I did something cool in Lord of the Rings Online.

I killed a Roving Threat the other day. Actually... maybe last Saturday was when I did it. So that's... 11/26/16. If you want to keep reading on, that's fine, but if not, I'll just let you know what happened. I was in this group and there were four of us, all at max level, in this almost equally high level area, (Osgiliath) when suddenly this Roving Threat appears before us and ambushes us.
We were unprepared and it completely fucking rinses us. Now, for some context, these bosses aren't at max level, but they're very close, and you need/should kill them for good rewards for max levels, and they're meant to be fought by 12 people. Not having any of that, after my group goes their separate ways for the night, I hop on my horse and go back to the place I died and I fought this Roving Threat one on one. I have a tendency to go after really tough NPC's and mobs that kill me to get revenge or just because they're there.
I soloed this Roving Threat.
That's all you really need to know, I guess, but continue on if you want the whole story.

To start at the beginning, we were just wandering around, it shows up and we walk straight into it on accident. It went a lot like this.

Of course, we fucking die after about three minutes but I can proudly say that I lasted the longest. For the rest of our time together, we went into other sections of the city and steered clear of the bridge where the boss was. While we were doing so I bided my time and planned how I would take revenge, while letting the others know that I planned to take it on and any were welcome to join me. They thought I was joking. They were wrong.

I am a Lore Master or LM for short. From the name of the class, I bet you can tell that it's a squishy class. Yes. I'm squishy and I have light armor. That'll come up later, I promise you.

When we finally split up there were only two others still left in the fellowship (group) myself, and a friend. Let's call her B. She headed out of the city to go do some crafting or something while I went back to where the boss was and prepared myself for battle. So she was still in the group and also still the leader (should've asked her to make me a raid assist so she could see the health of my target for extra confirmation of my glorious battle) and I don't remember quite why I stayed in the group but whatever.
Now, before we continue, let me give you some stats to show you how tough this thing is. I was fighting Kethat-sai. A level 103 Mûmakil (says the species is Mammoth when I use my LM-exclusive skill to peak at its stats and stuff for some reason) arch-nemesis with 1,985,344 health/morale and 92,970 power and he negates a decent amount of damage except for common. So most of my pets can actually (in theory) do more damage to him than I can. Since he's also an Arch-Nemesis he's also immune to fellowship maneuvers (special skills that you can pop off if you get lucky) so I can't lock him down for 6 seconds that way with my bog lurker pet (the only ranged pet the LM has, and also kind of OP if used correctly) nor can I stun/daze him, NOR can I root him. My class specializes in controlling the battlefield with 30 second dazes, stuns, debuffs, and rooting an enemy in place while I or others wail on them with a 25% chance of them breaking free on any damage. I also know what kind of damage he can dish out, and he can do around 29,000-30,000 damage at base.

So yeah, this fucking monster of a boss will keep coming at me faster and more determined (you also can't outrun him) than a damn World War Z Zombie.

I, as a Lore Master at the current time of the fight, had/have 25k health/morale at base. When I'm not buffed and go into my weakest specialization, I have around 23.7k health. So with knowing how much damage this boss does at his base, you might be wondering how I survived? Well, I run in the blue line specialization, the Keeper of Animals. I have designed my class to be a tanky light armor class. Decent avoidance, with good chances to resist negative effects like DoT's or debuffs, and maxed mitigations. Now, a light armor class can, at max, only have 40% on their common/physical and tactical mitigations. Mitigations negate the amount of incoming damage you recieve. So that 29-30k damage that boss does to me? Reduce it to around 16,675. If you have a calculator, or are good at math, and that number seems just a tad off to you, that's because it is. (It was also almost the exact amount of damage he did to me when he hit me.)
The LM in blue line is the only class that's tougher to damage than the others. I get an extra 2.5% bonus to all my mitigations (tactical is harder to defend against because it's more rare unless it's orc craft or fell-wrought damage, which goes into your physical mitigation) and I have more health. So with buffs, and if I summon my bear, I can get myself nearly 28k health, with 47.5% mitigations since the bear gives me an extra FIVE PERCENT and increases my max morale by 5%. But I didn't have the bear summoned with me for the majority of my fight with him, so I won't really count it. I'm actually overcapped on my mitigations, by the way, which is a great thing.
Then there's the critical hits. Aside from how it works, a critical hit basically doubles the damage of a skill. Now, not aside from how it works, here's the what he could do to me if I had theoretically no mitigation whatsoever. Around 60,000 damage, and that's being generous with my original calculations. I did some more math and factoring in the multiplier, (critical hits give a 1.5 damage multiplier to a skill at base, while a devastating critical doubles it EXACTLY by 2 at base no matter what) he can do around 51,750 damage with a more conservative estimate but you want to prepare for the worst, so assume he does twice the amount of damage with a critical hit. This is also assuming he was hitting me with tactical or physical damage. If it was physical, it's likely he's doing less damage to me because since he's a boss, he might be using orc craft or fell-wrought damage, which goes into physical mitigations along with common damage, except you need to stack up more physical mitigation to max out the orc craft and fell-wrought stuff because they contribute LESS to negating their damage. I think mine is only around 37.3% last I checked. But I'll probably never know because I don't want to fight it again quite yet and I didn't have enough time to exactly look through the combat logs while fighting him anyway.
Now there's this thing called critical defense. This reduces the amount of damage you take if you get hit by a critical or devastating critical hit. If I had designed my class the way it's supposed to be built/played, like a fucking noob, I'd have no critical defence and his critical hits would be doing around 29k damage, which WILL ONE-SHOT me if I don't have my bear out. But even with the bear, I'd still die in one hit. The answer? Get critical defense. For me, it's not maxed out (it's actually impossible no matter what you do) but I still get about a 37.5% bonus to damage reduction. So let's go through this again after I did more calculations, (I actually didn't do this in-game, I'm doing it now). I factored in the devastating critical hit and the worst he can POSSIBLY do to me is 24,797-25,590 damage, or around that. And that's me still being generous. Normal critical hits will do around 20-21k damage.
Now see, if I wasn't so adamant about making my LM a bit more tanky than normal, (thus not play like a scrub) I'd always die in one hit. Health be damned, if you don't have the mitigation to back up that health, it's worthless.
Now, granted, I still die in two hits no matter what, thus I should avoid getting hit at all, but the point is that at least I'll survive one hit and then I can think of something else to do if I get into that sticky situation. Which did happen, so now we continue on to the story!

