Bullroarer Update 30: Early Look: Skill Balance Work

[Hephburz-2]

• Several captain buffs are now raid-wide:

• Make Haste
• Motivating Speech
• Muster Courage
• Rallying Cry
• Routing Cry

These changes are VERY welcome, however, please can you clarify, do you mean the entire skill Rallying Cry is now raid-wide or just the buff from Rousing Cry blue trait (+5% damage buff). Also, can you PLEASE consider making both To Arms and the respective Tactics buffs raid-wide also, PROVIDING they do not stack with buffs of the same type, thus completely removing the necessity on being forced to take two captains. At present this is a good start, but without including To Arms/Tactics Buff as well, you will probably still see groups continuing to use two captains.

• Stand Tall Duration bonus reduced from (+10->+3s), Proc cooldown reduced from (1.0,2.0,3.0->1.0s,1.5s.2.0s)

Similarly, I would still also urge you to not nerf the duration this much, and would urge you to reconsider nerfing the duration bonus from +10s to +8s or +6s instead, due to the loss of Shield of the Dunedain as a self-cooldown.

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

Reposting: 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).

Red RKs are still not pulling competitive DPS numbers.

• Mystifying Fire and Molten Flame are now unresistable.

This is a nice change.

[Storm_]

[*]Several captain buffs are now raid-wide:

• Make Haste
• Motivating Speech
• Muster Courage
• Rallying Cry
• Routing Cry

This sounds actually pretty nice and could be a further nerf to yellow captain.

[Zaheer]

Ok, stop. This isn't up for debate. The dev diary tells you straight up that "your chance to fully avoid the attack is equal to your Block chance plus Parry chance plus Evade chance". That's how it works, it adds them all together and rolls against that. The same method applies for partials which we were able to prove on that other thread I linked by getting a character to 100% combined partial avoidance chance and observing that said character was never fully hit during a 10m parse of multiple mobs constantly attacking them. If avoidance was three separate rolls against each avoidance individually instead of a combined roll that character would have received quite a lot of full hits. So we do know 100% how BPE works.

BPE is working as intended, it's just getting devalued by a number of factors. The main one here is just how much rating you need to get to reliable BPE rates, this is the ratings curve for full BPE chance:

To cap out full avoidance chance on your character panel you'd need ~630k block rating, which is pretty insane. That's actually not even enough block rating to truly have 13% either as mobs in instances have various amounts of avoidance penetration that effectively reduce how much rating you have (but you don't actually get to see this at all). You're complaining that BPE is "very RNG" but it's designed to be RNG, having say, 20% block chance doesn't mean that each fight you'll block 20% of all incoming attacks, it means that given a large enough sample of attacks you'll eventually average out to see ~20% of them were blocked.

So yeah, of course it isn't worth stacking avoidance on your Captain right now, you'd need to stack a ton of essences and it would only serve to make you take less damage from physical attacks which aren't necessarily all the notable in an encounter. You're trading in a universal defensive stat (morale) for a situational one (avoidance) and you're doing it at a terrible exchange rate.

Now you've suggested several times around these forums that "fixing" BPE would change the meta and bump Guardians up in value compared to Captains but in reality it wouldn't do much. Captains gain about as much from improved BPE as Guardians do (admittedly not quite as much as Wardens do). It's kinda one of those things that affect almost everyone to the same degree, it ain't gonna change the meta; it's just going to maintain it.

Ok, stop. This isn't up for debate. The dev diary tells you straight up that "your chance to fully avoid the attack is equal to your Block chance plus Parry chance plus Evade chance". That's how it works, it adds them all together and rolls against that. The same method applies for partials which we were able to prove on that other thread I linked by getting a character to 100% combined partial avoidance chance and observing that said character was never fully hit during a 10m parse of multiple mobs constantly attacking them. If avoidance was three separate rolls against each avoidance individually instead of a combined roll that character would have received quite a lot of full hits. So we do know 100% how BPE works.

Ok, stop. This isn't up for debate.

I think you misunderstood what I said by ''I think there is more to it than the dev diary explains''

thanks for explaining tho, but I already knew this information regarding the way it operates. The only thing I thought was that BPE itself was rolled separate and pBPE rolled as a whole. Perhaps I did misread in the past, or it was a topic in the past that I had talked about with someone. I'd record someone actually testing this from my memories and explaining that it was rolled differently. But this could be entirely false ofcourse. I myself don't test it because I've never been interested into the BPE mechanic as a whole. So was I wrong? Yes, I was wrong, congrats. However regarding the other argument I am right and you cannot dismiss that.

So congrats u won this discussion, I hope your satisfied but I think it was completely pointless.

