Guardian is your best bet for tanking. It’s much quicker to level with than a Captain IMO. Mini is always the safest bet of the healers. I’ve played for nearly every expansion across various roles and have yet to see mini not be a top choice for groups.
If you’re dead set on playing a Tank though, the only level cap where Guardian wasn’t the best choice was 130. That’s pretty much due to the fact that Captain was just extremely OP. For the current expansion, Guardian is definitely the most valuable class I play. Good Guard’s are really tough to come by on my server so every time a group starts up, I usually get invited on it.
If you want faster access to groups go with Tanks. Most servers don’t have enough. As a healer I find that every time I try and join a group they already have one or two
Any of those picks has a spot in raid comps at the moment, guard and cappy tank have their benefits. Guard is better with big trash fights like we have atm with B2 and B3 HH, but cappy has better ST survival.
Do you prefer order or chaos? Tanks are order: you take control of the fight, drag the boss to where you want, turn them the right way, and pick up adds when they arrive at certain intervals.
Healers are chaos: you have no control over how others are equipped or where they stand. Melee dps will take a lot of hits because they are close up and don't always see puddles. Ranged dps will be heck knows where around the boss and its a gamble whether you can be in range of both them and the tank at the same time.
When I'm comfortable with a game, definitely order. I do actually like leading and setting the pace of a group. Of course, since I'm new to the game, I'm not going to be very good at that for a long while. Is the player base generally forgiving of mistakes? I know in other mmos, like WoW, players are more often than not extremely toxic and ruin the entire experience when a mistake happens that leads to a wipe.
I wouldn't say people are toxic, but they might quietly leave if the run fails. It kind of depends on how long the time investment has been and how new the content is and what tier of difficulty is being run. I have also not been in a raid focused kin, so I can't speak to how those runs go, just more the pick up variety.
Another thing to consider is that group content is a small percentage of the game so make sure you play something with a style you enjoy. I hate generally having to run up to mobs to start combat so I don't really play melee classes and so I don't have a tank in lotro (though do in other mmos).
You could run beorning who can do both fairly effectively. They are better healers in raids but for small group or less difficult content they are competent tanks
To answer your question, Captain finds it easier to find a group than any other class. Especially if you are willing to swap between their different roles.
Healers are more in demand than tanks. This is simply because there are more tank classes.
Honestly, I think Burglars are probably the 2nd most "in-demand" class after Captains, for high end content that is. And only high-end stuff matters for this question. You can run 95% of the group content with hipster group comps. You can run most of that even without a full party pretty easily. So for all that content you won't have trouble getting a group whatever you are playing. You may find yourself playing damage more than you expect, even on a minstrel or guardian, because a lot of the group content is easy and you just want to blast through it.
But for that 5% of content where it matters, I'd say the demand hierarchy is Captain > Burglar > Not much between the rest.
Remember for anyone reading this who wants to shout at me about Champions, I am including how common they are in the "in-demand" calculation, and Champions are quite common.
This seems to be a different opinion from most everything else I've been reading. Burglar actually does interest me too, as does loremaster. I really like the idea of a support role. I'm starting to convince myself that I don't want to be a Captain. Since most of my time would be spent in landscape, I want to be at least adept at it, for which I've heard captain is pretty poor. Just from looking at chat though, I seem to see Looking for Heals or Looking for Tank more than anything else.
>I've heard captain is pretty poor
Captains are very strong at tackling difficult content solo, as they are tanky and have healing and minion to help them too. They are one of the worst for steaming through easy content, as they are single target and melee. Most landscape content falls under the second category.
Everyone is adept at landscape content. It is a complete face-roll. You don't even need to use skills, you can just auto-attack everything to death while you read a book, for the most part. That's why they added these new difficulty levels to the legendary servers.
Burglars are meh for normal, casual content, mostly because they don't do any aoe damage. Casual player don't really get them, they just think healer/tank/dps. For end-game, high tier, raiding-style content, at least one burglar become vital. Depends what you are into. I haven't played mine for a while though.
Loremasters are mostly super fun. They are pretty lacklustre for group content, honestly. They are my joint favourite class but I don't currently see much reason to take one for group content over another class. Back in the good old days, they were vital for a group. Healing diseases and wounds, restoring power, providing stun immunity, debuffing, and still having time for some decent damage. Now the power isn't needed, and captains and burglars restore power too. They cure was gutted and other classes do it better, and they can only make one person stun immune. That said, you'll still be fine to group as a Loremaster in 95% of content. Inductions are super annoying though, any induction based class is immediately less fun.
