The State of the Captain

[Truthsworde]

Hello Captains! I'd like to start a discussion about the current state of the captain class. Whether you've been playing captain for years, or only recently took up banners to support and inspire your allies, how do you feel about your abilities right now? Do you wear the heaviest armour and stand directly in the face of evil, or do you anchor your allies, supporting them with words of inspiration when lights grow dim? Do you wish it were easier to encourage one specific ally in times of great need? Do you feel the strength of Elendil in your veins when striking servants of the enemy? What would you improve about this iconic class?

Hi OnnMacMahal, thanks for asking! To answer your middle questions right now, yes, yes yes and yes! I love being able to stand directly in the face of evil, I love supporting allies with words of inspiration, I love encouraging specific allies and I love striking down servants of the enemy. Probably like a lot of people that play a Captain I love our utility - to be able to fill different roles.

How do I feel about abilities right now? Many others have posted about the specific mechanics of abilities - I want to give an idea of what I want to feel the class to feel like - I want to tank and feel like I'm actively tanking (I don't tank raids). I want to be able to have healing that is wanted. I want to be able to be able to 'save the day'. I want to buff and support allies, and I want to do respectable damage.

The trouble is yellow has a lot of redundant traits and the rotation feels clunky. There are also a lot of situational skills in this line which which have been nerfed - I think it would be good to make this trait line less reliant on so many situational skills, and move some of them to all lines and replace them in this line with other abilities. Another (hard hitting!) melee attack would be good to add to rotation.

Blue line is fun to play but not very useful. It needs a buff to healing, at least single target healing or something. As others have said overall damage, including in red line, needs to be boosted.

I know could be controversial and could be hard to balance, but ideally I think the Captain should be a viable group tank in all trait lines (not raid tank except in yellow). Blue line maintains healing (healing tank), red line damage buffing (damage enhancing tank) and yellow line has utility / situational abilities that can be traited from other lines but traiting as a core spec increases tanking ability and greater threat generation (for raids etc.). This is similar to what exists but removes the pressure on blue line to be only about healing, makes red line more than just about 'being a buff stick in groups' and still allows yellow line to be a viable raid tank.

Thanks - I hope you can give the Captain class some love!

[Elrantiri]

In terms of the scaling issues and bugs, Zaheer already has a nice list: https://forums.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?676197-Current-bugs-archive


As for the overall state, I think you as Developers need to figure out what you want the Captain to be:

1. A support class with a DPS/Heal/survivability focus
2. A class that can DPS/heal/tank depending on role

Right now, each spec differs:
Lead the Charge: Clearly a support class with DPS focus, most of our DPS comes from buffing our group
Leader of Men: Clearly a tank, our main role is ~99% tanking with a bit of healing and buffing on top
Hands of Healing: Basically neither. It's not really strong enough to be a healing class, yet it also falls short of the buffs from Lead the Charge

To me the choice is simple. I want Captain back as a support class, where we can pick a focus of improving group damage, improve healing or reduce incoming damage.
Lead the Charge: Mostly alright, I would like access to reduced versions of Shield of the Dunedain and In Harms Way though (at the cost of spending a lot of points in Leader of Men)
Leader of Men: Reduce our own tanking capabilities but improve our buffs and personal damage significantly. Possibly give us the ability to give non-stacking survivability buffs (like SotD but as a toggle), so we can turn a DPS-specced fellowship member into a high damage tank.
Hands of Healing: Improve buffs significantly (e.g. incoming healing) and improve personal damage significantly

[Zaheer]

In terms of the scaling issues and bugs, Zaheer already has a nice list: https://forums.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?676197-Current-bugs-archive


As for the overall state, I think you as Developers need to figure out what you want the Captain to be:

1. A support class with a DPS/Heal/survivability focus
2. A class that can DPS/heal/tank depending on role

Right now, each spec differs:
Lead the Charge: Clearly a support class with DPS focus, most of our DPS comes from buffing our group
Leader of Men: Clearly a tank, our main role is ~99% tanking with a bit of healing and buffing on top
Hands of Healing: Basically neither. It's not really strong enough to be a healing class, yet it also falls short of the buffs from Lead the Charge

To me the choice is simple. I want Captain back as a support class, where we can pick a focus of improving group damage, improve healing or reduce incoming damage.
Lead the Charge: Mostly alright, I would like access to reduced versions of Shield of the Dunedain and In Harms Way though (at the cost of spending a lot of points in Leader of Men)
Leader of Men: Reduce our own tanking capabilities but improve our buffs and personal damage significantly. Possibly give us the ability to give non-stacking survivability buffs (like SotD but as a toggle), so we can turn a DPS-specced fellowship member into a high damage tank.
Hands of Healing: Improve buffs significantly (e.g. incoming healing) and improve personal damage significantly

that list you posted is pretty much outdated.

This is my updated post I had posted somewhere in this topic incase people didn't notice.

Ah yes, the state of captain.

Well, there are a ton of issues with the class but I'll first start with the overall image and user experience before I get to the details of each line.


Image & user experience

Firstly, the image, as for this moment all 3 lines suffer in regards to their image. One being simply distorted to another being unable to be what it was meant to be.
This goes for all 3 lines if SSG still holds the same vision for what it was during HD. Though, if we are aiming for recreating something like yellow captain as it was during HD, then you'll need to change a couple of things to make it work due to how current content operates today.

