Minstrel Changes and Feedback

[Bio-Flame]

Because "Piercing Cry" is OP.
Dear lord, what a joke....

[infinitewhimsy]

Because "Piercing Cry" is OP.
Dear lord, what a joke....

It's so OP you're the least desirable DPS class in the game not welcome in any group!

[Neinda]

It's so OP you're the least desirable DPS class in the game not welcome in any group!

But now with all these "improvements" they will be begging for DPS minis to join their groups. (NOT!)

I am not sure it is possible but I think we will actually move down a spot on the we don't want your lack of DPS list.

But just wait. This update minis get nerfed. We should start a poll and guess which class is next on the nerf list.

[Saephellar]

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.

Its funny how they are saying the piercing cry is suddenly too OP when its only been 14 years! they make no sense! SSG doesnt care about our feedback and always makes changed NOBODY ASKED FOR!!

[Astralman]

I can't believe you had the nerve to call Anthems "iconic". The only thing iconic about the min is how game developers can completely trash the most iconic class in MMO history. That's where your "iconic" Anthems came from; a result of that debacle.

I guess it's only fitting that present management is so lost, the Minstrel is finally thrown on the trash heap of gaming history.

In a way it's ironically fitting. You keep in that delusional cloud you've found for yourself.

That's fitting, too.

DITCH THE SKILL TREE...this isn't WoW

And, by the way folks. This "revamp" of the min is done for the sake of
a few people trying to appear to be doing something to earn their money.

[Arabani]

Ithe objections voiced by experienced raid healers.

Do you mean those experts who proclaim temselves great because they can achieve certain numbers on a training dummy? How do you even know if someone is an "experienced raid healer"? And what does "an experienced raid healer" mean in the first place? These are all subjective terms. And because our opinions differ developers ask for feedback. And developers do listen and adjust things if they find them reasonable. A simple "I want it this way" is not enough. "Our healing is 25% less now, we are doomed, noone will take us to the group now" is so far from the reality that it would take pages to explain, but I can give you some statements, which might come as a revelation for someone:

1) hps means nothing, it only shows how much damage you group is taken;

2) buffs matter, if there are two healers who can keep a group alive, the one with the better buffs will be taken my meta players;

3) to play a healer means to know when NOT to cast heals and do other things;

4) ultimately it comes down to the developers' vision of the class balance.

[DoRonRon]

The priority here is development of the system dev's skills set. Doesn't matter how badly or well it goes because LinkedIn doesn't require independent citation. You'd want it to go well ofc or might not feel you want to include said reference. Cordovan doesn't include what he does for Lotro for example.

Internal promotions have ever been the means for staff development so roots in QA in general may be seen as a good grounding, just not so much with Lotro's avoidance/denial of issues over the years.

There is one classic bug that minstrels have had to bare for years when we refresh anthems between fights; using Chord of Salvation to activate anthems and fall foul of the out of combat for 9 seconds mechanic and largely wasting the CoS. Now if you were unconcerned about starting encounters with anthems up and running you'd not perhaps notice this bug so much. That QA never got this bug addresses over the years would hint at it wasn't being given any priority. Just a thing we had to work around. It would indicate a reason for the out of touch anthem changes proposed though if you were not providing your group with those buffs. The free LP/MC or wonton key spending gets you those group play slots before those who have to grind out their gains over months ofc.

I maybe stretching it but I am struggling to explain it any other way.

[Joedangod]

Found some audio for a minstrel keeping up their anthem rotation:

Jokes aside please revise how you're setting up anthems. You're right that we don't want to be spamming out anthems before combat, but we also don't really want to be spamming them out during combat either. We'd be better off only being able to have one anthem active on the raid at a time, potentially with the option of changing which anthem is active to suit the situation.

By suit the situation I mean more generic swapping between offence, defence, or utility. Not the kind of anthem setup where only half the DPS are getting boosted because you separated tactical/physical damage into separate anthems or anything like that. That kind of situation is frustrating for those who don't get boosted and kinda just further enforces whatever is the meta.

