Captain Changes and Feedback

[theultimatekyle]

Maybe a bit more than 10%, IF it is possible to make it so the target will ONLY deal less damage to the Captain, because otherwise even a 10% outgoing damage debuff is wayyyy too much, but otherwise I support the idea.

Currently using blade of elendil in yellow puts a buff on the captain that reduces damage from the next attack by 20%. You can use it on things like blight in SV or thrash from threshold, but it's really not much better than just keeping battle hardened up instead which also comes with the outgoing healing. I don't think changing it to a debuff on the enemy is worth it if it only effects the captain. And yellow Captains identity is a group support tank, so it really does need more effects that help the group. I personally on't think 10% damage reduction on big hits is unreasonable.

[Hephburz-2]

Currently using blade of elendil in yellow puts a buff on the captain that reduces damage from the next attack by 20%. You can use it on things like blight in SV or thrash from threshold, but it's really not much better than just keeping battle hardened up instead which also comes with the outgoing healing. I don't think changing it to a debuff on the enemy is worth it if it only effects the captain. And yellow Captains identity is a group support tank, so it really does need more effects that help the group. I personally on't think 10% damage reduction on big hits is unreasonable.

10% outgoing damage reduction is significantly more than any other non LM/Burglar class can do, (mostly because I'm not sure how the champions challenge numbers are working now, but that was quite low already). I think the idea behind these changes is to actually pull yCaptain away from being the group support tank, and giving them the tools to be the main tank in their own right (the new self cooldown etc.) which I fully support, because for too many years yCaptains position as the gauranteed second tank has gone unchallenged, which itself really removed the ability to play around with different tank combinations.

Though yCaptains still possess the strongest group-wide defensive in the game in the form of LS+IHW, so *Shrug* (not that I'm saying this should be removed or changed, but, just pointing it out lol).

If it was a 10-20% outgoing damage debuff on the target that lasted for 10s or so (couldn't be reapplied more than once every minute) and only worked towards the Captain, it could be a very interesting concept to play with.

[thymos]

Right now, Blade of Elendil's value is mostly tied up in its specialization buffs: it improves your next use of Shadows Lament or Valiant Strike, and it reduces the damage of the next hit you take in yellow. We're aware of the fact that yellow's mechanic in particular is only situationally usefeul, and apart from these specific bonuses, the skill leaves much to be desired. I'm still considering a few options for the 'Light of Elendil' mechanic, as it does not seem realistically possible to scale up the damage from that effect at this time.

I completely forgot it had those effects, difficult to say if that says something about me or the effects in question.
They do sound forgettable... for example it might be better DPS to just stay in Battle Hardened and use Shadow's Lament without Blade of Elendil for the extra crit mag (totally speculative, no hard numbers here) but at minimum I imagine the damage is very similar.

Gif buf pls

[theultimatekyle]

10% outgoing damage reduction is significantly more than any other non LM/Burglar class can do, (mostly because I'm not sure how the champions challenge numbers are working now, but that was quite low already). I think the idea behind these changes is to actually pull yCaptain away from being the group support tank, and giving them the tools to be the main tank in their own right (the new self cooldown etc.) which I fully support, because for too many years yCaptains position as the gauranteed second tank has gone unchallenged, which itself really removed the ability to play around with different tank combinations.

Though yCaptains still possess the strongest group-wide defensive in the game in the form of LS+IHW, so *Shrug* (not that I'm saying this should be removed or changed, but, just pointing it out lol).

If it was a 10-20% outgoing damage debuff on the target that lasted for 10s or so (couldn't be reapplied more than once every minute) and only worked towards the Captain, it could be a very interesting concept to play with.

Theyre already able to be the main tank, and i find the game much more interesting when each tank has its own identity. Stripping away group support is a move in the wrong direction. Brawler, guard, and yellow captain all have their own tanking identities, and can all function in high tier content right now. The only thing that stops people from playing around with different tank combos outside of those 3 is the poor optimization of the other tanks. Nerfing captain group utility shouldnt be a precursor to trying to make champ tanks, bear tanks, or warden tanks viable (or god forbid if the new upcoming class is also a tank).

But the idea would be reduced outgoing damage on the target for everyone for a short period of time, then adding a buff on the target that prevents it from being reapplied for some amount of time. Ideally to debuff something like a blight, or thrash, or some other group wide aoe damage source.

