Minstrel Changes and Feedback

[Arabani]

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 is not the case I'm sure. Every heal is still there, we even got more heals. Lost some induction. but it hardly matters. As for the anthems, I do not like the new iteration and would like to see anthems more like auras. Trying to keep several anthems up is not fun at all. But in the end, noone is really forcing us to do so. I already see the way I'll play the mini: most times in Melody, switching to Resonace only if there are constant spikes on the tank, keeping a couple of anthems running, and inserting damage spells between heals.

I really like the new changes, giving more dps to a healer is always great.

[Bio-Flame]

At the core, I am not against some changes and tweaks to Yellow.
Personally, I believe a few tweaks and some fine tuning here and there might have been enough, since after all, Minis are in a good place in so far as group content is concerned. We don't need more spots.
Still, some changes to Yellow might be a good thing. More choices and options is always good for players.


I don't think that the solution to Yellow being underplayed is to completely remove it and work it into Blue and Red. Doesn't make sense.


What I do find it deplorable is to change Blue and Red playstyle, a style that has been around for many years and, a style that players were happy with. I don't think changing the flow to Mini's gameplay is a good idea at this point.
And if the justification for it is due to the changes to Yellow line, then that really doesn't make any sense.



It's not the nerfs per se (although, again, it's surprising that to change Yellow, you needed to nerf Blue and Red). Numbers can be tweaked.
The issue is the unnecessary and unwanted changes to Blue and Red.


They weren't asked for. The number of Minis playing the game is healthy. Meaning that players were overall content in playing minis.
But this....you're trying to give with one hand while simultaniously taking with your other hand...and feet.



Think about this: in order to force us to accept your changes to Yellow, you're forcing players to choke on your changes to Blue and Red.
That doesn't seem wise, at all.
Before starting this endeavour, did you really think that Minis wanted or even asked a change to their core gameplay loop 10 or more years into the game?



If you want to improve Yellow line, go ahead. But please, don't take away the essence what made Blue and Red Minis what they were.
That is the issue. Change yellow, a lot or a few but don't touch Blue and Red.
They weren't the problem.


You strike me as a good intentioned Developer but one that misread what players enjoy while playing Minis and miscalculated what makes a Mini player tick.
I hope you consider halting this needless change for the worse and change your angle of attack.


In the end though, it's sad to give feedback to SSG, fully knowing SSG doesn't change a comma to any changes once they hit BR but.....players are doing their part at least.
I respectfully hope you stop this unwanted change and go back to the drawing board.

[Elaelin]

It is not the case I'm sure. Every heal is still there, we even got more heals. Lost some induction. but it hardly matters. As for the anthems, I do not like the new iteration and would like to see anthems more like auras. Trying to keep several anthems up is not fun at all. But in the end, noone is really forcing us to do so. I already see the way I'll play the mini: most times in Melody, switching to Resonace only if there are constant spikes on the tank, keeping a couple of anthems running, and inserting damage spells between heals.

I really like the new changes, giving more dps to a healer is always great.

I agree on the anthems but I really don't want to spend all of my time in melody stance which under the proposed changes will be the only viable option to be effective. Why have stances at that point?

In some ways this almost feels like playing an old school blue cappy. Buffs and back up heals with a bit of dps on the side. Very little variety. It will be an OK design, but it won't be exciting and won't be in high demand as there are other classes that do the same things, only better. This change is good for those that never played yellow line and stuck to red/blue line.

I guess the good thing here is that minis will need less variety in their legendary weapons and that will be less of a grind to maintain. There won't be a need for a red/yellow/blue set after these changes. The new Middle Earth buff bots don't need much variety.

[infinitewhimsy]

I agree on the anthems but I really don't want to spend all of my time in melody stance which under the proposed changes will be the only viable option to be effective.

There's very little reason to go Melody even with the changes, no idea what half the people in this thread are even talking about honestly. Why do you think Melody is the only way to be effective?

[Arabani]

The new Middle Earth buff bots don't need much variety.

You focus too much on buffing, which is not really the role and the main feature of the class. Minstrel is a healer and he will remain so (though I hope Red will actually become a real dps line one day). Anthems are meant to be sutuational short-time cooldowns that can help you and your group or raid, they are not meant to be maintained all the time and all at once. As I've said, most likely there will be 2-3 up at a time. For instance, there is absolutely no need to cast protective anthems if the incoming damage is manageble. The same is true for cash out effects.

Do not panic and test the changes yourself. They are great. Mostly.

[Arabani]

There's very little reason to go Melody even with the changes, no idea what half the people in this thread are even talking about honestly. Why do you think Melody is the only way to be effective?

