How do I heal as a yellow mini?

Hey guys! I am one of the newer minis on here, and I decided to try giving yellow line on my mini a whirl when doing fellowships along with blue line, since it seems to be VERY popular among most skilled minstrels around these parts, especially in T2 raids, which I have a long way to go, before I can even consider worrying about it due to the sheer amount of support it can dish out to other members in the fellowship making them very strong, while also being great healing wise, though not to the overly strong levels of blue mini. I did some research on yellow minis, and I think I got the trait tree for yellow down, you go down into red until you get anthem of war, and you put the rest of your points in yellow, someone also said to go down blue line until you get the chord of salvation HOT trait, and get -induction for your heals as well as get anthem of war from red line, I am still deciding which path I want to take when it comes to traiting, but traiting yellow minis in general seems fairly straight forward. The anthems also seem to be easy to deal with, just get the +anthem duration, and +physical/tactical mastery from anthem of war, as legacies when I get my LI and I am good to go for the most part, then start with anthem of war, go to anthem of third age for -inductions when healing, and more outgoing healing, after that go with anthem of prowess for more armour/evade for my tank, and less attack duration, replace with anthem of composure for enemies who use tactical damage instead of physical, use the tale of tales AOE buff, and use song of aid, codas, and call to greatness very often, also considering another anthem of third age for even lower induction times with heals.

The problem comes with actually healing on yellow line, because it is more difficult than blue line, but also more fun, which I like, because you lose your huge AOE bolster courage heal, so just doing bolster courage spam will not cut it, and you cannot cut any animations with siloquay of spirit, since that is a blue line exclusive skill, and I cannot really find any actual guides/rotations on yellow healing, so I did some legwork on my own, and looked at the heals I have as a yellow mini to construct what I think is the rotation for a yellow mini is when healing, my guess based on looking over my skills on LOTRO wiki is that when healing in yellow line, bolster courage would be my best friend when it comes to single target tank healing, it is the only reliable single target healing skill my mini really has since it has no cooldown, it also does not have that much of an induction if I decide to dip into blue line, and get -induction for my heals, meaning I should probably get improved bolster courage from blue line, and get the +bolster courage healing legacy on my LI other than that, chord of salvation looks pretty reliable as a single target heal, so I might use it when it goes off cooldown, plus it gives a fellowship wide HOT, making it pretty good with AOE healing as well. The -healing induction legacy on my LI also looks pretty tempting

For AOE healing, inspire fellows, and the aforementioned chord of salvation fellowship wide HOT looks like it will be the main skills I will be using when it comes to multiple targets, only problem with those skills is that it has cooldowns, so I cannot exactly spam them unlike BC with single targets, but I cannot find any other AOE heals, which could be a problem, but many say that yellow minis bring out more than enough healing AOE wise, so there must be a reliable way to heal multiple targets that I missed. Also, one of the traits in yellow line says that my next heal will have a chance to crit after using offensive skills against enemies, so that makes healing with the yellow mini easier. Would that also mean that I should get the +critical healing percentage trait from blue line as well for yellow? I am looking for expert opinions on improving my healing rotation, and maybe some extra tips on yellow minis in general, because I am not so confident that this is the correct rotation since I am pretty much just guessing here. Can you guys help? Thanks! :)

If you are planning to heal in yellow and not just buff, you can skip red line and go down blue until you get Triumphant Spirit and its CD reduction. That gives you a great O S**t heal when you need it. Also, once you have three anthems on your fellows (usually three stacks on AoW), you can stack three AoTA's on yourself. It make Bolster an instant-cast and also adds a pile to outgoing healing. Use inspire fellows whenever it is up. Yellow mini pairs nicely with the 4 piece Featured Instance set to get a pile of damage reduction on your fellows, which with your Tale and other buffs makes healing much easier. Cycling anthems is key. Once you have three AoWs on fellow and 3 AoTA's on yourself you got about 30 seconds of instant cast bolsters to hit on anyone low on morale. Then throw out another AoW followed by AoTA, and do this three times in a row, followed by a couple more AoTAs to maximize the amount of AoTAs on yourself at all times.

