Introduction

This guide was originally written as a general guide for the guardians within my kin. A lot of the material covered in this guide is subject to debate since a lot of it is opinion, but almost all of it has been agreed upon by the three best guardians we have in our kin.

I hope you find it useful

A Theory on Threat Mechanics

My theory on threat: Within the game of LOTRO there are two types of threat; Actual damage threat and perceived threat. Actual threat is threat generated by damage and perceived threat is used by guardians to hold aggro off the DPS classes. Part of my theory also states that there is actually a cap on the amount of perceived threat you are allowed to have (say 10,000 points) but there doesn't seem like there is a cap on the amount of threat you can have from damage (if there was then a guardian could just hit both caps and hunter would never pull aggro and that would be a bit over powered me thinks) that is why even though you may be taunting like like crazy a hunter can pull it off you, but if you are doing damage as well it's a lot harder for the hunter to steal aggro.

An analogy I like to use is this...your fighting 3 people at once. one person is just standing there yelling at you, one is going crazy and try to do alot of damage, and the last guy is doing both. I don't know about you but the biggest threat that I perceive is the guy doing both although the guy not yelling may be doing more damage.

Traits

Virtues

my general trait setup Valour, Innocence, Justice, loyalty, Discipline

Innocence is REQUIRED!!! For guardians it is one of the most important traits you can equip since it give you the most melee defense compared to all the other traits.

I use Valour and Justice for the extra morale and a little bit more ICMR. Lately though I have been looking to replace Justice since the morale it gives it very low. Depending on the situation I might switching it with either Empathy or Tolerance. Valour may as be taken out since it's morale benefit is also low but it does give the most straight up morale then any other trait.

Loyalty (vitality) and Discipline (might) are great traits for a guardian since it affects 2 of the 3 most important stats that a guardian should care about. I have seen some guardians replace these with either Determination or Idealism for a boost to agility or fate.

Edit: IMHO, Justice and Valour are huge mistakes to trait. If you want to be effective handling bosses, and big mobs, then 283 morale isnt going to be the difference between life and death. Which is why it is important to mitigate damage to yourself. This can be done by reducing incomming damage from melee, ranged and tactical. 5% of ranged damage over the course of a fight will out wiegh the 283 morale gained by Valour. I would recomend Innocence, Discipline, Zeal, Tolerance and Compassion all maxed, as well as having Fidelity, and Charity maxed out so you can best trait for the encounters you are going to tank. With the level caps being raised even a 1% decrease in damage is a huge ammount over the course of a boss fight.

Class Traits

my tanking set up Stoic, Harasser, Defensive Expertise, Guardian's Ward, Threatening Presence, Controlled Breathing, Litany of Challenge

Stoic, Harasser, Defensive Expertise, Guardian's Ward, Threatening Presence are REQUIRED!!! Litany of Challenge I wont go so far as to say it's required but it can make your life as a guardian a heck of a lot easier since it adds +2 challenge targets and makes challenge last 3 seconds longer. I use to have Grim Challenge equipped but I have since replaced it since I'm finding my self no longer needing to use challenge as much and the extra healing from Catch a Breath helps the group alot.

Legendary Traits

Challenge the Darkness - REQUIRED!!! this is your "oh crap" button unlike challenge you can hit 10 targets with it and it activates your guardian's ward as to help keep you alive. It is a large AoE force taunt AND an AoE Agro Copy... which basically means that you get bumped to the top of the threat list of every mob (up to 10) in its affect radius (10m centered on you). It also raises Guardian's Ward and should buy you the time to get some good AoE threat building skills off like Litany of Defiance and Shield Taunt. Its also not a bad idea for a champ to drop an Ebbing Ire on you... especially if he had used Raging Blades before you used Challenge the Darkness... but that is if you are in an organized group that actually makes an effort to ensure that agro is on the tank.

To the King - There is no real reason why you shouldn't trait this unless you want to trait Guardian's Threat. It's great for both damage and for it ability to fire off FM's.

Shield-Smash - There is also no real reason why this shouldn't traited unless you want to use Guardian's Threat. This skill is great for both damage and threat (I regularly crit for around 1500 with it) and you can use it after Shield-taunt for a bit of a capstone effect on an individual mob.

