Bullroarer Update 32 - Beta #7 - CLOSED

[Miragael]

Why is an instance that's already a super joke dmg-wise being nerfed even further? If you actually took the time to gear yourself up even before the 1st nerf happened, the dmg taken was already too low imo. If you actually got yourself some purple gear and some mitigation essences even on the 1st build on boss 2 you would never die as any role. Why is this instance's dmg being balanced around people that don't want to gear?

On t3:
1st boss deals no damage and doesn't have mechanics, can also be kited if you want to do it with level 115 players
2nd boss deals no damage, blizzard can be ignored, puddle can be semi-ignored and it only takes 2 meters to step out lul, aoe can be ignored or just avoided by stepping 8 meters away, only 2 adds (that do nothing on top of it).
3rd boss is still weaker than a house dummy

How about the mechanics get fixed (and many more added) and the dmg gets increased instead to make it an actual good quality instance? Currently everything about this instance is an absolute mess, you are very late to give us 3 miserable low-quality instances, the gundabad instance cluster is a joke

Hope no one, especially Lotro Devs, takes this wildly inaccurate hyperbolic feedback seriously.

Catering to all players is win-win for all, instead of a minority of players who may have figured out optimized gearing and helpful strats earlier than others.

Devs, thank you for rebalancing this instance on T3 catering to all players, many who may even still struggle with T2 and who may not be regular readers of Lotro forums.

[JLPicard]

Bullroarer is OPEN
Now when a character logs in, they will only version their Quest/Deed Log when the build number has incremented.

Can anyone decipher this, what does this mean?

[auximenes]

[*]Changes have been made to how the game processes Quests and Deeds. Now when a character logs in, they will only version their Quest/Deed Log when the build number has incremented. The expected outcome of this is a reduction in hitching for the player. Please do a compare of your Quest/Deed Logs from Bullroarer and Live and let us know if you see any outstanding issues.

So, let me see if I understand this. Currently when you log in the game checks all Quests and Deeds to see if there is a new version of them but after this update the game will only run through the Quest and Deed version check the first time you log in after a game update?

How about a new weekly quest for VIPs that would award a black steel key?

/signed

Wonder if there are Keys to be had on the fabled Award Track?

[Indelin]

The change of the SaSu rewards to teal traceries is no longer in the patch notes. Was that decision reversed and will the chest continue to drop legendary traceries?

[Gildoriel]

I agree. As I also don't have anything against giving for example quests for free. Only what makes me wonder what will they do to make people to pay for sub, if that is what they want. Those perks that left does not, seems to me at least, worth 10-15$ monthly through the whole year.

But you could unlock all this for a 1-month-sub or totally free with earned LP (except Swift Travel, unless you like to regularly buy the tokens in the shop), so a long-term VIP won't notice any difference. It will only be useful for the occasional new player.

[Uroc]

But you could unlock all this for a 1-month-sub or totally free with earned LP (except Swift Travel, unless you like to regularly buy the tokens in the shop), so a long-term VIP won't notice any difference. It will only be useful for the occasional new player.

I think that some players which are not new have unlocked almost all expansions and quest packs. So when they make new alt they make a count that they need vip since milestones and 5min cd on those and return skills + lp for traits is together very expensive. So they go to that Sub window and just because they started to think about taking VIP they end up taking 3months (for extra lp and perks since they would take VIP anyway). So SSG in this case got 30$ from them, not just 15$.

For example I am that kind of player. I took 3 months recently. Who knows maybe next time I will just unlock short cooldown on my travel skills, I have unlocked everything else anyway, except Gundabad.

[escapado]

Bullroarer is OPEN


Instances:
[LIST][*]The Hiddenhoard of Abnankâra

• The Discovery Deed for this encounter has been bypassed.
• Please note: Boss Encounter 1 on Tier I is the only content currently available for testing.
• Known Issues
  
  • Raid entryway needs to be polished to match the exterior location in Clovengap
  • Ice-giant trash has no skills

- you can pass on the left and right side of the door to bossroom 1 - even infight and pull out the giants out of the bossroom. they dont reset. your can get kicked out off the platform and stand on the snow edges of the room. we dont think this is intentional.
- the bosses each have 500 million morale, which is in our oppinion slightly too much. but if you plan to bring more damage into the game through more lvls on the LIs it might be okay.
- the damage the bosses deal are really low, our tank fell of the platform and a champ tanked it while not dropping below 80%.