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Originally Posted by Beltharas

If you are planning to heal in yellow and not just buff, you can skip red line and go down blue until you get Triumphant Spirit and its CD reduction. That gives you a great O S**t heal when you need it. Also, once you have three anthems on your fellows (usually three stacks on AoW), you can stack three AoTA's on yourself. It make Bolster an instant-cast and also adds a pile to outgoing healing. Use inspire fellows whenever it is up. Yellow mini pairs nicely with the 4 piece Featured Instance set to get a pile of damage reduction on your fellows, which with your Tale and other buffs makes healing much easier. Cycling anthems is key. Once you have three AoWs on fellow and 3 AoTA's on yourself you got about 30 seconds of instant cast bolsters to hit on anyone low on morale. Then throw out another AoW followed by AoTA, and do this three times in a row, followed by a couple more AoTAs to maximize the amount of AoTAs on yourself at all times.

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Thanks... never found out there are fellowship, and individual anthems, I thought that meant you can only use 3 anthems in total, whether it was fellowship, or individual, thanks for clarification! Guess I will give 3 anthem of wars on my fellowship, give 3 anthem of third ages to myself refreshing every 30 seconds, throw my tale of tales, codas, and other buffs, and throw song of aids, and call to greatness when off cooldown, I guess the anthem of prowess is not going to be too useful after that 4 piece featured instance set giving damage reduction, so I should not worry too much about that one. Just looked up triumphant spirit, seems like it gives me a huge AOE based heal when needed, but it is on a two minute, 45 second cooldown when traited with cooldown reduction, so I cannot use it too often, still helpful when I need AOE healing. I guess animation cancelling is not even needed yellow line, so the lack of SoS is not even a problem since bolster is an instant cast making tank healing much easier, and would make for some quick healing whenever more than 1 person is under attack. The only problem with skipping red line is that I will miss the + tactical damage from my anthem of war, which would be a huge problem if the DPS part of the group is RK heavy, since the other 2 tactical classes are more support based in fellowships, guess I will focus on blue for now, and worry about that later, the other option which I am considering is to make 2 yellow mini trait trees, one for RK heavy groups that dips into red, and dips into blue up to -induction on heals, and the chord of salvation HOT, and the other one that is for non RK heavy groups that goes to blue until triumphant spirit, and the rest goes to yellow, just need to grind a bit more LP to unlock another trait tree. Other than that, it seems like it is just like I said, glad I am at least on the right track in terms of my healing rotation. Thanks for the advice! The more I hear about yellow minis, the more I am tempted on just scrapping blue for fellows altogether, but I am not going to that level yet, blue might be useful for fights that deal more AOE damage, that is pretty much the only strength blue minis have over yellow, while yellow has 3 very powerful AOE heals for AOE situations, they all have cooldowns, and while 2 of them are short, it is still there, so there are no spammable AOE heals yellow line, then again, I am probably making those cooldowns more of a problem than they actually are, and there are quite a few people saying that the AOE bolster courage thing in blue line is massive overhealing, I can also just use non induction bolster courages on multiple targets if the AOE skills are on cooldown, there is also that revive. I also lose perfect ending which is a bummer, but I have no idea how useful that is in blue, and not many blues talk about it, so it is probably not too important.

IIRC you cannot get both TS and Call to Greatness, but Call to Greatness is not as good as it used to be anyway. Song of aid is nice for a couple classes before battle, but during combat you'd only use it when buffs are all up and no one needs heals. Remember that Call of the Second Age also gives a run speed and -induction buff to close fellows so it is worth using. Also you can trait piercing cry to get a bonus to Bolster to fellows in its area of effect. Healers Strike gives a small fellow wide heal and I'll use it sometimes when I happen to be close to melee range.

