Bullroarer Update 32 - Beta #7 - CLOSED

[Harvain]

I beg to differ.... things might be just fine at 140 but for those of us frozen out of LI progress in the 50-100 level range the reward track is the only game in town and LI's are a massive Eff Yew by SSG until that is implemented. Waiting another month or six until it's "perfect" for the high end is not ok.

The Reward Track honestly in the grand scheme of things offers very little and is far more of a way that you can boost a Single Character quickly when it first goes Live. If said 1 Character doesn't need X, then it can be passed along but really unless you split what will be offered among several Characters there will never be a way for the Reward Track to be a saving grace and key element of the New Legendary Item System going forward.

In fact, it likely will offer SSG a bigger boost in terms of ridding all the excess Heritage Runes that are sat waiting to be used, having the Fate of Gundabad Expansion Quests being IXP right into the Reward Track instead of Heritage Runes being Rewards (bringing down the available Heritage Runes any Character can get by a decent amount) and moving SSG towards the path they are seeming to intend where Post-Reward Track Season One will be heading towards folks having to play the Game and finish Quests to Level the Reward Track.

Which I will note, nothing wrong with that but there should be an extra way that is kept under control that also always to Level the Reward Track that doesn't require Questing.



The Reward Track also isn't ready for how it helps any Account on a Single Server as much as how it's UI, Design, etc is.

Which doesn't seem like it'll be changing.

Compared to many Games using a Battle Pass (which the Reward Track is) those Games usually are more about a Singular Focus, where the Player isn't splitting Key Resources possibly amongst more than 1 overall need.

Many Games with a Battle Pass usually offering Cosmetic Rewards, Titles, Banners, Specials (Rocket League offering different ways when you score a Goal for an animation to be played) as something that has no real impact on the Core Gameplay but just the Personal Visuals the Player can use.

Where as with LOTRO this isn't the case. It's not an MMORPG let alone a Game where playing a Singular Character gives the most benefit & is the focus of the Game's Design. LOTRO gives an individual Account far more Short & Long Term Benefits when they actively play multiple Characters compared to a Singular Character. LOTRO even somewhat pushes an individual Account, although not outright forcing said Account, to want to have more Characters and that is by Game Design.

Which is where the Legendary Item Reward Track will always come up short if it's current Concept is what we'll one day have going Live.

[Arabani]

I beg to differ.... things might be just fine at 140 but for those of us frozen out of LI progress in the 50-100 level range the reward track is the only game in town and LI's are a massive Eff Yew by SSG until that is implemented. Waiting another month or six until it's "perfect" for the high end is not ok.

The Reward Track will not help you in any way. Your traceries will become obsolete at level 96 and then every 10 levels or so and you'll have to find the new ones. A bit of runes and scripts won't make drastic changes either.

The current state of LI system is so bad that noone really gets anything at any level. The RT is nothing more then a not so well concealed attempt to force people to log in and spend time in the game. Developers claim RT to be a supplementary system, but there is no primary system either! Once again-fix the core issue, before adding more systems.

On the bight side, one does not really have to worry about LIs untill level 120-130. Just use whatever traceries you find and level up sockets on your Lis with runes you find. Damage raiting of new Lis cover any non-optimal tracerie on landscape and alike.

[WeirdJedi]

The Reward Track will not help you in any way.

Unless you are on a legendary server. Then they can help a lot.

[Arabani]

It's not an MMORPG let alone a Game where playing a Singular Character gives the most benefit & is the focus of the Game's Design. LOTRO gives an individual Account far more Short & Long Term Benefits when they actively play multiple Characters compared to a Singular Character. LOTRO even somewhat pushes an individual Account, although not outright forcing said Account, to want to have more Characters and that is by Game Design.

I disagree with the above statement. I'd say the game even punishes those who have multiple characters, especially lately. Having alts is nothing more then personal preference in my opinion. I play one character and I'm fine. So I would not go that far saying the game pushes one to have more characters.

[Joedangod]

Unless you are on a legendary server. Then they can help a lot.

On one character, for one LI...maybe. Still have to pass through a layer of RNG to get the right traceries.

