EMERGENCY: Fix Flash of Light Changes ASAP!

[Hallsae]

This is a downright tragedy! I seriously cannot believe that you would nerf the FoL dmg at ALL levels by a factor of three! What were you thinking?! Please tell me this is some sort of unintended bug, and there wasn't even a public statement on the release notes that the paid FoL trait would have its targets reduced to only four! Please change the targets back ASAP.

Please fix the scaling problem, i.e. to only nerf the early game mark by a reasonable amount (say ~ 30% at most), leave the mid game mark, and buff the late game mark by ~ 100 to ~ 150% (or more) from the previous damage. Refer here for more details: https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...lash-of-Light)

Lvl 88 (I used to do 1,100+ dmg with FoL @ 88...not 350, and BTW I have a legendary item):



Lvl 52 (before this wreck of an update, it used to do 850+....not 263):



Lvl 15 (Wowww, this is unacceptable. 72 dmg?! It used to do 250+):



Ideally, it should be lvl 15 = 150 dmg, lvl 52 = 600 dmg, lvl 88 = 3,000 dmg

Just as an example^

Do note that I have spent so much money on this game in recent years, particularly on my lvl 88 guardian which is now my 2nd character in Rohan and which I've had many fun experiences on - all gone to ruin. And for what?...some temporary waste of a PVP server which should never have existed.

You can very well see that I'm extremely angered by this rash decision to nerf an already useless ability at late game, and to severely nerf the only thing that made yellow guard playable at early game.

These changes make landscaping really limiting, and I can no longer solo efficiently. Please first revert and then correct these FoL changes, and please reconsider your answer to """"scaling"""".

[hamphat]

I am with you 100%.

[HolyDuckTape]

Welcome to the Guardian class! I hope u enjoy ur stay in the grave.

I totally agreed with SSG nerfing FoL at lower levels but at higher levels and especially cap level, FoL has been underperforming since forever. SSG had the right idea but totally blew it by nerfing the overall damage of it (x3) instead of just fixing the way FoL progressed/scaled depending on level.

It used to do 7,5k dmg on lv 130 T3 mobs, Noticeable (in 3mans with aoe), good free dmg i would say but still too bad for 6mans/raids. It should have already been 7,5k-10k in the 120 cap. Now it only does 2,4k (with light dmg legacy). It has just become total garbage, totally useless. Not only have they nerfed the only somewhat useful thing on guards at endgame, but they also nerfed the whole line by bugging out or intentionally nerfing the Radiate trait to only put ''Marked by Light'' on a max of 4 mobs at a time at max rank.

Very nice so they just:

1. Nerfed the dmg on a line that's literally meant to be a tank who deals dmg (just look at all the dps traits it has)
2. Nerfed the ability to debuff mobs, while that's literally the whole point of yellow line! They are debuff tanks... what in the world.

-Their debuffing was already trash and now it has become even more garbage. And needed some big buffs
-Their AoE dps was quite good for a tank but still on the low side for 6mans and raids. And needed a slight buff

Yet here we welcome another nerf lul.

(And the only real way of buffing yellow guard dps is by buffing FoL cause buffing anything else just risks getting dps-geared yellow guards too strong.)


So honestly SSG has to:

1. Revert the FoL change and then buff it in endgame and higher levels, nerf it in lower levels. Make the scaling/progression better.
2. Revert the Radiate change (and then buff it in the future guard update)

[Hallsae]

Most importantly, the devs need to make the FoL scale up with the landscape mob health accordingly with the level of the guardian himself…I've already said this before, and I will say it again. Please hear me!

So because mobs jump so drastically in morale from approx. lvl 49 to 50, the mark dmg should jump drastically as well. Is it so hard?

And no, I will not stand for this thread to get buried! We need our voices heard!

[zabothank]

And no, I will not stand for this thread to get buried! We need our voices heard!

Guardians indeed need to be heared, we are the most dead class in the game but this thread will just go down like any other guardian thread... There's just so little guards left to actually fight for guardian change, that already tells you enough you need to know about the state of guards.

