Class Update - Loremasters

[Jula]

Thought I’d share some ideas I had that might be used in the LM revamp. Some might be better than others! All this being said, a round of bug fixes would be more than sufficient with maybe a small DPS increase but if more is planned some of these may have value. Everything I’m suggesting here is with PvE only in mind so any proposed breaking of PvP is purely through ignorance. This is a pretty long post sorry.

In no particular order:

Make Staff Strike and Staff Sweep Tactical Skills dealing light damage and with damage scaling based on Tactical Damage Rating. Having a meaningful set of staff skills will return some of the pre-HD risk/reward where DPS will be greater if you risk being in melee range, gives us something to do against fire resistant bosses and will make our single target rotation more interesting than Burning Embers spam. Plus its cool.

Fire mit debuffs (Tar/Raven) – we may need to acknowledge our fire mit debuffs are giving an advantage to DPS classes with access to fire damage and penalising those that don’t and making balancing them harder. Perhaps the benefit from these skills needs to be smaller but broader. For example, tar could only give -5% fire mits but in addition the BPE reduction of Ring of Fire could move here so Tar now helps Champs.

Upgrading DOTs to Searing Embers and Burning Embers spreading via Gust of Wind – the complexity in LM is having a broad tool kit of skills and choosing the right one at the right time so I would totally remove these unnecessarily complicated features. Burning Embers DOTs could be made a bit stronger overall to compensate (especially in Red line).

Fire Lore and Frost Lore spreading – another unnecessary and over complicated mechanic. Why not have a Yellow feat (possibly Capstone to replace buggy Enfeeble) that adds +2 targets to make them a limited AOE. Ancient Master will increase the number of mobs affected further but at a limited uptime.

I miss the mechanic where going Red affected CC and would like Yellow to offer greater boosts to CC than it currently does. I’d propose Blinding Flash and Cracked Earth are reduced to 16 second mezz/ 15 second root durations and the break chance of Cracked Earth is increased. Then in Yellow the durations are doubled and the break chance of roots can be lowered possibly through a trait. This will mean Red/Blue LMs can chain mezz 1 target. Yellow can chain mezz 2. Chain rooting still possible but more reliably on Yellow.

I’d propose some significant damage buffs to Cracked Earth and Ents. Both are CC skills with a bit of damage currently. I’d like to see Cracked Earth, alongside Sticky Gourd, be our bread and butter AOE skill (especially if the CC element is nerfed outside Yellow line) and for that it needs more damage. Ents is truly sad, this should be an epic, class defining skill but is now an emergency AOE stun on a long cooldown. This should have a cooldown and damage similar to Lightning Storm. NB with these changes and the previous change to Tar, Ring of Fire, universally hated by all non-LMs for its lag effects could be removed as its functions are now covered elsewhere.

Pleasant Breeze changes – something needs to be done to this but not sure whats proposed is the right change. Instead why not make this trait turn the single target power restore into an AOE version with a decent radius e.g. 15-20 m (possibly with a reduced effect on those other than the main target)? Then you could remove the group power heal skill altogether. You could move the AOE Beacon of Hope effect to this trait also.

Power management changes - scaling power restore back is fine if the goal is to make power management less trivial but as everyone is telling you, the power drain is another iconic feature and needs to be kept, if the effect is somewhat reduced

Wizards Fire – needs to stay as everyone has told you but it could just be a low damage, low cooldown DOT for tagging and also trigger the flank heal (please don’t remove the flanking mechanic, this is a classic class feature that should be kept and made relevant again if anything).

Enfeeble – always buggy and (apparently) hard to fix. Suggest total rework with boosts to Fire and Frost Lore targets as earlier but also a flat e.g. 20% boost to other debuffs like SOP Command, See All ends etc.

Wind Lore – previous poster has made an excellent suggestion to make this a Lightning skill to allow the three lore skills to be also apply the improved debuffs to Fire and Frost Lore. I’d go further and create a new trait in Yellow that adds a useful extra debuff feature, such as reducing mob finesse. The refresh/spreading of Frost/Fire Lore would be removed as above.

