Guide to the Lore-master

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Lore-master: Skills - Traits


A male Elf Lore-master

Lore-master is the first true cross-traiting class, having been reworked in U41. It is mostly ranged and its speciality is in using mezzes and other crowd control. Two of the lines use permanent pets and are designed as support in raids. The third, the Red line, was designed as a pet-less DPS which is strong in AoE damage. It plays very differently in landscape to the other lines and the old Lore-master.

All lines are now able to move freely when not in the induction stage of casting a spell.

Gameplay

As well as being a DPS in raids, the Red Lore-master has a nuke-and-run style with Damage-over-Time working whilst you do a bit of kiting. Lore-masters can now move during nearly all animations. A Blue Lore-master is the definitive pet line in the game and also is intended to compete for the Offensive Support role. A Yellow Lore-master retains its utility/debuffer role, but is now viable in landscape. It can be played like the pre-U41 Blue line, but has many better options for crowd control and is indeed the only line with significant numbers of these spells now.

Red and Yellow are significantly overpowered until around level 100 and you may wish to run at a much higher landscape difficulty.

For a complete list of skills, see Lore-master Skills and all traits and set bonuses are at Lore-master Traits.

Starting a new Lore-master

The following recommendations are designed to boost your damage potential in the early game. Other builds can be perfectly functional.

Whilst some players will prefer to use their older race-based introductions, other players are recommended to use the Mossward Before the Shadow introduction.

Lightning Staff Strike/flanks

Since the rework, the "Flank!!" mechanism has become much more relevant due to the strength of  Lightning-charged Staff Strike, and having emergency heals via  Wizard's Frost. Flanks are self-triggered in Red Lore-masters. They remain random in the other two lines and Flank-enhanced Lightning Staff Strikes are a big part of their early damage. The emergency heal is your only heal until level 23.

Traits and Skill progression

Lore-master core build for first 6-15 levels

The following traits are recommended for all lines, from level 5 at the latest.

Master of Fire (max) -> Lightning Staff Strike

Yes, it is unusual for players to immediately dive into other trees, but this is now really important for Lore-masters else you'll have no damage.

Blue for new players

Blue starts with the core build above. It's strongly recommended to start with the bear pet. It's supposed to guard and take hits for you ie as your tank.

Target a mob with <tab>. Send your pet at the mob(s). When it's a couple of seconds away, cast  Burning Embers. This will set your target on fire. Burning Embers has an induction phase and an animation phase. You can move during the animation phase, and it's later recommended to get in range for Lightning Staff Strike. You can also cast  Wizard's Fire on the move -- it has no induction. It has a different type of burning effect and buffs your pet's damage.

Pet tanking and the lynx

If the mobs leave your bear and come for you, you can cast  Major Pet Command. This makes you much less of a threat and the bear much more of a threat. This spell will also force any mob within 7m to attack it for 7s. You can also use  Minor Pet Command and later,  Inner Flame.

Mobs will die pretty quickly. When you get comfortable with this, start using  Wizard's Spark to reduce your induction time and increase crits.

When you're used to that switch your pet to the lynx for anything but hard mobs or higher landscape difficulty. Use  Sign of the Wild: Rage, Major and Minor Pet Skill with the lynx. If you do this before Lightning Staff Strike, the lynx will tend to hold aggro. If LSS will kill the mob, you can do this first. You can do this after LSS or before. You will struggle to keep Elites off you after 20s but you should maybe avoid those anyway. Use  Light of Hope to heal the lynx.

You get Lightning Staff Strike at level 13. Especially during flanks, this will massively boost your damage output, making it even more likely mobs will attack you. You will probably need to use the Bear and Major Pet Skill until you get to level 16. At 15, you can get  Burning Earth, or you can put points into Potent Sigils. If you're struggling to keep mobs off you,  Bane Flare is a nice emergency skill you can grab at any point.