Now you've suggested several times around these forums that "fixing" BPE would change the meta and bump Guardians up in value compared to Captains but in reality it wouldn't do much. Captains gain about as much from improved BPE as Guardians do (admittedly not quite as much as Wardens do). It's kinda one of those things that affect almost everyone to the same degree, it ain't gonna change the meta; it's just going to maintain it.

Yes, it will affect everyone, but the point is that it is required to fix certain classes individually. Like I said, it will affect the captain too, hence I stated that the rebalance of tanks should happen after these fixes. Rebalancing captain at this very point isn't going to work and is only a temporal fix. There's lit 2 ways SSG can solve this issue.

Either they adjust the balance of captain NOW and balance the warden and guardian tank accordingly to the content and stat system we have now. Which is dumb imo because you have no choice to just slot morale at this moment. Which would end up with warden and guardian just being like the captain, a meat sack with morale and cooldowns.

or they fix the whole system now, then balance tanks on that. So tanks can shift between having more morale or exchange that for more defensive stats. Currently it's not worth due dismissing returns & BPE not operating correctly.





You constantly keep mentioning how it's affecting captain too but that doesn't matter in this moment. The point is that the system works, after that rebalance and nerf captain where necessary.






To top it off, I wouldn't be surprised if the second option is their way of fixing. Which would result in extremely boring customization to your tank setup and having no room to basically do something else than morale whoring, as choosing other defensive stats basically means a poor exchange and terrible dismissive returns. I'll laugh so hard if the ''Brawler'' class is gonna be the god of morale stacking surpassing captain by miles. Because that's brawler effectively means in tanking terms. Brawling vs active tank.

This is a balance that all classes are put on and on I personally think that the most ''active tank'' would be warden, IF it would actually work, which it doesnt lmao

But yeah we'll see, I've said what I had to say and if SSG wants every tank to be the same way so be it. I hated yellow anyway, because even a monkey can play yellow line captain.

[Joedangod]

But again, this is false, it may maintain the meta, but it would also not hinder the other tanks.

As explained in my earlier post, the content we are provided, gifts us with b/p/e ignoring, high damage or tactical damage mechanics, which makes b/p/e useless.

And again, BPE isn't supposed to protect you from special abilities and the like. BPE is a tank stat for constant damage sources, over a large enough sample it averages out to be a reasonable damage reduction, in a small sample it can swing wildly. BPE actually does do a reasonable job right now, we just have a situation where the only tank that can actually get close to bumping it to reliable levels doesn't have any panic skills and has notably undertuned self-healing skills (that shouldn't be % as that would just further incentivise morale stacking over anything else). Sure, it's still pretty useless in fights where the constant damage comes from bleeds but having various builds for various encounters isn't really bad for the game.

Yes, it will affect everyone, but the point is that it is required to fix certain classes individually. Like I said, it will affect the captain too, hence I stated that the rebalance of tanks should happen after these fixes.

Kinda just shows that you don't really understand what separates Captains from the other tanks. We weren't in a YCaptain meta because Captains had lower average TPS (they don't, Guardians have lower average TPS), Captains were meta because they had double the number of strong panic skills compared to everyone else and they were capable of performing a support role whilst they were tanking. Boosting the value of BPE wouldn't have closed the gap between the other tanks and Captain but the changes to shield and raidwide cappy buffs do as they devalue YCaptain support/panic abilities and bring it down to a similar level to other tanks.

TL;DR: You can't make up the support/panic skill discrepancy between tanks by reducing every tanks average TPS.

[hunter4215]

Several captain buffs are now raid-wide:

• Make Haste
• Motivating Speech
• Muster Courage
• Rallying Cry
• Routing Cry

10/10 Change. Great impact for class balance especially for Guardians who find it very hard to compete with 70% Muster and Motivating speech.

While on the subject of Raid-Wide effects --- what about Mini Anthems? Mini anthems are just a matter of swapping groups, using them, and swapping back. This can create a ton of lag, up to 5s of delay for the whole raid per swap. Can we get those adjusted to raid-wide as well?

[BinaryTertiary]

All tooltips are screenshot with maxed mastery, greater Remm set, damage food and scroll. No other buffs present. I have done the same for the original screenshot, but forgot to mention it, my fault.

