(Lore-Masters U15B1) State of the LM

[PKCrichton]

What are the purposes of the 3 trait lines and what are the issues that exist with them.

What is the Lore Master at its core?
The Lore Master is a class that utilizes its knowledge of nature to command animals, harm and control foes. Thats the most basic statement of the class.

What is the focus/role of the KoA LM?

The Keeper of Animals LM is just that an LM that focuses primarily on their pet. Through traits and some skills we boost the potency of our pets so that they can be more effective in the role of a that given pet. The pet roles are pretty obvious as Bears are tanks, Raven is a debuffer, Eagle is cc/interupt/power, Sabertooth is AoE dps, Lynx is single target dps, Lurker is range dps/cc, Spirits are healing. I like that with HD they have expanded on the ability for our pets to influence both us and our group members. Group buffs from a pet is something that previously was only granted to the Raven and Eagle and even those buffs didn't scale up over time. Its really nice to see that expanded on and focused into the KoA line.

This line feels really solid to me. The only skill in it I have any issue with is Inner Flame which is a skill I've never liked and rarely ever used.

What is the focus/role of the MoNF LM?

The Master of Nature's Fury LM is just that an LM that focuses on its ability to use nature as its weapon. This is a pure dps role for the class and honestly feels very solid to me where it is right now.

The only issues I have with this trait line is the cooldown on Ents Go To War and what I consider an utterly useless Deep Trait Bonus of Buying Time.

What is the focus/role of the AM LM?

The Ancient Master LM's is one who uses his mastery of nature to control the field. That is they can help control how both their foes and allies act. This takes on a variety of forms from debuffs, roots and stuns/dazes on foes to power/morale boosting of allies. So your role is CC/Debuff/Power.

The two areas of the Control aspect that I have the most issues with right now are the Debuffing and Crowd Control aspects of the class.

Our debuffing is set up as single target debuffing with AoE forced out using Wind Lore or a very poorly created capstone trait. I really liked the idea of the secondary debuffs but the way it was implemented reminds me more of fighting the LT in Dol Guldor and having to cycle through to get the debuff you really wanted. As its setup right now the secondary debuffs are far to annoying to try and keep any of them active other than the Fire secondary debuff. It is not possible to ever keep the Lightning debuff up and the Frost is only doable by spamming Wind Lore. Wind Lore itself is a near worthless skill. SoP: See All Ends needs some work to bring it back up to par both by scaling its effect and adding back in the old Force of Will bonus to increase its magnitude and add -(level x 20) Crit Hit chance

For our Crowd Control aspect I really feel that Herb Lore has been nerfed to near uselessness, the base form that is now the only form is so weak that prior to this I'd only ever use it in open world. Blinding Flash is set up so its the same for all LMs and has no real boost to it. Disable I find to be near worthless trait all together

As for our fellowship boosting side of this line the two things I have issue with is the removal of the group Knowledge of Cures and the insane nerf to SoP:R/SI. Right now the Power role of this line is near worthless outside of raid instances but even there its not hard to keep power on everyone when outside of the Ancient Master line.

How well do the 3 lines fit the core of the LM?
Honestly the 3 lines fit the core perfectly if you look at it as a whole.

Every LM should be able to access a portion of the abilities of each role be it Pets, DPS or Control. I feel that every LM should have access to a 15s duration and 15s cooldown Blinding Flash. I was greatly against the Deep Red nerfing to 5s duration of this back with Moria but I feel that full power of Blinding Flash should be locked within the Yellow AM line. I wonder if all LMs should get the group KoA pet buffs but only for themselves unless they are traited deep enough into KoA or maybe grant us a portion of the buffs.


How far should hybridization be allowed/encouraged?
As for the question of how far we should hybrid that really is entirely up to the player and how many class trait points they've obtained. There is a lot of tinkering you could do to have half and half hybridization but not obtaining any capstone vs obtaining a capstone and then mixing things up to have a little of the different lines. I like having the ability to hybridize as much as I wish and that my points allow. Before MoNF had the induction reduction placed into it I was hybridizing into my MoNF with KoA just to get to a 10% induction reduction. Now I hybridize while in MoNF to boost my pet some, obtain an eagle for interupts, gain storm lore and boost my lightning skills power. I like that its possible in KoA or MoNF if you want to gain access to the base forms of Fire, Frost and Storm Lores with relative ease.

