Bullroarer Update 30 - Preview #1 - OPEN

[Naithanion]

well, they look pretty terrible at the moment!

the debuff-nerf for loremasters will be heartbraking for some! (especially for loremasters - pun intended)

do not really like the changes to the yellow burg either.

talking nerfs. you have totally forgot to nerf the beorning healing trait. far to OP ) - you have to kill the best healers in the raids also, while you´re at it.

talking about tanks. for heavens sake, buff up the tanking abilites on warden and guardian and do not kill the yellow captain!

once again, instead of fixing broken treatlines (for example blue warden) to bring them up to the levels of the best tank atm, you are breaking the one that really is fun to play. grumble grumble grumble...

yeah, and concerning the guardian - thats what we really needed in groups/raids- more damage for a tanking class....lol

well so far I´m not very happy with many of the proposed changes, but we´ll see.

greetings and salutations to all.

Naithanion

[HolyGigi]

Captains:

I understand that captains are OP and they should be tweaked. But what is the point in going full Yellow line for solo or 6 man instances if these changes go live?

You literally can't use your biggest Yellow skill, SOTD, when soloing. Why have SOTD then as a trait skill when you can't use it anyway unless in groups?
If these changes go live, I'm seeing Captains giving up on close to 5 of their highest tier Yellow traits because there's no point in putting points in them, you are better off going for more Red or Blue.


So, this is an absurd decision, your way of fixing the class is by removing a skill. Not nerfing it, but removing it entirely for all the solo players. *slowclap*

[Turin347]

Dialling down the potency of the various lore skills and other debuffs is a great move from a player perspective as it means players have more options in terms of what classes they can bring. Whilst higher tier players will certainly still err on the side of always taking an LM there is now more freedom for lower tier players to take something else instead.

There are 30, soon to be 33 traitlines in this game; they can't all have a guaranteed spot in instance content. The more options we get in terms of group composition, the better the grouping experience becomes.

A huge flaw in this reasoning is this: while the LM was previously guaranteed a spot in the "high" raiding, the class was already self-exclusive: u should bring one and only one, else a waste of a raid spot.

While it is good to have more choices, it should fall in the line of almost all other classes; they can fit spots in the number from 0 to 6 (for dps classes), 1 to 3 for cappies, 1-2 for minies, 1-6 for burglars (in extreme but still quite viable comps ofc) etc.
The worst position a class had was the Guardian being in a 0-1 situation thanks to the cappy, and then came the LM with a 1 min to 1 max.
Now the LM is demoted to a 0-1 situation.

It was already sad that the presence of one LM in a (not storied) raid automatically excluded every other LM from being even considered, let alone when the recruiting leader was already a LM. And now the situation worsen, with the virtual loss of the "mandatory but single" spot they occupied, since the exclusivity has not been touched.

The dps increase is laughable. The LMs are still casting spells that do average 100k on critical with a 1,5 sec induction + 1 sec animation, making a resulting dps of 40k. Think about the Power of Knowledge ticking for 55k every 1sec: just using it is decreasing your dps, in a world where the lower average should be in the 120-150k range single ta and the important encounters are 90% of the time single target.

[Kaeneth]

I'm not terribly bothered by the yellow captain changes, except I'm not a fan of SoD no longer being able to be used on himself. Reducing the duration, or potency when used on yourself, yeah that would be fair. But completely removing the ability to use it on yourself is going too far, and turns it into a mostly useless ability albeit for specific raid situations. But if yellow captain is going to get nerfed, which is fine, how about finally at least giving them another skill that puts them in a battle-readied state when going into yellow? It would at least make the rotation a bit more interesting and fuller feeling.

Also take some time to revisit flash of light for yellow guardians. It got hit way too hard with the nerf bat when the PVP server came out because of how poorly the damage scaled across levels. It may have hit too hard on the early levels before, but it certainly didn't stay that was as you leveled. Buff it back up and make it scale better after blue line is taken care of.

[pikeperch]

While it is true that yellow captain is overpowered compared to other tanks, it is still the only tank that can actually tank the hardest endgame raids. The reason why everyone favours captain is because other tanks just will not survive what is required to complete the raid. After these nerfs will anyone be able to tank the hardest raids? Guardian, warden, champ, beorning cannot tank them already, let alone after the debuff nerfs to LM and burg. Honestly I can't see a single reason to nerf the support classes. That will do nothing but kill all reason to take them in group content.