Gust of Wind – just remove it.
Reduced morale cost trait in Yellow – just remove it.
Mighty Wind trait in Red – just remove it
SOP: Vigilance – does this really need to be a skill? It could be passive or I’d like to see it a fellowship buff when you have an avian pet (Raven/Eagle).

[Nleuter]

The other suggestion I was thinking was make fire lore reduce physical damage. This would make it a proper counter part to frost lore that reduces tactical damage, and make it a proper counter part. By having the melee range split with the ranged damage being conferred by a secondary effect, everytime you cast burning embers you are switching back to the fire lore effect and removing the ranged damage reduction. This would be valid if we had a Lightning skill on a comparable cooldown to Burning Embers, or if the primary way to reduce the damage of a ranged enemy wasn't off the range damage debuff but rather as a result of the primary debuff. The collapse of the triadic lore debuff to the dualist lore debuff means that something really should have to give, and making fire lore reduce physical damage rather than just melee might be the appropriate means to achieve this.

[Vastin]

Ok, sorry I'm not caught up on this thread at the moment - I've been very busy implementing 2nd round class changes.

I just checked in the Loremaster 2nd pass - not sure when/if you'll be able to see it on Bullroarer, but they basically go as follows:

• WF and Power of Knowledge are both back, by popular demand.
• WF is probably not going to be as useful as you remember it, alas. It's more of just a fast basic blast now, with GoW having most of the embers interactions.
• WF's flanking effect has been updated so that its power and heal are meaningful - not huge, but decent.
• Power of Knowledge has been upgraded to a shorter (5s), high-intensity channel with good lightning damage and some power restore, but the power drain component has been removed.
• GoW induction time reduced, and its ability to upgrade Embers has been improved in the trait line.
• Most of the ground dot effects have been upgraded to do significant damage.
• Values on the share power abilities have been increased ~60%.
• Fierce Lightning/Ember cashout has been increased substantially.
• A number of smaller misc tweaks

Overall my feeling is that for a red line build the dps might still be a little shy of target? Hard to say though, as I made a number of tweaks at once so its hard to judge - and it also depends on where some of the other classes land. Thus, I'm going to leave it be for the time being and let you folks explore it - that and with the large array of CC & Debuffing the Loremaster has, I don't want it to be TOO dps competitive.

- Vastin

[ColMcStacky]

Ok, sorry I'm not caught up on this thread at the moment - I've been very busy implementing 2nd round class changes.

I just checked in the Loremaster 2nd pass - not sure when/if you'll be able to see it on Bullroarer, but they basically go as follows:

• WF and Power of Knowledge are both back, by popular demand.
• WF is probably not going to be as useful as you remember it, alas. It's more of just a fast basic blast now, with GoW having most of the embers interactions.
• WF's flanking effect has been updated so that its power and heal are meaningful - not huge, but decent.
• Power of Knowledge has been upgraded to a shorter (5s), high-intensity channel with good lightning damage and some power restore, but the power drain component has been removed.
• GoW induction time reduced, and its ability to upgrade Embers has been improved in the trait line.
• Most of the ground dot effects have been upgraded to do significant damage.
• Values on the share power abilities have been increased ~60%.
• Fierce Lightning/Ember cashout has been increased substantially.
• A number of smaller misc tweaks

Overall my feeling is that for a red line build the dps might still be a little shy of target? Hard to say though, as I made a number of tweaks at once so its hard to judge - and it also depends on where some of the other classes land. Thus, I'm going to leave it be for the time being and let you folks explore it - that and with the large array of CC & Debuffing the Loremaster has, I don't want it to be TOO dps competitive.

- Vastin

I just want to say, thank you for listening to the players, Vastin. You are definitely a boon to the SSG team because of this, and it is greatly appreciated.

About the dps, with the last round of changes that were made before these, on my LM with about 165k mastery and 55k crit rating, I seemed to be averaging between 14-15k dps on the training dummies in the Crafting Hall. On the group of 4 dummies, I averaged roughly 45k-48k dps it seemed. I'll have to see what happens with the most recent changes you made here when they do hit Bullroarer.