• Whirling Retaliation
  
  • Average damage from 119273.5 to 140329.5 (17.65%)
• Retaliation
  
  • Average damage from 73189.5 to 86243 (17.83%)
• Thrust
  
  • Average damage from 65454.5 to 76096.5 (16.25%)
• Overwhelm
  
  • Average damage from 104066.5 to 190766.5 (83.31%)
• To The King
  
  • Average damage from 133188 to 142318.5 (6.85%)
• Brutal Assault
  
  • Average damage from 52765.5 to 70554.5 (33.71%)
• Sweeping Cut
  
  • Not gonna go through that hell again, so just comparing tooltips from last BR to this one
  • Average damage on first attack from 38018 to 45378 (26.4%)
  • Cannot calculate second hit damage because it's missing from tooltip, but from memory, it's around the same increase
  • 2nd hit damage tooltip is now finally fixed, thank you!
• Hammer Down
  
  • Average damage from 151852.5 to 170892 (12.54%)
• Stamp got nerfed slightly, less than 10%
• Far too tired for rest and they are irrelevant anyway

• Please, start replacing Guardian traits, damage numbers are now amazing, but traits will always hang back the trait line. The following NEED changes:
  
  • Thrill of Battle
  • Skilled Deflection
  • Invigourating Parry
  • Honourable Combat
  • Reactive Parry
  • Prey On The Weak
• The following traits need their max ranks cut and bonuses from ranks increased:
  
  • Tireless Blows
  • Haemorrhage
  • Blind Rage
• And these traits could use some extra features or damage fixed:
  
  • Protection By The Sword (increase the AOE, increase the damage, make it raid-wide, have it give a parry buff)
  • Bleed Them Dry (have it give 10% bleed damage)
  • Heavy Blows (increase the damage to 10%)

[laughatdo0m]

Captain

• Reverted unintentional change to Blade of Elendil/Battleshout taunt traits.

Just to clarify. Battleshout is not intended to be a force taunt, but Blade of Elendil still is? The trait that causes Blade of Elendil to become a force taunt (Elendil's Fury) still says nothing about this. Though I believe tank captain has been hit hard enough that its fine for this to remain a taunt.

• Several captain buffs are now raid-wide:
  
  • Make Haste
  • Motivating Speech
  • Muster Courage
  • Rallying Cry
  • Routing Cry

Bug report:

• Make Haste: effects entire raid *AND* everyone outside of the raid within range.
• Muster Courge: effects entire raid *AND* everyone outside of the raid within range.
• Rallying Cry (buff + heal): effects entire raid *AND* everyone outside of the raid within range.
• Motivating Speech: effects only the fellowship. This should be changed to raidwide.
• Routing Cry (buff) is working as intended

Suggestions:
If we want to make it so captains are a "one-of" class per traitline in a raid, please make the following traits into raid-wide buffs, instead of fellowship buffs:
Blue:

• Fellowship of the Song

Red:

• Fellowship of the Blade

Yellow:

• Fellowship of the Shield

And set the following buffs to raidwide instead of fellowship only:

• Banner of War (applied by "Call to Arms: Herald of War")
• Banner of Hope (applied by "Call to Arms Herald of Hope")
• Banner of Victory (applied by "Call to Arms: Herald of Victory") -- not that anyone will ever use this
• On Guard (applied by "Improved Sure Strike" while traited in yellow line)
• Relentless Attack (applied by "Improved Sure Strike" while traited in red line)
• Focus (applied by "Improved Sure Strike" while traited in blue line)

Additionally you could make "Inspire (Song-Brother)" (probably all 3 Inspires really), "Gallant Display", "Valiant Strike", "Reform the Lines!" into raid-wide heals (along the lines of Rallying Cry) to bring Blue captain a little more raid-relevance without forcing them as an auto-include. Edit: People have noted this could force raids into bringing red cappy + blue cappy. So maybe not the best idea here.

[Omen_Kaizer]

Additionally you could make "Inspire (Song-Brother)" (probably all 3 Inspires really), "Gallant Display", "Valiant Strike", "Reform the Lines!" into raid-wide heals (along the lines of Rallying Cry) to bring Blue captain a little more raid-relevance without forcing them as an auto-include.

That's enough raidwide heals to outclass a yellow beorning in that sense even considering bluecaps are hots & overheals moreso than burst. Plus the net dps gain on a u30 red beorning is looking promising by my calculations even in conjunction with yellow bear, and would be a total lock if there were no yellow bear. That's how you continue to get an auto include on 2 caps per raid without a captank.

Just gallant display is fine.

[Lotro_Dancer1]

[*]Changed frost affinity to grant +20% outgoing healing, rather than force setting the bonus value to 20% (which prevented any other bonuses from stacking).

I missed this earlier... does this fix the blue Line +5% out-going-healing issue with the Remm set? If so, thank you!