Red line

The redline captain buffs its group mostly in terms of damage, it also offers respectable off heal if required. Its main feature is able to control the amount of damage being done within a set time. This we often refer to as burst damage, but this is instead pointed in terms of group play.

This also comes forward in how redline itself operates, the captain it's rotation is all about burst damage and building up to that point. While we should be able to do respectable damage, the offhealing should be decent too, with damage still overshadowing it.
Currently, this is turned around, the redline captain experienced some major issues during the change of LIs.


So what needs to change? Firstly, the redline captain should maintain this silver line of burst damage. The buildup on damage generally happened in forms of buff stacking, with an execution into shadow lament with inspire.
Currently, shadow lament hits lower than actual devastating blow, both skills should be able to hit like a truck, but due how Shadow's lament is basically your final execution of all the buildup you made through the rotation it should hit notably harder than devastating blow at all times, regardless of you have the tracery for lament or not. Both devastating blow and lament were known to be the 2 main hard-hitting skills of a captain since the days of shadows of Angmar. They both should deliver very nasty hits if they do crit.

For example, when you look into the execution of elendil, you gain a 20% dmg buff to lament. Then when you re-open hardened, you re-open readied and go through the bleeds with cutting attack first, from cutting attack you gain a 30% crit dmg multiplier that affects anything that gets applied (even dots) within that 7 seconds.

Thus you go with both states open -> cutting -> grave wound (as readied, cutting edge and hardened affect the dot effect) -> elendil -> devastating blow -> inspire -> master of war proc -> Shadow's lament -> master of war proc -> devastating blow. You can ofcourse still play around with this by choosing to leave your states open, sacrificing damage potential for more burst into lament.
Thus, you always release inspire and lament within cutting edge. You can also choose to smoothen the rotation out by placing grave wound directly after battleshout, this results in a much smoother rotation. Placing Grave wound directly after you executed from devastating blow into -> battleshout still should hold the remaining effect of cutting edge, which you got from cutting attack.

Point being, SL is the capstone skill pretty much and you cannot say; ''oh lets add a set bonus to cut the cooldown of shadows lament'' like you have done now, it's absolutely disgraceful and tells me SSG has no clue of what they're doing.



Then moving away from it's image and into experience, redline captain is fine in terms of speed and shouldn't be changed there, infact, I think it's already too fast due captain it's image being ''slow, but dealing heavy blows''. During Ered mithrin, redline received a much smoother rotation by cutting the cooldown from battle-shout. This significantly reduced the rotation and smoothness. But still, there remains a slight gap. Therefor, I think it's important to cut BS its cd down to 10 seconds here. This should allow it to line up perfectly as you restart your rotation.

So to improve overall player experience for red, I think it's better I make a list here.

• Advantageous Attack Bump up Advantageous Attack from telling mark which is triggered by using SL onto a target with telling mark. Maybe a flat 20% damage bonus to Shadow's lament from Advantageous Attack would be nice.
• Smoothen rotation by cutting down on the cd of battle-shout, this allows for both a smooth rotation will keep the image of the redline captain in check. Approx cut to 10 seconds cd.
• Grave wound initial bleed tick needs to be reinstated, as this was removed, and offers for a good short-term AOE tick that could help with landscaping. Allowing for a more smooth experience.
• scaling Bumping scaling to proper values, as relentless attack and armor rend from the herald. See -> Captains bug archive AND Giseldah's U31 stat scaling preview
• Master of war being consumed by marks, routing cry & battleshout
• Impactful blows Fix impactful blows as a trait, this trait stopped working when the LIs got swapped
• Shadow's lament damage needs to be bumped higher, it should always be the most impactful blow of the captain, with devastating blow following up to that.
• Bleed damage Increase bleed damage and upscale all skills accordingly.
• Overall damage output Increase overall damage output, but do NOT try to damage the image, unlike some of these people above me who have suggested increasing its speed, which is ridiculous.

Blue line

In terms of image, blue has a rather odd experience. It is more in an existential crisis than any of the lines and probably of whole lotro.

Many people mistake this line as an actual healer, whilst it truly is a hybrid. The line itself was intended as a hybrid, aggressive melee healer. A mirror of what redline. Being a healer, whilst having an overarching buffing capacity with strong abilities. Nevertheless, the line still performs well and for the users in raids, groups, it feels nice and flows nicely. There's one remarkable thing though that may bother the average player, that's damage. When blue was introduced, it was meant to be able to deal a good portion of damage as an aggressive melee healer. This was part of how the line was intended to operate. Now, it probably delivers almost the lowest damage in the game, with yellow captain sitting below that.

At this moment, blue also suffers from having a decently powerful ST heal. This ST heal was words of courage with a powerful initial and a decent HoT effect. This now has changed a couple of updates ago. I personally think this needs to be reinstated and the HoT effect from WoC should be compensated by properly adjusting many of blue captain its heals. This includes the Valour t5 burst heal, focus heal gained from executing sure strike in readied-state, and hands of healing heal, which is a chance-based heal that is supposed to heal a good amount as a gap filler.

