Minstrel Tweaks

[Seschat]

This is a completely exaggerated post. Vastin's already said he play tested at level 50 and was able to comfortably kill elite mobs. Minstrel dps has been over the top at low levels for a long time now, so really it's about time this sort of change was made. Finally, Vastin has also mentioned multiple times theses changes will be play tested either on Palantir or Bullroarer, which would give additional chance to review dps numbers.

Point of order: 50 is mid-level, not low level. Low level would be someone still trucking about in the Shadows of Angmar storyline.

[Xanovaria]

If you really want to change the timing of skills...

Change the induction times instead of cooldown times. That way the lv120 anvil set bonuses will be desired and useful.

In short, *I* may have to write up massive spreadsheets in order to properly understand and work with our character classes - and some of you obviously enjoy doing the same in your spare time - but I'd really rather that most players not be required to. I want to try to keep most of the major mechanics visible to players wherever reasonably possible.

We have to do this to find out which skills/traits actually do what they say they are doing. There are SO MANY broken skills and traits that REQUIRE THE COMMUNITY TO PERFORM YOUR QUALITY CONTROL FOR YOU.
Examples:
1) The "Tactical Mastery" trait in yellow line simply doesn't work at all. It does not award 5% tac mit period. Totally broken.
2) "Raise Our Spirits" trait in yellow line does not award a fellowship-wide AoE heal like it says it does. Totally broken.

I'm pretty sure you'll be fine, though I'll definitely need feedback from a wider range of levels to be safe.

We've given you the feedback about SoS and you've chosen not to listen to it.
Being "pretty sure" is not good enough. Be damn sure. Be confident that what you are doing is good for the community.

[Vastin]

Decent changes but in all honesty: now mini will be most likely on rk/beorning lv.
And that is not good for the given content and will most likely produce a t3 raid cleared on day 1/2....

This, of course, is my biggest concern ATM. Making Minstrels competitive healers again is easy - but so is overshooting the mark. It's not too difficult to re-arrange a classes' skills to make for more interesting rotation choices and a wider roster of valid skills - but its still pretty hard to keep classes balanced against each other in terms of overall output, and HPS is a good bit harder than DPS in this regard, because testing it is generally more challenging.

It may be that I have to come back around and do a modest across-the-board reduction in healing for all the main healers if this turns out to be the case. Vitality pools are pretty big right now so hopefully this won't overshoot. I'd like to hold off on doing a major re-balance of healing vs. vitality that until the next eventual level cap increase, when the relationship between healing/vitality/damage tends to get reset in any case.

-Vastin

[Thodrien]

This, of course, is my biggest concern ATM. Making Minstrels competitive healers again is easy - but so is overshooting the mark. It's not too difficult to re-arrange a classes' skills to make for more interesting rotation choices and a wider roster of valid skills - but its still pretty hard to keep classes balanced against each other in terms of overall output, and HPS is a good bit harder than DPS in this regard, because testing it is generally more challenging.

It may be that I have to come back around and do a modest across-the-board reduction in healing for all the main healers if this turns out to be the case. Vitality pools are pretty big right now so hopefully this won't overshoot. I'd like to hold off on doing a major re-balance of healing vs. vitality that until the next eventual level cap increase, when the relationship between healing/vitality/damage tends to get reset in any case.

-Vastin

Yeah and the biggest problem there is that about the 3 heal classes its not only about pure heal numbers.
Specially the heal rk need a rechange on their biggest cooldown where they can absorb -60% inc dmg of the whole fellowship on 1/3 uptime.
The biggest problem is that if you stack that by using 3 heal rks you can ignore almost every mechanic.

I would suggest:-30% heal nerv flat for beorning+mini+a 3-5min coodlown on rk stone.
And idealy before T3 gets released on live!

[Endoloose]

This, of course, is my biggest concern ATM. Making Minstrels competitive healers again is easy - but so is overshooting the mark. It's not too difficult to re-arrange a classes' skills to make for more interesting rotation choices and a wider roster of valid skills - but its still pretty hard to keep classes balanced against each other in terms of overall output, and HPS is a good bit harder than DPS in this regard, because testing it is generally more challenging.

