Minstrel Changes and Feedback

[Bio-Flame]

I'm sure that's true of some. But also true that a lot of people didn't I think. And saying unneeded and unwanted is perspective. Like I said I personally think they are positive changes and look forward to them. I spoke to others who feel the same. There's fair perspectives on both sides of this.

Then you never really enjoyed playing mini, you enjoyed some other class.
This isn't mini. This is playing LM, spaming Anthems.



Why? Nobody asked for this change.
Tweak Yellow, improve yellow, sure.

But destroying the feel of the class, to become an Anthem spam fest?
How's that for the better...?

[infinitewhimsy]

Oof I must not have tested that trait. That's a shame. The old hot wasn't crazy but it definitely felt noticeable at 75/85

Yeah it's a real shame all but 1 of the Anthem effects are totally worthless.
5% Threat Reduction via Compassion
3 Herald Strikes with no CD via Prowess
Tiny self HoT via Free Peoples
Power Restore via Compassion
Coda Crit Chance via War (seems to be bugged since there's no buff, but would be lackluster even if it worked)

The effects are anything but noticeable, they all effectively affect nothing.

Power and Threat are no longer considerations at end game (like, at all), Herald's Strike is a worthless skill most of the time (the HH 4 set changes that, but the buff doesn't stack so why do you need to apply it 3 times in a row? lol), you don't want to Coda at all in Blue now and the heal it gives isn't even good so a marginally higher crit chance isn't exactly exciting.

My suggestion:
Change the effects to something like...

Anthem of War - Next Coda is now guaranteed to Crit.
Prowess - Your next Piercing Cry is now AoE (I would be willing to swap into Melody for this kind of moment, this would feel impactful to AoE stun/corruption removal from ranged)
Compassion - Resets the cooldown on Chord of Salvation
Composure - Your next Ballad is twice as effective

And while you're at it change it so incrementing or refreshing Tale of Tales (that is, casting an Anthem) reduces the cooldown slightly on Song of Aid. These kinds of changes would make Minstrel feel more dynamic and interesting.

Then you never really enjoyed playing mini, you enjoyed some other class.
This isn't mini. This is playing LM, spaming Anthems.



Why? Nobody asked for this change.
Tweak Yellow, improve yellow, sure.

But destroying the feel of the class, to become an Anthem spam fest?
How's that for the better...?

Even if I don't like the current changes I think it's obvious Yellow line had problems. The old playstyle of just using your Anthems every 3 minutes wasn't exactly fun either you know? It was convenient though.

[WeirdJedi]

And saying unneeded and unwanted is perspective. Like I said I personally think they are positive changes and look forward to them. I spoke to others who feel the same. There's fair perspectives on both sides of this.

I will admit that I'm not on Bullroarer to get a feel for the changes, but I think a lot of these changes are good. I really didn't like the idea of prepping anthems before battle and disliked the expectation of minstrels temporarily switching to the yellow trait line to cast buffs before the raid advances. Any one of the changes - especially making it so you have to cast anthems during a fight - would have solved that problem. But I see why people are upset about it because my captain's Oath-keepers was changed awhile back so it could only be cast in-combat. This prevented me from spending that extra second casting it beforehand. In the end, I realized that it wasn't that big of a deal. However, I don't like how Call of Greatness refreshes the ability without the 3-minute debuff also clearing away on the enemy.

I also really like the idea of blurring the lines. Healing was very pitiful in red and there was very little you could do for damage in blue (even when switching stances). From the looks of it, they are also trying to make anthems flexible so you can coordinate multiple minstrels in a raid. Then again, there are so many different opinions on the matter that it is hard to tell from a glance.

[cwswim03]

Feels like a lot of these responses are knee jerk reactions without spending time on bullroarer. I think this is a really positive change. Yellow wasn't a particularly fun spec to play imo and this allows minstrels a lot more freedom in fulfilling their role while being able to take more stuff in yellow due to the changes in point costs. I like the idea of yellow as a utility tree to assist and customize the way you play red or blue.
My main feedback would be that it honestly feels bad not being able to put up at least one anthem before a fight starts. I get the need for "ramp up time" but idk. It is frustrating to be several seconds into a fight before you even consider a 2nd anthem.
The removal of the PC stun in red war speech is tough. It's been an iconic part of red mini for a long time. Not sure I'm a fan of losing it.
Finally small thing to ask but I was very excited to see anthem of the free peoples return. But was disappointed when i found out it no longer grants the HoT that it used to grant when you used Coda with the anthem active.