So what needs to change and improve for the overall player experience? Well, it's more or less a question of do we want blue to remain as a hybrid healer, or do we want it to be an actual healer? Because we can see that as a hybrid healer, blue line captain doesn't suffice really. Because if you want to make it work like redline captain, it will act as redline captain, meaning it will always hold 1 spot in raid. Thus you should question if we shouldn't just make blue captain a healer, rather than a unique hybrid that cannot be balanced because it has nothing that can counter it.

What needs to be fixed and scaled for an overall better experience?

• Inspire Using Inspire and cashing out gallant display T1/2/3 only affects the initial heal of inspire, the same goes for overall heal effects from words of powers (traceries). Only the initial heal of inspire is affected in that regard and not the HoT.
• Valour Valour Tier 5 AOE burst heal is still not scaled.
  
  • Valour which procs from Valour T5 gets consumed by valiant strike while Inspiriting presence is on cooldown.
  • [08/22 05:37:28 AM] Zaheer applied a heal with Valour to CHIMP-CLASS-ENJOYER restoring 5,263 points to Morale.
• Damage scaling Overall damage output should be much higher to about 150-200k DPS (as of today's standards)
• Hands of healing trait Hands of healing, as a core trait from the blue line trait tree, is neglected since Helms Deep, much like Valour T5 AOE burst heal
  
• Standard of Honour As of recently, the Standard of Honour got fixed in terms of healing. The heal got changed as well, as it now can crit. However, it is not affected by Inspiriting Presence.
  
  • As of now, Standard of Honour does not weigh up against Standard of Valour. Please reconsider scaling between those two standards as the standard of valor from yellow significantly outperforms the standard of honor in raid situations.
• Gallant display cashout At this moment, when we start building Gallant display, we only get to T2 before Inspire comes off cooldown. Maybe upping the T3 inspire heal bonus slightly for a bit more control over the single heal being done in an instance. This allows for slightly more control and reactive healing. @Joedangod however suggested it'd be better if gallant display just builds up and doesn't cash out when inspire is used.
• Cry of Vengeance Cry of Vengeance should be bound within the blue line trait tree and a new trait should come for it in its place, perhaps one that allows the blue captain to increase in DPS or something.
• Inspiriting Presence Shortening the internal cooldown of inspiriting presence could make the line more competitive and switch away the choice to cashout valour for a guaranteed proc on Inspiriting presence on a separate button. This allows the captain to still control the Inspiriting presence for a more pressing moment, making it act as a cooldown.
• Valiant strike & Valour release During Ered mithrin patch, valiant strike received a shortening cooldown. This was good, but it caused some issues with the captain consuming ''Valour, which procs from t5 valour''. Thus I think all the more reason we should receive a new button for releasing inspiriting presence once T5 Valour is reached. Because if Inspiriting presence is on cooldown and you hit valiant strike during Valour T5, you will consume the buff that is tied to valiant strike guaranteed crit proc aka inspiriting presence control. The buff gets consumed, but nothing happens as Inspiriting presence will remain on cooldown.

What do I feel needs to change?

I personally love inspiriting presence, but I think that due to the implementation as of now, it's uncontrollable. I love blue for being so unique in both playstyle and what it delivers, for example, being melee and able to be so flexible by swapping song-brother to a DPS ally instead of healing one basically makes you sacrifice healing for more DPS in the group. Then being able to pick stuff from redline truly allows you to deliver some assistance in terms of DPS at the cost of utility that you would otherwise have from yellow.

List of what I think that may need to change

• A better implementation of song-brother & inspiriting presence along with Valour
• Stop gallant display cashout
• Allow us to control the release of inspiriting presence once loaded up to Valour T5
• If no valour, with no inspiriting presence and no tactical dmg from song-brother, rework song-brother completely along with the standard of honour

Yellow line

To fall with the door in the house, the yellow captain is a pile of ####, a lost relic that got it's identity completely destroyed by both SSG and the player base who seem to think what the line represented. Yellow really wasn't all about just staying in hardened, infact hardened at the time had a much lower impact on tanking as a yellow captain. You're a 2-handed wielding sword-wielding tank that is able to support it's allies whilst being able to block with 2-handed and do damage.

Hate to break it to you, but that identity is completely gone and yellow has gotten to such a point that the trait line needs to be completely rebuilt due to how content currently reflects on classes & the sheer amount of bugs and scaling issues that plague the captain.

Yellow as of today no longer uses 2handed swords, which was part of its identity. There's no reason to use a 2-handed weapon now when your dps is dog#### and shield simply offers more stats. I feel that yellow lost it's identity here completely. Not just by losing the 2handed sword, but also because of how the cooldowns are linked together now and it has such a flat idiotic self-sustain that doesn't help for ####. Much of the line it's mechanics is broken and or does simply not work due casino meta that barely help with rising your turning point.

I once questioned for an increase in complexity for yellow, this resulted in replacing the elendil damage cashout trait to the elendil's fury trait, which is NOT a choice, since you have to trait that. Instead, I suggest SSG to incorporate elendil's fury into yellow passively without us wasting a trait slot on elendil's fury there and instead give yellow a passive damage buff when wielding 2h(which is still a choice). This should allow yellow to do some DPS too and since it's locked into the capstone trait next to SoD, no other line can access it and abuse it.