Overall feedback to the 12 man raid (might more people react to this?):
- the raid at this point is just an icy sandbox with 3 big target dummys in it.
we really want to test something in order to give proper feedback, but there is nothing really to talk about!
- the 12 man raid should be the centerpiece of the expansion - even more when the previous 6 man is really bad!
- please take the time you need in order to make a solid raid with interesting challenging bossfights and a rewarding lootsystem.

[rubagol]

Why is an instance that's already a super joke dmg-wise being nerfed even further? If you actually took the time to gear yourself up even before the 1st nerf happened, the dmg taken was already too low imo. If you actually got yourself some purple gear and some mitigation essences even on the 1st build on boss 2 you would never die as any role. Why is this instance's dmg being balanced around people that don't want to gear?

On t3:
1st boss deals no damage and doesn't have mechanics, can also be kited if you want to do it with level 115 players
2nd boss deals no damage, blizzard can be ignored, puddle can be semi-ignored and it only takes 2 meters to step out lul, aoe can be ignored or just avoided by stepping 8 meters away, only 2 adds (that do nothing on top of it).
3rd boss is still weaker than a house dummy

How about the mechanics get fixed (and many more added) and the dmg gets increased instead to make it an actual good quality instance? Currently everything about this instance is an absolute mess, you are very late to give us 3 miserable low-quality instances, the gundabad instance cluster is a joke

Strongly disagree.
First to point out, On t3 acutally:
Boss 1 actually still deals great damage after patch, 360k bleed which can not be purged randomly put on damage dealers is kind of tough. Also, 115 characters can not be admitted into HoR
Boss 2 still has high morale, some of her skill still does high damage, like shadow strike, roughly 600k or more on t3 on damage dealers. Adds also do 600k per hit wild swing damage.
Boss 3 is kind of underwhelming, but much stronger than a house dummy.



Overall, morale and damage is not the higher the better.
We can see from bullroarer HoR t5 Boss 2 and 3 have 500 million each, which is insanely high and make the whole fight super boring.
Damage also should not be increased cuz it will make t5 broken with extraordinary high damage that one shot players.

What actually makes an instance challenging and fun are mechanics that needs to solve, have combo and require group ordination to conter.
So I partially agree that this 6man has some potential(add more mechanics that make sense), but given the fact that It's already done and been put online, It's nearly impossible to redo/redesign boss encounters.
Therefore, I would rather see devs nerf it to a easy to farm state, than to super buff it to make it "challenging"(actually painful to complete)

[Winzhi]

Testing the raid makes no sense right now. Hardly any damage and no mechanics seems to be working. We had 1 death and one shot everything.

If there were mechanics, I must have missed it.

Health on bosses seems high and it feels like you are hitting a sponge just soaking it all up while doing nothing against you. Having smaller health pools but more mechanics, especially personal responsability mechanics and/or mechanics where you work together would be much more prefered than tank and spank with nothing happening.

[Ayvri]

Class, Race, and Virtue trait slots will now automatically unlock when a character hits the required level, regardless of subscription status or purchase. This does not apply to monster play characters.

Tested this on a F2P account. There's a minor (NOT game breaking,) bug.

Steps to reproduce:

• Create new character with Skip Introduction selected,
• Enter Eyes and Guard Tavern - use the Skip Introduction quest to bump to level 5.

A popup appears: You are now eligable to purchase a trait slot.

Return to Eyes and Guard Tavern, bump to Level 10 - working as intended: 2 virtue trait slots are unlocked, 3 locked (but not with pay symbol.)

[Eloriena]

- you can pass on the left and right side of the door to bossroom 1 - even infight and pull out the giants out of the bossroom. they dont reset. your can get kicked out off the platform and stand on the snow edges of the room. we dont think this is intentional.
- the bosses each have 500 million morale, which is in our oppinion slightly too much. but if you plan to bring more damage into the game through more lvls on the LIs it might be okay.
- the damage the bosses deal are really low, our tank fell of the platform and a champ tanked it while not dropping below 80%.