[CaerArianrhod]

Goddam Runes. Especially when doing instances - since I have to wait for an hour before I can stack them to already owned ones.

Just a small help: sell them to any NPC and buy them back immediately. Then the timer will go away, and you can stack them.

[CaerArianrhod]

They reduce the amount of enhancement rune types from drop on cap level. Now you'll only get legendary ones. Qol improvement here.

What they are saying is that instance chests (at level cap) will, at most, only give enhancement runes that work on LIs current ilvl range. [...]

I can read the words and I do understand them. I just still not get the meaning of the BS in that sentence.

It's a pretty bad change IMO... no one is worried about the very few spaces that teal/gold enhancement runes are taking up [...]. If they really cared about inventory space, they would give us something to do with the 1000s of yellow/common enhancement runes that we have that are worthless once all of your traceries are at ilvl 460+...

Exactly this!
I still have thousands of yellow and purple level 121 enhancement runes (from exchange old LIs), which I will be never ever able to use again. THAT is taking up my inventory space!
House of Rest T5 is dropping legendary enhancement runes. Who's stupid idea was that? I mean SSG now says literally, "We had no idea what we do, but now we will do something else, regardless of that we still have no idea what we do."
I would really like to meet one person (only one!) from SSG who is understanding what they are doing at SSG.

EDIT: there is still not a single word about what we can do and what we will get and when for the hundreds of old relicts (settings, gems, runes) and shards etc. etc. Many of them has been part of a paid expansion (I still have a lot of unpacked relics on lover level characters) or brought directly from the shop. Instead of messing up everything more and more, SSG should think about the real conversion of these items. Unless SSG is hoping that we will forget them, and they can then silently remove that from the game. (@SSG: NEVER GONNA HAPPEN!)

[auximenes]

This is a Known Issue with the Barter Wallet in this build. We hope to have this resolved quickly but it's going to take a new build.

I'm curious as to why you are giving the Premium Wallet away for free now? It seems like you wouldn't want to give away such a great feature and continue to collect LP's for it.

[NailFelagund]

I know this may sound radical, but...











Get rid of LIs. I play games to have fun - it's not a part-time job with ###### benefits. Invest more time in making this game more in line with the atmosphere of Middle-Earth. Play around with the Allegiance System (let us choose our kingdoms, for example Gondor, Rohan, Erebor and design quests/missions around them). Revamp Kinships. Flesh out stories. But please, please don't make me hate this game because of stupid LIs.

[Belechael]

As a casual player who only logs in the mornings for a few hours the only thing that kept me bothering with level cap activities was the fact that we could gather scrolls and crystals for the next LI level raise and store them.

Now this is impossible.

Remember the old promise that our LIs would level with us? Well, that is true now, but only their empty shells, as at every character level raise we will need to gather the EXACT SAME TRACERIES AND ENHANCEMENTS to recreate the weapons we already had! Of course this time has not come up yet, but I just can't bother with creating the "perfect" weapon with the knowledge that it will become useless in a couple of years or less.

So, the only thing I do anymore is creating the perfect weapons for my level 50, 60, 65 characters, getting them to max their stats, getting them max virtues and enjoying the landscape content.

I just can't wait to see the Angle!

[LadySelene]

I can read the words and I do understand them. I just still not get the meaning of the BS in that sentence.
Exactly this!
I still have thousands of yellow and purple level 121 enhancement runes (from exchange old LIs), which I will be never ever able to use again. THAT is taking up my inventory space!

Same here.
I'll wait for them to disenchant into something... IXP runes, maybe? NO WAY I'm using them on anything below cap. That's intermediate stuff, keep playing, it will be replaced. Does anyone at all craft old essences when the cap increases?
Nobody knows with SSG, maybe in a year or two they'll have enough data to collect on how people are using the LI progression offered to them. Maybe they'll find out nobody bothers about random traceries in boxes which cost 50-100 regional coins, or runes with similar barter rates

Reward track: I'm fine with account-bound rewards, the tokens will be used to fill gaps, random blue/gold boxes - on an alt who has only a few traceries. Yellow and purple boxes are pure disenchantment trash, first to be opened on the most neglected alt. But. Three tokens in three months are fine if we could get more tokens in-game. We can't. That's the major problem.