Because it let you heal basically for the same amount while doing more dps and providing with additional tools. Even on live I very often play in Melody as a Blue minstrel.

[Elaelin]

You focus too much on buffing, which is not really the role and the main feature of the class. Minstrel is a healer and he will remain so (though I hope Red will actually become a real dps line one day). Anthems are meant to be sutuational short-time cooldowns that can help you and your group or raid, they are not meant to be maintained all the time and all at once. As I've said, most likely there will be 2-3 up at a time. For instance, there is absolutely no need to cast protective anthems if the incoming damage is manageble. The same is true for cash out effects.

Do not panic and test the changes yourself. They are great. Mostly.

Thanks for the advice. I tried the changes and was underwhelmed. Only having one character at level cap and having played the one class since the game started, this will put a damper on my lotro time. Melody stance and repeating the same couple of anthems every 25 seconds is not my idea of fun. Just me. The heals on the test server are less than live and have a longer induction. We lose heal bonuses with the changes. The anthems on the test server are not as user friendly or useful as the anthems we have now on live. They are a lesser quality and require more time and effort to be useful. If I am healing, I don't really need mediocre DPS added. I doubt most healing minis will have spare time in a difficult instance to DPS in between heals and working on anthems but I am probably just slow on the keyboard. Yellow line today is great buffs and mediocre heals and dps. The new system will be mediocre buffs, heals and dps and staying parked in melody stance or constantly swapping from what I saw. I prefer the variety I currently have with three actual line choices and three stances within each line. Yes, the changes will be manageable and probably less work as there is no creativity or variety involved with the new set up. Yellow line did need some love and attention. Allowing yellow to be a spare set of skills available could have been an outstanding idea and could have worked well. Blue and red line did not need to be broken to force people to melody stance. If they would leave blue and red line as is and shorten the CD on anthems I really wouldn't care about this change but in an effort to make melody look more appealing they decided to break blue and red and force us to melody.

I will probably let the mini sit for a couple of months or so after this goes live as I don't see a need to respec and redo weapons for now. It is not like we have new end game content to worry about anyway. Let them work out the bugs and problems for a few months and figure out which skills are actually going to be useful in a live server. And as I said before I will no longer need three weapon sets with these changes. I anticipate going to one set with maybe a spare item that focuses on either heals or dps. Less grind in the new weapon system is a positive change here.

[infinitewhimsy]

Because it let you heal basically for the same amount while doing more dps and providing with additional tools. Even on live I very often play in Melody as a Blue minstrel.

I would say the Ballad damage bonus from Melody and the AoE from the Coda both give totally negligible amounts of DPS. Just what kind of content are you doing that has a low healing requirement which allows you the time to use these things instead of healing and simultaneously meaningfully benefits from their miniscule added damage? Or are you referring to something else? Because as is I really have no clue what these tools you speak of are

Also the difference in healing is quite big imo because in Melody you lose out on a constant 5% Incoming Healing buff on your entire group granted by Coda of Resonance which you can easily keep up permanently with no time loss due to CotC (comparatively, the bonus from Coda of Melody is a useless 2.5% Partial BPE buff, a complete joke), on top of a 5% Outgoing Healing modifier just from the stances, on top of 10% more damage on your tank during high burst moments since you now lack Improved Coda of Resonance. So not only do you heal for less, your group actually takes less healing, and your tank takes more damage in Melody over Resonance. Maybe in raids I guess Coda of Melody hits more targets and gives you more HPS in that moment, but that's pretty heavily outweighed by the aforementioned I'd say, hell it's probably outweighed just by the few times you have to hit Major Ballad and the fact it AoE heals in Resonance but not Melody.

Put it this way, if Melody wasn't useless, would they be trying to shoehorn us so hard into using it by taking away essential functionality like the crit from Piercing Cry and then putting it back exclusively in Melody stance?

[Dodik]

Damage output for red-line/dissonance has also been increased. Red-line minstrels being brought into a group shouldn't be entirely dependent on one debuff.

Several of the changes have actually reduced Red-line damage. Here is how you currently maximize Minstrel DPS:

- 100% uptime on Anthem of War and Anthem of the Third Age.
- 100% uptime on 3 Minor Ballad buffs.
- 100% or close uptime on Coda of Fury buff.
- Longest possible Anthem duration + refreshing them out of combat / on the run to next target.
- Most importantly, shortest possible Cry of the Chorus cooldown and using CoftC on CD.

Your changes broke the whole package. The lowest CoftC CD is now 57s vs 27s so the uptime on its 12% damage buff has been halved. By extension it also halves the uptime of the Coda buff because the Coda is only cast when the fight is about to end or right before CoftC comes off CD. With Encore being -30% only, we simply cannot risk losing the Ballad buffs without the ability to quickly get them back.

