Bullroarer Update 30: Early Look: Skill Balance Work

[Kaeneth]

Making red Guard a viable DPS option would be a good move. Warden is the best example of how it's much better to be able to fill an alternative role, rather than be able to do nothing and get cast aside. Having their DPS role is the only thing that's kept them relevant for what feels like a few years now. For the long term healthiness of a class, it's beneficial that they have multiple roles. It also has the additional benefit of just making the class more fun to play, being able to switch up what you do from time to time, making the class's overall appeal higher. Red Guardian is actually just a really fun spec too. I tend to enjoy it more than red champ honestly. Few things are more satisfying than a nice crit on hammer down, or dashing in and knocking down a bunch of mobs at once.

Also make yellow great again. As a side note- last time I checked flash of light was not effected by high elf's 5% light damage bonus, so I'm assuming that's a bug.

[Mirhaen]

Because the LM has to fill the healer slot in 3-mans, and it struggles with healing more than 1 target. The LMs single target heals work fine; what it specifically needs is a reliable AoE heal. An easy way to achieve this would be to rework pleasant breeze to make it easier to use.

So proposal is to tailor classes based on some groups' setups for a 3 men runs?

I am at this point worried about my lore master and class in general, and last thing I think of are heals when we have way bigger problems.

[Joedangod]

Uhm, when creating a new class, it tells you if its a support/dps/healer/tank. So no its not player-made, the problem is rather that its not relevant anymore and its kinda shady what SSG plans for each class(should they have one role they are good at, or be like RK/Captain that excel at different specs).

The character creation page wasn't updated to reflect the Helms Deep class revamp at all. It's actually outright incorrect in regards to Beorning as it lists them as Support...when they don't have a Support traitline.

We actually have a quote on the very topic of Red Guardian from the HD Dev Diary for Guardian changes:

Verizal: "...to create a fully functional DPS option for the Guardian. I wanted the Guardian to be able to hold his own when it came to damage numbers and not simply be viewed as a wannabe Champion."

Here's an interview from just last year on the subject:



I'll snip out some quotes for you:

Severlin: "So yes we want to make sure that the tank balance at the end game stays competitive for all tanks so that they that you don't feel obligated to bring one specific kind of tank."

Severlin: "Yes, we would like to have all of the trees have a place but that's a significant amount of work"

So yeah, "primary/secondary" roles are a player invention.

[Storm_]

The character creation page wasn't updated to reflect the Helms Deep class revamp at all. It's actually outright incorrect in regards to Beorning as it lists them as Support...when they don't have a Support traitline.

We actually have a quote on the very topic of Red Guardian from the HD Dev Diary for Guardian changes:

Verizal: "...to create a fully functional DPS option for the Guardian. I wanted the Guardian to be able to hold his own when it came to damage numbers and not simply be viewed as a wannabe Champion."


Severlin: "So yes we want to make sure that the tank balance at the end game stays competitive for all tanks so that they that you don't feel obligated to bring one specific kind of tank."

Severlin: "Yes, we would like to have all of the trees have a place but that's a significant amount of work"

So yeah, "primary/secondary" roles are a player invention.

I imagine it's a lot of work to go through all this and maintain all the data you must have collected/stored so thank you for that.
That surely clears some things up for me. I still think it wasn't a player based invention though, its just not up-to-date anymore and I think you cant fault anyone for thinking that.

Now, the problem is that the quotes you showed don't reflect how class balance work has been done in recent years, but I sure hope it will change. The way in which Vastin(and in the last weeks other SSG-members too) have interacted with the community hopefully points towards a positive trend.

[Rino90]

personal best on a minute basis was 171k and guess what? it was pitch perfect on both bleeds and parries (spamming overwhelm on CD when possible)

the problem is that you are very, very rarely gonna get that, the trait line is a complete mess and parsing dummies on a guardian is easily one of the worst experiences i have had in this game

there needs to be a lot of changes to the traits to alleviate this but i have a feeling we will not see any more changes for a while

The average damage that I do as a guard on the test is about 161k without any buffs and food. The best result in three minutes was 167k.
I propose to lay out the data of the parsers for a better understanding by the developers of further changes necessary for the red talent tree.

And as already said, even if the damage to the guard is raised to the current level of damage RK (~ 180k), the guard will still have nothing to offer in reid.

[BinaryTertiary]

The average damage that I do as a guard on the test is about 161k without any buffs and food.

[theultimatekyle]

So yellow hunter is still useless, Guard main legacy for their belts are still broken, Guard's have no real effective cooldowns for boss fights, Warden's only cool down (never surrender) is still broken, and the best way to proceed is to go ham on cappy, lm, and burg nerfs? The red RK and red beorning buffs are welcome, but come on.