As you can see the main line I have issue with from any of my posts is really the Ancient Master Yellow Line. It is the one that has the most holes in it. Which takes us right back to this.

Here is a list of all the issues that I know of that still exist with the Lore-Master class since the HD revamp. I've also included some suggestions on how to alter skills/traits/bonuses to accomidate the issues and make for a compromise between the the core of the class, the current version and the reasons behind some of the changes to the current version of things.

Yellow Line - Ancient Master
This line is said to have its core as CC and Debuffs with Heals. In reality its Debuffs, Healing and Power. It has barely any boost to CC. The Debuffing has major issues in its changes that need addressing. There is no way to keep the Lightning secondary debuffs up.

Lightning Secondary Debuffs - There is no current way to keep these up as all lightning skills have a cooldown that makes it impossible to keep this up.

• Suggestion - Add a cooldown reduction for Lightning Strike onto the Storm Lore Rank 3 trait.

Pleasant Breeze - I find is pretty worthless as it only ever triggered for use after you have had a crit from using Gust of Wind. Only then will the skill become active for use. This feels very lackluster to me and means I would never trait it because getting a random crit use skill worked into my rotations just really isn't worth the effort to pay attention for. Now when it does work I do really like that its a ground targeted skill that we can use to help out a group of players we feel need the extra power.

• Suggestion - Change the trigger for Pleasant Breeze to something with a higher chance than a single skills critical hit perhaps have it be all Fury of Storm skills . Then it would become a more useful skill.

Wind Lore - With the exception of when you are traited to spread Fire and Frost Lores around feels really weak and well pointless. It has a 1% damage reduction now apposed to its old stats to reduce range damage and increase attack duration. For being our one debuff that we always have it is rather lack luster these days.

• Suggestion - Pulled the Ranged Damage Reduction and Increase Attack Duration back to this skill.

Water Lore - This is a great skill that really doesn't get much of a boost from our trait lines beyond increasing its Incoming heal buff.

• Suggestion - Add in a bonus to one of the heal traits or bonuses that will add a +2 or +3 pulses to Water Lore.

The Ancient Master - We have been talking about this trait constantly since it was first put in in HD Beta and we have all felt forever that its currently a worthless capstone. Its power storage and distribution aspect is completely broken as it never distributes any saved up power at tier 10.

• Suggestion - Change it to a passive turning Fire/Frost/Wind Lores into their OLD AoE selves. Remove the power gathering/distribution that is already broken. Also put the old cooldowns on Fire/Frost Lore with a skill cooldown 5s shorter than the duration to allow for us to refresh and tier up the debuffs. This would also remove the current annoying spamming method we have in place.

Herb Lore -This only a 3 target Root. This used to be our golden skill for helping to control incoming mobs now its basically worthless. For a skill only available to the Ancient Master line it is very week.

• Suggestion - We only have access to the original base version of the skill. We need a Deep Lore version of this skill allowing up to 8 target Root. The old Deep Lore bonus could be taked onto the Force of Will set bonus.

Force of Will - This set bonus only increasing debuff durations by 15s turning 30s debuffs into 45 second debuffs. It also increases the Fire/Frost lore targets by 4 when using The Ancient Master. This as a capstone set bonus is very very lackluster.

• Suggestion - It really should give us the following +30 second duration on Fire Lore, Frost Lore, Ancient Craft, SoP Command, SoP See All Ends, add Deep Lore +5 targets to Herb Lore, Fire Lore, Frost Lore, Storm Lore, Wind Lore and Ancient Craft for a total of 8 targets.

Ancient Craft - When fully traited has a 45 sec duration and 1min cooldown so we have 15 seconds at least where it isn't on our targets.

• Suggestion - We used to be able to keep this up almost constantly when you were traited down to Force of Will with the old set bonuses as it added that extra 15 seconds to the duration to make it last a minute and have a cooldown of a minute.

Sign of Power: See All Ends - Is a relatively worthless skill anymore beyond its ability to hamper a foes crit rating.

• Sugesstion - I really miss the old version of this especially when it had the old Force of Will capstone bonus on it. Please bring this back.