Actually people have spent a lot of time on bullroarer testing it and the changes are garbage. Losing 25% ogh, inductions, coda -damage reduction, piercing cry stun/CR removal, legend of the hammerhand nerf, all to gain CTG reset for 3 skills (on two classes) is ####. They are turning a main healer into a support class and people ####ing hate it.

[Faudyen]

Was able to hop on Bullroar for a bit today.
My first concern is that for the landscape solo red mini there is no reason to spec into or use any anthem. The fights are over before you can build up to use them.
This would register to me the same if I was leveling up. My concern here is that when a mini reaches end game they all of a sudden have to learn a new way to play.
As a solo red mini I had a lot of points that I was putting anywhere because they didn't matter.
Song of aid cooldown is far too long. Song of aid is way at the bottom of a tree, costing a lot of points. The heal is about the same as inspire fellows. The hot on song of aid is a joke, yet is has a 3 1/2 minute cooldown. I'm not a raid healer, granted, but as someone that has no problem going blue for friends to knock out a couple of instances I would not put any points into this.
Induction time on bolster courage should be reduced.
The CotC nerf to blue line is unnecessary.
With all of changes you have made I'm bit surprised that there is still an induction between stances. This should be removed.
The removal of stun on piercing cry was a bad choice. Minis have never been an amazing dps class and this ability has kept many a mini alive over the years. It should be returned.
My feeling on melody stance is the same as before I played the beta. In my opinion, go to dissonance and resonance stance. Keep the coda in dissonance the damage it is now but add the aoe and heal from melody and get rid of melody. In my opinion when you are in a 3 man or 6 man you are either dps or you are healing, how often are people trying to do half of both? Our with your friends? Same thing, you are one or the other. Most classes (sorry red brawler) can heal themselves redline. You want to switch to blue stances after a fight, toss a couple of heals and move back, cool. I just don't see a point of yellow stance anymore.
Thanks

[infinitewhimsy]

I just realized the group effect from Anthem of the Third Age Resonance isn't applied to the Minstrel. So you're actually losing 10% Induction Reduction with the changes to the Anthem....wow, I'm speechless. That is so much worse than I thought, and I thought it was bad before.

Actually people have spent a lot of time on bullroarer testing it and the changes are garbage. Losing 25% ogh, inductions, coda -damage reduction, piercing cry stun/CR removal, legend of the hammerhand nerf, all to gain CTG reset for 3 skills (on two classes) is ####. They are turning a main healer into a support class and people ####ing hate it.

Where are you getting 25% OGH loss from?

[DoRonRon]

I guess a Monster player is going to love the changes.

Nothing on landscape survives my red mini long enough for him to cast an anthem. I had to fear mobs to delay their deaths just to add an anthem. Should I ask for it's CD to be lowered to 20 seconds to enable anthem use?

The more damage I do the more time I have to twiddle my thumbs waiting. If I want to attempt to buff with anthems any more that is. Bye-bye Warspeach, hello anthems I can't use except in a metronomic 20 second cycle of pulls across the map or mission. Kill me now!

The movie Hudson Hawk had Bruce Willis and Danny Aiello have a blast carrying out robberies while singing show tunes chosen to set their cadence and timing for each heist. This is like forcing them into one boring song to fit all jobs.

[cwswim03]

I just realized the group effect from Anthem of the Third Age Resonance isn't applied to the Minstrel. So you're actually losing 10% Induction Reduction with the changes to the Anthem....wow, I'm speechless. That is so much worse than I thought, and I thought it was bad before.


Where are you getting 25% OGH loss from?

Try your heals on live vs your heals on bullroarer and see the difference you get while using the exact same skill rotation. It's a 25% loss (as demonstrated by other parsers in the thread)

[Elaelin]

It would be nice to know why these changes/nerfs to the mini are needed. If the true intent is to introduce yellow line to those that only play blue and red line it falls short of the goal as the new (not really improved) buffs will be a choice under the new system. Yes, we will be able to put points into those yellow line skills but no, we won't have the time to use these new skills in blue or red line on a consistent basis. Add to that longer inductions, reduced heals and the mini will have fewer opportunities for group content and solo landscape activities will be a chore.

