On Lore-masters and Tamed Creatures

[Polymachos]

Another issue, this time with the small cousin, Lightning Strike.

I play in blue (always did so, even when red was the preferred one), and usually send my pet in, then do my part to the fight from the back row, even at level 140. But if I use a lightning strike, my pet stops attacking, and returns to me.

Why? I cannot even remember when it last happened that the Lightning Strike did actually stun a mob. I am forced to send the pet back in and keep fighting the mob at the same time. Not ideal. Please, either turn the Lightning Strike into a reliable stunning skill, or let the pet keep fighting. The current setup makes no sense.


Greetings, Polymachos

[Turin347]

There are already pretty good suggestions and points, so I not gonna repeat them too much. Just dropping some idea and consideration:

In solo play, the perceived bond/behaviour with the pet is quite cool atm, even if the effectiveness might not be stellar. The meh part is that far too many of the buffs we can cast via our skills or via the pet are of little or none-at-all advantage for us.

In group play, I think one of the major points is the mutually exclusive presence of one LMs: yes, a LM is almost mandatory in high tier content, but it is one and only one if you dont want to cripple your group. So while for ex you could get several of one dps class/heal class to fill you raid quitre effectively, with the actual effectivenesses you can have just one LM, since many of the buffs/debuffs are not stackable.


So I think the direction should be: make choosing to fill your raid with more LMs less of an insane thought.

As for the pet rotation, it is cool in the context of skill check, but it is abysmal as gameplay. I would suggest not giving CDs to pet summon, but making their "main" skill a toggled one, so that if you want the debuff you have to have the pet present and active. If you want to change the main buff/debuff you can switch pet, but one LMs will be able to keep only one "major" debuff. In this way you will benefit having multiple LMs with different pets, if you want to have multiple pet buffs on the boss. Then assign minor buffs/skills/heals to the secondary skills of the pets, something that will not be worth a resummon-practice (which will cast away the toggled skill).

In general, I would make one major pet buff (eg. +5% incoming melee dmg) to be toggled, and then make multiple LMs skills that will apply, with a CD, the other pet's buffs for a temporary time (as usual buffs/debuffs).


As for dps, I think that a class with so long animations and inductions should be better rewarded for casting. There is a large need for a revamp of major skills like Ents, Nature's Fury and LStorm, Murder of Crows to balance them between dmg, cd, animation and induction. Right now even using them constantly they feel like dents in long fights. Like, other classes have same dmg-skills as LStorm on less than 15s cds, without induction and awful animation recovery.

[Mithithil]

Been here since close to the beginning (/played is around a year and a half...), but that gives me no more insight than someone who has done six months.

IMO Blue line is as close to the pre traitline LM as we see nowadays, but it feels very unloved. I have not really bothered with it since the pet nerf in Mordor when Tutelage of The Brown Wizard no longer gave you the +3 levels signature pet which was one of the real "schticks" that the LM had. The reasoning given then no longer makes sense so please can the restoration of this be considered and discussed. I'll touch on some aspects later. Apart from that, blue line offers a rather meh experience. No group viability really and solo dps gets tedious with mob morale even in landscape and when the specialist dps does a mission in ten minutes and the Blue LM can take half an hour that makes for a very clear imbalance in what can be acheived, again, the Mordor reputation instances, and subsequent ones made this apparent in ways that should have been picked up upon.

Red line. Because I'm in a kin that is happy so to do I will take a red LM into some group play, a casual Sagorth or SV at T1 or maybe the Doom skirmish, but you are essentially mopping up a spot that could be used by proper dps. Solo it is generally fine in landscape but if there is any expectation of a red LM being welcome in a PUG, the acid test of acceptability of a traitline, it will need a significant boost to dps or some other special capacity brought to the group. You might argue that RoF has a large mob BPE reduction and sure, it does, but 100K reduction isn't much in reality and if the player experience is anything to go by, BPE buffs and debuffs are of very little practical value. Couple that with the general feeling that LM fire AoE attacks cause instant additional lag effects and there are groups that will specifically asik you not to use them, eg in PvMP or Forges and Lofts PUGs, or even the odd HH T1 where the leader just wants everyone dps ing.

Yellow line. The nerfs to Fire Lore and Frost Lore were a big hit frankly, and puddle mechanics which are unaffected plus the massive damage boss mobs need to do to get more than a tickling feeling in the tank, but instadeath for squishies, leave the effects feeling a bit underwhelming at times. Likewise SoP Command, unless its a long fight the effects make no real odds at all. I sue them all all the time but as much as anything else from habit. The healing changes were a great move, LMs now have a solid role in high tier 3 man content and kudos on that. Again the PG test application shows a pass although the coloured lights bit in DoP is still beyond me personally as debuffer/healer.

Corruption removal. LM used to be very good at this because corruption mechancis favoured the LMs "big wipe". They ahve now changed in favour of spammable removals where the big wipe big colldown is a positive disadvantage. Yes, skill reset with CTTV but there are so many things for which you will wish to keep that one that resetting corruption removal isn't going to feature often enough to consider.

Pet rotations. I've been round that route but my experience is that some of the time you are too busy unless the whole thing is a hot key macro to dismiss and summon, it makes using pet food a bit futile because you cannot apply it in combat and it is pretty group dependant. If all the dps are Hunters then frankly only the Bog Guardian is pertinent, if its all melee then only the bear matters and then only for shatter arms which isn't much and if your dps is all fire RKs then only the Raven matters. Raven + dps using fire oil is...well I'm not even sure it amkes any odds. Basically pet rotations don't seem to bring as much to the party as they once did. Sabre Tooth, Lynx and Eagle bnring nothing to the party, especially as the Eagle isn't accessible outside Blue and the interrupt skill is broken, fixing both of those before Thrang comes aorund would be A Good Thing.

I would cheerfully sacrifice in combat pet summoning to get the +3 levels signature pet back, with the bear's taunt and threat skills where they were and the Eagle not gated to blue and with the interrupt working

I'll elaborate, that bear combination, if you planned it that way, was a good "panic button" option if the tank went down. You would get the boss' attention while the tank was rezzed at the risk of being next in line if the bear was slotted. A test of skill, like doing Coldbear solo used to be, or solo T3 Roost if you want more recent, although in that latter was also resummon. If you want to give Blue line a unique advantage, let the capstone be combat pet summoning, but will it pass the PUG test.

By the same token the CD on nature spirit summonming was IMO a nerf too far. Halve the CD, if you lose it in the fight its tedious waiting on progression because a CD hasn't expired.