100% uptime on the two Anthems is no longer possible. 100% uptime on the Ballad buffs still is, but is harder to achieve. If you drop out of combat and lose the stacks, and CoftC is on CD, you have to spend 3 GCDs playing the ballads. Yes, unlike the Major ballad in Blue, Minor in Red isn't terrible. However, if you have a higher-damage skill available e.g. Piercing Cry or Call to Fate, but have to play the Ballad, the result is still a DPS net loss.

I doubt your 3% buff to Of All Trades will make up for all this. I realize of course that Minstrel DPS is mediocre and min-maxing it seems like a futile endeavour. Stuff dies fast on landscape regardless and we are not wanted in groups as DPS etc etc.

The fact remains that you're not just gutting heals in Blue, you're nerfing DPS in Red as well. For Minstrels who dream about Red ever becoming a viable group DPS spec, the changes are disappointing to say the least.

P.S. The new shared Anthem CD makes for a very neurotic experience. One has to carefully watch the CD and cast the next Anthem as soon as its ends. If I am late by just a few seconds, the grand total of Anthems I can maintain is reduced. Oh, and when the last NPC in a pull is about to die, but I still have several seconds on my Anthem CD left, should I yell at my group to stop attacking and prolong the fight?

[Elaelin]

Put it this way, if Melody wasn't useless, would they be trying to shoehorn us so hard into using it by taking away essential functionality like the crit from Piercing Cry and then putting it back exclusively in Melody stance?

My thoughts exactly. There is a reason behind this change that is not obvious.

[cwswim03]

It is not the case I'm sure. Every heal is still there, we even got more heals. Lost some induction. but it hardly matters. As for the anthems, I do not like the new iteration and would like to see anthems more like auras. Trying to keep several anthems up is not fun at all. But in the end, noone is really forcing us to do so. I already see the way I'll play the mini: most times in Melody, switching to Resonace only if there are constant spikes on the tank, keeping a couple of anthems running, and inserting damage spells between heals.

I really like the new changes, giving more dps to a healer is always great.

So you do 80k dps instead of 30k dps when hunters are doing 1M Dps. Seems great to me.

There's very little reason to go Melody even with the changes, no idea what half the people in this thread are even talking about honestly. Why do you think Melody is the only way to be effective?

On T4/T5 of the raid, minstrels have the best CR removal on live with PC reset for B2/B3. Now they'll have to go Melody to do that. (Agreed that Melody is essentially useless though and is only for this niche use.

Because it let you heal basically for the same amount while doing more dps and providing with additional tools. Even on live I very often play in Melody as a Blue minstrel.

Lol. Minstrels don't do DPS, they do DPM.

[Undroiel]

1. I like spacing out hymns. Just refreshing all hymns felt really bad.

The problem: Now you have to hit a non-heal skill every 20 seconds. Additionally the hymn buffs are really random (power over time? you are buffing fate for the whole raid already)

Tie the hymn effect to your active stance, no matter what hymn you get the same bonus.
- Healing: Next bolster courage is instant + 100% crit + crit magnitude (or some similar healing bonus)
- Dmg: Critchance + Critdmg on your Coda? (I dont know anything about dps mini)
- Melody: 3 Instant Heralds Strike + Improved healing on Heralds Strike

Makes hitting a hymn feel worthwile and you gives you the chance to catch up on healing/dps afterwards. This way you are more likely to keep up hymns even in tight raid situations.

2. Emergency healing

The problem: Removing the reset chance in blue line and upping cd of Cry of the Chorus means one of your key emergency skills is up way less.

In line with the first points make one of the yellow traits give the following benefit:
Hymns reduce the cd of Cry of the Chorus by 15 seconds.

3. Melody - Stances in general

Problem: Mini go heal, Mini go damage. Buffing was always a side effect -> 2 stances are viable.

At the moment you are trying to improve melody by dragging down the other 2 stances. Surprising enough people dont like that.

Make melody an actual buff focused stance, otherwise one stance will always outdo the other in healing/dps utility and make it obsolete. Keep healing and dps in the other 2 stances.

To archieve true healing-dps-buff disticntion between stances I suggest heavily altering most skill depending on active stance.

Crazy take: Alternatively remove Melody, you were not able to make a whole buff-focused traitline viable and straight up removed it. Why go out of your way and waste time and effort just to fail again, on stances this time?

[BOB9]

Just wanted to offer my perspective as someone who is not particularly attached to mini's playstyle, but picked up a pocket yellow/red mini for high tier raiding purposes.

