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I Really Want To Face LOTRO's Balrog Again - MMORPG.com

SystemSystem Member UncommonPosts: 12,599
edited August 2019 in News & Features Discussion

imageI Really Want To Face LOTRO's Balrog Again - MMORPG.com

There are few encounters I remember really well than the Balrog fight in The Lord of the Rings Online. The reason isn't simply because facing off against a "Demon of the Underworld" is memorable. It's has more to do with how my Kinship seeming formed an enmity for the Balrog of Morgoth.

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Comments

  • ScotScot Member LegendaryPosts: 24,273
    The Rift of Nûrz Ghâshu, you are bringing back halcyon memories, it became a sort of weekly outing for our avatars. The girls would pick their best frocks and we our best plate or mail. :)

    The variety of combat, tactics and great enemies defined the Rift, making it possibly the best dungeon I have ever played.
    KARMARIUSperrin82Octagon7711
  • Lumiere123Lumiere123 Member UncommonPosts: 62
    Rift was and still is a best dungeon raid in LOTRO.
    Complexity, the feeling of something dangerous is hidden in depths. And enemies in the old times were strong.
    And finding tactic to beat the Balrog was most funny and entertainment thing in LOTRO.
    Scot
  • AmatheAmathe Member LegendaryPosts: 7,630
    Enjoyed this article. That would be a fun raid, for sure.

    EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests

  • ShankTheTankShankTheTank Associate Editor / News ManagerMMORPG.COM Staff, Member RarePosts: 230
    What...do the skills...mean?
  • silentfury007silentfury007 Member UncommonPosts: 22


    What...do the skills...mean?



    Well put.
  • cameltosiscameltosis Member LegendaryPosts: 3,832
    I loved this raid! My guild had semi-imploded just before release of the Rift - we never had enough for Helegrod either and pugging sucked, so a load of raiders left the guild for more established raiding guilds.

    So, the Rift was my first time raid leading (after only starting to raid at all 1 month earlier....) and I loved it. In my guild, we found Thrang much harder than Thaurlach, but Thaurlach was way more fun to fight. I still remember the tactics all these years later:

    Phase 1:
    Enter the room...
    Leave one hunter in the middle to kill slugs, everyone else run to the left.
    Stunlock the big guy on the other side of the pee, focus down the big guy on this side. AoE the slugs before they reach the big guy and morph into big guys themselves.
    Cleanse the pee after killing everything, then sprint back to middle.
    Repeat on the right hand side.

    Phase 2:
    Everyone stand on the glowing circle.
    Team 1 (lm, hunt, champ) head to the left room. LM roots enemies, hunter as backup, champ hits the switch.
    Team 2 (cap, random) head to the right. Cap heal-kites the adds, random hits switch.
    Pee is now non-toxic, tank jumps in to tank the balrog, everyone else return to circle and kill off any adds

    Phase 3:
    Everyone except tank and healer run to back room
    Second tank takes blind one, everyone else spaces out left and right. Kill all the slugs before the reach black holes.
    Captains need to be on point removing fears, loremasters on point removing wounds.
    Take down the blind one.
    Heal up
    Solve puzzle on the wall

    Phase 4:
    Door opens, everyone sprints back to glowing circle, main tank hits all their cooldown to not die.
    Tank and spank balrog for 5 minutes or so
    Get out of the water when the rog jumps
    At about 12k hp, captains pop last stand + in harms way, everyone else pop all cooldowns. You now have 10 seconds to kill the boss, or we all die.


    So many times, we'd get to that last 10k health, the last 10 seconds of the fight, but we'd run out of power, or damage, or whatever. We'd be so close to killing him, had been fighting him for the previous 20 minutes, but we'd wipe. Was an amazing experience killing him for the first time though, we were all so excited about it. iirc, the whole guild went down the pracing pony for a piss up afterwards.

    Whilst The Rift was (and still is) my favourite raid ever, it was never really about the depth of combat (though, lotro had deeper combat than any game I've ever played before or since). Later raids (specifially the Mirkwood raids) were much more complicated and had deeper tactics.

    What the Rift did was give you fights that had lots of tactics, but weren't necessarily that hard. If you didnt know the tactics, they seemed really hard, but once you knew the tactics they became pretty trivial. There was less randomness, less pressure on resources compared to later raids. this gave a nice sense of accomplishment once you'd mastered a fight as well as not making it too difficult to overcome. Only really Thrang and Thaurlach put big pressure on being high-skilled players, but that was mostly just because the damage output of those bosses was a lot higher.
    Octagon7711
    Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman

  • LolienLolien Newbie CommonPosts: 1
    Everyone group up in Riv for a hope token buff!
    Scotperrin82Octagon7711
  • Po_ggPo_gg Member EpicPosts: 5,749
    Rift was brutal... and in a sense still is, being one of the few remained without scaling. There are plenty of players who keep alts stopped at level 50 for the sole purpose of "traditional" Rift runs.


