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The Road to Mordor: Six reasons why Minstrels rule
In the gaming world, you're either a bard person or you're not; there's no middle ground. For some, the concept of a character attacking with music and "inspiring" fellow adventurers with top 40 tunes is incredibly weird, even though armies used to employ musicians all the time for tempo and morale. For others, using music to help and hurt is a refreshing change of pace from fireballs and 70-pound impractical swords. Over the five-plus year adventure that I've had in Lord of the Rings Online, I've rolled many-a Minstrel, although I've yet to make one my main. I've always loved the concept of the class, especially within Tolkien's IP, where music fills an important niche in the books. Music has power in Middle-earth, and the Minstrel is the one with the skills to defeat Sauron with mad lute skills. As a tribute to this awesome class, here are six reasons why Minstrels rule -- and why you should try one out if you haven't already.
Allow me to introduce my shield to your face
Ghostcrawler posted fairly heavily on the Warrior forums the other day, and while Warriors are not especially my territory, something the crabman said reminded me of something I've really liked about Wrath so far. Referencing Gladiator, "Watch how Maximus uses his shield -- he isn't cowering behind it -- he's bashing people in the face with it. Shields should be a viable form of combat, not the option to avoid combat." This was said in the context of Protection possibly being viable in the arenas in the nebulous future (not anytime soon), but it reminded me of general playstyles anyway.To some extent, Warriors have fought like this for quite awhile. Shield Bash, Shield Slam, things like that. It wasn't just Shield Block. However, none of that stuff hit very hard. Sure, Protection Warriors shouldn't be able to rock the DPS with their shield, but Shield Slam was more like Shield Bump. The higher block values and thus higher Shield Slam damage is exciting, and the addition of Sword and Board puts even more emphasis on the shield.
