Based on the map of Middle-Earth and Tolkien admitting that it corresponds almost directly to the map of Europe, I'd say that the folk of Umbar and the Isles themselves represent a sort of Spanish Indies. Corsair by definition means "Pirate" or "pirate ship" if you're referring to a group of them travelling. The language they spoke before the Numenoreans arrived wasn't written by Tolkien but we know the Numens spoke Adunaic, Which is representative of both Latin and Semitic languages. To me it almost directly resembles Constantinople. The Varangian Guard (Vikings serving as elite soldiers in the Byzantine Empire) and a sea-faring people trading in all corners of the world with Norse, Greek and Latin roots alike. Taking all these elements in, like the winged crown, the pirates and the aesthetics and craftsmanship of their armours, I'd say you've got them all in one people. Edit: That was my long-winded approach of explaining the dwarf looking Norse, their involvement with Umbar, the language of Umbar and a metaphor of how their culture was formed as of course, it's fiction.
Good news, I won't have to wait until the expansion to start my River Hobbit Mariner, and finally play through Before the Shadow. I expect to see a great many River Hobbit Mariners running around soon.
Leaving aside a lot of the New Bits for now, because there's a lot of stuff to wait and see how it plays out with the new class etc... I'm glad to see the boosts to the dedicated DPS classes. Having been playing both my Guardian and my Champ a lot since the Guardian rework, it's felt pretty stark in the damage falloff. So tuning Guardian just a hair down, and boosting the "I'm here in this group to kill things, it's my job" pure DPS of the Hunter and Champ up some sounds like it'll bring things nicely in line. My Champ is *much* better geared than my Guardian is overall, and has felt lacking in that department. I'm sure Hunters won't mind either. :D
If they're going to make buffs and debuffs not stackable then they should have the exact same effect. If they have different effect then they should be stackable. SSG is doing a good job moving to normalization but executing it terribly.
I am a bit out of the loop, but does anyone know when the crafting changes are going to be arriving? Googling seems to suggest that the subject just stopped being discussed months ago... even though this is the change that I was most hyped for when it was announced. Has this been delayed until the launch of the expansion or is it still imminent? I really want to finally come back to lotro but I don't wanna level my chars with the old vocation system since they are changing it anyway.
I don’t understand why they are normalizing the debuffs. And a highly organized group, yes, you can rotate debuff cool downs. But most of the time, people are just going to use things. What’s going to result from this most likely is that people are either going to want one class or the other, and not both. When you normalize classes like that, they lose their unique strength and purpose for bringing everyone
Agree. Its great to see a new class but in raids we will soon see , LoreMaster ans Captains loosing spot sto Mariners . 12 Spots for 12 calsses is small space to fit them all.
Just like River Hobbits - Completely underwhelmed by Mariner. Any class with mechanics that hurt your own character is B.S. Looking forward to seeing what Amazon produces for a Middle Earth RPG.
