Blue line Burglar: The rework nobody asked for

[tansquare]

As a longtime burglar, amidst all these class updates and reworks, I'm highly anticipating a good look at where burglars stand!
In this post (excuse me if this is poorly formatted, I'm not an avid forum user) I will address my concerns of the class, specifically the gambler line.
I'll be suggesting a few changes and additions that could be made to make the class more engaging and rewarding.

The goal of the subclass is to rely upon "damage over time" and "chance" to defeat foes.
Burglars who focus in this line are not expecting to reach quiet-knife levels of damage, and that's not what this post is about.

The sad reality is, the DoTs from this line are very sub-par, and there is very little element of chance to be seen late game, as gamblers strike upgrades any gamble to max tier.

Possible ideas are as follows:


To start, the gambler line has three different kinds of gambles: damaging, debuffing, and disabling. We'll first look at these in detail.

Damaging gamble is very straightforward. It's a middle of the road bleed. It doesn't do a ton of damage, but with the legacy it can get up there.
Using the skill "Cash Out" allows you to consume the gamble on the target to remove the DoT to do some damage. Overall, it's not good, but not great.
Not much needs to be changed here, aside from the duration and damage. Up the damage just a little, and allow the skill "Hedge your bet" to reset or increase the duration.
Cashing out the gamble could deal area damage, or apply some sort of incoming damage debuff to make lucky/gamblers strike more rewarding.

Debuffing gamble is superb. Very little needs to be modified here. It reduces target damage, attack speed, and adds a large miss chance to their attacks.
Again, Cashing out this gamble accomplishes nothing. It gives the teensiest evasion buff known to man, supplying a very low rating increase and has no duration whatsoever.
It's much more beneficial to just keep the debuff on the target, as you'll end up lasting longer. We'll come back to this later.

The final, and most outstanding issue with the gambler line is the disabling gamble. My goodness. How did this skill get through the cracks.
It's a permastun, allowing any non-boss mob to be dazed with a very low break chance. It's almost a necessity in some situations, but many refuse to use it simply because of how boring and strong it is. There's a lot that needs a good look here. There should be a tool tip, like the other gambles that show a gamble is on the target. Another quick and more balanced change could be a delayed stun: "on expiration, the target is stunned for 1 x gamble tier" (ex: tier 1 gamble is 1 second, tier 6 is 6 second). It needs a window where it cannot be reapplied, so you cannot just spam it.
Another HUGE thing is that it cannot be cashed out. As it has no tool tip, you have no idea how it will last, and you have no way of removing it when applied. Cashing out this gamble could remove the delayed stun debuff and apply a shorter knockout, giving it some boss utility.


With a look at the base gambles aside, it's time to introduce a mechanic that could make this line more interesting. The risk/reward playstyle potential is huge, and it's unfortunate this line isn't showing the colors it could be. To fix this, we're adding a stackable buff called "luck".

Luck stacks up to five times on a gamble burglar, each stack increasing melee damage and evade chance by 1%. (Probably replacing stick and move).
One instance of luck is rewarded for each successful evade or critical hit on an enemy. The way luck ties in with gambles is as follows: luck is consumed to increase the tier of a gamble when initially applied. Gamblers strike no longer makes a gamble max tier, it just applies the damaging gamble. With no luck, gambles always apply at tier 1 EXCEPT IN STEALTH. Stealth feels very useless in blue line as it provides no benefits aside from a gamble chance increase. Aside from this, burglars will get a single tier increase to a gamble per luck used.
This change may give the player less control over the tide of the battle, but allows gambles to have their potency increased, making that 6 tier gamble so much more satisfying.

Healing is also a large issue with the gambler line. Bob and weave heals for about 2k at level 115, where mobs will hit you with 5k attacks. With luck introduced, Bob and weave no longer applies on an evade, instead, cashing out heals the burglar for 3% of their morale per tier of gamble purged. This gives more control to the player, and more sustain to the line. (Also the current heal over time ticks for 200 health every few seconds, it feels very useless). Cash out would provide this heal in addition to the changed removal effects.

The final idea relates to "All in" a buff that allows the gambler to increase damage, attack speed and evasion temporarily. This buff becomes a debuff if a target is not killed while you are under its effects. This skill perfectly encompasses the kind of playstyle of chance and risk, but waiting another 30 seconds for it to come back off cool down becomes irksome. To fix two birds with one stone, we will be changing gamblers advantage, the weakest bleed I have ever seen in lord of the rings, to something useful. Gamblers advantage becomes "Risky blow". This melee skill has a longer cool down (about 20 seconds) , and unlocks after an evade or crit like the normal skill, except it is significantly stronger. It even reduces the "All in" cool down by 5 seconds. The drawback? It has in induction! This skill requires you to either evade, attack from stealth, or for the opponent to miss for it to hit. This is where we return to the cash out of the debuffing gamble. Instead of the normal boost to evasion, we get a morale shield that while active, increases evasion by 15%. It won't last long, but a skilled burglar, with enough luck will be able to take advantage of this dynamic and deliver Savage blows while dodging assaults from his/her enemies.