The changes I would still like to see made were posted in an earlier post in the thread here. I will update them after making this post to factor in the changes suggested above.

[Vilan]

Liking these changes. I tend to play up-close flank-and-spank red line so this sounds up my alley. Adding lightning damage to PoK is an interesting twist. It hasn't had power drain in years though (sadly), do you mean you removed the power cost debuff it puts on the target? Totally fine with me. Thanks Vastin!

[Fulgurix]

Ok, sorry I'm not caught up on this thread at the moment - I've been very busy implementing 2nd round class changes.

I just checked in the Loremaster 2nd pass - not sure when/if you'll be able to see it on Bullroarer, but they basically go as follows:

• WF and Power of Knowledge are both back, by popular demand.
• WF is probably not going to be as useful as you remember it, alas. It's more of just a fast basic blast now, with GoW having most of the embers interactions.
• WF's flanking effect has been updated so that its power and heal are meaningful - not huge, but decent.
• Power of Knowledge has been upgraded to a shorter (5s), high-intensity channel with good lightning damage and some power restore, but the power drain component has been removed.
• GoW induction time reduced, and its ability to upgrade Embers has been improved in the trait line.
• Most of the ground dot effects have been upgraded to do significant damage.
• Values on the share power abilities have been increased ~60%.
• Fierce Lightning/Ember cashout has been increased substantially.
• A number of smaller misc tweaks

Overall my feeling is that for a red line build the dps might still be a little shy of target? Hard to say though, as I made a number of tweaks at once so its hard to judge - and it also depends on where some of the other classes land. Thus, I'm going to leave it be for the time being and let you folks explore it - that and with the large array of CC & Debuffing the Loremaster has, I don't want it to be TOO dps competitive.

- Vastin

Any statement about burning/searing embers not stacking anymore? Intended or a bug?

Also what about the finesse bug? Any chance to get it fixed in this patch?

[Mar-Evayave]

Ok, sorry I'm not caught up on this thread at the moment - I've been very busy implementing 2nd round class changes.

I just checked in the Loremaster 2nd pass - not sure when/if you'll be able to see it on Bullroarer, but they basically go as follows:

• WF and Power of Knowledge are both back, by popular demand.
• WF is probably not going to be as useful as you remember it, alas. It's more of just a fast basic blast now, with GoW having most of the embers interactions.
• WF's flanking effect has been updated so that its power and heal are meaningful - not huge, but decent.
• Power of Knowledge has been upgraded to a shorter (5s), high-intensity channel with good lightning damage and some power restore, but the power drain component has been removed.
• GoW induction time reduced, and its ability to upgrade Embers has been improved in the trait line.
• Most of the ground dot effects have been upgraded to do significant damage.
• Values on the share power abilities have been increased ~60%.
• Fierce Lightning/Ember cashout has been increased substantially.
• A number of smaller misc tweaks

Overall my feeling is that for a red line build the dps might still be a little shy of target? Hard to say though, as I made a number of tweaks at once so its hard to judge - and it also depends on where some of the other classes land. Thus, I'm going to leave it be for the time being and let you folks explore it - that and with the large array of CC & Debuffing the Loremaster has, I don't want it to be TOO dps competitive.

- Vastin

Thank you! I love WF and PoK (the animation is just golden; easily best in game -- possibly among the best in any game I've played).

Regarding the PoK power drain, can you share why that was removed? I'm not sure what negative impact it has on PvE, but for PvMP wouldn't that make it a little unfair for freeps? I haven't PvMPed in a while, so I might have missed something, but doesn't the defiler still have the ability to drain freep power? It seems that if defilers can do that, the freeps should have a similar ability.

Otherwise, very encouraged to hear about the changes to GoW and that flanking will still be a thing.