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Originally Posted by Beltharas

IIRC you cannot get both TS and Call to Greatness, but Call to Greatness is not as good as it used to be anyway. Song of aid is nice for a couple classes before battle, but during combat you'd only use it when buffs are all up and no one needs heals. Remember that Call of the Second Age also gives a run speed and -induction buff to close fellows so it is worth using. Also you can trait piercing cry to get a bonus to Bolster to fellows in its area of effect. Healers Strike gives a small fellow wide heal and I'll use it sometimes when I happen to be close to melee range.

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Dang it... guess I will skip call to greatness then, doesn't sound like I am missing too much anyway, sounds to me like song of aid is lowest on the priority list, but nice to use when you cannot do anything else useful, I will keep that in mind. Cool, I will probably use call of the second age when having to go into situations where mobility is needed, so they could run quicker. I checked the piercing cry trait, that makes single target bolster courage even MORE powerful to allies, too bad it cannot be AOE, then again, that would mean that there is pretty much no reason to use blue, to do that, I would have to crit on piercing cry, so I should probably get my crit up, which I probably would do anyway. At least Yellow line has just as great ST healing, if not better due to the fact that BC is instant for them, rather than having to get their induction time shortened through SoS, and it sounds to me like AOE healing for them is very good, it is just not OP like blue line. I checked the healers strike skill, it looks USELESS, but I guess it would be a decent filler for AOE heals, and it is better than nothing.

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Originally Posted by marke34

Dang it... guess I will skip call to greatness then, doesn't sound like I am missing too much anyway, sounds to me like song of aid is lowest on the priority list, but nice to use when you cannot do anything else useful, I will keep that in mind. Cool, I will probably use call of the second age when having to go into situations where mobility is needed, so they could run quicker. I checked the piercing cry trait, that makes single target bolster courage even MORE powerful to allies, too bad it cannot be AOE, then again, that would mean that there is pretty much no reason to use blue, to do that, I would have to crit on piercing cry, so I should probably get my crit up, which I probably would do anyway. At least Yellow line has just as great ST healing, if not better due to the fact that BC is instant for them, rather than having to get their induction time shortened through SoS, and it sounds to me like AOE healing for them is very good, it is just not OP like blue line. I checked the healers strike skill, it looks USELESS, but I guess it would be a decent filler for AOE heals, and it is better than nothing.

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I've never rolled with call to greatness either. It's just so outdated imho.
However ,on a fixed group that likes to push fellowships to the limit , it can prove useful.

As for blue/yellow , there is no argument if you want to be a useful minstrel.

The only fight you'll propably never heal on yellow on a dps group is unbroken t2c , but even there , you can fit in a yellow minny if people roll with 3 healers.
The rest ( 6mans/3mans esp ) are yellow all the way , it's all about speed nowadays ( sadly maybe ).
Yellow will only get stronger after next update since anthem of war will become even more OP through boosted legacies.

In my opinion , get used to yellow through a yellow/blue build that includes triumphant spirit.
Red anthem can slowly follow later when you feel confident.
If someone complains ( usually its a RK ) , feel free to remind him that he plays an easy mode 3-button class and maybe he should chill with his demands a bit ^^

Great, so I am ignoring call to greatness entirely, makes sense. I guess I really should scrap blue for fellows, the support from yellow minis is simply too strong, and the fact that my only big argument against yellow is less AOE healing due to overhealing from AOE BC that blue line has should mean that I should main yellow on this guy, I am sure that the mini does more than enough AOE healing on his own, even with the cooldowns on the AOE heals, at least blue line works well for the lazy minstrel who hates having fun healing, XD. Well, that means 1 less trait tree I have to buy by grinding LP, so thanks for saving LP! I have no idea what to do for ToDT T2 when I come up to that boss, but I would most likely think of something. Clearing instances/raids in a quicker amount of time is ALWAYS nice to have, even before they were all about speeding through them, it was just that yellow was the black sheep of mini specs, and was useless for a while come HD, until turbine buffed them, and people found out just how useful it is, and now people fall in love with it once they realized how strong it is now. Hold on a sec, anthem of war would be even better soon?!? Cool! Can't wait to see how fast clears are with the buffed anthem of war. Well, the sad reality of not getting the anthem of war trait is that Rk's are extremely popular in raids/fellowships as DPS right now due to their insane deeps red line, and the +30% tac damage with 3 anthems of war only makes them even more powerful, if they were not so popular, I would be more than happy to follow your advice, and tell that to the RK, XD. No offense to you RK's BTW, I love fire, and lightning just as much as the next guy, I just need to cut trait point costs.:D BTW, RK does not seem like a 3 button class, you use essence of flame, smouldering wrath, writ of fire, essay of fire, fiery ridicule, and scathing mockery, that is 6 buttons, not 3, plus it has a complicated looking rotation if you are trying it out for the first time before practicing it on a dummy, LOL.