Overall feedback to the 12 man raid (might more people react to this?):
- the raid at this point is just an icy sandbox with 3 big target dummys in it.
we really want to test something in order to give proper feedback, but there is nothing really to talk about!
- the 12 man raid should be the centerpiece of the expansion - even more when the previous 6 man is really bad!
- please take the time you need in order to make a solid raid with interesting challenging bossfights and a rewarding lootsystem.

Right now the Raid feels pretty pre-alpha-testing like without any real mechanics or buggy ones:
- eyes appear over Avatars but not in buffbars and if the blue eye is the notification for a harpoon strike, the 4k damage of the harppon seem quite small in comparison to the ticking dotson the tank with 250k/125k on Tier 1

But one big plus Point, please, please, please keep it:

- The bosses have their RP talk in green and become red after entering their platform, but they don't engage immediately with us and the "knowledge of the Loremaster" debuff can finally be used at (at least) one boss

[Braer]

I'm encouraged that there's evidence of process changes coming through rather than the stock "we can look/are looking at that". Not sure BR numbers will be the right environment to see a difference but I'll DL and check for issues. Having someone at the helm for a change? Someone with the playing experience in mind?

Edit: hmmm, downtime plan scuppered - seems to need live servers for a character copy.

[escapado]

Right now the Raid feels pretty pre-alpha-testing like without any real mechanics or buggy ones:

That's why im concerned. release date of the raid is 15th Feb!
how in the hell they wanna fill the raid with well thought through bossfights? plan in time for bullroarer to test it? bugfix it? polish and implement rewarding loot? that all in 3 weeks?
idk man

[egarthur]

A bit of a joke, don't you think? This is all unlocked when you become VIP and otherwise not and now it is free for all? what get VIP in return?

That's funny, in none of the marketing material for LOTRO subscription do I see mention of, in addition to the package of benefits and services, a claim that I also get the intangible benefit of being able to lord it over Premium and F2P players, that I get virtue-trait unlocks, etc. and they have to pay LP for it. Nor do I see any claim that SSG will protect me from the mental anguish of seeing players with lesser account types get some of the same benefits I do.

If virtue-trait unlocks, etc. are the deciding factor in whether to remain VIP or not, then when your sub comes up for renewal, feel free to let it expire. The absence of a subscription fee is then what you get "in return" for F2P and Premium getting their virtue-trait and other kinds of unlocks.

Now, I'm not one to say that SSG can offer anything, for any price, at any time, and this is all acceptable and fair, because, you know, it's just business and everything is fair in war and business. I'm not that guy. I've criticized them, for example, for the "shrinkflation" of delivering "early" Ultimate Gundbad purchasers (like myself) 2 Valars, and "late" Ultimate purchasers only 1 Valar (IMO, they should have made 2 Valars a permanent part of the Ultimate Gundabad deal, and put out a 1-Valar "penultimate" package, at a slighty-reduced price). But here, the virtue-trait unlocks, etc. that are being offered to Premium and F2P do not reduce, in absolute terms, the value of a sub. As I said, at renewal time, everyone makes a decision of whether a sub is sufficiently more valuable than continuing as a non-sub, and whether the additional value is worth the cost; by reducing the gap between the account types, SSG is undoubtedly going to lose a few that would otherwise renew their subs, as well as some that would have subbed for the first time, but decide not to, since they don't need to do that to get the virtue-trait unlocks, etc.. Presumably SSG is making a business decision that improving the F2P/Premium experience, will in the long term bring in an equal or greater amount of non-sub purchases (e.g. area/region/quest-pack/expac purchases, cosmetics, character upgrades, etc.) from those other account types, and/or simply that the extended duration of people playing F2P/Premium will result in them eventually deciding "hey, I've been playing for X amount of months/years, maybe it's time to pay for an upgrade, that will enhance my game experience". We'll see if that business decision pans out in the long run. But even if it doesn't, there is also the intangible of "customer goodwill", and I think (or at least hope) SSG cares about that too.

[HolyDuckTape]

Hope no one, especially Lotro Devs, takes this wildly inaccurate hyperbolic feedback seriously.

Catering to all players is win-win for all, instead of a minority of players who may have figured out optimized gearing and helpful strats earlier than others.

Devs, thank you for rebalancing this instance on T3 catering to all players, many who may even still struggle with T2 and who may not be regular readers of Lotro forums.