Additional Suggestions on Yellow Line
Disable being purely used for Stun skill I find a waste of the trait Add some affects for Daze skills and alter the base versions of Bane Flare and Blinding Flash to match.

It could work like this:

Base Version Blinding Flash
15 second duration
12 second cooldown
Then Traited
R1 - +10s Blinding Flash duration for a total of 25 seconds
R2 - +5s Blinding Flash duration for a total of 30 seconds
R3 - +5s Blinding Flash duration for a total of 35 seconds

Base Version of Bane Flare
5 second duration
Then Traited
R1 - +5s Bane Flare duration for a total of 10 seconds.
R2 - +5s Bane Flare duration for a total of 15 seconds.
R3 - +5s Bane Flare duration for a total of 20 seconds.

By altering Disable or some other trait like Firm Grasp it would allow our stunning skills to become more potent the more we invest in that trait. It would also leave a viable base version for the KoA and MoNF lines to still be able to keep a normal Bane Flare and be able to keep 1 mob off of them with Blinding Flash while at the same time giving the AM a strong boost to our CC skills in a line that is supposed to be CC and Debuff focused.


Red Line - Master of Nature's Fury

Buying Time - Hasten Sticky Gourd I still find to be rather pointless. I honestly don't get why this even exists as a Tier 5 set bonus. Hasten Sticky Gourd why do we even want this? When the duration of ISG is what 3 seconds shorter than the cooldown. The only reason I'd want to cast ISG faster is when my targets have moved out of my dot but that would require this hasten to to work a LOT faster....

• Suggestion - I'd rather have this be a Hasten Lightning Storm/Nature's Fury.

Ents Go To War - We have this skill back to its old SoA cooldown of 5 minutes no matter what you trait.

• Suggestion - Why not put the capstone bonus to grant us a 2 or 3 minute cooldown reduction for Ents like we've always had since Moria?

Blue Line - Keeper of Animals
Eagle-Friend - This used to be a Legendary Trait that was hard faught for by all of us over the previous 6 years of the game before Helm's Deep came out. Its a little annoying that it is now locked into the 2nd Tier of the KoA line.

• Suggestion - Move Eagle Friend to the 1st Tier of KoA to make it more friendly to the other lines to have. One of the trait configurations where an Eagle was always most handy was when we were in Yellow(Ancient Master) but now we have to spend 12 points to get this old Legendary Trait.

General Suggestions

Proof Against All Ills - As it stands right now the LM has nothing like this in any spec. For years we have been able to clear wound/disease of our group members but now our Knowledge of Cures skill is single target only.

• Suggestion - I would really like this added to the Advanced Knowledge of Cures set bonus for the AM line. I greatly dislike that our normal version of Knowledge of Cures has been reduced to the SoA single target long induction version of the skill. What could be done is have it work like it used to once ou hit x level Knowledge of Cures becomes instant cast(like every other classes fear/wound/disease/poison removal skill) Advanced Knowledge of Cures and then have the Ancient Master Advanced Knowledge of Cures Trait Bonus changed to be a version of Proof Against All Ills. Perhaps what this version does is effect all fellowship members within 15 meters of you (similar to an RK's Rousing Words). It makes for a compromise between the old and the new only affecting those nearest to you which for LMs in group content is typically only casters/ranged classes.

Gust of Wind - We all miss this being an AoE skill. Instead its just a single target skill that when in MoNF/Red line if traited it can spread some Burning Embers dots around...

• Suggestion - Why not add a Tier 1 trait in one of the lines that turns Gust of Wind into an AoE again. This would give players the option of having it as single target or AoE.

SoP:R - I've stated my case on SoP:R many times over in HD beta and I also understand the other arguments for why people dislike this kill. As it stands this 18 second cooldown and 20 second duration skill just isn't up to par as a whole.

• Suggestion - I've said it before and I will say it again the current version of the skill should be the base version of the skill. Then in Ancient Master have a bonus or trait that will shorten to cooldown to 8 seconds. This allows us to keep it up on 2 people or keep it up on 1 person and then have 12 seconds where if its absolutely needed we can wake someone up. Then our SoP Duration Legacy should also affect this skill and it would allow non Ancient Masters to keep 2 people with SI or have a wake up ability to use on someone (Currently the SoP Duration Legacy does not affect SoP:R). For those with AM traiting it would allow us to keep 3 people with SI and have 1 wake up use. This really is a solid compromise for all parties. Those LMs in the Moors will be KoA or MoNF traited and then would only have the option to keep 1 at most 2 people with SI.

