Rune-keeper planned changes with Isengard

[Overtone]

So the new rune keeper will need to retrait for every situation and require 3x of each stone and satchel even one perfectly.

Not necessarily. If you are really concerned about Group viability, you could get away with just Fire and Healing sets. No need to bother with a Lightning Set if you don't want to since it is really for solo play. Solo content is so faceroll easy for every class you don't need to have an optimal setup to blow that out.

I don't care what you say fire is useless on the moors and during solo

My RK will be putting this notion to the test come RoI...

but dont worry, we now have new and improved dots to stack, and the horrible inductions and Loss the ability to kite that comes with them...

We actually still do have an exceptional ability to kite even if the inductions blow. In addition, the Essay of Fire bonuses give us some induction-free DoTing potential in Fire, that when used in combination with Lightning skills, should be lethal.

[WhimsicalPacifist]

Cohesive and grammar/spelling are not necessarily intertwined. I garnished the message from his post, he thinks the nerf to lightening sucks. Rather than critique the delivery and waste time with that, a simple speed read will get you the gist. The developers could employ this tactic rather simply and save time, thus allowing them to read more. Sadly its redundancy that’s likely the bane of devs reading more, not poor grammar and spelling errors on a message board post.

I mean, it’s not 1998, eloquence in the electronic environment shouldn’t be expected and those who endeavor to what appears to be shaming others for their posting style often lose credibility as their replies are not on topic to begin with. (see what I did in the end? )

I could post in Middle English but that would be a waste of both my time and yours. I do speed-read but reading too many ill-made posts induces migraines. It is literally like running a 400m relay that runs through a few hurtles and ends with a brick wall.

I really believe that the numbers will be viable for both healing and DPS but am worried about how it will scale with equipment in updates later on. Runekeepers have a tricky dichotomy where fate, will and healing rating factor into spike damage, sustained DPS and healing respectively. A rough equivalency between Fire and Lightning will probably be perfectly achievable for some time to come, but what of when new gear comes out?

With the introduction of diminishing returns, as the moral pools of creeps and mobs increase, the Lightning line will become less effective unless LI's, skills, gear sets and/or traits scale. The other possibility is that stats might become inflated on individual pieces which is its' own chimera.

[revoked]

Actually, fire was quite reasonable in beta for solo questing and most solo instances. There were still times when lightning would have made things easier or you had to throw in a lot of lightning skills, but the AoE skills in fire were quite fun to use in "kill x number of boar" quests. The 5 seconds induction free from EoF, and the shorter induction on FR make it a much more viable line solo than previously. For me, lightning would likely still be the solo line of choice, but fire wasn't bad at all. Might even work in the moors. I know at least one RK was planning to try it.

Back to the healing output vs healing nerfs question, I did find that the itemization changes (almost all items with tactical damage also have outgoing healing rating) meant that it was quite easy to get my outgoing healing up, and that it was high even when I was traited for dps and using dps equips. I do think it will help balance out the healing changes, but my actual testing was limited, so I don't feel I can say for sure how it balances currently.

[Morecrabs]

How long is a 6-7 second induction really? when something is attacking and interrupting you? Coupled with the fact that just like epic conclusion u can't cast a firespell while you are moving any movement induction or no will cancel the casting providing your target ample time to interrupt or force u to attempt to avoid forcing you to cancel your action...

the loss of kiting which unless your fully healing attuned and using all fates entwined is the only viable defense the runekeeper

No matter how you look at it... the changes were sent to Nerf and were designed to hurt not help

Those of u. Who think this attack on the lightening line isn't a big deal obviously isn't realizing what they are losing

[Alad.]

I haven't seen anyone mention auto-attacks while soloing. In my experience and measurements, they add about 10-20% to dps (add 40-80 dps) depending how often you crit and how soon you come close to the mob, but a base minimum of 40 dps on a normal trash mob solo fight. I always go toe to toe when soloing. That will not be possible with fire skills due to the interrupts. So that's that much dps less if you go for fire. Runestones are a two-handed weapon, and we should make use of the free dps they provide.

[Alad.]

It would be really nice if someone who's in the beta and who has a little time and a photo editor could:

Take screenshots of all his skill and trait tooltips (and his trait setup) on his 65 RK both on live right now, and after transferring his toon to bullroarer, equipped with the exact same gear and still at 65.

