Bullroarer Update 30: Early Look: Skill Balance Work

[Kehleyr_SSG]

Welcome to the first look at a series of class balance adjustments we are working on for release in the coming months! This is an early look at class skill balance in particular that is targeted for release with Update 30: The Blood of Azog. With our emphasis on challenging end-game content, we've had to reconsider the balance of certain major group buffs and debuffs that were overpowered in the context of large fellowships. This has led to the reduction of several of these effects in order to hopefully allow for a wider breadth of class compositions in such content. We are balancing this work by not just focusing on nerfs, but DPS increases and other buffs as well.

We realize that we are coming in strong with a handful of significant balance adjustments downward to skills and abilities you may be used to using, and we would appreciate you considering the entirety of these balance adjustments in addition to "just" the key nerfs we are proposing. This list is also not intended to be a comprehensive look at class balance work that we will be doing both short and medium term.

Thank you for reading! Here are the changes being proposed.
~Cordovan

Notes added on May 25, 2021 are marked in turquoise
Notes added on May 27, 2021 are marked in violet

Beorning

• Cooldown on non-combat rez reduced [20s->1s]
• Expose is now a target debuff that increases incoming damage by ~Melee 7.5%, Ranged 5%, in human form it buffs Tactical and Ranged instead.
• Vigilant Roar no longer taunts by default - only when the first rank of the Vigilant Roar trait is taken (much like Biting Edge).
• ‘Vicious Claws’ (tank version only) can no longer miss, nor be blocked, parried, or evaded.
• Increased damage of the following skills:
  
  • Slam
  • Nature's Vengeance (initial hit)
  • Bee Swarm (initial hit)
  • Vicious claws, particularly in red-line.
  • Grisly Cry
  • Vigilant Roar
  • Thrash, particularly its lower tiers.
  • Expose
  • Bash
  • Execute

Burglar

• Fixed Disabling Attack trait attack speed bonus.
• LI bonus to Addle tactical dmg reduced to 5%, unimbued bonus to induction time reduced to 16%.
• Burglar Bob & Weave and Relish Battle trait heals both tick faster (1/s)
• Trickster versions of burglar skills are now named and described as such.
• In line with some of the other classes that have seen reductions in raid debuff skills, a couple of the yellow line trickster debuffs are being similarly trimmed.
  
  • Trickster debuff reductions:
    
    • Trick: Dust in the Eyes maximum miss rate reduced [~39%->15%]
    • Trick: Disable Damage reduction [-15%->-10%], Attack Speed Reduction [-20%->-10%]
    
    
  • Reworked Disable to fix various bugs (had to greatly simplify the skill's implementation under the hood). Finesse debuff is now -33% of target's finesse, rather than a scaling value.

Captain

• Captain's ability to maintain high and extended degrees of invulnerability has made them irreplaceable in high challenge content, so we've needed to limit a few of their most powerful abilities.
• ‘Kick’ can no longer miss, nor be blocked, parried, or evaded.
• Fixed: Captain banner heralds were not correctly inheriting offensive bonuses from their summoner.
• Fixed an old 'Make Haste' duration change that was never processed correctly.
  
  • Yellow Line:
    
    • Captain Yellow line morale bonus reduced from 25->10%.
    • 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.
    • Stand Tall Duration bonus reduced from (+10->+3s), Proc cooldown reduced from (1.0,2.0,3.0->1.0s,1.5s.2.0s)
    
    
  • Red Line
    
    • Telling Mark base effect reduced from (5->3%), Traited bonus from (5->2%), total (10->5%).
      
      • As a 100% uptime debuff with no action time cost, Telling Mark's group effect was too powerful.

• Reverted unintentional change to Blade of Elendil/Battleshout taunt traits.
• Several captain buffs are now raid-wide:
  
  • Make Haste
  • Motivating Speech
  • Muster Courage
  • Rallying Cry
  • Routing Cry

Champion:

• ‘Clobber’ can no longer miss, nor be blocked, parried, or evaded.

Guardian

• Protection by the Sword group melee damage buff increased [2%->5%]
• Sting cooldown [3->2.5s]
  
  • This should allow sting to be more conveniently slipped between skills with longer attack executions.

• Heavy Weapons Training now increases skill damage by [5->10%]
  
  • Gives a general dps boost and makes it more valuable for non-red guards to pick up the trait out of spec.

• The following skills received a damage boost, in approximate order of boostiness (smallest to largest):
  
  • Brutal Assault
  • Whirling Retaliation
  • Redirect
  • War-chant
  • Hammer Down
  • Shield-blow
  • Smashing Stab
  • Bash
  • To the King
  • Sweeping Cut
  • Shield-swipe
  • Force Opening
  • Overwhelm
  • Guardian's Ward
  • Stamp
  • Turn the Tables

• ‘Stamp’ can no longer miss, nor be blocked, parried, or evaded.
• The trait 'Relentless Assault' now grants a modest amount of Finesse.
• We're pretty happy with the distribution of Guardian damage across their skills, but they're still a bit low overall, so we're just giving them a general bump (except for Stamp, that was a bit much).