[Seschat]

The general feel I get from this thread is that hardly anyone (myself included) ever USED Gust of Wind, and didn't particularly want to. The only reason it was on my Blue/Yellow skill bar was because I wanted anything to spice up my skill rotation. So, my suggestion would be drop GoW completely to declutter the skills, give the spread effect to Wind Lore, and the Embers Upgrade back to Wizard's Fire.

And I'd really love to see Power of Knowledge get it's pre-Helm's Deep power draining effect back. Buffed even. Preventing an opponent from using their power-using skills is a valid control effect. Just ask the Creeps.

[Nleuter]

With respect to the enfeeble captstone. Maybe we can just replace the entire thing with a new capstone that does the following. Makes the secondary debuffs lock in place when they are applied. This would make it a proper capstone and worth taking as it would give us the ability to chain a significant number of debuffs onto the primary target without concern for removing any particular debuff as they would all be compatible. This should help avoid some of the other problems.

[jomanjy]

Ok, sorry I'm not caught up on this thread at the moment - I've been very busy implementing 2nd round class changes.

I just checked in the Loremaster 2nd pass - not sure when/if you'll be able to see it on Bullroarer, but they basically go as follows:

• WF and Power of Knowledge are both back, by popular demand.
• WF is probably not going to be as useful as you remember it, alas. It's more of just a fast basic blast now, with GoW having most of the embers interactions.
• WF's flanking effect has been updated so that its power and heal are meaningful - not huge, but decent.
• Power of Knowledge has been upgraded to a shorter (5s), high-intensity channel with good lightning damage and some power restore, but the power drain component has been removed.
• GoW induction time reduced, and its ability to upgrade Embers has been improved in the trait line.
• Most of the ground dot effects have been upgraded to do significant damage.
• Values on the share power abilities have been increased ~60%.
• Fierce Lightning/Ember cashout has been increased substantially.
• A number of smaller misc tweaks

Overall my feeling is that for a red line build the dps might still be a little shy of target? Hard to say though, as I made a number of tweaks at once so its hard to judge - and it also depends on where some of the other classes land. Thus, I'm going to leave it be for the time being and let you folks explore it - that and with the large array of CC & Debuffing the Loremaster has, I don't want it to be TOO dps competitive.

- Vastin

thank you for the nice changes again but still share the power with cd is a big problem for moors, i don't mind the magnitude nerf at all but 10s cd is big with how strong spiders powerdrain is...
also with the meta slightly changing to melee dps again i'd like to see some melee damage debuffs, most of what we have on yellow are fire debuffs/tactical debuffs so i would like to see the bog lurker +5% incoming ranged crit chance debuff changed to +5% incoming crit chance in general and maybe warding knowledge from +10% incoming tactical damage / +4% power cost to +10% tactical damage/ + 10%physical damage/ + 10% ranged damage, those would be really cool changes for yellow LMs and would decrease the gap between physical/tactical classes damage in raids imo.

[Mirillin]

...

Fire mit debuffs (Tar/Raven) – we may need to acknowledge our fire mit debuffs are giving an advantage to DPS classes with access to fire damage and penalising those that don’t and making balancing them harder. Perhaps the benefit from these skills needs to be smaller but broader. For example, tar could only give -5% fire mits but in addition the BPE reduction of Ring of Fire could move here so Tar now helps Champs.

Upgrading DOTs to Searing Embers and Burning Embers spreading via Gust of Wind – the complexity in LM is having a broad tool kit of skills and choosing the right one at the right time so I would totally remove these unnecessarily complicated features. Burning Embers DOTs could be made a bit stronger overall to compensate (especially in Red line).

Fire Lore and Frost Lore spreading – another unnecessary and over complicated mechanic. Why not have a Yellow feat (possibly Capstone to replace buggy Enfeeble) that adds +2 targets to make them a limited AOE. Ancient Master will increase the number of mobs affected further but at a limited uptime.

...

I agree with the majority of what is written in this post, especially these few points. And I would love to see the following become a thing again, I mean I know I still think of my lm as melee dps more often than not and would love to see more reflect that.