At 16, you respec. Respeccing is cheap at lower levels. At 16, go full Blue. You put 4 points in Potent Sigils, 5 points in Hunting Instinct, 1 point in Survival Instinct, skip the second tier (T2), 4 points in Prepare for War, 1 point in Wild Alacrity and 1 point in Don't You Touch Him, unlocking Retribution.

Retribution plus Wizard's Fire maxes it ie your pet damage buff. Suddenly, your Lynx now does most of your damage. Rotation changes to Burning Embers,  Sign of the Wild: Rage, Retribution, Major and Minor Pet Skills. You'll also unlock Inner Flame, which is both a strong channeling heal and is another threat transfer.

At 17, you can put a point into Friend of Large Hunters to get the sabre-toothed tiger for fighting groups. Note it only damages mobs in a cone (actually zig-zag-sided pie slice). Subsequent trait points go back into Master of Fire. After LSS, go into Burning Earth. After maxing that, put the last tier point into Master of Storms then start on the LSS damage tiers. From there you go back to Blue. There's not a lot else in Red until you can reasonably grab Dry Kindling around level 130.

Yellow for new players

Yellow is now viable both landscape and for low-level Lore-masters. Its build is almost exactly the same as Blue until level 16. Yellow's pets are more fragile so I like to grab a rank of Blue's Survival Instinct straight away and then follow the core build. It out-damages Blue consistently until late game, except in slow fights, and Yellow is better on raid bosses anyway. Its unbuffed pet damage is higher and it does more burst damage via combos that don't exist on the other lines. These 2-skill combos are collectively called Insult to Injury. Yellow is remarkably good for fast leveling on low difficulty levels and less repetitive than Red.

The earliest combo is  Test of Will -> Burning Embers. You can also do  Sticky Tar -> Burning Embers. The affect of this combo on Wizards' Fire seems smaller. Bane Flare -> LSS works but doesn't stack with Flanks. You can quickly use it with Wizards' Spark if you have a flank opportunity and get the LSS in before the flank times out. When you get Ancient Master, that can be used instead of Bane Flare and the debuff does stack. See Insult to Injury for more clarification.

As well as being more fragile, Yellow's bear is less good at generating treat as Blue's, and more attention will need to be paid to Minor and Major Pet skills.

Having no Yellow-specific damage skills or traits of its own, Yellow should pick them up from Red starting at level 3. Switch to the lynx when you feel comfortable but get a level in the AoE daze Bane Flare first. Get used to standing still and using it in an emergency.  Herb Lore is a secondary AoE mez. However, because it's solely a root, mobs with ranged attacks can keep attacking you. It's like an immediate Cracked Earth.

If you use exclusively the lynx, you can respec to get the 2 points from Survival Instinct back. Alternatively, you can get a second rank of Survival Instinct after you get Lightning Staff Strike.

Lacking the Sabre-Tooth, Yellow's AoE damage is limited to the low damage Storm-Lore, which is perhaps better saved as a short emergency mez. For this reason, it's highly recommended to get Burning Earth and not Cracked Earth. They do not stack anyway, even though the game allows you to get both.

Continue until you've maxed out Fend them Off (in Red). From this point, you can start investing more in Yellow. Max Bane Flare and then put 2 points in Shields of Knowledge. At T2, max Power of Knowledge. You don't need the power, but it's a nice channeled high damage spell.

Any other trait points you have, put in Shields or Survival Instinct. At 23, respec if needed and put those extra points in Mending Lore instead. The latter affects your new heal-over-time, Water Lore, which can be used whilst running! Yellow has innate access to the spirit pet and this is nice to use in groups when you have a proper healer (Blue Minstrel/Rune-keeper). It isn't much use solo though.