BTW, I think I finally found out the legacy combo I will use for this yellow mini. MH will contain anthem duration,-rally cooldown to make up for the worse revive yellow minis get compared to blue, still as death cooldown in case I get too much aggro, the 2 triumphant spirit ones, healing skills crit rating, and the other one can be anything, though -healing induction would look tempting if the heals on yellow were not instant cast after 3 anthem of third ages. The songbook will contain the 2 anthem of war lagacies, bolster courage healing upgrade, the chord of salvation crit rating increase, inspire fellows healing, +healing/motivation skills morale healing, and the final one can be anything, now I just need tons of legacy reset scrolls, XD. That way ALL MY healing skills get buffed, and get stronger, it is probably way past overkill at this point in terms of all those healing legacies I got as a yellow mini, but why waste valuable legacies that can vastly increase the effectiveness of my heals as a yellow mini? It only makes my yellow mini better when it comes time for actual raiding, XD. Will craft another LI set containing DPS legacies when soloing on my mini, so don't worry about that.

You can heal almost all of the current t2 content with that build, but the reality is that blue line is still preferable in a lot of situations. You'll want to plan on using both if you are looking to raid. I just mention that because you want your healing LIs optimized for healing in either line. I put anthem of War legs on a swap book, for example.

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Originally Posted by Beltharas

You can heal almost all of the current t2 content with that build, but the reality is that blue line is still preferable in a lot of situations. You'll want to plan on using both if you are looking to raid. I just mention that because you want your healing LIs optimized for healing in either line. I put anthem of War legs on a swap book, for example.

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Dang it... I should have known it would not be that easy, alright, back to LP grinding XD. Alright cool, just found out where to put my last legacies on my LI into, for my MH, I will put the last legacy into improving soliloquy of spirit, blue line minis use it a lot along with bolster courage, which I already got buffed since soliloquy of spirit is used to animation cancel bolster courage in blue so both heals go off at the same time, and I would replace my aggro dump with the -heal induction for blue line, the aggro dump legacy in general sounds like the least useful one on my LI, so I will replace that one, so blue heals can go off more quickly, my songbook will get the -cry of chorus cooldown, I have NO idea why I never thought of using it before, it makes stacking anthem of third age buffs easier for both yellow, and blue since I get 3 ballads automatically, so that is definitely going into my LI, my other option is to slot -power cost for heals into my legacy, but power really does not seem like an issue for minis due to how quickly it regenerates, and the cry of chorus cooldown is just too useful to pass up, so I am putting that in my songbook. With this kind of setup, my 2 main heals in blue, and all those heals in yellow are going to be EXTREMELY strong, I will get a better revive yellow, I will get induction reduction on my heals in blue, and my anthems of war are still going to get buffed, and be useful in fellowships, all without having to make a blue line, and yellow line exclusive set of LI's.