That would make the changes crystal clear from every point of view.

You would be doing us a great favour if you could do that, as for this info is sorely lacking for the moment.

A big thank you to any people who can do this for the RK community!

[Syntastic]

How long is a 6-7 second induction really? when something is attacking and interrupting you? Coupled with the fact that just like epic conclusion u can't cast a firespell while you are moving any movement induction or no will cancel the casting providing your target ample time to interrupt or force u to attempt to avoid forcing you to cancel your action...

the loss of kiting which unless your fully healing attuned and using all fates entwined is the only viable defense the runekeeper

No matter how you look at it... the changes were sent to Nerf and were designed to hurt not help

Those of u. Who think this attack on the lightening line isn't a big deal obviously isn't realizing what they are losing

So you're saying, our biggest loss is the ability to kite? Then us RKs who have never ever kited and still blow away any kind of solo content thrown our way should rejoice!! Kiting is nothing more than a lazy play style that lets you get away with playing your class, well, lazily.

That being said. Until we either hear from ZC, or play the changes ourselves, drawing conclusions from the little info we have is nothing more than venting. Sure, i have some days where i panic and expect my RK to implode come RoI. But the best thing to do is to calm down, and wait 4 weeks. (or god forbid, sooner, if ZC graces us with his wisdom)

[Morecrabs]

So you're saying, our biggest loss is the ability to kite? Then us RKs who have never ever kited and still blow away any kind of solo content thrown our way should rejoice!! Kiting is nothing more than a lazy play style that lets you get away with playing your class, well, lazily.

That being said. Until we either hear from ZC, or play the changes ourselves, drawing conclusions from the little info we have is nothing more than venting. Sure, i have some days where i panic and expect my RK to implode come RoI. But the best thing to do is to calm down, and wait 4 weeks. (or god forbid, sooner, if ZC graces us with his wisdom)

You have obviously Never taken your RK out on the Moors lets see u not make use of kiting there...

[revoked]

Not to argue that lightning will no longer the be most efficient trait line for solo or for kite heavy situations, but the 6-7 second inductions for fire skills is pure misinformation.

Most of the skills currently have an induction of 2-3 seconds (WoF is less of course, as is Essay of Flame if 4 deep, and Smouldering Wrath is a channeled skill not an induction) setbacks seem to have been reduced, and you have the 5 seconds of no induction skill use after Essay of Flame. That means you can easily pull with essay and nuke 3 mobs with FR for 5 hits, usually leaving one dead and at least 2 very low on health. Or if you have some attunement to start or are willing to use an enamel, you can throw a scathing mockery into the 5 seconds of skills and have WoF on 5 as well. It's quite a powerful combination.

Soloing landscape and skirmish mobs (Attack at Dawn, which has pretty large pulls and counter attacks) the only problem I had with fire inductions was with scathing mockery. The induction was too long and the chance of setback too high (it was more easily set back than other skills) when you were up close and personal. Use it after Essay of Flame and it's great. Also, you still get your autoattacks off when using fire, that was not an issue.

Occasionally i had to run out of range when my health was going down too fast, but I think that was more because my herbalist was not leveled up, so I had the same problem when traited lightning, particularly for encounters. With fire, even while running, my DoTs were still working, so once got my health up again, the mobs were at low health and it was easy to finish them off.

Not to say lightning won't be preferred in some situations, including quite possibly the moors. I haven't gone into the moors myself yet, but friends who took their RKs there traited lightning were still quite happy with their damage. EC crits were smaller but more frequent, and other skills were hitting harder. The level 75 pvp chisel has a chance to slow targets. Didn't hear anyone complaining about how useless RKs would be in the moors.

[Syntastic]

You have obviously Never taken your RK out on the Moors lets see u not make use of kiting there...

Quoting myself:

Then us RKs who have never ever kited and still blow away any kind of solo content thrown our way should rejoice!!

Which part of that did you not understand? I'm going to guess the bold part. Of course I'm not talking about the moors. Playing pvp in a game that stated numerous times that it would not cater to pvpers - and focus on pve first and foremost - is not worth my time. This is personal preference of course. Based on hard fact.

