Bullroarer Update 28 - Preview #3 CLOSED

[Elmagor]

Really?

Really. It's not from me, it's from developers. At start game have classic quests like "kill X mobs", now we have quests what have a lot of triggers, riddles, a lot of quests where we need protect something or have timers. We have more lore based quests, when at start only epic quests was lore filled. At start all mobs just fight in place where we encounter them, now they use CC, ranged mobs take distance from you, some mobs with low health run away from you.

[Ealdian]

Guardian - the only dedicated tank class in the game (blue - tank, yellow - tank/off-tank, red - questing/pvp) and yet surpassed in tanking by jack-of-all-trades classes like the Captain and Beorning...

Things that got us here:
1) removing the Tactical Mitigation gain from Vitality, which leads to sacrificing Morale for Tactical Mitigation or vice versa.
2) making the Moral gain from Vitality almost flat for all classes - 4:1, 4.5:1 and 4.8:1. The Guardian used to gain more Morale (5:1) than others (Captain had 3:1) because this class lacked the Morale Multiplier Traits/Skills other classes had.
3) taking the Block/Parry/Evade out of the meta by making the cap unreachable and at same time removing it as mechanic from Instances/Raids. B/P/E was a sustainable alternative for the Guardian versus the morale stacking because it was easy to cap (Block and Parry at least) and it was actually working as mechanic.
4) changing the Instance/Raid mechanics to favour the tanking classes that have:
a) Morale Multipliers that give huge Morale pools, which is the only way to survive cause every attack will hit you since B/P/E is not working.
b) Damage Reduction skills because this is the only way to deal with the high hits (there are too many damage buffs or rage skills on the bosses that can't be avoided).
c) DPS group buffs since almost every fight is a DPS race.
5) nerfing the Guardian's AoE targets, changed the Guardian class to the core, now the Guardian relies more on the Challenge to copy the group's threat than making threat with his own AoE skills.[/color]

Ideas for future changes:
1) bring back the Tactical Mitigation from Vitality, even a small amount will help.
2) boost up the amount of Morale a Guardian can gain from Vitality (Guardian only).
3) make B/P/E relevant again by changing the hit mechanics like it used to be, at same time make B/P easy to cap for the Guardian (increase the B/P/E gain from Might and Agility, increase the B/P from Guardian's Ward - Skill & Legacies - and Adaptability - Trait & Legacy)
4) if you do not plan on changing the Instance/Raid mechanics in order to make B/P/E relevant again then:
a) give to Guardian some Morale Multipliers and/or change the Morale gain from Vitality.
b) add to the Guardian's Pledge a damage reduction buff which can stack with Redirect (getting a parry response from Pledge that can be used for Redirect makes sense), so -35% Incoming Damage from Pledge(15s) and -35% Incoming Damage from Redirect(10s) to get you to -70% Incoming Damage for about 10s. Change Juggernaut to -100% Incoming Damage for 15s.
c) make Break Ranks an independent skill, not linked to Shield Taunt or other skill. Anyway, getting a group-wide DPS buff, will get the Guardian as class back in the meta.
5) bring back the AoE targets or at least 8 targets to all except War-chant, that should get 10 targets.

About some of the current changes:
1) Stoic Bubble now provides damage reduction during its effect rather than a heal on expiration.
- it's a positive change since previous heal on expiration was 99.99% impossible to apply (a 100k-200k bubble to survive 15s in order to get the heal) so I always had Stoic at 5/6
- what is negative about this change:
a) the Damage Reduction is directly dependent to the Stoic Bubble effect, which means that the buff will last only until the bubble is depleted.
b) the Stoic Bubble effect will not survive more than 1-2 hits in a raid, even with that 20% Damage Reduction, so I am not sure it is worth it to trait Stoic to 6/6 just for a 1-3s effect.
- a way to fix this is to add the Damage Reduction to Warrior's Heart Max Morale effect (20s) or add it as an independent tooltip buff.
2) Break Ranks now applies a group-wide buff rather than individual.
- it's a positive change.
- what I would change about it:
a) make Break Ranks an independent skill, not linked to Shield Taunt or other skill.
b) the skill should give a temporal self Critical Rating buff as well, in order for the Guardian to build his Fortification back faster and at same time to do a bit of DPS himself.

I have probably forgot to add some things but this has to do for now.

[Tullkas]

Any chance of RKs being viable again DPS wise we are about 20-25% behind all other DPS class's I understand we have DnFs so maybe a 15-20% damage increase across the board and an increase to DnFs in yellow n Red Lines to 5 min CD sounds fair.

[Barney1119]

Any chance of RKs being viable again

[Kehleyr_SSG]

Bullroarer is open through Thursday, 5 PM EDT, now featuring the new 6-man Instance!

[zaboch]

...and no new class changes. Greeeeeat! Why even bother at this point when nobody is listening?

[Hephburz-2]

...and no new class changes. Greeeeeat! Why even bother at this point when nobody is listening?