Spirit Pets - We have nothing that will really affect or buff these pets beyond morale and evasion. Nothing will boost their heals. It seems a real waste as the two lines where these could get someting are KoA and AM. But at the same time having a heal pet out in KoA seems pointless since you want your pet doing damage in that line.

• Suggestion - Since AM is the support line why not have it so some of our heal traits increase the reflect heal and another the AoE heal skills.

Mounted Combat
A couple thoughts about Mounted Combat both have to do with War Wolves.

• In Combat Summoning - Since HD we have been able to summon our normal combat pets while in combat but we still cannot summon our War Wolf in combat. This would be a nice change for those times he is just to far back and we lose him.
• War Wolf Skins - West Rohan introduced us to a White War Wolf skin. It would be really nice to have this as an optional appearance for our wolf.

[whatever76543]

I'm sorry I haven't read your whole post yet but I need to point something out for you. Wind lore is not useless. Not only will it spread your debuffs and trigger the frost bonus effect, it will refresh your debuffs removing the need to use fire lore or frost lore. I feel like this actually save me a lot of time since I am rarely stationary on a target in a raid allowing me to keep my important debuffs on at least 1 target. This also helps because you can't refresh frost or fire lore by using the regular skill. Back to reading.

edit 1. Wind lore refreshing debuffs helps take care of your concerns about AM. Water lore is a great heal, LMs just can't solo heal a 6 man or raid. The +5% incoming healing bonus is nice for AM. I really agree that herb lore needs some help with targets

With the eagle. If you are doing a raid you should be traiting into blue for the morale/mitigation bonus so the eagle is an easy point to put into

edit 2 WTB old SoP:R back but they use the tech they used in SoM for champ fervour to make SoP:R in its current state for the moors only

[PKCrichton]

I'm sorry I haven't read your whole post yet but I need to point something out for you. Wind lore is not useless. Not only will it spread your debuffs and trigger the frost bonus effect, it will refresh your debuffs removing the need to use fire lore or frost lore. I feel like this actually save me a lot of time since I am rarely stationary on a target in a raid allowing me to keep my important debuffs on at least 1 target. This also helps because you can't refresh frost or fire lore by using the regular skill. Back to reading

Yes you are right Wind Lore is used to Spread and can Refresh our Fire/Frost Lore but at the same time it is a Frost Skill and changes the Secondary Debuff to Frost from the Fire or Lightning that you may want to keep up on your target.

[Ithrien]

If you are doing a raid you should be traiting into blue for the morale/mitigation bonus

No thanks, everyone should have plenty of morale and mits in their own builds if they're doing T2 content IMO.

[Herwegur]

Yellow Line - Ancient Master
This line is said to have its core as CC and Debuffs with Heals. In reality its Debuffs, Healing and Power. It has barely any boost to CC. The Debuffing has major issues in its changes that need addressing. There is no way to keep the Lightning secondary debuffs up.

Lightning Secondary Debuffs - There is no current way to keep these up as all lightning skills have a cooldown that makes it impossible to keep this up.

• Suggestion - Add a cooldown reduction for Lightning Strike onto the Storm Lore Rank 3 trait.

Wind Lore - With the exception of when you are traited to spread Fire and Frost Lores around feels really weak and well pointless. It has a 1% damage reduction now apposed to its old stats to reduce range damage and increase attack duration. For being our one debuff that we always have it is rather lack luster these days.

• Suggestion - Pulled the Ranged Damage Reduction and Increase Attack Duration back to this skill.

Water Lore - This is a great skill that really doesn't get much of a boost from our trait lines beyond increasing its Incoming heal buff.

• Suggestion - Add in a bonus to one of the heal traits or bonuses that will add a +2 or +3 pulses to Water Lore.

The Ancient Master - We have been talking about this trait constantly since it was first put in in HD Beta and we have all felt forever that its currently a worthless capstone. Its power storage and distribution aspect is completely broken as it never distributes any saved up power.

