Bullroarer Update 33.2 - Beta #3 - CLOSED

[Carved]

Uruk Blackarrow:

• New Corruption buff: Stand Tall:
  - Gives +5% Skill Damage, +2 Max Range, and -3% Induction Duration per tier.
  - Tiers up to a max of 3 (15% Damage, 6 Range, -10% Inductions).
  - 15s Duration.
  - This effect is a Corruption, and can thus be dispelled by the free peoples.
• 'Centre' is once again a channeled skill:
  - Tiers up Stand Tall every 1.5s while channeling.
  - Fixed negative Power scaling on Centre.
• 'Vital Target' and 'Improved Vital Target' will add one tier of Stand Tall.
• Steadfast Barrage increases range to 40m and deals more damage per tick and channels for 6 seconds. Cooldown now 20s.
• Improved Steadfast Barrage gives a chance to crit and increases damage per tick and channels for 8 seconds. Cooldown now 20s.

Steadfast changes are fine. The new corruption is wholly underwhelming. I propose that the corruption tiers up from (Improved) Vital Target and (Improved) Punctured Target, whilst Centre is changed to a small heal over time. Even if the buff were worth channelling Centre for, this makes for rather clunky gameplay, and greatly disrupts the flow of the class.

This would give permanent uptime for the corruption after a short while in combat, but it's hardly problematic, given that it can be easily removed and you have to start over. Besides, having the buff up makes the class objectively more fun to play, so... why not?

Edit: Please also consider changing the debuff on Improved Punctured Target from armour to flat raw mitigation (both types), say around ~4% to match its counterpart on Hunter. Armour debuffs have been outdated against freeps ever since damage was changed to Orc-craft/Fell-wrought over 8 years ago, and especially since the introduction of essences. So little freep mitigation comes from armour, so debuffing it is very ineffective.

[Holytoe]

[*]Having discovered an error in the legendary item xp required by the legendary item rewards track across various levels, we have made adjustments to the curve. These changes will speed up progress through the legendary items rewards track for characters of most levels. For levels 45 - 60 and 95 - 120 the legendary item xp required to advance the track has been reduced. For levels 61 - 94 the legendary item xp required to advance the track has been greatly reduced. For levels 121 - 130 the legendary item xp required to advance the track has been slightly reduced. For now, at levels 131 - 140, the legendary item xp required to advance the track remains exactly the same, however we plan to make adjustments in future seasons, likely requiring slightly more legendary item experience to advance at levels 131 and higher.[/LIST]

While you are at it, show the numbers required to gain a level on the reward track. And to keep me from grinding up 8 different characters to sit at those heritage rune levels (45, 65, 85, 100, 115, 120, 130, 140, etc.), make all heritage runes apply full legendary item experience to the reward track no matter what level your character is that is using the heritage rune.

Some auction house love would also be nice, like buy orders. I know, you may have heard this before. Especially now, when you are thinking of adding in other race/class options, the boom of activity of new players joining lotro for the first time may soon be at an all time high. With all that activity, supplying those demands for items can be simplified by allowing 'customers' to put down money for an item, a 'supplier'/crafter notices an order for goods on the auction house, fills the order, and all are happy (customer gets what they want; crafter gets what they want). Let us see demand for items versus having to guess. While I am at it, increase the gold cap per character to like 50k - 100k and increase sell/buy order duration to 7 days. Anyone else see the logic in all of this? Please please please, do not continue to force us to rely upon guessing what a customer is willing to pay and what item they want to purchase. Buy orders show the demand for an item.

[Jargonaut]

All of those posts from Orion asking for feed back on beorning, captain, hunter, and guard just became infinitely more suspicious. The passive trait line on brawler was a bad implementation of a stop gap while class -continues- to be made. Snipping away support lines on other classes will just kill what makes this game unique when compared to other MMOs. Unless you're just dying to kill lotro off, you should take some time to reconsider. This looks lazy at best, malicious design at worst.