Moving on to how yellow should operate, as a tank, yellow isn't supposed to really have so much self-sustain, although, it should get passive healing income from our trait ''exemplar''. Other than that we should have Strength in numbers, but not in it's current form, rather was it was. This because SiN used to act as one of many cooldowns that yellow captain needs to burn in order to keep it's tank alive. Yellow captain used to have To arms, brother call, banner, SiN (pulse heal version), in harms way. Then the following 2 were the panic skills: Last stand and Shield of the dunedain.

Then there's the problem of certain traits being irrelevant due casino meta of boss damage, special attacks and a #### load of tactical attacks. For example,

As noted here below:



Partial BPE -> grants defeat event -> stacks turning point to a max of 5 (25%)

Yet, due the mechanics of today and all, almost all these traits I posted above are either broken, or simply do not effectively work anymore due state of current meta. That said, ofcourse BPE traits and all still work. But regarding exemplar and SiN? no.


Therefor I would suggest the following changes.

• Damage output Overall damage output
• 2-handed weapons Give yellow an incentive to use 2-handed weapons
• Selfhealing reduce overall selfheal in yellow
• The Two-handed prowess As of ered mithrin, steeled resolve became from 4% to 8%. However, with the yellow nerf patch, Two-handed prowess went down from 25% to 10%. This means we had a 15% loss but a 4% gain, thus 11% loss on morale. I want SSG to restore the remaining 11% back to two-handed prowes. This means two-handed prowess should be buffed to 21%.
• Shield of the dunedain SoD is a vital part of the captain it's panic skills along with last-stand. All other cooldowns are more or less an incentive to keep it's tank rolling. Therefor I suggest setting SoD from 10seconds to 5seconds duration, but allow the captain to apply it to himself.
• Stand-tall Despite the trait not having been updated in terms of description, the current stand-tall is set to: -1s, +1s LS duration for each rank. The LS duration of 10seconds is good, but the cooldown reduction tick not. Set LS cooldown to -1/-2/-3 again instead of -1/-1/-1.
• Noble Mark
  
  • Rescale Noble Mark damage over time effect to current respective values.
  • Venomous Haze from weavers in the ettenmoors only affects skills of 20+ range, yet it still affects noble mark and gives -10 range, meaning noble mark only has 2m range when being affected by Venomous Haze
• Defensive Strike armour buff The gained armor value is actually just physical mitigation, please set this to armor value, or raw physical/tactical mitigation.
• Strength in Numbers The heal got changed during Ered Mithrin to a flat sustained heal. This should NOT be the case, as the skill acted much as a cooldown that belonged to the yellow captain it's ''cooldown stay alive kit'', being a fundamental part how the tank worked. The heal acted a lot like a warden morale tap, except it draws it from surrounding allies. Please reinstate this old mechanic. The heal acted like this: 1 extra heal for each ally nearby. So if 5 allies were nearby it meant the following: 5x heal tick every 1s, for 5 seconds. SiN old mechanic
• Exemplar The exemplar heal has been bugged & or not properly scaled over time, please fix this as it was it is a capstone trait from yellow line.
• Last Stand
  
  • Prevent Last stand be able to crit upon expiration
  • Replace Last stand heal tracery for something else, because really, the current heal we have is already more than enough and I think healers should help you get back up after that.
• Turning Point Due casino meta, turning point hardly stacks up anymore. This because it needs defeat-event procs, which usually come from partial BPE hits. But since (p)BPE now rarely works due to special attacks, morale damage, puddles and tactical attacks and all, this is destroyed. Please find another way to allow turning point to stack again, or defeat events to proc again.

Across the board


Then there's a few things that do need fixing across the board.

• Motivation speech This skill used to be passive, but got changed to an active buff duration due to weapon swapping from the captain causing lag and resetting morale pools. While the change was good, the suggested duration by captain mal not. Please cushion the 5 minute duration to at least 10, or change it to something else.
• Light of Elendil damage over time effect, as this has been neglected for all 3 lines since pretty much helms deep.
• Breaking brother-link When dismounted with your brother skill linked on your pet, your brother link will break. This is a bug as the brother-link should stay active.
• Fighting Withdrawal still does not work when there's stun immunity active from the lore-master.
• Muster courage - selfheal The heal is released 0.5 seconds after the skill is initiated. The heal does not get bestowed if the captain is interrupted within that time frame. So for example : cast MC -> sword in air -> stunned -> does not proc heal
• Pet damage despite being a core element of captain, the herald still is annoying and does little to no damage. Maybe bring back placable standards?
• Barbed Arrows from archer herald currently sits at 10% slow, please upgrade it to 30% so the captain at least has something to counteract kiting. Also maybe a nice added damage bonus?
  
• Sure Aim from the archer herald does little to no damage, despite being an induction skill.
• Infuriating tactics from the banner heralds is a taunt builder, rather than a copy taunt. Maybe allow it to be a copy taunt?
• Coordinated Attack from the banner herald does little to no damage, also please increase stun chance to 50%, rather than 25% for 3 seconds.
• Defeat-Event skills magnitude Increase the magnitude of damage & healing from defeat event skills, especially routing cry damage.

