Developer's Diary – Captain Updates by OnnMacMahal

[Cordovan]

Developer's Diary – Captain Updates

Intro

Hello everyone! I’m OnnMacMahal, and I’m here to start talking about the upcoming Captain class changes.

The captain is a unique class: captains are flexible melee warriors and healers focused on supporting allies rather than maximizing personal output. While each trait specialization should be able to competently fulfill its primary role (healing, dealing damage, or holding threat and mitigating damage) they should each retain a focus on supporting allies rather than being entirely self-sufficient. We don’t want to lose sight of this core element. Even when wading straight into a melee, captains embody the sacrifices of leading by example while staying out of the spotlight in order to make their allies shine. Captains are team players, through and through.


Current State Overview

Why make any changes to the captain, you ask? “Captains make great tanks, and I always see requests for ‘rCap’ in LFF.”

Captains specializing in Hands of Healing (blue) make great raid-group support healers, providing lots of passive, AoE healing, but fail to keep up with other main healers when it comes to single-target healing and responding to large damage spikes. Additionally, some of the specialization’s core mechanics like Inspiriting Presence and Valour are semi-passive, making them hard to account for or plan around, and ultimately making them feel unreliable and unhelpful in moments where you really need them.

Captains specializing in Lead the Charge (red) make fantastic raid-group DPS supporters, provided your primary DPS players are physical-damage dealers. Red-line captain support unfortunately doesn’t extend as well to tactical-damage classes, and the value of a red captain drops precipitously as your group size decreases. A solo captain, even fully-equipped in offensive gear, who is questing, delving, or fighting monster players on their own will struggle to produce meaningful damage, even when compared to non-DPS specializations of some other classes.

Captains specializing in Leader of Men (yellow) make wonderful tanks for multiple group sizes. This specialization is by far the most broadly useful of all current captain specializations, without regard for content type or group size. However, gameplay for the yellow-line captain still suffers from the lack of a second skill to open the Battle-Readied state, as well as a relative dearth of defensive mechanics, compared to other tank specializations. Much of the value a yellow captain brings the group comes from Motivate (a passive buff that’s not an interactive combat mechanic) their in-combat rez (which can act as a full reset for 3-person groups) and the benefits from always-on skills and effects like On Guard, Inspire, Revealing Mark, and Battle-Hardened damage reduction.


Goals

Captains need a moderate damage increase across the board. Regardless of trait specialization, you should feel like you’re wielding a weapon of war.

Though the ability to summon a herald is a longstanding aspect of the class, players shouldn’t feel overreliant on their herald. Especially when solo, your herald should feel like they’re augmenting you and supporting you, not tying up half your skills and leaving you completely useless every time they decide to wander off or get stuck in a corner.

For Hands of Healing captains, we want to improve your capacity to fulfill a main-healer role. That means increasing your healing to your shield-brother, improving your ability to react to large amounts of damage in a short window, and reducing some of your passive, always-on AoE healing. You should also be rewarded for playing like the aggressive front-line melee leader you are.
For Lead the Charge captains, we plan to add a “solo” stance that dramatically improves your personal damage output at the cost of group-wide support. When running on your own, you gain little to no benefit from group- or ally-oriented skills, so replacing those with personal damage comes at no cost when you’re alone. When you’re in a group, we still want the group support to outweigh the benefits of this stance, but in cases like 3-person groups, you still ought to be able to fill a damage role yourself by foregoing group support (since you might well have no DPS-specialized allies in that scenario).

For Leader of Men captains, there are no major concerns we have about your current ability to fulfill the role of tank, so changes will be focused around smaller QoL adjustments and changes. We want you to be able to more actively rotate through battle-states, and for your core/frequent skills to have a greater impact on your role efficacy, so they don’t end up feeling like inconsequential filler.


Summary

Captains have a lot to love, so don’t expect things to change too drastically. We want you to be able to shine in all three specializations, in all sorts of content! That said, we’re looking forward to sharing a more detailed look at what’s coming soon. For now, thanks for reading!

[OnnMacMahal]

Thanks for reading! One quick heads up: I'm going to update this second post as soon as I can with more detailed information about some of the specific changes we've got in store, so keep an eye on this thread. In the meantime, I'll be responding to as many questions and comments as I can below.