[Hallsae]

Guardians indeed need to be heared, we are the most dead class in the game but this thread will just go down like any other guardian thread... There's just so little guards left to actually fight for guardian change, that already tells you enough you need to know about the state of guards.

I've linked @Vastin to this thread (and similar threads) via PM. Hopefully he listens.

[fireblaze737]

There are plenty of issues that the class guardian has such as:

The poor scaling of the incoming healing on the Warrior's Heart buff in blue on a guardian is it 1062 incoming healing rating, in yellow it gives 1062 incoming healing and 27k mastery (not bad amount of mastery for a tank) and red gives the same mastery

Adaptability is 3k at the max rank (rank 3) and requires the guardian not to use block and parry response skills to remove it not to mention Warchant removes the block one but not the parry one even though it is neither a block nor parry response skill (what is the cap on BPE?... yea this a is negligible buff)

Shield Use rank... don't need to say more on that one

Break the ranks == you are wondering why you are dying...

Disorientation which has been rendered useless since the introduction of finesse because who needs a reduction in BPE of a mob when you only see partial evade, parry(why are you in front of the mob?) and blocks(see parenthesis next to parry) as a dpser (the relevance of blue line is as a tank line, therefore, your disorientation is the buff that guardian gives to buff damage on the mobs for the DPS classes).

BPE scaling as a whole because you need to get 3 stats (not just one like the vitality stacking meta) and BPE does not work against tactical damage (which is about half the damage in the raid) so you would have to stack resistance as well for 4 stats total that would have to result in the same damage reduction as the increase of morale that would be provided by stacking the BPE and resistance

Morale Pool is the lowest in-game and the primary buff that guardian has over other tanking classes (mitigations) are now the same as the warden class with the set (70% from self buffs), this means even warden is more useful than guardians as tanks because they are a better version of guardians without some of the cooldowns but better DPS (who needs cooldowns though on a warden when you have massive BPE buffs that are kind of relevant). Numbers around 22k for lowest to 88k on highest I believe not to mention other tanking classes (Captain I am looking at you with that 940k (with dwarf's endurance and duty-bound) morale and 20% incoming damage reduction on 100% uptime or last stand effectively on an approximate 2-minute cooldown with the set bonus and traits for temporary infinite morale pool)

Stoic bubble rank 6 - I just fully healed with the Warrior's Heart skill and my temporary morale bubble did not pop so I need an extra heal to help keep me alive...?

Catch a breath bug - 2 bugs actually, One is the immediate skill bug which is well documented the other is if you have a block or parry response when catch a breath comes off cooldown then you cannot use the skill until your next block or parry response.

General Scaling issues on Guardian class - aka it does not really scale from level to level with the extraordinarily linear scale curve in a game that scaled on an exponential scale this bug is evident with the recent nerf because the damage was supposed to scale from low-level values to the high-level values but with mobs having hundreds of thousands of morale 3k damage is less than 3% of the morale pool versus something having hundreds of morale taking 72 for numbers less than 7% of morale pool

Not sure if this is a bug but is forced opening supposed to be in blue as well or is that a unique skill that is available in only 2 of 3 lines (I honestly don't know of any skill that is available in 2 of 3 lines most other skills are gated behind one line or in all 3 lines as far as I am aware)

And what do they do, nerf flash of light because "that kills people", the guardian class is not supposed to be good. We cannot have that now, can we?

[djheydt]

Just to satisfy my curiosity: what does Flash of Light do?

I ask because yesterday, one of my LMs ported from Duillond to Bree and started emitting flashes of light. Could someone have cast them on me, perhaps by accident? They were about a second apart and lasted for four or five seconds. I had neither buffs nor debuffs on me. Any ideas what that could have been?

[Hallsae]

Just to satisfy my curiosity: what does Flash of Light do?

I ask because yesterday, one of my LMs ported from Duillond to Bree and started emitting flashes of light. Could someone have cast them on me, perhaps by accident? They were about a second apart and lasted for four or five seconds. I had neither buffs nor debuffs on me. Any ideas what that could have been?