What you get after Mending Lore doesn't matter too much until you start raiding. I'll highlight some of the better traits though: At T3,  Sign of Power: See All Ends is a short emergency shield against bosses et al. You won't use Share the Power until late game so fill in points as you wish. Respec if needed when you can get to T4 as there's better stuff here. Blinding Flash is a single target daze that gets better at T5. The other two trait/skills are for 6-mans and raids. Blue is a bit better in on-level 6 mans but don't switch if you don't want to. In addition to improving Blinding Flash, T6 has  Pleasant Breeze, a decent AoE heal. It's ground-targeted so practice using it on you and your pet. T7 has Beacon of Hope which makes Light of Hope stronger and AoE. It has a smaller radius than Pleasant Breeze and is targeted on an ally. If you use it on your pet while standing next to them, you will be healed too!

When you start doing the level 50 raids, the debuffs et al become more important.

You can read more about debuffing later in the article.

Red for new players

Red unsurprisingly wants the same red damage skills that Blue and Yellow do, but it has no pet to hide behind. As such, you want to grab Yellow's  Bane Flare at level 3. After this, grab the core skills mentioned above. If you're still struggling, grab  Cracked Earth as well. Burning Earth gets outshone later on, but is good to get if you don't need the Cracked version.  Staff Sweep is your other AoE at this early stage.

Unique to Red is the cash-out mechanism. Lightning skills, including Lightning Staff Strike make your Burning Embers DoTs explode, instantly dealing more damage than the DoTs ever would. With LSS, the peak damage burst is one of the highest in the game and may cause your tank problems!

Both the other T1 buffs are great. Either way, you want to level up Fend Them Off at T3 as soon as possible.  Lightning Storm at T4 is the most iconic skill in the game and should be to wow your Fellowship whenever possible. Unyielding Sweep is great when you get a crit build but you don't need it now. Keep putting points into the T1 buffs and/or Cracked Earth. T5 are minor buffs and you'll want to max the former first. T6 has the big guns -- you might want to respec a bit earlier just to grab these. Ring of Fire is great but you'll mostly use it in groups. Mighty Wind is something you can use when the mobs are chasing you. Dry Kindling and Ancient Fire really boost your longer parse damage which gets more important as you level.

You can read more about playing Red later in the article.

Getting better at playing the Lore-Master

Yellow: debuffing, CC and support

If you are traited in traited in yellow line (The Ancient Master) in an instance, this will be your most common role: take out one or two mobs with a daze while debuffing the bosses. Note that some debuff skills aggro the foe when applied and others don't. Before combat, you can set up the following debuffs and buffs:

During combat, try to keep up the following (de)buffs:

  •  Fire and Frost Lore on a single target, depending on the type of mob (warrior-like doing melee damage or sorcerer-like doing tactical damage).
  •  Wind Lore to spread and renew the above debuffs to enemies surrounding the mob (with the traits Wild Fire and Chill Wind).
  •  Ancient Craft to lower the enemies' armour and increase the group's damage by a substantial amount.
  • Also refresh the two Signs of Power and ground targeted skills described above.

Warning: the next 4 pet-based debuffs have mostly changed in U41:

Pet debuffs now have a global cooldown. To apply another debuff, you need to dismiss your pet and summon a new one. For this, you can add a shortcut by typing /shortcut 1 /pet release in chat (this will create a shortcut on the first quickslot of your toolbar).

Concerning crowd control, you possess several daze and stun skills, to temporarily take out or interrupt one or more enemies.

  •  Blinding Flash: allows you to daze one enemy permanently by using it every 30s.
  •  Bane Flare: a shorter daze of 15s that affects up to 5 enemies.
  •  Test of Will: a stun with a longer induction and longer duration, which also deals good damage.
  •  Storm Lore: a short, multi-target stun.

Your two root skills,  Cracked Earth and  Herb Lore, also have their uses in some fights.

Finally, keep an eye on your fellows while fulfilling your other tasks:

Consider installing a plugin like BuffBars or DebuffVitals. Both are handy tools which track your buffs, debuffs, dazes and their durations. More information about plugins can be found on https://www.lotrointerface.com.

Red: Damage role

When soloing or doing easy content, you can change your role to deal more damage. The red line (Master of Nature's Fury) is most often used for this, increasing your damage from fire and lightning skills.