[Kotal]

While it is true that yellow captain is overpowered compared to other tanks, it is still the only tank that can actually tank the hardest endgame raids. The reason why everyone favours captain is because other tanks just will not survive what is required to complete the raid. After these nerfs will anyone be able to tank the hardest raids? Guardian, warden, champ, beorning cannot tank them already, let alone after the debuff nerfs to LM and burg. Honestly I can't see a single reason to nerf the support classes. That will do nothing but kill all reason to take them in group content.

for the most part, you take a cappy currently just because it means less effort for the rest. guardian can in fact tank all the high tier content, however a lot of it is just so much more difficult to do. cappy just makes mechanics more forgiving and can self sustain much better (as in they can just pull shelob away on first topple after add phase and just self heal even through eat buffs). a nerf to cappy just means everyone else has to play better

[Melkorben]

Lore-master

• The sheer magnitude of fire lore and frost lore debuffs are considerably above where we're comfortable with for large group content.
  
  • Fire Lore traited effect reduced (35->10%)
  • Frost Lore traited effect reduced (30->10%)

• While wind lore could actually afford to be a little better:
  
  • Wind Lore effect increased from (1/2/3->3/4/5%)
  • Wind lore duration increased to 30s to free up more rotation for other skills.

• The following skills/effects gained have received an ~20% increase in damage:
  
  • Burning/Searing Embers (direct and DOT)
  • Wizards Fire
  • Test of Will
  • Gust of Wind
  • Cracked Earth

• Unimbued fire lore buff reduced to a max of +2.5%

I left the game approx. when you changed the AD loot system, as it was for me the last straw, but the main reason I left is the boring LM game play that basically become to: AC, Shatter arms, lores and interrupt/“cc” some mobs if needed.
From time to time I’m checking the forum for any LM update notification, hoping that it will bring me back.
LM game play already become so boring and non-challenging and these changes will make this much more worse.
Fire/Frost lore nerf will make the LM totally non relevant for 3/6 man, I said it before these changes but now I believe more will agree with me.
The only solid reason to take 1 y LM into raid is AC and Shatter arms, maybe the new raid will bring the use of the other pets.
The wind lore change is most welcome, I like it.
The damage “buff” of 20% is totally negligible and not in place, it wont make the Red LM relevant, it won’t help the y LM and wont help other trait trees or roles (if there are any…)
This should be, as I understood, a class balance for the new raid so make the y LM role more support relevant instead of nerfing it.
In support point of view:
So many LM skills become obsolete or nobody care/notice if the LM use them or not, such as: “Improved” Sign of Power: Command, “Improved” Power of Knowledge, Knowledge of the Lore-master, Sign of Power: Vigilance, Sign of Power: See All Ends, Inner Flame, Warding Knowledge (if no RK), Pleasant Breeze, Air-lore, all dps skills and their utilities!
Root/daze/stun skills are so easy to break, most of the mobs and all bosses are immune to them.
Healing skills- if you are using them or not no one cares.
Pets relevancy beside Shatter arms and Root Strike (if there is more than one hunter).
Obsolete Legacies such as: Charged Air Reflect Damage, Inner Flame Base Healing, Pet Attack Duration, Pet Morale, Signs of Power Durations and Signs of Power Debuff Ratings, 3x Target Resistance types and Power Restored.
And ofc. Gear “Bonus’s” that non relevant.
I hope you will finally fix and update the dated, boring and poor Lore Master.
Cheers.