Cooldowns and effects.
Ents Go To War. Very flashy and used to be quite desireable but the CD is, and always has been, far too long for it to be anything other than a very situational skill. The damage output means you dont bother using it for that anymore and as a CC AoE stun its too slow to use far too often.
Nature's Fury. Visually impressive but full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Unless you have really specced up into red with book and staff, or indeed multiple books for each traitline, this skill feels like it needs a damage buff or a cooldown reduction

Corruption removal
Simply too slow for the current game

Healing skills
Great changes for morale heals, too early to tell on power heals. I think that the Gwatherenost raid will give more insight on that when there are 11 others' power levels to watch. Part of me would like to see the Barad Guldure raid power management skill requirement again, but I'm less keen on having to get the specific bit of specific raid specific gear setup.

The various debuff combos like out in the cold and playing with fire, I'm not certain they do anough to chase them. See above on slowed attacks and so forth. Likewise, given that player power can be drained out, perhaps the LM could get the ability to do that to mobs back again, with eg bringing three LMs along because between them thay can keep a boss' power drained enough to remove a big AoE attack possibility being a legitimate tactic, like dealing with Trolls in PvMP used to be.

Really pleased that there is engagement with the LM community, we've been rather the ginger haired stepchild for a bit, or so it has felt. We are not Mithrandir or Elrond, but the nearest a player can get to that.

One final plea, The Knowledge skill, the debuff it grants is paltry these days and the information a bit more vague than ideal. Numbers and/or percentages would be helpful. I for one, as a regular user, would like a better idea of the effectiveness of things.

[Halphast]

I disagree with loremasters casting on the run. From a game-lore perspective it makes sense that the studious, thoughtful class drawing on powerful forces of nature would have to stand still and devote their attention to their casting. From a gameplay perspective, LMs' movement is so slow anyway that the added mobility is an illusion; any enemy can keep up with us and continue attacking. Leave on-the-run-pewpews to the blue hunters.

I'm leveling a red loremaster gradually, and am currently at 112 so I don't have endgame level knowledge of how the class works in a group, but the cooldowns almost never get in the way for me, since I have so many options for high damage skills. At endgame I'm sure that's very different but I can't speak to it.

My biggest complaint at the moment is pets interfering with the camera. Originally it seems like bear pets only had exterior textures, so if the camera wound up inside the pet, it would be invisible. Recently the textures became two-sided and now the camera is always appearing inside the bear, getting awful, distorted horror images of the inside of the bear.

Agree with the person who said the Knowledge skill is too vague. I've instant-killed enemies with good resistance, and had my attacks shrugged off by enemies with average or worse... so what do the ratings even mean? These days I only occasionally use it for the pre-battle debuff and ignore the information window.

100% agree with the person who said the bog-lurker is too ugly and annoying to use. It's always in the way of the camera, and in stead of a natural creature it looks like some kind of zombie monster that rolled in the moss. The sounds are also more monstrous than natural.

[Tralfazz]

I like the Lore-master pretty much the way it is today. Some people in this thread appear to be looking for an entirely new class that adopts the old name. Some small changes should be considered:

–While some people think pets should be eliminated or left as nearly cosmetic companions, others think they should contribute a larger percentage of total damage output. I am in the latter camp, but not entirely: Pet damage and threat generation feels about right to me in all three specs from the earliest levels and at least into the 50s, even up to the 60s. After that, the percentage of total damage contributed by the pet drops to much smaller figures and with it the ability of the pets – even the bear – to hold aggro. By the time the character is in the mid/late-70s and certainly by the 80s the pet is a totally different type of companion than it was in the earlier part of the game. Some Red Lore-masters don't bother summoning a pet at all when running most landscape content; sometimes a bear when fighting an elite mob. And this hits Blue Lore-masters the hardest because so many of their class trait points are invested in traits which improve their pets – even twice almost nothing is still almost nothing. Pet damage needs to scale up to maintain both their proportional damage output and threat generation, pets of a Blue Lore-master need to have even larger outgoing damage bonuses, and the bear pet needs to have an inherent threat generation bonus in all specs as well as having its taunt return to a taunt plus threat match. Note that "more Pet damage as level increases" needs to apply to both their autoattacks and their skills.

–Some Lore-master pets are rather large. I like the bog-guardian appearance but as some other people mentioned it is very large. An easily-obtainable smaller version would be nice as an option. (I use the smaller bear most of the time, too, for the same reason.) For those who don't like the look of the bog-guardian, perhaps more variations on its general model would be a pleasant option.

–While I enjoy the ability to resummon different pets or even resummon the same pet with all its Morale and Power fully restored and all its abilities off cooldown and ready to use; this has always felt more like an abuse than a good mechanic. If a cooldown is added to all pet summon skills then it is important to make this cooldown very short because pets are despawned every time a stable master ride is initiated, they often become lost or stuck requiring a resummon (Return to Master works most of the time so admittedly this reason is less important), and they sometimes get "stuck" in combat with a mob far away requiring a dismissal followed by a summon to clear the in-combat state. I would be fine with a cooldown, perhaps 1 minute, which would trigger when a pet is defeated or dismissed or despawned in combat but not when it is dismissed or despawned out of combat; the cooldown would prevent any pet from being summoned until the cooldown ran its course. I would also be fine with pet skills not having their cooldowns cleared when resummoned, they can continue to run in the background even when the pet is not active. This would allow, for example, the Nature Spirit pet to have the same no-cooldown/1-minute-cooldown of all the other pets but have its "big heal" skill continue to have a 3 minute cooldown which could not be worked around by resummoning the pet. If pet skill cooldowns do not reset when the pet is resummoned then those skills need to be more effective (larger effect and/or shorter cooldown) to compensate – a tradeoff I would be happy to accept as I'd prefer to keep my chosen companion with me rather than resummon the same one after every battle or multiple times during a single battle in order for it to use its (weaker) skills more often. Out of combat I should change pets when I need a different pet's abilities, not to get a "fresh" version of the same pet. In combat, while I like the current "pet rotation" system, I would be more than OK with a cooldown preventing an immediate resummon of any pet if one is dismissed (or defeated).

–I don't have mobility issues with Lore-masters. Blue, Red, Yellow all seem fine. Being able to induct while moving doesn't feel right for a Lore-master. Are there still zero induction skills which can't be used while moving? If so, those should be changed and if the animation for those skills needs to change to make that happen then that should be done.

–There are a huge number of skills, I have more than 4 rows of 12 buttons each completely filled. The various debuffing skills (Fire Lore, Frost Lore, Sign of Power: Command, and so on and on) are too numerous. Consider keeping Sign of Power: Command and Wind Lore but adding most or all of the others as additional effects which are applied when using one of those two skills. Sign of Power: Command would, if fully traited, apply all "outgoing" debuffs to the target. Wind Lore would, if fully traited, apply all "incoming" debuffs to the target.

–Water Lore completely changes the game for Lore-masters, both when solo on landscape and in groups. Consider lowering the level at which Water Lore is granted. Instead of 77 perhaps 50 would be more appropriate – all classes should have all their core skills by Level 50.