Hunter

• Blindside will no longer cause the player character to move into melee range with their target if Combat Movement Assist is active.
• Blindside can no longer be parried, bringing it into alignment with other ranged Hunter skills.
• Fixed Hail of Arrows trait to properly proc 50% of the time at the first skill tier, and 100% of the time at the 2nd. Was bugged for quite a while.

Lore-master

• Bumped the base debuff value of Fire/Frost lore back up a bit [5->10%]
• 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%)
  • Unimbued fire lore buff reduced to a max of +2.5%

• 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
  
  
• The interaction between the trait Fierce Lightning and the skill Lightning Storm has been refactored to address frame-rate drops caused by the skill.
• The tooltip for Lightning Storm no longer erroneously suggests that the skill consumes Morale.

Minstrel

• Anthems should now be Raid-wide.
• Anthem of war unimbued LI bonus to physical/ranged reduced [~10->~5%]. Anthem of War base tactical bonus reduced [15->10%]
• The tooltip for Major Ballad now correctly says it is a damaging skill in the Dissonance form instead of the Resonance form.

Rune-keeper

• Further adjusting skill damage to find a better balance between Smoldering Wrath and other fire skills.
  
  • Smouldering Wrath CD increased from [15->17s]
  • Essence of Flame CD decreased [15->12s]
  • Induction on Essay of Fire decreased [2.5s->2.0s]
  • Damage of smaller fire skills increased.
  
  
• Mystifying flame no longer stacks different tiers on a single target.
• Further general damage bump, particularly for fire skills not called Smouldering Wrath.
  Fixed a bug that caused Essence of Fire buffs from Traits/Legacies to apply to Combustion and Smouldering Wrath.
  Bumped base skill damage to compensate.
• Mystifying Flames now affects all incoming damage, not just fire. Damage multiplier reduced from 15->5%.
• Known Issue: The trait is currently specifying melee damage but is intended to be all damage. This is a bug and will be corrected.
  
  • This debuff has frustrated fellowship rune-keepers for a while, as it was difficult for many groups to take advantage of.

• Fiery Ridicule DoT changed from (7 pulses/2s) to (7/3s), along with a modest increase in damage per tick.
  
  • This extends the DoT long enough that Essence of Flame can be used to reliably maintain it.

• The following red-line skills received substantial Damage bumps:
  
  • Scathing Mockery
  • Essence of Flame
  • Smouldering Wrath
  
  
• Changed frost affinity to grant +20% outgoing healing, rather than force setting the bonus value to 20% (which prevented any other bonuses from stacking).
• Mystifying Fire and Molten Flame are now unresistable.

Warden:

• ‘Shield Slam’ can no longer miss, nor be blocked, parried, or evaded.

[Wargoat]

Kehleyr, please keep in mind, in your changes to buffs, that for certain classes, the only reason those classes are invited to content is because of those unique buffs that set their class apart.

If you're going to nerf LM debuffs, then you're going to need to make LM tactical damage equal to a champions (which also has debuffs) for them to get invited to groups.

I will remind that Lore-Masters remember fire/frost/wind-lore -30+% damage debuff used to apply to 8 targets through lvl 85 cap. which was nerfed down to the current spread mechanic. and now the debuff itself will be negligibly different from the many other classes that also have debuffs.

Many of the other changes are welcome in the list. Captains also in a bit of a panic figuring out how to gear, and how many old armor sets are becoming useless with the changes.

For Burglars, what are your intentions with the LI Legacy, (Dust in the Eyes Miss Chance) with these given changes?

[Soragrim]

The DPS-increase is well appreciated, but not enough for red line. Some suggestions to make red Beorning more viable without buffing yellow line even further could be:
- Make Bash stackable again by the use of Vicious Claws.
- Increase damage over time from Bash.
- Increase damage from Relentless Maul while being in red line (Brutal Maul).
- Significantly improve Execute, because it's still totally worthless. Either remove wrath cost or make it being able to crit again AND double the damage.
- Slash Damage over time is pretty weak - it could you use a significant damage buff while being in red line.

[hunter4215]

DPS implementations are very underwhelming. Who working on class balance doesn't realize that guardian's bleeds are their main damage source and they were completely untouched.

[Hephburz-2]

Burglar

• Trick: Dust in the Eyes maximum miss rate reduced [~39%->15%]
• Trick: Disable Damage reduction [-15%->-10%], Attack Speed Reduction [-20%->-10%]
• Reworked Disable to fix various bugs (had to greatly simplify the skill's implementation under the hood). Finesse debuff is now -33% of target's finesse, rather than a scaling value.

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

To begin with, I will speak to the nerfs to Burglar and LM debuff skills; without an up & down consideration in all content for the effects of these changes, this should, for the time being, be reconsidered, or at least give us enough time to fully evaluate the changes to these debuffs in all manner of content - I agree with what has been posted elsewhere, that these skills should not suffer as a result of our own morale inflation, who would have been able to do T3 and above if the LM & Burglar debuffs were not as strong as they were when the content was released? As long as there are subsequent changes to boss damage to compensate for these changes, on the surface it seems ok, but this speaks to a bigger problem; a 30 or 35% debuff, yes, whilst big, it was however something that was noticeable, you could see the difference between not having and having a LM or YBurg, will this still be the case? Or will these classes now be sidelined in smaller group content because they have very little to bring to the table? I agree with others the strengths of these debuffs should be 20% at a minimum, so that the effects of which can actually be felt.