[fealegwe2]

lets look at Vastins assumptions by theorising with numbers
Vastin believes by making boss hit less combined with less mits from LM will bring the guardian into a better place.

pre nerf: if a boss hits for 300k and gets debuffed for 40% his resulting hit would be 180k on the guardian.
post nerf: if a boss now hits for 200k and gets 10% debuff his resulting hit would be..... 180k on the guardian

pre nerf: if a boss hits for 500k and gets debuffed for 40% his resulting hit would be 300k on the guardian.
post nerf: if a boss now hits for 400k and gets 10% debuff his resulting hit would be..... 360k on the guardian

so by these numbers (which are used for explanation) we can see that a reduction of 33,3% or less damage from the boss will not help the guardian at all.

so my proposal is this: to bring the tanking ability of the guardian into a better place the boss has to have at least a 40% or more damage output reduction
do we see this happening?

it is easier to throw numbers into a random number genrating programm after setting basic parameters than developing a new mechanic for a new raid or by bringing back BPE to boss fights
we all know the raid designer team is short staffed and under immense strain because the exec producer wants new content every 13 weeks.

this is the easier "fix" to SSG headache they have in designing raids for upcoming releases instead of truelly looking at the real issues why certain classes became irrelevant in the first place

[jUMP]

With this changes you are brining the death to support classes you should think of that !!!!!

I hope this changes are not permanent otherwise we gonna see [LFF]: Looking for tank, healer and 10 dps classes LFF.
Looking forward on how youll lower mechanics damage just because of this balance patch.

[Joedangod]

A huge flaw in this reasoning is this: while the LM was previously guaranteed a spot in the "high" raiding, the class was already self-exclusive: u should bring one and only one, else a waste of a raid spot.

While it is good to have more choices, it should fall in the line of almost all other classes; they can fit spots in the number from 0 to 6 (for dps classes), 1 to 3 for cappies, 1-2 for minies, 1-6 for burglars (in extreme but still quite viable comps ofc) etc.
The worst position a class had was the Guardian being in a 0-1 situation thanks to the cappy, and then came the LM with a 1 min to 1 max.
Now the LM is demoted to a 0-1 situation.

And the ideal situation is that every class has 0+ spots available to it in group content. If you have 12 people who main all of the classes except LM this group shouldn't be penalised for not having someone who wishes to play LM in raid content. The best situation for the players is when each role has multiple specs that can perform at a competitive level.

These changes aren't trying to completely address all balance problems in one go, they're mostly just dialling back some of the more egregiously overpowered abilities we have. Even with these changes LM is still realistically guaranteed a spot in every raid due to the nature of AC, their absence is just less punishing for the lower tier groups that don't run perfect/meta compositions.

[Kotal]

[*]Shield of the Dunedain LI legacy cooldown bonus reduced from (+10->+5s) (total duration reduced from 20->15s), Shield of the Dunedain can only be used on others.

I really hope you reconsider this, it would make sense if it was for a support role, as in blue line. But it just feels bad for a tank not to have a personal, also makes the ability useless for solo play. Im not sure why you would bring a tank that has no personal when you can bring one that does, its basically killing the spec instead of balancing it so I would rather it be 10s duration, or 50%, even 25% damage reduction rather than it be useless.

uhm what? have you heared of last stand, fighting withdrawal, to arms, in harms way and the busted amount of self heals? losing SoD as a self CD is by no means gonna kill cappy tanks.

[BinaryTertiary]

[But it just feels bad for a tank not to have a personal, also makes the ability useless for solo play. Im not sure why you would bring a tank that has no personal when you can bring one that does, its basically killing the spec instead of balancing it so I would rather it be 10s duration, or 50%, even 25% damage reduction rather than it be useless.

chank

also lol

[BinaryTertiary]

Fire/Frost lore nerf will make the LM totally non relevant for 3/6 man, I said it before these changes but now I believe more will agree with me.

shouldnt you know what fire lore does before commenting on it?

[Melkorben]

shouldnt you know what fire lore does before commenting on it?

Clown flag is stitched on you *on every thread* you make...troll

[Starstorm01]

The brawler tank line is going to do poopoo over other tanks.

[Kotal]

regarding the concerns that lms can't heal: are you taking the spirit pet into account? i don't wanna give ssg any bad ideas, but just the one skill alone on spirit pet, if used after catmint, returns 10% of damage dealt as morale. in a raid that'll be between 30k and 50k hps on dps classes, in 3 mans that can still be ~25k-35k. and that's just this one skill, so i'm pretty sure that lms are actually great for healing especially for 3/6 mans

[fealegwe2]

Regarding Guardian tanking, I'm waiting to see where the Captain changes fall out before I go and start tweaking them further.

