Bullroarer Update 34 - Beta #3 - CLOSED

[Faudyen]

A warg among wolves quest is a level 5 quest. I was able to obtain the quest at level 3. I was able to kill the level 6 wolves at level 3. The warg that spawned was level 9 against a level 3. I thought for a new player this might be frustrating, my suggestion would be to not make the quest obtainable until level 5 or 6.

[CloudCastle]

I used the 120 Valar that was given to everyone who logged in during the anniversary event, but at around 65, after completing all class deeds/epic content to that point, so maybe the Valar double dipped on some of these.

The point is, I was Level 120 with 98+ trait points (full spec). This will no longer be possible, and it looks like such toons will actually lose 12 spendable points at 120, nearly double the predicted -7!

While 98 is the max that can be spent, you used to be able to achieve it at a much lower level.

Since they gave multiple Valars to everyone who logged in during the anniversary event, this could affect many toons. They will log in and realize that they lost A LOT of trait points.

I checked 4 or 5 different characters to compare current trait points to the new set-up. All of my characters gained trait points except for the one who had used a Valar and she lost 11 points. At level 122 she currently has 98 points plus 18 points banked in parenthesis, so I wasn't surprised actually to see it go down, but it may be a shock for some people. In her case, I leveled her to 118 before using the Valar, so had quite a few trait points already, and the Valar doesn't appear to check this. It just dumps them all back on you again, so you end up with doubled up points. I expected that would get fixed eventually, because there's no way that's intended. On Bullroarer she has 87 points now and all the banked ones were removed. I can't see any reason now to have banked ones anymore since they no longer provide an advantage so that's ok. I will miss those other 11 points but at least it won't be long until you get them back again.

[CloudCastle]

I just want to say that I am incredibly impressed with this update overall. The sheer number of QOL changes and fixes to old bugs is a pleasant surprise. I love the quest tracker changes, riding skill immediately, fall damage change (although it makes those tomes and my favorite burg skill a bit less awesome), the Singing Bowl of Tauralindalë working again, and the removal of obsolete rewards. But the best...absolute best of all?

The Trait Point Change.

Oh my gosh, I never thought I would see this happen. I have hated the way trait points were linked to all sorts of varied sources, some of them difficult and confusing, and I hated the way traits were attached to long, linear quest chains in Rohan and Gondor, making it so every alt had to traverse the same exact path or else lose out. I had to keep a spreadsheet going to keep track for all my characters because it was so easy to get lost or miss points somewhere. My minstrel and RK were stuck with probably never getting some class trait points because my playstyle didn't involve raising poeple, and all my characters were forever locked out of those awful promotion points. I thought this would never be fixed because Valar boosts allowed you to skip some trait point gathering and I figured that as long as there was a monetized way to skip this, there was no way it would be removed. So thank you for that. a hundred times over.

I am wondering now though what brought this on, because i suspect there is something else going on behind the scenes that allowed this to happen. Something else must be important enough that it was worth giving up some valar sales. What is it? I have a few guesses...

Lag related to deeds maybe? If this change helps lag in anyway, then it is worth even more than the player good will it has already generated.
New alternative questing paths? I've long wanted to see some alternatives to Rohan and Moria. I love both regions, but they are very long and sometimes, after the umpteenth character, I just want a break. I figured the trait point issue was keeping this from ever being a reality, but now we are one step closer.

[wispsong]

Where did that 99% number come from? Since Epic Battle jewelry became best in slot for low level characters, it is pretty standard to get your 200 promotion points pre-Rift, as a side effect of getting full jewelry sets.

Standard for who? None of my characters ever got 200 promotion points and besides my main none even got 100.

[Nanganark]

IFA: Improved Feint Attack somtimes gives the Message: Skill is not ready, but it is ready...

If Players don't Trait: Focused Strikes; Double-Edged Strike/Flashing Blades should be 360° use-able, like it is now on Live Game Worlds...

[KaiserThorin]

I tried out the DPS on the shadow and flayer warg and it looks really good. The changes seem to push the warg in the right direction. Still, my r10 shadow warg deals around 70k dps on the light dummy, probably 10-15k behind the reaver. My flayer warg is almost there with 65k dps. So it seems to me, that the flayer warg is still better overall. Maybe the shadow warg needs still a little bit more damage to be competitive to the flayer warg and other DPS monsters.

[Kaeneth]

I like the new trait point system much better, it's a good step in the right direction for making this game more alt friendly and more new player friendly.