Not to mention that the first part of my post was just a snide comment. It amused me that among ALL the available complaints based on the community's perception of the changes to RK, that player chose to focus on the loss of kiting abilities like it was end all be all.

[amandatheelf]

Looks like a lot is getting nerf'd though with some improvements as well. Guess I'll just have to see if I like this or not come RoI.

[Ellery01]

His argument is full of a lot of misinformation actually. Lightning RKs are still going to be powerful in the moors, any common traiting build for moors (5y 1b 1r, or some variation of 5y) will leave them with a grand total of 5% less crit multiplier. The 3 trait bonus is 25% instead of 30% now. Shocking words hits even harder, and can crit up to and above 4k itself. Ceaseless argument's damage is only slightly lower (in truth, I barely noticed any difference, so many chicken littles here). No, you won't get 8k EC's anymore, boohoo :P You're going to be critting on EC 15-30% more often which is going to make it extremely dangerous in the moors (still).

I honestly believe the overall change to lightning is minimal at best, RKs are still gonna be facerolling the Moors, they'll just be using fire in pve raids now :P I'm very excited about the changes overall, and I really would like to suggest everyone take a chill pill until we have a chance to see how all the cards play out with the sweeping changes to the offensive/crit/outgoing heals/incoming heals/mitigation numbers.

[Osgril]

I just don't see what the big fuss is about. TL;DR - Looking great, can't wait.

First of all: Fire is getting buffed. This is years overdue and most welcome. All changes to Fire look appetizing, and should make this a most viable grouping/raiding build. If you have problems with this, I don't know what to say. Pure win in my book.

Secondly, Healing is nerfed. On paper, yes, it appears so. But, I've yet to see anyone reflect on the fact that healing across the board is buffed by a flat 30%. Yeah, it really is. This is based on the fact that we can now increase our outgoing healing modifier by a massive 20%, and also the fact that the incoming healing modifier has been raised to 25% from 15%. That makes +30% healing done, by everyone, to everyone. Assuming of course that people will cap their incoming and outgoing healing, but I'm taking this for granted. Also, do take into consideration what's happening to other classes, like captains.. Their 'brother' skills are going to revitalize a lot of things, I'm pretty sure. Captains look mighty hot as far as I can tell.

Thirdly, power cost increases all over the place. Yes, which is to be expected. Why? Well, since we have no caps on stats anymore, we're going to see people running around with at least 1500 Will judging from the gear that's been revealed to us already (which is the basic tier 1 gear in this expansion, mind you - new 12-man coming before end of year, with more gear I'm sure). We're going to have massive power pools! So obviously, if power is going to matter at all, we're going to have to get power cost increases. Even though our dev isn't speaking to us currently, I'm certain he has control over his numbers. This goes for Minstrels as well.

Fourthly, Lightning damage nerfs and all that.. Same answer as above. No caps on offence, an additional 10% increase in crit rating, massive Will/Fate values. We're going to hit things like a truck, and this much should be obvious. From the data provided to us, I see nothing that looks like a nerf, in fact it appears the opposite. Alright, CA has had its damaged decreased slightly, but what of all our other skills? Shocking Words buffed. Essence of Storm, buffed. I think Lightning is still going to be the overall most used spec, with the welcome addition of speccing Fire in groups (which wasn't really an option at all since Mirkwood launch)

Additionally, please stop confusing tactical crit multiplier with DPS. Crit multipliers *add* a percentage to your *current* multiplier. So, let's say a skill has a default 100% crit multiplier and you have a 20% crit multiplier from your gear.. The new multiplier will be 100+20 = 120%. That's not an additional 20% DPS, not by a long shot, although of course it's a nice addition. Without any thoughts from Zombie on this one to explain why, I'm assuming that multipliers were removed from gear to offset the additional 10% crit rating we're able to get now. At least that's how I would explain it. In the end it feels like we're going to do a lot more critical damage than we did before, even though our multiplier is a little lower.

And, noone's mentioned our autoattacks with the stone really. Given that offence and crit is now unified for melee/ranged/tactical, you do realize that we're going to have significant melee offence and crit, right? That should translate into quite considerable whacks we can do with our stone, hehe. I'm really looking forwards to that bit.

The point of this rant is basically to urge you to try to see things in a larger perspective and not just read into skill tooltips and patch notes. After soaking in everything I've read it seems to me we're going to be in a great place come Isengard. I can't wait, anyway.