I am not sure why you don't just leave the red and blue lines as they are and if you really want to get rid of yellow minis just open up the line as is currently. Let that be tested on live servers for a bit and then decide what nerfs are necessary. The current proposed changes only offer a watered down version of the potential of a yellow mini.

[Bio-Flame]

It would be nice to know why these changes/nerfs to the mini are needed. If the true intent is to introduce yellow line to those that only play blue and red line it falls short of the goal as the new (not really improved) buffs will be a choice under the new system. Yes, we will be able to put points into those yellow line skills but no, we won't have the time to use these new skills in blue or red line on a consistent basis. Add to that longer inductions, reduced heals and the mini will have fewer opportunities for group content and solo landscape activities will be a chore.

I am not sure why you don't just leave the red and blue lines as they are and if you really want to get rid of yellow minis just open up the line as is currently. Let that be tested on live servers for a bit and then decide what nerfs are necessary. The current proposed changes only offer a watered down version of the potential of a yellow mini.

Exactly.
Change/improve yellow if you want to, but why the destruction of how the class plays and feels?

In my language, we call that "throwing out the baby with the bath water".
Meaning: losing sight of what's most important while doing a secondary task.

[Hetweith]

Exactly.
Change/improve yellow if you want to, but why the destruction of how the class plays and feels?

In my language, we call that "throwing out the baby with the bath water".
Meaning: losing sight of what's most important while doing a secondary task.

the strategy here seems to be: lets fix what isnt broke to fix what is. is there a compulsion among the devs to see how far they can remove this class from what it was and what attracted me to it in the first place?
i play minnie because it wasnt an LM and wasnt a cappy. and now it seems we will have to gut and rebuild our LI's to function with these changes. is lotro going to give us the mats to make these LI changes?
and most of all is this thread just a waste of time because the history of player input is traditionally ignored from the beta server.

[infinitewhimsy]

Try your heals on live vs your heals on bullroarer and see the difference you get while using the exact same skill rotation. It's a 25% loss (as demonstrated by other parsers in the thread)

I see almost no difference between tooltips on live and tooltips on BR.

Healing parses are stupid. Unless you're comparing performance in an actual encounter/boss/instance the numbers are worthless, there's a lot of factors that determine how much you heal for, with what skill, and how often.

That being said I am sure the healing output is lower because they nerfed CotC cd while removing the reset on top of nerfing our induction buffs and Coda...and obviously you have less time TO heal now because you need to use Anthems a lot more and or swap into ######## Melody for a stun or Orome, but who knows if that isn't outweighed by things like the new Song of Aid damage reduction or -10% attack duration from Prowess/Resonance on the group letting you shorten the encounter or better deal with mechanics via higher DPS or the group simply taking less damage because of new Anthems stats like 5% Orc Craft mitigation on Prowess. You don't want to measure HPS, you want to measure impact, which isn't as simple.

[DoRonRon]

By the way Welcome to the Forums OP.

Hope you studies equip you to survive us being mean! We are attached to our Minstrels and their playstyle however. Upping the DPS/HPS (the usual "sell"/"cop out") leaves these mechanics in place still.

I'd love to know your sources for mini gameplay to arrive here.

[J-Moneyforever]

Then you never really enjoyed playing mini, you enjoyed some other class.
This isn't mini. This is playing LM, spaming Anthems.



Why? Nobody asked for this change.
Tweak Yellow, improve yellow, sure.

But destroying the feel of the class, to become an Anthem spam fest?
How's that for the better...?

Played Mini for 10 years. Have close to 1 year ./played on two different minis. Maybe just maybe I enjoy playing the class differently than you. Are you capable of comprehending that? So many angry thoughtless posts talking about how "WE ALL HATE THE CHANGES" when it's simply inaccurate. You can dislike the changes but making broad statements or claiming if someone disagrees with you they "must not like playing mini" is the argument of a buffoon. No point engaging with it.

