Any tips for attacking from Stealth?

[Strovolas]

I'm kinda new to burgling (level 13), and having trouble with getting good stealth attacks... I keep sneaking up to targets in stealth and getting noticed before striking with my dagger. Can experienced burgles offer any suggestions?

Would it help to attack from Stealth with a ranged weapon, such as throwing daggers or a bow, instead of a melee weapon like a dagger?

[TKH]

I'm kinda new to burgling (level 13), and having trouble with getting good stealth attacks... I keep sneaking up to targets in stealth and getting noticed before striking with my dagger. Can experienced burgles offer any suggestions?

Would it help to attack from Stealth with a ranged weapon, such as throwing daggers or a bow, instead of a melee weapon like a dagger?

Burglar does not use bow. And any ranged attack like consumable throwing axes, or stone if you're a Hobbit, breaks your stealth.

I think you have checked the box "Enable movement assistance in combat" in your Combat Option, which makes your Burglar auto-move too close to the target whenever you use a melee skill. So, you should uncheck that box, and try to manually approach your target from behind.

Remember that approaching from the front gets very high chance of you being discovered.

[Hiritier]

You dont need to uncheck the "movement assistance", I feel for melee classes, this options make things lots easier (except in some cases). However, you should alway approach from behind. Dont move infront, or even sideway from mobs in around 5m. Attack from behind also add bonus for some burg's skill.

[TheOrcsBane]

I'm kinda new to burgling (level 13), and having trouble with getting good stealth attacks... I keep sneaking up to targets in stealth and getting noticed before striking with my dagger. Can experienced burgles offer any suggestions?

Would it help to attack from Stealth with a ranged weapon, such as throwing daggers or a bow, instead of a melee weapon like a dagger?

At low levels sneaking up behind the mob and using Aim + Surprise Strike is enough to one-shot a ton of landscape stuff.


Later in the game though, when you have your legendaries and stuff, you'll start opening with either Surprise Strike or Cunning Attack most of the time, depending on the legacies chosen. Quiet Knife trait-line is all about burst damage and blowing up the target before it can hurt you, so you'd want to open with your hardest hitting skill.

Gambler is more about survivability and all that fun stuff. I'm not an expert on Gambler-related st00f, but all the Gamblers I know open with Cunning Attack for the most part because they focus on bleeds rather than burst damage.

[RJFerret]

The key to how close is to keep an eye on your mêlée skill. It will be unusable too far away. Approach the MOB, as others have said, from behind (in Lotro, that's 180°), and when your skill becomes usable, IE, it's icon changes on your skill bar, use it without getting any closer.

Things that make you more noticeable include being in front, moving, and level difference, you can get much closer to lower level things than higher (without items that increase your stealth level) without being noticed.

Hide in Plain Sight makes you completely undetectable for 10 seconds to MOBs, so if you do need to just get past something and don't mind burning it's long cooldown, that's an option too.

Note that in instances, many things are triggered based upon player position irrespective of stealth, so don't expect fights that trigger based on proximity to let you sneak in undetected.

[Strovolas]

Sorry for not replying back yesterday.

I played around with it on approaching animal NPCs and got more used to attacking from stealth. Definitely the trick was to watch the melee skill availability to see when I was close enough, as RJFerret said.

Also I hadn't thought to play around with the Combat Options settings, but yes that didn't make a big difference in this case. Still, it's nice to optimize that in general.

So thanks guys for the advice!

[Irenmund]

You are getting close to the level of getting items with +stealth. There used to be a great compendium of what these are and where they drop on the forums. Not sure if it still exists. But I know there's a few skirm camp items (I know you're not quite there). But definitely pick up +stealth pocket items and cloaks when you can to help with this.