What it really is, is the admission of failure of the previous revamp when they moved us over to trait trees. Gosh, you mean rigid skill pathways don't work? The old system for characters was much more like what you see now with skirmish soldiers. Selectable traits without any forced structure. And this is moving us back in that direction, lo these several years after the ill-advised change that people also hated.

[Caxeta]

Dont let FI or Classics Instances die.

[HolyDuckTape]

[]Anthem of Prowess: +5% Melee Damage, -5% Attack Duration, Agility, and 5% Orc-craft and Fell-wrought Mitigation.
Anthem of Composure: Now grants less Tactical Mitigation, but gives 3% Shadow, Acid, and Fire Mitigation.
Monster Play Class Changes:

• []Reaver: +5% Base Melee Damage.
  []Defiler: +5% Base Melee Damage, +5% Base Magic Damage.
  []Blackarrow: +5 Base Melee and Ranged Damage.
  []Warleader: +10% Base Melee Damage and +10% Base Tactical Damage.
  []Stalker: +5% to Base Melee Damage +15% to Base Tactical Damage.
• Weaver: +5% to Base Melee Damage.

Mhmm yes, increase creep's damage by 5% and then add 5% mits against creep damage, stonks!

[HolyDuckTape]

Please stop with this new trend of wiping out certain tree lines. It comes off as incredibly lazy and just removes another big piece for us to have the freedom to trait something different and have a different playstyle, more variety etc. It's so much more fun to have a different trait line to choose instead of now bundling trait lines together, where literally every class is gonna be the same old ####. Zero variety in builds, zero role changes, just plain 1-role tasteless bread.

Fix each trait line individually or remove the system altogether, returning us to SoA. This also means stopping with increasing the class trait points cap literally every big update. We have way too many trait points nowadays. You can max out 2 entire trees at this point it's nuts. We are just getting closer and closer to builds being called ''class'' instead of being called a ''build''

[Arabani]

It's so much more fun to have a different trait line to choose '

No it is not considering that once holistic classes were brutaly torn apart with Helm's Deep update, losing the original concept, role and gameplay. I wish we had just a class again, without trait lines in the current shape at all. Yellow line is absolutely useless, it only a means of prebuffing. There is no fun at all in choosing an obsolete spec. I see the change to Minstrel as a step to the right direction, even back to the roots. Love it. Please continue this approach with the rest of the classes, most of them has one usless line for sure. The only exeptions are Captains, Beorning and Rune Keeper, each of them has three very iconic and defining roles.

[Fulgurix]

Can anyone log in? My client is stuck in "installing pre-reqs".

[Once_of_Bree]

So does this mean that the Brawler with only 2 trait lines wasn't a mistake or work in progress but an insight in to how all classes will be? Seems odd decision to me, or rather a lazy one and an admission they don't have the resources to fix the many broken classes properly so instead we'll remove things.

[HolyDuckTape]

No it is not considering that once holistic classes were brutaly torn apart with Helm's Deep update, losing the original concept, role and gameplay. I wish we had just a class again, without trait lines in the current shape at all. Yellow line is absolutely useless, it only a means of prebuffing. There is no fun at all in choosing an obsolete spec. I see the change to Minstrel as a step to the right direction, even back to the roots. Love it. Please continue this approach with the rest of the classes, most of them has one usless line for sure. The only exeptions are Captains, Beorning and Rune Keeper, each of them has three very iconic and defining roles.

Yeah, that's why i added ''or go full SoA again'' I like both trait systems but definitely prefer the older one. It's just that these 2 systems do NOT mix well at all together.

A half-ased approach is much worse than either going full on trait line mechanic or full on SoA/old traits mechanic.

Going back to 25%-SoA while maintaining the trait lines core just plays so trashy. You got everything of every traitline, you are a jack of all trades and yet you are still mechanically stuck at the same time, it just doesn't flow well together. Commit to the fullest to either one of them.