Just an idea though, on what to do with blade of elendil. I just want Onnmm's work to preserve the captain's identity when raiding. Class role homogenization is a sickness in long running mmo's, and the unique status of the different roles in lotro are part of what make it stand out from games like FF14.

[Hephburz-2]

Theyre already able to be the main tank, and i find the game much more interesting when each tank has its own identity. Stripping away group support is a move in the wrong direction. Brawler, guard, and yellow captain all have their own tanking identities, and can all function in high tier content right now. The only thing that stops people from playing around with different tank combos outside of those 3 is the poor optimization of the other tanks. Nerfing captain group utility shouldnt be a precursor to trying to make champ tanks, bear tanks, or warden tanks viable (or god forbid if the new upcoming class is also a tank).

Brawler and Guard are still largely considered the stronger/main tank in most situations tbh, and yCapt is still ALWAYS the counterpart tank to both of these, and to any other tank too.

But the idea would be reduced outgoing damage on the target for everyone for a short period of time, then adding a buff on the target that prevents it from being reapplied for some amount of time. Ideally to debuff something like a blight, or thrash, or some other group wide aoe damage source.

But this would just make BoE become the -% incoming damage aspect of yCapt To Arms just functionally different.

[Arabani]

I'll just ask three questions:

1) Could you please explain your vision of Blue Captain, his viability and role in the group and raid content?

2) Why do you think Minstrel is the only healing class that has been viable and desirable for the entire 16 years?

3) How much experience do you have as a healer in a group and raid enviroment? In any online game?

P.S. Induction has nothing to do with being a competent healer, it is just a way to balance the kit. Everyone would certainly prefer instant abilities.

[Hephburz-2]

Please consider reducing the cooldown and upping the max number of targets to 9/10 (adjust the self-heal based on cooldown). If this skilll is staying at a 5m cooldown, then I'm sorry that tooltip needs to at least be a million damage.

- Also something to consider, can you change the raw ratings buff on Blade/Song/Shield brother to something else? % increase maybe a bit much, but, ratings are always annoying to work with/around.
- Defensive strike is also not applying the -5% incoming damage when you use it in yellow.
- With regards to At the Fore, would you consider seperating the +100% melee damage buff, so that it is not tied to your active At the Fore stacks and rather persists for the 25s duration, it's not as though giving yCapt 100% damage for 25s is going to break things, it would just be fun to play around with.
- Controversial opinion, but now that Shield of the Dunedain is in Blue, would you consider increasing its duration to 15s, to compensate slightly for the fact it no longer benefits from the Yellow line Exemplar cooldown reduction?
- As other people have noticed, Grave Wound is no longer stacking, hopefully this is a bug and NOT WAI.
- Please make Withdrawal immediate.
- Please consider lowering the cooldown of Reform the Lines.

[Elmagor]

For test, solo complete T4 delving School with yellow captain, looking not bad so far. More DPS and have brif problems with energy only with boss fight

[Theozor]

Will there be a forced respec when this goes live? My red line captain had 4 points in a trait that now only has 2 ranks so I had to pay for a respec to not waste those points.

I do have to say soloing will be much easier in red line than it was in the past. I've lost a couple skills I currently use, but the solo versions of skills that would normally require a shield/blade brother should more than compensate.

[Elmagor]

Will there be a forced respec when this goes live? My red line captain had 4 points in a trait that now only has 2 ranks so I had to pay for a respec to not waste those points.

I do have to say soloing will be much easier in red line than it was in the past. I've lost a couple skills I currently use, but the solo versions of skills that would normally require a shield/blade brother should more than compensate.

Bullroarer test #1 don't have forced respec so far. Maybe later

[theultimatekyle]

Testing the new captain changes for yellow. Defensive blade, the 4th trait down in the set bonus traits, isnt causing defensive strike to apply any buff.

*edit* grave wound isnt stacking either in redline, so thats a hugee dps nerf to red cappy, when we're supposed to be getting a buff.

[thymos]

Well having done something testing on Bullroarer 1 thing really stands out to me...

Defensive Strike feels awful to use while specialized in redline, especially while using Stand Alone. The skill is redundant and makes your rotation much more cumbersome, frankly I hate it. It's just another no/low damage skill you only want for its buff that needs to constantly be stacked with other similar skills that are all bleeding duration while you are lining them up. The idea of getting ready for a pull by hitting Telling Mark, Time of Need, Routing Cry, To Arms, Banner, Defensive Strike then Oathbreakers/Kick makes me feel nauseous. That's our list of buffs/debuffs on a big pull solo now, it's comical.