Make Staff Strike and Staff Sweep Tactical Skills dealing light damage and with damage scaling based on Tactical Damage Rating. Having a meaningful set of staff skills will return some of the pre-HD risk/reward where DPS will be greater if you risk being in melee range, gives us something to do against fire resistant bosses and will make our single target rotation more interesting than Burning Embers spam. Plus its cool.

[Mirillin]

[*] WF and Power of Knowledge are both back, by popular demand.

Yus. Thank you glad to hear it!

[*] GoW induction time reduced, and its ability to upgrade Embers has been improved in the trait line.

The wording here gives me a little concern, perhaps someone can confirm if that is just red line or has it been reduced for yellow (and blue) line as well? Ofc that being said I am still of the opinion that the skill should be removed entirely and the proposed changes be added to a different skill.

[*] Most of the ground dot effects have been upgraded to do significant damage.

Fantastic, glad to hear it!

[*] Values on the share power abilities have been increased ~60%.

Good to hear but I still think some small tweaking needs to be done to the cooldowns.

Overall my feeling is that for a red line build the dps might still be a little shy of target? Hard to say though, as I made a number of tweaks at once so its hard to judge - and it also depends on where some of the other classes land. Thus, I'm going to leave it be for the time being and let you folks explore it - that and with the large array of CC & Debuffing the Loremaster has, I don't want it to be TOO dps competitive.

- Vastin

I am exceptionally glad to hear this, while yes I do believe that lm's could use a buff to their damage I would hate for that to take over from our main role as support. IMO there are plenty of DPS classes but to me lm is one of the few that is complex and interesting to play and I would hate to see the class lose that in favour of doing more damage.

[Mar-Evayave]

The general feel I get from this thread is that hardly anyone (myself included) ever USED Gust of Wind, and didn't particularly want to. The only reason it was on my Blue/Yellow skill bar was because I wanted anything to spice up my skill rotation. So, my suggestion would be drop GoW completely to declutter the skills, give the spread effect to Wind Lore, and the Embers Upgrade back to Wizard's Fire.

And I'd really love to see Power of Knowledge get it's pre-Helm's Deep power draining effect back. Buffed even. Preventing an opponent from using their power-using skills is a valid control effect. Just ask the Creeps.

I agree. I usually only use it on accident and then kick myself for wasting time on that skill.

[afuturestrader]

Developer takeaway -- Please scale pet damage from level 85 to end game.

I have only had the opportunity to skim read the discussion here so perhaps I missed it. However I am surprised no one appears to have mentioned the problem in blue line with the pets.

The problem in a nutshell is that past level 85 pet damage does not scale. For example, numbers have been posted in the forums comparing Bog damage at level 85 vs 115 (maybe it was 105). At level 85 the damage was meaningful. At 115 more or less impotent. Unless the numbers I saw were a misrepresentation, this is an issue which should be addressed.

Blue LM is meant to be pet focused. That is a realistic strategy up to level 85. Beyond that it would appear to become less and less so.

I know some LM's play blue exclusively. Based on posted numbers the pet cannot be the focus beyond a certain level. One would die of old age trying to down a mob without a significant strategy change. But that defeats to point of the Blue LM.

To the raiders and other members of the "fun police" who are tempted to opine by leveling their Cardinal sin of "OP" on blue pets I say this. Don't play blue line. There is currently only one viable end game LM line. That is a yellow support LM. Scaling the pets damage beyond level 85 simply fixes what is currently broken. No one is taking a damage focused LM into a raid without a major league overhaul to the class. And the devs are currently going in the opposite direction.

To the devs - the lack of damage from a blue line pet beyond level 85 is something that should be fixed. Please look into this issue.

[Aelir]

my suggestion would be drop GoW completely

No and no. Please no more skill removes.

Concerning Blue and Yellow lines: is it correct that current update focuses on Red, and there will be more LM updates coming (focusing on Yellow and Blue)?
So much to talk about in Yellow...

