Lets talk about Skirmishes

Let me begin by saying that I am a level 61 Skirmish Noob. MY skirmish record and volume is dismal at the best so..... I figured what better place to be schooled than here.

I originally planned to post this as a sort of poll but since the topic is so diverse lets just consider this a free 4 all.

Basically I am looking for any info from all ya Skirmish Veterans that would improve my foray into this dark and foreboding world.

so here we go , hang on because this could be a wild and bumpy ride.

1. Based on your class, what soldier do you find to be most helpful. ie Class:Hunter Soldier:Herbalist just as an example,
2, What traits skills etc do you find useful for yourself and your minion,
3. Which Skirmish would you consider your favorite, most profitable . etc
4, Any interesting skirmish stories or tips. such as mobs that aren't part of the skirmish but yield added rewards.
5. Any additional information that I, as noob, didn't even think to ask.

Well, I appreciate any input ya all may have and hope ya enjoy me wracking your brains.

1/2. on my hunter and burglar, who are both high dps, i have the herbalist for survivability and a little aggroing distraction. i usually trait first the heal and hot, and then get the mana buffs. my hunter does a lot of focus skills for spike dmg to down things fast. my burglar does quite a bit of cc to focus on single targets.

my mini has the warrior because she needs the dmg help and can keep him alive through just about anything. my strategy with her is to keep buffs up, focus on heals mainly and throw out the occasional dmg spell.

my lm has the protector since she takes a bit longer to kill things, he provides a good distraction.

i think i chose the sage on my champ just to try something different. havn't really used it much yet.

3. my favorite is prancing pony cuz you stand there and the enemies come to you, same with the river one-tho those nps like to get themselves killed. but the most profitable ones may be thsoe where you control the flow of enemies (and therefor the pace/speed) like tuckborough or t&m.

4/5. not so interesting, but one very important thing is to time carefully when you bring in the event mobs. never at the same time as a boss, preferably during one of the breaks.

just my thoughts. as much as i love skirms, i don't know too much and am looking forward to what others have to say

1. As Hunter's we have plenty of dps. So on my hunter i run with the herbalist they have a nice set of heals that have saved me on tons of occassions. Some say the sage is a bit better though. You'll have to toy with them a bit and see what you like more, its also about your playing style . Solo with my hunter my herbalist keeps me alive, it helps a bit in higher level skirmishes too with more people, as theryel said they also have a power regen buff which helps nicely.

For my lm i run with the protector, Nice to take aggro off me and plus, you can use signs of protection on your pet instead and just focus on tossing your beacon of hope on to your protector, i would also recommend traiting for blue line on LM this lowers your beacon of hope to 20 sec CD and has an insta cast yay no induction .

3. Favorite skirmish wise, I use to love Tuckborough but from leveling so much it gets harder and harder and its probably 1 of the hardest skirmishes to solo. Harder than the 65 ones from the Epic. As Theryel said best skirmishes are wear you control the enemies, and it also depends why your doing them. Exp wise, T&M, tuckborough, and a few of the Epic ones Because you get full exp with no npcs to help, which is a bit tougher. Profitable wise, since everythings a bit random its more about how fast you can kill and get through the skirmish, one of the fastest like Theryel said is Prancing pony its nice and simple, but you dont get as many skirmish marks from it as say Gondamon. You probably get about 150 compared to 250 or so at the end from the bonuses.

4.Hm.. interesting things.. not really XD skirmishes can really only be interesting, if your in a fellowship, most of the time with kin cuz we always tend to have our Epic moments together. i.e Batel off the bridge in CD *hides*. A bit of advice though on Skirmishes that have you defend, and an Encounter pops up, Depending which skirmish it is you could pull an encounter into the fight with the main mob from the coutner attack and have the npcs help you, sometimes that can b easier then waiting til after the attack where its just u and the encounter, specially at 65

*cough* Batel off the bridge was in Uru.
Batel - or actually Batrapha - falling into green water UNDER a bridge where she couldn't be reached to rez her - that was CD.

I'll try to come back and answer more seriously when I am more awake. Or maybe I won't.

My input at this point:

- I don't like Tuckborough. At all. Makes me want to kill hobbits.
- I like Ford, but I think Elrohir seriously needs counseling. Suicidal elf, dang.
- Amon Sul is fun for ranged DPS.
- Prancing Pony is fun if you don't want to move.
- While I'm thinking about it, I think T&M might be my favorite. Slower pace, lots of fun, the bosses at the end are a challenge in a duo, but Adrean and I have a good system - you need to KEEP THEM SEPARATED! That's very key.

I should probably use a healer on Batel (my champ) but I have a protector. I definitely like having the protector with Batrapha (my mini)

Traits - no idea what I use, but I try to train and keep up to date on em.

Use wisdom about when you trigger the encounters, if it is ones you can control - ie when you plant the flags in Gondomon. Keep the torches lit when you do Amon Sul as best as you can, Adrean has a rhythm down so that they are fully lit when the Cargul shows up, I'm not that good so I let him do the torches. I've only run it once, but having poison pots when you run the Library is absolutely needed, and poison resist food is a good idea too.

Hmm, okay I answered in a non organized fashion, but there you go.

*edit* I read your post as level *16* skirmish noob, so most of this probably doesn't apply...haha. I would be the noob in this scenario!

1. I like the archer for my warden. He seems to burn down the mobs pretty well while I hold aggro on the group. If he pulls aggro it's only going to be one mob, which he can typically handle without dying. On my hunter (24) I was using the protector, who basically flip/flops the roles I enjoy on the warden by holding group aggro while I pick off mobs one at a time.

2. On the warden I use the +armor trait. For his archer minion I use +ranged damage and +ranged crit. DPS is my goal on the minion.

