Bullroarer Update 30: Early Look: Skill Balance Work

[Kehleyr_SSG]

Welcome to the first look at a series of class balance adjustments we are working on for release in the coming months! This is an early look at class skill balance in particular that is targeted for release with Update 30: The Blood of Azog. With our emphasis on challenging end-game content, we've had to reconsider the balance of certain major group buffs and debuffs that were overpowered in the context of large fellowships. This has led to the reduction of several of these effects in order to hopefully allow for a wider breadth of class compositions in such content. We are balancing this work by not just focusing on nerfs, but DPS increases and other buffs as well.

We realize that we are coming in strong with a handful of significant balance adjustments downward to skills and abilities you may be used to using, and we would appreciate you considering the entirety of these balance adjustments in addition to "just" the key nerfs we are proposing. This list is also not intended to be a comprehensive look at class balance work that we will be doing both short and medium term.

Thank you for reading! Here are the changes being proposed.
~Cordovan

Notes added on May 25, 2021 are marked in turquoise
Notes added on May 27, 2021 are marked in violet

Beorning

• Cooldown on non-combat rez reduced [20s->1s]
• Expose is now a target debuff that increases incoming damage by ~Melee 7.5%, Ranged 5%, in human form it buffs Tactical and Ranged instead.
• Vigilant Roar no longer taunts by default - only when the first rank of the Vigilant Roar trait is taken (much like Biting Edge).
• ‘Vicious Claws’ (tank version only) can no longer miss, nor be blocked, parried, or evaded.
• Increased damage of the following skills:
  
  • Slam
  • Nature's Vengeance (initial hit)
  • Bee Swarm (initial hit)
  • Vicious claws, particularly in red-line.
  • Grisly Cry
  • Vigilant Roar
  • Thrash, particularly its lower tiers.
  • Expose
  • Bash
  • Execute

Burglar

• Fixed Disabling Attack trait attack speed bonus.
• LI bonus to Addle tactical dmg reduced to 5%, unimbued bonus to induction time reduced to 16%.
• Burglar Bob & Weave and Relish Battle trait heals both tick faster (1/s)
• Trickster versions of burglar skills are now named and described as such.
• In line with some of the other classes that have seen reductions in raid debuff skills, a couple of the yellow line trickster debuffs are being similarly trimmed.
  
  • Trickster debuff reductions:
    
    • Trick: Dust in the Eyes maximum miss rate reduced [~39%->15%]
    • Trick: Disable Damage reduction [-15%->-10%], Attack Speed Reduction [-20%->-10%]
    
    
  • Reworked Disable to fix various bugs (had to greatly simplify the skill's implementation under the hood). Finesse debuff is now -33% of target's finesse, rather than a scaling value.

Captain

• Captain's ability to maintain high and extended degrees of invulnerability has made them irreplaceable in high challenge content, so we've needed to limit a few of their most powerful abilities.
• ‘Kick’ can no longer miss, nor be blocked, parried, or evaded.
• Fixed: Captain banner heralds were not correctly inheriting offensive bonuses from their summoner.
• Fixed an old 'Make Haste' duration change that was never processed correctly.
  
  • Yellow Line:
    
    • Captain Yellow line morale bonus reduced from 25->10%.
    • Shield of the Dunedain LI legacy cooldown bonus reduced from (+10->+5s) (total duration reduced from 20->15s), Shield of the Dunedain can only be used on others.
    • Stand Tall Duration bonus reduced from (+10->+3s), Proc cooldown reduced from (1.0,2.0,3.0->1.0s,1.5s.2.0s)
    
    
  • Red Line
    
    • Telling Mark base effect reduced from (5->3%), Traited bonus from (5->2%), total (10->5%).
      
      • As a 100% uptime debuff with no action time cost, Telling Mark's group effect was too powerful.

• Reverted unintentional change to Blade of Elendil/Battleshout taunt traits.
• Several captain buffs are now raid-wide:
  
  • Make Haste
  • Motivating Speech
  • Muster Courage
  • Rallying Cry
  • Routing Cry

Champion:

• ‘Clobber’ can no longer miss, nor be blocked, parried, or evaded.

Guardian

• Protection by the Sword group melee damage buff increased [2%->5%]
• Sting cooldown [3->2.5s]
  
  • This should allow sting to be more conveniently slipped between skills with longer attack executions.