Smile

You know these Guardian class changes have been sat on Palantir, completely unchanged, for the past 4 months, why did anyone think 3-4 weeks of Bullroarer was going to make a difference?

[Osglinthor]

No idea if this is just BR bug or whatever it has been mentioned in other threads and maybe even here,skill queing is messed up.
Massive amount of changes in notes also.

[HolyDuckTape]

Where are the other guard changes and the BPE rework?

-Blue guards are still BY FAR not even close to where they should be, the most recent BR changes are also not implemented in the right way for guardians to truly benefit from them.

-Red guards still need literally every single trait changed/buffed (not exaggerating, every trait is horrible and overpriced for such tiny buffs)

-Yellow guards are beyond broken in how they work, they got an identity crisis between debuffs and dps and are trash at both. An entire change is needed here aswell.

Rip guardians.

[ConsistantRager]

Where are the other guard changes and the BPE rework?

-Blue guards are still BY FAR not even close to where they should be, the most recent BR changes are also not implemented in the right way for guardians to truly benefit from them.

-Red guards still need literally every single trait changed/buffed (not exaggerating, every trait is horrible and overpriced for such tiny buffs)

-Yellow guards are beyond broken in how they work, they got an identity crisis between debuffs and dps and are trash at both. An entire change is needed here aswell.

Rip guardians.

Don't worry tho, im sure another burglar buff will come through soon enough. Something super reasonable like double edge strike making the next attack devastate or something really balanced like all the other burg changes that have happened in the last 7 years of burg development. Tbh delete all classes in this game other than burg because it gets more updates than all the other classes combined.

[utacynic]

Where are the other guard changes and the BPE rework?

Also: can we get our LI (belt) fixed before the new class gets added to the game?

[Hephburz-2]

Where are the other guard changes and the BPE rework?

-Blue guards are still BY FAR not even close to where they should be, the most recent BR changes are also not implemented in the right way for guardians to truly benefit from them.

-Red guards still need literally every single trait changed/buffed (not exaggerating, every trait is horrible and overpriced for such tiny buffs)

-Yellow guards are beyond broken in how they work, they got an identity crisis between debuffs and dps and are trash at both. An entire change is needed here aswell.

Rip guardians.

See below:

Smile

You know these Guardian class changes have been sat on Palantir, completely unchanged, for the past 4 months, why did anyone think 3-4 weeks of Bullroarer was going to make a difference?

[J-Moneyforever]

Don't worry tho, im sure another burglar buff will come through soon enough. Something super reasonable like double edge strike making the next attack devastate or something really balanced like all the other burg changes that have happened in the last 7 years of burg development. Tbh delete all classes in this game other than burg because it gets more updates than all the other classes combined.

I know this is tongue-in-cheek cause burgs get an absurd amount of love from the devs. But it's funny because they've broken their game so badly it's actually worse for a burg to dev on certain skills than just get a normal crit. And for champs a dev is ALWAYS worse than a crit. Systems on systems man.

[bAcKpAiN]

Could we please hear dev reasoning behind this change?

So people will open more boxes that have embers inside them as we as adventurer gear that decons for the old rate. I really really want to come back to LOTRO but the more I am reading from SSG the more I am staying FTP. I am stopping myself from resubbiing my son and I because of this kind of junk. The increase in virtues (probably with a sale on virtue xp tomes the first week) the drop in embers for content drops, the cost of the mini xpac. It all screams to me just stay FTP.

[Morellian]

Bullroarer is open through Thursday, 5 PM EDT, now featuring the new 6-man Instance!

Has the skill chain queueing issue been fixed?

Has Guardian shield use rank been replaced or given something useful to do?


Please fix (or at least acknowledge) these extremely urgent issues before any piece of content goes live.

[Joedangod]

Should probably just slap tactical mitigation on guard belts and have that scale off the starlits you put in.

[Braer]

Still not working on 64-bit dx11 so hardly a fair comparison with live loading for me.

Skill Queue didn't get any acknowledgement nor a roll back so that 2 minute test was it for me. Don't know how people are going to test a 6 man when half the members will have their skill timings screwed up.

[zaboch]

Should probably just slap tactical mitigation on guard belts and have that scale off the starlits you put in.

Absolutely not, ratings on legacies in general have to go, they're far too useless. As it is, I'd rather than nothing than 3000 tact mit.

[Joedangod]

Absolutely not, ratings on legacies in general have to go, they're far too useless. As it is, I'd rather than nothing than 3000 tact mit.

AFAIK the star lit part of an LI scales exponentially, not linearly like the legacies.

[zaboch]

AFAIK the star lit part of an LI scales exponentially, not linearly like the legacies.

And it will still provide slightly less than useless regarding benefit. There was a change after MM launch where all sources of tactical mitigation (global channge, any code or text which included any tactical mitigation buff) was reduced (in current and scaling) by roughly 20%. (This was the same update that also reduced Vitality by roughly 10% and increased BPE ratings by roughly 15%.)

While I was hyperbolizing, look at Champion Runes and Burglar Toolkits.



Yes....very exponential.

