I have a Captain alt and it’s a lot of fun. I always felt Captains were very paladin-ish but done in what I felt was a “better” way than most paladin classes I’ve seen. They’re best with the halberd though, which is a two-hander which means each attack is a little slower. They have awesome buffs, though some don’t last as long so to an extent playing a Captain well involves a bit of micro-management. But they are a very versatile class, which is what I look for.

The hunter on the other hand, is a blast in terms of shear single-target dps, but other than being able to taxi everyone around with the various “guide” (ie. teleport) skills, they seem to me more of a one-trick pony. Dps, dps, dps and a little crowd control on the side with traps. Now, don’t get me wrong, they’re not useless or unwanted. In fact I don’t ever recall playing an MMO where I’m constantly seeing groups looking for hunters (or champions) for dps instead of *only* looking for the generic tank/healer combo.

But I like being able to fill multiple roles which is why a Lore-master is my main; it’s the most complicated class in the game to play well. Minstrels are surprisingly fun; similar to WAR (though a completely different mechanic) they need to fight a bit to get to some of their best buffs, etc. though it’s not required at all for the standard heals.

It’s too bad you guys aren’t on Arkenstone, I’d be more than happy to run around with y’all…

@Brent: For my part, I’d vote Captain… it means some back-up healing, plus the only rez capability in the game (if I’m not mistaken). But that is just me being a bit insecure, not sure I have enough healing to cover everyone. Tho if you go full-on DPS with a hunter, Adam will be able to spend more of his time healing.

My advice would be to coordinate offline somewhat so that by the time you get to your weekly play session you have the same group quests lined up. And do every single quest in the Breelands so that you can skip the Lonelands if you guys don’t like it (many players cite it as their least favorite zone in the game, and a reason for quitting). If you do everything in the Breelands (including the old forest and some tough quests in barrow downs) you can actually head straight up to the North Downs and start in on some orange quests. Took me three toons to figure out that was possible.

In any case, that group should take you all the way through Cairn Doom and your legendary traits if everyone ends up digging LoTRO.

Regarding the group makeup and the issues you had with DDO. I think LoTRO is much more forgiving about group makeup for 90% of it’s content. I can’t comment much on raids, but even on most of the epic story-line quests you can get away with some pretty un-diverse groups.

Send Brynulf a whisper if you’re ever on Landroval.

Hemlock: Unfortunately it’s not. Our group was way too heavy on DPS. No fault to Craig (who played the rogue/wizard) but that character concept just doesn’t do well in a group. And the Monk class is a bit fiddly; none of us really knew how it worked.

As a result two of our five groupmates were probably under-utilized. Group size in DDO is six; we really could have used a second healer (a bard or pally would have been great) and an offtank.