1. The current changes have no macro changes on how dps or dps support minis are or will be used for raids.

2. DPS minis will still be tied to the dps hunter meta, because of the call of orome light mit debuff and now the new call to greatness. They will be replaced when the debuff is no longer worth carrying along and hunters will switch to fire oil.

3. Red minstrel does roughly the same dps in dissonance or melody stance in beta, because of the light mit debuff stacking. So dissonance is useless for endgame raids.

4. To make red minstrel a competitive raid dps you need to rework light mit debuffs or else they will become early 130 lightning RK again.

5. If you want red minstrel to be a support dps ala captain they need strong buffs unique to red that are not available in blue and are relevant to more than just hunters.

There are a few good changes:

1. Being able to use call to fate in melody stance. Giving melody another dps skill to hit is a much welcomed change.

2. Nerfing Piercing Cry. Disagree with everyone’s feedback about the piercing cry change. It’s a great decision. It was ridiculous that one of your mainstay spammable dps skills was everything all at once. Having to swap to melody is annoying, but melody is better than dissonance for dps anyway right now so…lol. Also blue minis in resonance do not need piercing cry the way it is on live.

Overall I am disliking these changes. Blue minstrel heals are nerfed and the feedback I’ve heard from my group is that it is dumbed down, slower, less engaging and not fun to play. Rotating anthems is not fun or engaging gameplay regardless of the line you are doing it in. Removing the yellow traitline just makes the water murky for what the vision of dps mini is supposed to be. If it’s supposed to be a main dps class then their dps is well shy of the mark. If it’s supposed to be similar to red captain it’s again well shy of the mark. There needs to be many more rounds of testing before this goes live as it is very unpolished and lacks a clearly defined goal for the class.


A few questions for OnnMacMahal:

1. What is the purpose of these changes and what is the goal?

2. What role/roles should Red and Blue minstrel be performing in raids and what classes/specs are they competing against for spots in future raids?


Here are the changes that I would make.

1. Make melody stance the middle ground between resonance and dissonance stance. A support/dps or support/heal spec depending on if you are blue or red. (This is the same as Yellow/Red mini and Yellow/Blue mini on live, so I understand wanting to move away from this)
2. Make red mini’s in dissonance a strong, but solo oriented dps spec. Ideally they would be a main dps, but I don’t think there are enough resources for this
3. Keep Blue mini in resonance a strong healer. On beta they are nerfed roughly 25%
4. Make all ballads fast skills, this smooths out rotation for both Blue and Red.
5. Reduce the base inductions of minstrel heals, right now they are overly reliant on -% induction buffs and nerfing those doesn’t solve the core issue.
6. Increase Red mini dps significantly. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to start with a 30% base dps increase for all ballads, codas and crys. Right now the numbers are atrocious in both melody and dissonance stance.
7. Make Anthems actually a decision. Right now on beta anyone not rotating and tracking anthems is trolling their group. It’s bad gameplay and game design
8. Reduce the number of anthems to 2 or 3 and only allow one active at a time. One dps boost, one for incoming heals to burst up a target, and one for survivability.

[infinitewhimsy]

3. Red minstrel does roughly the same dps in dissonance or melody stance in beta, because of the light mit debuff stacking. So dissonance is useless for endgame raids.
.

This is a serious worry for me and why I dislike the Orome changes so much, what kind of joke is it that you do more damage in the stance with less sacrifices/specializing for the sake of DPS? That has historically been the class identity of War-Speech/Dissonance, you give up healing so you can do damage, now you do both in Melody on top of stealing the stun and corruption removal.

I mean ask yourselves, what does Dissonance really have that Melody doesn't? A pittance more Ballad damage? Damage from the Thunderous Codas effect? That probably doesn't outweigh the better mitigation debuff for yourself, let alone for your entire group. This design is atrocious and "Anti-Minstrel", it makes the class feel like some generic MMO caster with no thematic weight or identity. Dissonance needs to do significantly more damage than Melody to have a reason to exist.

Melody of course...has no reason to exist...imo you should get rid of it as a stance entirely and instead make it a temporary buff effect that modifies how skills function, a bit how Codas used to be. Maybe then it'd feel like an impactful decision, but the current effects limited to it aren't at all what I'd pick or focus on. I'll reiterate that Herlad's Hammer and its variants is useless 99% of the time without the Hiddenhoard 4 set effect. I'll also reiterate that Resonant Piercing Cry does little to nothing and Coda doesn't do more damage or healing than most of our other skills despite being a cash out that requires 3 Ballads...so touting these skills as the key differences between stances is laughable.

