One important skill Lore-masters will want to develop early on is how to react to a "Flanked!" state your pet can put on a foe. This can be confusing to new players of the class as Flanking is a "proc" effect that may randomly occur each time your pet auto-attacks. The angle of your pet's attack does not matter (i.e., front, back, and sides are all the same), and there is no way to directly cause a Flanked! state to occur. It simply occurs periodically if your pet is attacking a target.
Note: "Proc" is a term used in gaming to refer to an extra effect that can randomly be "processed" under certain conditions. For example, an axe in LotRO may "proc" an armor rend debuff effect upon hitting a target. Armor or jewelry may "proc" a damage reflection effect when a player is hit, and so on. Similarly, Lore-master pets may "proc" a Flanked! state on a target while attacking.
Once the pet triggers a Flanked! state on the foe, you have 7 seconds in which to react. If you attack a Flanked! foe with a successful Improved Staff-strike, the attack will do greater damage than it does against a non-Flanked! enemy. (The trait Master of the Staff upgrades the normal Staff-strike skill to Improved Staff Strike.) Alternatively, if you cast Sign of Battle: Wizardry (received at level 14), or Sign of Battle: Wizard's Fire (received at level 54) on a Flanked! foe and it hits, you will receive a self-heal in addition to the normal DoT (damage over time) effect it casts. Only one of these bonuses can occur per Flanked! state since the state will be removed upon a successful attack from either skill. However if either attack misses or is resisted, the Flanked! state remains, and you can attempt to use the other before the state expires.
There are three ways to tell when a foe is Flanked!:
- There is an audible "chime" sound that occurs. (Note: The chime is "voice over". If you are having trouble hearing the chime, try turning up the "VO Volume" or reducing the volume of everything else.)
- If your camera is close enough to the foe, you will see a single, brief flash of two violet arrows on each side of the foe's body. This flash occurs only once and is quite subtle, so you must be actively watching for it. You must also have the "Particle Effects" option enabled to see this effect.
- An icon will appear under the Flanked! foe's morale/power status bar. It looks like the "Attack" icon on your pet bar (the open jaws icon). This icon is fairly easy to spot. Buff/debuff icons are added from the left, so if the foe is Flanked!, this icon will almost always be one of the first two or three icons due to its short duration.
Note: A Lore-master may only benefit from a Flanked! state applied by his own pet. Unfortunately, there is currently no way to distinguish between Flanked! states applied by two different pets attacking the same target. However, only the Lore-master whose pet caused the Flanked! state will benefit.
While there is no direct way to apply a Flanked! proc, there are ways to influence it. Pets flank at different rates, so your pet choice will affect how frequently you see Flanked! procs. The Bear (received at level 14 -- Friend of Bears), being the tanking pet, procs Flanked! the least. The Lynx (received at level 30 -- Lynx Speech) procs a bit more than the Bear. And the Raven (received at level 4 -- Raven-lore) procs the most of the non-Legendary Combat pets. The Eagle (received from the Legendary trait, Eagle-Friend, from completing both lines of the level 45 class quests) procs the most. Update: New pet, the bog-lurker, procs more than eagle in melee, but less than eagle from range. (received from Bog-Lurker, vendor book from getting kindred rep in moria)
Regardless of which pet you use, your chances of achieving a Flanked! proc are dependent on the pet's attack speed (more attacks = more chances to proc) and ability to hit (missed attacks will not proc Flanked!). Thus, buffing your pet with Sign of the Wild: Rage will improve your chance to see a Flanked! because that skill increases his attack speed. You will notice a marked difference in the Flanked! rate of a pet that is buffed with this skill. Similarly, slotting a trait that improves the pet's offense may improve his hit chances. For example, slotting Hardy Bear raises the Bear's level by one level. This improves his chances of hitting higher level foes, so it will improve his chance to proc a Flanked! state. Finally, reducing the target's defenses will help improve the pet's chances to hit, improving the chance to proc a Flanked! (e.g., Sign of Power: Command decreases the target's Parry chances).
Young Lore-masters will receive their first pet, the Raven, at level 4. However, the extra damage from the Staff-strike skill only occurs if the skill has been upgraded to Improved Staff-strike from the Trait: Master of the Staff trait. So an aspiring Lore-master will want to complete the deed Deed: Master of the Staff fairly early and then slot the resulting class trait to take advantage of this. This deed requires 600 uses of Staff-strike to complete. Likewise, the skill Sign of Battle: Wizardry is not received until level 14, so the self-heal will not be available until then. The self-heal component is part of the basic skill, so while it does require a Flanked! state, there are no additional steps to get this ability.
When you hear the term "Flank and Tank," it is in reference to this mechanic. Lore-masters can allow the pet to tank while they debuff and do damage. This is generally only practical with the Bear as he has the highest survivability and greatest ability to hold aggro (the foe's attention) with the proper trait build (e.g., Hardy Bear). The Lynx, is not as survivable as the Bear, but his high DPS (damage per second) allows for faster kills making his lower survivability less of an issue (especially when traited with the legendary trait, Noble Savage, which makes any pet a Signature pet). This makes the Lynx a somewhat useable in a tanking role as well. However, due to their lower survivability the Raven and Eagle do not generally work as well in a tanking role. But their higher Flanking rates do make them better suited to the "Flank and Tank" strategy. This is where the Lore-master himself takes the aggro and acts as the tank, relying on self-heals and extra damage from using the appropriate skills during a Flanked! state (as explained above) to make up for his lack of heavier armor. This wide range of options makes Lore-masters one of the most versatile classes in the game.
EDIT- From an old time gamer here. I was under the impression Proc was actually P.R.O.C. = Power release on contact.
