Apelreds Adventures in Middle Earth: November 2012

Having had a few outings on his Warsteed Grimberg has finally had to give up his uber casual mouse only technique. Being unused to triggering skills with the keyboard there is a bit of a random button mashing. Even so he managed to 'Kite and Shout' 6 Salamanders and has defeated War Bands Cinder and Hanrun.

Having trained his steed a few levels, Grimberg was not sure what to invest his points in so consulted his community of friends. Danania Supergirl of Lorien has done this fantastic 5 part guide that helped a lot, it is written from a Runekeepers point of view but is generally useful.

Part 1: Trait line Overview (Part 1)

Part 2: Light Traits (Part 2)
Part 3: Medium Traits (Part 3)
Part 4: Heavy Traits (Part 4)
Part 5: Comparisons (Part 5)

Fellow Captains have advised a Light Steed as a good match as the Captain Tactical skills are better than the Physical skills.

Grimberg found this very handy advice but he doesn't know who to credit for the info.

The first rule of Mounted Captaining is to realize you're not a melee class.
The second rule of Mounted Captaining is to realize YOU'RE NOT A MELEE CLASS!
Third rule, captains like light horses and have two disciplines. I have never used the Rohirrim discipline yet. The other two are just way better when leveling.

Captains start with four attack skills. Two are at melee. Two are at range, and the ranged ones do 2x to 3x your melee damage. At 40m or so. Quick note: most enemies either hit really weak, or only have melee attacks. There is NO REASON to try and engage in melee constantly. Sure hit as you pass if they get to close but don't just make melee passes. That's the only way war-band bosses are going to get you.

Cry Wrath is your nuke on a 16s cooldown. At level 75 with a level 1 steed, it would crit for 8k damage if I had fury built up. It also applies a Dot in Red Dawn stance. That's solid against bosses, but if you're in Riddermark it becomes a 5-target AOE with a 40m diameter. Yes, that means it hits up to 5 enemies that are within a hunter's bowshot of each other. I will ride through enemy camps, agro them all, then circle/nuke them with this before going into the camp for the clickies. It is insanely useful.
Cry Havoc is your utility attack. It has a base 10s cooldown and on a crit (which you're a captain and you should have a lot of) restores ~200 morale and power to both you and your horse in Red Dawn, 250 or so in Riddermark.
Rally the Riders is a melee shout but worth mentioning because it's basically rallying cry without the defeat response requirement. It only effects mounts though, but that's all that's needed in warband combat. We all know how good Rallying Cry is so that's all that needs to be said here.

The Light steed is the steed of choice for both healing and DPS IMO. Here's the path I chose to unlock my abilities:

First off, I've seen a lot of people recommend upping agility and yellow traits first to help with maneuverability. I think this is a bad idea. There's plenty of space, and you really don't care if you accidentally agro additional mobs. You're far better served leveling traits that are actually useful for combat first, then working on maneuverability to that end I suggest:

Leveling strait up the middle of the Blue line until you get Quckness, and maxing it. This knocks 6s off the cooldown of your ranged Cries, and Rally the Riders. This means that your big nuke is now a 10s cooldown instead of 16. It means your utility attack is a 4s cooldown instead of 10. This is an insane boost to DPS. Getting here granted you some mitigations and in/out healing through other virtues, which is a nice bonus but not the reason you're here. After this, time to change over and...
Level strait up the middle of the Red line until you get Wrath. This adds 25% crit chance to Cry Havoc, Cry Wrath, and Rally the Riders (crit heals!).
Fill in red traits by finishing off Forceful Blows (for 1200 more crit rating) and grabbing 3 in Combat Advantage (1500 physical mastery which you care nothing about and 2100 tactical mastery!).

At this point you can start branching out to pick up whatever you want. My next move was to get 2 ranks in Bonds of Power and pick up Invigorate in the blue tree to help with power consumption (though nowadays my power doesn't even move... crits restoring power is nice). You could also pick up the morale heal in the blue line if you want it as an emergency button. Eventually I did go into yellow for maneuverability and I did see the difference in how the mount handled but I definitely wouldn't have done that as my first advances.

UPDATE

Grimberg likes running in Riddermark discipline for the Cry Wrath AOE and is really jealous of Hunter Apelred's 21% run speed so after maxing Quickness he went for Dash with the Hard to Tire toggle for the max 16mps.

After Quickness reduced the cooldowns Grimbergs horse power seemed to vanish, not too good in the middle of fighting Bughrakh, thankfully Loremaster Celeros joined the fight and we took him down.

So with his Steed at level 15 Grimberg took Danania's advice about points in the blue line getting Bond of Power and Invigorate