[wispsong]

I hope this patch is not on Wednesday, not enough time to finish Gundabad and would hate to just stop there. But once these changes go live my mini is not going to continue questing there.

[WeirdJedi]

I hope this patch is not on Wednesday, not enough time to finish Gundabad and would hate to just stop there. But once these changes go live my mini is not going to continue questing there.

I think you have time. They already stated there will be another Bullroarer for testing. At the very least they had some tooltips to correct, a few problems that crept up with the new combinations, and testing a quicker anthem speed.

[Arabani]

I hope this patch is not on Wednesday, not enough time to finish Gundabad and would hate to just stop there. But once these changes go live my mini is not going to continue questing there.

Do you actually realise that Minstrel will have more dps and more survivability after the changes?

[wispsong]

Do you actually realise that Minstrel will have more dps and more survivability after the changes?

If you play correctly. I'm not getting caught in an already very hostile environment trying to learn to play mini again. Died several times in Car Bronach due to grouped mobs in tight quarters.

[infinitewhimsy]

Do you actually realise that Minstrel will have more dps and more survivability after the changes?

What is this based on?

Orome's debuff is 1/3rd of what it is on live, somehow I doubt our DPS is higher even with -5% attack duration from Prowess and a marginal boost to PC...and idk, I guess the tiny DoT you can trait for Coda of Fury? Orome literally affected all of our key DPS skills.

Plus that guy is talking about landscape, how many Anthems do you imagine they're going to have up and running on the average pull now that they have a 20s shared CD and are in combat only, so I doubt Prowess even makes it as a consideration.

I don't even have any guesses to what you mean by added survivability. Survivability is far lower in red line without the stun from PC.

[hillard1959]

If you play correctly. I'm not getting caught in an already very hostile environment trying to learn to play mini again. Died several times in Car Bronach due to grouped mobs in tight quarters.

Missions. The new Elladan and Elrohir missions would be perfect for learning/relearning mechanics. They're also not bad for reward track progress.

[hillard1959]

Plus that guy is talking about landscape, how many Anthems do you imagine they're going to have up and running on the average pull now that they have a 20s shared CD and are in combat only, so I doubt Prowess even makes it as a consideration.

As it works right now? Two. And that's only if you have the anthem duration tracery and the anthem traits equipped. And those would be stagger stepped if you wanted to keep them up. At least that's how it worked out for me. I ran Assault of Dharstrok (sp?) on BR when it was open. You actually have to work the anthems you want into your rotation if you want to keep them up.

[wispsong]

Missions. The new Elladan and Elrohir missions would be perfect for learning/relearning mechanics. They're also not bad for reward track progress.

Did them already and only do these once per character to get the extra tokens from the deed. Missions seem to have become the answer for everything these days. I finished the Gundabad mission deed on my main and that's it. They are boring if run to often.

[hillard1959]

Did them already and only do these once per character to get the extra tokens from the deed. Missions seem to have become the answer for everything these days. I finished the Gundabad mission deed on my main and that's it. They are boring if run to often.

Well, my next best suggestion would be Skirmishes. Those were my fallback for such things before Missions became a thing.

[Zvim666]

If you play correctly. I'm not getting caught in an already very hostile environment trying to learn to play mini again. Died several times in Car Bronach due to grouped mobs in tight quarters.

Mini landscape damage is very strong now, it has received a massive buff in damage.

Until you get up to speed you can always quest in high built up areas in blue spec, the main problem with mini is the self-healing is garbage in red spec, i complained about this when our last revamp passed by and we were given god-mode bubbles as a band-aid fix. They have been reigned in somewhat, but they still haven't done anything to address the poor self-healing in red.

I have a hybrid spec on my main mini that I used to solo instances with, it is blue spec with not a lot in blue, it was mostly a ballad/piercing cry/call of orome spamming build with the added benefit of having SoS, a double strength Chord and Snowball. Just having that constant stream of SoS healing will make you almost unkillable in landscape, anything that can't kill you very quickly isn't going to be able to.