Sari Surma farm for gold traceries: was too easy and therefore bound to be turned off. But. We need another reliable source of golds, probably tied to the latest expac. Will the raid drop them, or a barter symbol (or a shard of the barter symbol)? I see people complain they don't have any sources.
(Pity I'll miss 131 golds from it entirely, I'm not yet 140 due to getting bored with navigating through endless mobs and weird maps in Gundabad and quests not yet explained in wiki. But I kinda chose slow leveling, so that's my problem).

Incomparable runes removed from wherever they drop now, due to some weird explanation "you cannot use them, so you shouldn't get them" - and that approach, dear SSG, is a HUGE reason to NOT buy a new expansion on release. Better to wait half a year till it's available for LP - to this moment, it will be finalized, the LI gradually incremented and restrictions lifted.

[Gunhard]

I can read the words and I do understand them. I just still not get the meaning of the BS in that sentence.

What was this comment for if you understand everything but in previous comment wrote that you dont? Maybe calm down and realize its just a game and no need to be rude?

I still have thousands of yellow and purple level 121 enhancement runes (from exchange old LIs), which I will be never ever able to use again.

Maybe sell them for silver? Why would you have big compensation for gear from previous cap?

[Sk0field]

I tested the hunter and the champion raidsets. In both cases I used a mastery-capped character an those sets really need to be looked at from a balancing point of view.

First we have the hunter bowmaster set:



The Barbed Rain bleed is the same as the Barbed Arrow bleed but can be distributed on up to 10 targets without using a targets increasing tracery.

Over 54k damage (tooltip) per bleed tick per target every 2s with a theoretical uptime of nearly 100% (12s duration with 12s CD)


Edit: forgot to reforge before taking the screenshot. It actually is 57k damage per bleed tick.


Second we have the champion storm set:



An additional automatical AoE attack for every 10th blade skill crit (tooltip) for pathetic 1510 damage.



Not only is this in itself such a low damage number, that if it won´t be changed nobody would want to get this set for its bonus, but additionally the Born for Slaughter damage even does not execute as stated in the tooltip.
As can be seen in the CA window I only got 2 procs after 45 crits and 9 dev crits (not sure if dev crits count) instead of at least 4.

Actually, that hunter set bonus would be a much needed permanent addition to the bowmaster trait line. It should be awarded with the last tier of HoA, where as the first tier should already give the 100% reset chance on crit. This would help to close the gap between the way OP Champion ST DPS in yellow, compared to the relatively weak hunter AoE DPS in red.

Hunter's bowmaster raid set should rather favor ST DPS skill rotation and/or damage, like e.g. increase Upshot damage, increase Pen Shot Mitigation (would make hunter a more viable class for group play), increase pen shot debuff duration (10 seconds is just annoying), lower Merciful shot focus cost, etc. There are a lot of possibilities. It's just that they won't make it into this raidset I'm afraid...

also, re Merciful Shot: When are you planning to fix that skill? Swift Bow does NOT reduce focus cost of merciful shot anymore? I logged a bug report a long time ago which was sent to QA. Why is it not getting fixed with U32 ? Or am I missing something here?

[Waylock]

I'm curious as to why you are giving the Premium Wallet away for free now? It seems like you wouldn't want to give away such a great feature and continue to collect LP's for it.

SSG admits there are too many freaking currencies and stuff taking up people's inventory space, unless they have a premium wallet. Instead of cutting down the amount of fluff, they opted for the easy solution.

[Laurelinarien]

SSG admits there are too many freaking currencies and stuff taking up people's inventory space, unless they have a premium wallet. Instead of cutting down the amount of fluff, they opted for the easy solution.

Cant wait until the other shoe drops.

Also, would be nice to have some official word of how this LI track fits into the scheme of an expansion. Will the rewards be lackluster in season 1 due to being "early" on in the cycle or can we expect seasons to come to be just as forgettable? And why has the track become worse with each iteration? Was our feedback not clear enough or you have other plans you haven't shared with us yet? Are you expecting a mentality change from your playerbase, and if so, towards what mindset?

