Gameplay
Lore-masters use elemental powers to deal damage and debuff their enemies. They rely upon summoned animal pets to support themselves in combat through generating threat, dealing damage, and healing.
- Blue-line (Damage Support): Lore-masters specialized in the Keeper of Animals trait tree share a close bond with their pets that enables them to synergize in combat, boosting their fighting capability through sigils and passives, and inspiring their allies. They can provide group-wide offensive buffs through skills like
Sign of the Wild: Rage, 
Major Pet Command, and 
Battle Knowledge, and sometimes unleash 
A Murder of Crows upon their foes, allowing you and your allies to overwhelm your victims for a brief moment.
- Red-line (Damage): Lore-masters specialized in the Master of Nature's Fury trait tree employ the powers of nature to wreak havoc and deal significant Fire, Frost, and Lightning damage, and interweaving these elements for additional effects. They can amplify
Burning Embers to deal greater damage over time, spread the flames with 
Gust of Wind, and then can aggravate their inflicted burns using lightning skills, such as 
Lightning Strike, 
Lightning-charged Staff Strike, and 
Lightning Storm.
- Yellow-line (Pure Support): Lore-masters specialized in the Ancient Master trait tree use various crafts to control the battlefield and overpower their foes. They can use
Fire and Frost Lore to weaken them and 
Wind Lore to spread the debuff and to render them more vulnerable to attacks. They have crowd control skills that can Daze, Stun, and Root their enemies when needed. They can provide Power to their allies, supplemental healing, and a potent defensive buff through their 
Warding Knowledge.
This class is one of the most well-liked in the game, due to its strength and fun gameplay. Its pet interactions in Blue-line is unique, and Red-line is an extremely potent damage dealer. The class can be difficult to master, but is very rewarding to play.
Pets
The Lore-master is LotRO's main Pet class, and Blue and Yellow have access to permanent animal friends. Lore-master pets have useful abilities on their own, but also provide important synergy with the Lore-master's own abilities. Red Lore-master pets disappear after a short period of time but their effects and damage are applied immediately and remain important.
A Lore-master can only have one pet helping them at a time. A Lore-master must learn to choose smartly from their wide variety of pets to best fit each situation, specialization, role, and environment (see the Pets page for a detailed list of all the different animals a Lore-master can call to their side). Pets in Blue and Yellow can be micromanaged using skills in the companion quickslot bar (which can be clicked or dragged to your own quickslot bar, except for the special skills in the last four slots of the bar) and they will stay by your side until they are dismissed, defeated, or the maximum distance from the Lore-master has been exceeded.
Renaming and dismissing pets can be done by right-clicking your pet's portrait (in Blue and Yellow) to bring out the menu and choosing there, or by entering "/pet rename (name)" and "/pet release" in chat. (This can also be done by Captains.) Additionally, there is the Dismiss Pet skill which allows you to specifically dismiss your Lore-master's pet, as the "/pet release" command can also dismiss your non-combat pet and certain ally NPCs (e.g. Radhril in Trestlebridge missions).
Flanking and Harrying
All pets have a chance to cause 
Flanked! when attacking an enemy. A number of the Lore-master's abilities have improved effects when an enemy has been Flanked, i.e. Wizard's Spark (Lightning Strike in Red), Wizard's Frost, and Staff Strike (Lightning-charged Staff Strike if the Storm and Staff Red trait is equipped and lightning charges are available).
Pets can also cause 
Harried! when attacking an enemy from behind. Beyond its snare effect, Harried! has no other useful interactions.
Pets in Master of Nature's Fury
While specialized in Red line, pets no longer function the same way. When they are summoned, they apply their effects immediately, and despawn shortly thereafter. All Pets share the same skill cooldown. Flanking is still applied by pets, but the effect can also be applied by some of the Lore-master's regular abilities.
Pet Food
Pets can be fed pet food crafted by Cooks to temporarily but significantly improve a pet's stats. For example, you might feed your Lynx a Cut of Eastemnet Meat.
Appearance
A Lore-master can consume special items made by Jewellers to learn skills that summon pets that differ in appearance from the original. For example, the Brown Bear is the default but you can summon a Black Bear or even a little bear cub instead. This is purely cosmetic and does not affect the stats of the pet.
See each pet's individual page for a gallery of its possible appearances.
Guide to the Lore-master
The Lore-master is more fully intended to be an early cross-traiting class than the Mariner. It was reworked in U41. This guide remains valid as of U44.2.
The LM is mostly ranged and has two specialities. The first is in using mezzes and other crowd control. The second is that two of the lines use permanent pets and are designed as support in raids. The Red line, however, 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. You will get more damage by traiting in Red first.
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 up to 5x.
Pet tanking
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 as well as Wizard's Fire to reduce your induction time and increase crits. Use 
Light of Hope to heal the bear.
You can also use the raven pet, but it won't protect you like the bear.
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. 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. You can't use it on the move though so get used to standing still and using it in an emergency.
At level 16, you respec to get Retribution. Respeccing is cheap at lower levels. Instead of the core skills, 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 your Wild Sigil of Fire ie your main pet damage buff. Suddenly, your Raven now does most of your damage. You should also max your Wild Sigil of Lightning via Wizard's Spark.
Your Rotation changes to Burning Embers, Sign of the Wild: Rage, Retribution, Wizard's Fire, Wizard's Spark, Major and Minor Pet Skills. Repeat without Retribution until your enemies are dead. Note that your Wild Sigils expire. You can refresh them using the approprate Wizard skill and keep them at tier 5.
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 has better burst damage than Blue consistently until late game, 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. As with Blue, you can get a level in the AoE daze Bane Flare first if you're struggling. 
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.
Further Reading
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