For now I leave it at this.

[Elrantiri]

that list you posted is pretty much outdated.

This is my updated post I had posted somewhere in this topic incase people didn't notice.

Yeah I saw that one, but I was mostly referring specifically to bugs/scaling, whereas your (brilliant) post in here is a mix of both bugs/scaling and your wishes for the class.

[Plidak]

Ez fix, fast and simple.
Having no hearald active, provide 20% (or even 30%) dmg buff to the captain.
In grp we are great. Lots of skills to use, lots of ways to be helpful.
Our solo experience tho....
Imo to be viable solo cpt should have his dps doubled, but you can start 30% dmg boost if no active herald.
Also for God sake, fix herald pathfinding, i cant count how many times i need to resumon him while doing instances or indoors.

[auximenes]

Also for God sake, fix herald pathfinding, i cant count how many times i need to resumon him while doing instances or indoors.

The pathfinding is a universal issue caused by issues with the underlying terrain design. Maybe we should be bugging locations where pathing is bad although there is a lot of them and the current bug submission process is a pain in the [butt].

[Plidak]

The pathfinding is a universal issue caused by issues with the underlying terrain design. Maybe we should be bugging locations where pathing is bad although there is a lot of them and the current bug submission process is a pain in the [butt].

its a "new" issue. 1y ago i never had problem with my pet following me, or i should say my pet had no probblem to follow
Its a captain related, because LM dont have such problems. Also as LM i dont need to resummon my pet when change zone

[auximenes]

Well I haven't noticed any change in the bad pathing that's been an issue since the dawn of the game. It seems odd that there would have been a change to just the way Heralds path.

[Plidak]

Sadly i didnt see any captains buffs.
A slight dmg buff to the 20 sec cd single target skill second efect wont make the captain solo viable .
I do realise that as a support role class red captain cant expect to be on par with any dps class but man, make cpt dmg equal ot LM or burgler.
Wont even mention red mini dmg output, and mini is suppose to be a healing class in general
I hope we see some positive changes before the update come live.

Well I haven't noticed any change in the bad pathing that's been an issue since the dawn of the game. It seems odd that there would have been a change to just the way Heralds path.

Was odd too when RK lost their Li book :P
So i wont be their (ssg) first time.

[C.B.]

I've been playing Captain since early Mordor. I strongly believe the yellow line is fine. The blue line is situational, disgustingly clunky to play and completely unviable in most circumstances within Gundabad dungeons where melees are punished for being melee.

The red line, though... where do I even begin.

I have played every class throughout early levels and level cap both; it often felt like LM was the slowest to spread their wings, and I liked the fantasy of it - slow-paced damage with tons of enemy control.
Then I played the Red Captain and as a result, built my LM a shrine to praise them for their speed.

Over the past few expansions the Red line has been growing weaker and weaker, to the point it's become virtually unplayable. I'm a T3 Hiddenhoard raider and my gear keeps me both offence and defence capped on the landscape... what's the worst that could happen, aye? Well, ask the other 10 classes who solo Forges/Lofts without dying five times in the process.
Captain's Red line offers great support to the raid, true. But it offers little in terms of damage and close to nothing in terms of survivability; playing it solo feels like being handicapped by some divine authority or something. The average DPS is sitting at 100k or so with offensive stats capped, compared to 300-400k of other DPS lines. Only fully buffed with Oathies and red banner does red line feel somewhat viable, somewhat close to other lines - having to depend on 1-3 min CD buffs to perform is already alarming. The rotation is slow, unpleasant, with a lot of DPS downtime, and the way it's designed begs for min-maxing the order of execution, but does not reward the player for it.
Another issue is the lack of sustain/tankiness which should be inherent to heavy armour classes. Red Captain's self-healing is close to non-existent, no external defences can be put up other than Fighting Withdrawal which bolsters the avoidance, not EHP. The mark's healing nerf made it all the worse as leeching is nowhere near effective now, either. Internal defences are absent as well, due to the DPS rotation requiring the player to drop Battle-Hardened state or run a bot to play for them while they doze off.
And the heralds? Captain, as a support role, ought to be at their strongest when energizing their fellows, right? On landscape, a solo player has but their herald and their whooping 5k DPS.

I don't think a 'support role' should be so neglected. There is literally no other line this slow, this yuckity-yuck to play, this unrewarding and this prone to failure. Hell, I might as well solo play with full tank gear on at this point, what's another 30 minutes per mob kill. Sigh.

[Thorandril]

Alright here's every issue as I see it:

Hope Herald: useful in every situation, should be the only herald you have out at any point as it stands. The Herald of wars damage buff is insigificant and has been for years, and the herald of victory....... mitigating power costs hasn't been a thing in 10 years or more

general utility: having to re-apply motivate/idome in combat as part of your rotation is silly and boring. inducted rez in combat shouldn't still be a thing, I appreciate that cry of vengeance upgrade is useful but the trait is so good you cannot afford to drop it in any trait line you run.

i) it is not worth using archer for anything, anywhere. the loss of a 300k herald heal is not made up for with the heralds piddly slow. the archer pet is about 10 years behind the curve.