These are just a few concept I thought up late at night. I'm aware this would be a huge rework, but the blue line just needs a good face lift.
Again, any thoughts, additions or criticisms are greatly welcomed.

[Fingerz]

As a longtime burglar, amidst all these class updates and reworks, I'm highly anticipating a good look at where burglars stand!
In this post (excuse me if this is poorly formatted, I'm not an avid forum user) I will address my concerns of the class, specifically the gambler line.
I'll be suggesting a few changes and additions that could be made to make the class more engaging and rewarding.

The goal of the subclass is to rely upon "damage over time" and "chance" to defeat foes.
Burglars who focus in this line are not expecting to reach quiet-knife levels of damage, and that's not what this post is about.

The sad reality is, the DoTs from this line are very sub-par, and there is very little element of chance to be seen late game, as gamblers strike upgrades any gamble to max tier.

Possible ideas are as follows:


To start, the gambler line has three different kinds of gambles: damaging, debuffing, and disabling. We'll first look at these in detail.

Damaging gamble is very straightforward. It's a middle of the road bleed. It doesn't do a ton of damage, but with the legacy it can get up there.
Using the skill "Cash Out" allows you to consume the gamble on the target to remove the DoT to do some damage. Overall, it's not good, but not great.
Not much needs to be changed here, aside from the duration and damage. Up the damage just a little, and allow the skill "Hedge your bet" to reset or increase the duration.
Cashing out the gamble could deal area damage, or apply some sort of incoming damage debuff to make lucky/gamblers strike more rewarding.

Debuffing gamble is superb. Very little needs to be modified here. It reduces target damage, attack speed, and adds a large miss chance to their attacks.
Again, Cashing out this gamble accomplishes nothing. It gives the teensiest evasion buff known to man, supplying a very low rating increase and has no duration whatsoever.
It's much more beneficial to just keep the debuff on the target, as you'll end up lasting longer. We'll come back to this later.

The final, and most outstanding issue with the gambler line is the disabling gamble. My goodness. How did this skill get through the cracks.
It's a permastun, allowing any non-boss mob to be dazed with a very low break chance. It's almost a necessity in some situations, but many refuse to use it simply because of how boring and strong it is. There's a lot that needs a good look here. There should be a tool tip, like the other gambles that show a gamble is on the target. Another quick and more balanced change could be a delayed stun: "on expiration, the target is stunned for 1 x gamble tier" (ex: tier 1 gamble is 1 second, tier 6 is 6 second). It needs a window where it cannot be reapplied, so you cannot just spam it.
Another HUGE thing is that it cannot be cashed out. As it has no tool tip, you have no idea how it will last, and you have no way of removing it when applied. Cashing out this gamble could remove the delayed stun debuff and apply a shorter knockout, giving it some boss utility.


With a look at the base gambles aside, it's time to introduce a mechanic that could make this line more interesting. The risk/reward playstyle potential is huge, and it's unfortunate this line isn't showing the colors it could be. To fix this, we're adding a stackable buff called "luck".

Luck stacks up to five times on a gamble burglar, each stack increasing melee damage and evade chance by 1%. (Probably replacing stick and move).
One instance of luck is rewarded for each successful evade or critical hit on an enemy. The way luck ties in with gambles is as follows: luck is consumed to increase the tier of a gamble when initially applied. Gamblers strike no longer makes a gamble max tier, it just applies the damaging gamble. With no luck, gambles always apply at tier 1 EXCEPT IN STEALTH. Stealth feels very useless in blue line as it provides no benefits aside from a gamble chance increase. Aside from this, burglars will get a single tier increase to a gamble per luck used.
This change may give the player less control over the tide of the battle, but allows gambles to have their potency increased, making that 6 tier gamble so much more satisfying.

Healing is also a large issue with the gambler line. Bob and weave heals for about 2k at level 115, where mobs will hit you with 5k attacks. With luck introduced, Bob and weave no longer applies on an evade, instead, cashing out heals the burglar for 3% of their morale per tier of gamble purged. This gives more control to the player, and more sustain to the line. (Also the current heal over time ticks for 200 health every few seconds, it feels very useless). Cash out would provide this heal in addition to the changed removal effects.