–While I'm OK with the eagle pet being something unlocked only by speccing Blue, MANY other players were very disappointed by this change. It is mostly a cosmetic/role-play thing for those players, it's not like the eagle pet is more powerful (it has unique skills but none are of a nature which require that they be relegated to Blue Lore-masters only). Perhaps the eagle can be a Blue spec basic skill but unlockable with a trait available in both the Red and Yellow trees; or an easily-reached trait in Blue which adds damage to all pets for Blue Lore-masters and adds the eagle pet for Red and Yellow Lore-masters.

–Bear taunts need to be normal taunts, with both a forced-target and a threat-match effect. Adding a cooldown to resummoning in combat will prevent this from being abused. Add a buff to all raid bosses which prevents NPC taunts from working on them at all (perhaps 6-person instance bosses should get this buff, too).

Remember that any negative changes applied to pets will have a much larger impact on Blue Lore-masters than on the other two specs. Similarly, any positive changes made to pets will have a much larger impact on Blue Lore-masters. Blue needs a boost past 50 (as described above in regard to pet damage scaling), not a general DPS reduction, please keep this in mind as pet changes are considered.

[Khluzainn]

Been here since close to the beginning (/played is around a year and a half...), but that gives me no more insight than someone who has done six months.

If how long you have been playing the game is what mattered when giving feedback then my feedback would be the only thing these Devs would listen to as I have been playing since beta.

Fortunately that is not the case. I know a lot of long time players who have no idea how the games mechanics for damage and mitigations etc work who have been playing since day 1. Your join date means nothing and thats coming from someone who was one of the first...

[alearon]

I like the Lore-master pretty much the way it is today. Some people in this thread appear to be looking for an entirely new class that adopts the old name. Some small changes should be considered:

–While some people think pets should be eliminated or left as nearly cosmetic companions, others think they should contribute a larger percentage of total damage output. I am in the latter camp, but not entirely: Pet damage and threat generation feels about right to me in all three specs from the earliest levels and at least into the 50s, even up to the 60s. After that, the percentage of total damage contributed by the pet drops to much smaller figures and with it the ability of the pets – even the bear – to hold aggro. By the time the character is in the mid/late-70s and certainly by the 80s the pet is a totally different type of companion than it was in the earlier part of the game. Some Red Lore-masters don't bother summoning a pet at all when running most landscape content; sometimes a bear when fighting an elite mob. And this hits Blue Lore-masters the hardest because so many of their class trait points are invested in traits which improve their pets – even twice almost nothing is still almost nothing. Pet damage needs to scale up to maintain both their proportional damage output and threat generation, pets of a Blue Lore-master need to have even larger outgoing damage bonuses, and the bear pet needs to have an inherent threat generation bonus in all specs as well as having its taunt return to a taunt plus threat match. Note that "more Pet damage as level increases" needs to apply to both their autoattacks and their skills.

–Some Lore-master pets are rather large. I like the bog-guardian appearance but as some other people mentioned it is very large. An easily-obtainable smaller version would be nice as an option. (I use the smaller bear most of the time, too, for the same reason.) For those who don't like the look of the bog-guardian, perhaps more variations on its general model would be a pleasant option.

–While I enjoy the ability to resummon different pets or even resummon the same pet with all its Morale and Power fully restored and all its abilities off cooldown and ready to use; this has always felt more like an abuse than a good mechanic. If a cooldown is added to all pet summon skills then it is important to make this cooldown very short because pets are despawned every time a stable master ride is initiated, they often become lost or stuck requiring a resummon (Return to Master works most of the time so admittedly this reason is less important), and they sometimes get "stuck" in combat with a mob far away requiring a dismissal followed by a summon to clear the in-combat state. I would be fine with a cooldown, perhaps 1 minute, which would trigger when a pet is defeated or dismissed or despawned in combat but not when it is dismissed or despawned out of combat; the cooldown would prevent any pet from being summoned until the cooldown ran its course. I would also be fine with pet skills not having their cooldowns cleared when resummoned, they can continue to run in the background even when the pet is not active. This would allow, for example, the Nature Spirit pet to have the same no-cooldown/1-minute-cooldown of all the other pets but have its "big heal" skill continue to have a 3 minute cooldown which could not be worked around by resummoning the pet. If pet skill cooldowns do not reset when the pet is resummoned then those skills need to be more effective (larger effect and/or shorter cooldown) to compensate – a tradeoff I would be happy to accept as I'd prefer to keep my chosen companion with me rather than resummon the same one after every battle or multiple times during a single battle in order for it to use its (weaker) skills more often. Out of combat I should change pets when I need a different pet's abilities, not to get a "fresh" version of the same pet. In combat, while I like the current "pet rotation" system, I would be more than OK with a cooldown preventing an immediate resummon of any pet if one is dismissed (or defeated).

–I don't have mobility issues with Lore-masters. Blue, Red, Yellow all seem fine. Being able to induct while moving doesn't feel right for a Lore-master. Are there still zero induction skills which can't be used while moving? If so, those should be changed and if the animation for those skills needs to change to make that happen then that should be done.

–There are a huge number of skills, I have more than 4 rows of 12 buttons each completely filled. The various debuffing skills (Fire Lore, Frost Lore, Sign of Power: Command, and so on and on) are too numerous. Consider keeping Sign of Power: Command and Wind Lore but adding most or all of the others as additional effects which are applied when using one of those two skills. Sign of Power: Command would, if fully traited, apply all "outgoing" debuffs to the target. Wind Lore would, if fully traited, apply all "incoming" debuffs to the target.

–Water Lore completely changes the game for Lore-masters, both when solo on landscape and in groups. Consider lowering the level at which Water Lore is granted. Instead of 77 perhaps 50 would be more appropriate – all classes should have all their core skills by Level 50.

–While I'm OK with the eagle pet being something unlocked only by speccing Blue, MANY other players were very disappointed by this change. It is mostly a cosmetic/role-play thing for those players, it's not like the eagle pet is more powerful (it has unique skills but none are of a nature which require that they be relegated to Blue Lore-masters only). Perhaps the eagle can be a Blue spec basic skill but unlockable with a trait available in both the Red and Yellow trees; or an easily-reached trait in Blue which adds damage to all pets for Blue Lore-masters and adds the eagle pet for Red and Yellow Lore-masters.

–Bear taunts need to be normal taunts, with both a forced-target and a threat-match effect. Adding a cooldown to resummoning in combat will prevent this from being abused. Add a buff to all raid bosses which prevents NPC taunts from working on them at all (perhaps 6-person instance bosses should get this buff, too).

Remember that any negative changes applied to pets will have a much larger impact on Blue Lore-masters than on the other two specs. Similarly, any positive changes made to pets will have a much larger impact on Blue Lore-masters. Blue needs a boost past 50 (as described above in regard to pet damage scaling), not a general DPS reduction, please keep this in mind as pet changes are considered.

