Quote Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal View Post
SIZE=3]Pets (more than just the Keeper of Animals trait line)[/SIZE]
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 like the "Pet Rotation" as it acts outside of the normal gameplay.

By this I purely mean you are managing 2 sets of skill queues.

This is a pet issue in general in a lot of games. And maybe thats what people like about pets. But the idea of a "Pet" in my mind has always been one of coordination, not separation. If I want the pet to do a skill, my personal character should also act on it.

Sic'Em was, in my opinion, a great functional skill of what pets should do. You still have "The Pet Rotation" but instead of; Summon -> Use Skill -> Dissmiss, it should just be 1 skill, Summon pet. Then the pet autonomously uses it's skill and dismisses itself.


Suggestion:

To this end I would much rather simplify pets into 2 categories
- Active Pet
- Skill Pet

Active Pets
- These pets are actively out
- Doing things independent to the lore master on there own skill bar (like live...)
- You are not dismissing them or benefitting from dismissing them or rotating pets. They are out permanently.
- You can micromanage the pet for optimisation or set-and-forget, or, leave it on passive for it's passive buffs (Eagle, Raven, Light)

Skill Pets
- These pets are tied to a Lore-Masters skill
- The lore-master uses a skill, the pet is summoned, the pet does it's thing, and then leaves.
- Example 1. Bear taunt: The lore-master will summon a bear that will grab aggro for 10seconds. Apon ending will leave. Cooldown 1min.
- Example 2. Bog Lurkers Strike: The lore-master summons a bug lurker to strike and mark the target for ranged attacked. +5% inc Ranged & Tactical critical chance for 30s. Cooldown 1min.
- Example 3. Sabertooths Swipe: The lore-master summons a sabertooth that swipes and chills 5 targets. 5m radius. +5% inc Melee critical chance for 30s. Cooldown 1min.

This way you still have pets as a key part of the class, they're still being "rotated". The debuffs can remain. But it's less crowded on your ability and more on your active choices and cooldowns.

Obviously take numbers will grain of salt as I'm fully assuming there would be LI traceries or traits to buff them / reduce cooldown.

You still have your core "Active" pet that you could rotate. Obviously these can be tied to purpose like Raven (offensive debuff), Eagle (survival), Light (Heals), Lynx (Personal DPS). But you aren't told to swap these around. Infact the lines could promote use of 2+ of these. Say if we just have "Debuff line" and "DPS line". Eagle and Lynx could be red line buffed massively with perks to LM. While Raven and Light are buffed for debuff LM.


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 dont mind the inductions. Specifically the dps skills. I might sound crazy given modern day gaming. But at least the LM has it's limit. That being said, in PvP this is a huge downside. It would be a HUGE QOL to give the Lore-master some kind of cooldown to allow induction on move or a general overview to ensure they're smaller and don't "root you in place" after the induction.

Tar, Warding Lore, add some interesting dynamics to fights to make sure people are fighting in them. But the cooldowns and inductions don't all add up to make it a fun experience. They could both have there inductions removed and usable on the move to make sure optimal positioning and using them is fun. Cooldown/Durations at or over a min just doesn't cut it when many fights you move far too regularly to stay in a place for a minute. In theory, I'd love them to have no cooldown and just replaces previously set (akin to old captain banner) so the lore-master is just managing where he places his goo as the fight moves. But not completely dictating the fights movements, or being caught completely out of the loop.

Catmint could honestly be deleted. It's effects can be tied to a dps skill to make sure the LM thinks about it's own damage instead of being selfless and a weird light armor tank build.


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?
Infuriating line.

Blue and Yellow content for best support. Blue technically has better support thanks to -IncDamage on pets, but it's inconsistant and not required. So all the eggs in one basket to use AncientCraft with minor heals elseware and call it "Best Support" line. Even tho most of it's support can be picked up by blue and red just fine.

The "Meta" of LMs to sit in yellow and do very little but reapply debuffs/buffs creates a void of player skill. The low end LMs buffing low end hunters isn't actually doing much. They would likely have more value doing DPS with the same debuff skills. But obviously, you play for peak, so LM's build this weird setup where there own stats are purely defensive and utility.

I honestly hate it.

All the LMs debuffs could do damage. At least then you would slowly start to be slightly more concerned of your DPS and feel involved in the fight than a cheerleader.

Skills that are QOL but remove mechanics knowledge and skill like Ancient Master could be gone. Just learn to combo skills to spread debuffs. You don't need the skill. It could be somthing more interesting.

Even after all that the light armor lore-master is defensively a mess sporting healer like mitigations but little self survival. There needs to be somthing somewhere to make sure they're not left behind. Especially as the Lore-master is the range AoE burst class. So easy can you dump your entire load to get the aggro of 1 stray and die instantly, so obviously, you build like a tank and then vit stack into boredom.

If you kill pet rotating, yellow lore-masters are going to be twiddling there thumbs a lot. There needs to be some consistently in the class to translate from solo play to group play. Giving the debuffs some damage gives you that translation and then progresses into LMs doing damage skills. If this is an issue for end-game, a yellow line skill to "Mute" debuff damage so they can debuff stunned adds is desirable. But I still think Lore-Masters should do damage, even when debuffing, similar to Burglars and create some parity between the "Support" classes.


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.
I'm not against removing yellow line, but that doesn't mean removing support role. The class has 2 roles, it should have 2 lines. But it could (doesn't mean it should) be clear.

I have observed before that the blue trait specialization, the Keeper of Animals, does not seems to have a clearly defined role. Thematically, it’s the ‘pets’ trait line, but what does that mean for your role and priorities? It has a bit of group support, a bit of personal damage, but mostly ends up being used to moderately enhance red or yellow (or for the occasional cheeky flipped version of those two which are essentially the same but with Murder of Crows in lieu of other capstones).
Similar to this reasoning. Blue and Yellow could be merged for the most part. All the best bits and mechanics. Then creating a new "Yellow" to actually be a sub-set of traits that buff the supporting role of the pets or debuffs if red or yellow.

Looping all the way back...

Suggestion:

Blue: Support
Red: DPS
Yellow: Pets

Support is obvious. Fire/Frost lores, spreading debuffs, odd healing, power healing, warding lore, root, stun, all that jazz. But key here is that it's focussed on DEFENSIVE buffs.
Red is the same. Can basically not touch it in this theory.
Yellow becomes mainly about adding mechanics to the loremaster and most importantly, about your "active" and "skill" pets.
- Yellow unlocks many pets to be used as skills
- yellow unlocks Ancient Craft at it's full ability, this skill is equally good in red and yellow
- yellow has a higher priority on offensive debuffs and buffs

This way you can think of the 4 builds
B/r - A survivalist lore-master with group defensive support but able to do some damage
B/y - A Strong supporting lore-master applying both defensive and offensive buffs & debuffs with less focus on it's own damage
R/b - A survivalist dps lore-master who's focus is on its own performance (think PvP, High tier delvings, 3mans)
R/y - A strong dps & dps support with high AoE damage and offensive buffs+debuffs.

Nothing has been lost here in reality even with a line lost. Just you've added 4 viable choices and 2 meta choices.