[Pewpewmidget]

Remember the old promise that our LIs would level with us? Well, that is true now, but only their empty shells, as at every character level raise we will need to gather the EXACT SAME TRACERIES AND ENHANCEMENTS to recreate the weapons we already had! Of course this time has not come up yet, but I just can't bother with creating the "perfect" weapon with the knowledge that it will become useless in a couple of years or less.

My idea of LIs leveling with us would have been like the scaled earrings they gave us from the most expensive expansion bundles or the rings that the high elves get.
I wish SSG would have done this over deciding to make us reforge our weapons every 5 levels or so.

The realization that your LIs would become useless every level cap...
after spending so much time hunting down the traceries...
from a far too wide loot table...
and leveling them up with hundreds of enhancement runes...
that come in four different rarities...
that are now becoming time locked...
is really depressing.

About the traceries...
It wouldn't be that bad if each instance gave you one heraldry or power tracery AND one mastery tracery AND one craft tracery per chest to narrow down the RNG bullcrap.
Also reverting the change that made incomparable traceries drop only at the level range cap would be a great change. (Incomparable at 130 but back to rare at 131)
Even if you are level 140 running a level 131 instance, you are still putting the time and effort into the grind.
Example - School of Tham Mirdain would drop a rare heraldry/power, mastery and craft tracery from the 2nd boss and the 3rd boss would drop the same thing, but incomparable.

About the enhancement runes... (I'm just glad they didn't throw in white enhancement runes just because they can)
It wouldn't be so bad if we didn't have four different types of rarities or 49 levels per tracery slot.
It honestly should be more like half, or third of that, and per LI.

Having to hunt down 10 yellow, 20 purple, 10 cyan and 9 gold enhancement runes for each tracery slot is too much.
Especially since each LI has 12 tracery slots. (13 for class items, bows and javelins)
And there is also the fact that playing multiple specs is NOT unheard of and
some classes do need 3-6 LIs, like Rune-keepers, who need a pair of LIs each for fire spec, lightning spec and healing spec.

Actually, that hunter set bonus would be a much needed permanent addition to the bowmaster trait line. It should be awarded with the last tier of HoA, where as the first tier should already give the 100% reset chance on crit. This would help to close the gap between the way OP Champion ST DPS in yellow, compared to the relatively weak hunter AoE DPS in red.

Before I go on, I want to say that I agree with what you said about the current set bonus.

Another thing that would help close the gap is reverting the hunter nerfs to quick shot, precision stance and penetrating shot.
There was once a time where penetrating shot was worth using, other than for it's debuffs, because the damage was decent.

Although I do agree with nerfing critical magnitude, because hunters rely on crits way too heavily for dps,
if we do revert the precision stance nerf, I would prefer an increase in damage across the table.

On top of having to keep our heart seeker, barbed arrow and exsanguinate bleeds up,
we also need to use 3 focus each to keep penetrating shot's debuffs up every 10 seconds
and 3 focus for blood arrow before we can even use exsanguinate to apply its bleed
then 6 focus for merciful shot and then full focus to get the maximum damage out of upshot.
Outside of keeping your bleeds and debuffs up while keeping heart seeker, upshot, swift bow and merciful shot on cooldown (and prioritized in that order),
there is very little to no room for rain of arrows in a single-target-heavy setup, which is expected of us for bosses, in raids.

There is such thing as a area of effect setup, but it's more effective on landscape, missions, public instances and trash mobs.

What was this comment for if you understand everything but in previous comment wrote that you dont? Maybe calm down and realize its just a game and no need to be rude?

Maybe reading isn't your thing. CaerArianrhod clearly explained the reason for the comment in the second half of it.
The BS thinking behind the change is the reason anyone wouldn't understand the change or SSG's intentions behind it.

[Elenarra]

On the bight side, one does not really have to worry about LIs untill level 120-130. Just use whatever traceries you find and level up sockets on your Lis with runes you find. Damage raiting of new Lis cover any non-optimal tracerie on landscape and alike.

