More Shores of Evendim stuff

After playing last week and this week in the new zone and content, I have to say that I’m still pretty impressed. As I’ve mentioned before, the things that really make a zone for me are the topographical variation and lots to do. Well, Evendim has plenty of both. There are beaches, forested areas, plenty of ruins, a large variety of mobs and several quests that really advance the story and make me feel like my character is involved in the world events in Middle Earth. The other day, I ran around with a kinship mate and we stomped on salamanders and took out a bunch of thugs to get some quest items. It was pretty fun. We even survived what could have been a couple of really nasty pulls and respawns. My only gripes about the expansion are the high respawn rates (though those were explained on the LoTRO forums as necessary due to the large influx of players to the new content) and some of the wound debuffs on my Guardian.

Guardians need to be able to block or parry to activate their special skills. Guardians are also only able to tank because of their increased block and parry chances over, say, a Champion which wears the same armor type and can also carry a shield. There are a couple new wound debuffs which remove the block or parry chances and sometimes both together, thus making a Guardian basically a low-dps Champion. Many Guardian players voiced their discontent on the LoTRO forums so we’ll have to wait and see what happens.