On Lore-masters and Tamed Creatures

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.

1)Since you nerf The Spirit of Nature (with adding CD) and bear (with nerfing agro) LM pets needs to be buffed with maybe increased dps from them (if you worry about having debuffs to powerfull)

2)Red LM need to have more dps in both AoE and solo target if you want to see him as dps in instances

3)Light of Hope needs to be used on LM himself too with more AoE healing around it to keep him as valuable support for groups. Same for Peasant Breeze

3)Knowledge of Lore Master, Sing of Power: See all Ends and Sing of Power: Command must be reworked to be more usefull skills

4)Nature's Fury and Fire Shield needs to be buffed as capstone skills

5)Yes, Blinding Flash too important and usefull, we need 2nd interrupt

6)How about Wisdom of Consul adding bubbles for other memeber for your fellowship around LM?

7)Corruption removing one of weakest parts from LM. Usually you don't want to waste skill what removing CD from CC to just remove another corruption

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

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?

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Ok, first things first, I firmly believe that to make the LM fun to play, you should just give us the ability to use damage skills on the move (in red), but more on that later.

I like the general idea of debuffing a bit before big (AoE) damage skills. So, having longer cooldowns with "insane" damage can be nice. I don't think the reliance on tar + catmint for big attacks is awful, maybe give tar and Benediction of the raven a -10% fire & lightning debuff, so we do not only get a buff to half our skills. This way we can chain some nice big attacks. Honestly, if necessary, take Wind-lore and SoP: command away in red line.

However, imo the big cooldowns are currently too long and do not do enough damage.
The debuffs are good enough, but the cooldown of lightning storm and tar could be reduced from 90 to 60 seconds (in red),
the cd of Ents can easily be reduced from 300 to 120 seconds,
and I'd also advocate for a reduction of the cooldown of sticky gourd OR Light of the rising dawn from 30 to 20 seconds.

Furthermore, ancient fire and mighty wind could be reduced to 1 trait, which gives space for a 5% crit trait. All classes have this for their dps line, but lm is strangely left out.

All of this doesn't matter though with the clunkiness of the static lm. It feels very outdated and just makes the LM not fun to play. Even if the damage numbers would be increased and the cooldowns would be reduced to 10 times what they are now, it would make the LM an OP but boring dps class. The inductions themselves aren't the big issue, having them for big, rewarding skills feels fine, but let us use them on the move. The same with the animations, please make us a class that can use our damage skills on the move (this doesn't mean that many animations shouldn't be sped up, burning embers for one, is terrible).

It's rather odd, but I'm having more fun running around on my lm pressing wizard's fire 20 times than to stop and do a burning embers and lightning strike. If necessary, I'd even take a 30% run speed debuff while using induction skills on the move, but that might also be a thing that could be removed by traiting high enough into the red line.

Lastly, I'd advocate for upping the damage from cashing out burning embers considerably and making staff-strike and staff-sweep scale from tact mastery. Currently, they really don't feel worth it.

Just a quick thing to mention. Yellow Lore-Masters have and always will be required for 12-man content of any difficulty as bosses are balanced around their existence, and if they aren't then LMs are brokenly OP. For that reason, it is safe to assume that any other trait line for LM will be by default less desirable in end-game content since LotRO often rewards having as many different classes in the raid as possible. This in no way means that Blue or Red should be neglected in fun, but unless somehow either of these specs subvert other staple classes in their role, they won't ever be part of a preferred group comp.

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

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.

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First and foremost, I want to point out that I am a leveling Loremaster of 77ish. I do not have any experience with end-game Loremaster or raiding. My thoughts here solely have to do with leveling a loremaster up as a Blue Line pet master (over world, questing, deeds, etc).

Why I stopped playing my Loremaster as my main:
I love my Loremaster, but I changed my main from him to a Champion after I got to the high 70s. The main reason for this is because I leveled my loremaster as a pet master build where I depended a lot on my pet to do the majority of my damage. I pulled, debuffed, and did crowd control as needed, but for the most part, I would tell my pet to kill one of the mobs, and he did so with ease. I used Lynx almost exclusively because it is a DPS machine.

At some point in the 60s, my pet started less and less powerful. In the 70s it got to the point where I was doing the majority of the damage, and the pet felt more like a visual dot. That completely ruined my image of the character I thought I was leveling up.

Only one trait line viable in end-game:
On top of that, I kept hearing from everyone that in the end game, I will specifically be required to be Yellow line and to forget about damaging anything. That was the nail in the coffin because I didn't start a Loremaster with the intent of playing Yellow line. I don't know why there is a Blue and Red line when the class is basically shoe horned in to just using the Yellow line once you hit max level. Now, I get that it is a player-made concept, but the point is that the players wouldn't have come up with that concept IF the Blue and Red lines were actually valuable options for those roles in the end game. That means that Blue and Red need serious help.

Pet Visuals:
I can not stress enough how much I dislike the Bog-guardian pet. I'm sorry to all the people that like it, but that model is one of the uglies ones I have seen in the game. That alone is one reason I never ever use that pet. To add to that, the times I have tried to use it despite the looks of it, the pet constantly flies right up in front of my camera view, so I can't see what I am attacking. Due to the fact that it is tall and it does not move in to fight (due to being a caster pet), it just stands there right in the camera's view. Complete deal breaker for me. Give me any other option for the "caster" pet, and I would use it. As long as it is that Bog thing, nope nope... nope.

While I love the lynx's melee DPS (the main reason I use it the most), I am not a fan of the model. I would much rather have a more aggressive looking pet model. Something that when the mob sees it coming, they would actually be in horror that it is coming to eat their face off. I look at the little lynx, and I can't help but to think that I should toss it a ball of yarn to play with lol. He's adorable, but not what I would think of for a melee DPS mob.

Things I would like to see changed/added:
Pet Dash For Initial Combat Start - Give the melee DPS pets a teleport ability they can use to instantly get to the mob they are told to attack. It would be nice if when I tell my pet to attack a mob, they would be able to get to that mob with out such a long time running to it. The lynx in particular takes longer running to the mob than it does killing the mob. If I send the pet on a mob that is too far away to teleport, then have the pet run towards it until it is with in range, and then teleport the rest of the way. Put it on a cool down timer or something if it is over powered. Just give em a way to DASH in to the fight every 5 seconds or so.

More Powerful Instant-Cast DoTs - Since I am a pet master OR crowd controller, it would be nice if I had more instant-cast Damage-Over-Time spells that I could toss in between telling the pet to do stuff and crowd controlling mobs. Put a small recast on them, so they can't be abused, but make them powerful DoTs, so that I feel like I am contributing to the fight more than just locking down mobs and such. Any casts that require casting time are going to be instantly useless if I am forced to be a Crowd Controller in end game content because if I am spending time casting then that's time I am taking away from doing CC.


Thanks for taking the time to listen to everyone.
Pharone the Gnome

I don't particularly like the idea of a pet rotation, though I put up with it. Having a cooldown on summoning them just makes that more tedious.
I miss having the eagle in red or yellow specializations. My pets are there to help me and my group, not me to help my pets. ;p
I would like to see more mobility in red. It doesn't have to happen with all skills; but allowing more induction skills being able to be cast while moving; even if slowed a bit, would help.

One other thing. I miss being able to CC instance and raid bosses. Bring that back, please; while adding adaptability to the bosses so we have to be tactical about it.

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Originally Posted by Vuldyn

Just a quick thing to mention. Yellow Lore-Masters have and always will be required for 12-man content of any difficulty as bosses are balanced around their existence, and if they aren't then LMs are brokenly OP. For that reason, it is safe to assume that any other trait line for LM will be by default less desirable in end-game content since LotRO often rewards having as many different classes in the raid as possible. This in no way means that Blue or Red should be neglected in fun, but unless somehow either of these specs subvert other staple classes in their role, they won't ever be part of a preferred group comp.

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Err...yes ...yes ...and yes...I think the 3 replies you have cover most of it very well indeed. You can close the thread now.

I'm a casual player who doesn't raid, so I don't use yellow LM.

Red LM was first char I ever got to lvl 100, so have a fondness for it. I don't swap pets, except at the start of a fight. So I use bear or lynx when I want mobs bunched up before I use Lightning storm. I have to admit, I really don't use the other pets too much, jus the boggy sometimes.

Only requests I have are :

• Shorter inductions
• Give us Water lore much earlier than lvl 70
• Give us a cosmetic skin for the boggy - just too darn big and can obscure things. (tundra cub skin does this very well for bear, who normally has a very big butt in tunnels!

Thanks!

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

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.

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As always appreciate your engagement with the community.

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

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?

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Yes, every LM who does any real group content engages with the pet rotation. This is an integral part of LM gameplay. Some people hate it, personally I like it for the following reasons:

-Increases skill ceiling (you can say it's not hard but doesn't change the fact that it's easier to find LM's who can't do it well vs. those that can).
-Gives the LM more to do. LM's have a lot of skills and types of skills, they can DPS, CC, heal, debuff targets, provide power for the group, provide stun immunity, etc. etc. Without the pet rotation the LM has more than enough time to do all of these things, but with the pet rotation LM's have more to juggle and this can force the LM to have to prioritize what to do.
-Gives the LM more to think about. To build on the point above, if you are busy supporting your group by providing the pet debuffs that are relevant for your group's composition, you have to decide what else is important enough for you to do. In some cases, you have to decide which pets are worth foregoing in favor of maintaining CC, lores on multiple targets that aren't near each other, SI on tank, heals, etc. Pet debuffs also add an element of timing consideration into a fight.

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

Do you find yourself using different pets in different circumstances?

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In a group context I use every pet that would benefit the group. This means almost always Raven (helps hunters/RKs immensely), always bear, bog lurker if there are any ranged DPS in the group, and spirit pet in very specific situations due to the last nerf to its uptime. Eagle was only ever useful for self rez, Sabretooth is almost never used, and Lynx is useless.

Bear used to have a nice situational use for absorbing large hits or drawing a single add away temporarily, but this is no longer the case in instances.

When solo or running DPS as second LM (rare), raven is the only pet I keep out for consistent DPS boost, swap to bear if I need a tank to grab aggro.

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

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).

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They contribute to gameplay in the sense that the core pets are powerful and personally I enjoy leveraging them for different purposes within the game. I don't think we need access to more pets than we already have, and the variety we have now is pretty good. There are pets that are hardly ever used or never used, that shouldn't be the case.

From a fantasy perspective, I think if LMs had to tame their own pets in the wild (like hunters in WoW) there would be a greater sense of attachment towards them.

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

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.

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As a proponent of the pet rotation, I can get on board with having a CD on pet summoning but would suggest you consider the following:

-Pets can die easily or bug out, you don't want to create a situation where the LM is forced to dismiss their pet (or pet gets one shot) shortly after summoning, and now they are basically unable to do anything useful.
-There might be some merit in exploring whether a pet specific CD makes more sense than a global CD. This would prevent things like bear spamming to indefinitely taunt a target, but would still allow the LM to get a proper rotation going between different pets.
-Summoning a pet and just having it auto attack a boss is not fun. There's nothing engaging about this at all and the fact that LM pets have useful skills and can be rotated keeps the player engaged with the pets throughout combat. I'm not offering a solution here, just stating a problem that if the LM simply picks the pet they think is best and lets it autoattack for 30 seconds, a minute, whatever, that's not engaging gameplay at all.

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

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?

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LM burst DPS is actually pretty massive if you unload all your big skills at once, the problem is that every large hitting LM skill has a massive cooldown, so their sustain is awful. In today's game, waiting more than a minute to re-use a DPS skill just makes no sense at all. Between long inductions and long CDs LM DPS simply can't keep up with other DPS classes. I don't think there's any issue with having to leverage tar/raven to maximize your own DPS.

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

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?

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I think the LM is one of the most unique classes I've played in any MMO. I love that it has a core role in LOTRO that sits outside of the heal/tank/DPS paradigm. I always felt like a really good LM can make or break a group, especially in 3/6 person content. Their toolkit is very versatile and when played properly they can make a T5 instance so much easier. I think there are few classes who are able to tip the scales as effectively as an LM, and personally that's one of the things I really like about playing the class.

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

Are you frustrated by the fact that your long-mez is also your interrupt skill?

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I think it would be good to give LMs an immediate interrupt skill in addition to the one associated with blinding flash.

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

Does Water-lore-stacking provide you with something to steadily cycle into your skills, or does it feel like too much necessary upkeep?

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I'd say more the former. You can save time by foregoing water lore but in most challenging content you'll want to keep it stacked. I like that personally, and I like that having it stack 3x can give you more choice (i.e. do I put it on someone else this time who is taking or about to take some damage).

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

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?

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I think fights with a lot of CC definitely make things more engaging, challenging, and fun for the LM. I'm ngl before red maiden got changed that was one of my favorite instances on an LM, keeping all 6 mobs CC'd the entire time basically made it so the group could bypass all mechanics so it had to be changed, but as the LM doing the CCing I was having a blast. I still think LMs are interesting in fights where no CC is involved, especially if the LM needs to dip into a broader set of their skills to add value in that fight.


Thanks for reading all the feedback here, looking forward to see what you do with the class (and keeping my fingers crossed champ is next on your list!)

First things first, I appriciate you making a post so we as players can put in feedback.

My name is Alerond and I play Lore-Master on Landroval; they know me as Photon. This is from a raiders perspective, so what I'm about to write is verry biased. Next to that I'm most of the times put in lore-master because some people don't really like the class or think its either too much responsibility, or what I think repetitive.

So First things first, whenever you make a character you will see dedicated roles supposed to be for wich class. Lore-master is assigned support. So far, ever since trait lines were introduced, yellow line has been by far the most popular in raids since you have the best supportive skills. a basic Lore-Master knows that you want to have fire and frost lore up to reduce outgoing damage on the boss most players will know this, even if they play outside of the raiding communities.

Here is where things will become confusing for people who are more casual and don't really care about higher difficulty content.

Now things get real, and i'm going to be straightforeward.

Lore-Masters are boring (to me), not because I don't like the class, no no, it gets repetetive and tedious while carrying a lot of responsiblities over the raid.

Lore-masters are essential in all raids to be succesfull, that is because the lore-masters arsenal is HUGE, like it cannot be understemated how versatile a lore-master can be. *But it isn't* your skillbar is filled up to the max so you can have many different tasks; however for the last year my task has been : Lores, AC, tar Daze, Root, water-lore, stun and repeat. Throw in the tedious pet-cycling so you get to see your catminted raven for 1 second, your bog lurker for 0.5seconds your bear for 6 seconds to catch up to the target and then they're gone, or like its more often then not the case, back to the raven to benediction, bog lurker the next target. that is going to be smushed by the hunterstack since the LM debuffs are the strongest for the hunters. Lore things back up and then keep things dazed and then repeat for a twenty minute bossfight. Oh yeah there is a spirit pet wich was too strong, but now you never whip it out since the cooldown is so long and you wait untill one of the healers goes down basicly. (1.30M cd would fit better, 3M is huge)

Lore-masters to me were fun when you had access to lighting storm and assisted in taking down mobs, that is what the majority of Landroval things they are doing anyway by using damaging skills instead of pet debuffs, not knowing that the fight goes so much quicker if you just stick to the debuffing stuff.

Right now its unfortunate that the Lynx and Sabre-Tooth tigre can't be summoned unless you are actively trying to slow the raid down. Pet debuffing is fine, but at least make every pet usuable and make them 1M long so at least you can see your pets. The rescue eagle rez being in blue-line only is also kinda lame to me being able to put down a emergency rescue rez before something was about to clobber you was hilarious and always was led to good banter with the raid.

Something else that grinds my gears is Wizards frost.