• Suggestion - Change it to a passive turning Fire/Frost/Wind Lores into their OLD AoE selves. Remove the power gathering/distribution that is already broken. Also put the old cooldowns on Fire/Frost Lore.

Herb Lore -This only a 3 target Root. This used to be our golden skill for helping to control incoming mobs now its basically worthless. For a skill only available to the Ancient Master line it is very week.

• Suggestion - We only have access to the original base version of the skill. We need a Deep Lore version of this skill allowing up to 8 target Root. The old Deep Lore bonus could be taked onto the Force of Will set bonus.

Force of Will - This set bonus only increasing debuff durations by 15s turning 30s debuffs into 45 second debuffs. It also increases the Fire/Frost lore targets by 4 when using The Ancient Master. This as a capstone set bonus is very very lackluster.

• Suggestion - It really should give us the following +30 second duration on Fire Lore, Frost Lore, Ancient Craft, SoP Command, SoP See All Ends, add Deep Lore +5 targets to Herb Lore, Fire Lore, Frost Lore, Storm Lore, Wind Lore and Ancient Craft for a total of 8 targets.

Ancient Craft - When fully traited has a 45 sec duration and 1min cooldown so we have 15 seconds at least where it isn't on our targets.

• Suggestion - We used to be able to keep this up almost constantly when you were traited down to Force of Will with the old set bonuses as it added that extra 15 seconds to the duration to make it last a minute and have a cooldown of a minute.

Sign of Power: See All Ends - Is a relatively worthless skill anymore beyond its ability to hamper a foes crit rating.

• Sugesstion - I really miss the old version of this especially when it had the old Force of Will capstone bonus on it. Please bring this back.

[/LIST]

So much YES to all this.

Again and again... we keep bringing this up. I would love to see these changes implemented, and the versatility it will bring back to LM yellow line.


What I really want to see is the return of Deep Lore (+5 targets to lore skills) as part of the yellow capstone. This alone would be a huge improvement to the line.

[whatever76543]

No thanks, everyone should have plenty of morale and mits in their own builds if they're doing T2 content IMO.

1200 more morale and 2.5% hard mitigation is a bad thing? In dps no there is no need to use it but it can really help mitigate giant hits like in Ivar

[Vulcwen]

Those suggestions are way too much to get in place for U15.. I don't even want to see it in U15, since than it'll be rushed and full of stupid bugs.
I find it more important that at least the damn resistance bug gets fixed, and that those new essences are actually something worth considering, rather than building on top of the already flawed parts of the class.

[cdq1958]

Though it is unlikely much of what has been suggested will make it into U15, the suggestions are sound and need to be made.

I agree with Vulcwen that the resistance bug needs to be fixed.

Thanks, OP. I'd think that a reworked version of the post be placed in the LM forum.

[Aedfrith]

Deep yellow LMs should get old-style SOP:R back.

[PKCrichton]

Deep yellow LMs should get old-style SOP:R back.

We aren't ever getting the old full power SoP:R back we have to accept that. The best thing that can be done to salvage this is to come up with a hybrid method like I've suggested.

[JCAG]

What are the purposes of the 3 trait lines and what are the issues that exist with them.

What is the Lore Master at its core?
The Lore Master is a class that utilizes its knowledge of nature to command animals, harm and control foes. Thats the most basic statement of the class.

What is the focus/role of the KoA LM?

The Keeper of Animals LM is just that an LM that focuses primarily on their pet. Through traits and some skills we boost the potency of our pets so that they can be more effective in the role of a that given pet. The pet roles are pretty obvious as Bears are tanks, Raven is a debuffer, Eagle is cc/interupt/power, Sabertooth is AoE dps, Lynx is single target dps, Lurker is range dps/cc, Spirits are healing. I like that with HD they have expanded on the ability for our pets to influence both us and our group members. Group buffs from a pet is something that previously was only granted to the Raven and Eagle and even those buffs didn't scale up over time. Its really nice to see that expanded on and focused into the KoA line.

This line feels really solid to me. The only skill in it I have any issue with is Inner Flame which is a skill I've never liked and rarely ever used.

What is the focus/role of the MoNF LM?

The Master of Nature's Fury LM is just that an LM that focuses on its ability to use nature as its weapon. This is a pure dps role for the class and honestly feels very solid to me where it is right now.