As a raiding LM rather then a casual LM enjoyer.

Eagle pet being is blue is stupid.... Eagle rez was fun and causes good banter, stuff that occqsionally works is fun man.

Also pet swapping is fine, just make the buffs last 1 minute and make the other pets usable so in between casts you can see big lymx damage while pet debuffs are up

[Loox]

"what things bug you" -- skills that don't stack IE: wind-lore resets another LM's debuff, ancient craft, sticky tar, signs of power, all pet debuffs, knowledge of the LM .. that's 6 skills and all pet debuffs (Except eagle if B-LM) that are unusable or redundant if a second LM is in the group.

"Pets" -- I would happily trade a pet timer for the ability to summon while moving. Also, you should really be able to feed/buff your pet in combat or have it's food timer increased and a stay of that food timer when not summoned.

"DPS" -- Technically B-LMs don't have any attacks. Yes, MoC does damage but it is listed as a pet in the skills panel with a long cool down. Only mastery buffs and mitigation debuffs has any affect on MoC's damage. Same as any other pet.

"The Ancient Master" -- This tree is a staple of any raid and there is no reason to change that. That said, to have a second LM in a group requires them to bring something to the table.

Stackable skills as noted above may be enough for a red tree. For a B-LM they only have pet triggered buffs, and occasional MoC debuff, ATM making them to insignificant of a contribution to the group. Expanding B-LM's tree buffs to the group could change that dynamic.

[Parasomnie]

Greetings,

The Loremaster is my main-class for many years now and I act as a supporter in every instance and raid. My suggestions to the three lines are the following:

Blue Line:

The blue line should not be a separate line anymore. In my opinion it is a supporter line, but much weaker than the yellow one. And with the loss of the ability to summon all of your companions at once and the cooldown for the spirit it lost it's last arguments to be used. 2 supporter-lines are indeed too many. One is enough.

Red Line:

The red line should be reworked to be less clunky. Long animations (Lightning-Storm, Lightning-Strike, Ents go to war) and also long Cooldowns (Ents go to war, Lightning-Storm, Nature`s Fury) should be shortened significantly. But the goal of it should not be to make the LM's red line raid-viable. This would go much too far in my opinion. It should stay a quest and maybe 3-man-instance-line, but not more. The LM is a supporter und should stay one.

Yellow Line:

The main and also the strongest support-line. During the last updates it got boosted even more. My ideas for changes are the following:
- Blinding-Flash-Duration 30s > 35s
- Sign of power (SoP): command and SoP: See all ends should be given more viable effects
- Pleasant Breeze: make it a power-skill again and remove it's condition (no more crit from Gust of Wind needed), but it should get a longer cooldown
- Storm-Lore-Cooldown: 120s > 60s
- Dispel corruption: 25s > 15s. In my opinion it's effect should stay as it is. We have enough support-potential, leave the corruptions to others.

I think giving all pets a cooldown will make the LM harder to play and take away lot's of support-potential and flexibility. I love playing and rotating with all of my pets. This is what makes this class so unique.
Imagine a raid-situation: One boss, all buffs are expected to be on the boss all the time. Without good timing (which in some encounters is quite hard to manage) some buffs will simply expire, resulting in a damage-loss for the whole raid-group. And in nearly every endgame-encounter high dps is needed. Or imagine you call your pet and a random-hit instantly kills it - your raid will suffer a support-loss just 'cause of RNG. And - to name another point - the path-finding of pets is also a problem. The problem even starts when you summon them - they appear under the ground, behind unpassable gates etc.... - if you give pets a cooldown, will those problems be fixed forever? Because leaving them is not an option...
The pets of the LM are also not comparible to those of the captain. They have much more potential and offer a wide variability. For example: The aggro-skill of the bear can save lifes of raidmembers (a tank loses aggro - LM calls bear and takes it for some seconds) or save situations when a tank gets killed by a boss. Taking this away from the LM takes away a lot of potential. And a cooldown would make it even harder to react in such a way. Because those things happen aside from your usual support-rotation. If the skill is on cooldown, those cool things will not be possible anymore (Although I have to say that the bear should not substitute the tank. You changed the aggro-skill in one of the last updates. Just leave it as it is. It's fine.). And not every mob is cc'able...
And in my opinion the eagle should get a comeback for every LM aside from the blue line. First of all - the eagle never justifies taking the blue line - it's too weak for this. Second - the eagle is able to fear enemies (which is a nice interaction of skills). Third - the resurrection-ability is not very overpowered. It has a 10 minutes cooldown and because of it's condition (the eagle must fight and even then it not always works) is not very reliable.
The only pet that should keep it's cooldown should be the spirit. It's heal-sign-mechanic got strong and is a nice situational support. But the cooldown should be lower (2 minutes) and - that's an important thing - the spirit should be much (!!!!) more tanky. At the moment it gets killed by random hits (especially in raid-situations) quite often. Which is very frustrating for a skill with such a long cooldown.

[Elmagor]

LM in red line with his main DPS skills can't compared with RK or Hunter with their main DPS skills. Not only LM skills have longer animation, they have less buffs with them and longer CD. Without buffing his main dps skills he can't be compared with other dps red lines

Comparing with healers, LM don't have bubbles and his AoE healing (Breeze and Bacon) needs to be buffed.

[Siddharta]

Pets (more than just the Keeper of Animals trait line)
Do you engage with the ‘pet rotation’? If yes, how do you feel about it? Do you like that it adds activity or raises the skill ceiling, or do you find it overwhelming or even tedious?

Do you find yourself using different pets in different circumstances? Do you feel like your pets actively contribute to your gameplay and your Lore-master fantasy? Do you have opportunities to use the pets you like, stylistically? Or do mostly find yourself locked into a few types, either statically or in a constant ‘pet rotation’ (ie: Catmint raven, boglurker, bear).

Some of you may have guessed at this, but we’re eyeing some changes to pets similar to the changes made to captain pets in U35. Primarily, that would mean a pet summoning cooldown, which would limit your ability to use any given pet skill repeatedly (ie: bypassing the pet skill cooldowns by dismissing and resummoning the pet itself). Like captain heralds, this would still allow you to immediately resummon a pet that you have had out for a while (long enough for its cooldown time to fully elapse) but it would prevent you from using pet skills more than twice in a row without waiting for either the individual skill’s cooldown or the pet summoning cooldown.


The Ancient Master – Support-first Lore-master
The Ancient Master line is often the de-facto primary trait setup for Lore-masters, but that doesn’t mean it is above reproach. While LMs are primarily sought after in raid groups, instances, and PvP for their support capacity, that doesn’t mean the ‘support-first’ LM has no room for improvement. For those of you who live and breathe yellow-LM, what do you like about the class and the role? What do you wish were different? Are you frustrated by the fact that your long-mez is also your interrupt skill? Does Water-lore-stacking provide you with something to steadily cycle into your skills, or does it feel like too much necessary upkeep? Do you feel like you contribute meaningfully to the group in moments where there are few/no adds to CC or manage? Do you just wish you had a Wizards Lightning skill to reapply your preferred 'Out in the Cold' or 'Playng with Fire' debuffs?