So you are using fire-frost lore and you upgrade it by using a fire,lighting,frost skill correct? Pretty dope. However -1k tactical mastery on a lvl 140 mob is so bad, next to the increased powercost wich I guess is meant for moors players. Most of the time you refresh your lores every 30 seconds so you have tier 3 windlore on the boss and they will automaticly get the worst "upgrade"debuffs. It would have been cool if those three different upgrade debuffs were actually versatile ( more -tac damage, miss chance on like a boss aoe or something) to make it feel like good lore-masters could actually care about changing the bonus debuff after wind lore, cuz right now nobody really cares about that.

Sorry about the rant.

my thought on the three traitlines?

Pets (more than just the Keeper of Animals trait line)
Blueline is not my cup of tea, feels like it should get the yellow mini yellow warden treatment to me

would like if crowthies were actually in yellow line cuz then you could deal some damage while having fun hehexd

DPS


So for this I think red LM needs a GIGANTIC CD cut on your high damage skills, 5 minutes for ents go to war? come on man that's wayyyy too long unfortunately, or you know make it a 10 milion base power hit if its gonna be that long. Next to that the other big skills are like too long, you're mostly using burning embers and then like cracked earth gust of wind and light of the rising dawn untill you finally have your true skills back up ey. (if you don't pet swap wich most people won't). casting is fun it is kinda awkward


The Ancient Master – Support-first Lore-master
I like Yellow, concept is fun but right now the raid is way to LM heavy and its more tedious then fun to CC something. It should get like a new skill that would be a fun to use skill. so at least it doesnt feel like you slap something with a wet noodle.

#vuldyni needs to make his minstrel Vuldynstrel make it happen peeps he knows he wants to

Hope this helps!

Pet rotation is much the same as constant champion weapon swapping - tedious and annoying and keeps the LM from having time to actually use her own abilities. Please eliminate it the way champion weapon swapping was eliminated.

The LM pet hasn't been nearly as effective since the buff giving it three extra levels was eliminated and then belatedly replaced with something not nearly as good. That was even before the latest pet nerf. I used to love blue LM but it just is too ineffective now.

I agree with changes that make it harder to use the pet to kill things while the player is afk.

I agree with making effects less flashy to reduce lag - yes that means murder of crows.

Pets

On landscape, I just go red and don't bother summoning my pet because it gives no noticeable assistance, other than occasional bear tanking on a particularly tough mob. Pet DPS needs a huge increase for them to be impactful.

For group content, rotating through pets is IMHO a stupid concept and probably contributes to lag too. Disable pet summoning in combat. It would make your choice of pet for a given fight require some thought, and encourage you to watch over your pet to keep him alive rather than have it kamikaze the boss and just summon another when it dies. Alternately, pet summoning in combat could be added as a blue capstone. This would allow pet cycling to continue to exist (if that's your philosophy on the class) while giving blue something special which it currently doesn't really have. It would open up the possibility of a raid with 2 LMs, one doing pet debuffs and one doing other stuff.

Also remove the 3 min CD on the spirit pet. Nothing says "we don't know how to balance this" like asymmetrical summoning times. If the catmint 10% healing mark is too much, just cut the heals in half, 2.5% normal and 5% catmint.

DPS

Personally I don't mind the induction-based DPS play of the LM. I know many people despise it, but to me it lends a unique flavor to the class. If people prefer fast pew-pew or shing-shing, there's other classes for that. I feel like there's enough variety of attack spells that there's always something off CD. Lowering the CD on Ents would be nice though.

Some kind of lightning debuff skill would be handy as we have quite a few lightning skills. Speaking of, there seems to be a large focus on reducing fire mits, to the point where many other classes feel obliged to do fire damage to tap into these debuffs. Meanwhile frost only has the obscure sabretooth debuff and lightning gets nothing.

Support

LMs are always welcome in raids, usually accepted in 6 mans, and sometimes grudgingly allowed in 3 mans. We don't fit into the group trinity. We can't heal well, we can't DPS well, we can't tank well. When someone advertises for a 3 man healer, nobody is hoping for an LM to volunteer, unless stun immunity is important like Puglakh. Some extra heal skills would be a big help. Stronger debuffs would work too, but I realize that would destabilize raiding. Maybe in yellow Wisdom of the Council affects nearby players too. Or give us an in-combat rez. We need something. Alternately you could boost our DPS to the point that we can sign up for a DPS spot without feeling embarrassed.

The way pets are currently used is terrible gameplay and it needs to go. I dont mind full support LM, but most of it needs to come from LM. There is nothing "high skill" about current pet rotation. All that can be achive with LM skills, different CDs and so on. Pet summon CD is fine, provided they get way tankier and bug out less offten. Their use should be to compliment LM/Group depending on fight, their skills should be more impactfull(not in way of mental -20% fire mit debuff and such) but something you can rotate trough and maybe work in with different LM skills. So that LM isnt as it is now. Extremly boring to play in almost every scenario only fun you have is when you have to manage some CC where you feel like you actualy do something.

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

As stated somewhere else: Please keep the unique full support role alive and don't force us to be half-heal or half-dd, but make us more useful/impactful.
One of the current major problems of LM: Our corruption removals ar not optimal in comparison to other support traitlines and we have too many skills in yellow and not enough fast/non-induction skills in red.

Blue LM: I love LM pets but currently they are more like skills than pets, please make them more useful, give each pet a working role, maybe different stances/skills for solo and group play for some pets. Give every Pet a corruption removal skil. Maybe think about it as an offensive support traitline, that deals DMG via Pets and makes pets pets, not just skills.
e.g.:
Bear: Tank for solo or small fellowships, Damage reduction and resistance debuffs in 6-man or raids
Boglurker: Sufficient ranged DD / offensive support for ranged DMG
Lynx: stealthed debuffer with single target melee damage
Eagle: Power reg/Heal and self-rezz
Raven: Medium tactical dd with tactical DMG buffs / debuffs
Sabertooth: Melee aoe dd with interrupt skills
Light: Heal with incoming heal debuffs

Auras for pets giving constant buffs to the fellowship might be nice.

Red LM: i am not really a red LM, but i really like the heavy impact skills like lightning storm, but it is annoying to be rooted in place for a lot of skills.

Yellow LM:
I really like the maiar approach of things in terms of: we help and may save the day, but we do it subtle and only sometimes with a flash. We can heal, when we chose to and not because we are forced to do it, we can do a little damage, but we won't have to. We can do neither and still be usefull for our fellowship. I like the flexibility to chose in every situation what i will and can do with my skills and time as a yLM. It makes it a quite complex class, but lotro would be a different game without it. I love that lotro hasn't the holy trinity of dd/heal/tank, but a special place and heart for support.

BUT: we have too many skills, some of them broken vor years. I see the yLM as an defensive debuffer and CC traitline, that can use the help of pets, depending on the playstyle they chose for a fight, but shouldn't rotate through pets like they are just skills.

Buffs and Debuffs a yLM should keep:
- All Lores, Ancient Craft, Tactical DMG Buffs/Debuffs (Tar / Warding Lore), CC

What should be reworked:
- Signs of Power, Corruption skills
- Knowledge of the Loremaster - if re-working the skill to interact with the actual values isn't possible maybe a list of possible effects like possible corruption effect and immunities could be displayed.

Im absolutely curios what your plans are and i hope we don't have to wait too long for a first preview.

First, thank you for looking at the LM class.

Although my LM is 140, I am mostly a landscape player along with small T1 instances. I have played blue for that because I always found it most enjoyable. However, the pet contribution has gradually been whittled away. It began when pet levels were reduced to be on par with the LM. This probably makes sense in the red and yellow lines, but not blue where the pet is the whole point of the line. I mostly used the bear for solo as he was a decent tank. But since I don't do the higher tier instances I never learned about pet rotations in the first place but the concept seems a bit silly to me. Personally I just enjoyed blue more than red.

The only comment I have regarding yellow is the wound removal. We used to have a trait (before trait trees) called, "Proof against all ills," which made our wound removal fellowship-wide. IMO, if any class should have a group-wide wound-removal it should the a yellow LM. IIRC, even the purge poison for hunters is fellowship wide in its yellow line and it does more than poison now too.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

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.

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In my opinion, they are tow bigger issues with pets.

The first is only a related issue: the instance design. What ever SSG did in the past, player found a way to use a pet in a way SSG did not expect. (why not buy the way? 90% of those pet usages were "just using (pet) skill". Yes, sometimes quite creative, but still not exploits). Each time, the response from SSG was to nerf a pet. Just like the latest one for the bear's aggro skill.
The fact that we still have Honey and Oats with Perceived Threat shows how rash and thoughtless this change was. This pet food is completely useless now.

The second one: pets did not scale well with the game since level 70 level-cap time.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

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).

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Engage? Absolutely yes. It is (imho) the "cherry on the cake" for a good LM and yes sometimes it is tedious too.
There is only one pet rotation and you named it: bear, lurker, raven (depending on the classes in the group/raid) and depending on the situation: Spirit of Nature.
Lynx does nothing, you killed the eagle, sabercat does noting (they are just too few frost skill in the game to be interesting to call the cat for Frostbite).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

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.

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The idea is not bad, but the planned implementation is rather "catastrophic".
Instead of adding a CD for the pet itself, you should add a CD for the skills only. Many times an LM prepare a pet for usage (esp. Spirit of Nature) but then the pet is killed before we can use their skills. And now we are here with a CD on summoning. Also, the summoning time for a pet is far too long for the current game. What I would like to see is a unified duration and cool down for the pet skills (actually, it varies between 30 sec and 1 min. in duration and between 10 sec and 2 min in CD).
So if you plan to add any kind of CD, do not add it on the pet, but on their skills and lower the summoning time please. Spirit of nature and captain pets are the examples how it should not have been done.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

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?

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The most frustrating - as already mentioned - is that the LM is the most static and slow class in a game that SSG is making more and more dynamics (because everybody loves those puddles sooo much).
I am not sure about decreasing the CD of the LMs big skills. But either that or a slight increase of those skills damage. I like the idea that an LM can/could do a very good burst damage. Unfortunately, the single target damaging skills are too weak to bridge the gap until the big skills are ready again. Also, the induction time plays a big role. Long induction time + easy to interrupt = low DPS.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

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?

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1. Aso here Movement. Some improvement was made, but the LM is still the most static class.
2. Finesse: Why an LM need much more finesse as any other class in the game to apply its skills to a mob?
3. Corruption Removal: Since SSG is using more and more stacked corruptions instead of various ones, the "ultimate" debuffing & CC class became the worst corruption removal class in the game. Some changes to that are needed. (maybe something instead of Level-Headed and/or Flow of Power)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

Are you frustrated by the fact that your long-mez is also your interrupt skill?

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Yes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

Does Water-lore-stacking provide you with something to steadily cycle into your skills?

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Absolutely yes and the first good change, that was made to LM, was to lower the CD on Beacon of Hope.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

Do you just wish you had a Wizards Lightning skill to reapply your preferred 'Out in the Cold' or 'Playng with Fire' debuffs?

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Do you mean, to bring it back?
'Out in the Cold' or 'Playng with Fire' have been fantastic traits until level 50 and until someone stole us Wizard's Fire lately.
Deep Freeze (-1450 Tactical Mastery Rating) and Winter Strom (+15% Power Cost) are meaningless.
The other procs would be still great if we would have an easy way to reapply one of them as we need. But most of the time as an LM we have too much to do (speaking of endgame 6/12-man group content) to use Burning Ember/Cracked Earth/Sticky Ground or Strom-Lore/Lightning Strike/Power of Knowledge to change the proc.
But even if not, as soon as we use Wind-Lore we are ending always with Deep Freeze and Cool Off. Removing Wizard's Fire from any skill tree but red, was a bad idea. Wizard's Frost does exactly nothing for us regarding debuffing (even if someone tries to promote the skill with a class essence).
If you plan to bring Wizards Lightning, you really could consider bringing back Wizard's Fire too.

Suggestions:

The following is a list of proposed changes to the Loremaster pets as well as associated more general changes to the class and its respective blue line as a result of the proposals. The idea behind these changes is to give each pet a more definitive identity, whilst also clearly defining each pets function, we believe the changes will result in a much more interactive playstyle for the Loremaster when it comes to their pets and will also require an important decision to be made based on group composition and the content at hand when deciding what pet should be chosen, the fundamental idea being that it shouldn’t be possible to have or use more than 1 pet in combat at any time. It could also open up potential avenues at a later date following a more comprehensive rework of the blue line to allow more than one Loremaster to be taken in groups/raid settings.


Key Features:

• To clearly define each pet by giving them more of an identity.
• To give each pet a new skill that will be a character-based fellowship and/or raid buff. Thus, making choosing the right pet for the right situation even more important.
• To address current issues that the pets have.

Spirit Pet (Healing Pet):

Aura Skill: Grants a fellowship/raid HoT effect that would restore like 0.X% morale every Y seconds (Ex. 0.5% morale every 6s (effectively a 5% heal over 1 minute)).
Skill 1: Flashing Flank, reworked, daze 10 targets in a 10m radius for 2s. Cooldown 2 minutes.
Skill 2: Nature’s Gift, no change.
Skill 3: Nature’s Light, reworked to place an effect on the target, when hit by a player, it will grant said player a +10% incoming heal buff for 15s, the duration cannot be refreshed until expired. Skill duration 17s, Cooldown 1 minute.
Catmint would increase the +% incoming healing buff on Nature’s Light to +15%.

Bog-Lurker (Physical Damage Pet):

Aura: Grants a fellowship/raid buff to increase +4% physical damage.
Skill 1: Angry Bees should be a bigger, more impactful DoT.
Skill 2: Root Strike, incoming crit chance buff, applies to all damage sources as opposed to just ranged and is +2.5% instead of +5%.
Skill 3: Bursting Root, 50% chance to start a fellowship manoeuvre.
Catmint would increase the % chance to start a fellowship manoeuvre to 100%.

Bear (Tank or Mitigation Pet):

N.B: When summoned it should take the Lore-Master's morale into account and add it to its own base morale, Ex. If the bear has 300k base morale, and the LM has 500k morale, the effective morale of the summoned Bear would be 800k. The bear needs a much higher threat-modifier for its basic attacks, but not higher than that of actual tanks. Similarly the bear's basic attacks should hit in either a 90 or 180 degree arc, or should hit 3-5 targets by default.
The taunt / threat copy issue is resolved by skill cooldowns not resetting when dismissing resummoning pets. The bears whole identity is geared for tanking difficult solo content / 3mans, as it is unlikely a LM would use this pet in a 6man or raid setting, and could not be used on the fly as a result of the 1 pet limit.

Aura Skill: Grants a fellowship/raid buff that would increase fellowship/raid physical and tactical mitigations by +1 or 2%.
Skill 1: Roaring Challenge, 10s taunt duration, 3x threat copy, 30s cooldown. Should also apply a +% mitigation buff to the Bear for 15s (something like 10 or 15%).
Skill 2: Shatter Arms, +5% incoming damage, as opposed to +10% incoming melee and ranged damage.
Skill 3: Bear Hug, stun duration should be increased from 3s to 5-10s.
Catmint would make Roaring Challenge a 5 target AoE taunt.

Afterthought: Instead of Bear Hug being a stun, Bear Hug could essentially allow the bear to act as your "shield" for 10 seconds, any damage you take during this time will be redirected to the bear, cooldown 2minutes.

Raven (Tactical/Fire Damage Pet):
(For the most part, the Raven is actually in a good spot).

Aura Skill: Grants a fellowship/raid buff to increase, +5% tactical damage.
Skill 1: Evasion, the effects should apply to the LM and not the Raven.
Skill 2&3 Unchanged.
Catmint continues to operate as it does.

Lynx (Personal Damage Pet):

N.B: AoE skills should be 5 targets.