Simple question then: Why do tiers/difficulties exist in this game if it should be catering to everyone? The fact is: We got multiple tiers of difficulties meant for different types of players, and most importantly: EVERYONE is able to learn the game, instance and their class and is able to complete ALL content in the game if they are: 1. willing to put in the work and 2. interested enough in x content to do so.

So you admitting that t3 is rebalanced to ''cater to all players'' literally proves my point that it is way too easy. It being balanced to ALL players literally means its t1 difficulty now on a t3 instance. Thank you for proving my point. Also: ''optimized gearing'' we are talking about basic purple gear over here, imagine not even purple gearing yourself for a t3 6man and demanding to be able to kill it regardless of your skill, what a meme.

Strongly disagree.
First to point out, On t3 acutally:
Boss 1 actually still deals great damage after patch, 360k bleed which can not be purged randomly put on damage dealers is kind of tough. Also, 115 characters can not be admitted into HoR
Boss 2 still has high morale, some of her skill still does high damage, like shadow strike, roughly 600k or more on t3 on damage dealers. Adds also do 600k per hit wild swing damage.
Boss 3 is kind of underwhelming, but much stronger than a house dummy.

1. Ohno a 360k single target bleed of which 40-50-60-70% is mitigated (and many dmg reduction buffs from healers/tanks on top of this) and any players that actually have some purple gear having 800k-1.2million morale is so hard /s That's literally a 100k maybe a 200k maximum hit on players with 800k-1.2mil morale and that is the ONLY dmg taken here in the entire fight. (And the occasional additional 100-300k aoe if you tank it in place once every minute or so)

2. There are 2 adds, both can be perma cc'd that's just a joke in itself but even then the dmg they deal is completely ignorable on the tank. Tanks in this fight take barely zero damage to begin with. Her shadow strike in its original state could be survived by ANYONE that actually took the time to gear themselves up properly. I've only ever seen people die from it if they were still in 130 cap gear or in green gear without essences. It's a tier 3 6man, how about you just gear yourself up for it, that's the whole point of the game. It is a literal test-able FACT that anyone who took the time to get purple gear and green/purple essences is able to ALWAYS survive the shadow strike regardless of your role.

3. bruh

Therefore, I would rather see devs nerf it to a easy to farm state, than to super buff it to make it "challenging"(actually painful to complete)

It's t3, it's supposed to be challenging, why else is it freakin t3? Easy to farm = t1 or at most t2. This makes zero sense. Same for t4 and t5, they are literally meant to be difficult, nowadays t4 and t5 is literally the original t3 which was already on farm by the t4 and t5 lotro players, meaning the balance of the difficulties is complete and utter garbage.

[Cutedge]

I've been a lifetime subscriber for 15 years now so I never even realized that these things were locked behind a paywall, and while I appreciate that people could be upset about losing out on VIP benefits, this is such a QOL increase for players coming in that it's worth cutting the benefits of VIP without a second thought. Anything that reduces the paywall is a good thing. VIP players are still getting 500 LP a month which is worth like 7 bucks. They're getting gold hobbit presents. They're getting access to all quest packs and skirmishes. Should they add something else? I mean, sure I wouldn't complain but this doesn't seem as much of a value add as much as it seems to be a severe determent to new players that could cause people to see a ridiculous paywall and bounce off the game.

That said, they'll need to update this: https://www.lotro.com/en/game/vip

[Belechael]

I love it when some players completely miss the point of playing an RPG game with characters that are supposed to be getting better, just because they can clear all content. They make such fools of themselves.

The way the game is right now the only gear coming from instances that is an improvement over the quest, alliance, crafted and ember items is from T3 and up. So, a lot of players who play this game to advance their characters CAN NOT do that, because T3 instances are way to hard for them.

I couldn't care less from what tier the items that are better than those I already have come from, have them drop from T1 and give higher level items from T2 and T3, not the #### that drops now RANDOMLY. Otherwise I stop playing and guess what? SSG loses money!

PS. For what is worth, the itemization in this expansion is utter horsecrap, which is a shame as it used to be better just an expansion before. Not perfect, but better.

[Osglinthor]

[*]Warden - Tracery Mastery CD has been improved [-3 -> -5s], while Remmorchant set bonus reduced [-5s -> -3s]

This is deffinitly step in right direction. Next thing you could look at is to shorten at least some animations and improve overall attack speed. Let us use battle prep out of combat. And give us back Initial DoT hits.