If pet rotation will be much slower due to summon CD then you should give us something (a lot of) to do in exchange, because Yellow LM gameplay will become very very empty. Captain pet changes is a very bad example of redesign, because it doesn't affect captain gameplay at all except rare moments when the pet dies and you cannot resummon it. So overall you made it worse (still dont get what's your idea behind captains pet CD).

I personally would like to see pet spam removed but only if i will see the real gameplay replacement for it. Let's say pet rotation takes from 30% to 50% of Support LM time, so if you don't have this huge chunk of additional gameplay then don't touch it.

Overall QoL changes i would like to see as a Support LM:
1. Better corruption removal
2. Faster Animations
3. Changing some outdated skills and traits (Yellow line + basics skills):

'Warding lore'(trait\skill): currently only viable for tactical dps , should be an useful skill anywhere anytime (for example: +3% inc damage, -3% outgoing damage), transfer +10% inc tactical damage to Bear 'Shatter Arms' skill
'Advanced knowledge of cures'(trait\skill): Cure skill should have no induction and remove 3 effects for all trait lines. The trait itselff should be changed to seomthing like: +10% resistance for 30s , stacks (so you can keep it on 2 people or stack it on someone)
'Power of knowledge' (trait): change to something like 'Keeps the targed mezzed for its duration'
'Level-headed'(trait): needs a useful replacement (for example: 'Air-lore' chance to negate damage is increased by 1-2-3-4-5% (or 2-4-6-8-10%) (5 tiers)
'Flow of power'(trait): merge it with 'Level-headed' trait.
'Pleasant breeze' (trait\skill): change the activation method to be realistic and make the skill apply a single-target morale bubble (like 20% morale base + 2-3% each trait tier), increase cooldown to 1 minute. As an activation method LM probably could use a 'Beacon of Hope': each use of this skill gives you a stack of 'Beacon of Hope (1-2-3-4-5)', when you get 'Beacon of Hope-5' , 'Pleasant breeze' becomes actvie.
'Sign of power: See all ends' (skill): change it to +1.5% inc crit chance (3% with 'Enfeeble')
'Playing with fire(trait)' and 'Out in the cold(trait)':
Fire+fire: ok
Fire+lightning: ok
Fire+frost: -15-20% run speed
Frost+frost: -1% outgoing damage
Frost+fire: +1% inc damage
Frost+lightning: -30% inc healing

'Binding flash': interrupt should be transferred to a separate skill

4. I guess it is good time for blue line to begone and become additive

[Dranak123]

About the blue line. Maybe a talent tree for pets? Everyone plays only on yellow. The Red and Blue lines also deserve attention

Oh well 'in for a penny , in for a pound' . I know that yellow line is considered sacrosanct for LM raiders and other core raiders alike. Tweak it for your raids all you like....fine by me. You may have guessed by now that I am not a big raider and Yellow is my least favourite line to play , unless i need to get to sleep quick ! My main focus is Blue and red in that order. Several people have proposed Blue becomes some bastardised buffline to support red and yellow. Well for what its worth I think Blue is just great and its fun to play and is the most adaptable as well as offering wonderfully good flash DPS to help kill targets quick.......in the Moors !!

so i would propose.... 1. make the Feral cap bonuses from blue available in some diluted form in both blue and red (not yellow) and then make the cap additive to this in Blue only.
2. Budge Catmint to the right one place and then draw some lines down to line 6 for a new box where it can be improved in some shape or form....maybe just attack speed / damage / duration boost.
3. after giving pets some dps increase look at their special attacks and make them hit hard.
4. power of knowledge reduce channel duration but keep overall damage where it is....then allow it to be tiered up for a lightning damage mit debuff with a decent value and duration.
5 create a new skill ' power of wisdom' in a box below 'knowledge' with lines leading to it , that channels frost damage and has an outgoing healing debuff.
6. give redline a substantial induction cut to speed it up and see if dps improves to where you want it.

Just dont discard Blue line. some end game non raiders love it.

[-Tanyc-]

Good to see so much interest in Lm changes/improvements.

I play Lm as main from 2007 on and my biggest wish is to have my old Lm back, the one before the Rohan class destruction.

The Lm class is unpopular because of the way it was changed and the dps race raid design. The original Lm was perfect, it got messed up and broken over the years. Too many needless skills got added, the quickslot bars are overloaded, key binding of all useful skills became difficult (if you play yourself that is, without sequence macros). With the pet rotation the Lm in raids got busy and stressful. It's never boring though.

I agree, the pet's role needs to be clarified but the role of the Lm along with that, too.
Don't make things more complicated though, restore the role of the original Lm. Restore the un-nerfed Lm.

Restrict the role to Debuff, CC, Support heal/effect curing (stun immunity/wounds+diseases) in raid instances.
Pets shouldn't need to be rotated, there's enough dps support from tar, ancient craft, 1 pet buff plus the warding lore circle.
Save the Lm from tasks like emergency taunt-tanking when a tank gets 1 shot by a fully debuffed monster.
To prevent the big 1 shot hit from happening should be the Lm DNA, not the tanking, not dps buffing.

Don't get me wrong, all of this, it can be done and it's nice to challenge yourself and be able to do these things. Save your whole raid with your pet taunting. But let's be honest.. it's horrible to play Lm in high Tier raids. If there is a way back to normal difficulty raids with Challenge mode I would welcome that a lot. It's nice to have Tier 5 raids for less than 10% hardcore raiders, when the Tier system frustrates and demotivates the other 90% of the players. Devs, tone it down and go a step back to lower dps requirements if possible.
I went a bit off topic here, sorry. I can imagine some readers rolling their eyes already.

So back to my wishlist :

1. Restore the Deep Lore trait ! +targets for skills like Fire-, Frost-, Herb-, Storm-lore.. from 1 trait. I still have memories of debuffing a full skirmish wave with 12 target Fire-lore, all their weapons glowing up fiery. Great ! We could debuff all without clicking a silly Ancient Master skill or using Wind-lore to spread the debuff. Why do I have to use 2 skills now for a so-much-weaker AoE debuff when it was so so simple and effective before? Re-add the cooldown to Fire-lore if you must and reduce Call to Valar to be able to reset the skill for urgent situations.. But please restore Deep Lore trait. That would be awesome. (Sidenote: Fire-lore debuff strength is a little too weak now.. Mind those poor 1-shot tanks..)

2. Restore Sign of Power: Righteousness ! I will never stop to ask for this, sorry. Return the skill to its original duration and cooldown (by far longer than 20sec duration with 4sec cooldown, I think).
The old green skill icon in the targets vitals was also easier to spot than the current pink circle.