The final idea relates to "All in" a buff that allows the gambler to increase damage, attack speed and evasion temporarily. This buff becomes a debuff if a target is not killed while you are under its effects. This skill perfectly encompasses the kind of playstyle of chance and risk, but waiting another 30 seconds for it to come back off cool down becomes irksome. To fix two birds with one stone, we will be changing gamblers advantage, the weakest bleed I have ever seen in lord of the rings, to something useful. Gamblers advantage becomes "Risky blow". This melee skill has a longer cool down (about 20 seconds) , and unlocks after an evade or crit like the normal skill, except it is significantly stronger. It even reduces the "All in" cool down by 5 seconds. The drawback? It has in induction! This skill requires you to either evade, attack from stealth, or for the opponent to miss for it to hit. This is where we return to the cash out of the debuffing gamble. Instead of the normal boost to evasion, we get a morale shield that while active, increases evasion by 15%. It won't last long, but a skilled burglar, with enough luck will be able to take advantage of this dynamic and deliver Savage blows while dodging assaults from his/her enemies.

These are just a few concept I thought up late at night. I'm aware this would be a huge rework, but the blue line just needs a good face lift.
Again, any thoughts, additions or criticisms are greatly welcomed.

I believe the debuffing gamble doest not scale well at higher levels at all looking at previous threads and would require some work to be viable in t2c content.
https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...-Chance-Debuff

[Oelle]

Blue line burglar has several issues:

Its meant to work with RNG, but chances for proccs are always 100% for everything, if the player wants to go for that.
It uses gambling skills, but can only ever apply one of those, as they overwrite each other.
It does worse DPS than redline and worse debuffing than yellow line. Usually, one wants to debuff OR do dps, not a bad mix of both.

Debuffing gamble stacks additive, while yellows debufftrick stacks multiplicative. That makes yellow debuff MUCH better than debuffing gamble and debuffing gamble actually ####, although it sounds nice.

Blue burglars can permamezz several targets, which is so awesome, that many tend to call it OP and want a nerf. Plus, one doesnt have to trait blue at all to get it, only to be 100% sure that it works reliably.

->blue should get a complete rework which gives it a completely different use.
Something like yellow defensive debuffing (reduced outgoing damage of enemies) and blue offensive debuffing. Or other way round, though I see yellow more defensive, as it has groupheal and other effects for the group like mass-purge and power-regen for the group.
Or, blue burglar could get kinda tanky. Or it could get some ranged skills, like a dart-throwing spec with viable ranged damage. There is no need for one class with three different traitlines that all kinda do the same: damage and debuffing and CC, just in differing strengthes.
Or, blues gambles should just be viable, which none besides permamezzgamble actually is and really have a chance to do something, that is not always 100%.

[Mithithil]

The OP has clearly thought long and hard about the whole thing and I like the ideals, while thinking that some of the applications are "personal taste". I speak as one who rather enjoys blue line and yes, that does mean taking advantage of the ability to "shut down" mobs, there again, its rather the line's sole thing that it does well. Gambles just feel so unrewarding. Yes, 100% chance of success is great, but 100% chnace of a not very impressive bleed isn't really a bonus. Indeed since Mordor opened I've gone back to red line most of the time because the blue dps is low enough to be tedious and the mob shut down stopped being reliable just that once too often.

The games RNG has an unenviable reputation which is of limited help. 100% to thee and me isn't 100% to the RNG, suggesting other factors. The self heal cannot even be defined as woeful. I would suggest that if a blue line burglar has intentionally flipped on the evade buffing skill then the net result should be an achievable recovery of at least 1/3 of a morale pool not just enough to stave off a weak hit from a landscape mob. That's just not, well heroic enough! This is the skill we ued to used to solo through the gate to get to Tarman Sursa and L45 or thereabouts and should be something impressive. Maybe all incoming damage is converted to morale while the buff is on? Within reason or Scourges could become embarrassingly trivial:-)

I liked the stacking luck, but smacks of stacking Fervour. Burglars should be complex to play, its an advanced class, but complexity isnt just mechanics but implied playstyle too. I'm still alongside the idea of "if you are good you get places others have to group to". The mob shut down gives you some free hits, but maybe the stun immunity mechanics should apply afterwards.

[ColMcStacky]

I just want to say, I am asking for this rework . Although I'm fairly new to burg (only had one capped for a few months now), blue line is my favorite because of the sheer amount of versatility it provides. In my opinion, Tansquare had some really good suggestions to actually make blue burg competative in group content with red/yellow.

With a look at the base gambles aside, it's time to introduce a mechanic that could make this line more interesting. The risk/reward playstyle potential is huge, and it's unfortunate this line isn't showing the colors it could be. To fix this, we're adding a stackable buff called "luck".

Luck stacks up to five times on a gamble burglar, each stack increasing melee damage and evade chance by 1%. (Probably replacing stick and move).
One instance of luck is rewarded for each successful evade or critical hit on an enemy. The way luck ties in with gambles is as follows: luck is consumed to increase the tier of a gamble when initially applied. Gamblers strike no longer makes a gamble max tier, it just applies the damaging gamble. With no luck, gambles always apply at tier 1 EXCEPT IN STEALTH. Stealth feels very useless in blue line as it provides no benefits aside from a gamble chance increase. Aside from this, burglars will get a single tier increase to a gamble per luck used.
This change may give the player less control over the tide of the battle, but allows gambles to have their potency increased, making that 6 tier gamble so much more satisfying.