[Neinda]

I suspect that these changes are set in stone. The best we can hope for at this point is a tweak here and there. Customer comments here rarely result in anything actually changing. At this point we probably need to stick to begging for piercing cry to keep its stun and corruption removal in any stance and any improvements/adjustments to cool downs, inductions, etc. Maybe the comments will make small differences but I don't see this actually changing anything major. The yellow mini will have a new name/look and the choices will be spam mediocre buffs on long cool downs, lesser heals or mediocre dps. It is still three choices just not as well rounded or effective as things are today. Minis will have awesome tool bars and available skills but will have to choose which ones will be used as there is not enough time to use them all fully. On a positive note, I suspect we will see more classes nerfed shortly. Look at all those comment threads out there. Hopefully SSG will nerf the instances and landscape mobs to match the reduced skills of our classes.

[greendarner]

I feel ill. Seriously. These changes, specifically those taking away functions, the ones that are nerfing us, are horrible. The mealy-mouthed "rationalizations" for this mess are disgusting. Either you think you can hoodwink us with your "reasoning" or you have no actual clue how the class functions currently.

I've read through the entire thread, and while I might have missed a criticism or two, most that I did read are spot on.

Adding to the ill feeling is the knowledge that, unless SSG has had a sudden about face, there is NOTHING that will be changed. To say it's NOT set in stone is directly contradicted by all the times SSG has suddenly introduced changes via Bullroarer, invited feedback yet totally ignored the feedback they receive, and two weeks later, the changes go live. And those changes are almost never adjusted except in the very most minor way, unless they discover they forgot to nerf something. THAT they will "adjust". SSG, you think this is harsh? It's truth, and if you think being told the truth is "harsh", then so be it. This is a fair and accurate depiction of your past record of how you have operated, for as long as it's been SSG, and going back before that too.

Even if I thought the changes were beneficial, this is a huge daunting amount of relearning to do. As another poster put it, going back to being a noob again, learning a class all over. Admittedly, I'd have more enthusiasm for it IF the changes were beneficial, but they're first and foremost ANOTHER NERF to minstrels. You have a really peculiar business model: Look for ways to make your customers unhappy.

[nelar]

I copied over a level 65 and level 106 minstrel, and tried them both out in solo play, red spec'd, with additional points in yellow. I use a plugin that measures combat time in seconds. I found no significant difference in combat time between Dissonance and Melody stance, at best I might occasionally end combat 1 second faster in Dissonance. For normal mobs, neither stance had any significant difference. For signatures, Dissonance sometimes took longer because I had to heal to stay alive -- that was a non-issue in Melody. I also solo'd the Attack at Dawn skirmish, setting it to 2-man, running Melody. The final boss required using all healing skills including coda and strike, and was still close, but definitely doable. I don't think I would have had a chance in Dissonance -- without the additional healing from coda and strike, I don't see any way I could have survived.

So for solo play, melody stance gives the stun to Piercing Cry, further reduces mob resistance, and provides additional healing for tougher situations, for what appears to me to be an insignificant amount of additional combat time, and slightly less post combat time healing up for those who like to take on something more challenging then a single normal landscape mob.

As for anthems when soloing landscape, I never had more than one up -- combat just doesn't last long enough. Against signatures, if I had the three ballads up and piercing cry stunned them, I could always cast Third Age and then finish the combat. That meant I had the anthem up for any additional mobs that I could engage in the next couple of minutes.

I can't speak to raiding or healing, but for solo play the changes are great once you switch to Melody stance -- faster kills, ability to tackle tougher content, and coda/strike actually worth being on your toolbar.

[infinitewhimsy]

I can't speak to raiding or healing, but for solo play the changes are great once you switch to Melody stance -- faster kills, ability to tackle tougher content, and coda/strike actually worth being on your toolbar.

I'd love to hear what you think has changed about either skill.

[Arabani]

Yes, I like the changes in general. Except for the Anthems, of course. Most of them are realtively useless (5% increase is not a flat increase for instances) and keeping several up is not fun, neither is the new Invigorated/cashe out mechanic. The way I see it is that in most cases Minis will play in Melody, keep a couple of "the most useful" anthems up and almost never cash them out.

[hillard1959]

Yes, I like the changes in general. Except for the Anthems, of course. Most of them are realtively useless (5% increase is not a flat increase for instances) and keeping several up is not fun, neither is the new Invigorated/cashe out mechanic. The way I see it is that in most cases Minis will play in Melody, keep a couple of "the most useful" anthems up and almost never cash them out.