Blueline: Valiant strikes used to be a good heal, it is not. It ranks among the worst in game and it's a capstone trait/skill. The 5 tiered cashout with valiant is not nearly as potent as it needs to be for a tiered build-up heal, and it still needs and has always needed a visual/audio notifier &/or pop-up skill similar to defeat events to notify you when it has tiered to max. It is needlessly difficult to track.

Redline: bleeds too weak by a factor of like 200%, blade of elendil DoT hasn't scaled since level 50 (I can't believe this still remains as a......6-7k per tic light DoT, when some classes are now hitting 2-300k per tic on their DoT's)

[Gorikon]

Red cappy and DPS...

Cappys got a damage bump with U24.2. I remember that when U25 (Minas Morgul) went live, my cappy was the first Char I took through the new zones. Ofc he couldn't match the killspeed of my Champ, but he could kill stuff on his own. Questing was bearable.

Somehow, this changed with Gundabad. Questing with him is a complete slog. My speculations:
a) The damage bump from U24.2 somehow didn't scale well. (This is pure guessing, haven't numbers to proove.)
b) We also lost a good portion of DPS because of the new LI system.

LI system definetely is one reason for low DPS. We lost some very strong Legacies:
- 139% Bleed Damage
- 87% Light Damage
Another one was cut in half:
- 139% Routing Cry Damage --> 50% RC Damage
(RC does Light damage. As one may guess, it used to hit hard with U25. Now...not so much.)

When Champs lost their Crit Multiplier Legacy (which was OP), they got a 20% base damage bump. Cappies never got some kind of compensation for lost DPS legacies.

So...OnnMacMahal, it would be nice if you or one of your colleagues could take a look at skill scaling, and / or see if you could give us a dps bump.


Another idea that came to my mind: How about something like a Dissonance stance for Cappies? Doubles outgoing damage, but makes all heals / buffs self only. Might solve the "buffstick isn't supposed to do damage" problem.

[Twitcheetwitch]

My Captain is getting killed now. Played on Tuesday, was in Var Nuchur doing well against the Gredbyg. Now they're tearing through him and whittling away his morale like crazy. What has changed? and yes, I reset the trait tree, so that's not the problem.

[Plidak]

How about something like a Dissonance stance for Cappies? Doubles outgoing damage, but makes all heals / buffs self only. Might solve the "buffstick isn't supposed to do damage" problem.

Great idea, but we know devs dont read this forum ....
Cpt buffs MAY come in 3y from now ...
(or 4, considering beos)

[grizzly375]

As a mostly solo Captain, I'll agree with several things:

1. Damage, damage, damage, damage, damage. I get the concept of the Captain as a buffer, but one of my solo Cappies has been basically parked at 105 in the Udun foothills, because he gets CRUSHED due to inability to kill anything.

2. Motivating speech. Why does it have a cooldown? And why 5 minutes? Should revert to a toggle, IMHO.

3. Heralds - if they got any stupider, they would drag all of Middle Earth's IQ down by 50 points. I'm tired of having to recall or resummon constantly in landscape. My Loremaster's Bog Guardian stands 1/5 meters to my right rear, and stays there no matter where I move. Why can't the herald do the same?

I've never played a yellow or blue Captain, so I'll hold comment on specific skills. But, if there is an impending class rework to two trait lines and a buff line, I have to agree that Blue would be my choice for the axe. Give the Cappy two options - DPS or Tank, and move the healing skills into a tree that's accessible by either role.

[C.B.]

Sooo... any dev update on this issue? Instead of reworking minstrels and the like - when it wasn't even needed - can we bring the captain to playable levels?
There's been so much feedback that I really can't comprehend why nothing had been done yet. I could understand taking your time with the yellow/blue lines as they're far more delicate and subtle to balance. But red?
Just start off by doubling the damage on every red line skill, so instead of 100k DPS we do 200k in tier 3 gear on landscape. It won't change jack in terms of raid performance as all red cappies sport full tank gear for raiding anyway.
I basically stopped playing my captain altogether. When your biggest skills hit like a god damn Quick Shot, how can this be considered viable or at all entertaining? I swear, you guys forgot to scale the captain past Gondor or something. It is truly awful.

[Dranak123]

Sooo... any dev update on this issue? Instead of reworking minstrels and the like - when it wasn't even needed - can we bring the captain to playable levels?
There's been so much feedback that I really can't comprehend why nothing had been done yet. I could understand taking your time with the yellow/blue lines as they're far more delicate and subtle to balance. But red?
Just start off by doubling the damage on every red line skill, so instead of 100k DPS we do 200k in tier 3 gear on landscape. It won't change jack in terms of raid performance as all red cappies sport full tank gear for raiding anyway.
I basically stopped playing my captain altogether. When your biggest skills hit like a god damn Quick Shot, how can this be considered viable or at all entertaining? I swear, you guys forgot to scale the captain past Gondor or something. It is truly awful.