[CaerArianrhod]

Ok, sorry I'm not caught up on this thread at the moment - I've been very busy implementing 2nd round class changes.
I just checked in the Loremaster 2nd pass - not sure when/if you'll be able to see it on Bullroarer, but they basically go as follows:

Your feedback is highly appreciated! You can not imagine how much we would like to trust you, in the past we have had to learn many bitter lessons, which SSG gave us and therefor trust is not something we really have over to be able to spend in advance.

• WF and Power of Knowledge are both back, by popular demand.

Good choice.
After the first round there was to much things, which was affected but not considered by the change (like class deeds: The Study of Fire-lore, Improved Sign of Battle. Skills like: Ancient Fire, Empowering Fires, Effects (& procs) like: Improved Searing Embers than the red-line Abyss raid-set 4 piece bonus etc.)

• WF is probably not going to be as useful as you remember it, alas. It's more of just a fast basic blast now, with GoW having most of the embers interactions.

We will wait and observe.

WF's flanking effect has been updated so that its power and heal are meaningful - not huge, but decent.

Sounds good.

• Power of Knowledge has been upgraded to a shorter (5s), high-intensity channel with good lightning damage and some power restore, but the power drain component has been removed.

Could be interesting but what about the morale-drain component?

• GoW induction time reduced, and its ability to upgrade Embers has been improved in the trait line.

Could be interesting (depending how much the induction was reduced) , we will wait and observe.

• Most of the ground dot effects have been upgraded to do significant damage.
• Fierce Lightning/Ember cashout has been increased substantially.
• A number of smaller misc tweaks

Sounds really nice, we will wait and observe.

• Values on the share power abilities have been increased ~60%.

Sounds like the 10sec and 30sec CD will come. I hope you looked at the various power drain and the various power cost effects too in the game (PvP AND PvE) : Naerband (instant 100% power drain), Thron Raid etc...

Overall my feeling is that for a red line build the dps might still be a little shy of target? Hard to say though, as I made a number of tweaks at once so its hard to judge

One of the problems we had and have with LM damage is, that is seems that level 115 mobs have a very high tactical resistance. Whereas "ring of fire" (resistance physical) do a lot damage, the damage of the more powerful skills (Lightning Storm, Ents go to War, Light of the Rising Dawn etc,) with resistance tactical seems to be evaporate sometimes. I think there is a serious underlying problem/bug with the resistance of lvl 115 mobs, which also would/could explain the LM finesse problem.

I don't want it to be TOO dps competitive.

Why not?
Once it was a time where the LM was the top AoE burst damage class. Why not bring that back? I'm really taking about only AoE burst damage, it would be an interesting/alternative play style for many groups and raids combined with the AoE skill secondary effects (like the minus for BPA from Fire Ring or the stun from Ents go to War, the red line abyss raid set etc.) If you really want the LM to be "viable", you should think about also variability! We have this nice and powerful AoE skills, why not let us make use of them in groups/raids?
It is rarely that i can test LM DPS on current raid (mostly because our skills cause such a terrible flip-book 5 FPS game for everyone in the raid), but i had some occasion and the DPS on trash mob groups are not that bad (around 70K was very common*) Why not tweak that a little bit (not too OP) but a little bit, just so that we can be competitive.

ad *) Just in case if some one asking: unbuffed: tact. mastery 202K (380%), crit: 60K (23%), finesse: 123K (23.3%), mitigations (phys/tact): 63.2K/63.8K. morale: 68.6K.

[Joedangod]

Overall my feeling is that for a red line build the dps might still be a little shy of target? Hard to say though, as I made a number of tweaks at once so its hard to judge - and it also depends on where some of the other classes land. Thus, I'm going to leave it be for the time being and let you folks explore it - that and with the large array of CC & Debuffing the Loremaster has, I don't want it to be TOO dps competitive.

- Vastin

It's worth noting that currently LOTRO only has one real AoE DPS (Yellow Champion) who stands head and shoulders above everything else in that category. If it's at all possible for redline LM to lose some debuff/CC access in return for the potential to compete with Champions I would like to implore you to explore that route. It's unfair for a class to go entirely without competition as this guarantees them a spot in groups that others have to fight for.