Even if you really are planning on nerfing boss/raid damage to keep our damage taken in line with our current raiding experience, then whats the point of nerfing support to begin with? Its either pointless changes for spectacles sake, or its to phase support out from the lower tiers and make more room for dps in lower tier raids. And with the miserably small boost LM's are getting to dps, they'll still be no where near true dps classes, guaranteeing they dont get spots in t1 or t2 raids.

And the captain tanking changes feel like a kneejerk reaction. Overly drastic, and they dont even actually fix any of the tanking problems in the game. It does nothing to help the other guards, wardens, or even champ tanks. With respect to guard and warden tanks, we've been promised fixes for literal years now, but now they want to consider it after seeing how captain tank changes go over? If you have 3 flats on a car, you dont halfway deflate your one good tire before contemplating pumping up the 3 flats.

[Rino90]

Here's an example of a very good try. In the third minute of the pool, it turned out to raise the damage to 173k.

[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

[Neere_CH]

WTB hunter secondary role if guard and RK are now parsing really similar numbers to non-swap hunter, lol. Yeah, taxi it is.

If you take into account all the hints about weapon swap disabling in a month or two, nerfs to debuffs and new raid not being strictly speaking a dps race that should bring us in theory to overall damage decrease and new scaling. I wonder why we still have that hilarious morale pools then.

[Tatharil]

WTB hunter secondary role if guard and RK are now parsing really similar numbers to non-swap hunter, lol. Yeah, taxi it is.

The majority of hunters doesn't want a 2nd role. They are comfortable with their self chosen victim's role. Buhuu we can only do dps, so make us best in it without competition. Don't make our supporting role competitive. We don't want to make choices. We want our strongest support and debuffs in dps line! We don't want to sacrifice a bit of dps to be able to support. Never ever ask for yellow buffs! Red first! If Red hunter isnt top dps cry out loud and yell at those asking for yellow buffs since HD, because they are demanded to support the red outrage. Red first, that's our only role! And once Red is in a good dps spot no one even cares about yellow, that got even worse with poorly thought-out red changes. Yellow is supposed to stay quiet because hunter got his attention, now it's class x, y, z time for buffs.

[Chris91]

non-swap hunter

Who cares?

Nobody cares for my heals while watching Netflix or how well I tank while argueing with my roommates.

The game played to it's fullest should be balanced, everything else is L2P. Also swapping isn't that hard

[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 already stated about yellow. Though I do not want to opinionate about yellow as a whole but address the issues. Thanks for sharing the perspective tho, even tho it was indirectly :P

[HolyDuckTape]

bet you feel pretty dumb now huh? ./s*



*is a sarcastic remark, i am not insulting this person in any way, shape or form.

The one skill to save guardians!

[Hildilas]

2. If this skill cannot be used on self...it is not a tanking skill. It is a healing skill as it will allow you to keep someone up while your heal over time effects to their thing. it will have some marginal use in smaller group content but for raiding it will be a waste of points in most situations. If you insist on bringing back this skill to it's originasl function, then please integrate it into the blue line, as it's original function was to help the captain keep the group alive in his role of support class, not as a main tank.

Well you could see the cappy as a pure supporter. SOD and other panics would be tank support then...Blue is healing support and red damage support. I know this is tricky when it comes to 3 mans but I think the cappy would most likely just heal like the LM right?

Idk about the raid wide buffs though. Having two cappys in raid was never the problem. The problem was that one of the cappys took the main tank place. Don't try to change that by making his buffs raid wide. BUFF the main tanks so someone would still take 2 cappys AND a freaking main tank in raid AND maybe even an off tank. Like we did it way back with a guard, warden and two red caps. I would prefere one red one blue cap though.

I mean 2 traitlines usable in raid/ini = Still more than other classes have Wouldn't really mind If yellow was obsolete after the next update.

[Zaheer]

Well you could see the cappy as a pure supporter. SOD and other panics would be tank support then...Blue is healing support and red damage support. I know this is tricky when it comes to 3 mans but I think the cappy would most likely just heal like the LM right?

Idk about the raid wide buffs though. Having two cappys in raid was never the problem. The problem was that one of the cappys took the main tank place. Don't try to change that by making his buffs raid wide. BUFF the main tanks so someone would still take 2 cappys AND a freaking main tank in raid AND maybe even an off tank. Like we did it way back with a guard, warden and two red caps. I would prefere one red one blue cap though and apart from all the changes that are being made with rezzing IMO the strongest rezz should have always been possible on blue cappy only.

Allow me to correct you, blue line is not entirely healing support and allows for much more utility that is poorly understood by people. But this utility is small on raid scale, perhaps better in 3man and 6. Still I get what u mean, but I personally think it's not meant to replace a main heal. Or perhaps it could if you're forced to constantly burn cooldowns in some way, basically not allowing blue to have any panic skills. Which is kind of the case but yeah I won't go too deep into that :P

There were actually some kind of secondary roles for captain, invented by Turbine at the time. The main role was to support and the secondary role is delivered by the captain in the form of what line he's in. But blue was kind of special in that regard, because it wasn't meant to just do only healing.