I just want to comment on this Luck suggestion first, because it seems really interesting the way it ties into gambles. I like the idea a lot better than the current "Use Gambler's Strike to win" mechanic. I just want to add that I think the Luck buff needs to have a fairly low duration to actually make it "luck" and not "cheat". Maybe like 3-5s duration? I feel it needs a risk of falling off if you don't crit/evade enough, that way there is some luck to it. This way, waiting out for a higher tier of Luck actually has a risk to it of the buff falling off completely, forcing a "risk vs reward" situation which will probably be different for each gamble. This could alternatively work by making only crits from Crit Chain skills count towards the buff, but then increasing the duration of Luck to ~10s?

Also, I think it should only tier up to tier 3, making tier 4 gambles the highest initial application without stealth (maybe have stealth applications give +2 or +3 tiers?). This would be to account for a synergy with Hedge Your Bet that I would love to see: have a trait (replace capstone Sharp Eye maybe?) that upgrades Hedge Your Bet to a new skill called Stack the Deck, where when using it on a tier 6 gamble, rather than doing nothing, it will reapply the gamble at a random tier of 4 through 6. This would give the burg an incentive to stay focused on gamble durations rather than letting them wear off when they expire at tier 6. This will serve to make blue burg sort of "ramp up" as the fight goes on, starting with slightly weaker effects, but becoming more potent the more it harasses enemies.

Damaging gamble is very straightforward. It's a middle of the road bleed. It doesn't do a ton of damage, but with the legacy it can get up there.
Not much needs to be changed here, aside from the duration and damage. Up the damage just a little, and allow the skill "Hedge your bet" to reset or increase the duration.
Cashing out the gamble could deal area damage, or apply some sort of incoming damage debuff to make lucky/gamblers strike more rewarding.

I feel like the Damage Gamble should increase its damage almost exponentially as it tiers up. For all DoTs on a Blue Burg, each tier in my opinion should do a multiplier of the previous tier to really make maintaining a higher tier stand out damage-wise.

I would also like to see the duration of bleeds in Blue line to be increased (more than the +2 ticks we currently have). I think blue can be adapted with very little work to be a quasi-AoE line by simply increasing the duration of DoTs we possess, allowing us to maintain them on multiple targets with more ease. This would allow us to have some "AoE" damage without a massive rework, and without modifying our single target ability to accomplish this. And I'm not just talking about the Damaging Gamble here, I mean every DoT: Cunning Attack, Damaging Gamble, and Gambler's Advantage (which also needs a rather large magnitude buff).

Debuffing gamble is superb. Very little needs to be modified here. It reduces target damage, attack speed, and adds a large miss chance to their attacks.
Again, Cashing out this gamble accomplishes nothing. It gives the teensiest evasion buff known to man, supplying a very low rating increase and has no duration whatsoever.
It's much more beneficial to just keep the debuff on the target, as you'll end up lasting longer. We'll come back to this later.

If what Oelle said earlier in the thread about the Debuffing Gamble is true, then this needs to be fixed. The Debuffing Gamble should be multiplicative in my opinion, because an additive debuff is not helpful with the amount of effort it is to maintain. If anything about blue is fixed in my opinion, it needs to be this, especially since there is no risk of having both a Debuffing Gamble and Trick: Disable up at the same time; it won't be too OP or anything.

The final, and most outstanding issue with the gambler line is the disabling gamble. My goodness. How did this skill get through the cracks.
It's a permastun, allowing any non-boss mob to be dazed with a very low break chance. It's almost a necessity in some situations, but many refuse to use it simply because of how boring and strong it is. There's a lot that needs a good look here. There should be a tool tip, like the other gambles that show a gamble is on the target. Another quick and more balanced change could be a delayed stun: "on expiration, the target is stunned for 1 x gamble tier" (ex: tier 1 gamble is 1 second, tier 6 is 6 second). It needs a window where it cannot be reapplied, so you cannot just spam it.
Another HUGE thing is that it cannot be cashed out. As it has no tool tip, you have no idea how it will last, and you have no way of removing it when applied. Cashing out this gamble could remove the delayed stun debuff and apply a shorter knockout, giving it some boss utility.

As much as I agree with everything here, I have to say that I do like the daze. It doesn't have to be as broken as the Disabling Gamble currently is, but I do like having a second daze other than Riddle that can be a perma-mez in blue, and I would hate to see this disappear. The delay that you mentioned is a good way to fix this if you ask me. Leave the Disabling Gamble as a daze, but make it apply after a 10s delay, and any time someone tries to reapply the gamble to get a daze, it will reset the delay. Maybe have it be a 5s daze at tier 1, increasing by +2s for each tier? This would be 5s at tier 1 and 15s at tier 6. This way, the best you can do to perma-mez something would be to apply it after the target is already dazed, and the duration won't be long enough to be able to lock down more than two targets at once with full attention on maintaining the Disabling Gambles on the targets. Even with the +5s grace period from yellow, a single target that is taking damage can't be locked down more than 50% of the time, and it requires more attention than it does currently to maintain even this.