[OnnMacMahal]

First off, let me say thank you so much for your time and your feedback. I know changes like these can be frustrating, but I really do appreciate all of you taking the time to read through the changes, hop into Bullroarer, and write out your feeling and feedback here.

While I can’t address everything that’s been said here, I’m going to do my best to respond to some of the most common comments.

Piercing Cry
Let’s start off with Piercing Cry. While Piercing Cry is a delightful and iconic part of the minstrel’s toolkit, the base effects of this skill were simply overloaded. Keep in mind, this is a skill with a 10s cooldown, and that cooldown can be reset as frequently as every 1 or 2 seconds. For a skill that a red-line minstrel will often be using between every other skill, it was simply doing too much. It’s immediate, so it cancels animations from other skills. It’s an interrupt, so it will cancel monster inductions the second they start. It cleansed corruptions, making it nearly impossible for a monster to build any corruption buffs. And it stunned, for a whopping 5 seconds on criticals, which happen most of the time due to the +30% crit chance trait. That’s all on top of it putting out huge damage! Interrupting, stunning, clearing corruptions, and being the backbone of a red minstrel’s DPS rotation is simply too much for a skill you’re using that frequently.

While some of you have expressed great concern over losing this stun in sol/landscape environments, you recently gained the ability to stun mobs in an AoE by traiting a few points into ‘Enduring Morale’ in the red line. This is both a more reliable stun than Piercing Cry, and happens to be AoE, with only a 30s cooldown.

If you really must have the Piercing Cry stun and corruption removal, they are still there for you in Melody stance. Melody, in general, should have a stronger identity as a stance which gives you greater group-support utility.


Melody Stance
So lets talk about Melody! Before these changes, there wasn’t much reason to be in Melody stance. It put out worse healing and worse damage than Dissonance and Resonance, respectively, without bringing any additional utility to the table. Want to debuff monsters? Dissonance did it better. Want to buff your group? Resonance did it better. While Melody technically allowed you to heal some and DPS some, it didn’t make you particularly good at either one. In the future, Melody should be an appealing stance for group support and utility, while still leaving Resonance and Dissonance as stronger choices when you’re simply trying to maximize your personal Healing or Damage output.


Call of Oromë
Along with the changes to Melody, yes, the Call of Oromë debuff has been reduced. Like Piercing Cry, this was frankly too powerful. Call of Oromë is a single, long-range, AoE skill on a short cooldown. The fact that it essentially removed all light mitigation from a monster (or raid boss) was simply too powerful for one button press. And while it made bringing a Y/R minstrel more appealing for the current raid, that has more to do with the raid design and the relative strength of hunters than it has to do with the Minstrel class being able to shine. We’d prefer if DPS minstrels were appealing for their ability to debuff, buff, and DPS as a complete package, rather than for the value of a single debuff.
On that same note, however, minstrels in Dissonance stance will still reduce light mitigation when they use Call of Oromë, and that debuff stacks with itself twice. While the debuff is stronger in Melody, you will still get a non-trivial boost out of using this debuff, whether you’re in Dissonance focused on your personal DPS, or in Melody focusing a bit more on group utility.


Induction Times
I understand that the changes to Induction modifiers are frustrating, but this is not a nerf directed at Minstrels. The fact is, for characters at various level ranges, it’s trivially easy to achieve -100% induction speed under certain conditions. With these changes, -Induction bonuses you gain from traits and traceries will still help you shorten your inductions, but will now be multiplied with your ‘-All Skill Inductions’ buffs from skills or gear.
I’m also taking a look at possibly reducing baseline Minstrel inductions slightly. The goal is not to make Healing feel slow or clunky; it’s simply to make it such that you can’t build your Minstrel in a way that allows you to ignore all inductions completely!


Inspiring Cries and Calls (Watcher of Resolve Trait)
I know some of you are upset to see this trait go, but it simply wasn’t performing very well. It had an internal cooldown of 30s, which was necessary due to the power of resetting Cry of the Chorus. But in practice, the fact that it proc’d off of any heal skill meant it usually triggered the reset as soon as its 30s internal cooldown expired. In conjunction with the fact that Cry of the Chorus has its own cooldown, that meant you often triggered the ‘Inspiring Cries and Calls’ reset when Cry of the Chorus was a few seconds away from being off-cooldown anyway.
Additionally, several of you have expressed frustration at losing the ability to frequently chain Coda of Resonance and Cry of the Chorus to maintain 100% uptime on ballad buffs, without ever using Major Ballad. It makes sense; I do it myself when healing as a blue-line minstrel, but I’d rather work to make Ballads a more functional part of the rotation than continue to design around relying on Cry of the Chorus to circumvent the ballad building & cashout system entirely. Keep in mind, Major Ballad can now target an ally, so it can be used to heal your tank, and it still applies a splash heal around your target. As of the next Bullroarer, all Ballad skills will also be ‘Fast’ which should help make them feel more like part of your rotation, and less like they’re gumming it up.



