Way back at the launch of Lord of the Rings Online, the first character I stuck with past the early levels was a Hobbit Burglar. He was one of two (the other being a Loremaster) I hit the level cap with, right around the time Evendim was released. But then I set him aside in favor of the LM, and by the time I came back to him — after Moria, and after capping a Guardian and Captain, I found that things had changed so much I hardly knew what to do any more.
A couple of months ago, with nothing better to do while waiting for Mirkwood, I decided to start over with a new Burglar and relearn the class from scratch — and I discovered that it’s my favorite again, although it’s not the same class it used to be at launch. The biggest change, and the one I want to talk about in this post, is the Gambler trait line. The Gambler line can increase the Burglar’s capability quite a lot, but only with heavy reliance on chance. This trait line is especially unusual because it doesn’t just enhance game mechanics that already exist for the Burglar — it adds something new, which the class doesn’t have at all without at least one Gambler trait.
That new mechanic is the Gamble, which is a short duration debuff that has a random power level, and has a random chance of being applied when you use certain Burglar skills. The deeper you trait into the Gambler line, the more skills have a chance to apply a Gamble, and the better that chance gets.
In the previous paragraph I mentioned that gambles have a random power level. Whenever you apply a gamble, the game rolls a number from 1-6 which determines how powerful the gamble is. (If you roll a 6, the corresponding sound effect is a nice “cha-ching!” which is always nice to hear during a tough fight!) A tier 1 gamble is generally quite weak and useful mainly for enabling other bonuses, while a tier 6 Gamble is very strong. There are three kinds of gamble:
A debuffing gamble is a 15-second offensive debuff, similar to the Disable trick. At tier 1 it debuffs for +15% attack duration, and at tier 6, it provides +20% miss chance, +40% attack duration and -30% damage. And in case you want to reduce the enemy to complete helplessness, it stacks with Disable, too.
A damaging gamble does damage over time, 5 ticks over 15 seconds. The exact amount of damage scales to your level, but at level 60 it does 35 common damage per tick at tier 1, and 140 per tick at tier 6.
Finally, a disabling gamble is a daze, and is what gives the Gambler line one of its most useful abilities. Unlike Riddle, the daze from a disabling gamble works on any enemy type, like the Loremaster’s Blinding Flash. It also can have a long duration — it starts at 15 seconds for tier 1, and at tier 6 it lasts for a full minute!
One thing that can be a bit confusing to new Burglars, and is not explained too well inside the game, is that when you land a disabling gamble, a debuff that looks like a yellow star appears on the enemy, and the tooltip just says “Disabling Gamble”. What actually happens is that the daze is applied separately, in case the enemy is immune or it ends early. The yellow “Disabling Gamble” debuff is a placeholder which is used so that you get the full 15 seconds to use other bonuses that depend on a gamble being present.
The chance to apply a gamble from stealth (for the skills that allow that) begins at 60%, and the chance to apply one during combat starts at a measly 25%. But under the right conditions, you can add up to 70% to those chances; a level 60 Gambler with good legendary items can be assured of a fairly consistently landing gambles, although how effective they are is still up to the dice.
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