[Hephburz-2]

Suggestions:
If we want to make it so captains are a "one-of" class per traitline in a raid, please make the following traits into raid-wide buffs, instead of fellowship buffs:
Blue:

• Fellowship of the Song

Red:

• Fellowship of the Blade

Yellow:

• Fellowship of the Shield

And set the following buffs to raidwide instead of fellowship only:

• Banner of War (applied by "Call to Arms: Herald of War")
• Banner of Hope (applied by "Call to Arms Herald of Hope")
• Banner of Victory (applied by "Call to Arms: Herald of Victory") -- not that anyone will ever use this
• On Guard (applied by "Improved Sure Strike" while traited in yellow line)
• Relentless Attack (applied by "Improved Sure Strike" while traited in red line)
• Focus (applied by "Improved Sure Strike" while traited in blue line)

Agreed with all of this, it would absolutely remove the insistence on two captains completely, and open up group compositions massively. I wouldn't go so far as to make all aoe heals raid-wide that might completely push beornings and/or minstrels (especially) out of the meta in favour of a blue captain instead, whilst no doubt we want blue to be strong, it shouldn't be so at the expense of another class.

[Hephburz-2]

Just to clarify. Battleshout is not intended to be a force taunt, but Blade of Elendil still is? The trait that causes Blade of Elendil to become a force taunt (Elendil's Fury) still says nothing about this. Though I believe tank captain has been hit hard enough that its fine for this to remain a taunt.

Blade of Elendil was meant to be removed some time ago when they made threatening shout into a ST taunt and gave us Elendil's Roar. I haven't checked Cappy on BR but is BoE still functioning as a taunt? (Some set bonus or other also made battleshout into a taunt, I can't remember which).

[laughatdo0m]

Blade of Elendil was meant to be removed some time ago when they made threatening shout into a ST taunt and gave us Elendil's Roar. I haven't checked Cappy on BR but is BoE still functioning as a taunt? (Some set bonus or other also made battleshout into a taunt, I can't remember which).

The patch today set BoE back to a force taunt (I believe it wasn't a taunt yesterday?) when Elendil's Roar is traited, and removed the force taunt from battleshout. Thats why I wanted Blue name clarification.

[Rino90]

• Please, start replacing Guardian traits, damage numbers are now amazing, but traits will always hang back the trait line. The following NEED changes:
  
  • Thrill of Battle
  • Skilled Deflection
  • Invigourating Parry
  • Honourable Combat
  • Reactive Parry
  • Prey On The Weak
• The following traits need their max ranks cut and bonuses from ranks increased:
  
  • Tireless Blows
  • Haemorrhage
  • Blind Rage
• And these traits could use some extra features or damage fixed:
  
  • Protection By The Sword (increase the AOE, increase the damage, make it raid-wide, have it give a parry buff)
  • Bleed Them Dry (have it give 10% bleed damage)
  • Heavy Blows (increase the damage to 10%)

Also, it would be nice to add a passive bonus from choosing red line. After removing stacking bleed from crits, this is the only talent line without any bonuses.

[varobun1]

Also, it would be nice to add a passive bonus from choosing red line. After removing stacking bleed from crits, this is the only talent line without any bonuses.

Thats actually pretty funny yet sad that red guard doesn't get a single starting bonus

[Daenirion]

Also, it would be nice to add a passive bonus from choosing red line. After removing stacking bleed from crits, this is the only talent line without any bonuses.

I don't even remember why it was removed in the first place. They should definitely add it back or come up with a new one

I haven't played my Guard for a while now, but what really bothered me and I don't know if this has been mentioned already, but the 5.2m range on Turn the Tables is kinda stupid.
Most of the time you're in melee range anyway, but it's still frustrating if an important CC removal skill is limited by such a short range.

Either extend the range or remove both the range and fellowship manouvre

[BinaryTertiary]

I don't even remember why it was removed in the first place. They should definitely add it back or come up with a new one

After some digging, it's kinda obvious why it wouldn't work. There was a big update between U22.1 and U22.2 in how Guardian worked and the old bonus just wouldn't work at all.

To refresh minds:



Old Guardian relied on stacking/tiering up a singular bleed, causing increased damage and some perks would scale up with it. What this trait also allowed was that it pushed to max tier of the bleed to 5 (if you were, say, Yellow and took Broad Strokes, you would still get the bleed, but upon refreshing it, you'd only get it to max tier of 3)

Over the years, people have advocated for a change or to have something added, unfortunately, it won't happen it seems.