The only issues I have with this trait line is the cooldown on Ents Go To War and what I consider an utterly useless Deep Trait Bonus of Buying Time.

What is the focus/role of the AM LM?

The Ancient Master LM's is one who uses his mastery of nature to control the field. That is they can help control how both their foes and allies act. This takes on a variety of forms from debuffs, roots and stuns/dazes on foes to power/morale boosting of allies. So your role is CC/Debuff/Power.

The two areas of the Control aspect that I have the most issues with right now are the Debuffing and Crowd Control aspects of the class.

Our debuffing is set up as single target debuffing with AoE forced out using Wind Lore or a very poorly created capstone trait. I really liked the idea of the secondary debuffs but the way it was implemented reminds me more of fighting the LT in Dol Guldor and having to cycle through to get the debuff you really wanted. As its setup right now the secondary debuffs are far to annoying to try and keep any of them active other than the Fire secondary debuff. It is not possible to ever keep the Lightning debuff up and the Frost is only doable by spamming Wind Lore. Wind Lore itself is a near worthless skill. SoP: See All Ends needs some work to bring it back up to par both by scaling its effect and adding back in the old Force of Will bonus to increase its magnitude and add -(level x 20) Crit Hit chance

For our Crowd Control aspect I really feel that Herb Lore has been nerfed to near uselessness, the base form that is now the only form is so weak that prior to this I'd only ever use it in open world. Blinding Flash is set up so its the same for all LMs and has no real boost to it. Disable I find to be near worthless trait all together

As for our fellowship boosting side of this line the two things I have issue with is the removal of the group Knowledge of Cures and the insane nerf to SoP:R/SI. Right now the Power role of this line is near worthless outside of raid instances but even there its not hard to keep power on everyone when outside of the Ancient Master line.

How well do the 3 lines fit the core of the LM?
Honestly the 3 lines fit the core perfectly if you look at it as a whole.

Every LM should be able to access a portion of the abilities of each role be it Pets, DPS or Control. I feel that every LM should have access to a 15s duration and 15s cooldown Blinding Flash. I was greatly against the Deep Red nerfing to 5s duration of this back with Moria but I feel that full power of Blinding Flash should be locked within the Yellow AM line. I wonder if all LMs should get the group KoA pet buffs but only for themselves unless they are traited deep enough into KoA or maybe grant us a portion of the buffs.


How far should hybridization be allowed/encouraged?
As for the question of how far we should hybrid that really is entirely up to the player and how many class trait points they've obtained. There is a lot of tinkering you could do to have half and half hybridization but not obtaining any capstone vs obtaining a capstone and then mixing things up to have a little of the different lines. I like having the ability to hybridize as much as I wish and that my points allow. Before MoNF had the induction reduction placed into it I was hybridizing into my MoNF with KoA just to get to a 10% induction reduction. Now I hybridize while in MoNF to boost my pet some, obtain an eagle for interupts, gain storm lore and boost my lightning skills power. I like that its possible in KoA or MoNF if you want to gain access to the base forms of Fire, Frost and Storm Lores with relative ease.

As you can see the main line I have issue with from any of my posts is really the Ancient Master Yellow Line. It is the one that has the most holes in it. Which takes us right back to this.

Here is a list of all the issues that I know of that still exist with the Lore-Master class since the HD revamp. I've also included some suggestions on how to alter skills/traits/bonuses to accomidate the issues and make for a compromise between the the core of the class, the current version and the reasons behind some of the changes to the current version of things.

Yellow Line - Ancient Master
This line is said to have its core as CC and Debuffs with Heals. In reality its Debuffs, Healing and Power. It has barely any boost to CC. The Debuffing has major issues in its changes that need addressing. There is no way to keep the Lightning secondary debuffs up.

Lightning Secondary Debuffs - There is no current way to keep these up as all lightning skills have a cooldown that makes it impossible to keep this up.

• Suggestion - Add a cooldown reduction for Lightning Strike onto the Storm Lore Rank 3 trait.

Pleasant Breeze - I find is pretty worthless as it only ever triggered for use after you have had a crit from using Gust of Wind. Only then will the skill become active for use. This feels very lackluster to me and means I would never trait it because getting a random crit use skill worked into my rotations just really isn't worth the effort to pay attention for. Now when it does work I do really like that its a ground targeted skill that we can use to help out a group of players we feel need the extra power.