[KaiserThorin]

Hi guys, I just want to share some thoughts about the anthem system. I really like the idea to make the anthem more special by creating an anthem wide cooldown, forcing the player to choose depending on the situation which anthem to play. But I have to agree with minstrel players, that these changes would demote the current yellow minstrel to a weak support class, not comparable to the captain.


With that in mind, I thought about different ways to solve these problems. I came up with a couple of o.k. solutions, tho one really excited me.
The idea is to create few strong anthems with a clear purpose of strengthen either the offensive, defensive or resilience stats. That could look like the following anthems:

-Anthem of Offensive giving everyone 10% Physical Damage, 20% Tactical Damage and maybe a 5% Attack Duration cut (would be the combined stats from anthem of war, anthem of third age and prowess)
-Anthem of Defensive giving everyone around 150000 Physical Mitigation, 200000 Tactical Mitigation and 2% less incoming damage (a stronger substitute for anthem of composure)
-Anthem of Resilience giving everyone around 400000 Resistance Rating and 15% Incoming Healing, maybe 2% bpe (taking the leftovers from composure and third age to create an anthem for tanks, to heal them up easier)


The trade off would be, that only one anthem can be active, so the anthem played would overwrite the current anthem. With that, the minstrel player has to make a decision based on the situation to play the best powerfull anthem to buff the group. Especially in a raid, that offers the minstrel player the opportunity to increase the capability of the raid based on the situation. If the raid is trying to challenge T2 with a couple of poorly equiped fellows, the minstrel may decide to play the antehm of defensive to boost their mitigations. Otherwise, when the minstrel is facing a T4 raid, he may alternate between increasing the damage output of the group and increasing the survivability of the tanks. With the upcoming changes to Coda of Melody with a yellow trait, the minstrel would even be able to try a reset on the anthem cooldown for a fast anthem switch.
Also for the ettenmoors, the anthems would elevate the importance of the player's decision to play the right anthem. Depending on the group's composition, numbers and enemy facing, the minstrel may choose: the offensive anthem for a highly skilled 6man group facing a zerg raid, the anthem of defensive for a raid of low-geared freeps to boost their defensive or the anthem of resilience to substitute the missing loremaster to counter the weaver skills and incoming healing debuffs.


With that said, of course the anthems would be very powerfull. So to counter that, those anthems could be designed as improved versions and must be upgraded by putting lots of points into the yellow tree line, forcing you to spend points very thoughtful into the blue tree and red tree. Therefore, the weak version of the anthems could be a part of the minstrel base toolkit and available in every skill tree.

The weak version of the Anthems could look like:
-Anthem of Offensive 5% Physical and Tactical Damage Increase
-Anthem of Defensive 50000 Physical Mitigation and 80000 Tactical Mitigation
-Anthem of Resilience 150000 Resistance Rating and 5% Incoming Healing

For the cash-out effects of the anthems by playing the coda, anthem of offensive could provide 100% crit chance on coda like anthem of war, anthem of defensive a self hot and anthem of resilience a power over time like anthem of composure.


Of course I didn't forget about the Anthem of Third Age which is very important to the dps minstrels. I really like the "Anthem of Third Age: Dissonance" from the beta and think it should be included into the toolkit. Tho, it might not be a part of the base toolkit and be made available by putting points into the red tree line where the anthem of war is now. (never was a friend of putting points into the red tree to just get anthem of war) With that, Anthem of the Third Age is a part of the red tree skill line.

One question remains, what's with Anthem of Third Age: Resonance?
This Anthem has always been a very important part of improving the healing output. But with the possible upcoming changes of skill induction reduction and the plenty available options of reducing the skill enduction, maybe the Anthem will loss importance. In my proposed idea, you have to trait into the red line to get the Anthem and even than, the "anthem of the third age: resonance" offers less to the group. So it will only be a bail-out anthem to provide a little bit more healing to save the tank, with an instant cast bolster healing. This anthem would surely receive a downgrade.


So that's my proposed idea about changing the anthems. I hope you find it interesting and we may discuss it.

[DoRonRon]

Do you actually realise that Minstrel will have more dps and more survivability after the changes?