    I don't know why the balrog wings stucked for you this deep, but instead of reopening the can of worms which is the discussion about it (we had that under the previous article) I just derail the idea:
    Do you know what has definitely, without a doubt, wings? Chickens.
    You can now raid Sandson's farm and chase them winged chickens for eggs - Farmers Faire has just started :smile:
  • lotrlorelotrlore Managing EditorMMORPG.COM Staff, Member RarePosts: 662

    Torval said:

    Huh, I'm the odd one out that didn't like Rift at all. I'm a Helegrod guy.  Also their chasing WoW raid design nearly killed the game and permanently scarred it. It was one of the worst decisions they made about the game.



    I honestly don't disagree with this, Torval. I really disliked Helegrod personally. The reason why The Rift is so near and dear to my heart though is mostly because of Eruchin's relationship with the raid. I've never been an avid raider though, and I'm happy that LOTRO moved away from that being a focus for the most part. Though the ones in Moria were pretty cool too...
    [Deleted User]
  • UtinniUtinni Member EpicPosts: 2,209
    I guess I'm in the unpopular opinion that Rift was one of the most mindless and simple raids I've ever done in an MMO. Perhaps having played MMOs for years before LOTRO came out jaded me?
    lotrlore
  • etainiaetainia Member UncommonPosts: 1
    Anytime you wanna do this Eld, let me know
    lotrlore
  • lotrlorelotrlore Managing EditorMMORPG.COM Staff, Member RarePosts: 662

    Torval said:


    lotrlore said:



    Torval said:


    Huh, I'm the odd one out that didn't like Rift at all. I'm a Helegrod guy.  Also their chasing WoW raid design nearly killed the game and permanently scarred it. It was one of the worst decisions they made about the game.






    I honestly don't disagree with this, Torval. I really disliked Helegrod personally. The reason why The Rift is so near and dear to my heart though is mostly because of Eruchin's relationship with the raid. I've never been an avid raider though, and I'm happy that LOTRO moved away from that being a focus for the most part. Though the ones in Moria were pretty cool too...

    I should have said if I had to do a raid I preferred Helegrod, because I didn't like the raiding at all. I preferred to run through Carn Dum and Urugarth. I can understand why people were bored of that by then though. Also your reasons for liking it make perfect sense and are what I feel made MMORPGs unique.

    I liked a lot about the Moria dungeons except how easy it was to fail the entire run. I think it was cool how they fit so many different themes in one zone and then had a pinnacle dungeon for the themed area. It was really well thought out apart from the Radiance thing.



    I remember doing CD, Uru and BG runs in the original SoA days with the kin. Back when weapon speed and damage types mattered. That BG bow was the drop for all us original hunters we chased.

    I never got it....
    [Deleted User]
  • DavodtheTuttDavodtheTutt Member UncommonPosts: 415
    "There are few encounters I remember really well than the Balrog fight..." Needs something like "more than" or "as well as" or maybe "with such fondness as" in place of "really well."

    "It's has more to do with how my Kinship seeming formed an enmity for..."
    "It" and "seemingly" -- and although "seemingly" would be grammatical, it might be better to leave it out entirely, and the Kinship had an actual enmity ... hmm, "towards" might be better than "for"...

    Oh well, nobody cares about English these days.
  • PhaedruslivesPhaedruslives Member UncommonPosts: 130
    LOTRO is still the GOAT imo. FFXIV is steadily gaining steam behind it, though.
  • cgindecentcgindecent Newbie CommonPosts: 2
    Ran Conviction on Vilya back in the day. Remember world firsting all this stuff, but Balrog was one of my favorite fights personally and learning it with our group was probably one of the more memorable experiences running Conviction.
  • ScotScot Member LegendaryPosts: 24,273
    Ran Conviction on Vilya back in the day. Remember world firsting all this stuff, but Balrog was one of my favorite fights personally and learning it with our group was probably one of the more memorable experiences running Conviction.
    Welcome to the forums. :D
  • cgindecentcgindecent Newbie CommonPosts: 2

    Scot said:



    Ran Conviction on Vilya back in the day. Remember world firsting all this stuff, but Balrog was one of my favorite fights personally and learning it with our group was probably one of the more memorable experiences running Conviction.

    Welcome to the forums. :D



    Not sure why I never had an mmorpg account but this post brought back memories!
    Scot
  • advokat666advokat666 Member UncommonPosts: 93
    That´s an awesome read. I also have so many memories of Nûrz Ghâshu and LotRO in general. I really enjoyed your article.
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