This. I rarely use more than two anthems, Anthem of War and Anthem of Composure, while soloing. They're not even needed most of the time, but really nice to have when tackling solo dungeons. Now getting those buffs up and maintaining them are a chore.

I can see using Melody stance while specced into Warrior-Skald for a more AOE-centric build. That's actually pretty cool. I just want them to fix the anthems. And give me my stun back.

[mileyj]

I wrote out a much longer post, but at page 4 of mini feedback, there isnt much going to be said thats original. So heres to being short and sweet, unlike these changes that are long and....not so sweet.

-it seems that minis will be either spending all of their time spamming ballads and coda to reset cds and keep up anthems with minimal healing, or spend time healing with our long inductions and reduced hps at the cost of crippling our buffing capabilities.
-most of the anthems dont even make sense - random stats like agility or orc craft mits? separating melee and ranged/tact dam buffs? were just adding random things to each one to make them seem new and different, but its just all the old ones spread out across 5
-the piercing cry changes are a way to force minis to stay in melody. if you want us to use a skill or a stance, make it useful and we will even when given other options.
-ctg resetting oathies but oathies gives a 3min debuff on the mob and ctg is on a 7min cd. unless you have twin bosses this feels great at first glance, but is useless on application.

Im confused at the vision the devs have for the mini. On live, they fill the role of the main healer, but on BR maybe like a second rate cappy or lm. These changes dont feel like they were made by people who play the class or have an understanding of what groups/players look for in a healing class.

Thanks infnintewhimsy and gladenn and others, I agree with all of the comments that youve made and the suggested fixes as well.

Also, mildly offended at whoever said no one is on BR testing. Minstrel is a beloved class that has had some great improvements over the years and some of us have spent an embarrassing amount of hours on BR testing the changes.

[Edhelae]

Hello!
Hi everyone, I’m OnnMacMahal, and I want to talk to you about the upcoming changes to the Minstrel class. We’ve converted the minstrel’s ‘Protector of Song’ specialization tree into a passive tree, functioning the same way as the brawler’s yellow tree does. I’m here to answer a few questions up front, and give you a bit of insight into our thinking regarding these changes.


Wait, what’s happening?
With U33.2, minstrels will no longer be able to choose the ‘Protector of Song’ trait tree as their specialization. You’ll still be able to specialize in the other two trait trees, and the yellow tree isn’t going anywhere! While you won’t be able to choose yellow as your specialization, it is still full of exciting stuff. For most players, this means you’ll be able to access unique skills like Song of Aid and Call to Greatness while specializing in either ‘The Watcher of Resolve’ or ‘The Warrior-Skald’ trait lines.
NOTE: Upon logging into Bullroarer with a copied character, you may have a saved trait tree specializing in yellow. For now, you will need to manually click ‘Re-specialize’ in order to interact with the new traits correctly.


Why Yellow Minstrel?
The yellow minstrel line has a strong identity, but while there are good reasons to specialize in the ‘Protector of Song’ those reasons aren’t usually better than the reasons for specializing in blue or red. Yet it still has some very clear utility, and we regularly see minstrels swapping to a full yellow line spec to fire off all the buffs they can before swapping back to blue (or red) as a fight starts. And while it doesn’t have quite enough power or utility to justify using as a main spec, we see a lot of you considering the yellow line and keeping a yellow setup around. We just don’t see many folks staying in yellow line for very long. Obviously there are exceptions, but at the moment, minstrels staying in yellow spec for group content tend to be for niche circumstances.
Our goal is not to remove yellow line or yellow line’s identity, but to fold yellow line back into being a core part of the minstrel, accessible regardless of whether you’re in red line doing landscape quests, blue line main-healing a raid, or any other activity.



