Player Guide: Class Changes Summary: Minstrel

[Gillmour]

Perfect ballad is far from useless when dealing damage. I would agree that the power buff from using it is useless but the damage from it is quite good. Given the CD on using ballads it's not usually worth going 3 minors. Using minor, perfect, minor allows you to quickly build up your coda, which currently crits higher than call to fate (although I get the impression that call to fate will do more damage in HD, which makes sense given that coda has a chance not to consume the ballads). Not sure if the cd for ballads is changing at all but if not then the perfect ballad damage leg could still be viable.

[Silmelin]

If you're dps traited you will have Chord of Salvation as the main heal you can use. You will not have Anthem of the Free Peoples or SoS. Bolster and Raise the Spirit will still be available as well, but Chord will be your go-to heal.

In blue tree you won't have much power issue because the tree allows you to rank up points into power return chance from using healing skills. I never even noticed my power moving much.

That's nice. I like not having to worry about Power

I hope I can get by without the Anthem of the Free Peoples. I can't on live at the moment XD

[skylight112]

I appreciate everyone's patience but some of the terminology is over my head. I just play, I don't tend to explain or talk about it.

What is Hots healing? And why do I care if I we lose it?

What does squishy mean? (I've seen posts mention that healing is squishy now, but I don't understand what that means.)

It sounds from what people are saying that I can mostly use the red tree, and spend a few points in blue one for Chord of Salvation healing? Is that correct?

The term glass cannon has been used to describe the new red tree. I am kind of guessing here, but does that mean my minstrel will do more damage, but not be as resilient as he was pre-helm's deep?

[Calta]

I appreciate everyone's patience but some of the terminology is over my head. I just play, I don't tend to explain or talk about it.

What is Hots healing? And why do I care if I we lose it?

What does squishy mean? (I've seen posts mention that healing is squishy now, but I don't understand what that means.)

It sounds from what people are saying that I can mostly use the red tree, and spend a few points in blue one for Chord of Salvation healing? Is that correct?

The term glass cannon has been used to describe the new red tree. I am kind of guessing here, but does that mean my minstrel will do more damage, but not be as resilient as he was pre-helm's deep?

HOT HoT = heal over time. It is healing that 'ticks' on after you have clicked the skill. So casting the soliloquy of spirit on a guardian, for example, gives them a steady trickle of heals over time (pulses is how this is described in this skill's tooltip).

Instant heals by contrast, fill the morale bar by a fixed amount/%, once per click..

Squishy means what it sounds like-a class gets squished/squashed easily!

*NB: lengthy discussion of stats, armour, mitigations and resistances that are arcane knowledge to most of us is avoided by the following simplistic phrases/definitions*

But squishy can actually have several specific meanings.
Either

morale drops really easily caused by low icmr (in combat morale regen)

and/or you have too little morale to begin with,

and/or when your character takes a higher perecentage of damage per hit, than a tough class does, eg: a minstrel will get shot down dead with one hit by some bosses ('one shotted') but a warden or a guardian won't. (Unless there is something badly amiss.)

and/or when you don't have enough damage dealing or crowd control, etc. yourself to kill/fend the mobs off before they get to you.

so squishy means you can't heal enough to stay alive from the damage mobs do, and/or you can't do enough damage to kill them before you need to use all your major heals, or both.

glass cannon is a subset of squishy LOL. Tended to be used to describe a class that does lots of damages per second (dps) but doesn't survive being hit by an average mob more than once or twice, without needing healing. Now it often just means the class is a bit more fragile than some other equivalent light armour classes. :P

'Squishy' can be cured by more/better armour, more mitigations, more damage, or more self heals (this is where HoTs come in.)

'Stacking a hot' (eg using SoS on yourself) before starting a fight means you get 'free' steady heals early, so you do more damage early, because you only have to use your damage skills and not you insta heals. This matters in PvP, some instances, multiple pulls in PVE.

At the moment, live RKs have lots of HoTs whereas Minstrels don't. Minstrels have fast burst heals instead. RKs are described by some people as proactive healers and minstrels are reactive. It one reason they feel very different to play.

The debated areas in all this are:
a-what causes the 'squishy' that players feel ie diagnosis
b-what are the appropriate fixes for our class ie cure.

can't do b without agreeing on a..

Like life, this is where it gets messy
Hope this helps
Calta

edit and thanks Cloudie-wan. Bookmarked as my latest cheat sheet.

Request: Please post screenshots of your 'I iz a captain' spec/ build. My warden mate is not going to be happy on 18th, i suspect. I could ease some of his pain if 'I iz a cappie, too!'

[Maviarab]

Great stuff...many many thanks....not as bad as I was expecting to be honest....though going to have spec for healing and buffing separately now...meh...