Updated (Friday, January 27)

A note about x-brother skills:
Shield-brother and Song-brother have switches places, and some x-brother effects are being shuffled around.
It’s always been a little awkward that Song-brother skills increase an ally’s healing output and Shield-brother skills increase an ally’s defensive potential.

Unless you’re explicitly in a fellowship within a raid with an ally of the same role, these skills don’t particularly help your ally. A captain filling the role of main healer won’t often have another main healer in the group, and likewise a main tank captain won’t often have another tank in the group. Obviously some raids might require multiple players of a role in that way, but I would argue that’s an outlier relative to most gameplay situations. However, a main tank captain will almost always have a healer ally in the fellowship, and a main healer captain will almost always have a tank ally in the fellowship, so it seems natural that blue-line captains should have a shield-brother, while yellow-line captains have a song-brother.
This does not mean that you’ll lose the To Arms effects you love however. X-brother effects will now be different from the personal effects you receive when using skills like To Arms and Inspire.



Battle-readied, Battle-hardened, and Battle-state Management
Battle-state Changes
Battle-readied will now increase your threat multiplier for captains specialized in yellow-line
The existing Battle-readied damage increase will improve the healing potency of all your Valour heals (see Valour below).
Taken together with existing traits and traceries, captains in every specialization should have some incentive to maintain both Battle-states as much as possible.

Valiant Strike and Shadow’s Lament
These skills will no longer put you into a Battle-readied state. Since these skills benefit from being used while both Battle-readied and Battle-hardened are active, it’s awkward for them to give you Battle-readied. You’re forced to either use them non-optimally as finisher skills, or maximize their output and sacrifice the Battle-readied application.

Defensive Strike
Defensive Strike is making a return to provide all captains with a second baseline skill to grant them the Battle-readied state. You’ll acquire Defensive Strike before level 50, and it has a cooldown of 15 seconds. Nothing too fancy here, but a reliable skill to keep your skill sequences moving, even if you happen to be a tank.



Hands of Healing
Specialization proc heal
The 10% chance proc heal from specializing in Hands of Healing has been removed. This heal is inconsequentially small and added an unnecessary RNG element to core healing output.

Inspiriting Presence
The current effect from this trait would be replaced by a new effect:
Critical hits with melee skills will give you one stack of ‘Inspiriting.’ Each stack will give you 2% Outgoing Healing, up to 5 stacks. At 5 stacks, you gain ‘Gift of Spirit’ a skill which consumes all stacks to significantly heal a targeted ally.

Gallant Display
When traited blue, Gallant Display wouldn’t change much. It would have a moderate fellowship-wide heal, and both its potency and power cost would increase if used again within a short window. This bonus will no longer be consumed by Inspire (you use Inspire so frequently that it’s practically impossible to tier up the Gallant buff for Gallant Display itself).

Reform the Lines
This trait will be moving over into the specialization column (so it’s still blue-exclusive) while its position in the tree will be replaced by the ‘Shield of the Dunedain’ trait, granting you the eponymous skill.

Valour
This trait’s effect has been removed. It’s a fairly weak and unreliable heal. It has been replaced by an effect which adds a bonus heal to most of your melee skills. These heals will scale along with the damage of their relevant skills, and will only be applied to your Shield-brother.


Lead the Charge
Master of War
When you land critical hits with Inspire (not Shadow’s Lament) you and your Blade-brother will both receive +50% critical chance for 5 seconds.

Critical Magnitude
Captain critical magnitude bonuses were a little out of hand. Most of these bonuses will see their magnitudes reduced, but base damage will be increasing so much that you overall damage output will still be much higher, and less reliant on good crit RNG to boot.


Standing Alone
Stand Alone: Inspire > Self-determination
Self-determination will be a melee attack that gives you increased Damage and slightly-reduced Incoming Damage for 18s. By using this skill more-or-less off cooldown, you can maintain this buff for 100% of the time you’re in combat while standing alone.

Stand Alone: To Arms > Masterful Strike
This will be a strong melee attack which also gives you a strong Damage buff.