With respect to LM, the changes to Wind-Lore is very nice and obviously a counteract to the nerf to Captains Telling Mark. Whilst you are in the process of making such class changes could we ask you to also look at LM pet utility/debuffs and also their skill durations?

Lore-master

• 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

These changes are welcome, although it depends really if you want to see Red LM's filling a DPS spot in content? If so, this is not enough, it's a step in the right direction, but it's not enough.

Captain

• Yellow Line:
• Captain Yellow line morale bonus reduced from 25->10%.
• 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.
• Stand Tall Duration bonus reduced from (+10->+3s), Proc cooldown reduced from (1.0,2.0,3.0->1.0s,1.5s.2.0s)

These changes are welcome, and many of which I have been campaigning for since the start of Lv130, so thank you for finally listening, however, I think hitting both Last Stands duration AND its cooldown reduction capability might be a bit overkill now that we have lost Shield of the Dunedain as a self-cooldown, granted the frequency at which we could use Last Stand was beyond stupid, so I have no issue with its cooldown reduction capability being nerfed but I disagree to the degree of which you have nerfed it's duration. Last Stands primary cooldown function should be used to help avert a wipe, to allow a group a chance to recover, revive people if necessary, and get things back under control, 10s doesn't feel like enough time to allow this to happen, I would argue this should be reduced to no more than 13s, ideally 15s, but I know this will not be looked on kindly by advocates of Captain nerfs.

All in all, these changes are a step in the right direction to bring Captain down, as it should be, however the problem remains that in terms of support & utility the Captain is still almost unrivaled, Guardians bring very little to the table and desperately need some love.

I am also dismayed to find zero changes for tanking Champions (although less of a concern), it is still a concern to those of us who like and play it; Dire Need (desperately) & Fight On need reworking, Adamant & Bracing Attack need to be buffed, Unbreakable could use either a rework and/or buff. Champions need to offer more utility (currently they offer very very little) and they need help generating more threat through masochism. Please consider some Champion changes before U30 goes live.

Captain

• Red Line
• Telling Mark base effect reduced from (5->3%), Traited bonus from (5->2%), total (10->5%).
• As a 100% uptime debuff with no action time cost, Telling Mark's group effect was too powerful.

Given this change has been offset by the changes to LM's Wind-Lore, fine.

Rune-keeper

• Mystifying Flames now affects all incoming damage, not just fire. Damage multiplier reduced from 15->5%.
• Known Issue: The trait is currently specifying melee damage but is intended to be all damage. This is a bug and will be corrected.
• This debuff has frustrated fellowship rune-keepers for a while, as it was difficult for many groups to take advantage of.
• Fiery Ridicule DoT changed from (7 pulses/2s) to (7/3s), along with a modest increase in damage per tick.
• This extends the DoT long enough that Essence of Flame can be used to reliably maintain it.

• The following red-line skills received substantial Damage bumps:
• Scathing Mockery
• Essence of Flame
• Smouldering Wrath

It is nice you are focusing on Red-Line for RK again, I don't expect a larger overhaul of the line before U30 so I'll just state my thoughts. Red line RK is by far the easiest DPS spec to play of all classes, it's a no brainer, and has next to zero mechanics, so I have no issue with Red-Line RK DPS being at the bottom of all other main DPS classes, this is where it was during Anvil and the Lv120 cap and we still managed to get into content with ease because the gap was not so far behind the other classes. A few other changes I would like to see for Red RK before U30 goes live;

• There needs to be a greater across-the-board damage increase for ALL fire-line skills, the increases so far are welcome, but not far-reaching enough, please consider a further damage increase.
• Increase the pulse count of Essay of Fire (+2), at least +1, allowing us time to reapply it before it falls off.
• Mystifying Flames, a welcome change, but 5% isn't strong enough, it should be 7.5% at least (any higher would, admittedly, be too strong).

I am however, yet again dismayed to find there are no changes to Blue RK? Healing RK offers next to nothing in the way of offensive support and this fact will continually mean Healing RKs will forever be sidelined by Minstrels and Beornings, there have been more than enough suggestions made in countless threads over the past year, please consider implementing them.

Lastly; it is a welcome change to see that Vicious Claws, Shield-Slam, Kick, Clobber & Stamp can no longer be B/P/E'd now, failing to interrupt can never again be an option, especially for a low finesse tank.

[Loox]

Beorning - "Increased damage of the following skills" is vague but I'm hoping for a huge increase to damage or reduction in wrath for execute as it's the tree's signature skill.

Lore-master - Wind Lore, will it also stack from a second LM? Presently it resets it to tier 1.
Ancient Craft (any tree), could it be possible to have a second LM refresh enfeeble on an enemy that has enfeeble by casting AC? As opposed to the null value it presently offers.

[Thurallor]

I think it's long past time to publicly acknowledge that wardens aren't intended to be tanks, and change the introductory text/video so it describes the actual intent of the class.

[Vilan]

Please consider adding some value back into the yellow LM line to make up for the lack of debuffs. A boost to our healing and perhaps an in-combat rez would help us fill a healer spot in 3-mans, without rocking the raid boat too much since there's going to be rez limits anyway. How about making Wisdom of the Council apply to all nearby fellowship members when you're in yellow line? That would give us a way of healing spike damage.