[Hildilas]

Allow me to correct you, blue line is not entirely healing support and allows for much more utility that is poorly understood by people. But this utility is small on raid scale, perhaps better in 3man and 6.

I allow you ;3 I just went by colors of the trees (blue=heal, red= dd etc ) you know and that IMO the cappy IS in fact a supporting class and not a main tank or main DD or main healer. i kno that the cappy doesn't just support the healer in blue line.
Blue cappy has so much potential that I would prefer a meta with a blue and red cappy in raid without hurting the main tanks or main healers. It would be great If they could balance this and it would pave the path for other main tanks in case they get buffed.

[BinaryTertiary]

Guardian

• Protection by the Sword group melee damage buff increased [2%->5%]

okay now buff the aoe and make it affect all damage types then you have one trait less to work on

the list still remains the same the same

Critically important:

• Shield Use rank is still inactive
  
  • ...it's been 3 years. Can we please look into this?
• Catch A Breath cooldown bug
  
  • It was explained, in detailed, for years, since it was found. Still no fix. It was reported, for years, still no fix.
  • Using War-chant traited with Demoralizing Anthem to decrease the cooldown of Catch A Breath bugs out if you have a Parry Response proc. Clearing out the Parry Response (by using (Whirling) Retaliation) fixes the issue.
• Plethora of terrible traits we were told would be getting looked at
  
  • Notably Reactive Parry, Invigourating Parry, Prey On The Weak.
  • Others that are more than welcome to join the list:
    
    • Adaptability
    • Disorientation
    • Thrill of Battle
    • Skilled Deflection
    • Honourable Combat
    • Insult to Injury
    • Bolster
    • Singular Focus
    • Cataclysmic Shout
    • Light Touched
    • Protection
    • Flash Of Light
    • Manifested Ire

Following only need a few number or mechanic tweaks:

• Protection By The Sword (increase AOE, give it a parry buff)
• Blind Rage, Deeper Wounds, Tireless Blows, Haemorrhage (drop it down from 5 ranks to 4 and increase the bonuses slightly)
• Hammer Down (reduce the cooldown, at least by half)
• All 3 Warriors Fortitude (incoming healing rating didn't scale at all, mastery is low, increase crit chance)
• Tenderize doesn't scale properly, it will bug out after first rank if traited above third rank
• Warriors Heart in red should see its healed reduced, Guardian has access to plenty of cooldowns while in DPS to stay alive

[HolyDuckTape]

[*]Protection by the Sword group melee damage buff increased [2%->5%]

Come on..... what a joke. This is the Protection by the Sword fix?

Lemme tell you what's wrong with the skill:

1. it has a 10m range
2. it is a pulsating buff for whatever reason, not an actual aura. (tho this is not that big of a deal)

3. it's melee only so unfriendly for comps without many melee dps classes

4. it's a mastery based buff so just giving us 2 or 5% is still extremely minimal support. (For now this can be ok depending on how future balancing will affect our dps or support.)


And just one tiny thing gets buffed? We still have many traits to go.

[XnoTheBlack]

Every class should be able to at least fill in one of the three basic roles: DPS, tanking, healing to ensure that the player can secure a place in a 3-man run. They wouldn't have problem with 6-man and above too if it's the case. I'm a returned player just about last year and has started all over with just one LM. I have reached end-game content and is considering quitting the game already.

Lore-masters do not fill any one of the basic roles mentioned and so there is no place for LMs in a 3-man instance. Red-line LMs should be able to do extraordinary damage since it comes at a cost of long induction and being rooted in place. It's ridiculous that throwing fire and casting lightning hurt very little compared to swords and arrows. That 20% increase definitely won't secure LMs anything in group contents. It's actually a minimum of what should have been, not a compensation for debuff rating reduction. Another role that a "lore-master" can do better is healing and other forms of support and there are so many ways that this could expand on. Group stun-immunity? Better healing capability? Fear-immunity? In-combat rez? Making some support skills castable on the move?

Today all a LM can do is debuffing and CC. So when a fellowship starts, people only want one and only one lore-master. Unlike other classes that you could have a duplicate because they can fill in more than one role in a group. Not just that, many people doing group contents are grinding and so expect a breeze fast run and so are looking for all-teal-and-golden gears even for lower-tiered content. It's extremely hard for LM to get any of that when they get rejected all the time to group content to get the said gears. The only choice for some players is to grind embers for adventure gears. Even then it'd still not matter if the group has a LM already.