I have purposefully omitted the lack of this in my feedbacks because honestly, if people started listing all the Guardian issues, it would be overwhelming and pretty dissuasive to even begin working on fixing. I'd rather if we currently just stick to traits for now and later look into other issues and solutions. (coughStar-lit crystals on beltscough

[Sheldar]

So as a primary LM, I have always seen my role in raids (6/12/24) to be debuf with some CC on the side. My LI builds are built entirely around Frost/Fire Lore. I have primary imbued LI with the main legacies and swap book with the unimbued legacy. When considering massive changes like "nerf the LM so the debufs are less", please consider what that does to the LI planning we have done. I have 6 LIs right now and all are built for specific purposes. I do not have room to build a new LI to replace an existing one (not to mention the cost in grind time, or imbued legacy replacement scrolls.) In a major game play change like this (on LM I know the impact, on Guardian and Mini I can see a similar problem but am not as conversant at cap) would it be possible to first add a mechanic that allowed us to "recycle" imbued LIs into their components or some easier way to get the imbued legacy replacement scrolls. Last I check those were going for 400 gold at AH and it would skyrocket if 10-20% of the population had to respec an LI or two.

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%

• 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.

I have always seen the LM in raids (6/12/24) as pure "debuf and CC" but having it be an off healer (or buff to main healer thru Water Lore) or dps could replace that utility if wanted. As it stands I never have time in raid for my full rotations because as an LM I have so much to do. My number one job has always been to keep frost/fire lore up at all times. If you are nerfing that, please consider changing the refresh for those to allow calling frost/fire lore again before it is timed out to refresh it (similar to how wind lore refreshes it and spreads it.) Also consider increasing some of the pet debufs as well, as they can be situationally very useful, but are a lower priority in the rotations.

Anyone who runs an LM in raids is well aware that we are expected to do a lot and are need to know our skills and what rotations and alternate rotations we do depending on the situation, but just reducing the debuf for our key skills will negatively impact the ability for a "non-expert" LM to get a place in raid content. (I am sure the top raiding kins and great LMs will be able to compensate for these changes, but the rest of us likely will just be dropped from the groups.)


Note: If you are going to nerf the Frost/Fire Lore skills, please consider reducing the crit based boss damage (especially AoE.) It feels like recently the content has been more of a race to get enough morale to keep up with the "big hit damage" of the bosses (and in some cases even trash mobs.) Without Frost/Fire Lore to help keep that under control, you almost have to increase morale and heals by another 30% or so, or reduce the big hit damage by the same. In the raids I have been in as LM, a lapse of fire lore in boss fight is almost always a wipe, or at the least a loss of players and a rough regaining of momentum. (With fire lore up, there are still wipes and rough patches, but at least it is doable, the loss of that one skill, without compensating changes likely will break the ability for casual groups to raid.)

[venyos]

Make CAPTAIN's Shield \ Song \ Blade Brother Skills work throught RAID.

[Eralhir]

Hey,
I think the ycappy changes are too much. The fundamental problem is not that the cappy is too strong, but that various boss mechanics penetrate evade stats and thus any guardian CD no longer works and is therefore useless. If different bosses would not do this anymore, then the guardian would be much better and would be played more.
The current changes do not fix the basic problem, they just postpone it and do not fix it in any way. It's not the problem between cappy and guardian but a problem with the boss mechanics in the raids that the CDs don't work and you don't need a guard.

For these reasons, it makes no sense that you have the ycappy nerf so strong, how can you then still be able to refuel properly and run 3 and 6 man instances? Setting the shield of dunedain from 20 to 15 seconds is a big change and, in my opinion, justified. It is also justified that you reduce the morale bonus, so I'll go with you, but that you take out the shield of dunedain as a CD and you can no longer use it as a cappy on yourself, that breaks the entire skill line and with only one single CD, the class hardly makes sense to continue filling up with it. last fight is not enough as a CD.

If you really need a nerf, you should take the reset out of the shield of dunedain or reduce the one from the load stand, but not take a complete CD away from the class.

The 5 seconds shield of dunedain, possibly reduced reset (last stand 3-> 1.5 sec etc) would fix a lot, in combination with the reduced morale bonus.
What would help the guard enormously would be that not every mechanism penetrates evade stats, that the CD works again. If you don't do this, the Guardian will still remain bad. You have to revise the raid bosses.

P.S. A cool thing for guard would be a skill from red line usable in blue line, so that you get a parade reply that you can use redirect every 20 sec and don´t have to spam sting

thank you 4 reading and have a nice day

[Zaheer]

Hey,
I think the ycappy changes are too much. The fundamental problem is not that the cappy is too strong, but that various boss mechanics penetrate evade stats and thus any guardian CD no longer works and is therefore useless. If different bosses would not do this anymore, then the guardian would be much better and would be played more.
The current changes do not fix the basic problem, they just postpone it and do not fix it in any way. It's not the problem between cappy and guardian but a problem with the boss mechanics in the raids that the CDs don't work and you don't need a guard.

