LOTRO Legendarium: LOTRO’s five least-played classes – and why you should play them

In gaming, I’m often fascinated by “paths less traveled.” Maybe it’s a leveling expansion everyone ignores, a race that’s never picked for a kickball team, or a style of play that’s unorthodox. My interest especially perks up when it comes to the topic of underplayed and underrated classes.

As of 2024, Lord of the Rings Online has a full dozen classes – plenty of choices to suit individuals’ playstyles. And as is always the case, some of these classes are vastly overrepresented (Hunters, Champions, Minstrels) while others are quite scarce on the landscape. Today I want to look at the five least-played classes in this game and make a case for why you shouldn’t be so quick to pass by them!

Beorning

In short, if a class starts with “B” in this MMO, it’s probably underplayed. Beornings actually are well-loved by their community and highly touted as one of the stronger, full-fledged package classes in the game with healing, high armor, AOE, the ability to spit bees, and a nice run speed buff out of combat.

It’s just that anyone who plays one must contend with two restrictions: You’re limited to a single race (with some pretty cool tattoos, by the way), and you’re going to spend most of your game time in a big, bulky bear form. If you don’t like looking at a chunky ursine butt instead of your carefully tailored cosmetics, then it’s going to be a quick dealbreaker.

Still, it’s a very solid class that’s actually highly desired as a healer. And your hair and tattoo choices are actually reflected in your bear form, which is neat.

Burglar

Poor Burgs. Honestly, I feel bad for them. They’re one of the most iconic roles in the game, thanks to Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, yet they’ve almost never been a go-to class for most. I think the key problem here is that almost everything they do can be done by another class much better, and their signature mechanic — stealthing — isn’t attractive enough to offset that.

Another downside is that Burglars are very slow starters in LOTRO. Fans of the class admit that they struggled until level 30 or 40 before things became better.

So why play one, other than its underrepresentation? Burglars are actually single-target powerhouses with much better DPS than might be assumed. Being able to stealth means that you can zip through enemy camps to objectives instead of slogging through them. And there’s some nice utility and survivability with tricks and gambles.

They do need some more love by the devs to make them attractive to the larger population, though.

Brawler

One of LOTRO’s newer classes was a bit peculiar when it came out and hasn’t been a firestarter in the community. Here we have a melee class that… punches? Punches a lot without cool-looking weapons (although they do get battle gauntlets). I think a lot of people simply don’t know what to make of the Brawler and give this class a wide berth because of that.

Yet like the Beorning, the Brawler is quite well-designed and a good time if you give it a chance. You get some flashy animations to make up for that lack of handheld weapons, there’s a good deal of survivability and AOE damage, and you can even fling mugs at enemies to get their attention. There are some optional combos for power spikes when needed, and the theme of “punching the snot out of everyone” really grows on you, too.

Warden

I’ve always thought that the Warden is the coolest-looking class in the game with those Warden shields, spears, and javelins. Their flexibility to meet any given situation is second to none in this game’s class roster, and they get some nice travel utility with a run speed boost and travel skills. So why aren’t more people playing this?

There are two reasons that the Warden is underplayed, and they are connected. The first is that this class requires you to memorize and use chains of increasingly complex “gambits” to pull of moves that some other classes can do with a single key press. But those gambits are meant for fast, reactionary (and proactive) combat, which is defeated by the second issue: LOTRO’s notorious lag. The game’s unpredictable delays in input mean that a gambit can get ruined quite easily.

This isn’t to say that the Warden is impossible to play; it is still very viable and can be top-tier in certain situations. But you’ve really got to be committed to the concept and devoted to learning and memorizing the chains.

Mariner

This class’ lack of widespread appeal may be simply because it’s not even a year old at this point and hasn’t spread too far quite yet. It has turned some people away because the class requires learning skill chains and has a kind of scattershot toolkit.

Think of the Mariner as “Warden Lite” with a dash of Minstrel, and you’ll be in the ballpark. This is perfect for players who like the Warden concept but want it a bit more streamlined. It’s actually a fantastic class in a lot of ways, with heals, stuns, random effects, sea shanties, and some hard-hitting damage. It’s the closest this game has to a fencer, although (sadly) without any rapiers.