Just to clarify, we’re not out to ‘delete all yellow lines’ or cut all classes down to two specializations. We wanted to convert the yellow minstrel trait tree into a non-specialization tree because there was so much to love about the yellow line, but so little incentive to fully commit to it, due to the ways it penalized your base Healing or Damage output.


I’ll do my best to respond to the feedback on anthems soon, but for now, I’m out of time from writing this already-lengthy post!


And lastly, I do want to say again that I truly appreciate all of your feedback, and look forward to the next round of Bullroarer!

[shino047]

Because it let you heal basically for the same amount while doing more dps and providing with additional tools. Even on live I very often play in Melody as a Blue minstrel.

Whats your hps parse on dummy? People who don't even know how to play the class shouldn't be allowed to give feedback

[Neinda]

It appears our comments while appreciated are going to have no affect on these changes.

[gildhur]

It appears our comments while appreciated are going to have no affect on these changes.

By the time any changes reach Bullroarer, that's almost always the case.

[Neinda]

By the time any changes reach Bullroarer, that's almost always the case.

If I have to guess, there is some sort of store angle here. Something will be available in the store which will help with the negative affect of these changes. I can't wait to see what comes to the store soon lol. Maybe they will sell special skill packages or something. We will be able to purchase what has been taken away.

[hillard1959]

*snip*

Thank you for your response. I don't really agree with all of your rationales behind the changes, but I can't really argue with results. At least for Warrior-Skald. They make sense and I do seem to be hitting harder on BR than I was on live. That being said, I do think you need to iterate on these changes some more.

What I really wanted to hear about was the one thing you ran out of time to talk about. Anthems. I really want to hear your reasoning behind this and what methods you expect us to employ for them. Because as it stand now, it just feels clunky. So if there's something I'm missing or a new technique that I should be learning, please elucidate.

[WeirdJedi]

Thank you for your response. I don't really agree with all of your rationales behind the changes, but I can't really argue with results. At least for Warrior-Skald. They make sense and I do seem to be hitting harder on BR than I was on live. That being said, I do think you need to iterate on these changes some more.

What I really wanted to hear about was the one thing you ran out of time to talk about. Anthems. I really want to hear your reasoning behind this and what methods you expect us to employ for them. Because as it stand now, it just feels clunky. So if there's something I'm missing or a new technique that I should be learning, please elucidate.

Hopefully when they come with the next Bullroarer and make them Fast, it might feel a little better. I've always felt weird with how the current minstrel anthems work. It seemed like a minstrel should use three ballads against the enemy and then use an anthem, then repeat. But what we normally do is sit there, use our cry, cast all of our anthems, and then go in charging. We did it because it was effective. I'm not saying it was wrong, but I always wondered if there was another way to look at the traditional approach to how songs would be built in battle.

[Elaelin]

Here is my question for SSG. You are changing the mini because you want melody stance to be more important than it is today. Every class in the game has something that makes it stand out in a crowd. Every class has a "super power." For example: the RK has the best heal over time and is outstanding at DPS, the cappy has the best damage buffs and makes an outstanding tank and is able to heal and rez while accomplishing all those tasks, the bear has the best raid wide heals, the hunter is the best dps in game, the LM is absolutely needed to debuff bosses. the champion can clear entire hallways in one pull and so on. Currently, a blue line mini has the best single target heals in game and a yellow mini is great for group buffs in a raid setting.

After these changes are implemented, what is going to make the mini stand out in a crowd? It won't be DPS because you are not making any significant increases to mini dps. It won't be the buffs because the new anthem choices are not that exciting and require too much tiering up over an extended period of time that a group would probably not consider replacing an LM or a cappy with a mini to buff the group. A raid may take a mini for buffs but I don't anticipate a mini being first choice to buff in a fellowship setting and for raids it will probably be for niche situations only. There are only so many support spots in a raid and even fewer in a fellowship. It probably won't be heals because they are being reduced significantly. Based on what I can see from these changes, the mini will not be a go to class for any type of group content or role. The mini will have nothing unique or special to offer a group. The mini will be equal to and in many cases less than their counterparts for the same roles in a group setting.