• Suggestion - Change the trigger for Pleasant Breeze to something with a higher chance than a single skills critical hit perhaps have it be all Fury of Storm skills . Then it would become a more useful skill.

Wind Lore - With the exception of when you are traited to spread Fire and Frost Lores around feels really weak and well pointless. It has a 1% damage reduction now apposed to its old stats to reduce range damage and increase attack duration. For being our one debuff that we always have it is rather lack luster these days.

• Suggestion - Pulled the Ranged Damage Reduction and Increase Attack Duration back to this skill.

Water Lore - This is a great skill that really doesn't get much of a boost from our trait lines beyond increasing its Incoming heal buff.

• Suggestion - Add in a bonus to one of the heal traits or bonuses that will add a +2 or +3 pulses to Water Lore.

The Ancient Master - We have been talking about this trait constantly since it was first put in in HD Beta and we have all felt forever that its currently a worthless capstone. Its power storage and distribution aspect is completely broken as it never distributes any saved up power at tier 10.

• Suggestion - Change it to a passive turning Fire/Frost/Wind Lores into their OLD AoE selves. Remove the power gathering/distribution that is already broken. Also put the old cooldowns on Fire/Frost Lore with a skill cooldown 5s shorter than the duration to allow for us to refresh and tier up the debuffs. This would also remove the current annoying spamming method we have in place.

Herb Lore -This only a 3 target Root. This used to be our golden skill for helping to control incoming mobs now its basically worthless. For a skill only available to the Ancient Master line it is very week.

• Suggestion - We only have access to the original base version of the skill. We need a Deep Lore version of this skill allowing up to 8 target Root. The old Deep Lore bonus could be taked onto the Force of Will set bonus.

Force of Will - This set bonus only increasing debuff durations by 15s turning 30s debuffs into 45 second debuffs. It also increases the Fire/Frost lore targets by 4 when using The Ancient Master. This as a capstone set bonus is very very lackluster.

• Suggestion - It really should give us the following +30 second duration on Fire Lore, Frost Lore, Ancient Craft, SoP Command, SoP See All Ends, add Deep Lore +5 targets to Herb Lore, Fire Lore, Frost Lore, Storm Lore, Wind Lore and Ancient Craft for a total of 8 targets.

Ancient Craft - When fully traited has a 45 sec duration and 1min cooldown so we have 15 seconds at least where it isn't on our targets.

• Suggestion - We used to be able to keep this up almost constantly when you were traited down to Force of Will with the old set bonuses as it added that extra 15 seconds to the duration to make it last a minute and have a cooldown of a minute.

Sign of Power: See All Ends - Is a relatively worthless skill anymore beyond its ability to hamper a foes crit rating.

• Sugesstion - I really miss the old version of this especially when it had the old Force of Will capstone bonus on it. Please bring this back.

Additional Suggestions on Yellow Line
Disable being purely used for Stun skill I find a waste of the trait Add some affects for Daze skills and alter the base versions of Bane Flare and Blinding Flash to match.

It could work like this:

Base Version Blinding Flash
15 second duration
12 second cooldown
Then Traited
R1 - +10s Blinding Flash duration for a total of 25 seconds
R2 - +5s Blinding Flash duration for a total of 30 seconds
R3 - +5s Blinding Flash duration for a total of 35 seconds

Base Version of Bane Flare
5 second duration
Then Traited
R1 - +5s Bane Flare duration for a total of 10 seconds.
R2 - +5s Bane Flare duration for a total of 15 seconds.
R3 - +5s Bane Flare duration for a total of 20 seconds.

By altering Disable or some other trait like Firm Grasp it would allow our stunning skills to become more potent the more we invest in that trait. It would also leave a viable base version for the KoA and MoNF lines to still be able to keep a normal Bane Flare and be able to keep 1 mob off of them with Blinding Flash while at the same time giving the AM a strong boost to our CC skills in a line that is supposed to be CC and Debuff focused.


