threat Down Rank 7. Is this a useless legacy or does it actually help when I use heart seeker, which seems to be a big threat creater?)

I have been either adventuring solo on basic questing and deeding, grouping with my hubby's champ (around 66), or on rare occasion doing a 3 group through some of the easier instances with my hubby's champ and my son's maxed and traited for healing RK. Having a lot of fun, but having squishiness and threat issues.

When me and my hubby start a combat, I let him hit first, then do lower damage or slower induction range skills at the start so he can build aggro. But as soon as I do a hit like heart seeker, or one that crits or does a lot of damage, the mob attacks me and my hubby has a very hard time pulling the mob off me. Even with his threat skills. He prefers to run in ardour BTW. Can anything be done to help this? I am still mainly a dps class, and have been feeling hesitant of late to use my skills to their best potential.

I am also about to get better gear of course as I am very close to 70. Due to our family's situation, our son being autistic, we are unable to do any serious group instances where better gear and barter items for armor and jewelry drop. So I am limited to small instances and solo questing. What should I be looking for in stats and such on gear that I can realistically get?

Last, would Fate or ICMR be better when I have a choice between?

[Padrin]

Your lvl is higher than the champ, of course your going to draw the agro with big hits, not sure if there is a fix for that other than lvling the champ to your or higher lvl.
Use any & all legacys, skills, traits that will lower your threat, don't use heart seeker...except for kill shots, stick to the lower damage faster attacks until your tank is at or higher lvl than you.
Why are you pushing might when you are a ranged class...go Agil/Vital/fate.
Of course this is just my opinion, thanks for listening & good hunting friend

[darricus]

Hunters have 3 ways to dump aggro. Quickshot in endurance stance, distracting shot, and beneath notice. Try switching to endurance and hit with a couple of quickshots or a distracting shot (in any stance) before firing off a heartseeker. The level difference my be too much to make up for but it may help. Once you have aggro and he struggles to get it back, that is the time for Beneath notice, he should be able to pick it back up almost instantly.

BTW, I can't remember at what lvl distracting shot and beneath notice is learned. If it's unavailable yet i'm sorry. However I believe you should have endurance and qs by now.

[wachkussen]

I would say endurance plus endless quickshots would be the first thing to try. Keep distraction and beneath notice in reserve for when that slips up. With a hunter and a RK as the rest of your party, your champ should probably be tanking - and he will find that he can do that a lot better in glory mode than it will work in ardour.

As regards fate vs. icmr, my argument would run that morale regeneration is only of use after you get hit. When you manage to figure out how to manage threat, you should stop getting hit, so fate should, at that point, become more useful, more often. So I would go with fate.

[DrnknElf]

There are a couple things to make note of and which have already been mentioned but should be stressed.

First of all any dps class three levels higher than the tank is almost always going to have a problem with pulling aggro. That's just a basic thing about having a three level difference.

The second point is the champ being in Ardor. Ardor is the worst tanking stance you can choose as all the AoE skills have decreased threat due to the stance which is the worst thing you can have with regards to a tank. Depending on how well the healer can keep up the heals and the specific instance it's possible to tank in Fervor. I've done done this before on my champ with kinmates in quite a few instances. I've also run quite a few pug instances where the tank wasn't nearly as good about generating threat than I'm used to with the tanks in my kin meaning my champ ends up tanking quite a bit unintentionally. Generally the best thing I can hope for is my bubbles manage to keep me up and some heals get thrown my way. Normally this is enough. The other option is Glory with blue line traits since threat and survival are specifically what the stance and traits are for. I don't personally care much for champ tanking so I avoid it in the vast majority of cases when I can and use my warden when I want to tank but some people love champ tanking and are good at it.

As for the induction bow threat down legacy, I'm not sure that works with Heart Seeker. While Heart Seeker does have an induction I'm not sure it's actually in the same class as the Quick Shot, Barbed Arrow and Swift Bow skills. In the skill panel for the character (which you can find by hitting "K" or going to the character panel and clicking on the skills button) you will find skills grouped together under specific headings. You might be able to find out if Heart Seeker would make use of the threat legacy if it's in the same grouping as the skills I mentioned earlier. This may or may not be conclusive, however. There is a chance that the induction skills threat down legacy may only work on induction skills which generate focus normally which is the reason for bringing up the possibility that Heart Seeker doesn't make use of that legacy.

[Eldarian_Grace]

As other posters have said, the threat.issue is more of a over levelled issue rather than anything else. You're doing the right thing waiting for aggro to build, look out for a red downward arrow on the.mobs head (indicates aggro skill used).