For these reasons, it makes no sense that you have the ycappy nerf so strong, how can you then still be able to refuel properly and run 3 and 6 man instances? Setting the shield of dunedain from 20 to 15 seconds is a big change and, in my opinion, justified. It is also justified that you reduce the morale bonus, so I'll go with you, but that you take out the shield of dunedain as a CD and you can no longer use it as a cappy on yourself, that breaks the entire skill line and with only one single CD, the class hardly makes sense to continue filling up with it. last fight is not enough as a CD.

If you really need a nerf, you should take the reset out of the shield of dunedain or reduce the one from the load stand, but not take a complete CD away from the class.

The 5 seconds shield of dunedain, possibly reduced reset (last stand 3-> 1.5 sec etc) would fix a lot, in combination with the reduced morale bonus.
What would help the guard enormously would be that not every mechanism penetrates evade stats, that the CD works again. If you don't do this, the Guardian will still remain bad. You have to revise the raid bosses.

P.S. A cool thing for guard would be a skill from red line usable in blue line, so that you get a parade reply that you can use redirect every 20 sec and don´t have to spam sting

thank you 4 reading and have a nice day

Basically what I stated, except I don't really have an opinion regarding the nerf and overall state of the captain. But instead the way the stat system, including BPE works. This also gets added up with external factors like boss mechanics avoiding BPE as a whole. Now before some certain jodan will give me the response ''BUT THEN CAPTAIN GAINS JUST AS MUCH ADVANTAGE'' Yes it does, but they need to address the core issues for guard and warden first, which has to do with the stat and BPE system. After they can go nerf cpt asmuch as they want.

[Zaheer]

And again, BPE isn't supposed to protect you from special abilities and the like. BPE is a tank stat for constant damage sources, over a large enough sample it averages out to be a reasonable damage reduction, in a small sample it can swing wildly. BPE actually does do a reasonable job right now, we just have a situation where the only tank that can actually get close to bumping it to reliable levels doesn't have any panic skills and has notably undertuned self-healing skills (that shouldn't be % as that would just further incentivise morale stacking over anything else). Sure, it's still pretty useless in fights where the constant damage comes from bleeds but having various builds for various encounters isn't really bad for the game.

BPE indeed doesnt but certain mechanics and dmg sources of a boss should be affected by BPE, this is too complicated and too specific to discuss about since it all differs too much for each encounter.

Kinda just shows that you don't really understand what separates Captains from the other tanks. We weren't in a YCaptain meta because Captains had lower average TPS (they don't, Guardians have lower average TPS), Captains were meta because they had double the number of strong panic skills compared to everyone else and they were capable of performing a support role whilst they were tanking. Boosting the value of BPE wouldn't have closed the gap between the other tanks and Captain but the changes to shield and raidwide cappy buffs do as they devalue YCaptain support/panic abilities and bring it down to a similar level to other tanks.

TL;DR: You can't make up the support/panic skill discrepancy between tanks by reducing every tanks average TPS.

Kind of shows you don't understand how captain works with this comment. You really shouldn't have tried bring the discussion to the captain itself, but before I'll address the captain itself allow me to comment on

''We weren't in a YCaptain meta because Captains had lower average TPS (they don't, Guardians have lower average TPS), Captains were meta because they had double the number of strong panic skills compared to everyone else and they were capable of performing a support role whilst they were tanking. Boosting the value of BPE wouldn't have closed the gap between the other tanks and Captain but the changes to shield and raidwide cappy buffs do as they devalue YCaptain support/panic abilities and bring it down to a similar level to other tanks.''

Nobody stated captains have an average lower TPS, neither did I ever state captain isn't OP.
Neither did I state anything about closing the gap.

You again do not understand after I've tried explaining you 4 times by now.

There's no point in closing the gap at this moment, because you simply cannot. You cannot close the gap between captain and other tanks because these other tanks are at their core to reliant on how BPE operated before the whole change. You say it's minor, but it isn't. Both tanks did rely on avoidance and mitigations. Because these stats had become kind of pointless with certain mechanics and encounters, the warden and guard got heavily affected in that area. Simply boosting their skills at this moment is not going to work, because for example guard CDs got much BPE added and the same goes for warden. Yes they should be able to bear some of the damage they got during encounters with BPE (from adds for example) and the rest could for example be picked up by the build/pool. But by isolating the adds their DPS, the pressure is taken off. This is an example of where they would work properly but this is not the case due the way BPE and stats operate at this moment. That also gets added up with mechanics of this meta. Which hasn't got a single thing to do with the captain. Even if the captain was out of the picture, you still would have issues because the content is simply not in favor of these classes.

(warden and guardian are inherently too different at their core and rely on very different stats than just morale)

What I pointed out multiple times is that they need to address this issues first, yes it will affect captain too, but that's something they've to bear with for a small time. After that they should nerf captain, not before that like they do now.