Red Line - Master of Nature's Fury

Buying Time - Hasten Sticky Gourd I still find to be rather pointless. I honestly don't get why this even exists as a Tier 5 set bonus. Hasten Sticky Gourd why do we even want this? When the duration of ISG is what 3 seconds shorter than the cooldown. The only reason I'd want to cast ISG faster is when my targets have moved out of my dot but that would require this hasten to to work a LOT faster....

• Suggestion - I'd rather have this be a Hasten Lightning Storm/Nature's Fury.

Ents Go To War - We have this skill back to its old SoA cooldown of 5 minutes no matter what you trait.

• Suggestion - Why not put the capstone bonus to grant us a 2 or 3 minute cooldown reduction for Ents like we've always had since Moria?

Blue Line - Keeper of Animals
Eagle-Friend - This used to be a Legendary Trait that was hard faught for by all of us over the previous 6 years of the game before Helm's Deep came out. Its a little annoying that it is now locked into the 2nd Tier of the KoA line.

• Suggestion - Move Eagle Friend to the 1st Tier of KoA to make it more friendly to the other lines to have. One of the trait configurations where an Eagle was always most handy was when we were in Yellow(Ancient Master) but now we have to spend 12 points to get this old Legendary Trait.

General Suggestions

Proof Against All Ills - As it stands right now the LM has nothing like this in any spec. For years we have been able to clear wound/disease of our group members but now our Knowledge of Cures skill is single target only.

• Suggestion - I would really like this added to the Advanced Knowledge of Cures set bonus for the AM line. I greatly dislike that our normal version of Knowledge of Cures has been reduced to the SoA single target long induction version of the skill. What could be done is have it work like it used to once ou hit x level Knowledge of Cures becomes instant cast(like every other classes fear/wound/disease/poison removal skill) Advanced Knowledge of Cures and then have the Ancient Master Advanced Knowledge of Cures Trait Bonus changed to be a version of Proof Against All Ills. Perhaps what this version does is effect all fellowship members within 15 meters of you (similar to an RK's Rousing Words). It makes for a compromise between the old and the new only affecting those nearest to you which for LMs in group content is typically only casters/ranged classes.

Gust of Wind - We all miss this being an AoE skill. Instead its just a single target skill that when in MoNF/Red line if traited it can spread some Burning Embers dots around...

• Suggestion - Why not add a Tier 1 trait in one of the lines that turns Gust of Wind into an AoE again. This would give players the option of having it as single target or AoE.

SoP:R - I've stated my case on SoP:R many times over in HD beta and I also understand the other arguments for why people dislike this kill. As it stands this 18 second cooldown and 20 second duration skill just isn't up to par as a whole.

• Suggestion - I've said it before and I will say it again the current version of the skill should be the base version of the skill. Then in Ancient Master have a bonus or trait that will shorten to cooldown to 8 seconds. This allows us to keep it up on 2 people or keep it up on 1 person and then have 12 seconds where if its absolutely needed we can wake someone up. Then our SoP Duration Legacy should also affect this skill and it would allow non Ancient Masters to keep 2 people with SI or have a wake up ability to use on someone (Currently the SoP Duration Legacy does not affect SoP:R). For those with AM traiting it would allow us to keep 3 people with SI and have 1 wake up use. This really is a solid compromise for all parties. Those LMs in the Moors will be KoA or MoNF traited and then would only have the option to keep 1 at most 2 people with SI.

Spirit Pets - We have nothing that will really affect or buff these pets beyond morale and evasion. Nothing will boost their heals. It seems a real waste as the two lines where these could get someting are KoA and AM. But at the same time having a heal pet out in KoA seems pointless since you want your pet doing damage in that line.

• Suggestion - Since AM is the support line why not have it so some of our heal traits increase the reflect heal and another the AoE heal skills.

Mounted Combat
A couple thoughts about Mounted Combat both have to do with War Wolves.

• In Combat Summoning - Since HD we have been able to summon our normal combat pets while in combat but we still cannot summon our War Wolf in combat. This would be a nice change for those times he is just to far back and we lose him.
• War Wolf Skins - West Rohan introduced us to a White War Wolf skin. It would be really nice to have this as an optional appearance for our wolf.

These are some pretty awesome suggestions PK! I read this and wanted to reply so that we can get it back up to the front of the forum so that turbine employees can see this post again and see how important it is to do something, anything to fix the current issues with Yellow line LM.