It may be that I have to come back around and do a modest across-the-board reduction in healing for all the main healers if this turns out to be the case. Vitality pools are pretty big right now so hopefully this won't overshoot. I'd like to hold off on doing a major re-balance of healing vs. vitality that until the next eventual level cap increase, when the relationship between healing/vitality/damage tends to get reset in any case.

-Vastin

yeah, aint no fun with a class spoiled by being too powerfull. Looking forward to test the changes. Now please figure out a way to disable all those pesky set bonuses on gear <120 used by end-level players .

[dsltn07]

This, of course, is my biggest concern ATM. Making Minstrels competitive healers again is easy - but so is overshooting the mark. It's not too difficult to re-arrange a classes' skills to make for more interesting rotation choices and a wider roster of valid skills - but its still pretty hard to keep classes balanced against each other in terms of overall output, and HPS is a good bit harder than DPS in this regard, because testing it is generally more challenging.

It may be that I have to come back around and do a modest across-the-board reduction in healing for all the main healers if this turns out to be the case. Vitality pools are pretty big right now so hopefully this won't overshoot. I'd like to hold off on doing a major re-balance of healing vs. vitality that until the next eventual level cap increase, when the relationship between healing/vitality/damage tends to get reset in any case.

-Vastin

If you nerf Beorn, please have a look at giving us more skills in addition so that rotation becomes more than wrath maintenance and ER/bellow on cooldown. I’d also like to see the ER HoT lengthened so that is becomes a ST emergency heal for non-tanks as well. As it is, you have to use to to reapply the HoT so often it’s not available for anything else. Making the HoT tier down instead of disappear on expiration would also be a big help in this regard. Further, the CD vs duration on hearten is skewed too far. I would also prefer if many of the traits were reworked away from CC and closer to a direct support role with strong debuffs and heals. Improving the uptime on crush would be a huge change, as it is a maxed crush is up for 10 seconds and down for 6 if you’re reapplying every 16s.

I’ve written a lot of feedback on this, I may aim to try and compile a feedback thread for future changes sometime this weekend or next. May be busy with T2 anvil this weekend.

[Vastin]

If you nerf Beorn, please have a look at giving us more skills in addition so that rotation becomes more than wrath maintenance and ER/bellow on cooldown.

Yes on the nerf (sry, trying to keep it small), and yes I definitely want to come back around to yellow Beorn and make its healing structure more complex, unfortunately in their case they'll almost certainly need a couple new skills or major skills redesigned, so I need a decent chunk of spare time to be able to execute on that.

-Vastin

[dsltn07]

yes on the nerf (sry, trying to keep it small), and yes i definitely want to come back around to yellow beorn and make its healing structure more complex, unfortunately in their case they'll almost certainly need a couple new skills or major skills redesigned, so i need a decent chunk of spare time to be able to execute on that.