Why do people keep saying that? I'm playing in a three man, captain loremaster hunter, handling the tanking and 80% of the healing. Traceries are how I manage the healing, enough targets and all the other stretch to take six man instances on level. I USE that weapon, and loathe the fact that they shredded the number of legacies I could have with my level 50 starter LI in the new system. Not everyone lower levels is a solo landscape player where yes the mobs are trivial. And one thing that made doing all the quests on turtle tolerable was that they were adding to the weapon, since gutted until the reward track comes in.

But also I'm a crafter at heart. I started Lotro because I liked the crafting system, relevant from the gitgo and good through at least 100. I particularly liked that it added to the end game with contributions to legendaries. Well, that system has been gutted and nothing to replace it. I'm sitting on piles of shards SSG would like to ignore into non existence. I've cancelled my annual subscription back in early November, which runs out in April. I won't be buying points this weekend. When they trashed my leveling experience and destroyed my intended crafting they lost me. I'll play my main to 100 and walk away.

Finally, I already paid for ALL the expansions along the way, and bitterly resent their attempts to gatcha monetize my game play. I"VE ALREADY PAID and if that and a subscription isn't enough than I will go to a game that acknowledges sunk costs instead of reaching for my wallet each and every day. I don't play mobile games with their endless "Cough up more $$ and we'll play the game for you". For lotro to hire a developer wedded to that style is just the final bells tolling.

Sorry for the rant, but a game I dragged my friends into has turned into a hot mess and I'm apologizing to them weekly for my mistake.

[JERH]

I have a question on the gold/teal rune to purple nerf at “level cap”. Is that really “level cap range” (131 to 140)? Or level cap 140?

I have several alts stoned at 135 for various reasons. If they open a inc or leg rune box do they get a purple or the inc/leg rune? Either the statement “level cap” is misleading or it’s a stupid restriction.

Sorry, not willing to download BR just before it closes. Otherwise I can wait till next open interval to get my answer. Thanks!

[Pewpewmidget]

Sorry for the rant, but a game I dragged my friends into has turned into a hot mess and I'm apologizing to them weekly for my mistake.

I understand your frustration.
A handful of my friends have stopped playing, presumably because they noticed the hot mess of a grind coming around the corner.

One of them was trying to get his girlfriend to play and my kinnie on Arkenstone recently dragged his girlfriend into lotro along with a couple of their friends.
Although they haven't gotten past their 30's, one could only imagine their thoughts when told about the new LI system.

Both of my friends (not their girlfriends or their friends) have peaked levels 65 and 103 but have yet to endure the new grind.
One could only imagine their thoughts when told about the new system as well.

The sad reality would most likely them all stop playing the game...

[JERH]

I understand your frustration.
A handful of my friends have stopped playing, presumably because they noticed the hot mess of a grind coming around the corner.

One of them was trying to get his girlfriend to play and my kinnie on Arkenstone recently dragged his girlfriend into lotro along with a couple of their friends.
Although they haven't gotten past their 30's, one could only imagine their thoughts when told about the new LI system.

Both of my friends (not their girlfriends or their friends) have peaked levels 65 and 103 but have yet to endure the new grind.
One could only imagine their thoughts when told about the new system as well.

The sad reality would most likely them all stop playing the game...

Sadly I agree. Gundabad is beautiful but the quality of gameplay in the last 3 months plus U32 is disheartening. Luckily, warhammer 3 is out in less than 2 weeks, ffxiv hopefully will open to new accounts, or (horrors!) I could go back and reactivate my old WoW account.

[Neinda]

I understand your frustration.
A handful of my friends have stopped playing, presumably because they noticed the hot mess of a grind coming around the corner.

One of them was trying to get his girlfriend to play and my kinnie on Arkenstone recently dragged his girlfriend into lotro along with a couple of their friends.
Although they haven't gotten past their 30's, one could only imagine their thoughts when told about the new LI system.

Both of my friends (not their girlfriends or their friends) have peaked levels 65 and 103 but have yet to endure the new grind.
One could only imagine their thoughts when told about the new system as well.

The sad reality would most likely them all stop playing the game...

Currently, I know more people who have stopped playing the game in the last three months than I still play with in game. Great system SSG. I can't wait to see your encore to this one.