One thing though if you could answer please:

1. Inspiring Echoes. New skill as noted, but nothing to say whether it's gated behind a spec tree or comes as a standard skill?


Thanks in advance

[Telemachus]

Well, what do you guys think? How will you be building out your LIs with this revamped class?

I just wanted to add that I think Cry of the Chorus cool-down is a must-have legacy. Free coda and an extra buff every 30 seconds is just too good to pass up.

Inspiring Echoes. New skill as noted, but nothing to say whether it's gated behind a spec tree or comes as a standard skill?

It requires a tier 4 trait in blue to earn, and a crit with PC (while in heal stance) to unlock one use of it. Also (for me at least) it is not automatically added to my skill bars, requiring me to open the skills panel and get it out manually every time I change trait configurations.

[bohbashum]

It requires a tier 4 trait in blue to earn, and a crit with PC (while in heal stance) to unlock one use of it. Also (for me at least) it is not automatically added to my skill bars, requiring me to open the skills panel and get it out manually every time I change trait configurations.

Tier 4 - Resonant Piercing Cry - Scoring a critical hit with resonant piercing cry opens the ability to use Inspiring Echoes

Inspiring echoe's is an instant cast heal
heals max of 6 targets

it pops up on the contextual skill bar by default.

you do need to be in resonance stance to unlock the skill on piercing cry crit.

[Apache140]

I would like to point out that inspire fellows and its corresponding legacy is nearly useless other than the -1% incoming damage.

Bolster Courage provides a group heal with the same radius, double the strength and zero cool down.

Therefore, I really don't see why I would ever use Inspire Fellows unless I was specializing deep into yellow for bonus minus incoming damage.

[Beaniemooch]

I would like to point out that inspire fellows and its corresponding legacy is nearly useless other than the -1% incoming damage.

Bolster Courage provides a group heal with the same radius, double the strength and zero cool down.

Therefore, I really don't see why I would ever use Inspire Fellows unless I was specializing deep into yellow for bonus minus incoming damage.

With the 45s cooldown on Triumphant Spirit, the group heal with Bolster Courage, and the group hots on Chord you won't need any other heals. Inspire is a waste of space.

[Apache140]

With the 45s cooldown on Triumphant Spirit, the group heal with Bolster Courage, and the group hots on Chord you won't need any other heals. Inspire is a waste of space.

Right, but I'm pointing out a skill redundancy. At least inspire fellows was a group heal we could do in between TSs and Chords. The new Bolster Courage makes it practically obsolete.

[derek8604]

Im a ministrel but my account wont work i cant login after i download it what do I do please help i am so MAD

[Alotlost]

As much as I appreciate and love this work by BoBash, I am disappointed, to not have an 'offical' Dev release notes on our class changes. Honestly, I cannot understand, how it can be thought that a player's view, can replace that, which should be completed by an official member of the Turbine team. Especially, as there may have been some changes by dev's not caught by players.

In my eyes, this devalues, that which I considered to be a hard working team.

I apologise if this offends anyone, but I feel we the clients, deserve more than to be 'peer' led.

[Riggo]

As much as I appreciate and love this work by BoBash, I am disappointed, to not have an 'offical' Dev release notes on our class changes. Honestly, I cannot understand, how it can be thought that a player's view, can replace that, which should be completed by an official member of the Turbine team. Especially, as there may have been some changes by dev's not caught by players.

In my eyes, this devalues, that which I considered to be a hard working team.

I apologise if this offends anyone, but I feel we the clients, deserve more than to be 'peer' led.

On a happy note, I was able to read everything from start to finish while waiting for the patch to complete. On a sad note, I'm still at 56% of the DAT files - lol.

I'm not one to go out of my way to complain, but I do agree that Turbine has a responsibility to release official correspondence. I respect the hard work everyone has put into the beta and applaud the efforts of everyone who took the time to add to our collective knowledge. It appears that Turbine is capitalizing on the methodology used to buy skill points for horsemanship and is applying it for all characters. I'm guessing there's a great deal of code reuse going on and stability matters. Having one method to rule them all may help us in the long-term. Sadly, we may feel some pain in the short-term while the bugs are worked out. I do not mean simply coding bugs, but logical ones as well. I'm sure it is very difficult to balance every character's capabilities into a three-tier system. While I do not relish the thought of spending an entire evening remaking my main character, I am hopeful I get it right the first time so I do not waste time and resources respeccing my character.

