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.
Traits
As I mentioned above, the gamble mechanic is not used at all unless you have at least one trait in the Gambler line. Now, I’d like to talk about what those traits are and how they work together. In addition to enabling the use of gambles, the Gambler line is useful for enhancing your stealth and Fellowship Maneuver roles.
If you are only going to have one Gambler trait, that one is Leaf-Walker. Not only does it add 20% to speed in stealth — a universally useful buff, I’d say — but it also grants the chance to apply a disabling gamble from stealth when you use Provoke. Even if you spec down one of the other trait lines, using a spare slot on this gives you a very nice added crowd control ability, and you only need one legacy (+% Gamble Chance) on your tools to raise that chance to around 75% or more. Leaf-Walker takes a while to get — use Hide In Plain Sight 250 times — so get started early.
Another generally useful trait is Side-Step, which gives additional evade rating. At level 60 it adds +720, which on my level 60 Burglar corresponds to 4.4% evade and 0.9% partial evade. Nice for soloing and PvMP, especially with the Stick and Move legendary which opens your critical response skills when you evade.
With two traits in the Gambler line, you get a chance to apply a debuffing gamble when you use Clever Retort. This isn’t terribly useful by itself, but if you were going to have two Gambler traits anyway, a chance at that big debuff is nice.
If you’re going to be using Clever Retort anyway, the next trait should help: Honed Wit decreases its cooldown by 30 seconds (to 1m 30s), and allows you to use it all the time, instead of just in Mischief. Clever Retort is a trick-removal skill that does one of four random things based on Fellowship Maneuvers — direct damage, damage over time, healing (only for the Burglar) and power restoration (ditto). While the randomness means it isn’t always useful, you should still be using it often if you’re a Gambler, for the debuff.
Three traits in the Gambler line add the chance of a damaging gamble to Startling Twist, and also add bonus damage to Surprise Strike (around 200 points at level 60) when you strike a gambled target. This is only one of several bonuses that require you to land a gamble first.
Continuing the theme of debuffing a gambled target, Cruel Odds gives your Burglars Advantage and Double-Edged Strike (critical chain) skills a 10% chance to add a small critical vulnerability debuff to their target. If the target has a gamble, this chance becomes 25%. The debuff is only a couple of percent, but it stacks with Counter Defence and applies to everyone attacking the target.
At four traits in the Gambler line, the final bonus opens up: Mischevious Glee gains a chance to apply a disabling gamble. Heal yourself and put an enemy to sleep at the same time! Also, whenever you get a devastating critical, you get a buff which increases your gamble chance by 40%. At first this buff lasts 30 seconds but you can prolong it with a legacy; if you’re lucky, you can keep it up almost all the time.
Next up, we have Swift and Subtle, which increases Subtle Stab damage by 10% and, if you use it on a gambled target, applies a debuff to its resistances. Like the Cruel Odds debuff, this affects all attackers, so while the debuff amount is small (around 1%, if memory serves) it may be more useful than it looks.
Related to Leaf-Walker is Footpad, which increases your stealth level by +2 and adds the chance to apply a debuffing gamble from stealth when you Burgle. The usefulness of this trait is debatable. It’s often hard to tell whether adding stealth levels does anything at all, and you can get at least +6 more from gear which is probably more than enough for PvE. And since Burgle only works on a subset of enemies, the extra debuff is only situationally useful. But if you’re going 5 deep in the Gambler line, you might as well take it.
The final two traits in the Gambler line affect Fellowship Maneuvers, and to be honest I’ve never used them and probably never will. But for completeness, here they are. Overwhelming Odds gives you a buff after you complete a Fellowship Maneuver, with the nature of the buff depending on what color was most prominent in the FM, and Even the Odds lowers the cooldowns of your post-Fellowship-Maneuver reactive skills to 15 minutes and adds a +50% gamble chance buff when you use them. I’m not sure either of these are worth a trait slot, but there you go.
With five traits in the Gambler line you can use the capstone legendary trait, Dealing’s Done. Like the other two capstone traits, Dealing’s Done enhances one of the three 5-minute-cooldown critical response skills, in this case Lucky Strike. Lucky Strike normally just applies a damaging gamble. With this trait it becomes Gambler’s Strike, has only a 1 minute cooldown and if the target already has a gamble, that gamble will be upgraded to tier 6 and have its duration refreshed. That includes applying a 60 second daze if the target still has the yellow “disabling gamble” debuff! With a legacy, you can reduce the cooldown of Gambler’s Strike to 15-30 seconds, too.
Legendary Items
There are several Legendary Item legacies which relate directly to the Gambler:
The main legacy you should look for, even if you have only the Leaf-Walker trait for extra mezzing capability, is +% Gamble Chance. This goes up to at least 16-18% on second age tools, and may go to 20% on a first age (I’m not lucky enough to have one of those to check!).
Also on your tools, +X Gambler Devastating Critical Buff lengthens the +40% gamble chance buff you get from a devastating crit (with 4 Gambler traits). It doesn’t take a lot of points to level, so even at a low tier you can get an extra 10 or 12 seconds on the buff without investing heavily.
Finally, -X Lucky Strike Cooldown, found on weapons, does exactly what it says on the label. This is useful only if you use Dealing’s Done, and even then it isn’t a requirement — most of the time you won’t need to use Gambler’s Strike more than once a minute. I wouldn’t prioritize this over the other useful weapon legacies, but if you do get it, it’s worth tossing some points into, and relatively cheap.
Besides those, most of the same legacy choices apply to the Gambler as to other kinds of Burglar: Positional Damage, Critical Response Skill Damage, Skill Critical Multiplier, and so forth. Subtle Stab Critical Multiplier goes well with Swift and Subtle, too.
Play Style
As a Gambler you should get used to constantly applying and removing tricks. Well, that’s a useful thing to do for every Burglar, but as a Gambler you will be just as interested in the secondary effects as the primary ones. Most of the time, you should try to keep some kind of gamble on the enemy all the time, even if it’s not necessarily useful, so you and your group can take advantage of the various debuffs and bonuses you get with a gambled target. Even a low-tier gamble does something, after all.
On tougher enemies, you may want to hold your Clever Retort until you get a devastate, then use it to land a debuffing gamble which you then upgrade immediately with Gambler’s Strike.
Similarly, if you’re fighting a group, consider switching to a secondary target after a devastate and using Mischevious Glee to daze it, especially if you can use Gambler’s Strike to extend the daze to 60 seconds. If you’re soloing and you need to use Glee to heal yourself, listen closely for the “dazed” sound effect and if you hear it, immediately switch targets and/or turn off autoattack (turning your back also works). While the higher tier disabling gambles give you a couple of seconds before the daze breaks, lower tier ones are susceptable to being broken immediately if you’re not careful.
If you’re grouped with a Gambler, expect them to do the same things other Burglars do — stab the enemy from behind and distribute debuffs. If your Burglar has Leaf-Walker, keep in mind that while they can provide extra crowd control, even the best Gambler usually still has a small chance that the disabling gamble won’t land, nor any control over how long it is. If you’re burning down one enemy at a time, watch the adds in case the Burglar dazes one; the visual effect for a disabling gamble is kind of hard to see, certainly much less obvious than a LM’s Blinding Flash.
Conclusion
I hope this article has explained the Gambler a little better; I know I was pretty confused by it when I first saw the new traits, but now that I’ve played my new Burglar for a while, I just love this trait line, because it keeps me on my toes and simply feels very “Burglar-ish” in how you never quite know what’s going to happen until you sneak around and try it. Although I enjoy a lot of classes, I think my Burglar is the most fun, and will probably be my main for a long time.