[gaara908776]

SSG should’ve just integrated any game breaking play style legacies directly into trait trees/base class changes. Then we’d only have to worry about Heraldic/Word of Power/Craft traceries. As it is now, the LI system 3.0 hasn’t solved any of the issues plaguing the previous systems. It’s immensely grindy, especially if you play more than one character, there is still a very specific “meta” in tracery choice, and now cooldown or % based Gold traceries are game changing for most classes.

Right now each character needs 23 specific traceries at max level, some classes need up to 4x duplicates of the same tracery to max their LI. Even if SSG offered a weekly way to acquire a specific tracery your character needs, it would take nearly half a year to finish ONE character’s LI’s. This isn’t even considering that we have to replace previous cap ones by the end of every level cap increase.

As it stands now, SSG is removing the only reliable method to acquire these. Sure, you could make the argument that plenty of players don’t need Gold traceries to play the game, but a good portion of us don’t enjoy the prospect of playing the new raid with gimped characters because we didn’t win the random gold tracery lottery.

[Braer]

"Guardian - Shield Smash was incorrectly calculating its AoE from the selected target rather than the guardian.
Guardian - Shield Smash's arc range has been increased slightly to make up for lost reach now that it is correctly starting from the Guardian."

So we had to struggle with this since trait trees were imposed - until Olebenny and others figured out the bizarre behaviour and lay it out on a plate during the Pelennor/Minas Tirith era and it finally gets to the top of someone's list only now? It's a year since his last post so all a bit too late for him. [Edit: 3 for old Zipfile ]

For me, I'd persevered with Axe and Board as a good Dwarf should do. All my class "field craft" determined by the unaddressed "bug" and with exploiting it and maximising returns, undiscovered by other guards, found my niche. So another time sink for me to relearn the muscle memory on top of the periodic LI time sink and other's perhaps too late to rediscover the strengths of the build. Again very much too late to bring back all the disenchanted guardians on top of everything else. We shouldn't be so surprised when most of the games strength's have been dismantled in ignorance or in woeful intent over the last 8 to 10 years.

[escapado]

Hey Devs, hi people
i made a new thread about BR changes on RK. But maybe it finds here a good fit as well.

First of all: I'm happy that the RK got some interesting changes (hoarfire cycle buff, the new raid sets, dot puls changes) to allow him to compete in the champ/hunter meta. I want to talk about these changes and give you feedback on how it actually works or let's say not work. Also i want to adress some thoughts on quality of life changes.


1. Changes to Scathing Mockery & Writ of Fire Dot Duration descrease + more pulses:

You dont push the RK dps with this change!

Scathing mockery (21s dot duration, 20s CD, 3s Induction) has the longest induction of all fire skills, therefore you want to combine it always with essay of fire "no induction buff"(CD 10s, induction 2s). The shorter cooldown of SM forces you to use every essay of fire with SM. At the first look it seems like a good fit but lets take a closer look how much time you actually have between two SMs:

Essay into first SM, 10 s CD of Essay, 1,2-1,8s Induction Essay (depens on self induction speed buffs) into any other Fire skill of choice because SM is stil on CD puts Essay on CD again for 10s, 1,2-1,8s Induction Essay again into second SM: 22,4-23,6s
-> You have even with perfect timing* on Essay of fire SM not up for about 3 seconds. If you use SM without Essay youll shoot yourself in the leg by casting 2-3 seconds.

*Perfect timing means you always cast Essay when it just comes up. This is practically NOT doable. Due to other skills inductions, CDs and mainly because one of your main Damage skills: Smouldering Wrath is a channeling cast (up to 5,5s) with a Cooldown.
If the main reason to change the dot pulses and duration of scathing mockery was to increase the dps, you'll have to increase the duration of SM back to around 42s and keep the pulse rate.

2. Quality of life changes:

2.1 Flurry of Words
With the LI change and a new tracery for Frost Skills Duration and Vulnarabilty increase (+2,2% inc crit on golden tracery) + the Setboni Hoarfire Cylce (Red) and buffing -10% inc damage (blue) the skill becomes a must use skill for dps and Heal Rks. It finally puts a blue RK into the same offensive buffing light as Heal Beorns and Minis while healing. The main issue with flurry is that you place it always where you stand. It forces the Rk to move right into the most dangerous spots so you often end up dont using it. Please think about making flurry of words a target grounded skill like the runestones (maxed out fulgurit / flame runestone) so you dont have to walk into melee to place it.