[Nleuter]

It's worth noting that currently LOTRO only has one real AoE DPS (Yellow Champion) who stands head and shoulders above everything else in that category. If it's at all possible for redline LM to lose some debuff/CC access in return for the potential to compete with Champions I would like to implore you to explore that route. It's unfair for a class to go entirely without competition as this guarantees them a spot in groups that others have to fight for.

God's no, you will take my CC/debuff from my cold dead hands.... The only way such an option wouldn't have me rioting with molotov cocktails is if it was strictly locked into the red line spec, but that would just guarantee that I never used that trait line.

[Fulgurix]

God's no, you will take my CC/debuff from my cold dead hands.... The only way such an option wouldn't have me rioting with molotov cocktails is if it was strictly locked into the red line spec, but that would just guarantee that I never used that trait line.

That's exactly what he's suggesting btw...

Why even put a DPS tree if it won't make the class a viable pick for a dps role then? This antiquated mentality (pre HD) that a class is forever locked into one single viable role completely defeats the purpose of trait trees and shouldn't be considered at all.

[Forodir]

I would also ask something to be done for the lag that some of the AoE skill introduce especially when in group. There is no point making those skills competent if you in practice cannot use then. Ring of Fire and Lighting Storm are probably the worst. I’ve experienced several seconds group wide lag/freeze in certain areas (Skoironk used to be really bad, not sure how it is nowadays).

[Dranak123]

It's worth noting that currently LOTRO only has one real AoE DPS (Yellow Champion) who stands head and shoulders above everything else in that category. If it's at all possible for redline LM to lose some debuff/CC access in return for the potential to compete with Champions I would like to implore you to explore that route. It's unfair for a class to go entirely without competition as this guarantees them a spot in groups that others have to fight for.

agreed.Maybe one way to achieve this is to alter the bonuses etc in the trait line bonus boxes that run down the side of each tree. So fire and frost lore could be lowered in the selection boxes (available from all trait lines) and a bonus goes in the yellow box that is only available in yellowline ensuring debuffs can only hit their current levels in yellow. Therefore also the dps red and pet blue have lower values of debuffing and allow strengthening of their respective lines. This approach could not only be applied to debuffing but CC as well , as could the strengthening or bonuses in blue/red be added in their respective boxes to stop some 'godmode' cross trait selection mistake. Furthermore other classes may benefit from this tweak approach--if it is viable in the code to do this cost effectively.

[Knight.]

Copy and paste from another thread:

Ancient Craft is bugged in many ways:
Having both legacy and trait increases value by a huge unexplainable factor.
From like 11k base to 28k. If you have only have one of either it is either 13k or 15k respetively, which makes sense.
Enfeeble trait actually nerfs the base value before it gets multiplied for some reason. So it's 10k, 12k, 13k or 25k all less than without.

If possible, might be the perfect time to address this.

[PeroXpress]

Hi all,
So here is something I think about latest Loremaster changes.

Healing buffs
Buffing the morale heal output is welcome, when there's no other healer around. Now heals can really come handy in difficult moments.
With additional comment on a bigger picture when it comes to LM healing, now there are minis as primary healers and beornings and captains as secondary healers. Was there really necessary to buff another option to heal group? If it was your plan to make LM more versatile, then so be it. But I don't really see the point why LMs needed a healing buff at the expense of power restoring skills. Better to have both then.
I tried to use Pleasant Breeze a few times to check how it works, but I was never satisfied with the low chance for skill to occur and I abandoned that completely. A bigger chance for skill to happen is needed, for a GoW crit legacy to have a place on LI. Now that PB is changed to healing, the skill might be more useful.