Hi...I think they should tweak the trait trees to offer two new boxes at the cap tier. Maybe they are already there but not visible due to no use. But then i would activate them only in the lines and on classes that were desirable to do so. In this case I would open up a box in redline cappy with maybe 5 ranks....so that they consume points. Then i would go something like +25% damage , +10% finesse , +5% crit , +50% herald damage , +50% damage (again). This way you would have to commit all the way to get the benefit and couldnt cheat by going red and spending the points in blue yellow. Tell me I had too much of everything over Christmas and have gone batdoodoo crazy !!! and if the results were not good enough in testing i would just bump them.

[demonGAEBRIL]

Context:
I have been playing LOTRO as a Captain main since launch and mainly solo. I know this will sound ridiculous, but my main character after all this time is level 111. There are a lot of things I love about LOTRO as a game, but I'm afraid that picking Captain as my main class is one of my biggest regrets.


Class Theme:
I picked the Captain initially for a few reasons. I prefer martial melee classes, I hoped to do group content, and a hybrid class would give me role flexibility and diversity. I played WoW up until Wrath of the Lich King (2008) and along the way I found that I liked the healing/support role in groups the most rather than tank or dps. These factors attracted me to the class, but I don't think it has ever really lived up to its billing.


General issues:
Other posters have excellent lists, but I wanted give feedback on what I think are overall class design issues.

-The class seems to be designed around buffs as the core gameplay mechanic and the embodiment of the support role. The heavy power budget into buffs leaves class feeling weak and slow during solo play.
-Crit reliance on various core skills for damage and healing makes solo leveling frustrating.
-Static % modifiers on buffs and the binary nature of skills like last stand make the class hard to balance
-Best skills are buffs with significant cooldowns. This makes the class awkward to learn because they are skills that don't get used often while grinding, but are the core of Captain's group play.
-Heralds have clunky skills, don't scale well, and don't contribute much to the leveling process.

Leveling skill rotation:
Captain damage skill rotation, aside from its low damage, is very clunky to level with. Battle Shout, Inspire, Cutting Attack, Grave Wound, and Shadow's Lament are all on 15-20s cooldowns and DB/PA are gated behind Battle-readied. The skill rotation is long and very linear so what happens is that in low ttk fights the rotation gets annoyingly chopped up. Similarly, marks are annoying to use in low ttk fights because of their long animation and how toggle skills lock out when they expire. The other classes I've spent time with have more variable rotations with reaction skill chains, aoe, or an additional resource to manage to keep combat more dynamic.

If I was reworking the Captain my changes would be:
-Fix herald scaling, update abilities, and change heralds to be much stronger while captain is solo (maybe while blade-brothered?). Won't impact group play, can help make up for Captain's poor leveling speed.
-Change captain abilities to be less linear and cooldown + rng reliant. While the (relatively) big payoff from syncing skill rotation with 2m cd damage buffs is fun, it don't come into play often while leveling.
-Fix broken abilities and skills that no longer scale.
-Change IDOME timer to 30m at minimum.


Trait Lines:
-Blue line is a secondary trait tree and doesn't work on its own for playing as a group's primary healer. Needs an overhaul.
-Red line damage is too low.
-Yellow line has strong defensive CDs which make it hard to balance compared to other tanks. It doesn't do enough damage to be a leveling alternative to red line.

If the vision for Captain as a class is to be a pure support that doesn't take the spot of a non-hybrid then the goal could be to rework traits to support a healer, dps, or tank that the group already has.
Currently, the red+blue spec is damage and healing support, but yellow isn't support and main tanks instead. If however, the vision is for Captains to be able to stand in for any role in a group then yellow is fine, but red and blue trees are not.


Conclusion:
Overall, it's not that the Captain isn't valued or strong at endgame, it's that the leveling process is slower and utilizes less of the class' kit than any of the others. The class also needs quite a few quality of life changes like idome duration, scaling and bug fixes, and herald basic ability updates.

Thanks for reading!

[Thorandril]

Gallant display essence doesn't work in blue line, but works in other lines.

Overall redline may be the most underwhelming dps spec of any class. I don't think blade of elendil light dot has had its damage scaled since level 50. It's slways been kinda just "why?".

At least in red alone if the damage of every skill save devastating blow was doubled I don't think you'd still really come close to 1/2-3/4 the capability of any other class as compared to their dps lines.

Animation times & post skill delay could really be revisited similar to what was done for burglar. Captain rotation kinda feels stagnant too but with all the other issues I feel it has, being kinda boring to play is not it's biggest pitfall by far.

Of the 3 heralds there has only ever been one choice, archer has IMHO also never been good. Pets have 2 traits overall dedicated to them and they do lnot have a great impact. Almost nothing about the way captain trait trees work feels impactful because in any line you are in the ideal thing to do is sink points into blue for GD and muster heal. Captain has always been fairly linear, at the present blue line is the only semi dynamic and fun line to play.

[OnnMacMahal]

Hey folks,

As with the warden thread, I wanted to say thank you again for your continued engagement with this topic. With Captain work now underway, I'm looking forward to kicking off a new conversation with a more detailed look at some of the upcoming changes soon.

[Neinda]

Hey folks,

As with the warden thread, I wanted to say thank you again for your continued engagement with this topic. With Captain work now underway, I'm looking forward to kicking off a new conversation with a more detailed look at some of the upcoming changes soon.

