Warning: Those unfamiliar with LOTRO and its past year of updates will think I am speaking like one of the Sand People from Star Wars. This blog post assumes familiarity with the game, not unlike my fellow reviewer’s blog posts about Lost.

Sometimes gamers are their own worst enemies. When it comes to MMOs, some people quickly master the most recent content and demand more because they are bored. I’ve talked at some length before about LOTRO‘s use of narrative to give the game something beyond XP and loot grinds, but today I thought I would share how much I love the flexibility of the game’s mechanics.

Instances like Sammath Gul have great rewards. The Symbol of Celebrimbor alone makes the run worthwhile, but items like the Glass Flask and Ril-Mir round out the loot. Instances like SG are also difficult; while not impossible, players really need to be smart about their class’s abilities. And for new players, following instructions is a must. (It can take about 5 minutes to brief a new player on everything they need to know.)

At the same time, these rewards and difficulties encourage players to stick to very basic strategies and character class combinations in order to ensure a good run. Many players will sit around and say “We have to pull this group with strategy X,” or “We have to have a champion for interrupts and a captain for heals.”  Having discovered a single approach to an instance that works, players have a desire to stick to that strategy so that they can reliably farm it.

Thus, it is not surprising that some players get bored. You can only defeat Gorothul so many times with the same gear, traits, and classes before it gets old. The good news is that it is unnecessary. If more players were willing to be open to all of the possibilities afforded to each class, then they might find themselves having runs that are more fun and that allow for more players to participate. You might even get to use traits and skills that have been gathering dust for months on your interface.

In my own quest to do things differently, I have been experimenting recently with healing champions in Continuous Blood Rage. When healing with my rune-keeper, I found that it took much less effort than I expected to heal champions who were tanking, even when they stayed in fervor. Having a captain assisting with heals meant that on some pulls I wouldn’t even bother healing at all. I would just DPS while the captain took care of the champion. After joking with a champion friend of mine who loves to spar that he was too easy to heal, he offered me the real challenge. He was already traited for CBR, so he said he would activate his CBR during the next pull just to prove that there were limits to my healing ability. After a few trash pulls and killing Boss #1, we were all surprised to see that between my rune-keeper and a captain, we could keep him healed indefinitely while he stayed in CBR. Of course, due to the sheer DPS, he held all the aggro whether we wanted him to or not, so he was getting hit all the time, with no blocks, evades, or parries, while having a -90% incoming healing penalty. I finally broke a sweat when healing some good players I roll with all the time.

Am I just telling my readers this to show off? Only a little bit. Remember, it’s not just me, it takes a secondary healer to pull it off. But with a good fellowship covering me so that I can heal with impunity, we had discovered a new way to run some existing content. And with this new knowledge, I have been working with others to change things up and do some new and spectacular things. I figure if a rune-keeper and captain can keep a champion up in CBR, why not have multiple champs in CBR? Or perhaps run a group in SG with three captains, daisy-chained together so that no matter which one has aggro, they can be healed. Why not run SG with two minstrels and have one trait for war speech? Or have two loremasters, one of which is traited for DPS and the ever popular improved sticky gourd? Or what about giving our guardians and wardens a true test of their tanking abilities: see if they can hold aggro while champions CBR and hunters sit in strength. Or why not have a bunch of wardens and one primary healer?

The point is that there is no reason for the content to get boring. LORTO is flexible enough to sustain smart players who are willing to try new things. If a captain and rune-keeper can keep a champion up in CBR while facing bosses, then the possibilities are limitless.

I recently recorded a run I did with some players I know fairly well. With their permission, I recorded our most recent attempt to use CBR in SG. Posting this on the blog is meant to serve two purposes. One, to negate any cries of “Lies!” regarding any claims to healing champions in CBR, and, two, to demonstrate what we did right and what we did wrong in the run. It will also fulfill my promise to my friends to show their exploits on Youtube. Hopefully, as time goes on, I’ll be able to convince more healers and champions to join the CBR Club. And then I can move on to another project of taking the content and doing something creative with it.