Aura Skill: Grants a fellowship/raid buff to increase Critical Chance by +1%.
Skill 1: Surprise Strike should be able to be used in combat. It will consume a max tier windlore, and in exchange it will double the effectiveness of the incoming damage buff on the target for 15s. Windlore cannot be restacked during this time. Cooldown 90 seconds.
Skill 2&3: Feral Strike and Slashing Claws, apply a debuff to the target(s) that increase the LMs next damaging skill against the target(s) by +15%. Cooldown 1 minute.
Catmint would increase the debuff strength applied by Feral Strike and Slashing Claws making the LMs next damaging skill against the target(s) deal +35% damage.

Sabretooth (PvP pet):

Aura Skill: Grants a fellowship/raid buff to increase, +5% run speed both in and out of combat.
Skill 1: Frost Bite, reworked, 3 targets -30% slow. Skill duration 15s, Cooldown 45 seconds.
Skill 2: Fury of Winter, reworked to apply a -X high value armour rating. Skill duration 15s, Cooldown 45 seconds.
Skill 3: Throat Slash, reworked, 3 targets -30% incoming healing debuff to the target. Skill duration 15s, Cooldown 45 seconds.
Catmint would increase the strength of all 3 debuffs by +33% on the next skill play ONLY (-40% Slow, -40% incoming healing (official numbers for the armour debuff TBD but for Ex. -100k armour debuff would go to -133k)).

Eagle (Survivability Pet):

Aura Skill: Grants a fellowship/raid buff to increase, +5% morale, does not stack with Motivation and Motivation would override said buff.
Skill 1: Fan the flame, reworked, applies a debuff to every target affected by any tier of your burning ember DoT to deal -10% less damage for 10s, 2min cooldown.
Skill 2: Sacrifice, reworked with the ability to revive any fallen fellowship member, Cooldown 15 minutes. The Eagle will default always revive you if Sacrifice is off-cooldown, otherwise, you would target a friendly player and then press sacrifice (same as any other rez skill), the eagle flies to their location, dies, and rezzes the player.
Skill 3: Beak Rend, reworked, fears the target for 5s (100% break on damage after 2s), and applies a 25% morale heal to the Lore-Master.
Catmint could either increase the morale heal on Beak Rend or increase the debuff applied by Fan the Flames.



Associated general class changes & changes to Blue-Line:

• Catmint cooldown would have to have its cooldown increased to 75s up from 45s to make it a more meaningful choice when to use it, rather than just always having it active. Perhaps even longer to account for set bonuses that reduce catmint cooldown. Argument being that in many cases already on live, in a static fight the designated catmint buff or debuff is active 100% of the time (I.e. Benediction of the raven) this does not encourage any decision-making or interesting skill plays.
• Eagle trait removed. You should have the ability to always summon the eagle like every other pet.
• New trait in place of the old Eagle trait; activates the pets fellowship/raid buff skills. There are several ways these skills could be implemented, but we would opt for allowing these buffs to have a 100% uptime, as such, 5-10min duration, 1min cooldown, these fellowship buffs do not persist if the relative pet is dismissed or defeated, as such one LM can not stack or have active more than one at a time. However multiple LMs using different pets can have their fellowship buffs stack with one another (but still limited to 1 per pet (ergo having two lynx pets would not then result in you having two +1% crit chance buffs, you’d only get one, but if it was a Lynx and a Bear, you’d be able to benefit from the buffs of both pets)).
• Goes without saying that you would only ever be able to summon one pet in combat, in lieu of the removal to the weapon swapping, it might be an idea to allow the LM to attune the class item (the stickpin) to a specific pet, thus only being allowed to summon that pet whilst that item is equipped OR you gain a "buff" that will only allow you to summon X pet when in combat, for example, if you enter combat with the bear pet you will only be able to summon that pet, if you enter combat with no pet, the first pet you summon will apply said buff, the buff persists until you are out of combat OR you could be prevented from summoning any other pet for 60s after your current pet dies or is dismissed, there will be no penalty for resummoning the same pet though.
• Dismissing and re summoning pets will no longer reset the cooldown on their skills.
• Pet damage and general survivabillity significantly increased across the board. Pet speed should be defaulted at the same speed as the LM however they should not be susceptible to slows that take run speed below 100% but can benefit from +% speed buffs like make haste.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

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?

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When the last bout of changes to LM went through, and blue line received Murder of Crows, the best DPS a LM could output was by going Blue-Red (or so I experienced), with the HH Set and the Inner Flame buff. A key issue currently is that a Red LM (if taken) is still expected to serve as a modicum of their other roles, to heal, and debuff, and not taken as a DPS class in it's own right, except in rare cases. Thus LM damage needs to actually be substantially higher than it currently is, that the Red LM can simply DPS without being expected to do it's other things (unless in a dire situation), as such heals and debuffs should be substantially weaker, nerfed, or have increased cooldowns whilst in Red Line.

LM misses a key "buff" cooldown skill. That would increase Xdamage or reduce induction speed by X (or both) for X duration with X cooldown, this is 100% required.

Flanked effects should be changed or buffed, most are irrelevant.

Ents go to War still has a ridiculously long cooldown for little reason, if you were to compare this with, for example Fury of Blades + Horn from a Champion which = the same effect, I don't understand the reason behind why this skill still has the type of cooldown it does. It would be interesting overall to see more skill interactions with one another (Much like the old AC + Lightning Storm), LM has a lot to work with, Ents could do more damage to targets affected by Cracked Earth as an example. Ents go to War or Lightning Storm/Strike could increase targets incoming damage for X duration. Etc. Etc.

Loremaster has a ton of potential.

I wont go into a massive novel.

Yellow is great as it currently stands. The main issue I have with yellow line is that most of its potent effects are easily available if not completely baseline to the entire spec. Blue line in my opinion has never been a serious line at any point in lotros history. It is a good questing and solo line at certain level caps but that is long lost.

If there is to be a dps line it should be red and in my opinion it should be petless. Pets at their core are buff/debuffers. The biggest thing holding redline back is its ability to get 80% of the support skills that yellow has including pets. If redline is ever to be a true dps line that can do instances at even a mildly competitive level it needs to be stripped of most but not all its support abilities including pets. The idea of pets being reworked to actually contribute a ton of dps themselves is not a good idea in my opinion. I believe pets should continue to provide strong support when playing solo or when debuffing in yellow. Red line should still have access to pets for solo but when instances are being done as dps and you dont have a summoned pet you should get a buff similar to lone wolf from WOW.

The final comment I have on red is that through most of its burning embers iterations it has been very fun to play even if it didnt make sense many times. I have a big outstanding concern with munching burning ember ticks however. I have posted about this alot in discord. Currently if you get off your timing on BE it will cancle its own ticks like old champion deep stikes bleed used to. If you recall OnnM champs would crit so fast that they would constantly reapply the bleed and 2s would never go by so it would never actually tick even in a 10min fight. BE actually can work similarly if you are not careful. With so many skill either refreshing, upgrading, or downgrading BE you can get in a loop of constantly upgrading and downgrading it and with most of our inductions being 1s it can often go 4-5 casts before BE of any tier actually ticks. I have documented this with combat metrics as proof. Over a 3min parse I had BE on the target 100% of the time. So I should have had around 85-90 ticks of BE of all tiers combined. However in some parses, using the exact same rotation I had as few as 45-50 ticks of BE of all tiers added up. I dont mind the tiered gameplay but please consider a solution to this in your plans. Or if you get out of rhythm you will cancel almost half of your own dot ticks just for playing the class correctly.

As for blue line honestly I think the tree should be turned into a non specable tree like many other classes yellow tree has. Half the tree should provide buffs and bonuses to pets when solo or in yellow line. The other half of the tree could be used for general traits that we would want both a support and dps LM to have access to.

I am afraid that if we try to make pets work for everything OR if we try to keep blue line around as a second dps line it will just hold back the potential of the class. LMs have never truly had even a single dps spec be good in its history. We dont need to ruin its chances by trying to make 2 work. In my opinion I would not trust pets and pet AI in LOTRO to do great and meanful dps. So I hope the 'lone wolf' style for red is taken seriously.

Thanks for reading.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Khluzainn

Loremaster has a ton of potential.

I wont go into a massive novel.

Yellow is great as it currently stands. The main issue I have with yellow line is that most of its potent effects are easily available if not completely baseline to the entire spec. Blue line in my opinion has never been a serious line at any point in lotros history. It is a good questing and solo line at certain level caps but that is long lost.

If there is to be a dps line it should be red and in my opinion it should be petless. Pets at their core are buff/debuffers. The biggest thing holding redline back is its ability to get 80% of the support skills that yellow has including pets. If redline is ever to be a true dps line that can do instances at even a mildly competitive level it needs to be stripped of most but not all its support abilities including pets. The idea of pets being reworked to actually contribute a ton of dps themselves is not a good idea in my opinion. I believe pets should continue to provide strong support when playing solo or when debuffing in yellow. Red line should still have access to pets for solo but when instances are being done as dps and you dont have a summoned pet you should get a buff similar to lone wolf from WOW.

The final comment I have on red is that through most of its burning embers iterations it has been very fun to play even if it didnt make sense many times. I have a big outstanding concern with munching burning ember ticks however. I have posted about this alot in discord. Currently if you get off your timing on BE it will cancle its own ticks like old champion deep stikes bleed used to. If you recall OnnM champs would crit so fast that they would constantly reapply the bleed and 2s would never go by so it would never actually tick even in a 10min fight. BE actually can work similarly if you are not careful. With so many skill either refreshing, upgrading, or downgrading BE you can get in a loop of constantly upgrading and downgrading it and with most of our inductions being 1s it can often go 4-5 casts before BE of any tier actually ticks. I have documented this with combat metrics as proof. Over a 3min parse I had BE on the target 100% of the time. So I should have had around 85-90 ticks of BE of all tiers combined. However in some parses, using the exact same rotation I had as few as 45-50 ticks of BE of all tiers added up. I dont mind the tiered gameplay but please consider a solution to this in your plans. Or if you get out of rhythm you will cancel almost half of your own dot ticks just for playing the class correctly.

As for blue line honestly I think the tree should be turned into a non specable tree like many other classes yellow tree has. Half the tree should provide buffs and bonuses to pets when solo or in yellow line. The other half of the tree could be used for general traits that we would want both a support and dps LM to have access to.

I am afraid that if we try to make pets work for everything OR if we try to keep blue line around as a second dps line it will just hold back the potential of the class. LMs have never truly had even a single dps spec be good in its history. We dont need to ruin its chances by trying to make 2 work. In my opinion I would not trust pets and pet AI in LOTRO to do great and meanful dps. So I hope the 'lone wolf' style for red is taken seriously.

Thanks for reading.

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I definitely support blue being made into a passive spec, though I don’t support making pet’s redundant. Even with Lotro’s basic combat system pets can still be interesting and integrated well, they just have some glaring issues which I tried to address in my above post.

And 100% support what you said about BE.

I currently do engage in pet rotations and while I do think that it raises the skill ceiling of the class quite a bit, I do not think it does so in a fun and engaging manner. There are 3 offensive pets and 1 pseudo-healing pet options but since Shattered Arms benefits both melee and ranged damage it will always be in the rotation unless you are only running RK’s and Mini, which is a complete edge case scenario. At the same time Benediction of the Raven debuffs fire mitigations which Hunters can use oils to make the majority of their skills deal fire damage, therefore it’s a must if there are any hunters in the group at all and also benefits fire RK’s if there are any of those even still playing. Then there’s Root Strike, which again benefits hunters, and only hunters. So depending on the group composition an LM rotating pets can go from only rotating 1 pet (raven for themselves and fire RK) to having to run 3 because a single hunter joined the group. The healing pet thankfully got nerfed hard already so its now only used in moments where high incoming damage is coupled with high outgoing damage to keep the damage dealers alive. There is no high damaging Frost wielders to justify bringing out the Sabercat, and the Lynx only deals direct damage which is so pathetic that landscape enemies laugh at them. On top of all that, the durations of the effects are not consistent so you have to summon bear and bog lurker twice as often as the raven just to maximize uptime, and that is only taking into consideration a single target, which Shatter Arms and Root Strike effect. So the Pet Rotating LM’s rotation is heavily dominated by summoning and dismissing pets over and over again, while doing other utility stuff like Lores, CC, and offhealing in between. Lastly there’s Catmint, which just makes Benediction even better and since that directly effects hunters damage numbers it’s a constant demand. That means a debuffing LM is now locked into yellow/blue and while they can pick up some red skills to use some damage abilities it’s a spit in the ocean at best.

That all said I do not wish the system to abandon the idea of pet rotating entirely, as the added skill ceiling does give opportunities for growth, I just think that the current game lends the practice far closer to exploiting the system rather than embracing it. Therefore I suggest thus;

• Pet skills are purely for their damage or healing effects, no debuffs or buffs. This removes the issue of re-summoning as dismissing the pet in the first place would reduce their damage.
• Light of the Rising Dawn or Lightning Strike gain an added effect based on the active pet, allowing for the application of the debuffs to still occur but now it is an active player action rather than a pet application. Since both of these skills have rather low cool downs (20s for LotRD, 10s for Lightning Strike) there remains the option for multiple targets to get the debuffs, but that means using the player’s skill to do so, not the pets.
• Pet specific debuffs have a duration of 60s. Standardize the effects to make it easier to maintain and less micromanaging.
• All pet summoning skills share a cooldown of 20s. After 20s you are free to summon a different pet, or you can chose to keep the current pet active and refresh the pet specific debuff or apply it to another target.

Diversify the Pet Specific Debuffs as right now there are as I mentioned only 3 offensive options and 1 defensive option. With 7 current pet options there’s plenty of room to make some varied but niche effects that would reward the player for using the right pet for the right situation.


As for DPS, I really like the mini-system of tier up of my Embers DoTs and cashing them out with Lightning Skills, and the rotation overall for red LM leads to a pretty tight 30s of keeping DoTs active, with 60s windows of burst with Lightning Storm all aided by the Hasten effect and proactively using Staff-sweep to reduce cool downs. The issue is that even when ignoring pet rotating and focusing on just damage and the maintaining of Lores (you'd keep the wind lore debuff up anyways for more damage so not out of the question) the dps of a highly geared LM drastically pales in comparison to even a poorly geared captain and much less than any true dps. Over the last two years LM main utility has dropped with the nerf to Fire/Frost lore and the more recent nerf to AC but they have not gained any personal or offensive utility to offset that loss.

That all said a flat damage buff would not make the trait line perfect; Wizard's Fire is an awkward skill to use and the damage over time only lasts for 6s so maintaining its uptime is incredibly taxing for a skill that deals such little damage. There is not alot of pet utilization potential in red line beyond the Raven, and while you could use the Saber cat you really only have two frost skills that deal any major damage. Lightning Storm is still bugged from the last time LMs got a damage buff, making only the first hit of the three dealing significant damage and the other two dealing hundreds of thousands less. Nature's Fury can feel really awesome to use in a big group of enemies, but if the enemy you targeted with it dies before the duration ends then so does the effect.


Regarding Ancient Master I think it is probably the most used and least interesting trait line for LM's.
Red LM has the identity of wielding all of the elements and big flashy attacks, it just doesn’t have the game math to back up that power fantasy. The same could be said about Keeper of Animals where they specializing in bringing forth the fauna of the world against their foes, but those animals just got declawed and muzzled. Ancient master is.... you know stuff. The identity of the class is just debuffs, which the same could be said for the other two, and crowd control. The only reason it’s so popular is because it is the mathematically strongest option as it provides the most group utility while only having to sacrifice pet damage and personal damage potential, which already established as too low at base. In addition the main core of LM's utility comes in Fire and Frost lore and the ability to maintain those buffs, which the other two lines would likely be picking up from the yellow line anyways as an LM without Lores is just a bad RK so you are already using Ancient Master as a utility line; so why not just make it one?