Stand Alone: Words of Courage > Courageous Heart
This skill will give you +20% Mitigations for 10s, and will have a 50s cooldown. Toggling ‘Stand Alone’ off to return this skill back to Words of Courage will not reduce its active cooldown.

Stand Alone: Escape from Darkness > Cry of Fury
This skill will deal AoE damage, apply an Outgoing Damage debuff to enemies hit, and give you a strong self-heal over a brief period.



Leader of Men
Shield-brother’s Call
This skill will be transformed into one which requires you to target an ally. That ally would gain -30% incoming damage for 5 seconds. When the 5 seconds expire, some of that player’s threat will be transferred to you.

Shield of the Dunedain > At the Fore
This is a new skill that will take the place of Shield of the Dunedain. It will negate 50% of your Incoming Damage for 10 seconds, and each hit taken while active will give you a stack of Battle-endurance. After the initial damage reduction expires, you’ll gain +100% Melee Damage and each melee attack you make will restore 5% of your morale.
This skill will have a 4 minute cooldown.

Strength in Numbers
While the effect of this skill isn’t going to change, many of you have called out the fact that it needs to be tuned upwards. Expect to see SiN healing values go up, especially when it hits the maximum number of allies.

Fighting Withdrawal
Fighting Withdrawal would lose its parry buff. The parry buff has a huge impact on your damage mitigation, but tying it to your CC-breakout skill makes it feel bad to use just for parry or just for CC removal. For captains specialized into yellow, this parry buff will be shifted into ‘Hammer Stroke.’

Hammer Stroke
This will be a melee skill that deals significant damage and gives you a 30% Parry Chance buff for 10s, with a 45s cooldown.



Last but not least, a note about Gallant Display:
Gallant Display
Gallant Display will become a baseline captain skill, dealing frontal AoE damage in two hits. The increased potency and costs from tiering up the Gallant effect are being increased. This means that tiering up the Gallant buff will make all variants of the skill much more effective, and much more power hungry. Additional effects will depend on your specialization:
Blue: AoE Damage and AoE Healing; subsequent uses greatly increase Power Cost and Healing
Red: AoE Damage; subsequent uses greatly increase Power Cost and greatly increase Damage
Yellow: AoE Damage and minor self-healing; subsequent uses increase Power Cost, Damage, and Healing

[istvana]

While I understand the premise of the class, I respectfully disagree with the design approach that none of the trees should enable the captain to be entirely self-sufficient. I think it would be better to have one tree - presumably red - that allows a captain to solo more effectively than it now can. Note that I am referring to the ability to gain levels solo NOT the ability to be one of the better DPS classes for a group or a raid. That would be inappropriate for a class so dedicated to support.

By way of precedent I note that guardian used to be far more painful to level until a few years ago the red line was boosted so that guardians could get to maximum level with less pain. Guardians didn't exactly compete with champions or hunters as damage dealers after that but the improvement in landscape levelling was dramatic. This is what I am suggesting for red line captain.

[laughatdo0m]

While I understand the premise of the class, I respectfully disagree with the design approach that none of the trees should enable the captain to be entirely self-sufficient. I think it would be better to have one tree - presumably red - that allows a captain to solo more effectively than it now can. Note that I am referring to the ability to gain levels solo NOT the ability to be one of the better DPS classes for a group or a raid. That would be inappropriate for a class so dedicated to support.

By way of precedent I note that guardian used to be far more painful to level until a few years ago the red line was boosted so that guardians could get to maximum level with less pain. Guardians didn't exactly compete with champions or hunters as damage dealers after that but the improvement in landscape levelling was dramatic. This is what I am suggesting for red line captain.

If the "solo-only" stance is good then it assuages this fear I think. Certainly makes sense to allow captains to trade away their group support when they don't have anyone to support, while still keeping group support at the cost of personal damage when you are grouped.

[theultimatekyle]

While I understand the premise of the class, I respectfully disagree with the design approach that none of the trees should enable the captain to be entirely self-sufficient. I think it would be better to have one tree - presumably red - that allows a captain to solo more effectively than it now can. Note that I am referring to the ability to gain levels solo NOT the ability to be one of the better DPS classes for a group or a raid. That would be inappropriate for a class so dedicated to support.