I would argue for even shorter masteries CD provided we get animations and attack duration sped UP as well as Initial DoT tick.
And if you could code and make for example Wardens Triumph to cash out all damage over time gambits on target for a % dmg buff based on amount of gambits removed(and hit hard, but not enough to make it worth every time in rotation instead just as something situational). This would let us stop DPS on command in case of reflect or another requirment and play around with nuke parts or target switches.

You could also take a look into barbed javelin scaling and make it 20>100% chance in trait as well as take a loot into 15% double proc trait in redline and make it some form of consistent DMG increase as these kinds of RNG have no place in current game. Same thing could be done to marked target double proc chance and turn that tracery into % increase of marked\diminished debuffs.

Main points behind shorter animations and shorter masteries CD as well as initial DoT tick on gambits is to shorten rotation ramp up and increase our "brust". With these changes we can play around with consumption on quick sweep bleeds and change rotation around a bit(its not much of a mechanic but still more fun than to just sit there trough slow optimal rotation that a bot can do.) especialy if you could make that change to wardens triumph.

It would be very easy to tone it down from ~30 sec to 24 or even 20 provided you can change animataions easly since there is a lot of it that can be shaved off like builders\marked and diminished\Resounding challenge\stance swap\wall of steel\onslaught. Not to mention that changes like these would also benefit blue line> looking at dance of war.
Faster ramp up rotaion is far easier to balance and better for game. As it could at least tone down our role from sit on boss 24 7 with on repeat rotation being marked\diminished bot.

[g4n0ndork]

Hope no one, especially Lotro Devs, takes this wildly inaccurate hyperbolic feedback seriously.

Catering to all players is win-win for all, instead of a minority of players who may have figured out optimized gearing and helpful strats earlier than others.

Devs, thank you for rebalancing this instance on T3 catering to all players, many who may even still struggle with T2 and who may not be regular readers of Lotro forums.

And yet, holyduck is right in a certain context. T3+ difficulties were given to the players that wanted to have a good challenge, so optimizing your gear and how you play your class was mandatory. I've just done t4/5 of the instance and I have to say, I am extremely disappointed that this damage nerf came through. T4/5 is a complete joke of an instance now, all bosses are practically target dummies for you to soak damage on and you never have to worry about dying at all.
For example, T3 after the first adjustment update, with me having maxed out mitigations and 1M morale, the second boss was narrowly almost one-shotting me without proper debuffs from all classes present. after this update, T5, supposed to be the highest and hardest content of an instance you can get, the second boss doesn't even hit me for 30% of my morale. I would have thought T5 would at least be comparable to how the original T3 was when it came out, giving players a real challenge and maximise the usage of their skills and gear. But this is not the case. So in your quote saying they did good to cater to ALL players, they did not. They catered to the casual majority that is OK with not doing the hardest content there is but still asking to get the best gear possible, leaving the small minority that work hard for their gear behind and unsatisfied with joke instances that makes them bored and not interested to play.

(Constructive feedback, I'm not trashing you here ????)

[Belechael]

And yet, holyduck is right in a certain context. T3+ difficulties were given to the players that wanted to have a good challenge, so optimizing your gear and how you play your class was mandatory. I've just done t4/5 of the instance and I have to say, I am extremely disappointed that this damage nerf came through. T4/5 is a complete joke of an instance now, all bosses are practically target dummies for you to soak damage on and you never have to worry about dying at all.
For example, T3 after the first adjustment update, with me having maxed out mitigations and 1M morale, the second boss was narrowly almost one-shotting me without proper debuffs from all classes present. after this update, T5, supposed to be the highest and hardest content of an instance you can get, the second boss doesn't even hit me for 30% of my morale. I would have thought T5 would at least be comparable to how the original T3 was when it came out, giving players a real challenge and maximise the usage of their skills and gear. But this is not the case. So in your quote saying they did good to cater to ALL players, they did not. They catered to the casual majority that is OK with not doing the hardest content there is but still asking to get the best gear possible, leaving the small minority that work hard for their gear behind and unsatisfied with joke instances that makes them bored and not interested to play.

(Constructive feedback, I'm not trashing you here ????)