So, what’s changing?
A lot of things are changing. For the full list of changes, please see the release notes or hop into Bullroarer and check things out for yourself! However, I’ll cover a few broad categories of changes below:



Anthems & Codas
Anthems are an iconic part of the minstrel’s toolkit, but they aren’t always a very exciting part of the class. We want anthems to be more interesting to use, but we don’t want them to simply be a chore to maintain. To that end, anthems all now share a cooldown, have shortened durations, and can only be used in combat. We’ve also added a couple anthems and made sure they’re distributed around the trait trees. This means it won’t be possible for a single minstrel to maintain 100% uptime on all their anthems for the group. You’ll have to be a bit choosier with your anthems, but you also won’t be waiting for your anthem buffs to expire, only to pause what you’re doing and click through all of your anthems one by one to refresh the buffs.
Anthem buffs should also now have greater parity with one another. You should always want to have more anthem buffs, without feeling like any particular anthem is an absolute must-have above everything else.

Anthems also used to apply bonus effects to your next Coda, but these effects could be a bit confusing, and it could be hard to tell which ones were ‘queued up’ for your next Coda. These effects will now trigger directly off of their relevant Anthems, provided you have a point in the new ‘Invigorating Anthems’ trait.


Song of Aid and Call to Greatness
These two are a pair of awesome skills, but their effects varied widely in usefulness and could be difficult or impossible to utilize meaningfully. They’ve been changed so that they now have more unified effects for all of your allies:
Song of Aid is now a strong defensive cooldown, granting a brief Heal over Time and a Damage reduction & reflect, so help you get back on your feet when things start to go sideways.
Call to Greatness now resets a key or capstone cooldown for every trait tree for every class. This means that regardless of your chosen class or role, you should have a skill which will have its cooldown reset by Call to Greatness. This will allow Call to Greatness to be used both offensively and defensively, and make its effects relevant for everyone.
That said, not all classes are equal, and some have more impactful long-cooldown skills than others. So while some classes or specializations will still benefit from the new Call to Greatness effect more than others, there should be better parity overall, and we’re certainly willing to look at outliers going forward.


Stances
While Dissonance and Resonance have clear benefits, Melody has never had a very strong identity. While making changes to the yellow line, we wanted to strengthen the identity of the Melody stance a bit. While it can do some healing and some damage, it doesn’t excel at either, so we made some changes to make Melody better at applying debuffs, buffs, and unique effects.
Debuffs applied by Echoes of Battle and Call of Orome are now stronger while in Melody. Similarly, Piercing Cry only removes corruptions and stuns on critical hits when used in Melody. Additionally, Call to Fate can be used in Melody, though it will do less damage than it will in Dissonance.

Minstrels have three core skills which change depending on stance: your strike, your piercing cry, and your coda. Strike skills have been rebalanced slightly against one another, so their healing and damage values change more depending on your stance. Likewise, Piercing Cry now has more utility in Melody, does more damage in Dissonance, and is weaker offensively in Resonance. Codas (when traited) also now have bonus effects related to their respective stances.


Wrap Up
We know this is a lot of changes all at once, but we hope it improves overall gameplay for Minstrels, lets you access some of the unique abilities formerly hidden behind the yellow specialization, and helps you all feel like protectors of song.

Keep in mind that this is Bullroarer, so some of these changes may not be final, but we want to know what you think, and we look forward to seeing your reactions and feedback below.

First off all, good morning !!

And wow... what a work !! At the beginning, I was a bit scared of all this changes ! And when I logged in Bullroarer, and started to check the differents traits, i discovered how much good changes, that was ! I didn't really loose my heals skills, and got some nice buff with it ! Thank you, for those additions !

Although... even if the fact that doing the buff only when in combat doesnt bother too much, i got some trouble with CD shared wuth the anthems. If i'm not wrong, the max CD i got was 20sec shared... with a bit less than 2min anthems... If we want to buff our allies, we passe too many times with it instead of healing them... I think, for now it's my only problem ! =) I'm still checking a bit though and open to any suggestion or managing ideas other players may have ! ^^

[DrnknElf]

Most of the comments I would write here have already been covered by quite a few people already so I won't get into all of them. But I definitely have some serious issues with the changes.

The rather large induction nerf is terrible. On live I have a 0.5 sec induction for Bolster Courage. On BR the lowest I've been able to get it is 0.9 sec. That's an almost 100% increase in the time needed to fire off that skill and it's the same problem for any other healing induction skill. That is a direct and huge nerf to healing ability and there's nothing at all to offset it.