Healing is also a large issue with the gambler line. Bob and weave heals for about 2k at level 115, where mobs will hit you with 5k attacks. With luck introduced, Bob and weave no longer applies on an evade, instead, cashing out heals the burglar for 3% of their morale per tier of gamble purged. This gives more control to the player, and more sustain to the line. (Also the current heal over time ticks for 200 health every few seconds, it feels very useless). Cash out would provide this heal in addition to the changed removal effects.

I can see this working well. I would much rather just have Bob and Weave be increased honestly, but I would still be alright with a heal on cashouts.

The final idea relates to "All in" a buff that allows the gambler to increase damage, attack speed and evasion temporarily. This buff becomes a debuff if a target is not killed while you are under its effects. This skill perfectly encompasses the kind of playstyle of chance and risk, but waiting another 30 seconds for it to come back off cool down becomes irksome. To fix two birds with one stone, we will be changing gamblers advantage, the weakest bleed I have ever seen in lord of the rings, to something useful. Gamblers advantage becomes "Risky blow". This melee skill has a longer cool down (about 20 seconds) , and unlocks after an evade or crit like the normal skill, except it is significantly stronger. It even reduces the "All in" cool down by 5 seconds. The drawback? It has in induction! This skill requires you to either evade, attack from stealth, or for the opponent to miss for it to hit. This is where we return to the cash out of the debuffing gamble. Instead of the normal boost to evasion, we get a morale shield that while active, increases evasion by 15%. It won't last long, but a skilled burglar, with enough luck will be able to take advantage of this dynamic and deliver Savage blows while dodging assaults from his/her enemies.

I'm not a fan of the suggested cooldown increase to Gambler's Advantage, as once the bleed gets scaled, it can be a significant source of damage on multiple targets as it tiers up. I also don't really like the idea of decreasing the cooldown of All In (even if done by active mechanics). My main reservation with making blue line more dependent on All In for dps is that in boss fights, All In tends to be pretty useless since you don't actually get kills throughout most boss fights. In a group/raid situation, this may make blue burg lag behind in its actual dps numbers on single target fights the same way Beornings lag behind because their dps comes from a mitigation bypass in part, and not just from pure skill damage.

Now my criticism of All In aside, if this was to be done, maybe instead of increasing the cooldown on Gambler's Advantage, it stays at a 5s cooldown and only reduces the cooldown of All In by -2s? If my mathing is correct, using Gambler's Advantage every 5s would then make All In effectively have a 44s cooldown. Also, just wanted to mention that the Finesse buff/debuff from all in needs to be increased. Right now at 115, it is 2.8k. 10x this amount would be ok, but this is laughable.


Cashouts: I know these were mentioned by Tansquare throughout, but I wanted to give it a separate focus in my own post. Currently cashouts are useless. On the Damaging Gamble, the cashout gives a minimal damage tick (for me with 142% mastery, it is 6.8k at tier 6, before mitigated) that is barely more than a single tick of the gamble. On the Debuffing Gamble, it gives the Burg a brief, minimal evade buff. There is no cashout for the Disabling Gamble. The Damaging Gamble cashout effect is fine, it just needs a substantial magnitude increase. The Debuffing Gamble cashout is useless, giving an 8s evade buff of varying magnitude depending on the tier consumed (tier 6 gives 8500). At the very least, the duration needs to be increased to (I would say) at least 15s. Making this a percentage buff would also fix any scaling issues that might occur in the future, both at cap and lower levels (maybe making it +3% per tier?). The Disabling Gamble should get a cashout too, I recommend either an attack speed increase (+3% per tier?) or a movement speed increase (+2% per tier?).



I think these ideas are overwhelmingly positive, Tansquare, the All In suggestion being my only reservation in what you suggested. Overall though, I really like what you came up with a lot.

[ColMcStacky]

I just wanted to emphasize the bleed damage between tiers:


Now, I know my mastery is bad (I didn't build my burg for dps), but looking at percentage increases between tiers, you get the following:

Skill	Damage	increase to next tier	% increase to next tier
Damaging Gamble (4)	3906	178	4.6%
Damaging Gamble (5)	4084	1065	26.1%
Damaging Gamble (6)	5149	-	-
Gambler's Advantage (1)	651	651	100%
Gambler's Advantage (2)	1302	651	50%
Gambler's Advantage (3)	1953	-	-
Cunning Attack	2095	1550	74.0%
Critical Cunning Attack	3645	830	22.8%
Devastating Cunning Attack	4475	-	-

Now granted this is not accounting for legacies, traits, etc., but there doesn't seem to be any pattern or logic behind these increases. I think Blue Burg would get a much larger benefit if these scaled multiplicatively with previous tiers, say each tier being 50% stronger than the last. There will be a large variance, but that's the nature of The Gambler.