Is that an xp bonus item as your pocket? Consider keeping it in your bag until hubby catches up with levels. If your in dunland now consider getting kindred with the factions and getting agi barter items. Switch out anything with might on! You have more might than agi, this is great for the champ not so good for you. Have you checked out the class guides?

The threat.legacies add minimal benefit read this : http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...-probably-work the changes to champ.stance and getting same level will improve things much more.

Good luck

[redwoodtreesprite]

Am working on the threat issue, and like the idea suggested in the linked thread about having a bow for grouping that does less damage and has the different threat reducers on it. My 59 first age bow will be that bow soon. I have a symbol ready for a first age level 75 for my high damage bow, and will be using that in less than 2 levels for when threat is not as much of an issue.

HOWEVER, lowering my might so much in favor of agility seems to be a bad idea. I got the dunlending gear temporarily until I hit 75 and can have my tailor make the 75 guild recipes. Raised my agility nice, but lowered my might a lot. And ouch, am I taking a lot more damage now! I think it is a better idea to have a decent amount of might as well as agility. I did redo my virtues for the mitigation oriented ones as well, and will be deeding to get those up much higher. (The char profile link in my OP now shows my current gear but not the mathom helm and gloves BTW. )

Still working on all of this of course, and appreciate all the help given here.

[Patriotp3a]

Am working on the threat issue, and like the idea suggested in the linked thread about having a bow for grouping that does less damage and has the different threat reducers on it. My 59 first age bow will be that bow soon. I have a symbol ready for a first age level 75 for my high damage bow, and will be using that in less than 2 levels for when threat is not as much of an issue.

HOWEVER, lowering my might so much in favor of agility seems to be a bad idea. I got the dunlending gear temporarily until I hit 75 and can have my tailor make the 75 guild recipes. Raised my agility nice, but lowered my might a lot. And ouch, am I taking a lot more damage now! I think it is a better idea to have a decent amount of might as well as agility. I did redo my virtues for the mitigation oriented ones as well, and will be deeding to get those up much higher. (The char profile link in my OP now shows my current gear but not the mathom helm and gloves BTW. )

Still working on all of this of course, and appreciate all the help given here.

Forget about might. If anything, stack more vitality as it boosts morale level,tactical mitigation and physical mitigation. Stacking might for.phys mit is like stacking will for tac mit. If you stack agility you gain evade,parry,crit and lots more mastery. Finding the right balance of agil/vit will help you alot...much more than might/agil ever will. Using hobbit gifts should give you rather decent gear as you level.

best of luck.

[Eldarian_Grace]

Am working on the threat issue, and like the idea suggested in the linked thread about having a bow for grouping that does less damage and has the different threat reducers on it. My 59 first age bow will be that bow soon. I have a symbol ready for a first age level 75 for my high damage bow, and will be using that in less than 2 levels for when threat is not as much of an issue.

HOWEVER, lowering my might so much in favor of agility seems to be a bad idea. I got the dunlending gear temporarily until I hit 75 and can have my tailor make the 75 guild recipes. Raised my agility nice, but lowered my might a lot. And ouch, am I taking a lot more damage now! I think it is a better idea to have a decent amount of might as well as agility. I did redo my virtues for the mitigation oriented ones as well, and will be deeding to get those up much higher. (The char profile link in my OP now shows my current gear but not the mathom helm and gloves BTW. )

Still working on all of this of course, and appreciate all the help given here.

You are of course entitled to build your hunter however you like. You're right might will decrease the damage you take via parry and phys mit but if choosing might lessens your agility.and.hence physical mastery and DPS then you may be getting it wrong.

There's a basic formula to winning a landscape battle. How long it.takes your.dps to kill.mobs morale vs mobs dps.against your morale. Now as a dps class its always wise to err on the side of higher agility and therefore dps (too a point).

To explain that a little more the more might you have the less damage you'll take and longer for mob x to kill you but it will start decreasing your damage output via lost agility and take you longer to kill mob x. There's a balance to be struck.

This website will.compare you to.others on level, again as a guide, do with the info what you will. Ps. Pre rise of isenguard days the stats were capped at 600 each and might was worth having and many chars at 65 cap do indeed have loads of might and will. That's because no one has played those chars in years, so they scew the results.

ttahvo.webatu.com/

Good luck

You don't have to be a sheep but if the.sheep are successful maybe bleet at little x

[MightyKOko]

This is quite interesting topic for hunter (or any ckass) and group basics.