The 20 second (after traits) global cooldown on anthems makes them half useless. As a main healer I do not have the time to sit there and spam anthems on a timer like that. Making that worse is the choice to either forego using the coda or waste a lot of time building ballads back up in order to keep anthems going. In an intense fight there is literally no way to keep all anthems up and continue to heal properly. That is exacerbated by the increased induction times on all induction heals which lower healing output. Add into that the inability to use the coda anywhere near as much and healing output is lowered yet again.

The nerf to Cry of the Chorus is another problem. I didn't personally hit it as soon as it came off cooldown but used it more for emergency situations and the ability to keep healing while using the coda for its own benefits. It's no longer on a short enough cooldown to be able to do that. It will also cause issues in situations where the silence removal part of the skill is needed. Do I now use the skill even less than before because I absolutely must save it for specific emergency situations?

Call to Greatness is effectively useless. Before it was a very good skill which needed some tweaks to make it useful for all classes. Now it's a 7 minute cooldown of uselessnes. The extremely long cooldown alone makes it useless but the way it now works makes it even less useful since so many of the skills it effects are already on a much, much shorter cooldown already or have their own issues to being able to use the skill twice in a row such as Oathies. There aren't more than a few classes which get any real benefit from it and even then it's very situational. The removal of many of the useful effects the skill has on current live make it even worse. I don't see any point or have any desire to trait it at all since the points are wasted in all but the most rare cases.

Song of Aid has long needed a rework. Sadly, what we have instead is another useless or at least half useless skill. It works nothing like before and has a cooldown which is way too long to be of any real use outside of rare circumstances. That skill needed to be something other than a channeled skill and needed its effects updated like Call to Greatness and it would have been fine. It's another skill I likely won't trait because it's not worth the points and way too situational since the only useful thing about it is the damage reduction which is too short and/or too weak to be worth it with the long cooldown.

Overall, the changes, especially the anthem changes in practice are clunky and detrimental to the class. Anthems are useless in landscape play. In group play anthems require too much time and effort to be taken away from either healing or dps, whichever the minstrel is doing at the time. They were mostly a set it and forget it thing which was fine since minstrels already had enough to do otherwise. It's now as far from that as possible and in a time wasting and tedious way. The changes to anthems makes the class a lot less fun to play and at the end of the day I'm here to have fun.

Additionally, the way the old anthems and some skills were nerfed in order to make more anthems diluting what minstrels already had is ludicrous. It's not fun and it's not a positive for the class. Just because minstrels now have more skills does not make things better.

I am one of the few who has always like yellow line going back to before trait trees when I would trait four yellow and three blue. I've also like yellow line since the trait trees and always had at least one yellow setup and currently two; one yellow/blue and the other yellow/red. I even like Melody stance from time to time. I've frustrated many a monster player in the moors using that stance years ago and I've used it quite often in tougher landscape content or when soloing instances and even in three mans and some easier six mans. It has its uses. Unfortunately, the changes being made trying to force people into using it because it's stealing benefits we previously used in all stances is a mistake. Nerfing other stances in an attempt to make Melody more desireable is terrible.

Another issue rises with the desire for the developers to want us to stance dance. It's rare I have time to do any stance dancing in the middle of a group instance unless there's a built in lull. On the landscape its even worse. With the induction reduction changes, it takes longer to change stances than before. There's also the large problem of the five second cooldown before you can change back into the previous stance. That right there makes the stance dancing envisioned with some of these changes impossible and it's an issue that has been around for a long time. Stances either need no cooldown when changing them or at least a large reduction and/or the induction for changing stances needs to be eliminated. Personally, I'd leave the induction on the stance change but remove the cooldown although I'd be perfectly fine with removing both the induction and the cooldown. Stance dancing can be useful and has the potential to be more useful but it's impossible in the current state.

While I've always like yellow, in theory I have no problem with yellow line buffing the other trait lines. If done properly it's a very good change and a great benefit. Trait trees should always have been about buffing skills and such which you already had instead of being a way to add in artificial limits to classes. Anthems should all be in yellow line so any line can benefit from them. Yellow line should be about buffing skills you already have and it's not terrible to have some skills which are only in that line. However, the way the tree is setup with other changes made to the class has made this attempt a failure since the minstrel is actually a worse healer and a worse buffer overall than before. The promise is there but the current execution falls flat on its face.