[BinaryTertiary]

All screenshots provided have capped mastery and greater Remmorchant set. No other buffs present

Parry chain changes:

• Whirling Retaliation:
  
  • Average damage from 98,450 to 119,273.5 (21.15%)
• Retaliation
  
  • Average damage from 71,152.5 to 73,189.5 (2.86%)
  • Was there even an increase at all? This is a really small bump that can be easily attributed to Heavy Weapons Training change
• Thrust
  
  • Average damage from 63,632 to 65,454.5 (2.86%)
  • So I was correct, Retaliation didn't get a damage buff at all (or it was so miniscule it doesn't register in the tooltip, @Vastin)
  • bUt tHrUst iSnT iN tHe NotEs - Yes, but this gives you the number of how much the HWT's buff to raw damage is, 2.86% (5 > 10%). If there was a damage buff, the average damage number would be higher than 2.78%
• Overwhelm
  
  • Average damage from 104,066.5 to 162,786 (56.42%)
• To The King
  
  • Average damage from 90191 to 133188 (47.67%)

Bleed starters:

• Brutal Assault
  
  • Average damage from 52765.5 to 59968 (13.65%)
• Sweeping Cut (a bit complex)
  
  • Average hit from first attack from 26046 to 36882.55 (41.60%)
  • Average hit from second attack from 23506.5 to 35968.11 (53.01%)
  • There have been some big differences in how the skill works between live and BR.
    
    • Tooltip on live is incorrect, it lists the 2nd hit as being the same damage but in application, the 2nd hit is weaker (between 10-20% weaker).
    • Tooltip on BR is correct-ish, it still lists the 2nd hit as being the same damage and seem to overlap a lot more. HOWEVER, critical hits draw damage from the weaker value rather than the buffed one. This results in 2nd hits critical and devastating hits to be significantly weaker (around 25% damage loss)

Others:

• Hammer Down
  
  • Average damage from 110438.5 to 151852.5 (37.50%)
• Stamp
  
  • Average damage from 53120 to 88628 (66.84%)
• Force Opening
  
  • Average damage from 33338.5 to 53148.5 (59.42%)
• Guardians Ward
  
  • Average damage from 31309.5 to 53148.5 (69.75%)
• War-chant
  
  • Average damage from 57186 to 73177 (27.96%)

[Omen_Kaizer]

AoE flank heals, a wider beacon AoE, and a rez would be neat.

But it's a given that LMs wont be tossed out of raids, they got enough unique offensive and even still defensive value. If we were to get some hard 6mans (unlike Shaka maybe more like T5 Lamentation was), I can see people being ambivalent about yLM vs yBurg instead of yLM being mandatory, and that's a good thing. 3mans I'm a little worried about.

[Hephburz-2]

AoE flank heals, a wider beacon AoE, and a rez would be neat.

But it's a given that LMs wont be tossed out of raids, they got enough unique offensive and even still defensive value. If we were to get some hard 6mans (unlike Shaka maybe more like T5 Lamentation was), I can see people being ambivalent about yLM vs yBurg instead of yLM being mandatory, and that's a good thing. 3mans I'm a little worried about.

On the surface of it, I'm sure LMs still bring a far wider array of support to the table than a YBurg does, but, yeah, the choice is a lot smaller now than before you're right. Yellow LM could certainly do with something more to make it stand out, such as you have suggested - I don't know why they just don't do away with the 'targetted' version of beacon of hope and just make it an AoE group heal instead, would serve a much better function, shorter cooldown on water-lore (allowing us to more easily apply it to multiple targets but still max 3 stacks) would also not go amiss.

[Jargonaut]

The sheer magnitude of fire lore and frost lore debuffs are considerably above where we're comfortable with for large group content.

Guess what? Not all of your customers are raiders. What will these nerfs do to solo play? Pets have been broken, especially for blue line that is supposed to have especially good pets, for years now. The debuffs help to make the pet effective in landscape questing. You can't find time to fix pets, but you can find time to break another skill set?

[HolyDuckTape]

Guardian

• Sting cooldown [3->2.5s]
  
  • This should allow sting to be more conveniently slipped between skills with longer attack executions.

• Heavy Weapons Training now increases skill damage by [5->10%]
  
  • Gives a general dps boost and makes it more valuable for non-red guards to pick up the trait out of spec.

• The following skills received a damage boost, in approximate order of boostiness (smallest to largest):
  
  • Brutal Assault
  • Whirling Retaliation
  • Redirect
  • War-chant
  • Hammer Down
  • Shield-blow
  • Smashing Stab
  • Bash
  • To the King
  • Sweeping Cut
  • Shield-swipe
  • Force Opening
  • Overwhelm
  • Guardian's Ward
  • Stamp
  • Turn the Tables

Altough it's welcome, these changes do not bring red guardians closer to being a viable dps option at all. The damage increase i have seen so far is extremely minimal, if you were doing 130-150k before you will now do about 140-160k+ or so without crazy crit builds. Sure damage is an issue for red guardians and should be buffed but the main issue is the horrible trait line. (Also noting that BLEEDS didn't get dmg buffed)

So currently we have these issues:

-Guardian dmg output is too low and guardians have zero utility to make up for this. So either 1. Buff dmg or 2. buff utility (or both slightly)

-The traitline needs way too many points for way too little upgrades. The points spent should be reduced and the upgrades should be bigger.