[FrauBlake01]

Blue line burglar has several issues:

Its meant to work with RNG, but chances for proccs are always 100% for everything, if the player wants to go for that.
It uses gambling skills, but can only ever apply one of those, as they overwrite each other.
It does worse DPS than redline and worse debuffing than yellow line. Usually, one wants to debuff OR do dps, not a bad mix of both.

Debuffing gamble stacks additive, while yellows debufftrick stacks multiplicative. That makes yellow debuff MUCH better than debuffing gamble and debuffing gamble actually ####, although it sounds nice.

Blue burglars can permamezz several targets, which is so awesome, that many tend to call it OP and want a nerf. Plus, one doesnt have to trait blue at all to get it, only to be 100% sure that it works reliably.

... which makes blue line perfect for soloing where no healer saves your behind and no tank grabs your aggro, and where the majority of mobs do NOT turn around for you to get any positional damage bonus, in fact I believe that no single mob turns around to grant you the positional bonus of red.

->blue should get a complete rework which gives it a completely different use.
Something like yellow defensive debuffing (reduced outgoing damage of enemies) and blue offensive debuffing. Or other way round, though I see yellow more defensive, as it has groupheal and other effects for the group like mass-purge and power-regen for the group.
Or, blue burglar could get kinda tanky. Or it could get some ranged skills, like a dart-throwing spec with viable ranged damage. There is no need for one class with three different traitlines that all kinda do the same: damage and debuffing and CC, just in differing strengthes.
Or, blues gambles should just be viable, which none besides permamezzgamble actually is and really have a chance to do something, that is not always 100%.

It does not need to become more tanky or ranged or whatever, if anything, it could focus on soloability. (There's already red for raiding which can take full advantage of positional in most raid situations.)

Would not hurt to make bleeds a lot stronger in blue. (Red line should be a 'Surprise Strike line' and not a 'Cunning Attack from stealth' line, i.e. should be positional, direct damage)

Even with the bad gear my burgs have, a Bob and Weave heal of 288 per tick with 40k+ morale is ridiculous, I think this is horribly broken. (With 5/5 in Swift and Subtle.)

I don't like the whole idea of removing the gamble debuff or gamble bleed, so I don't like the Cash Out skill at all. Doing (significant and not ridiculous) AoE damage when removing a gamble (like warden's Spear Sweep ?) would at least make this skill bearable. Or an ST damage spike, a really high one. (Spikes should be a red line direct damage thing though)
Otherwise, the skill should just be removed. A boost to Gambler's Advantage or bleeds in general could take that spot in the trait tree. (The skill is just a lazy copy of the yellow 'remove a trick' mechanic to gambles anyway.)

Hedge Your Bet and Gambler's Strike should not only upgrade gambles but also always refresh their duration. (--> remove Cash Out)

Gambler's Advantage should proc Even the Odds, not only Double-edged Strike.

Would not hurt to swap Double Down and Overwhelming Odds, so red line does not have the 'disable problem' anymore.
(No matter what SSG develops, I doubt that FMs will ever really work well, not with all the server lags that occur all the time [not occasionally]. Or maybe people want to have the lag and ping problems in a group scenario that wardens already have in their gambit building ?)

Subtle Stab cooldown needs to be reduced, as many posters already said.

To further support 'red = direct damage, blue = bleed', swap the Honed Wit and High Roller traits, possibly include Double-edged Strike. (My preference, Cash Out would be removed since the skill would be removed. ;-)

Sharp Eye: 'This buff is suppressed when you are performing your Critical Chain' ... why ?

Aggravated Bleeds ... lame



The trait trees and trait line bonuses were little more than what they were before trait trees, OO was in the gambler page of the old trait system I think. Nobody was forced to take it in the old system since there was full freedom.
Class work in Helm's Deep beta was ceased for most classes after the first pass because the devs were needed for the work on big battles or otherwise the server center outage might have had to take longer than two days.

This is why a useless trait bonus like Overwhelming Odds survived in the tree up to today. Nobody used FMs back then already.
(Sad thing is that this bonus even survived the recent rework. Sad thing is, that on top of OO, blue line now has a second useless bonus with Bob and Weave. Saddest thing is that there is little chance for improvment because burglars just recently had their 'rework'.)

Actually, Overwhelming Odds should have become a fellowship boost and gone to yellow, while Clever Retort should have been reworked to interact with gambles (instead of Cash Out) and gone to blue.
I never understood why a 'one of four effects' skill was not in the blue tree and why a fellowship dependent boost was not in the yellow one.
(Well, I understood that the trait trees were 'literal translations' of the old system with the old trait distribution to trait trees.)