And like I said, these classes shouldn't be turned into meat sacks to just take the burst dmg like the captain and have these ridiculous panic skills.


You stated, that I was saying the captain have average lower TPS, but that's false. But they can get close to guardian reductions if they do desire so, which is part of the class. But if they do, they have to compensate in some way, which brings me to my final point.


I do not think you can tell me how a captain tank is supposed to work, you cannot argue about this because the captain is suited for every setup desired by it's player. This has been the core principle of the class and if you didn't get that memo then I don't know what you understand under ''captain''.


If I desire to have a selfheal build with high defensive stats at the expense of morale and perhaps BPE, then I can do that. If I desire to have a huge morale pool at the expanse of mitigations and perhaps BPE/selfheal, then I can do so.

What I point out is that the captain is the jack of all trades, you should have known that by now... It's within the class description at the creation screen...

This is another reason I state that it's an incredibly bad idea to balance things now without the stat system and BPE system operating properly.


To rebalance captain with the current state of the game is a very bad mistake because of all these factors, SSG first really needs to address the core issues with guard and warden, which also does affect captain to a degree. Then when this is addressed they can nerf captain.


I've explained you now 4/5 times I believe and I'm starting to get tired of having to tell you 4/5 times the same thing without you understanding. But I won't explaining you what happens exactly if we continue the way we are going now.





Joedangod ''NERF CAPTAIN TO BRING GAP CLOSER TO GUARD AND WARDEN''


Assuming they won't change the meta, stats system and BPE, they'll have to scale warden and guard up to the living expectations of the content. The content heavily revolves around burst damage and ignoring defensive stats.


This puts warden and guardian at a major disadvantage because they both do not rely as much on a ''buffer pool'' as captain. Captains by average build take higher TPS than guards but got a larger chunk of morale. To get guard and warden working.. they need more morale.. now I hope you understand where I am getting at finally.


To get warden and guard there, they would need to turn them into meatsacks with ridiculous pools, boosting their morale pool, having many panic skills. Now where have we seen this before? Ah yes, captain. These classes would lose what they stood for. Since they aren't captains their options were more limited when it came to builds.


So guards were the ultimate fortification as they have very good defensive stats, almost better in every area than captain.
BUT they always need a healer, as they have almost no way to sustain themselves except through panic skills (this is very generalized)
Wardens on the other hand tended to have the smallest pool out of the 3, they however compensated that with great self-sustainability. But where did they fail? They had almost no panic skills.

Both guardian and warden are actually like polar opposites from my perspective. They fill each other in their weakened role. At least this is how I viewed them for years.

Captain on the other hand was perhaps more flexible, they were able to perform in both these roles but not as good and that was what made them usually the ''second'' tank option, the support tank in raids. In smaller content, the captain was able to perform as how he likes, being able to suite his build to what was required. Self sustainability, or maybe more morale with less self healing. Because by exchanging stats, it still would've worked for captain.
Fitting more heal doesn't work as guard if u want better sustainability, increasing healing would benefit the warden most and captain second, because like I stated, captain shouldn't be the best in any role.

My preference as captain was a small pool with high self-sustainability. At the time when wardens still operated well, I was able to do many of the things they did, but they were always outperforming me in that area and I had to use my cooldowns more often.


This is why I think this balance of self sustainable vs brawler build should be fixed and captain should be more reliant on it's cooldowns because it's weaker in both these areas. They did excel at morale, but guard overall did excel in regard to defensive stats. In hardened captain gains much outgoing heal for self applied heal, but it doesn't come close to warden self-healing.

This balance should be restored because I think it's completely pointless to have 3 tanks operating very similar if SSG is going to continue with the way they are now.



They should stay to their core principles. Warden should be restored to it's former state, guard should be restored, the stat system shouldn't neglect these 2 classes, the BPE system should operate as it did before for those 2 classes. Content should be scaled accordingly and then, then nerf the captain down below warden and guard in their roles but allow them to keep using their cooldowns.

[JoRDee]

So let's say 2 Red RKs are in a group, you are actually taking away 25% possible fire mitigation from them with the change to mystifying flames. Giving just 5% damage - I'm assuming it will NOT stack - even it does stack with other RKs, it will still be a significant loss in DPS for them or my common sense is way off. Unless you are buffing damage of Fire RKs by like 60% or higher, I don't see there being much difference at all with this change other than physical classes doing even more DPS as they already get -15% armour rating buff from molten flame.

On some of the other changes that include nerf of damage buffs, have you thought maybe you buffed physical classes too much? Making silly changes like this on RK, which the nerf you just did to some classes won't even make a difference,

Also the damage buff to wind-lore will also make some of the damage buff nerfs pointless.

