The Final Ding

A view over dark Sad Doldur, in Mirkwood.

Sooo, my second minstrel finally hit 65 last weekend. I must say it was a fun ride, and I really miss getting XP now - questing just feels so much more rewarding when you know there's always a new skill or trait or piece of equipment just after the next milestone.

I'm also surprised how easy it was to solo as a minstrel, the original healing class. It was pretty easy all the way to 50+, and once I got the red-line trait capstone at 58 (I don't know how I did it, but I got Kindred with the Guards just a moment before hitting 58!) my puny bard turned into an insane weapon of mass destruction, critting 2500+ on on-level mobs and hardly losing any morale herself while tackling 2-4 mobs.

Short guide to minstrel awesomeness:

• Acquire and trait Unrelenting before lv20 and oneshot on-level mobs.
• Trait Battle-Hymn as soon as you can (awesome combat-regen for solo).
• Use Cry of the Valar (fear) if you pull too much.
• Kite using the run-speed buff of Call of the Second Age and nuke while running.
• When facing a difficult pull (skirmish lieutenants with adds, etc), use Song of Distraction to break the group.

Basic Warspeech damage rotation:

1. Ballad of Resonance (raises all your tactical damage by 10-20%)
2. Echoes of Battle (lowers mob's resistances -> bigger chance your next skills will land
3. Call of Oromë (lower's mobs Light resistance -> your ballads and cries will do more damage)
4. Spam Call to Fate, Call of the Second Age (if melee), open ballad tiers for Anthem of the Valar (with Battle-hymn trait this gives as much combat-regen as Anthem of the Free Peoples)
5. Apply Call of Oromë once it's off cooldown and keep Ballad of Resonance up at all times

I even got to dps a couple times in instances where the group already had a healer, but sadly power is a big issue for minstrels still. After one or two skill rotations my power pool would be empty. While solo I usually just ate some regen food and bought the 50dp regen buff for 30 minutes (I definitely recommend that for anyone on a questing spree!), but without a meek LM feeding me power I wouldn't be able to keep the mincer-machine going in group instances.

Now I'm sort of wondering what to do with my new healer, since my runekeeper is already giving me angry looks and my first minstrel refuses to talk to me.