I have 2 suggestions:

The first is the simplest and easier I think. Change the skill Defensive Strike into an Immediate skill, that way it can fit into our rotation much more effectively and would be a welcome animation break for all trait lines.

If we can't have that....I would much rather Shadow's Lament give you Battle Readied as before. I understand the temptation for uniformity that obviously lead you to removing the Battle Readied opening effect of Shadow's Lament to put on Defensive Strike instead, but this is ugly and clunky and extremely unwelcome. Yellow needed another Battle Readied opener like this, Red did not. All it does is cause unnecessary skill bloat and slow down your rotation with what is effectively another filler skill. I never played much blue but I imagine it's the same story, it's just an extra filler skill to press in between the skills you actually want to use, you'd probably prefer to just use Valiant Strike and do something else useful with your 2nd click.

[theultimatekyle]

yeah, defensive strike is fine for yellow line, but its just skill bloat in red and blue. Itd be so much nicer to just keep shadows lament and valiant strike as they are on live. No having to worry about shield brother for valiant, and no having to worry about the clutter on the bar.

[ultimatemanwe]

Given the 65-70%+ mits on Guard/Brawler (even higher in the Guard case), plus the Shield Brother -15% incoming damage reduction buff, these two classes will be near invincible and the skill is just too OP and you've broken the tank role bc nobody will want a Cappy tank for multiple reasons:

1. Cappy on cappy as far as precedence go, you can't apply the Shield bro/song bro bc they clash, so Cappy will never reap this benefit.
2. Cappies just lost their double rez utility in all lines except blue.
3. Heals are no longer as powerful as they used to be, namely the revealing mark, crits are fixed with stat changes (great, but the magnitude of yellow cappy heals are too low now). Buffs don't make up a lack thereof.
4. They lost one of their taunts, when they already sometimes have more difficulty than say, Guards, to get aggro initially.


In general, you've just gone and removed their usefulness for utility as well as some of their survivability in terms of tanking. Please don't let the tanking cappy go into the ground.

[thymos]

yeah, defensive strike is fine for yellow line, but its just skill bloat in red and blue. Itd be so much nicer to just keep shadows lament and valiant strike as they are on live. No having to worry about shield brother for valiant, and no having to worry about the clutter on the bar.

Which is why it should be changed to be Immediate, then everyone will be happy.

Also some things to note:

- I didn't notice any buff icon when using Inspire in Stand Alone.

- Shadow's Lament seems to be missing and replaced with Valiant Strike. Also spreading your DoTs feels really good, I like this direction and hope to see how it works when we get Shadow's Lament back.

- Courageous Heart feels like it has too short of a duration for a skill that doesn't do any damage and has a 50s cd. It would be nice if you added a damage component to it, I imagine something like Routing Cry where 'the forces of evil quail before your bravery and determination' and you deal AoE light damage around you.

[BotLike]

I'd argue that with a shorter banner duration it's simply more incumbent upon you and your group to organize prior to dropping the banner, rather than dropping it and trying to corral people into it. You will lose a moment or two of maximum-buff uptime if you're hitting Banner, To Arms, and Oathies all at the same time, but that's simply the price of using all of them in sequence. It's worth noting that your allies suffer no such cost, and at the end of the day I think it would be equally silly to stagger the overall durations of these effects for the sole purpose of being able to better line up all three durations perfectly with one another.

I scratched my head a lot with this.. Aligning your buffs well is how you push raid dps. If that's not expected from a good red captain , what is ?

A lot of well-thought work has been put into this captain rework , i 100% mean and respect that and it gives me joy. You need to keep in mind though , that the class has slowly but steadily , gotten some of the most devastating nerfs in Lotro history.
Most of them were/are justified since captain used to be as OP as it gets - especially yellow - and left like that for years.
A few examples are Last stand (itself + it's synergy with harms way) , Dunedain self cast and now removal from yellow line , now nerfed OB duration and removal of double res - unless blue , revealing mark (used to be a sort of lifesteal) and so on.
These are HUGE nerfs and even though i see attempts to make up for it , you are not there yet. Captain has a nasty APS (attacks per second) problem. It won't pull the personal DPS needed to be considered a solid dps class. His skills and buffs take too long to build up and execute. Thus APS problem. Cutting attack AOE for example ? Amazing change ! Too bad champs will just kill everything in aoe before you even have time to aoe stack your dots , never mind actually getting all the ticks in.