Move Warding Circles, Herb lore, and Fellowship Share the Power out of the core traits, make Air Lore a universal skill, and Beacon of Hope and Knowledge of Cures added as traits that upgrade the base skills; then lastly put Force of Will, Herb-lore, and Ancient Master as the yellow capstones (kill Enfeeble, its caused too many bugs and deserves death).

Now any LM traited red or blue can bring the suite of utility that the LM is known for, but incorporate it into the way the trait line is played.

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Originally Posted by Hephburz-2

I definitely support blue being made into a passive spec, though I don’t support making pet’s redundant. Even with Lotro’s basic combat system pets can still be interesting and integrated well, they just have some glaring issues which I tried to address in my above post.

And 100% support what you said about BE.

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Pets have always been an LM thing so I understand them sticking around. Its just my preference that id like to see them removed from red. Its not required.

I think pets should be part of the solo and yellow line completely though. I dont want pets removed from LM by any means.

My advice, all LM pets should be able to tank equally well. (This would satisfy me as a solo LM being able to choose any pet I want to use and not feel locked into any particular one pet) Other than that they should continue having their unique identities and, as Hep posted, enhanced.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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

"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.

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.

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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

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?

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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

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Iwner

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

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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.

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

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

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

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.

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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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

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?

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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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mystarr

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

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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.

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

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mystarr

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

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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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Elmagor

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.

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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.

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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

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.

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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 :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Elmagor

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

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

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Loox

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

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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)

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.

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

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.

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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. :cool:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

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?

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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).

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

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?

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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.

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Originally Posted by Mithithil

and puddle mechanics which are unaffected

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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

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

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.

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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?

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I do engage with the pet rotation yes, but I dont love or hate it. I love the effects and support it provides to the group however the actual act of summon/attack/dismiss/repeat ad nauseum is...not thrilling engagement. What I love about it is that it does make the LM think about the order of summon, which pets to use and when - all based on your group comp. So it does add a level of additional "skill" but nothing thats difficult whatsoever. My biggest beef with pets is their pathing, my god ./facepalm. When Im standing 2m from the boss, summon bear, tell it to attack (its in melee range already!!) the dang thing takes 5 janky strides sideways around some random invisible nothingness, pauses, then attacks. Its painful to watch and an annoying time waster.

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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).

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As stated above, yep. Different importance order in different circumstances/group comps and I do love that. Exception, on a single boss fight (between phases in HH B2 for example, or Hrimil between ads) then it does revert to a completely static rotation on repeat. That said, even with changing order importance based on comp/boss its always the same 4 pets used, raven/boggy/bear/spirit unless for some reason your comp is missing specific classes. The rest are useless in raids (RIP eagle)
Stylistically yes I find the choices for LM pets fine as is. I suppose my only complaint is that now everyone can get cosmetic pets that look identical. Completely minor complaint, irrelevant really.

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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).

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Ehh...will be interesting to see how this translates to raid boss balance but Ill reserve judgement until its implemented.

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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?

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What I love about it is that its so dynamic. Its not an easy class to play well, and because of its massive array of skills it allows the player to think of unique solutions and more interesting gameplay than some other classes. It contributes sooooo much, and for the player that can manage all those options in the moment, is very rewarding.

Am I frustrated with Blinding Flash, YES - but less so for the reason you mentioned. What frustrates me is the ridiculous travel time!! For an INTERRUPT skill, we have to factor in how long it takes to travel to the enemy (seriously who thought of that!?), since it wont apply the effect until after it hits. Interrupts need to be immediate, period. Its an interrupt...not a 'maybe it'll sail across my screen in time, maybe it wont!' skill.

The Water Lore question - Keeping it up is fine, Id say the animation pause interacts with lag weirdly and can feel a bit long. My gripe with it is likely just a lag gripe, 'you cannot do that while moving' meanwhile I have very clearly STOPPED moving, it adds too much time to the induction. Not really sure what I'm trying to say here lol, making WL useable on the move would just be far too OP. Its range can definitely feel a bit short, even with the extension tracery compared to Beacon which is 10m further. But its very useful regardless.

Do I contribute meaningfully when no ads....sometimes yes, sometimes no. A big help to that was the recent Beacon of Hope buff, cooldown/uptime timings are great so that's something we can use much more often. I do feel that on single-boss fights, once all my buffs are up and heals are on cooldown...my few DPS skills feel very unimpactful. However yellow LM is a support class and so Im not expecting to do mega deeps anyways, but ya sorta...meh on that. I'm sure now with people being power-starved all over the darn place, I will have more to do in those situations ;)

Wizards Lightning skill to re-apply Out in the Cold/Playing With Fire debuffs? YES!! And to that, please add Wizards Fire back in yellow - for that exact reason. Burning Embers is cool and all but longer CD and cant use while running make it an annoyance if we're using it to refresh said buffs on multiple targets. (This doesnt apply to solo-boss fights of course, I'm thinking situations like Hrimil ad-phases here.) Especially since Wind-Lore is a Frost skill...so when we use it to refresh lores it also procs the useless buff '-Tactical Mastery Rating," which reduces mob tact mast by...wait for it....1450.



Now that those questions are answered I'll just pop in a couple last ideas.
Knowledge Of The LoreMaster has a cool debuff (if used out of combat.) However...99% of raid bosses are green-barred pre fight and do a long dialogue and then only red-bar once the fight starts and you're in combat anyways. So its effectiveness is basically nil in raids most of the time. And even if the debuff were made to apply while used in combat, the induction is too long.

Pet CDs make me nervous for the simple fact that the pets bug out so freaking often ./facepalm. Or I don't have time to wait for it to unhook itself from some invisible block on the floor to run over and apply its skill. I often get the message 'cannot command companion at this time' for no apparent reason other than its beside a pillar/partially line of sighted and just having a seizure. OR as very often happens, the pet runs into an attack and dies before its skill is fired. If this happens even once, time and pet skill wasted, RIP me. An idea for this (not my idea) would be to make the pet's skills not be applied by the pet themselves but applied by me with the requirement that the attached pet be summoned. That way it doesnt matter what your buggy pet is off doing, the LM controls when the skill activates, from themselves, so long as pet is summoned.

I dont play red all that often (moreso now in the 3-mans yay!) but I find our initial burst is huge....then Im waiting around for looong periods while all my heavy hitters are on CD. Burning embers, gust, lightning strike spam is rather...snore-fest lol.

Sign Of Power: See All Ends has to be the most useless skill an LM has...but it LOOKS the coolest! Definitely needs to be made relevant somehow.

Theres more that comes to mind but Im sure others will have it covered. As an aside I completely agree with Vuldyn's point and hope you keep that in mind. LM's don't need red and blue to be raid-viable trees. A yellow LM will ALWAYS have a raid slot, always until the end of time guaranteed. There are other classes without this luxury. I run the new 3-mans on T5 on my red LM just fine, its not necessary to make redline the new hunter dps. Buff em, sure...but not to that level.

I'm relatively new to playing Lore-master in group content and I'm really enjoying it as the sort of master strategist that provides some level of support in all directions (cc, buffs, debuffs, heals). The Gundabad instance cluster has been a fantastic case study for the nuance they bring to the table. But I've always enjoyed the Keeper of Animals thematically the most, though it was always clear to me that Ancient Master is the only one worth considering in raids. If class changes can ultimately allow for a second viable trait line that maintains the support essentials, it would take a huge leap ahead of my other alts.


Pets (more than just the Keeper of Animals trait line)

I use the pet rotation. For me I tend to prioritize cc, debuffs, and spot healing before I rotate beyond the first pet that will provide the most dps support (minimum effort for maximum benefit); so the more stable things are the more I'm rotating pets for the aforementioned trio of 'always on' dps buffs.

This isn't as satisfying as I'd like. Especially for the game's premier pet class.

An increased summoning cooldown is only a partial solution, in my opinion. It would force us to be more strategic about when to rotate pets, which is a good thing. But it could also be unduly punishing to not be able to resummon a pet if you misclick the wrong pet, they die to frontals because of wonky AI, you die and get revived shortly after summoning, they get stuck to wonky AI, etc etc.

I would prefer something like (or a combination of) the following:

(a) no cooldown but add a meaningful morale cost for summoning pets; reduced or eliminated in KoA
(b) make partial Fellowship Friend buffs available to all trait lines; full potency in KoA, possibly as an aura instead of crit procs
(c) make Catmint KoA-only; rework pet skill/benefits for more varied combos/usage

A more varied approach would still allow for a slightly weaker version of the current pet rotation at a higher cost (self-healing or healer's attention), while incentivizing more dynamic pet usage according to fight mechanics, and providing a foundation for a more appealing "off-spec".


DPS

My dps as a Lore-master is rudimentary at best so I can't offer much in the way of rotation perspective or specific solutions.

Here are some things I do like:

- The "messiness" of aoe damage, because conjuring the elements to dps should be a messy affair
- The Burning Embers dot/Lightning cashout, which feels proportionally correct compared to similar mechanics on other classes (albeit low overall comparatively)
- Buffs to fire damage that benefits red RKs and Hunters using fire oil (though this is not exclusive to MoNF)


Here are some things I don't like:

- Glut of damage-related traceries required to achieve modest dps (lightning, fire, crit WoC/heraldries; induction WoP/WoC; damage WoP)
- Lack of broader pet synergy besides Raven, which is exponentially more potent with fire/aoe effects
- Lack of meaningful pet damage; it need not be the exclusive providence of KoA


The Ancient Master – Support-first Lore-master

I'm pretty happy with where AM is and adjustments to pets/KoA would pretty much seal the deal for me.

Blinding Flash as an interrupt is perfectly fine, that limitation leads to interesting problem-solving without necessarily needing to rely on someone else. But if you wanted to give us a secondary option, Staff Strike/Sweep would make an interesting candidate. (also the Staff Sweep buff caps at 3 instead of scaling to 7 with aoe targets tracery, working as intended or opportunity to aoe dps play?)

I don't have a problem with needing to use Lightning Storm or Storm Lore to proc the OitC/PwF secondary debuffs en masse, though I suppose while we're on the subject the miniscule tactical mastery rating debuff from Frost Lore + Frost could definitely use a change.

Water-lore is great and the reduced cooldown of Beacon feels fantastic in the 6mans. It's been key to providing meaningful support healing to "off-meta" healers. I guess if I had one real wish to spend on AM, it would be for one more healing interaction to solidify their role and be able to main heal in duos/trios if needed. Maybe something like: Pleasant Breeze heal is doubled on your Air-Lore target. Feels thematically appropriate and would flow well with the rotation/statting.

I can really see myself sticking to healer classes and burg when I return to end-game. LM has received so many nerfs compared to QoL improvements in the past year. Just lost bear taunt copy, you're going to introduce cooldowns, DPS and healing is up but that's not been the LM's role. I liked rotating pets by the way, when I learned about it I immediately became far more valuable to my groups than those who were too busy role-playing with their "best friend" pet or too lazy/stuck in their old ways.

If you can do something, please fix skills that have inductions AND long animations. Tar is especially bad, especially on mobile fights. Perhaps a reduced cooldown and duration so it has more efficacy.

Make blinding flash travel faster. I've gotten into trouble for late CC because of animation and travel time + frame drops/lag. Meanwhile burg's daze is instant.

More corruption removal. Perhaps on the ST sword and staff strike?

Pets could do with more AOE skills. You heard a group of mobs together but it only attacks 1. So you use an AOE skill or heal and that pulls the whole lot, who interrupt your next skills. Not to mention the bear taunt can't even perma hold 1 mob anymore, at least make it an aoe taunt. Can you imagine making all tank classes have only 1 5s ST taunt?

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Originally Posted by Elmagor

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)

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Yet SSG calls it a support class. It doesn't say support/healer/damage or any other combination as other characters do at creation.

~~Blue Line just has too many traits that haven't scaled well as we continue moving forward. Ultimately, blue should be the utility line which gives pets their different buffs (increases to their buffs) Traits that would boost pets by possibly adding additional targets for pet debuffs making their debuff skills AoE (Raven already is).
~~Keep the induction reductions as they are (Already has 24% which is fine). Possibly add a couple traits that would modify cooldowns on some skills or.. give pet specific traits that you can spec for the currently existing buffs that those pets would give if you were specced into blue. Lynx -10% skill inductions, Raven +5% crit chance, Bear +mits/morale (Buffs for the LM only of course.)
~~Not a fan of the lack of rotational capability in blue since Lm does have a high Cooldown to skill usage ratio.

~~Red Line isn't a total mess as many people seem to make it out to be. What I think holds it back is the fact that 5 targs as a base for aoe (without tracery) is a bit low.. Maybe add a +2-3 target count on AoE damaging skills for speccing red?
~~Lm suffers from the same issues Red rk does.. a mixed bag of skill damage distribution (ST, DoTs, and AoE) without being able to effectively get everything you'd need for dps via traceries.
~~Flanked Effect is extremely unreliable since pets (minus nature spirit) don't have a skill to proc flanked. Why is a DoT buff of 10s in duration tied to an RnG proc, which then must be set up with a slightly low damaging skill such as wizards fire.
~~Making burning embers spread 100% on gust of wind usage would help them in aoe situations as well, not sure why RnG also has to play a part in that still, but 100% spread chance would be a nice boost.
~~Fixing the Sticky gourd trait that is passively bestowed would be nice too.. Burning embers does not apply every 4s anymore since that trait was tooltipped based on the pre-change sticky gourd (ground effect)
~~As many people would agree, at the cost of being stationary you should be dealing more damage. Lm has good AoE right now, but still could use a bit more overall tuning since it is a very stuck in place class.
~~Don't make me trait and channel 3 seconds for inner flame fire/lightning damage buff.. Every other class has a relatively short animation for self buffing.. If I am forced to channel then make the buff much stronger to make up for the loss of other skill usage (wearing 4 set HH to resolve this problem isn't the answer, its a bandaid and not worth it)
~~Yellow Line is in a much better overall state with beacon and healing changes. A few dead traits such as power of knowledge and pleasant breeze (Ground targeted heal isn't ideal and should proc to fellow immediately on gust of wind crits)
~~AC trait is super solid but it just doesn't favor tactical classes enough at a 5:1 Phys/tact mit cut ratio. Perhaps AC could see some adjustment there to bring it in line debuff wise for both sides.
~~As I mentioned target counts for Red dps, why not make yellow line have +2-3 target count on AoE debuffing skills as well?

~~General ideas..
~~Looking as classes with self heals/cds etc.. Wisdom of the council is very outdated. I wouldn't mind seeing the stun/negation proc being removed and adjusting the cooldown to 2~ mins or so.
~~AC as a whole should definitely feel the same effect for tact, phys, ranged classes and not just favor the phys side of things.
~~Make Raven benediction more tactical (rk/lm) oriented since bear shatter arms is giving a nice buff to inc dmg for phys/ranged.
~~Additional target counts on AoE skills will in my opinion help Lms out with tracery selection not being "forced" into having AoE target count.
~~We all know... Inductions + animations on Lm really slow the pace of the class down immensely, cleaning up one side or the other a bit will improve overall feel and flow of Lm.
~~A general CD reduction of some of the longer skills (nature's fury, Lightning storm, Ents, ring of fire)


I'm sure some will have agreements and some will have disagreements on my thoughts, but thats what the discussion is for.

First off, thank you all for your responses so far!

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. . . you should just give us the ability to use damage skills on the move (in red)

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This has come up in several posts, but it is the sort of change that would fundamentally alter the class. One might argue that in LotRO, the Lore-master is the one true induction-based heavy hitter remaining in the game. For players who enjoy that playstyle, what are their other options should anchored inductions be removed from the class? Not to suggest that there should be no changes to inductions, but a categorical change allowing all damaging skills on the move (even if only in red-line) would be a significant shift.