By way of precedent I note that guardian used to be far more painful to level until a few years ago the red line was boosted so that guardians could get to maximum level with less pain. Guardians didn't exactly compete with champions or hunters as damage dealers after that but the improvement in landscape levelling was dramatic. This is what I am suggesting for red line captain.

Bro they literally say up top they plan to add a solo stance to red line cappy to allow it to solo more easily.

That said, I disagree with OnnMM's approach to heralds. No captain is relying on a herald to complete content, nor does it being out of range prevent you from using half your skills. The brother toggle has a 50m range and gives access to 3 skills in total, inspire, too arms, and brother's call. If someone feels useless when their herald isn't nearby then the game has failed them in a separate, more problematic way.
What heralds need is a buff, something unique for them. Right now the only useful herald is the herald of hope for mits, with war and victory being effectively useless in high tier content.

I would personally like to see them alter the heralds to where you could only use one herald per line (ex: herald of war for red, hope for yellow, victory for blue) and then just make the buffs they provide raid wide. Then they'd just need to improve war and victory to match hope, cause again, hope is just too good.

[OnnMacMahal]

If the "solo-only" stance is good then it assuages this fear I think. Certainly makes sense to allow captains to trade away their group support when they don't have anyone to support, while still keeping group support at the cost of personal damage when you are grouped.

This detail is key. It was important to me that captains get a bit of an output boost when they have no DPS-focused ally to support. The solo-stance isn't the most elegant solution, but it will allow you to trade the benefits of some group-focused skills for significant personal value.

[tansquare]

One big question regarding the solo stance: is it a specialization bonus in Red, or would it be accessible in Red's tree?

I know hybrid classes aren't quite the meta these days but prior to this I've been Blue-line with a touch of red, but doing any solo content is a miserable slog.

Trading off group potency for individual strength is incredibly appealing, but having it be isolated to one line could be a bit discouraging. I know many yellow/blue captains path slightly down red so having it be in the tree would be a godsend.

(It would also give captain an interesting rune-keeper-like rhythm, where when group healing is fine, a blue captain could solo stance for more damage/buffs, and then swap back when healing is needed. Granted you'd never reach full red DPS potency, but it would be nice when trash was getting cleared/demand was low etc.)

[OnnMacMahal]

One big question regarding the solo stance: is it a specialization bonus in Red, or would it be accessible in Red's tree?

I know hybrid classes aren't quite the meta these days but prior to this I've been Blue-line with a touch of red, but doing any solo content is a miserable slog.

Trading off group potency for individual strength is incredibly appealing, but having it be isolated to one line could be a bit discouraging. I know many yellow/blue captains path slightly down red so having it be in the tree would be a godsend.

(It would also give captain an interesting rune-keeper-like rhythm, where when group healing is fine, a blue captain could solo stance for more damage/buffs, and then swap back when healing is needed. Granted you'd never reach full red DPS potency, but it would be nice when trash was getting cleared/demand was low etc.)

Right now, this is a specialization bonus for those who are in the red (Lead the Charge) trait tree.

I don't want the solo-stance to impinge on the identity of the class as a primary group-supporter, which is why I've limited this to the red-specialization for now. That's not a hard and fast rule, but I also don't want group expectations to arise that blue/yellow captains should be trying to drop into their solo stance as much as possible to nudge their DPS upwards.

In any case, I encourage you all to discuss it, and I look forward to seeing your feedback both now and when Bullroarer opens.

[Elmagor]

That yellow cap QoL changes allow him be used as tank in instances, or hurt him and allow people use captain only as offtank?

[Phantion]

Question: Has anyone given thought to perhaps being willing to rename some of the Cappy skills to reflect their altered status post-High Elves?

The class was initially inspired by Earnur and crafted for Men in mind. But since High Elves gained access to the Cappie, a lot of the names of particular skills don't really mesh up well with who they are. A High Elf could fire a "Blade of Gil-galad" but a "Blade of Elendil" feels like it makes less sense for that character.

So, maybe try for more "neutrally named skills" that could swing either way? Like "Blade of the Great Alliance" - Tooltip: "The valiant strength of Gil-galad and Elendil the Tall inspire you" - or "Tales of the Great Alliance inspire you" - or whatever would sound best? Like - something that doesn't take away the "Blade of Elendil" aspect from Men cappies while also giving some more variety to the class to work with different races, based on what it is now?