While I decried how anthems and some skills have been diluted in order to add more anthems, not all of it is bad. It's not bad that the -incoming damage was removed from Inspire Fellows and moved to an anthem since the anthem would spread the effects raid wide and over a larger radius instead of being fellowship only. However, the long global cooldown for anthems makes this change much less useful.

Overall the changes being made to the minstrel are a large net negative. Less healing, more aggravation and more steps to accomplish the same things. I'll repeat that the theory of using yellow line to buff red and blue lines and opening up more anthems and skills to red and blue line is great. But the execution and other changes are simply terrible.

As it stands the changes, if they go to live, will be a huge mistake. The negatives the changes have created are a severe detriment to the class, its usefulness and its primary roles. Even if the positives somehow made up for the net healing ability they still would be a mistake to take live. The minstrel currently on Bullroarer is nowhere near as capable or fun to play as that on live.

[yorkl]

it is completely unnecessary and superfluous to change anything about the minstrel. you are wasting unnecessary resources here. rather spend your energy on solving the real problems in the game. I like the mechanics of the minstrel the way it is. I looked at the Minstrel updates yesterday on the test server. I do not like it. nobody needs that.

[Elaelin]

Based on what I can tell the plan is to push the mini out of being a main healer and into a support class similar to an LM. It appears in order to use the anthems effectively the mini will have to be in melody stance or constantly switching to and from the stance. If this is actually the plan, why not rework the anthems so that they provide an effective and ongoing benefit to the group in terms of buffs and the ability to debuff a boss? The proposed anthems and shared cool down for anthems makes them cumbersome to use in group content and somewhat useless in solo content since you have to be in combat to begin the process of tiering them up and you have to stay alive and in combat long enough to maximize their use. Every time combat ends you start over and the mini and group lose the benefits. Most of the anthems will end up not being used due to time it takes to tier up the anthems and cash them out. I imagine, most of us will tier up 1, maybe 2 anthems at most and let the rest sit. The anthems won't be used much on landscape and solo content.

You could also consider just making all of the anthems one time big skills that make a difference sort of like when fellowship maneuvers were used. In a situation like that, the long and shared anthem cool downs would make sense. The shared cool downs could even be longer depending on how much impact the skill gives to the group. I would equate that type of anthem to individual call to greatness skills that affect the entire group. The mini would have the ability to use a skill and make a difference when it counts. It could be a big dps boost, a boss debuff, a group buff or even a heal buff. This would make the anthems special and meaningful in a group and not take away from the healing role of the mini.

Call to greatness should live up to its name. A reset of a CD once every 7 minutes seems not worth spending the points. The chances for call to greatness to make a major difference in a group are minimal when all it does is reset a CD. A skill that can only be used once in that long time a time period should offer something epic for the group. Maybe a massive dps boost or a massive damage reduction or something along those lines. It should be a skill that makes an actual difference during the boss fight. Give call to greatness a benefit that matches the name of the skill, something great.

Whatever is decided here, please leave blue and red line as they currently stand. Please don't ruin piercing cry and force us to always be in melody stance. I love playing my yellow line mini (I actually have two separate yellow lines that I use.) but there is a time and place for yellow line and there are times when red and blue line are more appropriate to the situation. Both red and blue lines are in a good place right now. None of these proposed changes will get a mini a DPS spot in a raid or instance and how many support classes will be used in a group once you fill it with healers, tanks and dps. Changing the purpose of the mini to support rather than main heals this late in the game does not make sense to me at least. It would make more sense to just make another LM type class and let the mini continue to be a healer. The current proposed changes are going to make melody the go to stance and force the mini into one play style with few options and variations. There will be melody stance for dps on landscape and melody stance for healing/buffing in instances and very little else to choose. There will be a standard skill rotation of refreshing whatever anthems are in vogue this cycle every 25 second with little if any opportunity for variety. I suspect the mini will become an extremely boring class to play with limited opportunities to join in group content as the LM and burg will provide better support benefits than the mini.

And while we are discussing completely changing the mini and their place in Middle Earth, please give us the same cool down on the in combat rez skill no matter the line being used. If the mini is going to become a several times removed cousin to the LM at least give us the same cool down in blue/red line for our rez. Also, make song of distraction work on chained mobs. There are so few places where that skill is even worth it anymore. It would be nice to see it become useful again.