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However, imo the big cooldowns are currently too long and do not do enough damage

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When traited/geared into maximizing direct, personal damage, I’m inclined to agree with this.

One of the reasons this discussion is valuable is that Lore-masters still have one foot in pre-Helm’s Deep class design. A red-line, full-DPS Lore-master still has a large number of skills which are unrelated to improving your personal damage (or even survivability). Signs of Power, KotLM, Beacon, etc provide you with little to no personal benefit, and this is before considering the fact that a level-capped Lore-master still has a heap of trait points to spend in either blue-line (at least providing some personal benefit through the inner-flame damage bonus and catmint-raven debuff) or yellow-line (where you immediately pick up lores, even if you’re just trying to pull things like the +Lightning Damage passive on Storm Lore traits).
This leaves a DPS-oriented Lore-master with a kit loaded with group support skills, even if they’re running about solo or even (perish the thought) trying to fill a DPS-space in a 3-person group.

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Yellow Lore-Masters have and always will be required for 12-man content of any difficulty as bosses are balanced around their existence, and if they aren't then LMs are brokenly OP. For that reason, it is safe to assume that any other trait line for LM will be by default less desirable in end-game content since LotRO often rewards having as many different classes in the raid as possible

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While this is true of the current state of the game, is there any reason why a yLM should be the only class able to fill that support role? Burglars also have a support trait specialization, but most players don’t turn up their noses at a burglar being able to put out respectable damage while traited and built for maximizing damage output. In abstract, why shouldn’t a yellow-line burglar be able to fill the ‘support’ role for a group while a Lore-master fills a ‘DPS’ slot?

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Bear used to have a nice situational use for absorbing large hits or drawing a single add away temporarily, but this is no longer the case in instances.
. . .
What ever SSG did in the past, player found a way to use a pet in a way SSG did not expect. (why not buy the way? 90% of those pet usages were "just using (pet) skill". Yes, sometimes quite creative, but still not exploits). Each time, the response from SSG was to nerf a pet. Just like the latest one for the bear's aggro skill.

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The core issue with pets (from my perspective at least) is the fact that they were not designed to be re-summoned in combat, let alone ad-infinitum in combat. When folks say ‘we’re just using pet skills’ that’s totally fine until you start dismissing and re-summoning a pet with the knowledge that re-summoning it will reset all of its skill cooldowns. While we have the ability to put an initial cooldown on pet skills (which makes a skill unavailable immediately when a pet is summoned) this isn’t ideal because the cooldown isn’t visible to the player. Our only real alternatives are to either nerf the pet skills themselves (or otherwise prevent them being used, like with bear taunts in instances) or to add a cooldown to the summoning skill itself, which prevents you from resetting your pet skills repeatedly (though you can still do it twice in quick succession, assuming you have already had the pet out for long enough that its summon cooldown has already elapsed).


Speaking of summoning and dismissing repeatedly . . .

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the Pet Rotating LM’s rotation is heavily dominated by summoning and dismissing pets over and over again, while doing other utility stuff like Lores, CC, and offhealing in between
. . .
Pet rotation is much the same as constant champion weapon swapping

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It seems clear that some of you value the ability to engage in the pet rotation, while others find it tedious or avoid it entirely. If I had to pick one main gripe with the ‘normal’ pet rotation, it would be that it’s a lot of actions to apply one debuff for each pet. As a hypothetical, what if your pets no longer had debuff-applying skills, but you had a single debuff skill on your bar which changed depending on your active pet (essentially a dynamic lore skill with higher uptime than cooldown) which allowed you to apply multiple debuffs via either pet cycling or target cycling, but at a lower rate than what is currently achievable via pets?

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-Pets can die easily or bug out, you don't want to create a situation where the LM is forced to dismiss their pet (or pet gets one shot) shortly after summoning, and now they are basically unable to do anything useful.
Pet CDs make me nervous for the simple fact that the pets bug out so freaking often

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If pet summoning skills gained a substantial cooldown, it would likely be necessary to increase the cooldown of ‘Return to master’ but allow it to be used in combat. With at least a 15-20s cooldown, it ought to allow you to fix the errant stuck/broken pet without opening the door to kiting/returning abuse.

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To clearly define each pet by giving them more of an identity.

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I agree. Each pet should have a viable use-case and raison d'être.

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Consider lowering the level at which Water Lore is granted.

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I agree. Water-lore should probably drop down to at least level 50, given how impactful it is for the class.

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The identity of the class is just debuffs, which the same could be said for the other two, and crowd control. The only reason it’s so popular is because it is the mathematically strongest option as it provides the most group utility while only having to sacrifice pet damage and personal damage potential, which already established as too low at base. In addition the main core of LM's utility comes in Fire and Frost lore and the ability to maintain those buffs, which the other two lines would likely be picking up from the yellow line anyways as an LM without Lores is just a bad RK so you are already using Ancient Master as a utility line; so why not just make it one?

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Would you support a change that locked more debuff potential behind the Ancient Master specialization, while freeing red-line to deal more direct damage?

On trait-lines, specializations, and group roles:

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).

For this reason, I have floated the possibility of the blue ‘Keeper of Animals’ tree becoming a passive trait tree. Though a number of players have argued that the ‘Ancient Master’ line, being the ‘core’ identity of the class should become passive instead, and at least one player has argued that the ‘Keeper of Animals’ tree should remain a specialization but provide the benefits of a red captain, acting as an alternative choice for offensive group support.

Keep in mind, it’s not a guarantee that any line would become passive in an eventual Lore-master revamp, but feel free to add your thoughts on the matter in this thread.

Between blue and yellow spec, if one of them must go away, it must be blue spec. Blue spec less used between on LMs and you can use all pets in other specs anyway. While yellow spec working fine, used everywhere and too important for instances. You can use same style of playing without blue spec. Yes, some poor LMs leveling on blue spec, but they can do same thing (or even better) with using red line + buffs from blue tree. For me, blue trait tree always looks like "we have some skills what don't fit into red or yellow, so we put them into blue". Support LM trait healing skills in blue spec anyway

Talking about pets, if you against re-summoning pets every minute, you can keep all functionality from pets, but make them have only one debuff on target in one time. If pets debuff overwrite each other, we have reason to use just one pet during combat and still can decide what pet debuff must be used in different situations. LMs already punished when bear role as tank was nerfed, why punish them even more?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

Would you support a change that locked more debuff potential behind the Ancient Master specialization, while freeing red-line to deal more direct damage?

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Totally a good way to look at things. All or nothing for the damage output or debuff output in a way.

On trait-lines, specializations, and group roles:

I have observed before that the blue trait specialization, the Keeper of Animals, does not seems to have a clearly defined role.

.. LMs used to be proud of their pets before spec trees came into play.

Thematically, it’s the ‘pets’ trait line, but what does that mean for your role and priorities?

.. I chose a pet class because of the pets 16 years ago, the KoA because of the choices when trees were created.

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).

.. True, because there are no attacks in the blue line, just pets.

For this reason, I have floated the possibility of the blue ‘Keeper of Animals’ tree becoming a passive trait tree.

.. You would end my desire to exist in Middle Earth.

Though a number of players have argued that the ‘Ancient Master’ line, being the ‘core’ identity of the class should become passive instead, and at least one player has argued that the ‘Keeper of Animals’ tree should remain a specialization but provide the benefits of a red captain, acting as an alternative choice for offensive group support.

.. Absolutely!! Buffs and debuffs are both support. Don't kill the tree, fix it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Loox

.. I chose a pet class because of the pets 16 years ago, the KoA because of the choices when trees were created.

.. You would end my desire to exist in Middle Earth.

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How with turing blue spec into buff spec LM stop being pet class?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

It seems clear that some of you value the ability to engage in the pet rotation, while others find it tedious or avoid it entirely. If I had to pick one main gripe with the ‘normal’ pet rotation, it would be that it’s a lot of actions to apply one debuff for each pet. As a hypothetical, what if your pets no longer had debuff-applying skills, but you had a single debuff skill on your bar which changed depending on your active pet (essentially a dynamic lore skill with higher uptime than cooldown) which allowed you to apply multiple debuffs via either pet cycling or target cycling, but at a lower rate than what is currently achievable via pets?

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I think this could be interesting. Personally I really don't mind the extra steps to execute a debuff from a pet skill, but I get some players find this too hard (or tedious). If we went this route I'd like to see spirit pet brought into line with the other pets again. I think it would be best if there was consistent uptime/CD between all pet debuffs, but as you described the nature of the single 'lore' skill would allow you to employ multiple at once but not all so some thought would have to go into it. I guess the question would then be, is there any reason to dynamically select which pets you use, or will people just pick the pets that support their raid's highest DPS classes? Spirit pet is certainly situational, but the rest are all just damage buffs for the group/raid. Continuing to think out loud, maybe if the pet debuffs switch from promoting certain damage types to different forms of DPS buffs (i.e. mit debuff, increased crit chance, + % damage) that might incentivize a more thoughtful process to prioritizing them (as well as remove any biases towards particular DPS classes).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

Would you support a change that locked more debuff potential behind the Ancient Master specialization, while freeing red-line to deal more direct damage?

---

Absolutely. I think this is a necessary change if red line is to become a viable DPS option. I think you put it really well in another post that red line has an overload of excess trait points that end up going into half-baked group support instead of personal DPS impact. This leaves red LM's in a weird spot where their support isn't good enough and neither is their DPS output.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

On trait-lines, specializations, and group roles:

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).

For this reason, I have floated the possibility of the blue ‘Keeper of Animals’ tree becoming a passive trait tree. Though a number of players have argued that the ‘Ancient Master’ line, being the ‘core’ identity of the class should become passive instead, and at least one player has argued that the ‘Keeper of Animals’ tree should remain a specialization but provide the benefits of a red captain, acting as an alternative choice for offensive group support.

Keep in mind, it’s not a guarantee that any line would become passive in an eventual Lore-master revamp, but feel free to add your thoughts on the matter in this thread.

---

To be honest, up until now I was very confident that yellow should become passive for the following reasons:

1) As you noted above, it is the core identify of the LM and already gets utilized by blue/red LMs today.
2) Yellow is consistent with what has been done with other classes, consistency is good.

However, reflecting on the red line dilemma (too much support, not enough DPS), I am now rethinking this. You picked a tough class to rework.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

On trait-lines, specializations, and group roles:

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).

For this reason, I have floated the possibility of the blue ‘Keeper of Animals’ tree becoming a passive trait tree. Though a number of players have argued that the ‘Ancient Master’ line, being the ‘core’ identity of the class should become passive instead, and at least one player has argued that the ‘Keeper of Animals’ tree should remain a specialization but provide the benefits of a red captain, acting as an alternative choice for offensive group support.

Keep in mind, it’s not a guarantee that any line would become passive in an eventual Lore-master revamp, but feel free to add your thoughts on the matter in this thread.

---

I would aruge, Blue should definitely be made passive, and allow your pets to be more meaningful and assist you in the role you are performing otherwise, in yellow with debuffs/buffs, and in red, with damage.

According to my personal observations and experience of playing for this class, I want to say the following. LMs are only nerfed, but they do not provide anything significantly new and interesting. No pets, no skills, nothing. Perhaps this will change in a future revision.

Now let me remind you about how in 2015 the blue LM line was finally devalued, when the crow gives a maximum 3k mitigation to the group ... which now looks ridiculous. The blue branch of the LM has no experience in instances, as Elmagor wrote, and he is completely right, since there is nothing essentially useful in it now, but only to use it in tandem with the red and yellow, thereby strengthening himself.
Let me remind you that the blue branch is mostly run by beginners, but it does not have worthwhile buffs, it does not have good dps, it does not have debuffs. The blue line is 90% useless in the game. The red line is full DPS, which is what it is designed for, and the yellow line is for debuffs in the group / raid.

I sometimes get the feeling that the developers do not have an understanding of the balance and what they generally want to do with the class. Constant rework without clear reasons for in-game examples.

Can I raid in the blue branch? - no, the blue lm has nothing to do there, do you want to inflict dps in the raid in the yellow line? Delete your character then please, you don't seem to know how to play this class. They take lm in the yellow line so that it would apply debuffs, and not cause damage, since all the main dps is in the red line and players forget about it. In order for the LM to deal damage, he needs to accelerate and rotate, in the yellow branch you will not do this. It’s better to debuff in the yellow branch, heal and become, you actually have a lot of things in this line. Now Lm forgot that mana should be distributed to the group, after they carried out the reform with energy, when I go to play with another class, not one LM did not throw mana ... not alone, and you still want to deal damage ...
The blue branch must be removed and made secondary or completely redone, so that it makes sense to go to the raid or you can swing alone. I don't think there is any other way.

I've been playing this class since Shadows of Angmar, this is food for thought.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

Would you support a change that locked more debuff potential behind the Ancient Master specialization, while freeing red-line to deal more direct damage?

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I dont see that as solving the problem, in fact I see it as doubling down on it.

Yellow Line as it is already has the strongest debuffs locked behind it because of Force of Will increasing the uptime on Ancient Craft. That is one of only two only things that a yellow LM can do "better" than a red; everything else is just lowering the maintenance cost for Lores (longer duration and thus easier to keep up). The other being Warding Knowledge, which only applies to tactical damage which up until the most recent mini changes was low on the damage dealing totem pole (rip RK's)

It could be argued that what you are suggesting is what is already the case, and thus only yellow LM's are considered because they provide the strongest mathematical increase to the group.

So if Yellow Line's power is just due to 1 skill and 1 trait that increases the uptime of a universal skill, why not just make that the utility line?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Brinuw

I dont see that as solving the problem, in fact I see it as doubling down on it.

Yellow Line as it is already has the strongest debuffs locked behind it because of Force of Will increasing the uptime on Ancient Craft. That is one of only two only things that a yellow LM can do "better" than a red; everything else is just lowering the maintenance cost for Lores (longer duration and thus easier to keep up). The other being Warding Knowledge, which only applies to tactical damage which up until the most recent mini changes was low on the damage dealing totem pole (rip RK's)

It could be argued that what you are suggesting is what is already the case, and thus only yellow LM's are considered because they provide the strongest mathematical increase to the group.

So if Yellow Line's power is just due to 1 skill and 1 trait that increases the uptime of a universal skill, why not just make that the utility line?

---

Ok, let's see what yellow spec can bring to LM:

+10% incoming damage to boss
AoE heal self-centred on target
Group power share (used without targeting other players)
AoE Root (usefull CC)
Insta-remove wounds from anyone
+4 targets for Ancient Craft and Sign/Lore
Additional stun

Now you can remove all that and look what usefull you can get from blue spec...

Eagle
+2% damage for pet
+1% Crit for pet
+2% BPE for pet
+2% speed for pet
+5% Morale/Power for pet
No induction if your pet crit

You can leave all of that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

The core issue with pets (from my perspective at least) is the fact that they were not designed to be re-summoned in combat, let alone ad-infinitum in combat. When folks say ‘we’re just using pet skills’ that’s totally fine until you start dismissing and re-summoning a pet with the knowledge that re-summoning it will reset all of its skill cooldowns. While we have the ability to put an initial cooldown on pet skills (which makes a skill unavailable immediately when a pet is summoned) this isn’t ideal because the cooldown isn’t visible to the player. Our only real alternatives are to either nerf the pet skills themselves (or otherwise prevent them being used, like with bear taunts in instances) or to add a cooldown to the summoning skill itself, which prevents you from resetting your pet skills repeatedly (though you can still do it twice in quick succession, assuming you have already had the pet out for long enough that its summon cooldown has already elapsed).