Boss damage is generally going to be tuned for a somewhat lower throughput as well to adjust for the debuff reductions, so Guardians may find themselves in a more reasonably competitive position by default - if not, I'll look at further adjustments for the other tanks.

What we did not want to do was bring all the other tanks up to the Captain's level of mitigation/vitality, as that was giving our raid designers a serious headache to work around.

-Vastin

>Regarding Guardian tanking, I'm waiting to see where the Captain changes fall out before I go and start tweaking them further.

so we reduce God-mode to superior mode and still leave the guardian at adequate mode..... oh wait captain is still superior needs another nerf.
so then we eventually have 2 adequate tanks, one with no die skill the other without. who would you choose as raid leader ? does not make the guardian any better

>Boss damage is generally going to be tuned for a somewhat lower throughput as well to adjust for the debuff reductions, so Guardians may find themselves in a more reasonably competitive position by default - if not, I'll look at further adjustments for the other tanks.

please refer to previous post

>What we did not want to do was bring all the other tanks up to the Captain's level of mitigation/vitality, as that was giving our raid designers a serious headache to work around.

how many captains are there on each server? how many of them are over 1 million health buffed?
in my opinion players who take the effort to gear and learn the right rotations should be rewarded and respected and not seen as the reason for a measuring stick by which ave joe gets judged.
if someone gets to that level of invincibility/mitigations in the game you designed and released then they should be rewarded with T5 completion and not have their class nerfed
what percentage of available captains that have entered T1 have completed T5 ? that should be measured as a reasonable idea of how OP they are

it seems SSG is like " oh #### guys! raiders have T5 completion now! our numbers are going to drop if we have Captains who don't die and LM's that make our bosses wet noodles"

ps.... no-one asked for a dps increase on the tank. who takes a red Guardian into a raid to tank?

[Kotal]

[QUOTE=fealegwe2;8074646]
how many captains are there on each server? how many of them are over 1 million health buffed?
in my opinion players who take the effort to gear and learn the right rotations should be rewarded and respected and not seen as the reason for a measuring stick by which ave joe gets judged.
if someone gets to that level of invincibility/mitigations in the game you designed and released then they should be rewarded with T5 completion and not have their class nerfed
what percentage of available captains that have entered T1 have completed T5 ? that should be measured as a reasonable idea of how OP they are

this amount of invincibility is not the player or the gear (for the most part). it is the class. mediocre cappy players can successfully tank higher tier raids without much issue, while skilled guards will have a very hard time and need a nearly perfect group (for remm at least).

the nerfs are a good step in the right direction

[Melkorben]

regarding the concerns that lms can't heal: are you taking the spirit pet into account? i don't wanna give ssg any bad ideas, but just the one skill alone on spirit pet, if used after catmint, returns 10% of damage dealt as morale. in a raid that'll be between 30k and 50k hps on dps classes, in 3 mans that can still be ~25k-35k. and that's just this one skill, so i'm pretty sure that lms are actually great for healing especially for 3/6 mans

M8,
You cant heal more than 100%, and the healer role is good enough for raids, so if the LM is using healing skills or not, including the spirit pet, it just doesn't matter.
BUT!!
If this fire/frost lore nerf will take place the use of spirit in raids will be noticeable for sure, for 3/6 man it will be very hard if at all.

[Turin347]

And the ideal situation is that every class has 0+ spots available to it in group content. If you have 12 people who main all of the classes except LM this group shouldn't be penalised for not having someone who wishes to play LM in raid content. The best situation for the players is when each role has multiple specs that can perform at a competitive level.

This is half correct, because actually the ideal situation would be if every class has both 0 spot guaranteed AND some number of spot possible. And having classes that can have possibly 6+ spots being competitive and classes that have max 1 spot in the same context is far from an ideal situation.

These changes aren't trying to completely address all balance problems in one go, they're mostly just dialling back some of the more egregiously overpowered abilities we have.

I agree that the lores were like a madness, debuffing 100% of the time all the mobs by 30(+)% of their dmg.
Not complaining about that, but about the blow at the value of the class itself. The point is in understanding how high or low is the value that the LM has lost without anything to compensate in any "direction".
The dmg buffs of the LM may now result being not so much better than having another dps because of the nerf of many other sources of increased dmg, so that the total dmg buff in the end will be lower in its multiplicative result. Or it may be the other way around, the LM dmg buffing will be more important due to the nerf of the buffs of others, but we'll see.

