Burglars, those sneaky bastards

When I started playing Lotro I thought burglar was the less needed character in the game. But when I started playing as a burglar, with my alt hobbit Fedegard Strongfoot of the Fallohides, I noticed burglars are useful as hell! It's a great fun to play with burglar, more tactical than with my hunter. You have to sneak behind enemy and strike and use many skills. With Lamaerahd it's like powpow dead. Burglars are quite good actually in solo playing, but burglar comes real handy in a fellowship. Ofcourse the more players there are in a fellowship, the more useful a sneaky burglar is. Ofcourse as fellowship manouver damage making attacks are nice but fellowship skill can be a life saver in a hard place if used wisely. And now I mean that you can get lots of morale or/and power from it. Plus burglar can do at least a fellowship skill every 2,5 minutes which is pretty awesome.

Now my burglar is 42 and he has go a bunch of great skills. Couple stealths of course, fellowship manouvers, riddles, more damage mark etcetc. And he will come even more handy ofcourse when he reaches lvl 50.

It's a shame that in our kinship there aren't really burglars. If I remember correctly, only Parsly and Sandomar, and I haven't seen them in ages. So hopefully soon my burglar is level 50 and I would be in the same spot as Mick, I would have two powerful characters and either one of them could be used in kinship fellowships. If dps isn't needed, Lamaerahd, and if something more tactical is needed, Fedegard could be used And it would be a real advantage if we have a possibility to use burglar. I've noticed that there aren't so many burglars around in Lotro.

We've noticed with Melvin that burglar is really good. We've played quite much together because Melvin is kind enough to help me. I just haven't always been the master of mysteries when playing with Melvin. As he said, I've been more like a much noise making careless bowling ball

Lamaerahd wrote:

As he said, I've been more like a much noise making careless bowling ball

Actually more like a cannon ball.

Mick wrote:

Lamaerahd wrote:

As he said, I've been more like a much noise making careless bowling ball

Actually more like a cannon ball.

ah my mistake

My burg alt (33rd) has been lots of fun. Initially I found her a bit weak but you need to be quite tactical to get the most out of the various skills. Her big one while soloing is Riddle (30s mez). This is great for taking care of pairs of mobs, although the fact that non-humanoids aren't affected makes eg Old Forest less than happy hunting grounds for her.

The key thing to learn is to line up your tricks & buffs/debuffs to maximise durability in combat. For example Stealth/Backstab for an opening big hit and guaranteed crit, use Dust in the Eyes to debuff, fight for a bit, use your Startling Twist to remove Dust in the Eyes just as its starting to run out anyway to stun him, use Counter Defence to increase his vulnerability when he's stunned, fight some more, use Mischievous Glee to remove that and self heal, use Disable to debuff again etc.

The point is to start with a big hit and then use Mischievous Glee and Startling Twist are good things to keep the mob on the back foot but both are on 45s cooldowns so you're best to run a trick for 20-25s before using one. Find Footing and Touch & Go are both handy for getting you out of tight spots as well and are only on 5 min cooldowns. Haven't got Ready & Able yet but looking forward to that (36) and Enrage @ 38 as well. It is very satisfying if you can time things well to keep a far superior opponent pinned down long enough to defeat them. Much more a case of using smarts than muscle though in keeping with the class.

People tend to have less patience for Burgs stealthing in fs is my experience so Mischief mode is great for sacrificing stealth for more frequent mezes. Also your signature conjunction-on-demand skills only work in fs. There are 3 skills (Exploit Opening, Trip and the item Marbles) you can use as openers although the first 2 at least are on 5 min cooldowns. Most peeps expect you to be an encyclopedia of the best conjunction to go for as well which is amusing because I'm not

Anyone got any suggestions on these?

Yeah burglar is very interesting char and you can't feel bored playing it.