[GingerAj]

Racial traits and passives definitely need looking at next. Racial weapons should always be available to the class you pick, surely it should be easy enough to add new LI’s as many were removed. Racials should also adapt to the class chose - WoW does this with their racials in that the skills change a little bit depending on class.

[Flogdir]

Can anyone log in? My client is stuck in "installing pre-reqs".

Same here.

[Kaeneth]

Can anyone log in? My client is stuck in "installing pre-reqs".

Same here.

+1

Not able to get past this for some reason.

[Calding]

Can anyone log in? My client is stuck in "installing pre-reqs".

I am seeing this as well. And strangely the launcher news is from the regular client rather than the typically Bullroarer news item.

[LordOfTheSquids]

We are investigating the login issues, no ETA at the moment.

[Nanganark]

Please make ''[Gundabad Craft Recipe Selection Box]'' and ''[Gundabad Heraldry Recipe Selection Box]'' Barterable for [1'000 Ancient Scripts] and let them also more drop from ''Legendary Reward Track 3: 101''

[LordOfTheSquids]

We are investigating the login issues, no ETA at the moment.

Login issues have been resolved. Sorry about the delay.

[Degelhil]

@ SSG

Please consider keeping the server online over the weekend... Me and a few others only have time on weekends.

[-Aran-]

• Steadfast Barrage increases range to 40m and deals more damage per tick and channels for 6 seconds. Cooldown now 20s.
• Improved Steadfast Barrage gives a chance to crit and increases damage per tick and channels for 8 seconds. Cooldown now 20s.

Steadfast should be interrupted when the target gets behind the object.

[CHEBURASHKA]

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT ISSUES:

1) Cleanse problem: all creep curable debuffs are almost useless in group pvp because freeps have tons of cleanse skills on short CD (some of which are even raidwide).
How to solve it?
- Either add tier system to debuffs and bleeds (e.g. 1 debuff requires 3 cleanses to remove it and becomes less potent with each cleanse)
- or give creeps more curable effects so that they could spam them more often; decrease CD on these skills; make them aoe

Suggestions:
warg – increase max targets on Fleas and decrease CD
BA – make ‘Flaming Arrow’ aoe (3-5 targets)
spider – make ‘Tainted Kiss’ aoe and some debuffs too
defiler – make most debuffs aoe

Note: if cleanse problem is fixed you’ll have to nerf some creep debuffs (+100% induction and silences primarily).

2) Corruption removal problem: all corruption bonuses that you introduced are gonna be useless because of how fast freeps can remove them.
How to solve it?
Increase the number of corruptions which various skills give significantly (x2 at least). (the fact that corruptions can be removed is not the problem, the problem is that they can be removed extremely fast).

3) Fear resist problem: ‘Muster Courage’ (+40% fear resist raid wide buff) in combination with other resist buffs make all ‘Fear type’ skills resist all the time.

That includes:
- (WL) all 3 shouts
- (defiler, warg, spider) all Fear CC
- (warg) 2 silences and the new -20% mitigation debuff
- (defiler) -50% out heal debuff, ‘Doom of the North’

All skills above (expecially Fear CC and WL shouts which are mainly used to get non-induction buff) are really strong in theory but in practice they just get resisted like 70%+ of the time and creeps lose TONS of utility because of it.

How to solve it?
- make these skills ignore a big portion of fear resist that freeps have (40% for example)
- change skill resist type from Fear to Disease, for example

4) Creep base stats and corruption problem: base stats are too low and corruptions give enormous buffs (especially mits).
How to solve it?
- buff base stats significantly (finesse primarily because it is really low and it will help with cleanse problem and fear resist problem)
- nerf corruptions. Make them give small buffs (e.g. +5% mits maximum from all corruptions slotted, +5% crit, etc.)
- combine phys mits and tact mits corruptions

5) Population buff problem (Lainedhal’s Call to Arms, Akhulun’s Fury): these buffs give inc damage reduction to one side which makes the balance worse.
How to solve it?
- remove inc dmg buff from it

6) Store buffs problem: pay to win PvP is a bad game design.
- The main offender here is Tome of Defense which gives MASSIVE BUFF (e.g. if you have -40% inc dmg and add ToD – ToD decreases RAW inc damage by ~15%; the more inc dmg buffs you have the more useful ToD is [and all other inc dmg buffs too]).
- Freeps can buy ToDs and other store buffs with gold while creeps can not. That is why 80% of the freeps now run with perma ToD while only rougly15% of creeps do the same.