I spent just a bit of time exploring the new areas and as usual the world building is very well done and the music is also enjoyable. The tutorial portion was quick enough and felt like it had a good amount of flavor as well. I didn't do quests after that because I'd rather experience them when it goes live, but I'm looking forward to creating a new character in this fresh way.

I'm not fond however of the eagle pet being restricted to blue line LM's now.

As for a couple of general BUGS I'd like to see fixed-

-Stout-axe Captains' "battle-shout" skill has the shout of the regular dwarf, not the unique Stout-axe dwarf shouts. It's jarring to have two totally different voices coming out of one character.

-Wardrobe weapon bug (also currently live). When switching to an outfit that has a different weapon type than what you currently have equipped it will display the default equipped weapon rather than the outfit slot's weapon when you switch to the correct weapon type.

Example: Outfit 1 on champ has two 1H weapons, my champ has two 1H weapons equipped. They show up just fine cosmetically.
I switch to outfit 2 which has a 2H weapon, and then switch my actual equipment to a 2H weapon. In this case my 2H weapon now shows as my equipped weapon instead of the one equipped in my outfit.

The only way around this is to remove the 2H weapon from the outfit and add it back in. However then if I switch back to dual wielding and outfit 1 the two 1H weapons now show the actual equipped weapons instead of the outfit's weapons.

Essentially outfit weapons bug out and don't show if you switch weapon type.

And just to clarify- I'm NOT talking about how you can't use a 1H weapon appearance on a 2H equipped weapon and vice versa, I'm well aware of that. This is a bug where the matching weapon type to the equipped weapon type is not showing up properly.

[Khluzainn]

what will happen to charachters that had 2 vala treatments? ( a 120 and a 130 Vala ) that means over 20 extra trait points unused... are these to just fall away?

Probably and they should be removed. Traits over the cap were never intended...

[Spilo]

Love all the quality of life changes this update!

The LM Wizard's Fire changes are senseless. Nobody was asking for this, and it adds nothing of any value.

Of course it does. Wizard's fire was solely used for tagging mobs and ease of application of secondary debuffs on AoEd Frost Lore/Fire Lored targets. The Flank heal scalled horribly, and the lack of DoT made it incredibly weak damage wise. This is a step in the right direction.

For LM;

Please give us a wizards fire in the yellow tree. Could even be nerfed to single target and no DoT's. Reason is that it is one fireskill that has no induction and as such can be used to trigger secondary buffs of fire and frost lore. We loose too much time if we have to rely on other induction fire skills.

Agreed. Wizard's Fire should be accessible in all lines, but should have the DoT component/Flank DoT buff cashout in Red line only. The power restore isn't particularly useful right now, either, so I'm wondering if there's a need for two skills. Either way, I'm glad there's work being done on giving the skill an identity again.

---


PvMP:

Cool stuff with the blessings, have some initial points of feedback:


1. Corruption nerfs- nice! Keep in mind during this "transition" period, this renders some corruptions almost entirely useless (means folks can only really play for the 3 set bonus when slotting corruptions, mastery single corruptions are horrible, etc.), whereas some like Health for Power are super powerful. Hopefully we can find a balance between set bonuses and individual corruptions.

2. Not all blessings are created alike. The DoT modifier is HUGE, so Shelob is hard meta, except if you're BA/Shadow warg in which it seems like Blogmal crushes it with the stat department. I don't think there'll be a lot of options in the blessings department for people who run the numbers, and that's a tad unfortunate. Also, confirming that early on people will be able to swap blessings easily (when this goes live), correct? The lack of % on the stats until you actually accept the blessing makes it tricky to trest.

3. Cool stuff with the Audacity gear, but 26 is still pretty darn low on the curve, considering the curve punishes folks for not being max (a good thing). Would love for T1-T3 gear to be higher on the spectrum, or, even better, just delete T1/T2 gear and make T3 cost gold.

4. Warg changes: honestly pretty disappointing. The skills that were specifically targetted for nerfs/buffs were... ok, I suppose. Wasn't the best way to buff/nerf DPS, but it was reasonable enough. However, the % changes were really truly disappointing. After running the numbers, Eye Gouge damage got buffed by FOUR percent! Four, on probably the 4th most damaging skill LMs have, isn't going to have any meaningful impact on Shadow Warg DPS. The only significant buff seemed to be Sudden Pounce which received an estimated 30% DPS buff, but that's a one-time use skill that won't help sustained DPS at all. Unfortunately, I appreciate the gesture, but this is likely going to be around 2% buff to Warg sustain (ignoring the general stat increase), if even that, and you also have to consider that Wargs benefitted from the blessings SIGNIFICANTLY less, as they don't benefit much from the DoT modifier. In fact, Shadow Warg damage got proportionately WORSE this update- egad!