What skills in these changes will make the mini a first string useful and welcome member of a fellowship or a raid? What will make melody stance a "must have" skill in a fellowship or a raid? What will be the mini's super power when all the dust settles? Is the intention to make the mini a "bench" or "backup" class? What will be the mini's role in group content and what will make them a competitive class for group content?

[Degelhil]

First off, let me say thank you so much

Thank YOU @ OnnMacMahal!

I really appreciate your communication with us. I don't play a minstrel, so I'm only in observation mode. I really like your answers to us! Please continue like this =)

[infinitewhimsy]

First off, let me say thank you so much for your time and your feedback. I know changes like these can be frustrating, but I really do appreciate all of you taking the time to read through the changes, hop into Bullroarer, and write out your feeling and feedback here.

While I can’t address everything that’s been said here, I’m going to do my best to respond to some of the most common comments.

Piercing Cry
Let’s start off with Piercing Cry. While Piercing Cry is a delightful and iconic part of the minstrel’s toolkit, the base effects of this skill were simply overloaded. Keep in mind, this is a skill with a 10s cooldown, and that cooldown can be reset as frequently as every 1 or 2 seconds. For a skill that a red-line minstrel will often be using between every other skill, it was simply doing too much. It’s immediate, so it cancels animations from other skills. It’s an interrupt, so it will cancel monster inductions the second they start. It cleansed corruptions, making it nearly impossible for a monster to build any corruption buffs. And it stunned, for a whopping 5 seconds on criticals, which happen most of the time due to the +30% crit chance trait. That’s all on top of it putting out huge damage! Interrupting, stunning, clearing corruptions, and being the backbone of a red minstrel’s DPS rotation is simply too much for a skill you’re using that frequently.

While some of you have expressed great concern over losing this stun in sol/landscape environments, you recently gained the ability to stun mobs in an AoE by traiting a few points into ‘Enduring Morale’ in the red line. This is both a more reliable stun than Piercing Cry, and happens to be AoE, with only a 30s cooldown.

If you really must have the Piercing Cry stun and corruption removal, they are still there for you in Melody stance. Melody, in general, should have a stronger identity as a stance which gives you greater group-support utility.

What about Dissonance's identity? Why would you ever use Dissonance now? With the superior Orome debuff and the DPS numbers being so marginally different, you are better off in Melody on top of being able to heal and CC and remove corruptions and stun. Again, if you stack 2 Orome's, you're probably doing more damage in Melody than in Dissonance because of the debuff. So what about Dissonance's identity?

It feels truly strange to hear you basically say Piercing Cry is overpowered...when it was the half the reason Minstrel DPS was remotely tolerable (the other is the Orome debuff, which you've also nerfed)...and Minstrel DPS was totally unacceptable and not welcome in any real groups for any real content despite this. So what was so OP about Piercing Cry really? Killing landscape mobs? As another poster pointed out, the only time it marginalized mechanics and was overpowered was for corruption removal in raids, which you can still do in Melody. So how can you claim you're correcting Piercing Cry's viability?

Minstrel as a DPS class is not used in raids, at all. So...yeah...

To be clear - - by reducing the Orome debuff you are reducing Piercing Cry Damage too, so it's not actually even more damaging in Dissonance which gets less than half the Orome debuff Melody does, which is of course 1/3rd of what it is on live. So, on top of losing all of its utility, the skill probably doesn't hit harder in the DPS stance, which of course you sacrifice utility AND healing to use. I'd call that a disaster of design, wouldn't you?

Bullroarer is down currently, but when I looked it seemed almost unthinkable for Minstrels to trait Enduring Morale in anything but red specialization, just fyi. Other traits take priority, so that feels like a big copout answer. And that's sidestepping the fact CotSA can't possibly replace PC since it is very short range, part of your usual rotation and likely on cd, and not easily resettable (it's actually harder to reset now since you increased the CD on Anthem of the Third Age AND because you want to keep Anthems on CD permanently). Also worth pointing out you're not just removing Piercing Cry's stun from Dissonance, you're removing it from everything except Melody. I constantly used it to stun in Resonance and even reset it to keep doing so since it was responsive and snappy I could support my group quickly without a loss in heals. Can't do that anymore, not without wasting time swapping stances. And it's worth mentioning you've also removed the Reflect component which had up to 100% uptime and added it to Song of Aid every few minutes for a few seconds instead. This slight of hand with the changes where you shuffle the toolkit doesn't ever seem to end with us coming out ahead.