[Morecrabs]

you Misunderstood my argument entirely,

first by dropping Base damage, you have negated a % of the attunement bonus, and lowered the number to start your calculations with, and you have also lost damage to the lowered trait line multiplier, the majority of the Lighting RK dPS comes from scribe spark and ceaseless argument and there respective critical

you are the one who does not understand how the changes affected you, must be distracted by the pretty SW crit Numbers the same way the EC numbers dazzled in the past.. distraction nothing more..

The remaining spells only filled in about 30% ish of damage done in a fight

Now shocking words offers Prettier Crits.. thats all they are... and are drops in the bucket for any real form of DPS

its still just a small Crit chance, and Happens with less than a 1:7 chance and a 1 in 20 chance to get this Mythical 4k damage from a spell u can only cast 3 times a minute, amounting to really not much of a DPS contributor

they gave you something pretty to look at and you really dont even understand what or how they took it..

the Loss of the 8k ec crit was never a big deal... but now whats the point of even USING EC if it and Shocking words now have similar cooldowns, have similar crits, and similar devs? I certainly wont be wasting the 2x more power to use it.. knowing its going to make everything cost more for nooo real measurable benefit.. Vs cheaper alternatives..

Epic Conclusion by your own argument is essentially worthless considering its Costs and penalties vs any possible Gains

anyone dumb enough to actually click on it now full well knowing your going to get the same result from Shocking words simply wasting power..

[Unixbomber]

His argument is full of a lot of misinformation actually. Lightning RKs are still going to be powerful in the moors, any common traiting build for moors (5y 1b 1r, or some variation of 5y) will leave them with a grand total of 5% less crit multiplier. The 3 trait bonus is 25% instead of 30% now. Shocking words hits even harder, and can crit up to and above 4k itself. Ceaseless argument's damage is only slightly lower (in truth, I barely noticed any difference, so many chicken littles here). No, you won't get 8k EC's anymore, boohoo :P You're going to be critting on EC 15-30% more often which is going to make it extremely dangerous in the moors (still).

I honestly believe the overall change to lightning is minimal at best, RKs are still gonna be facerolling the Moors, they'll just be using fire in pve raids now :P I'm very excited about the changes overall, and I really would like to suggest everyone take a chill pill until we have a chance to see how all the cards play out with the sweeping changes to the offensive/crit/outgoing heals/incoming heals/mitigation numbers.

Smart advice. Rune-keepers will still be incredibly powerful in the moors and anyone saying otherwise is simply trolling or completely ignorant. When you burn through 14k morale in 5 attacks, you are not nerfed. If damage is reduced in one area and increased in another, resulting in an overall net increase in your damage; you are not nerfed.

[Fasin]

Secondly, Healing is nerfed. On paper, yes, it appears so. But, I've yet to see anyone reflect on the fact that healing across the board is buffed by a flat 30%.Yeah, it really is. This is based on the fact that we can now increase our outgoing healing modifier by a massive 20%, and also the fact that the incoming healing modifier has been raised to 25% from 15%. That makes +30% healing done, by everyone, to everyone. Assuming of course that people will cap their incoming and outgoing healing, but I'm taking this for granted. Also, do take into consideration what's happening to other classes, like captains.. Their 'brother' skills are going to revitalize a lot of things, I'm pretty sure. Captains look mighty hot as far as I can tell.

30% increase comes with the expansion. NPCs, bosses, raid trash, everything else will also be getting some % increase that you somehow forgot to take into account. It would be a massive 30% increase if we leveled to level 75 only to go back and raid Ost Dunhoth 10 levels below us. I might add that the number is only 30% if somehow everyone you heal manages to max their incoming healing (good luck with that).

Buffs to Captains doesn't change the fact we are possibly going to be nerfed.

On a side note, all the doom and gloom is irritating. I'm not saying we're getting nerfed horribly with Isengard, I just thought your argument was silly.

At least wait till you see the developer diary people..

[Osgril]

Of course I'm taking that into account, Fasin. Anything else would be silly, as you say. Fact remains that there is a potential +30% healing done due to the changes, no matter if mobs are scaled to accomodate that it's still a positive thing, right? And indeed, I'm pretty certain most serious players will aim for capping in/out healing. Might be harder than previously, but due to the changes it'll also be more important than before. I think there's a pattern here. Sounds to me that the idea is pretty clear - focus on your build. I so hope I'm right.