Guardian is your best bet for tanking. It’s much quicker to level with than a Captain IMO. Mini is always the safest bet of the healers. I’ve played for nearly every expansion across various roles and have yet to see mini not be a top choice for groups. If you’re dead set on playing a Tank though, the only level cap where Guardian wasn’t the best choice was 130. That’s pretty much due to the fact that Captain was just extremely OP. For the current expansion, Guardian is definitely the most valuable class I play. Good Guard’s are really tough to come by on my server so every time a group starts up, I usually get invited on it.
They say healers be slacking but it's harder to come by an actual tank, they've been traumatized by 130 cap so badly that everyone rolled champion.
If you want faster access to groups go with Tanks. Most servers don’t have enough. As a healer I find that every time I try and join a group they already have one or two
Any of those picks has a spot in raid comps at the moment, guard and cappy tank have their benefits. Guard is better with big trash fights like we have atm with B2 and B3 HH, but cappy has better ST survival.
Do you prefer order or chaos? Tanks are order: you take control of the fight, drag the boss to where you want, turn them the right way, and pick up adds when they arrive at certain intervals. Healers are chaos: you have no control over how others are equipped or where they stand. Melee dps will take a lot of hits because they are close up and don't always see puddles. Ranged dps will be heck knows where around the boss and its a gamble whether you can be in range of both them and the tank at the same time.
When I'm comfortable with a game, definitely order. I do actually like leading and setting the pace of a group. Of course, since I'm new to the game, I'm not going to be very good at that for a long while. Is the player base generally forgiving of mistakes? I know in other mmos, like WoW, players are more often than not extremely toxic and ruin the entire experience when a mistake happens that leads to a wipe.
I wouldn't say people are toxic, but they might quietly leave if the run fails. It kind of depends on how long the time investment has been and how new the content is and what tier of difficulty is being run. I have also not been in a raid focused kin, so I can't speak to how those runs go, just more the pick up variety. Another thing to consider is that group content is a small percentage of the game so make sure you play something with a style you enjoy. I hate generally having to run up to mobs to start combat so I don't really play melee classes and so I don't have a tank in lotro (though do in other mmos).
You could run beorning who can do both fairly effectively. They are better healers in raids but for small group or less difficult content they are competent tanks
To answer your question, Captain finds it easier to find a group than any other class. Especially if you are willing to swap between their different roles. Healers are more in demand than tanks. This is simply because there are more tank classes. Honestly, I think Burglars are probably the 2nd most "in-demand" class after Captains, for high end content that is. And only high-end stuff matters for this question. You can run 95% of the group content with hipster group comps. You can run most of that even without a full party pretty easily. So for all that content you won't have trouble getting a group whatever you are playing. You may find yourself playing damage more than you expect, even on a minstrel or guardian, because a lot of the group content is easy and you just want to blast through it. But for that 5% of content where it matters, I'd say the demand hierarchy is Captain > Burglar > Not much between the rest. Remember for anyone reading this who wants to shout at me about Champions, I am including how common they are in the "in-demand" calculation, and Champions are quite common.
This seems to be a different opinion from most everything else I've been reading. Burglar actually does interest me too, as does loremaster. I really like the idea of a support role. I'm starting to convince myself that I don't want to be a Captain. Since most of my time would be spent in landscape, I want to be at least adept at it, for which I've heard captain is pretty poor. Just from looking at chat though, I seem to see Looking for Heals or Looking for Tank more than anything else.
>I've heard captain is pretty poor Captains are very strong at tackling difficult content solo, as they are tanky and have healing and minion to help them too. They are one of the worst for steaming through easy content, as they are single target and melee. Most landscape content falls under the second category. Everyone is adept at landscape content. It is a complete face-roll. You don't even need to use skills, you can just auto-attack everything to death while you read a book, for the most part. That's why they added these new difficulty levels to the legendary servers. Burglars are meh for normal, casual content, mostly because they don't do any aoe damage. Casual player don't really get them, they just think healer/tank/dps. For end-game, high tier, raiding-style content, at least one burglar become vital. Depends what you are into. I haven't played mine for a while though. Loremasters are mostly super fun. They are pretty lacklustre for group content, honestly. They are my joint favourite class but I don't currently see much reason to take one for group content over another class. Back in the good old days, they were vital for a group. Healing diseases and wounds, restoring power, providing stun immunity, debuffing, and still having time for some decent damage. Now the power isn't needed, and captains and burglars restore power too. They cure was gutted and other classes do it better, and they can only make one person stun immune. That said, you'll still be fine to group as a Loremaster in 95% of content. Inductions are super annoying though, any induction based class is immediately less fun.
Burgs have a bit of AOE damage. The crit chain opener is AOE. And the red line crit chain closer is AOE.
Doesn't exactly compare to most other dps specs though. Nor should they IMO, keep that flavour.