Inspiring Cries and Calls (Watcher of Resolve Trait)
I know some of you are upset to see this trait go, but it simply wasn’t performing very well. It had an internal cooldown of 30s, which was necessary due to the power of resetting Cry of the Chorus. But in practice, the fact that it proc’d off of any heal skill meant it usually triggered the reset as soon as its 30s internal cooldown expired. In conjunction with the fact that Cry of the Chorus has its own cooldown, that meant you often triggered the ‘Inspiring Cries and Calls’ reset when Cry of the Chorus was a few seconds away from being off-cooldown anyway.
Additionally, several of you have expressed frustration at losing the ability to frequently chain Coda of Resonance and Cry of the Chorus to maintain 100% uptime on ballad buffs, without ever using Major Ballad. It makes sense; I do it myself when healing as a blue-line minstrel, but I’d rather work to make Ballads a more functional part of the rotation than continue to design around relying on Cry of the Chorus to circumvent the ballad building & cashout system entirely. Keep in mind, Major Ballad can now target an ally, so it can be used to heal your tank, and it still applies a splash heal around your target. As of the next Bullroarer, all Ballad skills will also be ‘Fast’ which should help make them feel more like part of your rotation, and less like they’re gumming it up.

You failed to address the fact you ALSO increased the cooldown of CotC as well as removed the reset. How can you say this trait should go because it resets CotC about the time it is seconds away from resetting (which I don't even agree is true) when you also doubled the effective cooldown of CotC thereby warranting the trait you just discounted because the cooldown was too short but is now longer?

It doesn't matter if Major Ballad is fast or targettable now, the numerical heal is the same, it's a bad skill, you don't want to use it. These are band aids, they don't change the reality. Why would you want to use Major Ballad instead of SoS? The latter not only heals for more, but gives a mitigation buff and sorely lacking damage buffering via a stackable HoT. Arguably the ONLY time you'd use Major Ballad instead of SoS is to reset Piercing Cry, which you can only do in Melody now, and Melody Stance changes Major Ballad to in fact not heal at all but give a worthless amount of damage or maybe a worthless debuff too if you trait for it (a trait which is only good for Minor Ballad, which you should never use while healing). These rationalizations are truly strange, and anything but convincing.

Also keep in mind, by changing this you've also removed the Minstrel's ability to reliably keep up the 5% Incoming Healing buff on the group through your Coda (which of course you now need to spend 5 trait points on BR for the same effect you have on live by default). But you see now you NEVER want to Coda except once a minute when CotC is up, you've removed nuance, not added it. This also affects Improved Coda of Resonance, which is now no longer desirable either.

This response has left me feeling disappointed and discouraged. I mean it's great of you to restate the concerns everyone has posted, but you haven't actually answered them. Giving reasons for why you did what you did isn't the same thing as answering or acknowledging the reasons Minstrel players don't want these changes, it's not really any kind of discourse at all more like an evasion or digression.

I understand that it's easier to just keep the current system and switch around a few skill categories, but it's not a good system. For example, Coda is a cash out like you said, but how much does it do? The only reason people care about Coda is because it removes your Ballad buffs and prevents you from using Anthems. The actual heal or damage is not impressive, it's not much more than our other skills (sometimes it's less) and it doesn't feel impactful. Imagine that, hitting 4 buttons, 4 global cooldowns, and it does less than hitting 1. That's a terrible 'cash out'.

Trying to force players to Coda and Ballad more without new or interesting reasons to do so WHILE ALSO increasing inductions is anti-fun incarnate, especially when you're already adding a higher GCD (global cool down) cost to playing Minstrel with these in combat shared CD Anthems, it's clunky and NOT fun. There's no nuance to automatically hitting the next Anthem every time the skill lights up as off CD. Some other angle is clearly desirable if you bother to look at the system. I mean look at Perfect Ballad. It gives Power Reduction. POWER REDUCTION. It's pure trash, has no use anywhere at any time, ever and lots of players don't even put it on their quickbars, and yet you're going to keep it...maybe switch it to Fast along with Major Ballad. In this thread I've listed quite a few skills and buffs and traits, old and new, that are completely negligible, I didn't see you mention any of them. Yeah, discouraged is the word.


I'll let other people talk about the loss of induction speed, because honestly what's the point, these BR feedback threads always go the same way. It's kind of funny because I was just complaining it's always 1 step forward and 2 steps back with SSG the indian givers, and I just finished getting my 2 induction Word of Craft Focus traceries after maxing the reward track and grinding out boxes, and now pretty much that exact number is being removed from the class. I guess it must be nice in RK land, where you not only keep your induction reduction, but now you'll benefit from the Minstrel's Anthem of the Third Age while the Minstrel doesn't. Must be damn nice.

[Arabani]

I still think there should be no stances and War Speach should be just a flat buff to damage while blocking the possibility to heal others, no skills alteration. The way it was before the trait lines.