Appreciate the work as always!

[Thurinuor]

I have a question: In which region in the deed panel are the new regions located? Eriador was already full and the UI looks ugly at the moment I thin. Can anyone answer this question? Thanks!

[HolyDuckTape]

So we can now get rewards on par with raid level rewards and even BiS items from.................. missions

lul, rip this game

[Gildoriel]

In the quest tracker it says you have to stand near Madog and Teilo Gwynlad while catching a fish. Doing this doesn't advance the quest.

Looking in the proper quest text in the quest log tells you have to stand near the hobby master and catch a fish. Doing this does advance the quest.

So: The text in the quest tracker (or yellow text in the quest log, next to the red dot) should be adapted so it tells you to stand near the hobby master.

/loc: You are on Bullroarer server 15 at r1 lx1191 ly694 ox145.42 oy139.99 oz339.19 h216.6. Game timestamp 84205.736.

[Catrine]

Oh man, these look fantastic. Auto-granted trait points! Bigger quest tracker!! Earnable riding skill! Optional Sessionplay quests!


(and of course reduced fall damage...hugely appreciated by someone who might possibly be constantly falling off of cliffs, bridges, etc etc etc...)

[Strider5548]

-Wardrobe weapon bug (also currently live). When switching to an outfit that has a different weapon type than what you currently have equipped it will display the default equipped weapon rather than the outfit slot's weapon when you switch to the correct weapon type.

It doesn't just display your equipped weapon, it actually changes your outfit and replaces your outfit weapon with your equipped weapon. This is a horrible bug because it is not only really frequent and annoying, if you don't have your outfit weapon saved in storage or wardrobe you lose it forever because it gets wiped from your outfit configuration.

[l6rp24e57]

Standard for who? None of my characters ever got 200 promotion points and besides my main none even got 100.

Standard for people who bothered to flesh out their characters with all opportunities given at a selected level. I have 3 chars at 400 promo points (each main/side quest platinum), and only 1 of those 3 is 130+ lvl
Seeing them take out from me what was gained by all of that hard work is horrendously disappointing.
They just do everything after the mind of those who blind rushes lvling without looking at everything on the way. I believe at some point it will come to "you get a lvl cap char from start. Now go to store and buy latest expansion"
Glad i wont have to witness that should this U34 release as-is - in accordnance to current patchnote.

[wispsong]

Standard for people who bothered to flesh out their characters with all opportunities given at a selected level. I have 3 chars at 400 promo points (each main/side quest platinum), and only 1 of those 3 is 130+ lvl
Seeing them take out from me what was gained by all of that hard work is horrendously disappointing.

Not as disappointing as loosing currency to a made-up cap. At least the trait point revamp helps all characters, and a tremendous grind is gone. And you never needed 400 promo points for the 2 trait points anyways, so you must enjoy big battles.

[l6rp24e57]

Not as disappointing as loosing currency to a made-up cap.

Currency you can re-earn and its completely your fault if you didnt check your wallet before disenchanting something
The game changes, unlike currency, you cant get back what was before.

At least the trait point revamp helps all characters

Sorry, what?!

and a tremendous grind is gone.

they could have removed the quest/deed grind by auto-granting those deeds/quests or their own points at levels they start being available. They didnt do that. Bc they push people to lvl cap and dont want players outside of it for long

And you never needed 400 promo points for the 2 trait points anyways

you needed only 200 for 2 trait points. 400 is absolute maximum if you didnt purchase any. If you did, maximum is 524 iirc

[Lillipia]

There are several threads here of where to put feedback.

Bug report - I went through the tedious process of completing a bug report and see that ppl are reporting here. Which should we do? Just listing it here is would be fine and convenient for all .

I've seen references to a discord server - where is this at? I know others have asked about discord servers and communications from the Dev team on them. I'm fine with this, but shouldn't a server link be accessible to everyone who uses Discord and provided here on the forums?