IF YOU DIDN'T WANT TO READ ALL OF THAT TEXT UP THERE, HERE'S WHERE THE TRUE STORY BEGINS.

The first battle begins at the bridge and I can tell you, the space I had was horrible for maneuvering so I was hemmed in unless I wanted to contend with the massive amount of trolls. Which, in this situation, is dangerous since they're lvl 100's and they can still aggro to lvl 105 players so that's a hazard I didn't want to deal with. Even without that, it's actually still very dangerous and since the respawn times are actually about a minute in this particular area [Osgiliath] you need to move/kill fast in order to not get overwhelmed.
You'll notice that I said the first battle. Yes, I did not win this one, due to aggroing the trolls and my focus was split. That's not the sole reason I had to throw the fight, though it was a contributing factor. Thankfully, I wasn't too far into the fight and I'd only done about 500k damage to him. The reason I had to throw it was because the damn boss KNOCKED me off the fucking bridge. Into the water.
LOTRO has this thing called mounts, which are just horses that you use to get around faster, unless you're in Moria, then you use a goat. Somewhat recently (maybe about three years ago) we got this update that added warsteeds, thus introducing mounted combat. However, while you move fast as hell on a warsteed, (a light warsteed moves the fastest in-game) it follows the same rules as all other mounts: if you go into deep enough water, you are automatically dismounted from your steed. Except stable master ones I've found, hilariously enough.
But this is the water from the Anduin that Osgiliath has running through it. It does a flat 2,000 damage to you every two seconds and gives zero fucks about your mitigation. So not only was my leg broken, thus hampering my movement, I had to get out of this damaging water, low on health and then find my way back to the boss before it reset.
Unfortunately it found its way to me first because it fucking CHASED ME by jumping off the bridge, (unharmed I might add, the cheating bastard) then continuing to attack and charge me until I managed to mount back up and run the hell away because there was no way I was fighting in such a tiny space. But I survived, so that's great!

I learned from my mistakes and I tried a different tactic. After a long battle I'm very close to killing him and he only has about 24k health left but I'm on my last legs. My health is fine but my warsteed's is not and if you so much as gave it a dirty look it'd fall out from under me. Which is basically what literally happened. My faithful steed was hit with a nasty debuff, making his turning rate horrendous and more difficult to control than normal (normal mounts have 2 modes. Stop and go. Warsteed doesn't work like that and it takes some getting used to with the controls) so I barely get off my skill to remove the debuff but I'm too late. I run into this camp with two orcs and one of them has a bow and aggros to me and I desperately try to escape but it's hopeless. He gets one hit in and Callista (my warsteed) is down and out for the count with the boss hot on my heels. I barely manage to get back on Callista in time for one last attempt but I'm far too late to deal with the mobs while also avoiding the boss and I die.

You see, a warsteed and its rider share damage. Basically, let's say an attack deals exactly 10,000 damage to me. Now we factor in my mitigations, and we'll assume we use only my mitigation. That's 5,750 damage. The steed shares its rider's damage, so that 5,750 damage is actually now dealt as 2,875 damage to the player and the warsteed. Keep in mind that basically kills a normal warsteed and you'll have to mount up again but all damage dealt to you is halved. Plus you get some extra mitigations just for being on the warsteed anyway.

Now my third attempt is just as equally long. Not really much of a difference in what happened except that my wolf died. Or MAYBE it survived the fight, somehow, but I don't think it did. It didn't survive the first two fights. Of course, I first kill the orcs responsible for my death earlier in the name of revenge. Callista also didn't go down once in the entire fight. After about 20 minutes maybe (no more than 50 minutes in the entirety of my attempt) I finally bring him down.
Vengeance is mine. I have bragging rights, and B (remember her?) was only kind of there to confirm it. She hopefully saw the loot I got since we were still in the fellowship together at this point. I unfortunately did not have the foresight to take a screenshot. Which I really should have done. But still, this was my reaction at finally winning.

Oh, and I got a lovely Gift-Giver's Brand out of it. But since I didn't have the quest, I only get ONE instead of SIX! Goddammit. Now I only need 49 more in order to get something good!

Well bring it on LOTRO! I'll do it in my spare time!