Edit: Threat Stance: This is a nice skill to have if you are running instances. Shield Smash, IMHO is not a quality legendary because it stuns the mob, which on bosses is ineffective. I would prefer to have the Threat Stance so you can use it like an extra challenge. To use this skill properly you would run in block/parry stance and if once you have established aggro if you are fighting with a champ/hunter/minst for the mobs attention, flip into threat stance and your threat gets a +20% boost (more or less depending on legacies, etc.). This will give you a huge edge in threat that you shouldnt lose again. If one was to run in Threat stance all the time, well then you would be better using any other legacy, or even leaving the spot blank. When used correctly, Threat Stance is an extra 'oh crap' button that seals the deal on threat when you need it. Also it has 0 cool down, so you can use it one fight after another if you needed too.

Gear

Armor

There is no right or wrong when it comes to gear but as always the best gear you can have it raid gear. As of right now the level 65 crafted gear is horrible compared to the DN set and the armor from the new 12 man raid Barad Guldur actually seems to have slightly inferior stats (other then armor) compared to the DN set. So if you can get your hands on a DN set (that's asking alot) your gonna be uber...but as of right now the +25 rad pieces coupled with the +15 set (the +10 set has better stats) you should should be good for the majority of all tanking situations.

Jewelery

As for jewelery there is no right or wrong answer so long as your not an idiot. Sublime Dawn-rose stuff is still good but the loth stuff is better. as long as you don't get any rings of tactics you should be fine, But with that said there is a ring that drops from SG that is amazing for a guardian. The ring in question is Ril-Mîr when compared to a Glowing Aureate Band it is superior in every way except for a small loss of parry rating.

Legendary Weapon Legacies

Sometimes there can be some confusion about which legacies to use, in this section I'll give you just a basic over view for both weapons and belts.

Weapon

AoE targets - I'm gonna say REQUIRED!!! for this one since in almost every situation you encounter more than 3 mobs at a time being able to hit every single one of them can only help you tank and can't hurt.

Honestly that is really the only "needed" legacy. the rest of our legacies are pretty useful and too numerous for me to want to type them all out :) , but I will list some recommendations

• Whirling Retaliation damage
• Sweeping Cuts damage
• Guardian's Pledge cooldown

anything else you get on your weapon is just gravy in my opinion

Belt Legacies

ah yes the belt... the greatest thing to happen to a guardian since our ability to wear heavy armor...

As most of you have seen on our belts we all have received a new DPS like thingy to pour our points into on our belts called "Shield Use Rank". Now you may be asking your self,

What does this new fangled Rating for me?

Does it increase block chance?

Does it increase damage?

Does it do both?

The answer isn't so simple. All shield use rating does it increase the damage you do with your shield attacks which is really nice, but I would suggest you don't put more then a few ranks into it on a level 65 third or second age belt since your points could be better spend on you actual legacies.

now as for your legacies there are some very important ones you want on your belt if you plan to tank.

Skill Threat Up - Adds a threat component to even non-threat skills, Possibly increases threat on skills that already have a threat component.

Challenge Targets - if you max out this legacy your challenge can affect 8 targets.

Shield Damage - Helps you build up aggro since all shield attacks have an enhanced ability to generate it and it helps with DPS (naturally)

I would say those 3 are the required legacies but there are many other legacies that when thrown on top of those can make a world of difference like...

Cry resist - reduced chance to have taunts resisted

Catch a Breath cooldown - I have yet to get this but from what I've heard you can get you CaB down to a 15 second timer (compared to 45 seconds) which would absolutely awesome and almost over powered depending on how much it costs to rank up.

also any healing type legacies you can get would also benefit you a lot.

Taking Command

In my opinion the thing that separates a good guardian from a great one is only a few small points.

the first and most important aspect of tanking that some seem to miss/forget is positioning. Having the ability to position and manipulate a mob(s) is one of the best things you can for your self as a guardian and it can also help your group immensely. I'll also give you a basic guideline on what to do when you encounter some of the troublesome mobs with in Middle-Earth.

Situational Tanking

- Tanking multiple mobs

when your faced with tanking multiple the best thing you can do in this situation (or any tanking situation) is to first get all the aggro (naturally) and then move them to a spot where every member of your group is facing the backs of the mob(s). What this does for you is that it makes it easier for you to identify a mob which has lost your aggro for he will either run off or just turn around. doing this will also help the group since it will increase everyone's DPS and thus killing the mobs faster.