It's also good that we have access to Elven heralds. But there are no "High Elven style" heralds - like an old friend from the Second Age who wants to help you. For example, it would be neat to be able to summon "Harthalin" and not only have her be a housing guard item. It would be neat to have High Elves who look similar to the Mirdain warriors from "The Doom of Caras Gelebren" and of some High Elf NPCs from the Caras Gelebren area in Swanfleet (*and you could word it differently so that it's not just a "herald" / "servant" role to satisfy those with lore concerns about it; "summon your ancient friend to buff you and your allies" or something of the like). Speaking of which: it would also be good to have some "cosmetic pet" versions of those "Mirdain warriors" too- but that's more in Scenario's wheelhouse.

Would it be possible for the class update side and the lore side of the dev team to kind of . . . collaborate on this and see what's possible? I know everyone's focused on stats and skills right now, the practical gameplay stuff . . . but it seems like, if there was any time to "revisit the question of how the class plays depending on which race you choose in character selection," this is it.

Anyways . . . it would be nice to see some expanded options for Cappies - including heralds (*or "ancient friends"). It would also be nice to get some missing herald cosmetics from regions after Forochel and Moria that we never really got - like Rohirric heralds, Gondorian heralds, Swan-Knight heralds, Lorien and Malledhrim (*grey and green uniform variants from South Mirkwood), South Ithilien ranger heralds / archers, and so forth. Right now, we have Archers who wear the grey Lorien outfits - but no Herald versions (*who just wear the Bree-land style / Eriador chain-mails instead).

Those are my two cents Btw- I'm very excited about getting a solo dps increase while having additional grouping options!

Cheers!

[laughatdo0m]

Right now, this is a specialization bonus for those who are in the red (Lead the Charge) trait tree.

I don't want the solo-stance to impinge on the identity of the class as a primary group-supporter, which is why I've limited this to the red-specialization for now. That's not a hard and fast rule, but I also don't want group expectations to arise that blue/yellow captains should be trying to drop into their solo stance as much as possible to nudge their DPS upwards.

In any case, I encourage you all to discuss it, and I look forward to seeing your feedback both now and when Bullroarer opens.

For right now you've disabled the solo-stance for blue/yellow captains right now to protect against people dropping stance to nudge DPS, but what about how it will interact in red-line? Will it be implemented in a way that raiders won't have to micromanage their stance between buff windows to maximize their damage?

[istvana]

"If the "solo-only" stance is good then it assuages this fear I think"

I think so too. I wasn't unhappy with any of the details we know just tossing out a 30,000 foot philosophical comment about one aspect of how the class should work. And not the most important aspect by any means.

[aLousyMonk]

Very excited to see the Blue Line Captain getting reworked! The idea of being right in the front lines in my Heavy Armor while being able to throw out reliable heals sounds like a blast : )

[Hephburz-2]

For Leader of Men captains, there are no major concerns we have about your current ability to fulfill the role of tank, so changes will be focused around smaller QoL adjustments and changes. We want you to be able to more actively rotate through battle-states, and for your core/frequent skills to have a greater impact on your role efficacy, so they don’t end up feeling like inconsequential filler.

I don't know what Captain world you are living in, but rotating through your battle-states? There are captains out there who willfully drop out of Battle-Hardened? Sorry? Unless I need to pick up a new target with BoE, or use it for additional aggro, I'm never dropping out of BH - the buff from BoE is also so niche it can only be used in situations where you can 100% predict the next attack, outside of that, it's usefulness is completely lost. So again, rotating through battle-states as a Yellow Captain? I'm sorry but that doesn't exist. If you want a Yellow Captain to rotate through their battle-states you need to give us a reason to EVER go into Battle-Readied and sacrifice that -18% inc damage, because currently, there is no reason, I'm not dropping BH just so I can use DB or PA, especially not as a YCaptain where that damage almost feels like it's negative anyway.

And for your core/frequent skills to have a greater impact on your role efficacy, so they don’t end up feeling like inconsequential filler.