-vastin

***applause***

~~~cheers~~~

!!!gratitude!!!

[Vastin]

Specially the heal rk need a rechange on their biggest cooldown where they can absorb -60% inc dmg of the whole fellowship on 1/3 uptime.

There are a number of these really overpowered group buffs/boss debuffs bouncing around that we need to gradually weed out. They make our instance designer's lives very difficult because they can often be used to completely negate major mechanics or just render an instance trivial if stacked in creative ways. Buffs of this magnitude either need to go or have very short up-times.

-Vastin

[dsltn07]

There are a number of these really overpowered group buffs/boss debuffs bouncing around that we need to gradually weed out. They make our instance designer's lives very difficult because they can often be used to completely negate major mechanics or just render an instance trivial if stacked in creative ways. Buffs of this magnitude either need to go or have very short up-times.

-Vastin

Short uptimes in combination with a return to the longer cooldowns may be helpful. It used to be that most of the best skills in the game had 5-10 minute CDs, which was majorly reworked/changed with the introduction of the trait trees. You could use it to save a fellow, but usually only once per fight.

[Aelbryht]

This, of course, is my biggest concern ATM. Making Minstrels competitive healers again is easy - but so is overshooting the mark. It's not too difficult to re-arrange a classes' skills to make for more interesting rotation choices and a wider roster of valid skills - but its still pretty hard to keep classes balanced against each other in terms of overall output, and HPS is a good bit harder than DPS in this regard, because testing it is generally more challenging.

It may be that I have to come back around and do a modest across-the-board reduction in healing for all the main healers if this turns out to be the case. Vitality pools are pretty big right now so hopefully this won't overshoot. I'd like to hold off on doing a major re-balance of healing vs. vitality that until the next eventual level cap increase, when the relationship between healing/vitality/damage tends to get reset in any case.

-Vastin

Do you see blue Captains becoming part of the healing conversation again? If you're managing to get Minstrels, RKs and Beornings all back on a more even footing it would seem a shame for the Hands of Healing traitline to be left out in the cold as it were. Maybe that's not too high a priority though since they see good use as support and tank already.

[Arabani]

Vastin, please do not forget that there is another healer that needs fixing-Blue Captain. The class requires significant changes, new healing skills, traits and so on to be able to heal as well as the rest of healers.

[Edelanor]

- Major Ballad group heal increased by ~570%. This skill can now be used prior to combat.
Interesting-
With no induction and 1s cooldown, this could be used at any time, in any situation at all.
You could keep anthems and codas always up, because a heal doesn't need to engage a mob.

- Raise the Spirit's yellow line trait now properly applies a Fellowship HoT (3ticks/2s, 20m radius)
Will the amount be increased as well, like Improved Chord of Salvation? It is currently very low, like the others.

- Improved Chord of Salvation group heal component increased by ~300%, cooldown increased [10->12s].
What is happening to the regular Chord of Salvation, for Healers not in Blue?

[Milarien]

If you weren’t aware, tanks should be able to easily keep themselves alive through almost all T1 content except some 6 man boss fights and anvil. Even T2 glimmer can be done without heals fairly easily. There is also a massive difference between a well geared, skilled minstrel, and a landscape minstrel who doesn’t quite understand the class. We are talking a magnitude of 5-10 times stronger. I’ve seen minstrels (plural, as in multiple different players) struggling to put out 2k HPS (from a tank main point of view). I suspect this comes from a lack of class knowledge.

Edit; as an excerpt: Just last evening I did a T1 quays run with a minstrel and hunter. For trash pulls I went dps, the minstrel was in healing line and could not even keep the hunter alive when the hunter pulled a single mob, the hunter was also severely undergeared and I suspect had less than 10k dps, but this is just an example of the variety of players. Not everyone has raid gear or dedication sadly. I wound up having to use my dps gear in tank line to be sure they never got agro, but also to progress the run along with at least SOME dps. If my dps was equal to or less than their combined dps, the quays run would have likely taken well over 1.5-2 hours.

I think my point was that I shouldn't NEED raid gear to do non-raid content. T1 instances are intended to be the starter versions of the instances, one would presumably be doing these instances in part to obtain gear for T2/T3, in part to learn the instance in order to do T2/T3, and in part just for the fun of the instance itself.

And, to be clear, I am a former raider. I did raid type content until I was diagnosed with several cancers some years ago. I know the difference in skill and in gear.

[Edelanor]