-The traitline does not have any interesting mechanics to it at all, you just put bleeds on mobs and crits on slashing wound targets deal an unnoticeable small amount of extra dmg. Zero mechanics to it at all. Spice it up some more! There is so much to play around with here, bleed stacking, bleed spreading, bleed tiering, etc. im not that creative.

-The traitline needs better traits in general, All traits are very weak and dont change much at all. We need to see some big changes here, we wanna see stuff like bleeds crit dmg, bleeds penetrate x% mitigation, crit chance trait and such great goodies!

-Red guardians get crushed by Parry response rng, the dps numbers can be so insanely different due to no parries being procced at all or having extreme luck on proccing parry responses. The dps difference is huge ~25%. Their crit rng is also horrible now due to not having a crit trait. Many people have suggested before: Sting crits should give you a parry response! And bring back BPE into the game.

Atleast it is progress but red guardians are still nowhere near being useful. Also: yellow guardians are a total mess too, they need some attention too.

[Zaheer]

Captain

• Captain's ability to maintain high and extended degrees of invulnerability has made them irreplaceable in high challenge content, so we've needed to limit a few of their most powerful abilities.
• ‘Kick’ can no longer miss, nor be blocked, parried, or evaded.
• Fixed: Captain banner heralds were not correctly inheriting offensive bonuses from their summoner.
• Fixed an old 'Make Haste' duration change that was never processed correctly.
  
  • Yellow Line:
    
    • Captain Yellow line morale bonus reduced from 25->10%.
    • 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.
    • Stand Tall Duration bonus reduced from (+10->+3s), Proc cooldown reduced from (1.0,2.0,3.0->1.0s,1.5s.2.0s)
  • Red Line
    
    • Telling Mark base effect reduced from (5->3%), Traited bonus from (5->2%), total (10->5%).
      
      • As a 100% uptime debuff with no action time cost, Telling Mark's group effect was too powerful.

Yellow

Personally, I think this was required to bring down the captain tank. However, I think that this shouldn't be nerfed too steep. Because ''captains'' should not be compensating on their utility when the overall ''system'' is a complete mess.

Here I point out towards BPE and the mechanics of bosses heavily focused on buffer-sized tanks. Which is NOT the guardian.

The following I might say is just my thought but perhaps won't sound too nice.

I think that we shouldn't be compensating because guardians and other tanks do poorly. I think that the classes shouldn't be touched at all before you actually fixed the BPE system that I've been talking about for years now. Adjusting classes with a broken stat system makes no sense whatsoever. Guardian & warden rely heavily on BPE and you CANNOT dumb down every class to a ''buffer like'' tank, like the captain who is an absolute god at dealing with burst damage. Making a class compensate for a broken system that you guys do not want to fix sounds incredibly stupid to me and the idea of bringing in more burst mechanics is only going to be more catastrophic. I feel that when we do talk about more burst mechanics from bosses that circumvent BPE as a whole (as for the stat system being equally broken too) the game becomes very one-sided and builds and ideas are out of the question. You no longer have the choice to balance things out yourself and you're forced to go with a big size buffer as we've since pretty much Mordor. If you're enforcing players to stack more morale due to the burst mechanics circumventing defensive stats, no wonder the captain outshines everything because that's what it is good at, perhaps even too good in my opinion but it's hard to say with the way things are at this moment.

Because the class used to be less leaning towards a buffer-sized pool and was in the middle of everything but not the best at any. This is what is the ''core'' idea of captain within all lines and this is no longer maintained with the way yellow operates on live. The whole reason captain is currently #1 tank choice is because of multiple factors.

• Content in favor of buffer-sized pools
• BPE system complete pile of ####
• overall stat system being extremely one-sided
• Yellow being slightly overtuned

Since the yellow line got a good fix, I think that the pool in combination with heals has gotten too much.
I also understood that there was an attempt nerfing the yellow in the past with the standards when there was a patch to the captain in regard to ''fixing up the class''
The attempt was to nerf the yellow line standard from 30% inc heal to 20% inc healing. Which is very logical with the amount of heal yellow had at that moment. However, also yellow captain isn't working entirely as it should be. but I'll get to that point later.

Since the yellow line used to be the balance of everything, the yellow captain could actually be built in many ways when we do talk level 95-100 content. With 95 being slightly more restrictive in how far you could go with this. Because when the Faramir set was released with 5 slot essences, some crazy builds were being created that would blow everything out of proportion. From extremely sized buffer tanks to very small pools with high defensive stats in combination with strong self-healing. Though, we've seen which class was on the opposing side and was probably just as overpowered *urrrrrhm* ''wardens''

Getting down to what might happen upon fixing the stat system, including BPE as a whole, we might expect to see yellow line captain back at the top. Now you might wonder how and why this because for the entire time the class has been bugged in one of its traits that heavily, and I mean heavily affects the way it plays at this moment & how overturned it actually is.