Your most important skill for this is  Burning Embers due to short cooldown and induction, slow and reasonable DoT (which stacks up to three times). Using Gust of Wind on the foe will upgrade the effect into Improved Searing Embers, a more powerful DoT. Try to keep this up on an enemy as often as possible!

Other damaging skills include:

  •  Lightning Strike: has a chance to cash out all stacks of Burning or Searing Embers, dealing high single target damage.
  •  Lightning Storm: can cash out Burning Embers as well, but deals more damage than Lightning Strike and to multiple enemies.
  •  Cracked Earth: AoE skill with reasonable damage, roots enemies in place for 30s after a 3s delay.
  •  Sticky Gourd: AoE skill that sets the ground on fire, dealing high fire damage over time.
  •  Light of the Rising Dawn: single target light damage with a stun.
  •  Ring of Fire: AoE skill that deals high fire damage and debuffs enemy Parry/Evade/Block ratings.
  •  Ents go to War: AoE skill that stuns all affected enemies (up to 5) and deals high fire damage, but it has a long induction.
  •  Nature's Fury: single target frost damage with a long induction.

Normally you would start with Sticky Tar and Benediction of the Raven (to lower Fire mitigations), Burning Embers and Sticky Gourd. Next, tier up Burning Embers and alternate other damaging skills.

Pets

Each pet has its own specialities and is useful in different situations. Only one pet can be summoned at a single time and each of them possess three special skills as well as an attack and some behaviour commands (aggressive, passive etc.), which you may use just like your own skills. More information about these skills can be found under Pets.

During combat, your pets has a chance to flank the enemy. This event interacts with a number of your skills, which in turn consume this event:

  •  Wizard's Fire, an immediate damage skill with no cooldown or induction and a long range, gives you a small heal when used on a flanked target.
  •  Staff Strike, a single target melee skill, deals bonus damage when used on a flanked target.

The damage of your pets is quite low compared to yours and therefore the (de)buffs are their most important use (some of them were already mentioned in the above sections). If you do not want to constantly change pets because you're too busy chaining your other damaging skills, the Bog-guardian and Lynx do reasonable damage (with the lynx's high damage opening attack in Surprise Attack), while the Sabre-tooth Cat is the only pet that does AoE damage. Finally, the bear can be used as a tank since it possesses a force attack in Roaring Challenge and has the highest flank rate, providing you with more heals from Wizard's Fire.

Emergency Skills

The Lore-master also possesses some emergency skills:

  •  Wisdom of the Council instantly heals you for 50% of your Morale and provides you with a chance to reflect and negate damage for 1m, but has a cooldown of 5m.
  •  Bane Flare has a shorter cooldown of only 1m with an induction of 1s and dazes 5 targets around you for 15s, providing you with some time to heal, cure, resummon a pet, renew some debuffs or just run away. Thanks to the 4s grace period, you can also use this as an offensive skill. Throwing Sticky Gourd at them in the first seconds will not break the daze!
  •  Storm Lore is a quick but short AoE stun for a small group of enemies, with a long cooldown of 2m.
  •  Call to the Valar instantly resets the cooldown of some of your skills and makes you immune to induction setback from damage and interrupts.
  •  Back from the Brink provides the Lore-master with an out of combat Revive.

Equipment

A Lore-master can only wear Light Armour and use staves as a weapon (at level 40 you gain access to a sword). From level 20 on, you can carry a Book of lore in your class slot and a brooch in your ranged item slot.

Important stats

When choosing your equipment, you can focus on better survivability or better damage, depending whether soloing or playing in a larger fellowship. For more survivability, you are looking for:

For more damage, you are looking for:

Finesse can be useful at higher levels as mobs get more Resistance and B/P/E ratings, to make sure your debuffs and damaging skills hit.

Choosing crafting professions

The crafted items that are most useful to a Lore-master come from the following professions.

See also

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