Anyway, what I am saying is that many seem to only look at the negatives, and conveniently forget what's on the + side of things. As with all things one needs to look at the bigger picture, and balance things against eachother to see the real outcome. I see a lot of good things with this update. Am I really the only one?

If you like the argument that we are getting nerfed, then by all means. But we are also getting massively buffed due to new stat mechanics, levels, gear etc, so the end result I doubt will be a nerf. At least nothing I can gather from the available data at this moment in time. Again, I hope I'm right.

Anyway, totally agree with your finishing point - let's wait for the official word and leave the tinfoil hats in the drawer.

[Overtone]

I haven't seen anyone mention auto-attacks while soloing. In my experience and measurements, they add about 10-20% to dps (add 40-80 dps) depending how often you crit and how soon you come close to the mob, but a base minimum of 40 dps on a normal trash mob solo fight. I always go toe to toe when soloing. That will not be possible with fire skills due to the interrupts. So that's that much dps less if you go for fire. Runestones are a two-handed weapon, and we should make use of the free dps they provide.

This is actually a great point. However, when I say my RK will be rolling Fire, I don't mean he will only be using Fire skills exclusively. If ZC is nerfing Lightning to discourage facerolling, then he is trying to push us into broader and more variant DPS rotations. I envision rolling Fire for my RK to not be a shift to facerolling Fire instead of Lightning. Rather, it will be a more synergized combination of the two. Open with Fire from range, begin melting targets, until the gap closes, and finish with Lightning (auto-attacks).

the loss of kiting which unless your fully healing attuned and using all fates entwined is the only viable defense the runekeeper

I'm slightly confused here. There is no loss of kiting. Kiting will simply be more like that of a Hunter for example. DPS...gap closes...cc...kite...DPS...gap closes...cc...kite...etc. We still have our old reliable CC tools at our disposal to assist in creating the space needed to DPS (CR, ST, DW, AoS/AoF, PI). None of those have changed.

His argument is full of a lot of misinformation actually. Lightning RKs are still going to be powerful in the moors, any common traiting build for moors (5y 1b 1r, or some variation of 5y) will leave them with a grand total of 5% less crit multiplier.

This is not entirely correct. We also received a gear nerf pretty much across the board to our Tactical Multiplier. So the nerf is deeper than that. If I were to roll Lightning in the RoI Moors, it would be 7Y based on what we know so far, maybe 6Y/1R.

Smart advice. Rune-keepers will still be incredibly powerful in the moors and anyone saying otherwise is simply trolling or completely ignorant. When you burn through 14k morale in 5 attacks, you are not nerfed. If damage is reduced in one area and increased in another, resulting in an overall net increase in your damage; you are not nerfed.

Lightning received a trifecta nerf (skills/traits/gear). It was nerfed. lol There simply is no dispute.

Introducing the Moors argument is even more problematic. There will be no 5 attack kills on any Creeps with enough in Battle Promotions to have a decent Finesse score. Thinking otherwise is delusional. Additionally, Creeps are getting added tactical resists, as well as tactical and critical mitigations. Creep healing was also significantly buffed.

Feedback I'm getting from friends in Moors Beta is that RKs rolling Lightning are getting owned (probably due to a failure to understand the changes and not being geared properly, but owned nonetheless) solo. WLs and Defilers are virtually unbeatable. That is solo play of course. Apparently, in group play, the changes aren't as dramatic.

[Unixbomber]

Lightning received a trifecta nerf (skills/traits/gear). It was nerfed. lol There simply is no dispute.

Introducing the Moors argument is even more problematic. There will be no 5 attack kills on any Creeps with enough in Battle Promotions to have a decent Finesse score. Thinking otherwise is delusional. Additionally, Creeps are getting added tactical resists, as well as tactical and critical mitigations. Creep healing was also significantly buffed.

Feedback I'm getting from friends in Moors Beta is that RKs rolling Lightning are getting owned (probably due to a failure to understand the changes and not being geared properly, but owned nonetheless) solo. WLs and Defilers are virtually unbeatable. That is solo play of course. Apparently, in group play, the changes aren't as dramatic.