We all do know that turning point stacks up to +25% inc healing with BPE. Now we also know BPE doesn't work properly. I've been observing conditions with tanking past year long enough to tell that turning point doesn't actually get past rank 1 due to the broken BPE system. Ah well, maybe it does but your chances are very slim :P

This brings us ofc back to how overturned yellow actually is, it just doesn't show yet until the content & overall stat system gets fixed.
I've been saying this for a very long time, sadly no one mentioned turning-point not actually working properly anymore due to external factors.

About time you start fixing the BPE system first so you can tow the warden and guardian back into line with the captain, instead of turning them into wannabe captain classes.
Maybe lower the ridiculous stat scaling regarding inc heal, BPE & mitigations too, so we have options because the current meta bores me


Redline

Yeah, we come to redline now after me ranting about the stat system.

So yes, I do understand that on paper, redline does seem like the ideal choice and top pick for every raid because of its utility, which is of course true but there are a few things people do not know or are not aware of.

The red standard of war is bugged (as of level 95) and still is in the current patch.
( Current numbers are M 5% T 2% R 0%) Which should be a 5% crit bonus on ranged, tactical & melee.
Then earlier, the standard of war got nerfed from 30% to 20%, which many people still do not know about.
OB having been nerfed and can no longer be used until its cd on target is finished.

Perhaps it's a good way of encouraging captains to do their study and actually DPS, or if required do more healing instead by sacrificing the sure-strike gaps within their rotation for off healing.

I think Telling should be scaled to 6/7%(as before the release of rohan), to see how much it impacts current game design. Losing 5% is very steep and hits the captain quite hard. The buffs we provide only make a few % difference in total raid DPS and with this change, I think that the captain might actually be hit too hard and I fear that we might actually be replaced (as we've already seen with Kidzu Kalah), where redline captain replacement was optional(mostly being the case as the captain was forced into either yellow or blue).


Overall utility

I think that perhaps the make haste change and so is good, 45 seconds make-haste for an entire fellowship is of course ridiculous, and changing the duration is a good idea. The captain still remains in a good position despite losing utility for the amount of support and options it brings to the table with its combat rez and overall off heal & DPS capability.

Banner heralds still not providing any damage bonus.

However there's still many issues and some very major ones that still need to be addressed like the standard of war fix, redesign of the stat system(in my opinion) due to DPS classes having too much room, but then again I speak from the perspective of a support role and do not have any knowledge on other classes.

Furthermore, I wanted to thank SSG for listening to the banner appearance, I think they're better visible now with the right settings on.

I'll later fill in more information perhaps as I'm still thinking a lot about this. As I've still not gotten to blue line.

[Joedangod]

Here I point out towards BPE and the mechanics of bosses heavily focused on buffer-sized tanks. Which is NOT the guardian.

And here I shall point out that Captain has the highest full BPE chance of all tanks, a constant BPE ratings boost and a very powerful BPE defensive cooldown with a fairly solid uptime.

Three tank traitlines exist that legitimately ignore BPE and those 3 are YGuardian, BChampion and BBeorning. If BPE was truly the problem with tanking right now those 3 specs should be the best, in reality only BBeorning can hold its own in the tank role and even that spec can't match YCaptains support output.

[Hephburz-2]

And here I shall point out that Captain has the highest full BPE chance of all tanks, a constant BPE ratings boost and a very powerful BPE defensive cooldown with a fairly solid uptime.

Three tank traitlines exist that legitimately ignore BPE and those 3 are YGuardian, BChampion and BBeorning. If BPE was truly the problem with tanking right now those 3 specs should be the best, in reality only BBeorning can hold its own in the tank role and even that spec can't match YCaptains support output.

His argument still remains a valid one though, if these 3 lines also had the morale to match a YCaptain and if BChamp had adequate cooldowns, they could all easily rival a YCaptain on raw tanking ability alone (no, not in terms of support). The content we are faced with gives us bpe ignoring, high damage mechanics that require a morale soak AKA a Yellow Captain, the content we have is just a much a problem as the Captains OPness, and BOTH need to be addressed.

The YCaptain is getting it's required (albeit too much in the case of LS) nerf, a content rework has to come next, or these changes alone will do nothing to alter the tanking meta.

[Joedangod]

His argument still remains a valid one though, if these 3 lines also had the morale to match a YCaptain and if BChamp had adequate cooldowns, they could all easily rival a YCaptain on raw tanking ability alone (no, not in terms of support).

Well no, his argument essentially boils down to "Changing/Buffing BPE helps close the gap between Captains and the other tanks" when in reality a boost to the effectiveness of BPE benefits Captains almost as much as it benefits Guardians. BBeornings can stack morale almost as well as Captains on live, have a very strong defensive cooldown, and have notably better aggro management yet they still can't compete with YCaptain. YCaptain support is severely overtuned, the current bout of changes definitely knock YCaptains down to BGuard/BBeorning levels defensively but YCaptains can still perform as a support role whilst tanking and that is ridiculous.

YCaptain support still needs to be dialled back and the spec needs to have its aggro capabilities improved to the point where you can realistically generate at least some aggro outside of forced taunts.

[theultimatekyle]

Hmmmm, a drastic over nerf to captain tanks with no meaningful adjustment to guardian, warden, or champion tanks, along with a hard nerf to incoming damage debuffs from support that are necessary for high tier content? Smells a lot like a new premium tank class is going to be sold in just a few months. Imagine that.