It's got absolutely nothing to do with LMs. Instead, it's the light damage that procs when you mark a mob with Take to Heart (an ability you get as soon as you enter the Fighter of Shadow/yellow line).

Flash of Light/Take to Heart is (was) the defining ability of the yellow guardian...without FoL, the yellow guard is nothing. The devs have stripped us of our core ability to fight multiple and higher difficulty mobs on landscape, while at the same time questing and deeding very quickly. So now we are left with no solo line whatsoever.

[splatterthrash]

Flash of light was quite overpowered at lower levels and deserved to be nerfed.

[Hallsae]

Flash of light was quite overpowered at lower levels and deserved to be nerfed.

Did it really deserve to be nerfed by ~ 68% (AKA 3x weaker)? You tell me.

Do you really think that an ability should be doing 350 dmg to mobs that have over 17 K morale? You tell me.

[Murtanion]

Did it really deserve to be nerfed by ~ 68% (AKA 3x weaker)? You tell me.

Do you really think that an ability should be doing 350 dmg to mobs that have over 17 K morale? You tell me.

You really don't want to look at the other guard damage tooltips if this is upsetting to you.

Leave FoL in the graveyard. Fix all the other myriad issues with Guardian DPS, Traitlines, and tanking Viability.

[Hallsae]

You really don't want to look at the other guard damage tooltips if this is upsetting to you.

Leave FoL in the graveyard. Fix all the other myriad issues with Guardian DPS, Traitlines, and tanking Viability.

Well clearly I'm a landscaper who mains yellow, deep into the Wildermore storyline…only to have it ruined like this. Why did they choose FoL, out of all possible abilities, to modify? All because of some PVP server, my solo capability has to suffer as a result. There's a reason I chose yellow guard to level up, you know…because it's fast, fun, and efficient.

[HolyDuckTape]

Flash of light was quite overpowered at lower levels and deserved to be nerfed.

Indeed, but the problem is that ssg nerfed the whole thing for all levels. At cap level it wasn't anywhere close to OP and now it's trash beyond trash.

[splatterthrash]

Indeed, but the problem is that ssg nerfed the whole thing for all levels. At cap level it wasn't anywhere close to OP and now it's trash beyond trash.

100% agree, but look at it this way: being already nearly irrelevant at cap, it's not like an extra nerf will make much of a difference anyway. The class has much bigger issues than this.

[HolyDuckTape]

100% agree, but look at it this way: being already nearly irrelevant at cap, it's not like an extra nerf will make much of a difference anyway. The class has much bigger issues than this.

True that, it's already in the grave regardless of FoL. So it's more like a quality of life kinda thing at this point. Well it was already a QoL thing pre-nerf for cap

[Kaeneth]

Even with more pressing issues in the overall scheme of things, this really mattered to me just as somebody who very much so enjoyed playing yellow guardian. Sure, go ahead and lower the damage a bit at the lower levels, it's fair to say it was a bit on the high end there. (Though even then was really necessary to lower by 68%? That degree at least seems purely like it was done for Bombadil rather than PVE.) But regardless, higher levels, and on to cap, should have been left alone or even buffed some. It was just so unnecessary there, and I think that's what's most irritating about it.

[Hallsae]

Our biggest hindrance now is that Vastin hasn't been online since 24 June. Is he usually offline for this long?

I seriously cannot resume my yellow guard solo play because of this.

[djheydt]

It's got absolutely nothing to do with LMs. Instead, it's the light damage that procs when you mark a mob with Take to Heart (an ability you get as soon as you enter the Fighter of Shadow/yellow line).

Flash of Light/Take to Heart is (was) the defining ability of the yellow guardian...without FoL, the yellow guard is nothing. The devs have stripped us of our core ability to fight multiple and higher difficulty mobs on landscape, while at the same time questing and deeding very quickly. So now we are left with no solo line whatsoever.