3. Restore Improved Knowledge of Cures to be group-wide again.

4. Restore the Master of the Staff trait. It added a morale boost and extra damage, even more damage and stun on a flanked enemy. Loved it, now Staff-strike isn't in my quickslots anymore.

5. Restore the Raven's wing tactical mitigation aura to be active in all trait lines. Increase its buff potency in yellow so it can replace Frost-lore and then delete Frost-lore, yes seriously. Frost-lore is one of the silly, added skills noone ever asked for. Same goes for Ancient Master skill, noone needed it with Deep Lore trait. Why are those skills there? The achieved effects worked perfect passively, why make such things require a skill use? That decision is just wrong. Lm gameplay was fine, it didn't need to be more active. It was fine as it was.

6. Restore Wind-lore to be the -50% ranged debuff. Replace raven's Distraction e.g. with some Murder of Crows effect that activates only on a flank.
Wind-lore spreading is stupid. zS You overwrite your Playing with Fire debuff with frost, and need to reswitch/reactivate it back with fire damage. The Lm actually weakens his own debuff and has to reapply it with Wizard's fire and Cracked earth to re-enalbe the desired effect on the boss and adds... isn't it silly? The Eriador Lm with Deep Lore did this debuff stronger with one (1!) skill use, The Gundabad Lm now is weaker and needs 4 skills. Symptomatically for the class changes. More skills - less effect.

7. Restore Flanking. Flank heals should be group-wide or AoE again and as amazing as the idea behind this subtle mechanic is. A damage bonus on flanked targets would be nice, too. Maybe the Lm could open up a flank damage bonus for all raid members if he triggers it for the raid somehow (e.g. Ancient craft on a flanked monster = more dps for the raid? or maybe even with the suggested changed raven Distraction skill?)

8. Restore Herb-lore in all trait trees. Why was it taken away from blue and red anyway? Was it just forgotten in the mass of Lm skills?

9. Restore Wizard's fire to be a single target DoT in all trait lines again and restore Sign of Power: Command to be +30% attack duration in all trait lines, too. The skills were fine and more useful.

10. Restore Test of Will in all trait lines and remove silly skills like Ring of Fire, Nature's Fury and Lightning Strike. All 3 are imo a little questionable in what they do (call down a lightning flash every 10 seconds? create a ring of fire - lol? a tornado?), they only add shiny animations (and lag?). To make up for lost cash out ember damage Adding insult to injury could be made available in all trait trees. The inherent cc component of LotrD and Test of Will makes them more Lm-suitable skills. In general I dislike shiny animation skills - Lightning storm, Storm-lore and Ents are wonderful and enough for the show.. Shift the class back to be fire dps, more sticky gourd, cracked earth etc. Reduce the cooldown on Ents and LotrD. Staff-strike-stun the enemy then add insult to injury, staff-sweep then sticky gourd.. - Yes, that's the way I liked to play Lm. Moving and stopping.

The class suffered from the side effects of the dps race mania, stat cap removal and the class revamp.
My wishes would undo changes for the worse and just bring back the good old stuff.

Un-nerf the Lm

restoring should be easier than creating new solutions
and don't make the class even more complex

[Mystarr]

PETS

YES I engage with the pet rotation in group content. (It's a significant part of what a LM is expected to do in group content.)

I DONT enjoy it. It makes for tedious game play. Playing my LM in group content is basically a mind numbing rotation of constantly summoning and then dismissing a pet that I only want for 1 skill and then cramming my other LM skills into the gaps in my pet rotation.

Pet skills = skills that require me to hit three button to use (1 summon, 2 use skill, 3 dismiss)

On a class where most other skills have significant inductions, having all of my useful pets skill be 3 part (click) skills is tiresome.

Don't get me Wrong. I LOVE the uniqueness and role that the LM fills in this game, but I don't particularly enjoying the button mashing of pet rotations.

A THOUGH/SUGGESTION (Blue line LM could use a distinctive role)
What if the Blue Line LM had access to all of the pet skills/debuffs with no (or a greatly reduced CD) and Red/Yellow LM's were given the restriction of a long pet CD
If you could implement this without requiring the Blue LM to click three buttons for every pet skill that would be GREAT. (Maybe give the Blue LM a "super" pet with most of the current pet skills?)

Maybe make pet appearance separate from pet skills

• Red/Yellow LMs could summon a pet with any of the current skill options (and apply whatever skin to it they like)
• Blue LMs could summon a "super" pet with most of the best skills from all of the different pets (and apply whatever skin to it that they like)

EXs:
Yellow LM #1Summons a pet that has the skills of the current raven pet but likes having a bear pet so they give it a bear cosmetic (Would have new long re-summon CD. This means they only have access to the skill of one of the current pets)

Yellow LM #2 Summons a pet with the current skill set of bog lurker but likes to play with a eagle so they give it an eagle cosmetic (Would have new long re-summon CD. This means they only have access to the skill of one of the current pets)

Blue LM has a "super" pet with most of the skills of the current bog lurker, raven, spirit, and bear. They like the spirit boar cosmetic so they apply that skin (Would have new long re-summon CD. This means they would have access to all of the pet skills without needing to constantly dismiss/re-summon)

MISC

• CD for corruption removal is too long
• Having mez and interrupt on same skill is annoying

[Tryplon]

Hi everyone, I’d like to kick off a conversation about Lore-masters. Lore-masters (along with yellow-line Burglars) have long filled a unique 'support' function in role and group composition, as evidenced by the dominance of the yellow ‘Ancient Master’ line. However, ‘support’ can mean different things to different players or in difference contexts, and the Ancient Master is only one of three possible trait lines available to Lore-masters. So let’s start talking about Lore-masters: what the class does well, what things bug you, and what you might feel needs a bit of improvement. I’m also going to post some preliminary thoughts and questions below about specific aspects of the class, including pets, DPS skills and ability, and support-primary skills and mechanics, to help guide the discussion.

This is something else I thought of today that would really be some much needed QoL changes and are for all lines.

1. Reduce the cooldown of dispel corruption to 10 or 15 seconds. Considering other corruption removal skills, a 10 seconds cooldown on this skill really isn't OP.
2. Give staff-sweep an interrupt. One additional interrupt would do wonders in solo play, and since it is melee it won't change much for group play.

2 very big QoL changes that should be easy to implement.

[xDementedx]

Pets (more than just the Keeper of Animals trait line)
Do you engage with the ‘pet rotation’? If yes, how do you feel about it? Do you like that it adds activity or raises the skill ceiling, or do you find it overwhelming or even tedious?