...their absence is just less punishing for the lower tier groups that don't run perfect/meta compositions.

I would say that their PRESENCE is just less CONVENIENT for the lower tier groups, and that is a whole different story.
The mob dmg is still there, but the LMs will just help less. At least, until we'll hear about a pass over all the mobs dmg outputs in all of the game, and for now there is no hint about that.

[jUMP]

M8,
You cant heal more than 100%, and the healer role is good enough for raids, so if the LM is using healing skills or not, including the spirit pet, it just doesn't matter.
BUT!!
If this fire/frost lore nerf will take place the use of spirit in raids will be noticeable for sure, for 3/6 man it will be very hard if at all.

Dont worry they don't play the game, they said for large group content. They don't care about 3 or 6 mans.

Imagine ShelobT5 with foul reek, webs, puddles or thossyT5 without cappy. They gonna delete some Shelob mechanics hahahaha and they needed like 4 weeks to release RemmoT45, they are going back in time not forward

[Kotal]

M8,
You cant heal more than 100%, and the healer role is good enough for raids, so if the LM is using healing skills or not, including the spirit pet, it just doesn't matter.
BUT!!
If this fire/frost lore nerf will take place the use of spirit in raids will be noticeable for sure, for 3/6 man it will be very hard if at all.

the main reason you need healers in a raid is tank damage, and damage spikes on the group. that is the reason why blue cappies aren't viable, cause they can't deal with damage spikes. however consistent group damage (tiering DoTs, puddles etc.) will be very well countered by healsblike spirit pet. for raids, the other lm heals aee not significant enough to counter damage spikes. for 3/6mans, however, those heals work very well. currently, you can run any t5 130 3 mans with an lm and 2 dps. lm heals are most certainly sufficient for that. and for 6mans, you don't bring lms just for lores either.

[Melkorben]

the main reason you need healers in a raid is tank damage, and damage spikes on the group. that is the reason why blue cappies aren't viable, cause they can't deal with damage spikes. however consistent group damage (tiering DoTs, puddles etc.) will be very well countered by healsblike spirit pet. for raids, the other lm heals aee not significant enough to counter damage spikes. for 3/6mans, however, those heals work very well. currently, you can run any t5 130 3 mans with an lm and 2 dps. lm heals are most certainly sufficient for that. and for 6mans, you don't bring lms just for lores either.

Agree about the raid in case your group is not following the mechanics or the mechanics is still not known, LM can help there for sure.
3/6 man you can run T5 with no LM and have no problem as well.
After these changes Im not sure if it will be needed/wanted at all- that's what Im saying.

[WorrBinpike]

So if i take Remmo as example with these changes, especially the LM and Captain changes not 1% will succeed T2+ this raid but 0,01% from now on.


Lol.....

[fealegwe2]

[QUOTE=Kotal;8074649]

how many captains are there on each server? how many of them are over 1 million health buffed?
in my opinion players who take the effort to gear and learn the right rotations should be rewarded and respected and not seen as the reason for a measuring stick by which ave joe gets judged.
if someone gets to that level of invincibility/mitigations in the game you designed and released then they should be rewarded with T5 completion and not have their class nerfed
what percentage of available captains that have entered T1 have completed T5 ? that should be measured as a reasonable idea of how OP they are

this amount of invincibility is not the player or the gear (for the most part). it is the class. mediocre cappy players can successfully tank higher tier raids without much issue, while skilled guards will have a very hard time and need a nearly perfect group (for remm at least).

the nerfs are a good step in the right direction

at what point did the Guard lose its relevance to the Captain? that should point towards the real issue. this band-aid policy is not sustainable
if having a class that is a problem, when it has always had these skills, points to a bigger problem, namely game design rather than the class itself.
and thats what i am trying to say.

in the current state of the game a skill that grants immunity will always have preference even if the captain and Guard are nerfed/buffed to be on the same level of mitigation/vulnerability
and lets not talk about wardens who were originally thought of as a tank hybrid.....