[gildhur]

Hmmmm, a drastic over nerf to captain tanks with no meaningful adjustment to guardian, warden, or champion tanks, along with a hard nerf to incoming damage debuffs from support that are necessary for high tier content? Smells a lot like a new premium tank class is going to be sold in just a few months. Imagine that.

Alternately, you're only seeing the first build of an update, and devs have already chimed in to confirm that other tank classes will be looked at after the Captain changes are tested sufficiently. Not everything you don't understand is a conspiracy.

[Thurallor]

Alternately, you're only seeing the first build of an update, and devs have already chimed in to confirm that other tank classes will be looked at after the Captain changes are tested sufficiently. Not everything you don't understand is a conspiracy.

That's not how this works. 99% of the changes that are going to be included in Update 30 are on Bullroarer now. They don't make drastic changes between Bullroarer builds, unless there are serious bugs.

[Zaheer]

And here I shall point out that Captain has the highest full BPE chance of all tanks, a constant BPE ratings boost and a very powerful BPE defensive cooldown with a fairly solid uptime.

Three tank traitlines exist that legitimately ignore BPE and those 3 are YGuardian, BChampion and BBeorning. If BPE was truly the problem with tanking right now those 3 specs should be the best, in reality only BBeorning can hold its own in the tank role and even that spec can't match YCaptains support output.

And here I point out that this is fairly okay if they decide to fix everything. People really should stop screaming nerf this, buff that, nerf that, and this. I'm getting sick and tired of this constant damage control. They need to sit down and redesign the system properly instead of constantly allowing classes to be compensating for each other.

Yes captain has the strongest BPE in the game at this moment because of it's passive BPE boosts, but if you did follow SSG on their BPE updates, BPE does no longer stack the same way it did before, instead pBPE does which is an entirely different roll. Which is ALSO unaffected by the captain his BPE traits. Besides this doesn't matter for now anyway. They should first fix the entire stat system before they go with the short-term reward which will basically turn this game into one pile of ####.

We know you've been constantly screaming for captain nerfs, but you really should wake up at look at the big picture of what happens and why instead of towing a class in line with another without having any idea what happens around it. You CANNOT simply change the way a class operates. Unless you think that they should lose their set values and all operate in the same manner?





I honestly do not even care how much yellow captain is nerfed because I overall think it's currently a bad decision to nerf the captain with the current state of the environment. Do I say the captain is balanced? No, I do think it's completely broken, but having the right approach to fix something is required here if you want classes not to be fighting over the same role. I mean look what they want to do, changing guard and warden in a buffer class whilst their roles should be working more within (p)BPE and selfhealing opposed to captain that shouldn't even have this much self-healing in yellow. They're making a mess of this and being on constant damage control of their own system being unable to cope with classes that cannot deal with burst damage mechanics. I do honestly not care what they do with yellow now, I personally think they should first go to the drawing board.

Fix BPE, redesign the stat system, redesign the way mechanics are added to raids because constantly adding more burst damage to bosses that ignore BPE and or other defensive stats will result in being catastrophic for those classes that cannot deal with burst dmg in this way *urhm* guardian and warden (perhaps even champs, and beorns)

Make a plan -> fix the fkin BPE system -> look at other defensive stats -> overall PvE design -> then do class rework

because doing class rework on a #### system doesn't work and is only a temporal patch up

If you want, I won't mind giving you a practical situation to make you understand

[BotLike]

Please consider buffing Red Guardian bleeds , since those can make a significant difference and are currently untouched.
The initial damage boosts are welcome and a step towards the right direction , but retaliation needs a lot more love. ( it falls behind compared to whirling due to not having any legacy boosts )

[Lotro_Dancer1]

Rune-keeper

• Mystifying Flames now affects all incoming damage, not just fire. Damage multiplier reduced from 15->5%.
• Known Issue: The trait is currently specifying melee damage but is intended to be all damage. This is a bug and will be corrected.
  
  • This debuff has frustrated fellowship rune-keepers for a while, as it was difficult for many groups to take advantage of.

• Fiery Ridicule DoT changed from (7 pulses/2s) to (7/3s), along with a modest increase in damage per tick.
  
  • This extends the DoT long enough that Essence of Flame can be used to reliably maintain it.

• The following red-line skills received substantial Damage bumps:
  
  • Scathing Mockery
  • Essence of Flame
  • Smouldering Wrath

RK Feedback: Summary - Red line improvement is a bit better, but still un-useable in group content. (Side note... while I was drafting this, I watched a HNT on the dummy next to me parsing 185k to 195k and an LM parsing 140k).