That's ultimately how every dodgy thing gains acceptance: an RNG BiS in a painful instance, virtues, BBs, new LI base dps, new traceries that break game mechanics/ai. And "metrics" for the CM to offer up a "seems popular" when most prior content just got "cancelled". And with each "inducement" supplied the clawback (we see here) and the fall even further behind for those not so engaged.


How many of us have the resources, cash or otherwise, to discover our best builds for how we play and what we do? Only way my Red mini gets a raid slot is if the healing mini becomes a pariah in groups. That's down to player perception; Mini - heal, Guard - tank end of.

Survivability is all about movement. Stood in place like a lemon or always on the move with the skills developed over years to not pull adds. Good grief they just added an in-combat run speed craft recipe (not that I need it) to add to our self/group buff. And why it makes Deadly on LSs rather pathetic for a kiter.

All the explanations the OP has replied with could be simply implemented with tweaks to the existing Minstrel setup. What is the point of making changes if the end point will deliver what you are suggesting if you loose a lot of peeps in the process?

Tweaked the Minstrel skills a bit - not such a great entry for the resume...

[gardavil]

I appreciate all the feedback, but I also encourage you all to actually hop into Bullroarer and look at the changes yourselves. If you currently play a yellow-spec minstrel, we aren't taking away your tools at all. The goal is to keep everything that makes yellow minstrel great, without penalizing your core healing or damage when making that choice.

Then if your goal is what you claim it is... LEAVE IT AS IS (make no changes to what Minstrel is before this update) please and thank you.

[Daguest]

Piercing cry having a stun has been a thing ever since the game released years and years ago. To me it's a core thing for Red mini ever since, perhaps because it was one of the first red trait you used to get.
I doubt it was that OP, considering nobody noticed how strong it was for the past, what, 14years ?

It didn't clean corruption for a long time though. If that's the issue, then move the corruption cleaning to another skill ?


For the rest, I can't say. I never played yellow mini, so I'm not overly affected. I do not like the idea though. And as many others, I'm concerned to see the removal of many yellow trees in the future. There is already very little progression and customization past a certain level, since you get so many skill point, and many skills are not interesting to begin with. Above lvl 100-120ish, you pretty much unlocked everything you cared about already. Maybe that's an issue that should be looked upon instead ?

[Neinda]

Maybe someone with the knowledge could explain why SSG feels the need to break red and blue in order to make a watered down version of yellow more appealing?

These changes were not asked for by the player base and I don't see how getting a small (if any) boost on landscape while decreasing heals and buffs in group content is a positive change for the class. The mini has never been a DPS class in group content and none of these changes will make the mini a DPS class being invited to group content. The changes just move the mini down to the bottom of the list for classes that heal, buff and DPS. The mini will be the go to class when nothing else is available for a vacant group spot. Nothing in these changes will make the mini a "must have" addition to any group content. It will be the opposite. The mini will be last choice in all areas not just DPS. With the update the mini will have nothing special or unique to offer a group unless lesser DPS/heals/buffs are wanted.

So we will run around landscape in melody and that appears to be it for the future of the mini. Red and blue stances will not be used for much if anything. If they just want yellow stance minis who are mediocre at anything then this update is a major success.

If you want the mini to play in group content work on the outgoing heals as the new and watered down buffs don't make up for taking away healing capability in a group. Give the mini something to keep it a viable class in group content.

The best part here is that SSG didn't even feel the need to ask for input from the player base before they dropped this in the test server as they are with other classes. Minis found out about this change after it was a done deal and our input was not needed and unwanted.

Lesson learned: Complain about something and SSG will go to silent mode and leave things as they are. Don't complain and SSG will nerf it since it must be something people like and enjoy.

[cwswim03]

((((((( 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. )))))))


Please address the fact that you nerfed overall healing by 30%, essentially relegating minstrel to a buffer/support class. Thanks

[DoRonRon]

Wasn't yellow for peeps that couldn't hack Red nuking everything in sight and Blue MT healing a raid? Mostly because they were never into gearing and virtues, traits and all it takes to make a functioning class. Or is it to remove the re-trait pre pull, if that still goes on, does it?