The nerfs for fire and frost lore is mildly funny. The difficulty of raids got a nerf after Remm. To make up for that and them being to easy i guess, you nerf lores. You also gave champs a 30s taunt that puts a pretty impressive incoming damage debuff that makes every big hit not even tickle and with an RK bubble to top it off but lets nerf LM lores! EZ

[Froyo_K_Baggins]

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?

While I think the nerfing of LM & burg debuffs continues to be terrible, this is a whine. I just took my LM through Snotgrot (copyright). I've run blue line for years and I had zero problems. I don't vaguely understand the complaint about LM in landscape. I don't raid and he's one of my more enjoyable toons.

Back to the debuffs, in the Moria days, it's where burgs and LM helped the most in DN and elsewhere. Now everything is a dps race, cappies are the key tank, and some classes don't seem to ever be invited to raids. Another reason I stopped raiding years ago.

[Melkorben]

Lore-Master, support role (Yellow):

1. Fire/Frost lore nerf: as already mentioned, that would place the LM in a very bad place at 3/6 man. Nevertheless if you are going to do it you should help the LM to fill better the spots as an healer (targets, more relevant skills, bigger magnitude, rez?) or tank (better aggro, more than one target).
2. Support skills relevancy, if you are using them or not- no one care: “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.
3. LM effects: bring back these effects into mechanics - make the LM more complicated/complex than what he is right now, effects such as: Adding Injury to Insult, Warm Up, Cool Off , Deep Freeze, Burning Embers: Slow Burn (on boss/boss adds), etc.
4. Pets: make them more relevant in raids beside Shatter arms and Root strike- we have 7 pets but use almost only 2 of them, make them *equally* support all source of damage (melee, range and tactical).
5. Staff legacies: 16/17 legacies are for DPS, only Power Restored can be related for support role. Right now the utility of the LM staff, that he bring into the raid, is only as a *relic/title holder*. Add more support legacies on the staff (imbue/non imbue) such as: LS stun 3 sec (non imbue version), Crack earth immediately root (non imbue version), Blinding Flash targets, Beacon of Hope bigger radius, anything that will make Pleasant Breeze relevant, Inner Flame fellow effect , Pets skill improvement (cd, magnitude/value, aggro, targets, radius effect, etc.).
6. Ground buff/debuff: make Tar, Sticky Gourd and Warding Knowledge skills more relevant, *equally* support all/more source of damage, remove some mob/boss immunity, make them work with LM effects, etc.
7. Sticky Gourd: have an FPS issue and the visual effects that too bright and annoying that most of the players ask the LM in advance not to use it at all.
8. Frost animation: too long, root in place- fix it please.

IMO, The base line should be that the y LM role in raid should not include any practical DPS while he is too busy to give high support quality.
Cheers

[Joedangod]

Suggestions:
If we want to make it so captains are a "one-of" class per traitline in a raid, please make the following traits into raid-wide buffs, instead of fellowship buffs:
Blue:

• Fellowship of the Song

Red:

• Fellowship of the Blade

Yellow:

• Fellowship of the Shield

And set the following buffs to raidwide instead of fellowship only:

• Banner of War (applied by "Call to Arms: Herald of War")
• Banner of Hope (applied by "Call to Arms Herald of Hope")
• Banner of Victory (applied by "Call to Arms: Herald of Victory") -- not that anyone will ever use this
• On Guard (applied by "Improved Sure Strike" while traited in yellow line)
• Relentless Attack (applied by "Improved Sure Strike" while traited in red line)
• Focus (applied by "Improved Sure Strike" while traited in blue line)

Additionally you could make "Inspire (Song-Brother)" (probably all 3 Inspires really), "Gallant Display", "Valiant Strike", "Reform the Lines!" into raid-wide heals (along the lines of Rallying Cry) to bring Blue captain a little more raid-relevance without forcing them as an auto-include. Edit: People have noted this could force raids into bringing red cappy + blue cappy. So maybe not the best idea here.

I'd honestly advise against making almost any of this raidwide (herald bonuses would be ok admittedly since only one is notable to begin with). Making Fellowship of the X raidwide is just a straight buff to second captains as you'd be able to chain To Arms raidwide for 50s of every minute. On Guard/Relentless Attack/Focus being raidwide again is a straight buff as you almost never want to run two Captains of the same line.

When it comes to Blue Captains I'd really prefer not to make their heals raidwide (unless SSG are making all healers raidwide in which case big thumbs up). The spec is only really lacking in regards to tank healing or spot healing so I'd really just prefer to see those aspects improved in some way. Rallying Cry HoT should probably be fixed to not apply raidwide.