Edit:Good news everyone! I made the dumbest mistake of my life when deciding legacies, apparently, when looking up the minstrel legacies on LOTRO wiki to help with my decision, I came across a couple of legacies that got improved when my MH gets imbued, and gave a bonus to that skill, namely, -triumphant spirit cooldown, and the decrease on the induction to heals, I thought those 2 bonuses were seperate legacies, so I counted them as a used up legacy slot for my MH, it was not until today when I looked at them again when I realized my dumb mistake. Now, I got 2 free legacy slots for my MH, and I will put the - cooldown on the call to ioreth skill for blue minis, and the aggro dump cooldown reduction legacy I originally replaced with -healing induction into them. Now my legacies for MH looks like this:anthem duration, -cooldown call to ioreth, - rally cooldown, +sililoquay of spirit magnitude, -healing skills induction, -triumphant spirit cooldown, -still as death cooldown, songbook legacies remain the same. Now, I got every single legacy that is even somewhat related to blue/yellow line except -power cost on heals, and I already shared my thoughts on that earlier in my post. I guess the only problem with this set up is that I have no legacies that give me +will, I do not have any free space left unlike with my DPS mini legacies, so I put a few +will legacies on my DPS LI's, but not on the support ones, so I lose out on quite a bit of my effectiveness with my heals, and many people seem to like stacking morale/crit rating with their essences when gearing blue/yellow minis, so I cannot really gain much will there, I guess the main way I will get will on this guy is with stat tomes, food that gives +will, and scholar scrolls giving me +tact mastery to make up for that deficiency on my hobbit mini. BTW, sorry for talking about gearing/legacies for blue/yellow minis, but it is related to the topic of blue/yellow minis, so it is relevant here, so I decided to post it on this thread instead of making a new one, ignore it if you want, XD.

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Originally Posted by Beltharas

IIRC you cannot get both TS and Call to Greatness, but Call to Greatness is not as good as it used to be anyway.

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I'm not opining on Call to Greatness, but unless the trait planner is out of date, you can get both it and Triumphant Spirit, and have a few point left over. Whether you want to is a different question I suppose.

http://www.lotrottp.lotrostatus.com/l.php?c=6zb

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Originally Posted by bastiat1

I'm not opining on Call to Greatness, but unless the trait planner is out of date, you can get both it and Triumphant Spirit, and have a few point left over. Whether you want to is a different question I suppose.

http://www.lotrottp.lotrostatus.com/l.php?c=6zb

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LOL, guess you can actually do so, but I really do not have enough trait points for that to get all the traits I want. Here is the link to my trait tree for yellow minis currently. Got the piercing cry trait from red, so I can crit much more often with piercing cry, to make my bolster courage heals much more effective to my allies in the fellowship.

http://www.lotrottp.lotrostatus.com/l.php?c=6zc

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Originally Posted by marke34

LOL, guess you can actually do so, but I really do not have enough trait points for that to get all the traits I want. Here is the link to my trait tree for yellow minis currently. Got the piercing cry trait from red, so I can crit much more often with piercing cry, to make my bolster courage heals much more effective to my allies in the fellowship.

http://www.lotrottp.lotrostatus.com/l.php?c=6zc

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You should get feedback from others that are more experienced, but from what I've read Resonant Piercing Cry as a trait is no longer very useful. See this thread...

https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...t-Piercing-Cry

Increasing your healing crit chance would be more valuable for healing.

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Originally Posted by bastiat1

You should get feedback from others that are more experienced, but from what I've read Resonant Piercing Cry as a trait is no longer very useful. See this thread...

https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...t-Piercing-Cry

Increasing your healing crit chance would be more valuable for healing.

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Alright, cool, then I get 4 more leftover points to spend on stuff, if I read change of pace healing correctly on the yellow tree, it gives me 100% crit chance on all heals after using a damaging skill until I get out of combat for 9 seconds, which would theoretically mean that I can get 100% crit chance on my heals the whole battle once I get the buff, in which case, I will put those points into improved coda of melody, and the 1 extra point to perfect performance, if the buff is NOT 100% for the whole fight, because it probably is not, then I will put the 4 points into blue to increase the crit chance of my heals.