Just curious. Where will this conversation take place? Will it be here in the official LOTRO forums or will it be in the player run discord favored by SSG staff? We probably need to know so people will be able to stay up to date on the changes. I honestly don't know where we are supposed to be for information these days. Thanks in advance.

[OnnMacMahal]

Just curious. Where will this conversation take place? Will it be here in the official LOTRO forums or will it be in the player run discord favored by SSG staff? We probably need to know so people will be able to stay up to date on the changes. I honestly don't know where we are supposed to be for information these days. Thanks in advance.

All of our in-depth looks have been threads here on the forums, and I hope to precede these with a couple developer diary primers on lotro.com. We might even be able to have a live stream.

[Denthemen]

I guess I'll throw my hat in the ring as I play Captain exclusively.

The captain is in everyone's chili. We do bit of everything, but buffing has always been the trade craft. Group play has always been "okay", sometimes hit or miss as classes will complain about our OP in some aspect (normally as tanks) because of an incoming system or update that gives an advantage or a healing bug . I remember a bug that kept your standard up full time after you threw it...very nice, anyway. The real problem with captain for me and my solo play style is that when I chose captain I chose it because I wanted the herald to help me and be meaningful in a fight; I like melee classes but wanted the suitability to do really challenging things solo if I wanted to. The only thing i consider valuable about the herald is the herald heal and sadly because our fight style as solo captains is to survive the fight longer then the enemy does: its a war of attrition and it takes time. I know we are not champs but when I see champs plow through mobs or missions in quarter of the time it takes me to do it; that can be really frustrating, especially as you either play very slow solo or get pigeon holed for your oathies and attack speed in groups.

I agree with many of the suggestions about heralds and solo play needing a revamp but I think I would go radical when it comes to group play for the captain...hear me out.........

I suggest that the captain and other classes be stripped of some of their group buffs and they be given to a group mechanic that is the FMs/conjunction system. It has always been a problem with the FM system that it didn't scale well with levels and updates but also as it could make boss fights and such really untenable to design in balance. What I purpose is allow a little of the damage but mainly make the system reward the group with buffs (that were taken from classes) that differ depending on the type of FM or make it semi random. This system would allow all characters regardless of class to be more unique, to allow players to play with their particular play style in a group without being pigeon holed. It would also make pugs less of a thing as it would make players wise up about just getting through; they need to be unified, groups would be a lot funner to play with. The buffs that classes "lose" could just be tamed down for the group or used for solo play: I know this is where the major work would be involved, but I think it would revolutionize the way lotro is played. Solo play would be strengthened and group play would be more rewarding. I would love for people to bring their own flavor into the group instead of being needed to just be one thing.

Anyways, pretty crazy idea, but I would love the day when I would come into a group as any line and felt that my group buffs were fine, the big stuff should come through cooperation.

[Vilan]

That's an interesting idea! You could make FMs operate based not only on the color you click on, but have it class-based as well. Like when a captain applies a red FM contribution, the FM also applies an attack speed buff to the fellowship, independent of what the final FM is. A burg putting in a red contribution could make the FM do extra damage if he's behind the mob when it goes off. You'd end up not just figuring out the optimal FM, but who should be responsible for each specific slot.

Well, that was fun dreaming. Now back to reality where FMs are useless other than as an interrupt.

[Denthemen]

That's an interesting idea! You could make FMs operate based not only on the color you click on, but have it class-based as well. Like when a captain applies a red FM contribution, the FM also applies an attack speed buff to the fellowship, independent of what the final FM is. A burg putting in a red contribution could make the FM do extra damage if he's behind the mob when it goes off. You'd end up not just figuring out the optimal FM, but who should be responsible for each specific slot.

Well, that was fun dreaming. Now back to reality where FMs are useless other than as an interrupt.

It starts here We will prevail.

I like those ideas. Anything this system would do would be really beneficial for groups even if its simple. For example, a group of 2 or 3 could now have access to buffs that those classes couldn't normally get. It would get rid of the problem of support classes not being able to do 3mans together or specifically needing a main tank or main healer for t1-t2.

The buffs would be really valuable and each would be wanted in any group or raid. Just as a play on the system colors we already have it could be like:

-10% attack speed
+10% outgoing damage
+10% incoming healing
+10% defense
Not an exhaustive or correct list of buffs or their numbers

It could also be done as you suggest with different classes and colors...it can be made to be simple or really challenging and deep. Though I like the way FMs are designed now with all the cool graphics and colors. Harder FMs could grant you the main buff and a lower version of another. really cool stuff.
But it could just be an FM being the group cooperation to enable you to get a buff you need. The design about classes and the colors on what buff you as an individual in the group need.

FM buffs could last longer than traditional buffs so you wouldn't need to do them all the time but the group would try for rotations of things to get different buffs at the same time. It would break up the monotony of just pwning mobs until boss then finished. It would also allow devs to view and create challenges around the team rather than the enemy.

In the end though, this is about opening up group play and not being so stuck to one thing as classes normally are. FM system like this would make many of these balance problems with classes go away and devs could worry about content, this is a great way to actually fix the system for good and not just put a billion patches to different classes as content changes. Devs will know that they can tweek one system to make things easier or harder and they wont have to rely on so many individual changes. Work on the upfront but great payoff.