• Heavy Weapons Training now increases skill damage by [5->10%]
  
  • Gives a general dps boost and makes it more valuable for non-red guards to pick up the trait out of spec.

• The following skills received a damage boost, in approximate order of boostiness (smallest to largest):
  
  • Brutal Assault
  • Whirling Retaliation
  • Redirect
  • War-chant
  • Hammer Down
  • Shield-blow
  • Smashing Stab
  • Bash
  • To the King
  • Sweeping Cut
  • Shield-swipe
  • Force Opening
  • Overwhelm
  • Guardian's Ward
  • Stamp
  • Turn the Tables

• ‘Stamp’ can no longer miss, nor be blocked, parried, or evaded.
• The trait 'Relentless Assault' now grants a modest amount of Finesse.
• We're pretty happy with the distribution of Guardian damage across their skills, but they're still a bit low overall, so we're just giving them a general bump (except for Stamp, that was a bit much).

Hunter

• Blindside will no longer cause the player character to move into melee range with their target if Combat Movement Assist is active.
• Blindside can no longer be parried, bringing it into alignment with other ranged Hunter skills.
• Fixed Hail of Arrows trait to properly proc 50% of the time at the first skill tier, and 100% of the time at the 2nd. Was bugged for quite a while.

Lore-master

• Bumped the base debuff value of Fire/Frost lore back up a bit [5->10%]
• The sheer magnitude of fire lore and frost lore debuffs are considerably above where we're comfortable with for large group content.
  
  • Fire Lore traited effect reduced (35->10%)
  • Frost Lore traited effect reduced (30->10%)
  • Unimbued fire lore buff reduced to a max of +2.5%

• While wind lore could actually afford to be a little better:
  
  • Wind Lore effect increased from (1/2/3->3/4/5%)
  • Wind lore duration increased to 30s to free up more rotation for other skills.

• The following skills/effects gained have received an ~20% increase in damage:
  
  • Burning/Searing Embers (direct and DOT)
  • Wizards Fire
  • Test of Will
  • Gust of Wind
  • Cracked Earth
  
  
• The interaction between the trait Fierce Lightning and the skill Lightning Storm has been refactored to address frame-rate drops caused by the skill.
• The tooltip for Lightning Storm no longer erroneously suggests that the skill consumes Morale.

Minstrel

• Anthems should now be Raid-wide.
• Anthem of war unimbued LI bonus to physical/ranged reduced [~10->~5%]. Anthem of War base tactical bonus reduced [15->10%]
• The tooltip for Major Ballad now correctly says it is a damaging skill in the Dissonance form instead of the Resonance form.

Rune-keeper

• Further adjusting skill damage to find a better balance between Smoldering Wrath and other fire skills.
  
  • Smouldering Wrath CD increased from [15->17s]
  • Essence of Flame CD decreased [15->12s]
  • Induction on Essay of Fire decreased [2.5s->2.0s]
  • Damage of smaller fire skills increased.
  
  
• Mystifying flame no longer stacks different tiers on a single target.
• Further general damage bump, particularly for fire skills not called Smouldering Wrath.
  Fixed a bug that caused Essence of Fire buffs from Traits/Legacies to apply to Combustion and Smouldering Wrath.
  Bumped base skill damage to compensate.
• Mystifying Flames now affects all incoming damage, not just fire. Damage multiplier reduced from 15->5%.
• Known Issue: The trait is currently specifying melee damage but is intended to be all damage. This is a bug and will be corrected.
  
  • This debuff has frustrated fellowship rune-keepers for a while, as it was difficult for many groups to take advantage of.

• Fiery Ridicule DoT changed from (7 pulses/2s) to (7/3s), along with a modest increase in damage per tick.
  
  • This extends the DoT long enough that Essence of Flame can be used to reliably maintain it.

• The following red-line skills received substantial Damage bumps:
  
  • Scathing Mockery
  • Essence of Flame
  • Smouldering Wrath
  
  
• Changed frost affinity to grant +20% outgoing healing, rather than force setting the bonus value to 20% (which prevented any other bonuses from stacking).
• Mystifying Fire and Molten Flame are now unresistable.

Warden:

• ‘Shield Slam’ can no longer miss, nor be blocked, parried, or evaded.