Take care, be safe, and say 'Hi' if you see me on Firefoot. :-)

Cheers,

Minevad

[Strongsong]

HOPEFULLY we'll see some chunky dps changes before it goes live. as a whole the minstrels dps is awful in beta

assuming we do get some chunky dps balancing in the minstrels favour, ofc you'd expect red line to do the most dps (duhhh).

so if your traiting yellow for dps your probably going the wrong way, unless you want to buff your groups dps, in which case your probably doing the right thing. the line looks very good at being a kinda weird captain, healing while damaging. with the trait Change of Pace you can get garenteed crits to dps skills when you heal and crits to heals while you dps. so your actually rewarded with dps when you heal... weird... you can get some sweet aoe with coda with using this ofc.

speccing yellow but traiting red and staying is dissonance might sound insane, but you will still be able to buff your groups dps and have call of orome to use every 10s. you'll also be able to use call of the second age a lot more, maybe even enough to constantly keep up it's group buffs (need to test that!). with anthems that can stack, you *might* be able to get close to a garenteed critical on your coda using anthem of war too.

I actually experimented with a yellow/red combo during the last few months prior to HD. It was almost viable... So now I'd say its definitely viable. I did as said above (spec yellow, trait red, fight with war speech on). My LIs were made for buffing. I picked up anthem duration wherever possible. The problem I had was that I couldn't use WS coda as it would remove anthems... I had to do damage from calls and cries, with some ballads to fill the rotation gaps... THIS HAS BEEN FIXED!!! We can now coda and keep up our anthems when specced yellow!!! This has also fixed harmony... Prior to this, harmony was pointless because it was so coda dependent, but coda stripped anthems. Was stupid. Am keen to see whether buffing minis go yellow-red or straight yellow. I will definitely be playing one of the two.

[Calta]

Hi folks
Given Minstrels will be more finished in 12.1 it would be useful if any obvious bugs or things that make no sense to you, were submitted through bug reports ingame and noted here in this thread for follow up testing by players.

Examples of what we assume are bugs are: The coda of awesome only offering double digit aoe heals, the piercing cry crit stun issue and related stance (we think we know, as per Boba's post how it's meant to work but it still seems buggy to me) animation length when stance changing, redundant legacies (if any) how heal threat seems to work, and most importantly imo, rally only available fully traited in blue spec. Which makes yellow spec useless as a healing/buffing spec atm, unles you are capped with points to spare to go blue/ and yellow..

We've largely been providing feedback without much idea what is working as intended and what is not (as noted by other beta testers) so if all minstrels raise their concens the dev will know what to explain/fix....

also note there will very likely be major, dps changes across all class in 12.1, so if you want to do some parses and start a thread on what build does what damage on training dummies, at various levels, it would be good. Clough has done some already, if you want to see the useful format.

(The 'minstrels are OP' brigade have been very very loud through beta in the general HD feedback threads-just a heads up )

[Beaniemooch]

Set up Moochy today with her trees. While in the red tree and in Dissonance stance I have full Fellowships Heart available to use. I should not be able to use that as a group heal in the new war speech. Also when in blue line and in Dissonance stance I can use Fellowships Heart and Triumphant Spirit both.

Finished setting her up, picked up my mail, logged off for the night.

[J_Howell]

Hi folks
Given Minstrels will be more finished in 12.1 it would be useful if any obvious bugs or things that make no sense to you, were submitted through bug reports ingame and noted here in this thread for follow up testing by players.

The one that most perplexed me and the other minstrel in my kin who was on at the time was the duplication of Gift of the Hammerhand and Improved Gift of the Hammerhand. Doesn't seem like we're supposed to have both...

The other puzzling thing we noticed was that of all the skills we lost, Improved Song of Distraction was not one of them. Maybe Turbine is *really* determined to make sure Fil Gashan challenge remains feasible.

It looked like I had Rally even though I only set up my red trait line tonight. I didn't test it, but it wasn't grayed out like other unavailable skills.

Very disappointed that red/blue can only have one anthem up at a time (and two for yellow). But I don't think Turbine considers that a bug, unfortunately.

[Calta]

The one that most perplexed me and the other minstrel in my kin who was on at the time was the duplication of Gift of the Hammerhand and Improved Gift of the Hammerhand. Doesn't seem like we're supposed to have both...

The other puzzling thing we noticed was that of all the skills we lost, Improved Song of Distraction was not one of them. Maybe Turbine is *really* determined to make sure Fil Gashan challenge remains feasible.

It looked like I had Rally even though I only set up my red trait line tonight. I didn't test it, but it wasn't grayed out like other unavailable skills.

Very disappointed that red/blue can only have one anthem up at a time (and two for yellow). But I don't think Turbine considers that a bug, unfortunately.

thanks-i'm still patching so i can't check. will report back later on rally. and the hammerhand twins.