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What if you apply a debuff to the player when a pet ability is used. That way, if they dismiss the pet and resummon it, the debuff would keep them from recasting that exact same pet ability until the debuff counts down and is removed. Make a debuff for each specific pet type, so you can rotate pet abilities by swapping out pets, but you can't machine gun the same one by doing the dismiss/summon dance.

Then you can add on top of that an ability to instantly remove the pet debuff(s) via a line in the Blue trait tree seeing as it is the Pet master line. Set the recast on the pet debuff removal based on how many points put in to that tree. That potentially adds a little value to the Blue line, but it still needs way more.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

It seems clear that some of you value the ability to engage in the pet rotation, while others find it tedious or avoid it entirely. If I had to pick one main gripe with the ‘normal’ pet rotation, it would be that it’s a lot of actions to apply one debuff for each pet. As a hypothetical, what if your pets no longer had debuff-applying skills, but you had a single debuff skill on your bar which changed depending on your active pet (essentially a dynamic lore skill with higher uptime than cooldown) which allowed you to apply multiple debuffs via either pet cycling or target cycling, but at a lower rate than what is currently achievable via pets?

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Could add all the pet debuff skills as LM abilities on the Blue line and make it so that you can use any one of them with out having the needed pet summoned, but if you have the specific pet out, it gets a bonus to its effectiveness.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Pharone

What if you apply a debuff to the player when a pet ability is used. That way, if they dismiss the pet and resummon it, the debuff would keep them from recasting that exact same pet ability until the debuff counts down and is removed. Make a debuff for each specific pet type, so you can rotate pet abilities by swapping out pets, but you can't machine gun the same one by doing the dismiss/summon dance..

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Also they can revamp LM pets as Captain heralds. Turn their debuffs into buffs working for everyone when that pet was summoned.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

On trait-lines, specializations, and group roles:

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).

For this reason, I have floated the possibility of the blue ‘Keeper of Animals’ tree becoming a passive trait tree. Though a number of players have argued that the ‘Ancient Master’ line, being the ‘core’ identity of the class should become passive instead, and at least one player has argued that the ‘Keeper of Animals’ tree should remain a specialization but provide the benefits of a red captain, acting as an alternative choice for offensive group support.

Keep in mind, it’s not a guarantee that any line would become passive in an eventual Lore-master revamp, but feel free to add your thoughts on the matter in this thread.

---

I like the blue line and I play it very differently compared to the other lines when roaming alone. I would not want to see it go away instead of being revamped.
The only thing that keeps the Lms from being just "another support" or "another (mediocre) DPS" is the pet system, that update after update got butchered and kept behind.

Should u want to revamp the LM, you should not aim to make it "the same as other classes with a different appearance", u should work on and improve its peculiarities, which in the case of lms these are pets. Pets should not be just a "one more click to apply a buff".

For ex bring back the concepts of flanks (with a proper re-design), make the blue pets synergize with skills, contribute to DPS and spread heals and buffs, in a meaningful way.
The blue line that has never been updated should make the class rely 50% on pets. Else, what's the meaning of a pet class with such a roster?
The pet value should be 50% of another player, not 50% of a single skill.

Having pet debuffs overwrite each other, allowing only one debuff on a boss at a time, is one solution. You could still put different debuffs on different mobs at the same time, but that's rarely necessary.

Or you could turn pet debuffs into an aura that surrounds the pet. When the pet dies or is dismissed, the debuff goes with it. That would make pet cycling pointless and encourage you to keep your pet alive.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

On trait-lines, specializations, and group roles:

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).

For this reason, I have floated the possibility of the blue ‘Keeper of Animals’ tree becoming a passive trait tree. Though a number of players have argued that the ‘Ancient Master’ line, being the ‘core’ identity of the class should become passive instead, and at least one player has argued that the ‘Keeper of Animals’ tree should remain a specialization but provide the benefits of a red captain, acting as an alternative choice for offensive group support.

Keep in mind, it’s not a guarantee that any line would become passive in an eventual Lore-master revamp, but feel free to add your thoughts on the matter in this thread.

---

Personal preference here is that the blue line become passive, if you go that route. My pets are there to help me and my group; not otherwise. Others, naturally, will have differing opinions.

I'm broadly against the rate at which third specializations are being converted into utility trees. It's quite literally making classes two dimensional and of all classes I would argue Lore-master should have the most depth. Every class does not need to be dps plus X.

Also consider the renewed interest/investment being made in PvMP. Binary classes make for less interesting fights where the opposition can easily identify you as one spec or the other and respond accordingly. The third spec is the wildcard, the paper to go with rock and scissors as it were.

The issue with Keeper of Animals is not that it lacks identity, it's simply not been scaled properly for years.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Elmagor

Ok, let's see what yellow spec can bring to LM:

+10% incoming damage to boss
AoE heal self-centred on target
Group power share (used without targeting other players)
AoE Root (usefull CC)
Insta-remove wounds from anyone
+4 targets for Ancient Craft and Sign/Lore
Additional stun

Now you can remove all that and look what usefull you can get from blue spec...

Eagle
+2% damage for pet
+1% Crit for pet
+2% BPE for pet
+2% speed for pet
+5% Morale/Power for pet
No induction if your pet crit

You can leave all of that.

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Not really sure what you are trying to point out regarding the yellow stuff. Sure that is all there (cept the +10% incoming damage, no idea where thats coming from) but Omn specifically said Debuff, which none of those are. They are great utility, but I wouldnt say they 'define the Identity' for yellow LM the way the Ents/Sticky Gourd/Natures Fury does for red line or the Pets do for blue.

I would like to point out that your blue line break down does paint that line is a pretty bad light, because 6 of the 7 things you listed are just pet buffs, and considering how weak the pets are its effectively a wash with those no matter how much you buff them; however, I would like to point out a few things that blue line can do that no other line can;

The only 'debuff' would be Murder of Crows; +10% Inc Dmg plus a strong DoT on target, plus a strong AoE DoT. I'd compare it to Warding Knowledge since they are both 10%, but one is single target and all damage while the other is AoE and just tactical but with half the cooldown.

That said, I dont think Blue LM should just be a debuff centrick line when it has such potential to also bring buffs to the equation. As Omn has said in other posts that it could be akin to a red captain in sorts, still bringing its debuffing potential with Lores, but also providing group buffs via Fellowships Friend and Raven's Protection. The framework for that system is already in the class, its just that the durations are too short, things haven't scaled correctly, and since pet rotating dominates the LM time its really hard to focus on that while rnging your way to extra buffs.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

This has come up in several posts, but it is the sort of change that would fundamentally alter the class. One might argue that in LotRO, the Lore-master is the one true induction-based heavy hitter remaining in the game. For players who enjoy that playstyle, what are their other options should anchored inductions be removed from the class? Not to suggest that there should be no changes to inductions, but a categorical change allowing all damaging skills on the move (even if only in red-line) would be a significant shift.

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This may be true from a higher view about general class balancing.
As a player, for me, it looks like (taking the delvings as an example. This is an exaggerated example!! An LM don't die that easy): try to cast a big spell with long induction/animation --> get some puddles under my feet --> move out of puddles --> try to cast a big spell with long induction/animation --> get some puddles under my feet --> move out of puddles --> dying.
But this is the main problem: SSG is creating more and more dynamic environments, and a "true induction-based" class just don't fit in such environments any more well.
The "heavy hitter" is questionable. The burst damage is "nice", if we can go through all big damaging skills, but all what it is "nice". Not enough to be the "true induction-based" class, since some cooldowns are too long and the single target skills do too less damage without their corresponding traceries.
Maybe would help here to combine some traceries into one (like Ring of Fire, Cracked Earth, Sticky Ground has all the same percentage) so we could slot some traceries for the single target skills too.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

One of the reasons this discussion is valuable is that Lore-masters still have one foot in pre-Helm’s Deep class design. A red-line, full-DPS Lore-master still has a large number of skills which are unrelated to improving your personal damage (or even survivability). Signs of Power, KotLM, Beacon, etc provide you with little to no personal benefit, and this is before considering the fact that a level-capped Lore-master still has a heap of trait points to spend in either blue-line (at least providing some personal benefit through the inner-flame damage bonus and catmint-raven debuff) or yellow-line (where you immediately pick up lores, even if you’re just trying to pull things like the +Lightning Damage passive on Storm Lore traits).
This leaves a DPS-oriented Lore-master with a kit loaded with group support skills, even if they’re running about solo or even (perish the thought) trying to fill a DPS-space in a 3-person group.

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This is true, but ...
In my opinion: if you are "wiping out" skills from the red line, the red line LM would need to get a significant damage boost. And I am not sure if that would make sense, because we have dedicated DD classes. The argument with 3 man is a double-edged sword, because such a red line wouldn't be only for 3 man instances. Trust me, I don't enjoy playing any other class as much as my red line LM, but I think the main reason is that even a red line LM can do a lot of other things too, and I wouldn't like to change that too much. What would we have if you're removing all those "unrelated to improving your personal damage" skills? A class with a lot of fire and lightning skills. But we already have the Rune Keeper for that. IMHO the red line need some improvement like lower CD and/or lower induction time and/or a bit more damage, but making the red line to a second rune keeper like line? I don't think that's necessary.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

While this is true of the current state of the game, is there any reason why a yLM should be the only class able to fill that support role? Burglars also have a support trait specialization, but most players don’t turn up their noses at a burglar being able to put out respectable damage while traited and built for maximizing damage output. In abstract, why shouldn’t a yellow-line burglar be able to fill the ‘support’ role for a group while a Lore-master fills a ‘DPS’ slot?

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There is no reason, why a yellow-line burglar shouldn’t be able to fill the ‘support’ role for a group while a Lore-master fills a ‘DPS’ slot, IF you rework not only the Lore master but also the Burglar. The yellow LM is the stronger class in terms of mass control and debuffing (except mass corruption removal) and DPS support in 6-man or in raid. For 3 man is the opposite true, a yellow burg is preferable because of it's DPS while still fully supporting.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

The core issue with pets (from my perspective at least) is the fact that they were not designed to be re-summoned in combat, let alone ad-infinitum in combat. When folks say ‘we’re just using pet skills’ that’s totally fine until you start dismissing and re-summoning a pet with the knowledge that re-summoning it will reset all of its skill cooldowns.

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I absolutely agree with you. We have seen in HoA at the 2nd boss how this can be abused.
But to be honest, I am not sure who to blame for that. Pets and pets related issues have been neglected for a very long time, or they were some "quick fixes" with more questionable results than solutions. See Naerband for first big nerf to bear, then removing aggro stance of pets, passing the eagle to blue line only, newly the removal of the "tanking" from bear. Clearly, those abilities have been abused and used for exploits. But those "quick fixes" - albeit understandable - did more bad to pets than good.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

While we have the ability to put an initial cooldown on pet skills (which makes a skill unavailable immediately when a pet is summoned) this isn’t ideal because the cooldown isn’t visible to the player. Our only real alternatives are to either nerf the pet skills themselves (or otherwise prevent them being used, like with bear taunts in instances) or to add a cooldown to the summoning skill itself, which prevents you from resetting your pet skills repeatedly (though you can still do it twice in quick succession, assuming you have already had the pet out for long enough that its summon cooldown has already elapsed).

...

As a hypothetical, what if your pets no longer had debuff-applying skills, but you had a single debuff skill on your bar which changed depending on your active pet (essentially a dynamic lore skill with higher uptime than cooldown) which allowed you to apply multiple debuffs via either pet cycling or target cycling, but at a lower rate than what is currently achievable via pets?

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What about a solution like the "Oathbreaker's Shame"? It has a CD on the target mob. Such a CD on the mob itself could have been the solution for the bear taunt too.
The idea with a "dynamic lore skill" sounds very interesting. (Actually, something similar has been done with the Warden's Way of the Spear/Shield/Fist)
Balancing cool downs and effect durations would/could be a difficult task. Raids in the current state of the game are a DPS race in high tiers. The support from an LM and the pet debuffs are essential for succeeding, so ideally they are up all the time.

Depending on what you are going to do with the other pets, but if we still have only 3 combat-buff pets (bear, lurker, raven), how could this skill work?
60 sec CD on pet summoning, 70 sec pet effect duration, 20 sec CD on the skill itself.
Green: first rotation
Orange: second rotation

	sec.	20 sec skill CD	sec.	20 sec skill CD	sec.	20 sec skill CD	sec.	20 sec skill CD	sec.	20 sec skill CD	sec.
1. pet effect CD	70		50		30		10/70	-	50		30
1. pet summon CD	60		40		20		60	-	40		20
2. pet effect CD	-		70		50		30		10/70		50
2. pet summon CD	-		60		40		20	-	60		40
3. pet effect CD	-		-		70		50	-	30		10/70
3. pet summon CD	-		-		60		40	-	20		60

Would leave 10 Seconds for summoning induction and casting the spell and other things. If the effect is still running, it would be refreshing itself.
There is only one draw back: it still not offer a solution to the problem, when the pet is killed before the skill could be used.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

Would you support a change that locked more debuff potential behind the Ancient Master specialization, while freeing red-line to deal more direct damage?

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No. See above, that would make the red line to a 2nd rune keeper.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

On trait-lines, specializations, and group roles:

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).

For this reason, I have floated the possibility of the blue ‘Keeper of Animals’ tree becoming a passive trait tree. Though a number of players have argued that the ‘Ancient Master’ line, being the ‘core’ identity of the class should become passive instead, and at least one player has argued that the ‘Keeper of Animals’ tree should remain a specialization but provide the benefits of a red captain, acting as an alternative choice for offensive group support..

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Over time, the blue line had increasingly become a niche product. If any of the skill trees are going to be only a supporting line, then as it currently is, it would be the blue. The pets are too weak. Damage is less than mediocre, even if skilled blue-red, there isn't enough group support to skill blue-yellow.
I don't mind if the line stay, but in that case it needs a significant amount of love. At the end, it will be an economical decision (time and effort) what happens to it.

I originally rolled LM to play as a gish-type (D&D battlemage) but I think Red LM should be the utility line, so that LM has a stronger identity as the pet and support class. We already have RK for magic badaboom, all the LM's funky dot gameplay can be used to reinforce Red RK gameplay. Make Blue pets worth something by changing traceries from magical damage to pet damage, and either cut down on magic damage spells, or make them have more interactions with pets/debuffs.

I never understand why devlopers putting such nerf on bear pet to prevent abuse with boss and screw 99.9% of bear use for LM when they can just add new buff to boss. Remove protection from slow effects, CC and FM from instance bosses or add new buff related to bear pet/captain herald. Every class must have same threat from developers. Why nerf LM bear when you don't nerf other classes for same things? Not fair in all. Bad and not wise decision.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SerowLOTRO

I originally rolled LM to play as a gish-type (D&D battlemage) but I think Red LM should be the utility line, so that LM has a stronger identity as the pet and support class. We already have RK for magic badaboom, all the LM's funky dot gameplay can be used to reinforce Red RK gameplay. Make Blue pets worth something by changing traceries from magical damage to pet damage, and either cut down on magic damage spells, or make them have more interactions with pets/debuffs.

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Lms are supposed to be support, not cannons. I agree red should be utility.

Or, what if you rework Blue to be a dedicated Spec-able Healer role line (Allowing all pets and any changes including spec-able blue traits made to improve them into Standard LM auto-granted), Red a spec-able DPS line, and Yellow a Utility line (Still focused Heavily on Buff/Debuff/CC)

I like that the pet rotation adds activity and raises the skill ceiling. I've also gotten adjusted to the 3 minute cooldown on the spirit of nature pet.


I find myself using different pets in different circumstances. the circumstances don't really depend on content. they depend on the group composition.


meaning, If we have a hunter in group, I always use Bear, Bog Lurker, and Raven if the hunter runs Fire Oil.