• Running Greater RK Remm set, 4 piece, with Critical Flame 5% Fire satchel title. Tact mastery:803, Crit 612. No Scrolls/food etc.
• DPS parses on the dummy are around 120k un-buffed. Better than before, but low comparable Yellow Gear averaging 147k unbuffed similar gear/stats. (155kdps average buffed)
• DPS breakdown - 36% Smouldering, 16% Essay of Fire, 13% Essence of Flame, 7.6% Ceaseless, 7.4% Searing words

• Rotations works... but is very simplistic in nature, there are not enough Fire skills.. rotation requires regular lightning skills. inductions on frost are too long for the bad dps (plus frost = water... not good for fire.. lol)
• Smouldering (1/3rd of our dps averages 120k DPS... thus locking our base DPS). Essence of Flame provides spikes averaging 250k... but all other skills average well under 90k per hits, thus offsetting Essence and reducing DPS
• Fiery Ridicule's and Writ of Fire, our only low CD fire skills have terrible initial damage (less than Scribe Spark).
• Dot Damage is very low... too low... for instance the average Writ of Fire T3 is only on average 6k per tick higher than T2. 4 seconds per tic = 1.5k dps increase. This is nothing... Fiery R only does 3k dps extra from T2 to T3. again... nothing.
• Lightning is fast, shoot on-the-move, no inductions, great AoE, stuns, etc... To be T2+ endgame viable yellow still needs 15-20% DPS increase.
• Fire is slow, long inductions, easily disrupted by hits (even the target dummy causes induction delays). But better range.
• Fire needs an additional +40% to +60% or more to be T2+ viable. Fire given the slower/more rigid playstyle, should parse greater DPS when allowed to stand stationary and uninterrupted (such as at the test dummy) else there is no reason to leave yellow line. HNT should remain the benchmark high DPS, long-range, rapid target switch, where the red RK can only out DPS and approach WRD DPS rate if left stationary for long periods

• personal vote:
• Writ of Fire has terrible initial and dot DPS. No debuffs or buffs (like yellow Writs). CHANGE: 10 sec CD. Initial Damage x 4. + 3% Fire damage per tier.. Max Tier = 10. Should tier down (not cancel)... this again requires long build-up times, but reduces the RKs ability to switch high DPS to other targets (again...leave highest DPS rapid target switch to HNTs). Doesn't do alot of damage on its own, but the buff increases all DPS. Combustion can be used to spread Writs very 15 sec for attunement cash out (good for AD type adds, but not good for things like Remm B1 spider adds)
• Fiery Ridicule's low initial and DOT damage (7k dps) DOT only increases 13-15% per tier. As it stands.. you burst out 3 tiers and then never use it again since Essence refreshes the Dot and the initial damage lower than the worst lightning skill (scribes spark). CHANGE: Tier up to 6. CD to 6sec. initial DPS x 1.5 Dot + 25% per teir.
• Add some additional fire skills to add some complexity to the red line and minimize the use of lightning. Something like...
  
  • NEW: Flame Strike - no induction, quick hit 100kish damage. 1s CD
  • NEW: Stoke - moderate initial damage. 5s cd. next skill +50% initial damage.
  • NEW: Flare Up - 1s induction big hit, + DPS per Fiery ridicule tier, 3s CD
  • NEW: Ignition. medium hit. 2s cd.
• Moving should hurt attunement. However, left uninterrupted and stationary, the RK should parse between HNT and WRD DPS peaks. (IE 130kdps first min, 180k DPS second min, 220k DPS third min +).

There are lots of other ideas in the forums even better. But Fire RK, while improved, it not strong enough to be used in groups.

[Joedangod]

Yes captain has the strongest BPE in the game at this moment because of it's passive BPE boosts, but if you did follow SSG on their BPE updates, BPE does no longer stack the same way it did before, instead pBPE does which is an entirely different roll. Which is ALSO unaffected by the captain his BPE traits. Besides this doesn't matter for now anyway. They should first fix the entire stat system before they go with the short-term reward which will basically turn this game into one pile of ####.

Yeah, no. The roll for partials and the roll for full BPE are done the same way, adding them all together and rolling against that total. SSG changing full BPE to use a different system compared to partials would be weird, if you're going to keep spouting this nonsense you're gonna need to cite some evidence.

[Daenirion]

I would like Power Management to return as a gameplay feature. It's unacceptable that you're able to just roll your face on the keyboard and be at >90% of your total Power at all times. It would increase the need for Support classes in group content and the nerfs to Fire/Frost Lore wouldn't hurt as much.

RK Feedback:

I like the Red RK changes, but they don't address the main issue. The whole spec design is relatively simple. All you do is apply your DoTs, refresh them occasionally and press some lighting skills while waiting for Smouldering to come off CD. (on boss fights. AoE rotation on trash mobs is less boring). The majority of your DPS on single target fights comes from one skill. That's hard to fine tune, because it also has a quite short CD. As a result, the spec is either too weak or too strong. Damage should be spread out more and maybe consider adding new skills/spec mechanics.

• NEW burst skill: 2-3min CD, all your DoTs tick twice as fast for 10-15 seconds (example: Writ of Fire: X damage every 4 seconds for 20 seconds -> with burst skill activated: X damage every 2 seconds)
• NEW skill that allows you to cash out the current Writ of Fire stacks on the target
• NEW skill with short induction, medium damage and 1s CD
• NEW skill with no induction, medium damage, can be used while moving
• Reduce the induction time of Essay of Fire from 2.5s to 1.5s
• Scathing Mockery should refresh your Writs on the target (for AoE fights after spreading Writs with Combustion)
• Increase Smouldering Wrath CD from 15s to 20s (maybe even 30s)
• Increase Writ of Fire intitial damage
• Increase Fiery Ridicule initial damage
• Change Flurry of Words to a ground targeted skill

EDIT: DNF should be reworked into an active revive and removed from the 2 DPS specs