Advice to not completely suck with a Lore-Master on LOTRO

The most important things to remember are:
The Lore-Master is not a Damage Dealer
The Lore-Master is not a Healer

Your role is crowd control and supporter, which means you check which target can hurt your group most and immobilize it, usually with your Blinding Flash which is your most important skill in every group and instance.

You have to check that noone attacks this target so he will actually stay stunned. If the target you want to stun already gets attacked, just switch to the next important free target.

Priority targets are:

• Strong enemy damage dealers
• Anything attacking your healer
• Enemy healers

The second most important skill in your bar will be Share the Power which you can use to support your healer. Especially in later instances your healers will run out of energy quite fast, especially in a less experienced group.

I do not recommend pets in group since they easily attract more enemies than your party can handle.

Other usefull skills:

• Beacon of Hope to heal your healer in case of emergency
• Power of Knowledge to gain power you can then transfer to your healer
• Sticky Tar allows your casters/ranged players to kite the enemy more easily
• Herb Lore is especially usefull if there are too many enemies for your group to control, it allows you to easily root a whole group of enemies. Keep in mind that it's useless against ranged enemies though.
• Sign of Power: Righteousness is important against enemies that tend to stun a lot, in which case you should keep it up all the time on your healer.

All the other skills are nice to have but in groups you have to master the above mentioned skills and make sure you fullfill those tasks before you can expand your play to use all the other skills.

Lore-Master is an even less obvious character than healers, you usually don't see when he does anything, you only see when he doesn't do what he was supposed to do.

I think the lore master is the hardest solo character since it's extremely weak in melee. The pets make it easier but you still tend to die quite fast if you make even a slight mistake.

Oh, that reminds me of another important point:
The Lore-Master is not a Tank, but can be used as a good fighter if traited right. so in some cases you do not need to run in circles, if traited differently though, it is suggested that you do run in circles

I have a level 59 loremaster, made it to level 25 or so without dying. There's a lot of survivability inherent in a LM, and a lot of power.

You have, essentially, three ways to build a LM. You can focus on Crowd Control, your Pet and Healing skills (you'll never be THE healer, but you might well be A healer) and DPS through elemental damage.

You're never going to be a minstrel or a runekeeper, though. Sigh and move on, and notice on your skills where it talks about what ELSE they can do.

If you're soloing, I highly recommend the pet traits. (And even when not, you should always have a pet out. Loremasters have a powerful self heal through flanking that you don't want to neglect, and a second self heal-over-time that requires your pet to be out.) Learn your pets, buff your pets, and realize that ALL of them are useful, at the right time. If you go with this line, you'll potentially unlock a ranged pet that will be an excellent way of contributing to pull DPS without worrying about the pet pulling. You'll also be able to remove various conditions in or out of combat, which can be a life saver to the group.

The DPS traits can allow you to do a lot of damage, at higher levels, but can result in your most powerful CC skill (Blinding Flash, the 30 second mez) being cut down to 5 seconds. Don't go this way if you're in a group; anyone can provide DPS, only YOU have your range of buffs and debuffs.

When in a group, you're best to excel at crowd control and power-management. Refilling your healer or tank with power will save the day more than once. Rooting a group of melee combatants before they reach you will make things even better -- you have a lot of stuns, you have a lot of debuffs, you have snares and buffs and other things.

Control the battlefield. Don't put your pet on aggressive. Be prepared to toss out an emergency heal now and again, be ready for ressing when things go bad. Learn which of your own skills break your crowd control. Use your different skills frequently while leveling, so you can see which ones are useful when (and you unlock all the traits associated with them). And don't be afraid to change your build with new traits, to try out different ideas. There's a lot of correct ways to play a loremaster. (And if your group already has two loremasters, then hey -- it MIGHT be worth trying a DPS-heavy build.)