- Tanking Trolls

Trolls aren't as bad as everyone makes them out to be, now I am not saying they can't be a pain in the butt but if you do your job right it should be pretty easy. When your faced with troll you should get aggro as soon as you can and find a nice wall to plant your back against. The reason why you should do this is that every troll has the ability to knock back. Hopefully I don't have to explain why this can be bad in almost any situation.

- Tanking a Kiting Ranged Mob

One of the most annoying enemies you can face is an enemy who is ranged and when ever you get close to them they run away. Now the common tendency of most people is that they will follow this mob until it stops. Sometimes that idea works and you get away with it, but what if he's headed for another group of enemies and there's no wall or pillar to line of sight it? what do you do? Oddly the best advice I can give you for this is to chase him only a short distance (if your able to hit him at least once you got close enough), once you've moved to where the mob was just stop where you are. If you did it right the mob will actually stop running from you and then come back and get into melee with you.

Survivability

Under this section I'm going to give some insight into when you should and why you should use your emergency skills and they can save your entire raid.

Warrior's Heart - I tend to use this for just as basic heal...some guards like using it before the head into a fight so they have a larger morale pool but in raiding situations like the watcher you getting hit so hard and so fast that it doesn't make much of a difference. I tend to pop this skill off when I'm at about 50% and I know I'm about to get hit pretty hard soon.

Guardian's Pledge - God mode. one of our greatest skill is pledge. any guardian worth his salt knows how precious guardian's pledge is. this skill should be used in these type of situations.

1.) you and everyone else in your group is at about 50% health and you know the minstrel is having a hard time keeping up with the high amount of spike damage.

2.) someone in your raid dies and the minstrel has to use rally but can't stop to do so since your getting hit so much. announce to the minstrel that when they're ready you will pop pledge so they have time to get the rez off (this can save your raid)

3.) Someone runs off and pulls some extra mobs and you have to hit Challenge the Darkness to get everything under control but the healer wasn't expecting it so your morale starts to drop...pop pledge till the healer gets their bearings.

Thrill of Danger - not much to say about this one other than it's most idea to pop when there are atleast 3 enemies near by so you get the most power out of it.

Aggro skills

Challenge - The biggest and most common misconception most guardians and non guardians have about this skill that once you use challenge they think they have reset everyone's or set their aggro to that of the highest persons. These beliefs are wrong. what challenge does for you in locks a target on to you for 10 seconds (13 seconds if traited) and allows you to use all of your other aggro skills with out the mobs running off to chase other people. Yes challenge does have an actual aggro building component to it but it does not reset aggro.

Fray the Edge - I admit I don't use this skill as much as I should. I mostly use this skill for pulling a single target who got pulled by some one and build up some more aggro on it so it doesn't run off again.

Litany of Defiance - When keeping aggro over multiple targets this skill is a must use when you get a block response. it adds a threat over time to every target it hits... how much aggro it adds though is unknown. I am still up in the air on whether or not using Litany of Defiance generates more aggro on a single target than shield-swipe.

Shield-taunt - Skill is primarally useful for building aggro on groups, but can also be useful for building threat on targets with damage reflection (so you aren't taking heat you don't need to take). It has a reportedly higher threat componet than Bash, but Bash is ultimately more power efficient on a single target and has chance to crit.

Engage - This skill always confused me until recently. Engage is one of my favorite aggro skills just based on the fact that it is an aggro reset button. if you die in a boss fight and get rezzed using engage on the boss pretty much puts you back to where were in regards to aggro. unlike challenge though people can pull aggro after you use it since it puts you just slightly above the person with the most aggro. What this means in that it's not a force taunt in the regards that you can just hold the target when you want it but rather if you fall behind in aggro and you can't get it back using engage plus fray the edge should put you in a great position for aggro retention.

Challenge the Darkness - as stated earlier in above sections this is your "Oh crap" button if things get really hairy and dicey then pop this bad boy and force taunt 10 guys on to you and become the most threatening target. Think of it as a large AoE Challenge and AoE engage, that also raises your Guardian's Ward. I often use it in conjuction with Pledge and as many AoE taunts as I can.