But well, really working on the classes would have required the server center to go down for more than two days ... which could have cost the exec producer her job ... wait ...
(It was the unfinishedness of all classes that gave the trait trees their bad reputation.)



Finally, another dream ...
Removal of the Throw Knife skill and introduction of a new type of ranged weapon: slings, for burglars (and beornings, fits beornings much better than a bow imo)
A basic version of the weapon with the class trainer (similar to simple instruments for minstrels) and a crafted version, made either by farmers (my preference) or tailors.
Removal of burglar signals. With multi-output recipes, it would be no problem to have burglar and beorning versions.
No special skill for either class for the ranged weapon (beornings already have bows without a special Let Fly skill).
Raw damage comparable to a bow. (comparably to a bow-auto-attacking guardian)

(And no, dear hunters, yellow wardens, etc., it would NOT turn a burglar or beorning into a spot-threatening ranged beast.)

Of course this will never come because it would require new animations, but one can dream ;-)


PS: apologies for my bad English

[Mithithil]

Any ranged skill, be it a thrown knife, sling, catapault or what have you rather removes its purpose if it breaks stealth, its a small hit and will only ever be such, so why give away the advantage of a positioned attack with the primary weapon? Its not really in the spirit of what the burglar is all about, burglars don't fight fair. The ranged skill needs to do something, and ideally something relating to which traitline you are in, although that may not be fully practical. Not breaking stealth if in the rear arc of the target seems fair as a compromise, but perhaps it could proc something as well. My current thought is give the knife a 30s coodldown and give it a good chnace to proc a disarm, the knife sticks in the opponent's arm or similar. Note that a disarm only works on mobs that are not using natural weapons and the net effect for say, 5s, is a caster or rnaged cannot attack, or is interrupted and a melee mob belts you with its fists. Dragons, some trolls and giants, undead and all animals, well you simply made it cross... An easy way to determine would be to use the same filter that permits the picking of pockets. It could use the same test of stealth too if that kept mechanics and code simple.

[jljohnson4]

Any ranged skill, be it a thrown knife, sling, catapault or what have you rather removes its purpose if it breaks stealth, its a small hit and will only ever be such, so why give away the advantage of a positioned attack with the primary weapon? Its not really in the spirit of what the burglar is all about, burglars don't fight fair. The ranged skill needs to do something, and ideally something relating to which traitline you are in, although that may not be fully practical. Not breaking stealth if in the rear arc of the target seems fair as a compromise, but perhaps it could proc something as well. My current thought is give the knife a 30s coodldown and give it a good chnace to proc a disarm, the knife sticks in the opponent's arm or similar. Note that a disarm only works on mobs that are not using natural weapons and the net effect for say, 5s, is a caster or rnaged cannot attack, or is interrupted and a melee mob belts you with its fists. Dragons, some trolls and giants, undead and all animals, well you simply made it cross... An easy way to determine would be to use the same filter that permits the picking of pockets. It could use the same test of stealth too if that kept mechanics and code simple.

I agree with you. In pve throw knife seems to provide no particular advantage. However, in pvp throw knife is a gift from the freep gods. With a 4 second cd, 30m range, and the ability to use while moving, it is an amazing skill that allows us burgs to keep our faster warg counterparts in combat when they are out of range of our other skills. Though I do like your ideas for pve application.

[Demosthenes11]

Hey folks.

Most ideas seem very interesting. However, it seems to me that a number of issues attached to the current design and layout of the class, which would work pretty well if not for these, need to be resolved before we start thinking of a revamp. Judging by Beorning rework i doubt the devs have the resources and time to re-introduce the class. After all, it's not nearly as problematic as Beorning used to be until recently. On the other hand, it's problematic enough to be nearly excluded from the upcoming raid. This can be fixed in faster and easier ways than a total rework.

Here's a list of much needed fixes that would severely update the class back to relevance in view of anticipated and today's end-game group content:

1. Values for blue and red lines damaging abilities & trait bonuses.
Overall sustained DpS needs an increase. Burglars don't have to (and probably shouldn't) reach typical damage dealers in terms of numbers, but if their arsenal and its values are to remain unchanged, the contribution of their DpS to the group's overall DpS should be able to compensate for their lacking debuffs compared to their competitors, lore-masters, making them an equally desirable alternative.

2. Disabling Gamble behavior.
The debuff still appears to inconsistently apply additively(?) as opposed to multiplicatively (like disable and fire-lore) and differently based on target's mob type, meaning different percentage of damage decrease for elite/signature/etc mobs. The gap becomes larger the more mobs' mastery increase. This negates the option of picking Blue line as main trait branch in any boss fight, hence severely limiting the class to main yellow paths in most of group content. Duration is also ridiculously short.