As long as they can't/won't introduce a logical itemization progress that will offer meaningful item advancement through the instance tiers catering to the casual majority instead of the l33t small minority, as you correctly imo pointed out, is the best solution to keep people playing and money coming.

The pressure should be on the itemization NOT on making and keeping instances hard.

[Gunhard]

[*]Class, Race, and Virtue trait slots will now automatically unlock when a character hits the required level, regardless of subscription status or purchase. This does not apply to monster play characters.

This alone is a huge change for those who dont pay monthly sub and especially for those who want to try ftp part of the game. Probably might help new players dont feel so restricted and invest into game to play it more.

[LadySelene]

This alone is a huge change for those who dont pay monthly sub and especially for those who want to try ftp part of the game. Probably might help new players dont feel so restricted and invest into game to play it more.

Yeah, great change, thank you!
(Will not help me much to play a valared f2p char due to currency cap, which prevents me to swap to the new LI, but I wanted to sub to unlock swift travel... someday... when the blue XP bar won't interfere with my playstyle on ALREADY VIP-unlocked characters, who do NOT want to rush to 140 and do NOT want to buy a stone which occupies a gear slot and stops XP gain dead. But it might be a big issue to others, who can do without swift travel).

Maybe SSG should address something for VIPs, too? There were numerous suggestions for getting access to VIP town services without having to travel to Bree/homesteads every 2 days. Someone came with an idea of buying a stack of consumables off the NPC, you click the consumable and it executes the quest which drops those 2 items in the bag. So the logic behind those 2-day items won't be changed. I'm trying to imagine how I, if I were VIP, want to play alt X which is probably left near a quest NPC, and my mobile bank has expired. The necessity to return and pick it up, again and again... do something to it.

[Braer]

The slow release of multi tier deed unlock instances it to provide players with opportunities to deal with periodic capped currency demands, in a manner of their choice/peer group.

[HolyDuckTape]

And yet, holyduck is right in a certain context. T3+ difficulties were given to the players that wanted to have a good challenge, so optimizing your gear and how you play your class was mandatory. I've just done t4/5 of the instance and I have to say, I am extremely disappointed that this damage nerf came through. T4/5 is a complete joke of an instance now, all bosses are practically target dummies for you to soak damage on and you never have to worry about dying at all.
For example, T3 after the first adjustment update, with me having maxed out mitigations and 1M morale, the second boss was narrowly almost one-shotting me without proper debuffs from all classes present. after this update, T5, supposed to be the highest and hardest content of an instance you can get, the second boss doesn't even hit me for 30% of my morale. I would have thought T5 would at least be comparable to how the original T3 was when it came out, giving players a real challenge and maximise the usage of their skills and gear. But this is not the case. So in your quote saying they did good to cater to ALL players, they did not. They catered to the casual majority that is OK with not doing the hardest content there is but still asking to get the best gear possible, leaving the small minority that work hard for their gear behind and unsatisfied with joke instances that makes them bored and not interested to play.

(Constructive feedback, I'm not trashing you here ????)

+1 totally agree, i did t5 yesterday aswell and thought it would atleast be the original t3 but nope, it's an absolute joke now, you can now do the t5 6man ''the hardest content in the game'' with a full level 130 geared alt. It's literally 2x-3x easier than how t3 used to be (which was already being completed by tons of people). An absolute abomination bruh.

As long as they can't/won't introduce a logical itemization progress that will offer meaningful item advancement through the instance tiers catering to the casual majority instead of the l33t small minority, as you correctly imo pointed out, is the best solution to keep people playing and money coming.

The pressure should be on the itemization NOT on making and keeping instances hard.

It's simple: you put in more work and grind (and complete higher difficulties of the game = you get better rewards. That's literally the building block of every single game on planet earth. That's what puts progression in a game and thus keeps it alive.

[Snowlock]

Strongly disagree.
First to point out, On t3 acutally:
Boss 1 actually still deals great damage after patch, 360k bleed which can not be purged randomly put on damage dealers is kind of tough. Also, 115 characters can not be admitted into HoR
Boss 2 still has high morale, some of her skill still does high damage, like shadow strike, roughly 600k or more on t3 on damage dealers. Adds also do 600k per hit wild swing damage.
Boss 3 is kind of underwhelming, but much stronger than a house dummy.

Did they revert the bleed damage nerf from two patches ago? It felt like it last night.