Yes, I figured it wasn't the same thing. But what, can anyone imagine, caused my LM to be generating flashes of light for several seconds?

[Gandolf_TheOld]

Our biggest hindrance now is that Vastin hasn't been online since 24 June. Is he usually offline for this long?

I seriously cannot resume my yellow guard solo play because of this.

It has only been 10 days. Have you ever considered Vastin may be on vacation or worse? After all he does live and work in Massachusetts; the Boston Metropolitan Area.

[Forohir]

I very much suspect there's a bug here.

The amount they reduced it by (roughly two thirds) is about the same as the potential +Light damage legacy can give when maxed out (+69%).

The problem is that that legacy is not working correctly.

According to the patch notes:

Flash of Light has had its damage reduced. However, this ability will now properly benefit from added light damage bonuses from Legendary Items at higher levels.

Indeed the damage has been decreased. Whereas before the patch I was doing 10,081 to a given enemy, now I am doing 2,880 to that same enemy.
If I equip a belt with +42% Light damage, I do 3,084 -- an increase of around 7%, not 42%.

For that alleged "42%" to come out as instead "7%" means Flash of Light base damage is around 500 at level 130, and that some mysterious trait / stat is giving my Guardian +450% damage to it to bump it up to 2880, and then my +Light legacy is only applying 42% against that 500 base, to up my damage to 3084.

I think that's very unlikely. I think the intention here was that they reduced the base damage by 69% but then assumed the legacy would allow people to recover that 69% … except that's not how the math is working out.

[Hallsae]

I very much suspect there's a bug here.

The amount they reduced it by (roughly two thirds) is about the same as the potential +Light damage legacy can give when maxed out (+69%).

The problem is that that legacy is not working correctly.

I think that's very unlikely. I think the intention here was that they reduced the base damage by 69% but then assumed the legacy would allow people to recover that 69% … except that's not how the math is working out.
[/FONT][/LEFT]

Even then, a 69% dmg nerf for any level of FoL is still an outlandish decision, especially at early game when you have virtually nothing to compensate (in later levels, at least you have more skills and extra trait tree buffs + LI). Basically, your character is useless until he gets the LI legacy, which doesn't even make it acceptable anyways, as +69% is nowhere near as significant as –69%…you'd need around +200% to make a threefold increase.

[HolyDuckTape]

I think the intention here was that they reduced the base damage by 69% but then assumed the legacy would allow people to recover that 69% … except that's not how the math is working out.
[/FONT][/LEFT]

Sounds interesting, I too think that they tried to fix the dmg lost with the light dmg legacy so cap level FoL wouldn't be affected. Vastin himself stated that it was a Low-level problem and not a higher level/cap level problem. Seems like the math just didn't work out and they messed it up. Seems like there is still hope for a fix then, but for now rip FoL

[Hallsae]

Yeah, should've seen this coming. Just look at the way in which Cordovan worded the initial changelog:

We have run a command on Bombadil only to reduce the damage from the Guardian ability Flash of Light, as this ability was doing excessive damage. This change will be applied to all servers in a future patch.

^That sounds like they optimised it only for Bombadil, and didn't even bother to test it on live servers/PVE before releasing it.

Devs, next time, please make sure to test these sorts of changes before releasing them. Please!

[Kaeneth]

I'm not sure if it's intentional, but I've just noticed high elf's light damage racial trait doesn't seem to have any effect on war-chant or FoL...

I dusted off my old level 40 guardian I hadn't logged into for a while to see how this really did impact the lower levels where the main focus of the change was. In Fornost water FoL did 173 damage to the mobs with ~6.5k morale and 169 damage to the mobs with ~14k morale. So even where it may have been a bit too powerful before, I think the 68% even at lower levels was way too much. It's just not even that noticeable that it's active.

I understand wanting to get a quick fix out for Bombadil, but for live servers this just wasn't went about in the right way. I hope this skill gets revisited, readjusted, and scales a bit more normally, ultimately being a bit more useful in the lower levels and a lot more useful in the higher levels than it's currently sitting.