4. Blue line.
Disabling gamble has no tooltip. Cash out is self-destructive and should -as of it's current state- be removed from a burglar's skillbars in case one accidentally uses it. Hedge your bet does not refresh gamble's duration and offers minor damage, making it a rotation filler. One basically hits it if everything else is on CD. Overwhelming odds trait is irrelevant, much like FMs.

5. Trick and trick removal damage legacy and trait bonus need to be severely increased or -preferably- changed to something meaningful.

6. Mischievous Delight & Clever Retort as the main fellowship healing tools are too weak. Clever Retort as attached to FMs abilities and their values probably needs a complete rework, unless there are any plans i'm not aware of about updating conjunctions.

7. Conjunctions are irrelevant and are solely used as another cc tool.

8. Debuffs.
A number of debuffs need a serious review to become potent, rather than rotation fillers. Dust in the eyes miss chance is obsolete against signature mobs and above in >t2 encounters. Snag duration is too short. Provoke crit chance percentage debuff value is way too low. Counter Defense is entirely broken as its numbers have yet to scale to today's rating standards. Addle is an essential debuff, but also a case of way too many uses packed in one single ability. We need it to interrupt inductions, to interrupt some of our own tremendously long animations and to debuff bosses. These features should belong to separate abilities or addle should have a much shorter cooldown.

This list was put together off the cuff. I might have missed some -or many- of today's burglar failings, but i can guarantee you that if even half of these points were addressed, we'd be having a much different and otherwise potent conversation here.

PS: Throw a knife is a fancy, even thrilling for casual folk idea, but truth be told it's obsolete to an end-game burglar. If this is the upshot equivalent of nerfing Reveal Weakness, i'm speechless...

[Areyekuwe]

Hey folks.

Most ideas seem very interesting. However, it seems to me that a number of issues attached to the current design and layout of the class, which would work pretty well if not for these, need to be resolved before we start thinking of a revamp. Judging by Beorning rework i doubt the devs have the resources and time to re-introduce the class. After all, it's not nearly as problematic as Beorning used to be until recently. On the other hand, it's problematic enough to be nearly excluded from the upcoming raid. This can be fixed in faster and easier ways than a total rework.

Here's a list of much needed fixes that would severely update the class back to relevance in view of anticipated and today's end-game group content:

1. Values for blue and red lines damaging abilities & trait bonuses.
Overall sustained DpS needs an increase. Burglars don't have to (and probably shouldn't) reach typical damage dealers in terms of numbers, but if their arsenal and its values are to remain unchanged, the contribution of their DpS to the group's overall DpS should be able to compensate for their lacking debuffs compared to their competitors, lore-masters, making them an equally desirable alternative.

2. Disabling Gamble behavior.
The debuff still appears to apply additively as opposed to multiplicatively (like disable and fire-lore) and differently based on target's mob type, meaning different percentage of damage decrease for elite/signature/etc mobs. The gap becomes larger the more mobs' mastery increases. This negates the option of picking Blue line as main trait branch in any boss fight, hence severely limiting the class to main yellow paths in most of group content. Duration is also ridiculously short.

4. Blue line.
Disabling gamble has no tooltip. Cash out is self-destructive and should -as of it's current state- be removed from a burglar's skillbars in case one accidentally uses it. Hedge your bet does not refresh gamble's duration and offers minor damage, making it a rotation filler. One basically hits it if everything else is on CD. Overwhelming odds trait is irrelevant, much like FMs.

5. Trick and trick removal damage legacy and trait bonus need to be severely increased or -preferably- changed to something meaningful.

6. Mischievous Delight & Clever Retort as the main fellowship healing tools are too weak. Clever Retort as attached to FMs abilities and their values probably needs a complete rework, unless there are any plans i'm not aware of about updating conjunctions.

7. Conjunctions are irrelevant and are solely used as another cc tool.

8. Debuffs.
A number of debuffs need a serious review to become potent, rather than rotation fillers. Dust in the eyes miss chance is obsolete against signature mobs and above in >t2 encounters. Snag duration is too short. Provoke crit chance percentage debuff value is way too low. Counter Defense is entirely broken as its numbers have yet to scale to today's rating standards. Addle is an essential debuff, but also a case of way too many uses packed in one single ability. We need it to interrupt inductions, to interrupt some of our own tremendously long animations and to debuff bosses. These features should belong to separate abilities or addle should have a much shorter cooldown.

This list was put together off the cuff. I might have missed some -or many- of today's burglar failings, but i can guarantee you that if even half of these points were addressed, we'd be having a much different and otherwise potent conversation here.

PS: Throw a knife is a fancy, even thrilling for casual folk idea, but truth be told it's obsolete to an end-game burglar. If this is the upshot equivalent of nerfing Reveal Weakness, i'm speechless...

I like this post and will repost it to this thread here: https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...hould-be-fixed

It does not mean that I agree with every word, or that the author should like everything I say. Still it hits many issues just right, in my opinion.