If we have a Fire RK in the group, I always run Raven.


If we have champ, burg, brawler, red beorning, or hunter, I always run a Bear at least.


Each pet has its own role.


I feel like my pets actively contribute to our gameplay in group play via pet rotation and bear tanking in fellowship instances (Not raids anymore since it got disabled).


I feel like my pets actively contribute to my gameplay solo.


I do mostly find myself locked into whatever is optimal for the group because i want to contribute the maximum amount to the group via pet rotations ie Catmint raven, bog lurker, bear, heal pet in a pinch.


I am frustrated by the fact that the long-mez is also my interrupt skill, but im happy that I can use most skills while moving and not having to face the targets. please do NOT revert that change no matter what else you do!


Water-lore-stacking provides me with something to steadily cycle into my skills and help the healers keep everyone healed up greatly. the recent revert back to having an initial heal is MOST welcome thank you for fixing that!


I feel like I contribute meaningfully to the group in moments where there are few/no adds to CC or manage by working the pet rotation and keeping burning embers and water lore up. without a pet rotation, i would be so bored with nothing to do!

The most annoying thing about yellow lore master is these lore debuffs.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...6028/image.png
The problem is that when using Windlore, only the very 1st effect is distributed, so you often have to use a completely useless fire or lightning skill to make it 2nd or 3rd. Please fix this.

I would also very much like the Pleasant breeze skill to be always available without using the useless gust of wind. Lm support-heal in my understanding, but 2 skills per heal is not enough. Also in this regard, I would like him to have a 5% crit chance in the yellow line

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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?

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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.

Quote:

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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.

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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.

Quote:

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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).

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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.

First of all, big thanks for engaging us in this effort and getting opinions before setting changes in stone. Highly appreciated.

Let's start with the basics: LM is a class with pets, it's the core of the class and I wouldn't change that.

Also, when doing updates let's take all playstyles into account. Let's not just tune the class to be optimized for current raid configurations. LM should be fun to play in landscape and also have a viable spot in 3 and 6 man instances. E.g. currently it is hard to squeeze in PUG's since the focus is in Tank/DPS/Heal-trinity and LM cannot fill any of those spots naturally.

Back in times I played LM mostly in blue line in landscape. It brought nice survivability and fast skill execution. It also provided nice tools for tactical options when using pet for thread control and splitting group of enemies between pet and yourself. It was like playing WITH you pet as equal companions and defeating enemies together. With removing the +3 level capstone and reducing the DPS+thread from the pets, they don't have much use as companions anymore but are more like cosmetic pets with some debuffs.

In current state, pets are used mostly for their debuffing capabilities. So e.g. when rotating pets in instances, it is not about the pet you pull, it is about the debuff it provides. Some pets provide extra functionality like Bear's thread control (now nerfed) and healing from Spirit. I'm not a hardcore raider and don't utilize pet rotation, but to rotate pets just to get the debuff it provides and dismissing it right away doesn't feel right. I'd like to see one pet per fight approach which we had back in old times when you couldn't resummon the pet during the combat. Pets should provide more value outside just one debuff and you should pick the proper pet for the combat and stick to it, even to the point trying to keep it alive since you cannot resummon it again. Then again we have these pathing problems, where pets get stuck and they can bug otherwise as well so I'm not fully locked on this resumming ban if these bugs couldn't be fixed. Having Return to master available during combat might mitigate the problem, though.

About blue line. I don't like to see blue line removed just for the sake of it. It could co-exist with other lines. Maybe the pets could be enhanced in that line so that DPS capability from the red line would be splitted beween you and the pet where in red line it is just you providing all that DPS. So that would mean having smaller DPS from yourself but pet being able to compensate with increased DPS. So in short, bring back the old blue line.

Outside the pets, I'd like to see LM being able to fill some role outside the support role in instances. The tanking role is probably out of the picture so it's either DPS or healing. Having a DPS role improved would be easier by just ramping up the DPS in general. That could be done by reducing the utility and (de)buffing capabilities from the red line. There is no natural line for healing unless that comes from the yellow line together with buffing but both roles may not be trivial to combine under one line.

Then some random thoughts that I see other people also pointing out:
- If it wasn't obvious from above, please bring back proper thread based tanking for bear
- All the big skills (Lightning-Storm, Ents, Nature's fury) have too long cooldown
- Nature's fury is a nice skill but if the primary target dies early, the AoE part stops also. The AoE part should continue still.
- We have quite a skill bloat, some of them could be combined easily, especially some support line (de)buffs
- Allow more skills to be executed while moving. It doesn't have to be all, but having just one DPS skill while moving is quite limiting. Also some skills root you for too long.
- There could be another interrupt skill and it should also be more immediate
- Corruption removal capability is quite weak

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Maedol

The most annoying thing about yellow lore master is these lore debuffs.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...6028/image.png
The problem is that when using Windlore, only the very 1st effect is distributed, so you often have to use a completely useless fire or lightning skill to make it 2nd or 3rd. Please fix this.

I would also very much like the Pleasant breeze skill to be always available without using the useless gust of wind. Lm support-heal in my understanding, but 2 skills per heal is not enough. Also in this regard, I would like him to have a 5% crit chance in the yellow line

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But look at some of those numbers. The power cost and TacMast reductions are...risible. Not worth any effort to get and make no relevant difference. Unless we get the serious power drain option affectring a mob's power cost is pointless and any mob where doing this will matter will always have "enough power". As for -1450 TM, that would not be significant 50 levels ago, should be closer on -145000 and even then that's probably less than a 10% debuff. I know that at end game a lot of it is edge cases where those 5% differences matter, but with morale bloat and the consequential mob damage those edge cases are being marginalised.

Warm up only matters on inductions and for the unbreakable ones the effect will happen anyway, again, this isn't as useful as it could be. A better result would be "Warm Up, temporarily makes any induction breakable". Much more useful and a combination for which to work. A buff on bosses to prevent this working if you must, and then why bother having the skill. +20% on a 5 second induction is a whole second, which if the game is running smoothly...but... It may be better to work with evironment limitations than across them :-)

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Originally Posted by Ryvick

Or, what if you rework Blue to be a dedicated Spec-able Healer role line (Allowing all pets and any changes including spec-able blue traits made to improve them into Standard LM auto-granted), Red a spec-able DPS line, and Yellow a Utility line (Still focused Heavily on Buff/Debuff/CC)

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It's more easy to buff red spec to allow LM deal 90% of hunter/champion dps. Blue spec have so many weak traits, or traits working on pet. You just can't rework it this way where LM can replace Mini/RK/Beorning in serious instances. In 3-man with Captain - of course, even on T5. But just imagine LM being only one healer in SV T5, HoR T5 or Sagroth T5. He don't have bubbles, he don't have in-combat rez. Go and try Hrimil T3+ with blue LM, and show us result.

LM not JUST a pet class, you can't make him into Necromancer sort of class when he wasn't dps, LM hybrid support class. You just can't buff his pet side so much what his support side stop being needed in instances. His best side was always CC and debuffs, pets was never relevant in hard content for 16 years.

He need red spec for daily quests/delving missions/T1-T2 content where his debuffs not needed. Why he need blue spec when he have pets in any spec anyway?

When mini lose yellow spec and warden lose yellow spec that wasn't their main trait tree. Doesn't matter like you or not, blue spec wasn't core spec for LM for 15 years, and must be reworked, and yellow spec working fine. Why fix something what wasn't broken, and broke something what working fine for years?

LMs don't walk alone, we got a lot of friends on our side, you got that Urchir? We will put your dead face into oblivion! (friends currently unavailable... please hold...)

Dear SSG, let me clarify a few things about different lines purpose from my perspective. A whole game meaning is circling around simple thing - killing mobs (in most ways), and from that point of view all become very clear.

The Blue-Line "identity"...
1 - physical DPS from Pets when a foe immune to the Fire attacks or reflected back any tactical damage ("A Murder of Crows", I'm watching on you, because even the "Shield Wall" can't help me).
2 - Pets get strong attack and defence buffs
3 - Pets get increased agro
4 - Pets get immune to "Knockback" and hold adds in specific point (Sabertooth Cat was the best for me because of AoE auto-attack)
5 - slower but safer DPS on one/multiple targets

The Red-Line identity...
1 - tactical AoE DPS
2 - increased damage
3 - increased magnitudes for critical hits
4 - faster but more dangerous DPS on one/multiple targets

The Yellow-Line identity...
1 - tactical ST DPS
2 - almost all damage dials through the combination of any stun-skill plus Embers with "Injury To Insult" effect (the attempt to compensate low LM's survivability which doesn't work where it really needs - PvMP and Instances)
3 - faster but more dangerous DPS on one target

What would I like to see...
1 - Light-type ST DPS in Yellow-Line
2 - instant cast for "Bane Flare"
3 - instant cast for "Knowledge of Cures"
4 - more base range for "Water-lore"
5 - double the duration time for "Nature's Fury"
6 - less CD for "Big skills"
7 - opportunity to get all word-of-power-DPS-traceries (because all LM's DPS separated between three different types of skills/effects)
8 - opportunity to lower the level of incoming healing on a target
9 - channel duration for main Pet buffs/debuffs to prevent a horrible/clunky/annoying abuse-mechanic
10 - no CD for Pets re-summon (we need a possibility to react on the changed situation)
11 - access to the "Beacon of Hope" in any Line
12 - more survivability for class

What wouldn't I like to see...
1 - The Ancient Master capstone (you, SSG, gave up already at the stage of impossibility to fix the problem with stucked tier 10 mana-share-effect)

Who would I go with in 3-man instance...
Tank with auto-heal / 2 range DPSers with auto-heal

Who would I go with in 6-man instance...
Any Tank / Minstrel / Any range DPSers

Who would I go with in Raid (LM plus Burglar or two Burglars)...
Since most dangerous adds hit in % of your HP, AoE debuff loses almost all meaning. That's why I'd prefer two Burglars with strong DPS and both crutial effects on Boss - double "Enrage" and double "Disable". They can share a mana, they can CC foes, they can use skills in move...

A few thoughts about "Raid LMs"...
1 - these guys need to wait 2 minutes CD skill to root something instead of use 10 seconds CD skill
2 - they got a decent Heal, but they don't have any essences for it, almost all slots filled with Vitality
3 - they have found their calling in Pets-abuse-mechanic, because they don't know what to do except that and a few Dazes
4 - they think they have some rights to broadcast the "right vision" of class down to the gameplay tiers and marginalizing all class (done) (I see such behaviour even in this thread)
5 - some of them thinks that Yellow-line add 4 additional targets for the "Ancient Craft" (the corresponding belief is present in this thread)

What do other classes "know" about us...
1 - "Ancient Craft" skill only in Yellow-Line
2 - low CD for mana-share-skills
3 - almost no Heal
4 - almost no DPS
5 - any Pet could be used for exploit
6 - LM's AoE causes most of the server lags (they own macro doesn't count)

Personal experience...
1 - I did a few times HH t2 as a Red LM. Most people didn't even notice it (it's been a long time since I've enjoyed a Raid)
2 - I really feel sorry for the guy who tried to rotate Pets on Creoth from Spring of the Red Maid instance (his sad image still stands before my eyes)

Final thougts...
People reject what they don't understand well. The part of the responsibility for that is on you SSG. You can change everything drastically and too often. Nobody needs that. Please, at least don't touch debuff access in Red and Blue Lines. Thanks all for reading - have fun!

I am delighted that LM is getting looked at for a bit of a revamp.

I am looking at it from a T3/4 raiding stand point, which may explain some of my views.

I love lm as a support and group character. Grouping is why I play the game.

Regarding Yellow.

I wouldn't change much about yellow in its current form. It has a role to do, and it does it well. It's pretty solid as it is. Maybe not perfect, but it excels at aoe debuffing, got some great CC, and some good heals. (I am keeping pets separate for now) The only things I would love to see are a separate, instant interrupt, and a much better corruption removal skill. For a support class we have borderline useless corruption removal skills. I would also possibly like an update to warm up, winter storm debuffs too, as some aren't great. However most of yellow makes LM vital in anything above a t2 raid, so it's definitely in a strong position at the moment.

Regarding Red

In higher tier raids red doesn't really server a purpose. For raiding I run a high MIT's and morale build for survivability useful so find any damage is weak, and mostly there because it looks cool. I definitely agree that red LM needs a buff, but wouldn't want to see it being able to match good champs, hunter or wardens. the tactical class to be too DPS imo should be rk but that's a separate discussion. LM should do nice DPS, but shouldn't be competing with the top DPS classes as it will/should always have a vital spot in any raid or group content.

Regarding Blue and pets.

Personally pets at the moment are only there to apply specific buffs. Bear to increase group damage then dismiss and summon raven for fire mit debuff, dismiss then summon lurker for ranged crit. Or other orders. Basically it's boring. And only uses a few pets. I haven't summoned my Lynx or sabertooth in years now! Just remembered we have an eagle too. The point I'm trying to make, badly I'm sure, is that blue line should be all about the pets.

Make it a utility like and give each pet a point. Someone earlier suggested give each pet a passive like captain pets. Spirit pet does a percent heal over time, bear boost raid MIT's, lynx boost raid dps and so on. I think it's important these buffs apply to the raid, not just fellowship, as one of lms vital roles is in raids but if you make it fellowship only, most the buffs would be useless. No tank needs more damage or crit really. Blue currently has a great capstone but most of the time you can't use it, as blue has no real use in group content. I would, unpopularity I think, like to see pets have a shared cd when dismissed or killed. This would stop spamming of pets and making you think and focus on which would be best to use. The cd doesn't have to be long, but enough that you can't just spam them. For example the spirit pet cd is way too long. Makes it hard to use unless you know a specific phase that will need it is coming. 15/30s would probably be sufficient.

In all blue should become utility and be all about pets. Boosting their DPS/Healing/Tankiness to reasonable levels. Let bear taunt in all fights again. Universal summon cd would stop that getting spammed. Traits could simply be 5 points into bear boosts raid MIT's by 1% per point used for example.

Summary.

I'm sure not everyone will agree or even like the suggestions above. And that's fine. These are just my opinions on a class I've played a lot this expansion. I think LM is a very strong class. It's heals are very good at the moment, which is why I haven't mentioned them. Its very good and debuffing and cc'ing. Just a few quality of life improvements needed. Corruptions and interrupt. Red needs boosting. I don't know you make LM a continuous dpser. It isn't a line I hugely find useful in the content I enjoy. The biggest area that needs love is blue and pets. Well thought-out changes there would really breath some life into, what is currently, a pretty boring summon skill dismiss rotation for pets ATM.

I agree with OnnMacMahal that the inductions should stay. The blue/red setup with lynx and crafted traceries made inductions almost disappear already.
The same setup made the Lm a good dps class. I don't remember the exact numbers I got with it few month ago, but they were quite impressive.
The problem is, that a Lm isn't expected to be dps, and it will take a lot (OP dps) to make people perceive it as a dps class.
I personally don't want to see the Lm being the new Fotm dps class. It's fine as it is. It's a supporter.

"In abstract, why shouldn’t a yellow-line burglar be able to fill the ‘support’ role for a group while a Lore-master fills a ‘DPS’ slot?" - this is really scary, NOO, please don't go that way

Yes, pets were not made to be used the way they are now. I don't get what OnnMacMahal means with "(though you can still do it (*the pet skill) twice in quick succession, assuming you have already had the pet out for long enough that its summon cooldown has already elapsed)". Do you want to make the pet to be used like the Trickster burglar skill with maximum 2 properties (like 2 Disables or Provokes) being applied?
The dynamic lore skill you suggest reminds me of burglar's trick/removal options (consume a trick for glee heal, stuns etc.). Same burglar thinking behind this: "Would you support a change that locked more debuff potential behind the Ancient Master specialization, while freeing red-line to deal more direct damage?"