This is tricky. I think the average player just summons their pet, gives the pet food, and let's it auto cycle through their abilities. I would prefer to use one pet and if the situation changes move onto another one, but the debuffs each pet (raven, bear, bog-guardian) gives is essential to tackle the highest tier of instances and content in group settings. I think if ALL DEBUFFS were shared (and/or applied with Catmint) then I wouldn't mind if pets had a longer summoning CD. And the average player wouldn't feel overwhelmed with a pet rotation. I think the "pet rotation" funnels lore-masters into debuff and off-healing because they don't have time to do any type of damage. I use to have pleasant breeze but since there isn't meaning or time for using damaging attacks I untraited it. It got to a point where other "pro" lore-masters would get upset that I was doing damage attacks in Yellow. Yes pets need work and it's a tricky balance that would satisfy both casual and pro lore-master players.

[Elmagor]

[B]Pet skills = skills that require me to hit three button to use (1 summon, 2 use skill, 3 dismiss)

No, you need use 2 buttons. Summon and dismiss. Pet can auto-use skills what you can setup for auto-use and you don't need to click on them.

[Mystarr]

Another Thought/Suggestion about Blue Line LM
Maybe give Blue Line LM a little more of a healing focus?

Currently a blue line LM with a spirit pet gets some healing buffs but they cant compete with yellow line beacon of hope (and pleasant breeze)
A LM that wants to do supplemental heals NEEDS to be in Yellow line

Maybe:

• Give all LM trait lines Beacon of Hope but give it a bigger radius in blue line (20m?)
• Move pleasant breeze into blue line
• Maybe move the 5 trait tree points from mending lore into blue line

[Loox]

[B]PETS[COLOR=#00ffff][B]What if the Blue Line LM had access to all of the pet skills/debuffs[/LIST]

B-LMs had that. It was called Sic'em.
If you had previously kept the skill/debuff enabled that last time you used them individually it would trigger all pets debuffs/buffs when you used Sic'em.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZckeqEgbpw

RIP Sic'em, you are surely missed.

[Mystarr]

No, you need use 2 buttons. Summon and dismiss. Pet can auto-use skills what you can setup for auto-use and you don't need to click on them.

Yes an No. You still need to use some skill on the target to get the pet to engage and it's a little tricky if you want to use catmint on the raven or spirit pet.

[Vilan]

I like the idea of reducing some skill bloat. The easiest is to combine 2 related skills into 1. Fire Lore + Frost Lore. SOP Command + See All Ends. SOP Righteousness + Vigilance. Tar + Warding Knowledge. There, I just got 4 extra spots on my skill bar.

Adding an interrupt on Staff Sweep (or Strike) is a good idea too.

Flanking is a neat idea, but it never really made sense to me flavor-wise since it's not actually related to your pet getting around or behind the enemy. Maybe make flanking require a positional attack and have it auto-apply Catmint? That would add a dimension of maneuvering around the foe and getting a debuff bonus out of it. Not positive on this, just spitballing.

[Hoppa_Joel]

Hi everyone, I’d like to kick off a conversation about Lore-masters. Lore-masters (along with yellow-line Burglars) have long filled a unique 'support' function in role and group composition, as evidenced by the dominance of the yellow ‘Ancient Master’ line. However, ‘support’ can mean different things to different players or in difference contexts, and the Ancient Master is only one of three possible trait lines available to Lore-masters. So let’s start talking about Lore-masters: what the class does well, what things bug you, and what you might feel needs a bit of improvement. I’m also going to post some preliminary thoughts and questions below about specific aspects of the class, including pets, DPS skills and ability, and support-primary skills and mechanics, to help guide the discussion.



Pets (more than just the Keeper of Animals trait line)
Do you engage with the ‘pet rotation’? If yes, how do you feel about it? Do you like that it adds activity or raises the skill ceiling, or do you find it overwhelming or even tedious?

Do you find yourself using different pets in different circumstances? Do you feel like your pets actively contribute to your gameplay and your Lore-master fantasy? Do you have opportunities to use the pets you like, stylistically? Or do mostly find yourself locked into a few types, either statically or in a constant ‘pet rotation’ (ie: Catmint raven, boglurker, bear).

Some of you may have guessed at this, but we’re eyeing some changes to pets similar to the changes made to captain pets in U35. Primarily, that would mean a pet summoning cooldown, which would limit your ability to use any given pet skill repeatedly (ie: bypassing the pet skill cooldowns by dismissing and resummoning the pet itself). Like captain heralds, this would still allow you to immediately resummon a pet that you have had out for a while (long enough for its cooldown time to fully elapse) but it would prevent you from using pet skills more than twice in a row without waiting for either the individual skill’s cooldown or the pet summoning cooldown.



DPS
A DPS-oriented Lore-master has some interesting skills and mechanics, but your overall repertoire of damaging skills can sometimes feel quite thin. Are there things you like about the current damage potential at your disposal? What frustrates you when trying to prioritize DPS? Reliance on induction skills? A dependency on tar + catmint raven to maintain high output? Waiting for cooldowns when Burning Embers is already tiered up and Lighting Strike/Storm are on cooldown? What do you like about your core damage rotation? What do you wish you did better?



The Ancient Master – Support-first Lore-master
The Ancient Master line is often the de-facto primary trait setup for Lore-masters, but that doesn’t mean it is above reproach. While LMs are primarily sought after in raid groups, instances, and PvP for their support capacity, that doesn’t mean the ‘support-first’ LM has no room for improvement. For those of you who live and breathe yellow-LM, what do you like about the class and the role? What do you wish were different? Are you frustrated by the fact that your long-mez is also your interrupt skill? Does Water-lore-stacking provide you with something to steadily cycle into your skills, or does it feel like too much necessary upkeep? Do you feel like you contribute meaningfully to the group in moments where there are few/no adds to CC or manage? Do you just wish you had a Wizards Lightning skill to reapply your preferred 'Out in the Cold' or 'Playng with Fire' debuffs?





Edit: Just wanted to update this top post to note that we are not planning to remove the Support role or identity from the Lore-master. Many of you have expressed that you enjoy playing a support class, and that this is part of a group dynamic that makes LotRO unique.

Pet rotation stopped for me, a long time ago ( sorta ) I'll explain why.
I stream, and my best friend is partially vision impaired. So we play together, I read for her, she plays, on /follow and we have a great time!
The problem that arose with loremaster pets is size. Mainly when you are on follow, all you see is a giant bear Bum, or, a boglurker, etc etc. In the past. because of this I had put out suggestions for pet ideas for smaller pet types, but seemed no one noticed.
I also proposed a pet and follower ( inclluding player /follow ) grid idea. The idea is that if you have a pet, a cosmetic pet, and someone on follow they do not collide Imagine a 3x3 grid ( 9 locations ) Now, within the grid, you can place yourself, your summons pet, and cosmetic pet, and where a player on /follow woudl be located. I didnt see much in response to this suggestion either, I feel this would be one to fix pet rotation, with also having pet 'skins' tomes for various pets.