I'd just like to point out to all the people complaining that healing|inductions|whatever is too OP with full specced endgame raid gear, the answer is to nerf your gear, not everybody else.

[dsltn07]

I think my point was that I shouldn't NEED raid gear to do non-raid content. T1 instances are intended to be the starter versions of the instances, one would presumably be doing these instances in part to obtain gear for T2/T3, in part to learn the instance in order to do T2/T3, and in part just for the fun of the instance itself.

And, to be clear, I am a former raider. I did raid type content until I was diagnosed with several cancers some years ago. I know the difference in skill and in gear.

I was talking about gear and knowledge in combination, not raid gear. I don’t have raid gear. I’ve seen minstrels do well without raid gear. What is unfortunate is finding a quest geared minstrel in blue line trying to main heal a tank that doesn’t need it for the t1 3 man, and seriously struggling. I’ve seen a minstrel with quest gear and one or two essence pieces with will and tact mastery essences slotted. I’ve also seen a fully vitality slotted minstrel struggling to heal. This isn’t entirely about quest gear vs raid gear, it’s class knowledge and I think the stat rebalance in combo with a lack of knowledge caused a lot of confusion.

Expecting that vit stacked minstrel to do well in a T2 raid would be ridiculous. That’d be like stacking Pmastery and crit in my tank and expecting to do well.

[sapienze]

All these changes to healing, the front end (inductions), Heal increases, Back end (reducing animations) could very well have an unintended outcome. It is a lot and all at once. Since the animations are being shortened in length, this in itself is worth a look at as a stand alone preview. Then if it looks good and the Minstrel still needs help move onto the Inductions and lastly at the heal rate and its sum in a rotation.


Story of Courage was always a risky choice in a "need to" situation. It's good to see it changed.


Overall the heal specced Minstrel looks good here. I just hope this new version doesn't make the class too easy.

[dsltn07]

He did wrap up his post by saying that it might have been overdone and need some tuning back down. I’m sure we will hear about it once it hits BR.

[Thoroval]

This, of course, is my biggest concern ATM. Making Minstrels competitive healers again is easy - but so is overshooting the mark.

I really hope some good comes of this pass and that concerns over raiding or other classes doesn't quash it. I just want to play my minstrel in places like The Wastes without feeling like roadkill all the time. I've never felt so frail in combat in any game. In fact, I've decided to skip Mordor entirely (not even going to purchase it) if The Wastes is any indication of the difficulty there. I'm not a raiding minstrel. I don't have and never will have that level of gear. I'm sure some of my difficulty is my current gear (I'm working on accumulating better), but not all of it. Lately I've had to go elsewhere to get my combat fixes and that's just sad.

[keztryl]

There are a number of these really overpowered group buffs/boss debuffs bouncing around that we need to gradually weed out. They make our instance designer's lives very difficult because they can often be used to completely negate major mechanics or just render an instance trivial if stacked in creative ways. Buffs of this magnitude either need to go or have very short up-times.

-Vastin

As opposed to removing group buffs/boss debuffs, I would rather see bands of non-stacking but competing buffs.

Before things got out of balance, especially at level 50 cap, it felt like each class had a degree of overlap with other classes. Sure they were each unique but some skills were the same. With the trait tree changes, I feel like there was an effort to make each class more unique. And maintaining that vision seems to me to be the direction where the development team would like to go.

Having unique roles is fine, but I think quite a few of the "buffing/debuffing" yellow lines are in rough shape, and were never allowed to become truly viable out of fears that increasing the potency of these lines would lead to overpowered stacking of buffs. A good example is yellow hunter, and yellow warden, which are currently specializations that have no real place.

I would rather see something where there are a few buffs that cap (say incoming damage, cannot be increased above x%) but multiple classes can contribute in different amounts to that buff/debuff.

The logic would run something like: both Captains and Minstrels can inspire their fellows, but the presence of both does lead to the fellowship to become so inspired that they twice as powerful as they were before. There is limit to how inspired you can be. Similarly, several classes might be able to increase % based damage to a target (Burglars and Captains), but this doesn't mean that each class is pointing out a different weaknesses or that multiple weaknesses can be exploited by the DPS classes all at once. Directing the flow of battle to exploit an opening is not made better by more than one person calling it out.