First - using lvl59 First Age Bow is really holding you back here. lvl70-74 Third Age bow will have significantly higher ratings, I may be wrong but it should be arround -30. So, even a third age, it will do more damage and will lower your aggro more. My basic rule of swapping Legendary weapons is to change it when the initial DPS of the new bow is higher than maxed of my old one. Also, I will advise you to go for Focus skills threat down instead of Induction - the reason is Focus skills usually hit harder and crit more and need their aggro kept low

Second - aggro works in misterious ways.... or not actually. Even if you give your champ mate some time, his way to keep aggro is by doing damage to the target. In the very moment you do more damage than him (even if startign later) you will have the aggro.

Third - don't hold yourself back! You are a hunter and what hunters do best is hell of a single target DPS. The harder you hit - the less time will have your enemy to attack you To hit harder you need to stack more Agility, and the good thing is Agility gives you tons of evade, so your enemies will have hard time to hit you, it also gives you parry (the same ammount that Might will give) and crit (so you will hit even harder). Talking about stats we come to:

Fourth - Leave Might to champs. What you really need is (in my personal order) - Agility, Vitality, Mitigations (from virtues), Fate, Crit and Physical Mastery. Since 1 Agility = 10 Physical Mastery you need to calculate if it's better to have an item with less of a stat but tons of pure physical mastery.... and when it's not. Same goes for Vitality/Morale and Fate/Crit/Power regen.

So, basically - do not use too old weapons (it's reasonable to change em every 5-7 levels untill you reach cap), stack Agility and unleash hell on your enemies.

[redwoodtreesprite]

Regarding the 59 bow, I am getting a shiny new 75 first age bow in less than one level. (Got lucky at the AH on a symbol.)

I will be making the 59 bow a threat reducing bow for when I group with my hubby and son in those instances with 30K and higher morale mobs. Already have the rest of the threat reducing legacies lined up to put on it...

The gear I have now is in between gear, till I hit level 75. Of course the xp pocket item will be vaulted at that time as well, making way for a good pocket item.

I am now grinding some older deeds to bring up the mitigation virtues. That should help as well.

[Macroscian]

Class slot with reduced threat works well for me when I skip heartseeker entirely and trait for barb arrow bleed.

[BackAgainAndThere]

Like Eldarian_Grace said, when you increase your Might as opposed to Agility on a DPS class, you're basically making the fight LONGER, which isn't a good thing when you're a squishy little hunter. On my hunter I've always just looked for gear with the highest agility possible. I also like gear that gives +morale (as opposed to +vitality) because I would rather have the morale available to take a couple hits if I really need to.

As for threat, a threat down book in your class slot helps, and using the right threat-down legacy helps out too. You said you have an induction threat down legacy, which is great if you use induction skills more than you use focus skills. For me, I tend to use Penetrating Shot/Blood Arrow to bring down my targets, so I have a focus threat down legacy slotted, but if you mostly use a lot of inductions then obviously go with the induction threat down legacy. Using Endurance and Quick-Shotting should be your last option to lower your threat. You're taking a lot away from your DPS by going this route, so if I were you I would get a threat-down book and get your legacies in order before going this desperate route. I've been playing my hunter for over a year and so far I've only had to go this route when I was up against long fights, like a boss in a 6-man or something, never on landscape mobs when I was in a group.

Hunter are going to be pretty squishy no matter how you build them, but if you can maximize your DPS while also giving yourself enough morale to take a few hits if things get really crazy, then you shouldn't have a problem taking down enemies much quicker than they can take you down.

[Decreation]

As for threat, a threat down book in your class slot helps, and using the right threat-down legacy helps out too. You said you have an induction threat down legacy, which is great if you use induction skills more than you use focus skills. For me, I tend to use Penetrating Shot/Blood Arrow to bring down my targets, so I have a focus threat down legacy slotted, but if you mostly use a lot of inductions then obviously go with the induction threat down legacy. Using Endurance and Quick-Shotting should be your last option to lower your threat. You're taking a lot away from your DPS by going this route, so if I were you I would get a threat-down book and get your legacies in order before going this desperate route. I've been playing my hunter for over a year and so far I've only had to go this route when I was up against long fights, like a boss in a 6-man or something, never on landscape mobs when I was in a group.

Hunter are going to be pretty squishy no matter how you build them, but if you can maximize your DPS while also giving yourself enough morale to take a few hits if things get really crazy, then you shouldn't have a problem taking down enemies much quicker than they can take you down.

What's standing here worked for me but i did not use the -threat legacies tho. i used to have a pretty awesome tank by my side so that's a + aswell - don't know if you group with Guardians or wardens aswell?