3. I prefer the offensive skirms, as you can take them as fast or slow as you like. Defensive skirms can get rough when my daughter/wife comes calling and I need to step away from the keys


4. If I have trouble finding a special encounter mob - alt+tab and google always come through with an answer!

5. They're awesome xp and loot upgrades in the 20s. Seems to be slowing in the 30s, but still a great way to spend 20-30 minutes.

Skirmishies for me are almost completelly about dps.

I tried playing with an herbalist and it helped me survive but also made the skirmish take at least 50% more time.

I use a warrior with my hunter (51), archer with my Warden and Captain (33-34) and changing from Bannerguard to Protector with Lalril (62 LM).

With the level 55 skill protector does more dps than bannerguard, that has horrible skills if you solo skirmish but is nice on team ones.

For soldier skills, I would say (surprise) dps ones

Do not get the power regen one on archer. Soldier brains get damaged due to how much they get hit and the archer lieks to use that skill at start of figths instead of dpsing.

Warriors can be good due to how much they can aoe enemies and hold aggro while also killing them.
Remember that soldiers can be resummoned for free, even if they are alive. If they morale/power is low after one figths, one single click and (no induction) they are back fully healed.

I usually run the skirmish against yellow mobs (1-2 levels above, depends on wheter I willg et bonus marks or not), but sometimes its worth going orange (when you will get the next tier drops - level 30, 45, 60).

At higher levels, imo, it isnt really worth doing the encounters. They take too long to kill, in some skirmishs are out of the path and the prize is minimal (chance of loot plus some little marks).

- Trickery is a good and fast one for good xp and marks. Eat food before and press no stop.
- Tuck is AoE paradise.
- Amon Sul was amazing when my hunter still used the archer. With a melee soldier or a melee char, there too much running around.
- Bruinen usually cant be done afk due to how dumb those elfs are.... the last boss add wont be put in front of the water horses to be debuffed, so they might stay there and get killed.
- Prancing pony is another good one to AoE.

- Gondamon is usually horrible, except thats one that you can go afk and win if you´re a pet class (done with captain and LM). Just put pet near the main dwarf with aggressive on, summon soldier and do other things. Loot in 25 mins or so, depending on level).

All those are with the solo I want xp/marks in mind.

For small fellow and fellowships, herbalists and protectors soldiers gets way better since they buff more people.

I find doing them solo is a totally different and much easily managable ballgame than when you do it as a fellow. I go dps soldier in solo but I find that doing that in fellows is too dangerous lately.

(some nice tips as I skim what you all wrote)
When I skirm with Veidal I use a beefcake archer so I can maximize dps. That works great solo. But with any group we usually need more defense, heal, damage mitigation, etc, and my archer simply helps smack things around, doesn't even care if I get poisoned or need a heal, etc.
I love one that most don't like, it's Trouble in Tuckborough. The map is confusing. Once you get it down pat I seem to net more from it than most of the other skirms you get before 60-65. I can usually do it in 20 minutes and it gets me I think 280 ish skirm marks at lvl 65. I run that once a day, buy the tier 4 relics and sell them on AH for 2-5 gold.
P.S. Tuck isn't a time based one like the waves in "My Little Pony" or "Gondor Man". In Tuck, if you know the route and flatten the enemies fast, you can increase how efficiently you beat it.
Those special 3rd marks (forgot what the first word is) are only in 6-12 man skirms, so that's why it's worth doing those. I think that's where people get that symbol of celebumbledor.
(Note:spellings may have been changed for silly-people reasons)

"Do not get the power regen one on archer. Soldier brains get damaged due to how much they get hit and the archer lieks to use that skill at start of figths instead of dpsing." -Lal

Agreed =D
I dropped this power after seeing my full power hunter drop to his knees (puff) and get power he didn't need, quite a few times. I actually said something unkind to him IRL and then reminded myself that he's just a pixel-pile and I should love him even if he does stupid things that annoy me.

I love skirmishes. I find that I have to limit myself so I can do normal quests too

On my hunter I've grown to love the protector. He holds the pack while I pull them of him one at a time. after putting some marks into him he rarely dies. hoping his effectiveness keeps up as i level.

I prefer the ones where I control the pace, least favorite is gondo.

I caved. I had to try the experiment of going Herbalist instead of Archer.

I now have a pretty sturdy Herbalist and I solo'd 5 skirmishes at my level last night for over 2000 skirmish marks without any deaths and killing all encounters. Because of my dear Herbalist I was able to hold continual conversations with people through tells. It got super hairy a couple times with my Herbalist and me out of power and her life hanging by a thread once and mine another, when we pulled really bad combinations of Elites and mobs.

Pretty sure my archer couldn't have done that. On the other hand it probably took longer. Skirmish log stats are useful to look at on your character page. Alas they aren't updating very quickly these days.

Repost on skills for an Herbalist I found and followed

Skills: Nature's Cure, Refreshing Herbs , Strengthening Draught, Ultimate - Words of Healing

Training : Healing Done, Boundless Power, Resurgent Power, Boundless Resolve

I find words of healing the best healing skill, because the soldier doesn't heal me too often, so every time he uses this one I'm sure i get heals aswell. And for training i prefer to up soldier's power pool as much as possible.

For the ULTIMATE: Words of Healing, save up 4 Second marks and barter it.
Herbalist rank 15 (level 59)
Skills at 7s and 9s
Training mostly 1s (boundless power at 4)
Personal: a couple of 1s

You're a more patient man than I am

Tried the herbie at lower levels on my hunter.
Yeah, he can keep you alive, but I havent died in a skirm for a long time and I would say even 500 silver for repairs if more than worth the time won doing those skirms faster.