• Half of Captain Skills, in all 3 lines are "filler", because nothing you do is consequential, skills end up getting used because everything else is on cooldown and you have nothing else left to use. It's wholly terribly designed. In yellow, you get into BH and spam Sure Strike until you need to pop a heal or taunt a target, that is the entirety of Yellow Captain, there's absolutely nothing else to it.
• With Red line, if it didn't feel like I'm hitting with a stick, it might actually be worth putting some effort into your DPS build, instead you just stack mits and morale, because the main benefit you bring as a R Captain is for the group, not what your personal contribution is, because again, it is as you described, inconsequential.
• Blue line is just a massive spam of AoE HoTs that tick for a nice HPS parse, but are wholly irrelevant when dealing with spike or heavy ST damage to a target.

In short, none of the Captain lines are "fun" to play, they are extremely simplistic and nothing you do feels like it has any value, your heals are weak unless you are in Blue, (in Red and Yellow, over 50% of your healing if not more is from Revealing Mark), and in every line the damage is abysmal, without force taunts, a Captain is never, EVER getting aggro on their own in Yellow, it's just not happening.

Much of the value a yellow captain brings the group comes from Motivate.

This is true of all Captain lines, not just Yellow.

In my complete, and honest opinion, and as a Captain main I cannot even believe I'm saying this, you should remove Motivation from the game. At a time when the game had fewer classes and Raid Compositions were much more standardised it made sense, but in the current game climate, having a single class that can buff your morale by 10% permanently is not only bizzare it's also a bad design, the skill should no longer exist. It also might make Captains easier to balance, as well as allow other tanks the opportunity to get into raids, because let me tell you, groups will sacrifice the Red Captain spot long before they will ever sacrifice a Yellow Captain spot.

-

- Damage needs a very big increase across the board.
- More skills should be locked into or behind Battle-Readied and Battle-Hardened, not necessarily forcing a state change like DB and PA do, but the skill only being useable, or only giving a certain key benefit if used in X stance, like Sure Strike with your tactics buff.

[gildhur]

Question: Has anyone given thought to perhaps being willing to rename some of the Cappy skills to reflect their altered status post-High Elves?

Don't forget that Longbeards and Stout-axes can also be Captains now too!

The only real solution to this newfound diversity is to replace every mention of "Men" with "Free Peoples", but that also gets more unwieldy and awkward the more you use it.

[laughatdo0m]

In my complete, and honest opinion, and as a Captain main I cannot even believe I'm saying this, you should remove Motivation from the game. At a time when the game had fewer classes and Raid Compositions were much more standardised it made sense, but in the current game climate, having a single class that can buff your morale by 10% permanently is not only bizzare it's also a bad design, the skill should no longer exist. It also might make Captains easier to balance, as well as allow other tanks the opportunity to get into raids, because let me tell you, groups will sacrifice the Red Captain spot long before they will ever sacrifice a Yellow Captain spot.

I know there were other changes involved with that patch that impacted tank balance; but I remember during 130 content I always said one of the most important nerfs that cappy tank needed for guard to be top tier again was to make Motivated Speech raidwide or remove it entirely.

[WeirdJedi]

In my complete, and honest opinion, and as a Captain main I cannot even believe I'm saying this, you should remove Motivation from the game. At a time when the game had fewer classes and Raid Compositions were much more standardised it made sense, but in the current game climate, having a single class that can buff your morale by 10% permanently is not only bizzare it's also a bad design, the skill should no longer exist. It also might make Captains easier to balance, as well as allow other tanks the opportunity to get into raids, because let me tell you, groups will sacrifice the Red Captain spot long before they will ever sacrifice a Yellow Captain spot.

I remember reading a few statements from October on Discord about Motivating Speech which were all good points. "I don't love that Motivating Speech in Defence of Middle Earth is only 5m with no impact from refreshing or relation to anything in your rotation, but it's not exactly the biggest issue the class has at the moment...It probably just needs the 30m duration back...I agree with the points in favor of removal, but it'd be a sore point just to take away purely because it's not an active skill... [in response to attaching the ability to a skill] The morale multiplier would go unnoticed at best, and at worst it would drop off to reapply, effectively dealing 10% morale damage to all your allies whenever you press the skill. So, not the most exciting possibilities."