So, in my mind, buffing classes would be grouped, with their buffs (or at least some degree of the buffs) being non-stacking. Each buffing/debuffing line might be better for certain kinds of buffs than others, and still have a few that are completely unique (e.g., Oathbreakers). But there would be room for some interchangeability between classes, in the same way that there is room for some interchangeable of DPS classes and heals. The classic debuff classes like LMs, would just have a greater range of buffs available to them, but not a collection of buffs that are entirely unique.

Possible bands might include: Inspirational +% damage buffs, damage reduction buffs, attack duration buffs, mitigation debuffs, etc.

[the319]

Examples:
1) The "Tactical Mastery" trait in yellow line simply doesn't work at all. It does not award 5% tac mit period. Totally broken.
2) "Raise Our Spirits" trait in yellow line does not award a fellowship-wide AoE heal like it says it does. Totally broken.

We've given you the feedback about SoS and you've chosen not to listen to it.
Being "pretty sure" is not good enough. Be damn sure. Be confident that what you are doing is good for the community.

The tach mit works just fine, just hover your cursor over the tach mit in stats and you'll see the percentage go up 5% when slotting it. Ros has been fixed if you read the v2 patch notes!

Vastin, can you check inner strength trait in the blue, I don't think thats giving 15% to bubbles last time I looked.

[Milarien]

I really hope some good comes of this pass and that concerns over raiding or other classes doesn't quash it. I just want to play my minstrel in places like The Wastes without feeling like roadkill all the time. I've never felt so frail in combat in any game. In fact, I've decided to skip Mordor entirely (not even going to purchase it) if The Wastes is any indication of the difficulty there. I'm not a raiding minstrel. I don't have and never will have that level of gear. I'm sure some of my difficulty is my current gear (I'm working on accumulating better), but not all of it. Lately I've had to go elsewhere to get my combat fixes and that's just sad.

FYI, Mordor is pretty doable at 120.

[Hildilas]

There are a number of these really overpowered group buffs/boss debuffs bouncing around that we need to gradually weed out. They make our instance designer's lives very difficult because they can often be used to completely negate major mechanics or just render an instance trivial if stacked in creative ways. Buffs of this magnitude either need to go or have very short up-times.

-Vastin

...Keep in mind the mordor set, the fact that overhealing isn't always THAT useful and that the Beo does nothing in terms of group defence buffing. I got my warden standing in the corner and my burg and my Beo does not want to join again.
As others said: Make the captain a better healer than tank again...Everyone will always take a captain over a warden/champ and maybe even over a guard because of their marks and stuff.

[Xanovaria]

Vastin: The new v2 changes look pretty acceptable mate; good job. However, please keep in mind a few things about the minstrel:


1) Minstrels are reactionary healers. Our ability to heal comes from the quick reactions of our skills and ourselves. The heals don't necessarily need to be large; but they need to be fast.


2) Making a skill rotation "Interesting" just for the sake of it being interesting should not be a goal. Having different skills that can/need to be used in a variety of situations IS important. We need skills that:

a) Sustain a target's (tank) morale while he is full.

[This is currently being accomplished with SoS and Bolster Courage, but will be much harder with a long BC cooldown, leading to the tank's morale droppingand us having to play catch-up]

b) Can be used immediately in reaction to a target's (think DPSer) morale suddenly dropping to get him up back up to full.

[Current Skill: Chord of Salvation]

c) Can sustain a fellowship's morale OFTEN ENOUGH TO KEEP EVERYONE ALIVE. This is important when there is distributed damage; think Rakothas in Throne of the Dread Terror

[Currently being done with Inspire Fellows; which will not be feasible after the proposed cooldown increase of Inspire Fellows]

d) Can HoT and be applied to multiple targets so our attention and heals can be placed elsewhere. Ex: when a few DPSers get adds on them for the duration of a boss fight

[This is the job of SoS. With the new cool-down of SoS we will not be able to apply it to more than 2 targets, negating its usefulness in boss-fights]

Good job thus far though mate; keep it up and thank you for listening to the community on this one. We really do appreciate it.

[Saruman_Of_Numbers]

There are a number of these really overpowered group buffs/boss debuffs bouncing around that we need to gradually weed out. They make our instance designer's lives very difficult because they can often be used to completely negate major mechanics or just render an instance trivial if stacked in creative ways. Buffs of this magnitude either need to go or have very short up-times.

-Vastin

If you plan on nerfing fates entwined, you will have to work some major bugfixes and skill polish on healing RKs... RK bombastic inspiration has the longest skill delay of any ability in the game, and several other skills have also fallen behind... the only thing keeping healing RK relevant (compared to beorning/cappy and now minstrel) is the fates entwined skill.