[Ruvalas]

Hi guys first sorry for bad english but i found a bug in yellow line with the trait "Sharing a Story", wich give a cd reset for the cry when you crit on a ballad but i tested in a skirmish and i got a cd reset each time i did a ballad, no matter if it critted or not wich gave me crazy dps (cry-ballad-cry-ballad...) so i don't know if it's intended or not but it doesn't match the tooltip.

[MathKnight]

I noticed Call of Orome says Only useable in Dissonance Stance but can be used in any stance. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I'd prefer it to just lose the text saying it's only useable in Dissonance.

[Mar-Evayave]

Erm... just noticed... Coda of Melody deals the AoE damage of 1700-2500, and its AoE heal is a WHOPPING 16-22 points of morale. Total. As in, that's it.

O.O Who forgot the zeros? And when can I have them back? Cause Harmony (Melody) used to be my favorite stance for normal gameplay. And I even would use it in some more casual instances.

[Sylrisson]

The one that most perplexed me and the other minstrel in my kin who was on at the time was the duplication of Gift of the Hammerhand and Improved Gift of the Hammerhand. Doesn't seem like we're supposed to have both...

The other puzzling thing we noticed was that of all the skills we lost, Improved Song of Distraction was not one of them. Maybe Turbine is *really* determined to make sure Fil Gashan challenge remains feasible.

It looked like I had Rally even though I only set up my red trait line tonight. I didn't test it, but it wasn't grayed out like other unavailable skills.

Very disappointed that red/blue can only have one anthem up at a time (and two for yellow). But I don't think Turbine considers that a bug, unfortunately.

I was also confused by having Gift of the Hammerhand AND Improved Gift of the Hammerhand.

My minstrel is currently traited red-line and has the Rally! skill. Some kinmates came and died for me so I could see if I was able to use it, and I was able to use it. Seems like a bug.

[Mar-Evayave]

About Coda of Melody... I was in all-red (or half-red/half-yellow) at the time. When traited outside of the blue line, my Coda of Melody did the pathetic 16-22 heal (with an extra 2.5% partial parry/block/evade chance).

Then I switched to all-blue and my Coda of Melody's heal was back to the way it should be (good AoE damage, good AoE heal). And yet I see nothing in the blue-line that even talks about this Coda. It just talks about the Coda of Resonance.

And to be blunt... I want my Coda's natural form to remain untouched! I want my Resonance coda to be all-out 1-target heals, I want my Dissonance coda to be all-out 1-target damage, and I want my Melody coda to be AoE damage/heals, but BIGGER than that pathetic 16-22 morale. That is such a worthless amount it's not even worth bothering with. And I don't want these effects determined by my tree. If extra things (like the parry/block/evade chance) get thrown in based on tree, then fine, but not the effects that this class has had for years!

*unhappy with my minstrel; this was my FAVORITE class and that was my FAVORITE stance...*

*switches to Dissonance*

[Sylrisson]

Hi guys first sorry for bad english but i found a bug in yellow line with the trait "Sharing a Story", wich give a cd reset for the cry when you crit on a ballad but i tested in a skirmish and i got a cd reset each time i did a ballad, no matter if it critted or not wich gave me crazy dps (cry-ballad-cry-ballad...) so i don't know if it's intended or not but it doesn't match the tooltip.

Just had another minstrel in my kinship traited yellow-line with Sharing a Story who is reporting this. Using any of her ballads results in the cooldown of Dissonant Piercing Cry being reset every single time, even though according to her combat log her ballads aren't critting.

[BillBones]

I play with the balanced heal/damage toggle going (traited yellow). A couple things. The coda in this form heals literally ~20 morale at level 75. Wat? Also, I was doing ridiculous damage. My hunter friend and I were +4 on the enemies in Great River, but we were killing the enemies in roughly 3 hits. Usually, this third hit was mine while she was still inducting an attack. Damage seems to be way OP right now. I didn't even bother with my yellow traited buffs.

Also, I traited yellow line and use the balanced toggle (is it still called Harmony?). Doing so, I traited a bonus to echoes of battle (which used to be part of the damage toggle). I traited 2 separate traits (3 and 1 points each, I think) but the power is missing from the harmony toggle. It used to be in Harmony, while the reflect toggle was in the heal stance. Basically, I traited a skill, expecting it to be in the same place it was before (and expecting the yellow line to match up with the balance toggle, which seems pretty obvious to me) but this did not occur. Now I have to respec to get any use out of those points. Any idea why this was shuffled around?

Additionally, I really liked having to "weave" the anthems pre HD. Just being able to spam all 3 anthems immediately in battle is boring.

Finally, why didn't they remove our rez power from the deeds? They did remove the revive one from the captain (if I recall correctly). Now to get another trait point I am going to have to farm 95 revives for the revive deed? Also very frustrating.