Lord of the Rings Online MMO News, Guides, and Features at Ten Ton Hammer

Killing hobbits never gets old.

Tired of slinking around, or keeping the health of your groupmates up, or standing in the background, plucking arrows at Freeps in Lord of the Rings Online? If that's the case, then you'll be happy to note that you won't be doing any of that with the Orc Reaver. The Reaver is a no-holds-barred, in your face, dual-wielding warrior whose sole purpose is to unleash as much damage as possible upon the weak souls sorry enough to get within his reach. No group should be without their very own instrument of destruction.

A Hobbit's Nightmare

The starting statistics of the Reaver are a step above the rest in terms of basic survivability. Good armor, solid health, and a respectful amount of power go a long way in ensuring your Reaver continues breathing long after his enemies have succumbed to the multiple wounds you've undoubtedly inflicted. With statistics like this, there's no arguing the role of a Reaver is destruction, destruction, and more destruction with a dash of tanking tossed in. As usual, you'll want to increase your passive skills as soon as possible, preferably in the following order: Armor, Health, Avoidance, and Resistance.

Being a Reaver means not only putting the fear of Sauron into the hearts of your opponents, but also ensuring you can take as much damage as possible, because you will quickly become target numero uno shortly after engaging enemy groups. By increasing your armor first rather than health, you ensure that the healers in your party don't have to work quite as hard in their quest to keep you from dying. Increasing Avoidance before Resistance is done for the same reason. If you're not there to be hit, it's that much less power they have to expend on you. This setup helps everyone involved, so put a smile on your face and get to it.

Why Do Healers Never Heal?

Despite all the talk about keeping your healer from having to work to hard, the sad reality is that this will rarely be a problem and here's why. For some reason, most healers that I've found running around the game seem far more interested in casting their DoTs than they are in keeping you alive, even if you're in the same group... standing beside them... jumping up and down waving your hands. You see the problem.

If that's the case, then why do I stress the order of increases as I have above? Because when you find a real healer, they'll love you for it and you'll work together like mashed potatoes and gravy. You'll be inseparable and awesome, all in one go. On the other side of the fence, when you have a crappy healer, no amount of doing anything is going to help, so be prepared to eat plenty of dirt.

The PvP in Ettenmoors is far more reminiscent of StarCraft than it really has any right to be. Things may change in the future, but as it currently stands, the majority of PvP involves both sides Zerg rushing each other in a few places around Ettinmoors (Tol Ascarnen, most often). Since you don't have an ounce of ranged combat ability, guess where that plants your sorry butt in each of these encounters?