2.2 Hoarfire Cylce Buff
The Hoarfire Cycle Buff tiers up but is always named the same. Please add something like a T1-T3 description to make it easier to track.

2.3 Heraldrics for red RKs
The new LIs put the Damage RK in a low morale spot because of a lack of defensive alternative heraldric. Every DD nowadays slotted a the defensive mastery + main stat + vitality heraldric, but the RK only has a defensive heraldric with outgoing heal so the rk is forced to use the offensive heraldric which lacks in comparison to other dps heraldrics 5k vitality per LI! Please make a defensive Heraldry with mastery vitality and will.

2.4 Mending Verse Healing over Time
With Golden traceries the hot of mending verse lays around 6-7k which is on a tank with 2 million morale really low. pls consider making this skill more benefital.

3. Bugs

3.1 Healing Set Bonus is still bugged. You only buff yourself with -10% incoming damage but your allies dont get the frostarmour buff.
3.2 Cleansing Flame line: Afterburn (+5% Increasing Fire Damage over time per Skillpoint) doesnt affect Smouldering Wrath.


4. Summarize and outlook:
I dont want to dive too deep into this but if you want to, message me about this:
For me the red RK doesnt have to be in the same dps range as hunters and champs since the RKs always offered different defensive benefits in the past. These were
1. Do not fall this day (which effectiveness was reduced due to revive limit - sure it kinda tricks the mechanic but overall every battle rezz got devalued by this + LI change: Target is revived with less morale)
2. Overall defensive damage dealer: Selfmotivation (got negativly effected by the LI system because you dont actually have space to slot the tracery and the use of the needed skillpoints is questionable if you want to play with yellow buffs) + the fact that as a RK you always got to the tactical mititagion cap quite easy because will on nearly every armour or jewellry piece gave you a decent portion of tact mit. Without the need of slotting tact mits (like hunters,champs,wardens) you could easily push your morale by slotting vita essences when everything else is capped ofc. but without having new vita essences the only path is to slotting physical mit. (so please keep the vita essences )
3. LI Heraldrics mentioned above

-> RK is at an interesting point where he develop into a more defensive healer by providing -inc damage and debuffing (maybe add better debuffs on winter skills? chilling rhetoric is useless and tbh essence of winter too). red rk can develop into a glascannon as it was long time ago or into a defensive damage dealer but even then he needs adjustments to actually be relevant, maybe like this:
Since the Tankiness of Red RKs got nerfed they either need to be dpswise in a higher spot (simply buff RK Damage flat by 10-20% and adjust it in the next updates)



Thanks for reading and keep up the good work so far,
Spinoza



TLR:
1. New SM messes up rotation, fix it by increasing duration and keeping the dot pulses
2. Make flurry of words a target grounded skill like other runestones to avoid walking into dangerous areas
3. hoarfire cycle buff different tiers should have different buff descriptions
4. make a defensive heraldry for red rks with mastery, more vitality, will
5. take a look at mending verse hot
6. fix the Blue raid set boni
7. fix afterburn so it affects smouldering wrath

I'm playing my RK for nearly 15 years now. So please dont rate this thread as a usual whining about someones class is not op enough without any further thoughts on it :-) .

[Fureo]

3.2 Cleansing Flame line: Afterburn (+5% Increasing Fire Damage over time per Skillpoint) doesnt affect Smouldering Wrath.

7. fix afterburn so it affects smouldering wrath

Smouldering Wrath is not a Dot ability thats why it is not influenced by the Trait, so it works as intended i would say. Otherwise you'd have to argue that +Dot pulses need to increase the Hits from SW as well and so on...

Besides that i agree to what has been brought up.
I personally would add that RK could use a 20%-30% dps buff in addition, but i would even sacrifice the availibilty of DNF in damage traiting for that buff, as this is imo unnecessary strong utility from a DPS class.