Power skills
I thought about power restoring cooldowns already when sharing power, and it seemed strange to me why the low cooldown. Ignoring other work around me, I could really restore power to entire group in no time. A 30s cooldown to fellowship, and a 15s on single target is probably ok?
Talking about power in general, there were problems with power sometimes when levelling, but none at cap level (except while boss power drains). So for Power Restore to become more used and important, slight changes in power consumption could be considered? I never played PvP though, so I don't have any comment on Creep power drains and counters to that.
Now on to the Power of Knowledge skill. Someone already said it's one of the coolest animations in game and I agree with that, when you draw it from a dazed opponent. I didn't use it for drawing power though, but always as a morale restoring option. Here were already some ideas about bigger power costs to LM skills, instead of whole power consumption changes, so PoK will be used more frequently.
Burning Embers, Wizard's Fire, Gust of Wind
Good to bring back Wizard's Fire, for mentioned reasons. Spreading the fire onto the mobs, well that takes too much time, so reduce the induction for GoW. I know there's a -25% trait skill option, but what about when we play yellow?

Hasten
Hasten bonus was fine before with the icons appearing without having to strike a target. Its a waste of time and dangerous. I'll use the Storm Lore every time or any other daze, just to get away from mobs.

Increased base damage
I was satisfied with damage on red tree, it was sufficient to practically destroy a pack of mobs, combined with Ring of Fire and Lightning Storm. What I would like to know is, what kind of damage secondary damage skills do, for instance the fire ignited by Lightning Storm. Better make secondary outcomes more powerful, to avoid taking aggro with primaries. Also weak DoT skills over longer periods of time don't help much with lower morale mobs, better make those shorter and stronger. How are these DoTs comparing to RK ones?

Target Resistance Fire skills debuff Legacy
I read on these forums that fire debuff legacy doesn't do anything. Tested on an Arch-Enemy dummy and for me it didn't provide significant debuff on fire skills, after 100+ skill uses. There was no difference between a FA book with the legacy, and a TA book without it. Is that rumour true, can anyone explain and come up with a definite answer? Is dummy resist chance and subsequent debuff spread over Absorbs and Immunes?. Some say use a bunch of finesse, I'd rather use morale or mastery in place of finesse, if the debuffs actually worked as intended.

Armour Debuff Range
At the moment LMs have to get perilously close to the mobs or even the boss to use this skill. For someone who watches over a group this is a waste of time and also dangerous, similar to the not-so-thought-about Staff Sweep change. Make this skill usable on +20m.

This is all for now, thank you for reading.

[Oelle]

is there even a power-drain on any freep class actually?
I thought, LMs lost their power drain years ago already... never really used the skill anyway, but I thought, it just restored morale and power over the last years and lost the drain-part with HD traitlines or at another time some years ago...

[B749]

So, tried some stuff out on today's BR build.

DPS parses: was able to do pretty consistent 30k single target. Rotation can probably be optimized by a fair bit still tho! That was with 208k mastery and 53k critical rating. Using two of the nerfed tactical damage runes; I thought they were supposed to be unslotted but they haven't been? Not sure what's the goal for those and whether we should test with or without them.
Most of the damage coming from Embers in both its forms, followed by Lightning Strike and Lightning Storm. After that comes Blast of Flame (embers Lightning cashout effect) and Power of Knowledge channel. Other effects were pretty small, dealing very little damage overall because few uses (due to CD or proc luck) or underwhelming base damage.

Note: Sticky Gourd and Fierce Lightning floor damage effects are still doing very little damage:



I think all things considered, it's still below the mark (regardless of whether or not we're supposed to have two Tactical runes available). Suggestions to increase DPS output:

Increase damage on the following effects/skills:

• Sticky Gourd (floor effect) by ~100%
• Fierce Lightning (floor effect) by ~100%
• Gust of Wind by ~75%
• Power of Knowledge channel by ~50%

Those changes would hopefully bring the DPS closer to the 40k mark, possibly slightly beyond.

Also -- you need to address the Yellow line "Power of Knowledge" trait; make it do something relevant to the skill in its new form, like + channel duration maybe? Or make critical hits with Lightning Strike and Storm Lore reduce the active cooldown by 2 seconds? Just some ideas!

Overall the red line feels fun to play now, though the single target damage output is still a little underwhelming. The AoE potential is pretty good, though!