How to solve it?
Either:
- don’t make store buffs usable in moors
- or make them do different things if used in moors that don’t affect combat (infamy and comms boost, for example)
- or add 6h buffs to both freeps and creeps that you can buy with gold/comms that negate ToD (+15% outgoing RAW damage or something). But make it impossible to use it together with ToD.

IMPORTANT ISSUES:
7) Creeps need better offensive debuffs (-mit, +inc dmg, -max morale/vitality).
Reason: too few debuffs compared to what freeps have.

8) Ground based inc healing debuffs (‘Blight’ and ‘Shadow Pack’) should be strong (because it takes a lot of effort and coordination to make them work) while other inc healing debuffs should be weaker.
- it’s good that you made inc healing debuffs stack but it will be too OP if non ground based debuffs are too high.
- inc heal debuff from warg puddle should not stack with other puddles but mit debuff should stack.

Note: there needs to be a compensation (some dps buff) to BA and reaver if VT and Dev Strike inc healing debuffs are nerfed. Why? Because it affects solo pvp.

9) Do not base creep strength on finesse buffs from OPs and relic.
Reason: Ops and relic can easily be flipped. Instead of adding finesse buff to Ops and relic add it to base stats. Keeps should not give any combat buffs across all moors.

Overall Macro/Meta Feedback- will repeat what I said above:

^General Feedback which i think is improtant.


Class specific changes that needs to be done (the most important points are in yellow):

Warleader:
1) make all WL shouts ignore fear resist by like 40%
2) DO NOT REMOVE STANCE SWAPPING OR INCREASE CD OF STANCES: stance swapping is what makes WL hard to play because you need a lot of awareness to know exactly when to do it. Removing Stance swapping is the same as removing positional dmg from warg and hence making it way easier to play it (Note: I know that there is nothing regarding stance swapping in the notes but I just wanted to say this just in case you decide to nerf stance swapping).
3) tact mast debuff on banner is too big
4) add offensive debuff (mitigation/inc dmg/max morale reduction) with short duration to ‘Cleave’ to make it more useful and make WL rotation harder
5) add defensive groupwide buff to ‘Fracture’ with short duration (it will combine well with induction buff that it gives now cause if you need to heal someone you would also benefit from defensive buff at that time)
6) add useful debuffs or buffs to ‘Black Speech’ and ‘Intimidating Shout’ instead of buffing dmg. Reason: WL dmg is not that important for group pvp but offensive buffs/debuffs, on the other hand, are. Also making a healing class do a lot of damage solo is not good.
7) make ‘Snap Out of It’ two separate skills: one skill removes CC and the other gives HOT. Why is that important? Because this skill does two things that are not always needed at the same time. You often need to remove CC from one person (for example healing defiler) but you don’t need to give HOT to it (and vice versa).