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Originally Posted by marke34

Alright, cool, then I get 4 more leftover points to spend on stuff, if I read change of pace healing correctly on the yellow tree, it gives me 100% crit chance on all heals after using a damaging skill until I get out of combat for 9 seconds, which would theoretically mean that I can get 100% crit chance on my heals the whole battle once I get the buff, in which case, I will put those points into improved coda of melody, and the 1 extra point to perfect performance, if the buff is NOT 100% for the whole fight, because it probably is not, then I will put the 4 points into blue to increase the crit chance of my heals.

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Again, don't listen to me because others are more experienced. I used to think that Change of Pace looked kind of bad, but your posted prompted me to do the math. It gives a 25% chance for the next heal, and only the next heal to crit. So if you always alternated between offensive and healing skills: Damage, Heal, Damage, Heal, Damage, Heal, it would grant an effective 25% healing crit chance. But if you alternate at all like: Damage, Heal, Heal, Heal, Damage, Heal, Heal, Heal, then the effective added crit drops. Obviously if you go Damage, Damage, Damage, Heal, the healing crit added would increase.

If you assume you have a base healing crit chance of 25%, this is how I calculate the added healing crit per trait point invested. Since Critical Strikes adds crit at 0.5% per point investment for a Yellow Mins, Change of Pace would outperform as long as you are doing one damage attack per seven heals.

Healing per Damage Skill	Effective Healing Crit	Added Healing Crit	Healing Crit Added per Trait Point
10	26.9%	1.9%	0.38%
9	27.1%	2.1%	0.42%
8	27.3%	2.3%	0.47%
7	27.7%	2.7%	0.54%
6	28.1%	3.1%	0.63%
5	28.8%	3.8%	0.75%
4	29.7%	4.7%	0.94%
3	31.3%	6.3%	1.25%
2	34.4%	9.4%	1.88%
1	43.8%	18.8%	3.75%

Now if your base critical healing rate is 50% (as some people are getting to), the table looks different.

Healing per Damage Skill	Effective Healing Crit	Added Healing Crit	Healing Crit Added per Trait Point
10	51.3%	1.3%	0.25%
9	51.4%	1.4%	0.28%
8	51.6%	1.6%	0.31%
7	51.8%	1.8%	0.36%
6	52.1%	2.1%	0.42%
5	52.5%	2.5%	0.50%
4	53.1%	3.1%	0.63%
3	54.2%	4.2%	0.83%
2	56.3%	6.3%	1.25%
1	62.5%	12.5%	2.50%

Now you need to do one damage attack per five heals. The question becomes how many damage attacks are you doing per heal. If all you're doing is Ballad, Ballad, Ballad, Anthem, Coda, repeat, this would seem to be pretty awesome (assuming the Coda benefits- worth checking if the damage and heal from the coda both work, one works, or neither works).

It would seem to me that a ballad or some other damaging skill would be used at least once for every five heals, in which case this would add more crit than the competing blue or red options. But again, more experience people in raid content should chime in on that.

Alright, cool, so TLDR, change of pace is VERY good as long as you throw in an attack every 5-7 heals since critical heals are a mini's best friend, will probably use that one when I get to the 25% crit cap for raids with my gears/essences, when I get to 50%, or a bit below that, the utility will kinda drop off, so I will put my points elsewhere, and not worry about change of pace so much. Still, 25% means that 1/4 of your heals crit, that is still a large amount, which is good. Will have to look into finding out how to get my crit cap up to 50%.

Edit:found out how to get to 37.5% crit chance, get the 5% crit chance increases from blue line, 2.5% from red, and then get the 2 piece armour set bonus from the greater trappings of vigilant watcher set from TODT T2, I also found one that increases it EVEN MORE to go up to 42.5% with a 4 piece set, but the 4 piece featured instance set looks too valuable to pass up, so I can only get up to 37.5 for now, still 3.75/10 of my heals crit instead of 2.5/10, HUGE improvement already, XD. Now, I need to find out how to get 20 more trait points to get those 2 traits.