If you consider to delete a trait line and make it passive I would choose the yellow line. I agree that the yellow line is the core of the Lm and it should basically always be usable. That's why the lores are at the top of yellow trait tree. In addition to CC/debuff skills the 2 optional trees could enable the Lm to do more dps in red line or to do more heals with blue line. Blue could be shaped as a Radagast-pet-style healing tree. I guess Sic'em was a try on the Radagast theme before it got removed. Why not have Loyalty and Inner Flame applying for all the group? Flank heals could be made useful here, too.

To sum it all up I don't like the Lm to be "burglarized".

I like the true Lm.
The way it is described here: https://forums.lotro.com/forums/show...e-and-Glossary
(search the site for Fire-lore & The Study of Fire-lore; Deep Lore; Dunedain Learning; 3 red traits changing Ent cd to 2min & LotrD to 15 sec; Healer, Wind-lore, Master of the staff and Harmony with Nature were nice as well)

I may sound like a broken record but those are the things I'd like to see again, sorry.

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Originally Posted by -Tanyc-

The problem is, that a Lm isn't expected to be dps, and it will take a lot (OP dps) to make people perceive it as a dps class.
I personally don't want to see the Lm being the new Fotm dps class. It's fine as it is. It's a supporter.

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Mini and RK supporter too, and still they always overdps LM. When they buff mobs (huge numbers of morale and armor, delving system), LM need to have at least one spec for playing outside of group instances.

I like bohbashum's idea regarding some pets being turned into a 'summon, apply effects, and leave'. I had a similar suggestion for the spirit pet when the aoe heal skill was given a prep time. Pets in general could use a revamp. My concern with the pet system, though, is if the game can handle 'fancy' pet summonings and whatnot without the performance being affected.

Maybe do away with pet skills and just have a separate skill that applies all the pet effects consecutively. This way, players can just have whichever pet they want active while still being able to have the benefits of the other pets. The effects probably could use some consolidation. Appropriate pet VFX and sound for when each effect is applied would be nice. OR have a separate skill that changes effects depending on which pet is active. Then have all pets share a summon cooldown.

I realize this is pretty much what Sic 'Em was in essence, but hopefully the sequential 'summon' is not as performance-heavy as the old simultaneous summon; and this should not be Blue line only as this would be a replacement for pet rotation as a whole.

The problem with this is that there will only be one shared cooldown for all the effects.

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I think no Lore-master spec should be turned into a utility line as each one is too unique in my opinion, and have different fantasies. There are also too many skills. I'd much prefer each spec to be improved, especially Blue and Red. Much more, I'd prefer the focus to be on reworking the pet system first and foremost and then adjust the spec trees accordingly.

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Originally Posted by -Tanyc-

I agree with OnnMacMahal that the inductions should stay. The blue/red setup with lynx and crafted traceries made inductions almost disappear already.
The same setup made the Lm a good dps class. I don't remember the exact numbers I got with it few month ago, but they were quite impressive.
The problem is, that a Lm isn't expected to be dps, and it will take a lot (OP dps) to make people perceive it as a dps class.
I personally don't want to see the Lm being the new Fotm dps class. It's fine as it is. It's a supporter.

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If you have the two traceries 11% + 8%, neither the additionally 5% tracery nor the cat with 10% brings you a benefit (which is then between 0.3 and 0 (null) seconds depending on the skill).

• you would give up 10% tactical damage on the lurker.
• if you really go that path down, it makes Don't Interrupt Me to an obsolete skill
• you are loosing three big skills (Improved Sticky Ground, Natur's Furry, Ents) to get one: Murder of Crows.

When the changes with MoC were made, I tested blue/red, but I never could reach the same DPD as with red/yellow and this is still the case.

I don't like this kind of "this class is DD/tank/support/heal only" mentality (and I am sure I am not alone with that: red guardian, red captain tank or DD warden? ... and so on), albeit I agree with you that each class has a "main role".
But such a main role doesn't mean, that the other line(s) shouldn't be viable.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by -Tanyc-

Yes, pets were not made to be used the way they are now. I don't get what OnnMacMahal means with "(though you can still do it (*the pet skill) twice in quick succession, assuming you have already had the pet out for long enough that its summon cooldown has already elapsed)". Do you want to make the pet to be used like the Trickster burglar skill with maximum 2 properties (like 2 Disables or Provokes) being applied?

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It means that you can summon a pet early, so its summoning cool down begins to run. Use then the pet skill later and resummon the pet and being able to use its skill again.
I do that with Nature's Sprit in some instances. It is a timing question. And it always a danger that the pet is killed accidentally before its skill could be used.
This is why I do not like the idea of having a CD on the pet itself, if they stay as they are now.

I was thinking of how Catmint is great on spirits and ravens and pretty useless on other pets. Here's some alternative ideas, not necessarily all together at once.

Bear
Roaring Challenge becomes AOE
Roaring Challenge applies reflect damage effect on bear
Bear Hug gets +3 sec stun

Eagle
Nobility gives extra ICPR
Sacrifice doesn't apply Survivor debuff on you
Beak Rend also heals you

Cat
Lynx remains in stealth and can Surprise Strike repeatedly
Sabretooth Throat Slash applies 3 sec stun to unflanked mobs

Boggie
Angry Bees adds +miss chance
Root Strike also roots target for 5 sec

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?
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I used this line the most because I tend to play solo and I like being able to use my animal friend as part of my DPS or tanking abilities. I tend to use the sneak kitty and the bear. I don't use the other much because I rarely group with other players. I like how LOTRO makes the pet actually be useful. One of the reasons I don't play FF14 is because the Summoner's early game pet is basically just window dressing. It's lame and doesn't feel like a part of you. I've fake never forgiven LOTRO for nerfing the "pocket bear" after the last LOTRO beta. I miss pocket bear who could hold aggro. I don't like playing with others and I really enjoy having my bear tank and then I'm able to do things.


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?

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I don't like this line that much but it would be more interesting if our DPS increased enough to make the playstyle feel different. What I don't like is there are many attacks that do relatively the same thing. Again, I don't raid or group much so I'm just attacking normal mobs or signatures is my thing. I see the redline because able to AOE well and have increase DPS. I would be ok with the pet being window dressing in this lin and that the pet should be secondary and maybe even disappears because the energy goes to you in this line.

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?

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I don't play this line. Too many buttons. Debuffs aren't that useful with normal mobs and signatures. I wish they did DOTs too and then I'd look at them more. I'm sure it's a great group support class and that seems fine. I just want the ability to have a pocket bear back on normals and signatures again.

ok...is it the case that OnnMacMahol is fishing (with respect) for justification to do a number on LM's or are they being unduly influenced by 'raid robots; ?
why is it that i can do more short dps in blue than red on targets under 10 million as given by combat analysis.? is it because you dont know blue or i dont know red ?

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

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?

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DPS LM- Would love less induction times. I want to see LM be some viable DPS in runs and not be slowed down by numerous inductions. Side note- I want more lightning and even Arcane type magic. I know we are very nature based but still would be nice to see some additional spells as we havent seen anything really new/change in a while. Same for all 3 lines of LM really.

Yellow LM-I think we are VERY valuable to a group but things could be better. I want to see my interrupt skill be different than my mez spell. Wizards lightning skill? please elaborate as that sounds interesting. Water lore is manageable if its needed but I am open to changes. would like to see if we can offer any other group buffs vs mostly debuffs to mobs.

OVERALL LM- I am rather happy with LM but I would like to see 1 thing added and it is MINOR. Illuminating your staff and (more likely) walking with it when you go into walk mode.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnnMacMahal

On trait-lines, specializations, and group roles:

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).

For this reason, I have floated the possibility of the blue ‘Keeper of Animals’ tree becoming a passive trait tree. Though a number of players have argued that the ‘Ancient Master’ line, being the ‘core’ identity of the class should become passive instead, and at least one player has argued that the ‘Keeper of Animals’ tree should remain a specialization but provide the benefits of a red captain, acting as an alternative choice for offensive group support.

Keep in mind, it’s not a guarantee that any line would become passive in an eventual Lore-master revamp, but feel free to add your thoughts on the matter in this thread.

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Keep Yellow Line. KEEP KEEP KEEP. Red of course KEEP. Blue makes sense to become the passive/buff line for the other 2 trees.

Thanks so much for finally looking at a very forgotten (in terms of functionality in todays raids and pvp) class. The LM is now and 16 years later has remained my very favorite toon to play.

My recommendations are simple:

In BLUE.... being all about pets, make those pets REALLY good. I mean REALLY REALLY good. The LM should be controlling pets. Those pets should be instant to cast with the cd's on the pets skills virtually non-exisitent, and the damage from any pet (sans the light) should be on par mid-range damage with health appropriate for doing such a job.

Yellow..... this should be all about cc, and REALLY good CC. Roots should root several targets with break chances lowered considerably. Stuns should last longer than they do, bane flares shouldn't have long cd's. Debuffs are actually okay, but durations should be longer and debuff circles should be expandable like the red line has with ring of fire so the debuff radius is larger. This would help with fights that are constantly needing to move. Same thing with Tar.
Heals need to be on par with an RK/Mini in Yellow so there's an option there. Pets in this line should be as they are now though because the LM should be controlling the fight, not relying on pets or the actual LM.

Red... This is NATURES FURY....... it should really be that then. The skills are called what they should be (lightning storm, ring of fire, burning embers, light of the rising dawn, etc.) but the damage they do is certainly not showing the fury of nature.
Based on previous statements by Orion we were all under the impression that there would be two high DPS classes and the rest would all be on par with each other. That has yet to happen and RED LM's remain VERY VERY far down the chain with regards to sustainable DPS. It is because of this that in LM's are relegated to yellow for raids, and seldom if ever sought out as a first choice for DPS.
It would be great to have LM's truly wield the power of nature with sustainable damage on par with RK's or DPS'ing mini's. Pets would be either not an option, or a basically useless like they are now.

This way, a raid could fill with a yellow lm that's controlling things, a blue that's fighting with potent pets, and a red that is actually doing real damage. That would be three roles to choose from and..... gives raid leaders options to fill 12 , 6 and 3 man fights with players that they simply can't do right now.


Another thing with RED LM's or really any LM build, but I say red, because it's the closest to dps you can get. MOBILITY!!!!!! Virtually everything a LM does regardless of trait line is done standing still and with craaaaaaazy long inductions. As the game has matured, the speed in which things are done as well as moving around in a fight (pve or pvp) is ESSENTIAL to survival. As such, there should be a modification similar to how RK's have high dps (fire), but no movement, or movement at the cost of potency (lightning).
I'm not suggesting that lm's should have a lighting/light build and another fire build.... that would be redundant. What I'm suggesting is that standing still to execute a skill should give AMAZING results in that skills execution...... For instance, sticky gourd should be doing similar damage to say a hunters reign of arrows..... Howerver, if the LM uses that same skill on the move, it should do what it's doing now (which isn't much in relative terms)

Lastly, inductions and cd's........ if red is truely suppose to be about damage, there needs to be faster inductions (moving or not) and reduce some cd's on some skills (5 minutes for ents go to war is just silly in the current fight configurations)

I've personally been asking for RED lm changes for many many years now, and can't tell you how appreciative I am that someone is finally listening.

LM is fun, but it could be REALLY run if there is a very clear distinction in the three roles versus what they are now. This will also have the LM playable solo in PVP which is not something done much given the severe handicaps standing still, and having very looooooooong inductions has in an environment that nothings stands still in.

Thanks so much for listening!!!!

I just wanted to start this by saying the Loremaster is 100% my favourite class and the one I started playing LOTRO with - I love the pure Support focus instead of tank/healer/DPS. Please don't change the core of the class!
There is a lot of content here already so just a few thoughts. Some of them are inspired by a sense of nostalgia for the pre-trait tree LM I started out on:

1) Its great that the LM has such a wide and varied toolkit and I wouldn't want that to change. Its very important to be able to switch on the fly to respond to circumstances whether that is a bit of healing, damage, debuffing, CC or being able to use a bear to tank a boss while the actual tank is rezzed. However, we do have an awful lot of skills and very full bars. Adding Wizards Frost, for example, seemed an odd design decision which I assume was made to give a reliable frost damage skill to upgrade Fire Lore and Frost Lore. As others have said, the Playing with Fire and Out in the Cold mechanics are a bit clunky and in some cases very underwhelming anyway and most people pay little attention. Maybe rethinking the mechanic was a better solution to this problem? Overall, some consolidation of the less "iconic" LM skills may be appropriate. I for one would not miss Pleasant Breeze and there are other examples.
2) You've asked about Pet Skills and rotation. Essentially people are using Pets as a configurable extra sets of skills. So maybe just give us that - some kind of bonus skill or skills based on the pet out. That could have a shared cooldown to stop rapidly cycling through pets to spam skills if thats a worry. Or you could also only allow combat resummoning of the selected pet so we can't swop pets mid fight but don't lose utility if a pet dies. Maybe then we could get our proper Bear Taunt back? NB Blue could get some bonus here like extra or better pet skills (which might allow you to remove catmint?) - maybe even a second pet or the ability to combat summon different pets. You'd need to try and make all of the pets valuable with skills that offer more than just a trivial amount of pet damage. There should be more than one "best option" like the Raven fire mit debuff but a choice depending on circumstances. In summary, Pets should do more than just be a configurable sets of skills to cycle through beyond level 70-ish. Better DPS or some meaningful customisation of our skills or stats based on the pet being out (like the Raven Tactical Mit buff) could be considered.
3) If wanting to focus on 2 not 3 main trait lines, I could see an argument for making Blue and Yellow the main trait lines and Red the bonus as its always nice to boost DPS but I don't see this as our primary role. Yellow could focus on debuffs and CC, Blue on offhealing (enough to do 3 mans say) and buffing Pets (NB I consider Fellowship members to be unruly and wilful Pets that rarely do as told so Blue could have meaningful fellowship wide buffs). I've been here long enough to recall that our better heals were historically in Blue not Yellow - i.e. like it was pre Helms Deep when Healer and Beacon of Hope were Blue Keeper of Animals traits.
4) I miss having a reliable way to apply Ranged damage debuffs. Wind Lore used to do this. I miss Herb Lore and Warding Circles outside of Yellow. I also miss getting Storm Lore, Fire Lore and Frost Lore which I consider core to the class by default so always trait for these in Yellow under every circumstance.
5) I miss having access to the Eagle outside of traiting Blue. It being a Blue trait I could get to in Red or Yellow was fine. The Eagle used to be obtainable by everyone via a Legendary trait and is cool. It used to do interrupts, flank well and the self rezz was neat. It could stand to be a bit better so it becomes an option alongside Bear and Raven. NB It used to be that the Bog Lurker was the Blue only pet, so I'd happily see that boosted and made Blue only if you feel Blue needs a unique pet.
6) I miss flanking being a meaningful mechanic especially flank healing. Its still there but its not very significant. I miss being able to do meaningful melee damage with staff skills
7) I would like a way to get an in-combat rezz. It doesn't need to be very good. Or available in every trait line. But I'd like it.
8) Lightning Storm on a bunch of mobs is the coolest thing in LOTRO by far. Especially the sound effect. I would give up a number of the newer red line skills like Natures Fury to be able to do this more often. While you are at it, I'd like to use Ents more too and not just as a big stun. It would also be nice to have Ents available to all LMs too as this also was obtainable pre trait trees via a Legendary trait but I can live with the current setup.

My keeper of Animals Lynx @ level 140: scored a critical hit with Savage Bleed on the Crystalline Cold-drake for 1,675 Beleriand damage to Morale
I guess I'm happy it was a crit hit. :~