Defiler:
1) GIVE DEFILER INCOMBAT REZ (2-4m CD) and nerf WL rez accordingly (reduce max targets).
Reasons: a) freeps have way more incombat rezzes than creeps and that is especially evident in small group pvp (example: 6 man group with 1 wl has 1 rez for 5 targets, while freeps with cappy, blue mini and yellow RK have 4; WL DOES NOT REZ when 5 targets are dead, it rezes when 1 is dead so the amount of targets is irrelevant here).
b) freeps can win most fights by focusing Wls first because that leaves creeps with no incombat rezzes. Creeps can’t do the same because there are a lot of classes that can rez on freepside. (example, focus WL with oathies and that’s it; creeps have no CD to save WL from that, defiler bubble is useless because it is easily negated by skills that interrupt induction).
c) WL rez is almost never used for 5 targets in small group pvp (6-12 man groups). Is is used for 1-2 creeps. You can’t wait till 5 creeps are dead because you won’t be able to kill anything or heal.
2) Make Fear CC ignore 40% fear resist. This skill is one of the best CC on creepside and the fact that it is blocked by ‘Muster Courage’ is bad.
3) add 5s CC immunity and immunity from interrupt skills to ‘Blessing of Darkness’. Reason: currently this skill is ABSOLUTELY USELESS AS A DEFENSIVE CD against good freeps because it can be immediately interrupted. That is especially true in small group pvp (6-12man) where freeps can just prepare in advance to interrupt this bubble when they burst some creep. Increasing this skill CD slightly might be also needed if you actually add 5s immunity.
4) 100% induction debuff is too high even though it is cleansable now

BA:
1) make all dps skills better compared to ‘Vital Target’, ‘Tangleshot’ and ‘Revenge’ (and redistribute dmg). Especially ‘Strong Pull’, ‘Explosive Arrow’, ‘Flaming Arrow’, ‘Screaming Shafts’, ‘Headshot’.
2) make ‘Skirmisher’ Stance useful. My suggestion is to make it an aoe based stance. Reason: creep aoe damage is almost non existent.
3) fix ‘Explosive Arrow’ aoe bug.
4) make 2 melee skills (‘Cut’ and ‘In Your Face’) more useful by adding either debuffs or buffs (for your group) to them. Reason: currently there is almost no point in using them, especially in group pvp.
5) make traps (‘Fire Trap’ and ‘Set Trap’) more useful for group pvp.
6) rework ‘I See You’ - make it do some kind of a buff to your group instead of stealth detection (which is useless).
7) make ‘Centre’ some kind of an offensive buff (like Burn Hot on hunter or something). Reason: power HOT is useless.

Spider:
1) make spider bleeds and debuffs more relevant in group PvP by fixing the cleanse problem.
2) pet buff: make pet summonable in combat, buff pet morale and mits, nerf Devour so that you can’t abuse heal (add CD and reduce healing from it), add useful offensive pet debuffs (mits, inc dmg, max morale). Reason: if pet is not summonable in combat it is ABSOLUTELY USELESS because it dies from aoe instantly and bring no benefit to the group. Pet should do offensive debuffs but the damage it does should be small.
3) revert ‘Necrosis’ change. Reason: creeps do not have a lot of finesse so that nerf is not needed at all.

I gave my in depth comments on spider changes here (post #40 and #50):
https://forums.lotro.com/forums/show...ter-Play/page2
And here are my suggestions on how to make spider better in group (post#101):
https://forums.lotro.com/forums/show...75#post8154675

Spider Feedback

^Important spider feedback.

Reaver:
1) make reaver aoe dmg much better than it is now. Reason: creep aoe damage is almost non existent.
2) remove armour debuff from ‘Sundering Blow’ and add phys and tact mit debuff instead. Reason: armour debuffs are really weak because they remove only 20% (out of all armour value) of phys and tact mits from freeps.
3) dust miss chance is too high

Warg:
1) stance swapping should be easier:
- make it possible to stance swap from shadow to flayer (and vice versa) without going stanceless for 10s.
- reduce stances CD from 10s to 5s
Reason: That change alone would MASSIVLEY improve warg utility in group content. And with your additional changes it would be even greater.

2) move 20% mit debuff from ‘Howl of the Unnerving’ to ‘Rabid Bite’.
- fear in combination with mit debuff is a bad game design. Why? Fear is primarily used on warg for defence (to CC multiple freep dpsers). Applying mit debuff to them at the same time makes no sense.
- Rabid Bite is useless now so making it a mit debuff is good. If you make it cleansable – keep CD short. If uncleansable – increase CD and reduce duration.