Though I sort of agree to some extent that removing something that has been around for awhile is definitely going to upset people. Personally, you have no idea the number of times someone shouts out in the group, "Is there a human captain somewhere? I want to see how high my morale can go with Motivating Speech and Duty Bound."

[Faudyen]

Having a solo vs group stance sounds interesting. Looking forward to see how it plays out.

[Arabani]

I only play as a captain healer, so I greately appreciate the desire to make us real healers. I've been waiting for it for years, pretty much since Rohan.

Looking forward to see the list of actual changes. But I have a few things to comment upon already:

1) I believe that solo stance should be in the general class kit, regardless of the spec. As I've said, I play in Blue, always. It would be great to "trade the group support for my personal dps" in such a situation. I know several people who play only in Yellow and they would appreciate the stance as well. It would also make sence to switch into dps stance during the instance, if the support is not realy required (on trash packs for instance), and switch back to healing mode when needed;

2) It would be great to have reactive heals as Captain, since we are melee oriented. Both group and single target. Reactive is a heal that has charges that trigger every time the target of the spell receives damage, untill there are no more charges;

3) Please, please, please make hobbits being able to Captain. That is my biggest desire and wish of all time.

[Mariuam]

am really glad to hear cappy getting some attention and love
been back to the game after 7 years break, my main cappy was lvl 100 and since then am working my way to lvl cap (now 110)

yellow cappy is a great tank, but struggles to be a 2nd tank in group content, not have too many skills to grab aggro for a large number of mobs and has very low dmg to keep them with me
i had fully lvl 100 gear when max lvl was 100 and still, i can not solo 6men level 75 or 85 instances or even warbands that are +20 lvl below my lvl

i play solo most of the time, and i need to run instances below my lvl for deeds ..etc, but i can't do that, red cappy gets killed few seconds after i start combat and yellow can last a few minutes then bye bye, i tried tokens, scrolls, tomes..etc

red cappy needs dmg buff, we have a lot dmg bounce we get from skill but all are for a short time and only trigger if crit.. please change that

[Findulas]

Any chance of increasing the duration of IDOME? That five minutes is annoying, constantly having to babysit it. I can remember when our IDOME used to last thirty minutes. Granted that might be pushing it, maybe ten minutes or so? Five minutes is too short, especially in a long fight. Thanks.

[Hephburz-2]

but I remember during 130 content I always said one of the most important nerfs that cappy tank needed for guard to be top tier again was to make Motivated Speech raidwide or remove it entirely.

It's not specifically about making guard top tier again, all the tanks should be on an equal footing, in that they bring something unique to the fight, and whilst they can all do the job, certain tanks are better for certain situations than others. YCapt has not yet been replaced as the second tank in raids for multiple reasons, motivation being one of them, to give ALL tanks a better chance, motivation needs to get scrapped.

[OnnMacMahal]

t would be nice to see some expanded options for Cappies - including heralds (*or "ancient friends"). It would also be nice to get some missing herald cosmetics from regions after Forochel and Moria that we never really got - like Rohirric heralds, Gondorian heralds, Swan-Knight heralds, Lorien and Malledhrim (*grey and green uniform variants from South Mirkwood), South Ithilien ranger heralds / archers, and so forth. Right now, we have Archers who wear the grey Lorien outfits - but no Herald versions (*who just wear the Bree-land style / Eriador chain-mails instead).

While it's not possible for us to change skill names for different character backgrounds, it is possible for us to add more herald styles in the future.

[OnnMacMahal]

For right now you've disabled the solo-stance for blue/yellow captains right now to protect against people dropping stance to nudge DPS, but what about how it will interact in red-line? Will it be implemented in a way that raiders won't have to micromanage their stance between buff windows to maximize their damage?

As currently envisioned, toggling on 'Stand Alone' will disable 'Blade Brother' and transform Inspire, To Arms, Words of Courage, and Escape from Darkness. It should allow you to make a simple choice: do you want to sacrifice group support in favor of personal damage and fortitude? If you're actually solo, the choice should be obvious. In small groups, the answer probably depends on what you're doing and your group composition. In a full fellowship, let alone a raid, the choice should be obvious again, the other direction.

[Arabani]

motivation needs to get scrapped.

I agree, it would be nice to see Motivation removed.