[Belechael]

Standard for people who bothered to flesh out their characters with all opportunities given at a selected level. I have 3 chars at 400 promo points (each main/side quest platinum), and only 1 of those 3 is 130+ lvl
Seeing them take out from me what was gained by all of that hard work is horrendously disappointing.
They just do everything after the mind of those who blind rushes lvling without looking at everything on the way. I believe at some point it will come to "you get a lvl cap char from start. Now go to store and buy latest expansion"
Glad i wont have to witness that should this U34 release as-is - in accordnance to current patchnote.

This is not fleshing out, this is playing epic battles ad nauseum because you like them. Getting all the jewelry from the battles would level you up so fast that you would only have time to do more battles to get the next jewelry!

I also like them and I have all my 10 level cap characters with at least 200 points for the 2 extra trait points, but I don't complain that I wasted all that time playing the battles, because I actually liked doing that.

If it takes just that to disappoint you to the point that you leave the game, well... you know what they say, right?

[Merlinous1]

[*]'Eagle-friend' is now earned by specializing in the 'Keeper of Animals' trait tree.

I do not think this is something that should be implemented on live. As a LM who solos or raids, its nice to have the Eagle as a revive so the healer's dont have to use one on us LMs. As a solo LM I usually run Red with a bit of Blue. Raiding I run Yellow with a bit of Blue. The Eagle helps soo much. Please dont implement this on live servers..

PLEAAASE! PLEASE!! PLEASE!!!!

Thanks
~Merlin/Myrddin

[Ohri72]

Minstrel - Anvil set

Could we please get some compensation for the loss of the -10% heal induction from Anvil Set?

With the new changes, the mini's healing output already took a 15% nerf, losing anvil set now too will make the number even worse. Please dont turn blue mini into an ''only there for anthems'' bot for endgame!

[cdq1958]

[*]'Eagle-friend' is now earned by specializing in the 'Keeper of Animals' trait tree.

I do not think this is something that should be implemented on live. As a LM who solos or raids, its nice to have the Eagle as a revive so the healer's dont have to use one on us LMs. As a solo LM I usually run Red with a bit of Blue. Raiding I run Yellow with a bit of Blue. The Eagle helps soo much. Please dont implement this on live servers..

PLEAAASE! PLEASE!! PLEASE!!!!

Thanks
~Merlin/Myrddin

Not that I use my eagle much in red, solo; but I do like having it where I may need it. So, I agree with you that all LMs should be able to get the eagle, if they want it. I am not going to run a blue LM just to have it.

[Once_of_Bree]

Standard for who? None of my characters ever got 200 promotion points and besides my main none even got 100.

Completely agree, pretty sure I'm the only one in my kin that has even 100 promotion points and that's only on 1 character.
Big battles are terrible, and completely avoided by large swathes of the player base. Putting 1 let alone 2 points behind such a dead system was bad design.
Similarly forcing you to do all those tedious Rohan quests & deeds or the Old Anorien ones were almost as bad, was a terrible design choice.

Now you can play your character how you want and not be penalised.

Basing trait points purely on level is the best QoL decision they've made in years.

[l6rp24e57]

If it takes just that to disappoint you to the point that you leave the game, well... you know what they say, right?

Not only that. Its complex of reasons, the dominant part of which were introduced with new legendary items patch and onward from that time.
I have explained in detail in this post:

https://forums.lotro.com/forums/show...t=#post8161871

might be a bit harsh but nothing personal and i said nothing but sad truth. This U34 is likely become the last straw where i see no point in continuing being here. There are many people who like spending time exclusively in endgame, i accept that tastes differ. I am just not the one of them.

[AceSenko]

Minstrel - Anvil set

Could we please get some compensation for the loss of the -10% heal induction from Anvil Set?

With the new changes, the mini's healing output already took a 15% nerf, losing anvil set now too will make the number even worse. Please dont turn blue mini into an ''only there for anthems'' bot for endgame!

Is... is this a joke? Lets tally up the current induction reduction that a blue mini currently enjoys:
Additive sources include words of craft (13%), word of power (11%), and hiddenhoard set (10%) for a total of up to 34%. You can add adroit to this as well with a warden which would make that up to 54%.
Multiplicative sources include word of mastery (11%), anthem of the third age (15%), quick melody trait (20%), and follow up trait (15%) for up to 61%.
Combining these sources together would make a 1.00s healing induction become a 0.21s induction already. And you're complaining about losing 10% from an armor set that's TWO level caps old?

This isn't even mentioning the dubious claim of losing 15% healing output. If you look at top mini players, their healing output barely changed with recent changes while their group support went up considerably.

So yeah, you'll be just fine without anvil set on your 140 minstrel.