3) Increase CC duration of ‘Howl of the Unnerving’ and all stuns; and make fear chance 100% instead of 50%.
- 5s Fear from Howl lasts for 1.75s (on a freep with full AUD). It’s way too short. Make it 8s so that it would last for 2.8s (on a freep with full AUD).
- same thing with stuns.

WARG FEEDBACK:

^Important warg feedback.

[Gilean-EU]

To me it looks like solo war-speech minstrel is going to have harder time than before (and less DPS). Hopefully I am wrong.

[KillAllFrep]

First off, whoa, Creep changes like this? Never thought I'd see the day.

Secondly, most of them look pretty cool and I really like some of the reworks to make them a little more in-depth, however a few of the list are giant OP red flags:

Reaver:

Blinding Dust now increases miss chance by 40% for 30s hitting up to 4 targets on a 15s cooldown - this remains a wound ability.

Blinding Dust is currently a 20% miss chance debuff which is already really strong, 40% on a 15 sec CD is wild.

Devastating Strike now has a 15s/8s cooldown and a threshold require of 33%/50 for the differing variants decreases the incoming healing on a target for 8s and increases the damage done by 150% and 250% for the normal and enhanced version respectively.

Am I reading this wrong? DS is now giving a +1-250% incoming damage debuff to the opponent? Oathies is 35% and is insanely potent, 250% would see people being one-shot. Or is this just a 150-250% buff to DS? Still absurd but at least not insanity.

Curse of the Melancholic Heart' now reduces Outgoing Healing by 50% (from 25%).
Gooey Gourd' now increases Skill Inductions by 100% (from 20%) but is now a cleansable poison effect.

Seems fairly apparent that there's some intent to cripple Freepside healing with all of these changes, but are you aware that all of the various debuffs Creepside has for +induction duration can already put some skills like Bolster Courage on 3+ second inductions as-is? A skill like Epic for the Ages with all the applicable induction debuffs would be like 7 or 8 seconds lol. With a Warg that can interrupt constantly and three times without even touching the player? Come on.

Flea Bitten now applies an initial interrupt and then a pulsing interrupt on the target that lasts for 15 seconds pulsing every five seconds.

This is ludicrous, Warg already has absurd interrupt-ability on Tacticals/Healers with how many chances for silence application it has, this is going to mean that a single Warg is able to permanently lock down a single healer and ensure they cannot use a single induction ever, especially given the changes to Minstrel's CotC in this patch and 3s CD ER.

Howl of unnerving now has a 50% chance to apply a fear debuff, reducing mitigation by 20% on up to 4 targets.

Again, has anyone checked how massive something like a 20% direct mit debuff is? Like wow.

Shadow Pack now reduces incoming healing by 25%; 10% after leaving the debuff area.

Please tell me this doesn't still stack. -100%+ inc heals on a tiny cooldown, placeable anywhere immediately is ripe for abuse.

--- As I say, aside from the above glaringly overpowered things, the changes seem good and I'm particularly glad Creeps will get cleanses now, the new Defiler especially looks like it finally got stances as its needed forever.

[Ohri72]

I race-changed my RK to woman and on every other Bombastic Inspiration heal it does a weird animation like it puts its sword away, If you could fix that before it goes live that would be nice

[Phantion]

I race-changed my RK to woman and on every other Bombastic Inspiration heal it does a weird animation like it puts its sword away, If you could fix that before it goes live that would be nice

Yeah and the fiery meteor skill in red-line doesn't have it's graphics on an RK woman either.

Cheers!

[fealegwe2]

before you shoot me... i have never played pvmp and know little to nothing about coding.

but if it were possible it would be best if all charachters ( regardless of level and gear in Live or baby creeps ) were scaled to lvl 465 equivelant stat range when they enter the moors and then if you want better gear stats etc you need to earn it in the Moors.

in my humble opinion it would make the first time new player experiance better and if you are better statted than the rest then you have earned the right to have that extra 5% advantage.