Your statements would hold more weight if I hadn't specifically tested a variety of builds, traits and gear against R15 creeps with full Battlefield Promotion. My friend was in disbelief as my weakest hit on him was just over 2k. Shocking words will hit nearly as hard as epic conclusion when it crits under the latest builds so when you have a 4.5k shocking words hit followed by a 5k+ epic conclusion hit, factoring in essence of storm and sustaining bolt hitting between 2-2.5k, the possibilities to drop some intense damage in a matter of seconds, especially when reducing your targets mitigations before using perfect imagery, is still not only very possible but achievable. The flipside to this scenario is that creeps can also trait defences which actually matter, however traiting protection in one regard opens weaknesses in other areas, which in its own right greatly benefits grouping in the moors more than ever before.

As for your friends in moors beta, all I can account for is my own personal testing as it's truthfully all I actually care about; if someone says something can't be done while I'm doing it, I tend to ignore their opinion as it's nothing more than that, an opinion. I would suggest if you really want to see definition of ridiculous, be sure to try blade brother on top of the -15% war cry. Things die, quickly.

[Artanisul]

I might add that the number is only 30% if somehow everyone you heal manages to max their incoming healing (good luck with that).

If anyone you are in need of healing does not have their ICH as high as possible then they are doing it wrong. Healing the DPS as they over agro is going to get everyone killed.

It is any tanks job to max their Incoming healing.

[Fasin]

If anyone you are in need of healing does not have their ICH as high as possible then they are doing it wrong.

Then when i use my dps build i'm doing it wrong.

Healing the DPS as they over agro is going to get everyone killed.

Sorry, forgot nothing AoEs in this game.

It is any tanks job to max their Incoming healing.

Yes.

[Unixbomber]

Hmm... they do mention increased incoming damage not decreased mitigaiton. Can you take another look? And does this debuff get removed when the morale reduction is triggered? (It should stay on, shouldn't it?)

[Unixbomber]

New at level 70 - Improved Rousing Words - If channeled for 5 seconds on an ally, they will gain a tier of Writ of Health.

Does Rousing Words require a target? It's a group healing skill and they usually don't. Now it does, I guess. The wording is ambiguous... will all the fellowship get that (nerfed) tier of Writ of Health? If not, then it’s a strange mix of a single-target healing within a group heal skill. Still, it’s an improvement. Unless it no longer heals the whole group.

Just wanted to confirm that anyone healed for 5 seconds will indeed receive the benefit of Writ of Health, not a specific target. In addition, when running a quick healing test without using a healing riffler or any other gear that would otherwise improve my outgoing healing other than a level 75 satchel and a healing stone my Mending Verse, when it crit, healed around 1,100 morale on the initial heal, on a target with no incoming healing.


// Rune-keepers are nerfed, useless; the end is nigh!

[revoked]

Adieu was that working on the latest version of beta? I tried it this morning but just using RW essentially on myself (was not in fellow) and it did not leave the WoH on me. I hope it is now operational.

But yes, the full group still gets RW but anyone in range for 5 of the 6.5 seconds also is supposed to get a WoH, making it much easier to keep a group healed up. It is one of my favorites of the proposed healing changes (along with the Prelude power return) and by no means a nerf.

Regarding the tooltip for FTOW and FTx, I think it has not yet been changed nor is it clear whether the skill itself has been changed. Neither had been changed as of B2 build. Haven't tested in B3. But remember, what was intended in B0 may never make it to beta much less to live. Right now the only thing that has been changed for Fall/do not fall skills is the attunement. And even that could change.

[Unixbomber]

Adieu was that working on the latest version of beta? I tried it this morning but just using RW essentially on myself (was not in fellow) and it did not leave the WoH on me. I hope it is now operational.

But yes, the full group still gets RW but anyone in range for 5 of the 6.5 seconds also is supposed to get a WoH, making it much easier to keep a group healed up. It is one of my favorite of the proposed healing changes (along with the Prelude power return) and by no means a nerf.

Well, the skill states "Allies effected for at least 5 seconds will gain a tier of Writ of Health" and doesn't imply you'll receive the benefit so technically I was mistaken in saying anyone healed so good catch on that but yes, it works. It's awesome.