My other thought, was to instead, make a catergory for each "type" of pet ( small stealth, large tank, flying, and spirit-healing ) Now, The idea with this, would / could work like each catergory could have a umber of pet tomes, ( like captain heralds ) and you are just using the appearance cosmetically over one of the summon catergories.
Imagine, instead of just flight, ( crow, eagle, hawk ) you had also, butterfly, insect swarm,,,, why would it need to be flight only? Perhaps you have a small spider sitting on your shoulder, or, squirrel, and when you target, ( like the bird attack distruption ability ) maybe the spider climbs on foe? or squirrel and small woodlands things attack/swarm?
Small stealth, ( lynx ) coudl be small dog, small house cat, badger, stoat, fox, etc etc Rhosgobel rabbit.... Tank, could be bear, sabretooth, mastiff, boar, farm pig, bull, cow, Just thoughts to liven up, and work with various player sizes too.
I honestly would love any of these options because they could allow me to decide to switch to another pet type, instead of just baby polar bear or lynx, so my friends with me can still see.
I think my grid idea, could help>

So yeah, rarely do I rotae, and this is Why.
I am a casual player, maybe my input isnt important, but I woudl be happier with a few of these ( or all ) options.
Also, we have shovel, and pitchfork "impelments" that only cosmetically work with "Implemnents" and not with any other weapon. These woudl ( should ) work with staff as a cosmetic, and I know a lot of folk woudl like to see this, specially since we now have hobbit Loremasters

[Loox]

SSG should listen to end game content LMs, and not low level LMs in blue line who never have any instance experience. Because LM role in instances so important and so easy to screw

Do you think LM class as support should be a tree or a class? Because at the moment it is just a tree.

[Elmagor]

Do you think LM class as support should be a tree or a class? Because at the moment it is just a tree.

I think LM must be valuable in instances even with red spec, just not with any instance. No, I think he have enough support skills (not only from yellow tree)

[gildhur]

I've only played LM as one of my primary characters since Hobbit LMs were added recently, though I've done T2-3 raid and instance content at cap for a while now. So grain of salt on my comments here.

Pets (more than just the Keeper of Animals trait line)
Do you engage with the ‘pet rotation’? If yes, how do you feel about it? Do you like that it adds activity or raises the skill ceiling, or do you find it overwhelming or even tedious?

Do you find yourself using different pets in different circumstances? Do you feel like your pets actively contribute to your gameplay and your Lore-master fantasy? Do you have opportunities to use the pets you like, stylistically? Or do mostly find yourself locked into a few types, either statically or in a constant ‘pet rotation’ (ie: Catmint raven, boglurker, bear).

Some of you may have guessed at this, but we’re eyeing some changes to pets similar to the changes made to captain pets in U35. Primarily, that would mean a pet summoning cooldown, which would limit your ability to use any given pet skill repeatedly (ie: bypassing the pet skill cooldowns by dismissing and resummoning the pet itself). Like captain heralds, this would still allow you to immediately resummon a pet that you have had out for a while (long enough for its cooldown time to fully elapse) but it would prevent you from using pet skills more than twice in a row without waiting for either the individual skill’s cooldown or the pet summoning cooldown.

I don't. The only pet skills I use are bear taunt and spirit heal. I also set a skill on each to auto-fire. Otherwise they're just a (VERY) minor passive DPS boost or a way to grab aggro for an entire camp so I can rain lightning down on it. I love that we have pets, of course, but I would prefer not to have to micromanage them. I would like them to have MUCH more DPS, but I also don't want to have to trait blue to accomplish that.

IMO bLM needs to go the way of yWard, yMini, and yGuard. Let us select useful pet traits but not have to forego our primary roles to get them.

With their currently low damage, my pets are primarily cosmetic. In fact, I always pair them with identical cosmetic pets for that reason. My bear is a polar cub, and I use the Yule Festival one at the same time. My spirit of nature is Ghost-bear, and I have the Ghost-bear from the Extra Life giveaway as its twin.

DPS
A DPS-oriented Lore-master has some interesting skills and mechanics, but your overall repertoire of damaging skills can sometimes feel quite thin. Are there things you like about the current damage potential at your disposal? What frustrates you when trying to prioritize DPS? Reliance on induction skills? A dependency on tar + catmint raven to maintain high output? Waiting for cooldowns when Burning Embers is already tiered up and Lighting Strike/Storm are on cooldown? What do you like about your core damage rotation? What do you wish you did better?

I think LM DPS is pretty good. We get insane burst from Lightning-storm and decent sustained DPS from our various fire DOTs. I actually think there's a little too much overlap in our AOE fire skills. Cracked Earth, Sticky Gourd, Ring of Fire, and Nature's Fury could probably be consolidated somehow.

Additionally, I wish we had a LITTLE more group support in red (ideally in the form of an AOE debuff or group heal).

The Ancient Master – Support-first Lore-master
The Ancient Master line is often the de-facto primary trait setup for Lore-masters, but that doesn’t mean it is above reproach. While LMs are primarily sought after in raid groups, instances, and PvP for their support capacity, that doesn’t mean the ‘support-first’ LM has no room for improvement. For those of you who live and breathe yellow-LM, what do you like about the class and the role? What do you wish were different? Are you frustrated by the fact that your long-mez is also your interrupt skill? Does Water-lore-stacking provide you with something to steadily cycle into your skills, or does it feel like too much necessary upkeep? Do you feel like you contribute meaningfully to the group in moments where there are few/no adds to CC or manage? Do you just wish you had a Wizards Lightning skill to reapply your preferred 'Out in the Cold' or 'Playng with Fire' debuffs?

We need MUCH more reliable heals in yellow. I don't expect to be a main healer, but we need at least one single-target heal of significant magnitude, and more reliable AOE healing. I would remove the crit-trigger from Pleasant Breeze. I'm fine with it being only available after Gust of Wind, but I hate that I only get to use it once or twice on an entire instance run because it never crits. The range of the AOE component on Breeze and Beacon of Hope also needs to be significantly wider.

An in-combat rez would also be nice, but not really a must-have.

I definitely think we need an additional interrupt. Wizard's Frost, perhaps? We've already been trained to have it on a hair-trigger from flanking.

The last of my beefs with yLM are Knowledge of Cures and Remove Corruption. I appreciate the Resistance buff that KoC gets when traited, but the cooldown is far too long. Same for RC. Either lower the CD, make it AOE, or make it remove more than 1 tier of corruptions. For a master of knowledge, we should be better about these kind of things than other classes.

and puddle mechanics which are unaffected

This got me thinking. What about a yellow line skill that negates a puddle effect? But given how reliant instances are on puddles these days, it would be nice to have a way to at least partially counteract them.

Safe Haven: long CD (5m?), short diameter (10m?), elimination of all ground effects within the space