[Tullkas]

Absolutely not, ratings on legacies in general have to go, they're far too useless. As it is, I'd rather than nothing than 3000 tact mit.

Or Make it % Based ~2.5 % or so at max star lit level. With guards being so far away from Cappy Tanking and very little Tact Damage reduction skill's this would be a small step in right direction.

[zaboch]

Or Make it % Based ~2.5 % or so at max star lit level. With guards being so far away from Cappy Tanking and very little Tact Damage reduction skill's this would be a small step in right direction.

Suggested before and will repeat again. Just make it give Base Combat Damage, similar to how the same runes work (at a lesser magnitude). This would help out all lines, as Guardian struggles with base damage on multiple skills (and bleeds overall).

[cdq1958]

Quest instance "A Perilous Pact" now advances. The next step, "A Strange Rock" is partly obscured. F10 does highlight it and you can use it to advance to the next instance.

[Thurallor]

I don't see anything in the release notes about the major housing bug (when all of your housing items are invisible/inaccessible, and restarting the game may not even fix it) which occurs with distressing frequency. Is it being addressed in this update?

[Thurinuor]

...yes. I've known entire kinships I raided with that are now gone because there haven't been many bad decisions. Outside of raiding, however, yes, there weren't many bad decisions made (/s)

VIP only support (while at the same time dropping most features of it), continuous server problems (lag, delays, chat functionality breaking), problematic content releases (numerous reported/unfixed bugs, screen clippings and bugged quest resources), lootbox favoured meta (can't wait for gambling laws to move up in the world and see how'd they deal with them, this game is still technically operating illegally for Netherlands, just surprised nobody reported it), class balance ignorance...I can go on and further explain every single one here, but what does it matter when a good majority of the population S-keys and tries to provide input into matters they can't comprehend, to them, GAME IS PERFECT!!!AND IF YOU CRITIQUE YOU CAN LEAVE!!11!!1 (Looking at you, Landy and Laurelin players)

Right now, Im not sure how the logic for this ... let's face it, glorified quest pack locked behind a paywall (certainly not an expansion, it has less content than Mordor), is. There is sometimes a spike in population when new content drops and people come back, but there's no way that many would be even tempted. Props to returnees (again, /s)

But, why is LOTRO then still here? It's simple, massive budget cuts.
A few months ago, there was a roster leak, with a spreadsheet of employees in each department and they were pretty much running on skeleton crew, not sure for how long but it's certainly been a while. You can see the cuts happening, mostly in the art department first:

• Uniquely drawn maps were gone since Central Gondor, replaced by a zoomed out topography which looks hideous
• Many items between classes started sharing appearances and many textures have been repurposed. This has been a trend since Pelennor/Throne days.
• Many reused assets, some that have no business belonging there
  
  • AM instance is just repurposed Angmar, they made literally nothing new for it, other than the boss, but I wouldn't even dare say that, the disfigurements looks like they downloaded an owl model from Sharebin and contorted it to fit on another model
  • No new assets have been made for the entirety of Minas Morgul and Northern Anduin, even Shelob was just a glorified spider model with the same animations, Rhukhor was just a suited up Angmarim model with a larger bucket helm that was enlarged from Dolvaethor without the spikes
  • 3 mans were entirely recycled mobs and content, they didn't even bother making animations for their "specific" attacks.
  • Let's move even more back, Hrimil was the last actually unique asset developed, with new animations and rigging (even though they look a bit jagged and not fluid)
  • Again, entirety of all instances was recycled content and we saw literally nothing new in any of them. Hell, they didn't even bother changing the Arnorian symbols on Avaburg
  • I'll just say it here again, for emphasis. I'm fine with lesser/landscape mobs sharing skins or having low effort put into them, maybe even some for 3 mans. But 6 mans and especially raids should not look like the same henchmen that we fought on landscape, it's completely breaking the one unique thing LOTRO has, world building.

So yeah, that's why the game is still around. It's not because, of your implied sarcasm, that the changes (or lack thereof) didn't chase away people. They did. It's just that there have been so many budget and staff cuts in the back that are really starting to haemorrhage into the game itself at a much larger scale. And the next update is more of the same, repurposed assets, lack of balancing, more progression gating.

Maybe you should play another game and move from here. You are here in a beta (!) forum. People who are hating a game should not write walls of text in a beta forum where people want to talk about the new things coming with a new update. You are wrong here. If you don't like what you see, please leave this website instead of hating everything and everyone here. Thanks!

This is a 13 years old game. SSG is an indie studio, it's not WB games anymore. Sure that they have less ressources. I am glad to see new content and can't understand why some people are thinking we are in 2008 anymore. Wake up. Play the game or leave. Did you ever spend a single penny in the game? Most of the people who are hating the quality of lotro are the ones who want everthing for free or have spend ONE time money in Lifetime Account and are thinking SSG has to pay them 1000 bucks every month for the rest of their lifes.

What I am doing now: I am going with the 100 dollar package with war of the three peaks and then I am going to support the game with another 100 dollar points bundle.