Does anyone feel like describing how soldiers in skirmishes work?

How many types are there? What are their roles? What's your view on how they work?

Thank you in advance

i have a herbalist, so for me its just a woman that runs behind me and sometimes supplies me with power and morale. She is clearly blond too, because she often gets confused when seeing other dwarves *winks*. I am actually surprised she doesn't heal too bad, does even start fm's for your groups, heals the whole group.
There is lot of information with spoilers on the lotro forum too, but i can not find it here at work.

I play as a Champion and have experimented with three types of soldiers so far. The Herbalist for me works the best, she usually does a fantastic job at keeping me alive, only slacking occasionally. Playing with the Warrior was a big mistake for me, we both tended to die a fair amount. The Sage worked quite well, she debuffed nicely although I still ended up dying occasionally.

I think a fairly good guide is, if you are dps then use a herbalist if you are a healer then use a Protector, but that's just a guide.

This may not help as there is plenty of proper skirmish guides out there which will go into much better detail.

A few useful links below. As a general guide and to reiterate what Seraborn has said go with what you lack as a character. Ekhelm runs with a herbalist 2 levels above him and he goes through skirmishes like a hot blade through butter

Skirmish Compendium
Protector
Sage
Herbalist
Warrior
Bannerguard
Archer

i remember that the bannerguards healing used to be very weak (or something bugged about it), has it been fixed or made better? I have a fairly decent herbalist, but when i try the hardest difficulty we both run out off power as the dps of only a guardian is a bit low from time to time.

I believe it has been fixed, but BAnnerguard healing used to be reduced by Common Mitigation... which was really stupid and made it an awful choice for a Guardian. On my Guardian I use a Warrior - lots of nice AoE dps, but if I was trying to solo tier 3 I'd have to use a herbalist I think. On my champ I use a herbalist, seems like a no-brainer to me.