There are so many broken things on lore-masters
- Broken resistance legacies after Finesse has been introduced (since years ago)
- A lot of mobs and bosses can't be stunned.
- A lot of irrelevant skills that nobody cares and don't make a difference at all in gameplay.
- A lot of irrelevant legacies.
- Pets doesn't scale well and is still often not responding to command. It's now only used for buff/debuff.
I find it really weird how companions come to be recycled instead of used out in the field.
- Blue line is irrelevant for late content.
- Sic-em pets are still waiting for order.
- Long animations that go beyond the induction time. Once cast mid-way, you can't even cancel it by moving since it'd rubber-band you back to the animation+ Dated animations. Some could be much more aesthetically pleasing and functional time-wise.
- Light of Hope heals are abysmal in today bloated stats.
- Wisdom of the Council sometimes can sometimes fail to heal you (and the cooldown activates)


The worst part of all these is the fact that they are issues that have been here for a really really long time. Look at the forum for LMs and I can't help but fail to see the commitment to fix old things ( but which are ever-present for every new and returning players). Please consider a good look at the game and see how many things that developers have spent time to make just for it to be abandoned. It is just sad.

[ReadmybioArkBurg]

The 5% additional buff to lores is a step in the right direction, other support areas of the class should still be looked over such as a healing buff, bear pet tanking buff for 3-6mans, and pets such as eagle/lynx/saber tooth tiger to have skills, higher dps, or debuffs that are of more use.

[Zaheer]

I allow you ;3 I just went by colors of the trees (blue=heal, red= dd etc ) you know and that IMO the cappy IS in fact a supporting class and not a main tank or main DD or main healer. i kno that the cappy doesn't just support the healer in blue line.
Blue cappy has so much potential that I would prefer a meta with a blue and red cappy in raid without hurting the main tanks or main healers. It would be great If they could balance this and it would pave the path for other main tanks in case they get buffed.

To be honest, each lines delivers within that area. Blue had a kind of ''secondary'' part within that compartment of doing heals. But I rather not go into that. I once did write something about that no point bringing it in here. I believe this was the topic: Hands of Healing feedback/discussion

I think yellow it's role is to constantly buff it's allies, being an off-tank(due to the supportive role) within raids but able to tank in 6man and 3man.

This implies that they can always be replaced by another tank.

Yellow line captain in normal circumstances was always below defensive stats with guards and had a lower ''HPS'' than warden, but it sat kind of in the middle of these 2 tanks with a slightly bigger buffer. The captain was however asked to constantly burn his cooldowns more often. e.g. yellow banner & to-arms. I think captain should be reduced in morale like they're now, but a bit more thought into the nerfing is required. But before I advise nerfing the captain tank further I recommend first fix the issues I addressed earlier.

If I really do have to give my opinion, I think it's fine the way LS & SoD are nerfed. However, I think taking away the ability to use SoD on the captain himself is a bad move. But all with all, I think the other issues like stats and BPE & content design need to be addressed first.

AND I think SSG won't put these changes really through before live about nerfing captain this steeply, but if they do...
well... they'll get to see for themselves :P

[laughatdo0m]

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.

Is Anthem of the Third Age (Resonance, Dissonance, and Melody) supposed to be raid wide? This one was always just a self buff in the past but is currently buffing the whole raid today on Bullroarer.

[Lotro_Dancer1]

[*]Anthems should now be Raid-wide.

The go-to is already Mini-Bear since Mini is a great healer with buffs and the bear provides raid-wide heal. With this latest change, the Bear is raid-wide heals and the mini is now raid wide buffs. I have no problem with change to raid-wide mini anthems. However, the RK healer (which is suppose to be a main healer) is being pushed farther from usefulness in raids.

Given that the standard now seems to be "raid wide" effect for healers, can we please make an argument to make Rousing Words raid wide? I think this one change could help the RK healers to be on par and viable in raids again.

Thank you!!

[Dranak123]

The go-to is already Mini-Bear since Mini is a great healer with buffs and the bear provides raid-wide heal. With this latest change, the Bear is raid-wide heals and the mini is now raid wide buffs. I have no problem with change to raid-wide mini anthems. However, the RK healer (which is suppose to be a main healer) is being pushed farther from usefulness in raids.

Given that the standard now seems to be "raid wide" effect for healers, can we please make an argument to make Rousing Words raid wide? I think this one change could help the RK healers to be on par and viable in raids again.

Thank you!!

Hello People. My suspicion is that the RK damage reduction skills which are a mix of AoE , group/raid wide , or single target are underrated. This may be because aftermarket DPS programs fail to account for the effect and basically just 'add up the raw damage and healing and quantify it' . Am I totally wrong and sinking into delusion at the bottom of a lovely bottle of Australian Red ? Do the incoming healing buffs just boost Minstrel numbers as well as our own ? And do our AoE/group/raid heals reflect in the stats and compare to other class AoE and similar heals ? is the RK 'damaged' because it can act as a multiple role class within a raid...surpassed by perhaps only the LM ? discuss.....