You absolutely MUST give banner an extra 5 sec duration at the very least , to allow red captains to align all their buffs for the fellowship/raid group.

As for yellow captain , i see a significant lack of offensive buffs , while brawler got 1 for free a few months ago cause why not ?
Tank without a single strong offensive buff , either inc dmg or group buff in this meta = dead imo. You'd have to make it broken strong survival wise to make it worth , that's just my opinion.
If captain is supposed to be a jack of all trades that is just ok and best at nothing , then this rework will certainly achieve that. I am just really sad for red captain. Used to be a truly iconic class for all of Lotro's history and currently is rarely even taken in HH.
Don't see how this will change.

[StormsFury85]

Will talk first about things that affect all levels and could lead to exploiting.
Captain herald of hope has a threat copy taunt, if the pet is sustained for the duration of the cooldown, pet cheesing can occur on bosses that cannot function properly when targeting pets. I would suggest not making this skill a threat copy as it will simply lead to exploiting done by certain players in certain environments. A simple 10 second taunt to relieve pressure of of the captain or another player is more than satisfactory and far less risky to have a threat copy on an incredibly tanky herald with a relatively short cooldown on its resummons.

Will now talk about the scaling of captains healing.
Captain healing at the lower levels is significantly lower than on live server, and the self sustain is also substantially lower which hinders captains who play at the lower levels quite drastically.
Skills like Muster Courage heal have seen a drop by around 80% effectiveness at level 60.
Skills are healing anywhere between 300 and 2.2k on non crits to crits with that new skill healing 10k with a large window between uses.
On live a level 60 blue captain can heal substantially more than this and self sustain very easily. But on bullroarer the heals are much, much weaker and I can see newer players or level capped players or those leveling alts finding a lot of problems if the scaling of heals under 140 is not looked at and raised accordingly to the damage of the level cap.

For example:
A Dar Narbugud raid boss can hit around 20,000-30,000 on a critical hit.
Runekeepers and Beornings have no issue healing this within a few seconds, a minstrel a little longer.
A blue captain on the current update would struggle to react to that without the new skill, and if it didnt crit, it would still take another 4-5 seconds to heal it and if that damage affected multiple players, the captain cant heal it.

I can provide more accurate data if requested, regarding numbers. But hopefully this is looked into as it will affect a lot of players under the level cap.

[Hephburz-2]

Given the 65-70%+ mits on Guard/Brawler (even higher in the Guard case), plus the Shield Brother -15% incoming damage reduction buff, these two classes will be near invincible and the skill is just too OP and you've broken the tank role bc nobody will want a Cappy tank for multiple reasons:

1. Cappy on cappy as far as precedence go, you can't apply the Shield bro/song bro bc they clash, so Cappy will never reap this benefit.
2. Cappies just lost their double rez utility in all lines except blue.
3. Heals are no longer as powerful as they used to be, namely the revealing mark, crits are fixed with stat changes (great, but the magnitude of yellow cappy heals are too low now). Buffs don't make up a lack thereof.
4. They lost one of their taunts, when they already sometimes have more difficulty than say, Guards, to get aggro initially.

In general, you've just gone and removed their usefulness for utility as well as some of their survivability in terms of tanking. Please don't let the tanking cappy go into the ground.

As for yellow captain , i see a significant lack of offensive buffs , while brawler got 1 for free a few months ago cause why not ?
Tank without a single strong offensive buff , either inc dmg or group buff in this meta = dead imo. You'd have to make it broken strong survival wise to make it worth , that's just my opinion.
If captain is supposed to be a jack of all trades that is just ok and best at nothing , then this rework will certainly achieve that. I am just really sad for red captain. Used to be a truly iconic class for all of Lotro's history and currently is rarely even taken in HH.
Don't see how this will change.

After giving these changes some thought and having had time to sleep on it, I actually really want to echo what both of these people are saying.

This update will;

- Take away a rez from yellow captain.
- Completely destroy it's group healing capabillities, the loss of inspire, gallant display and halved revealing mark.
- Complete loss of defensive support utility to your group / raid tank through having lost SoD and Shield-Brother.

As much as I hate to say this, yCaptain was the support tank, that was the roles identity, and you have completely removed that, because what it brings to the table now is entirely irrelevant, it cannot heal the group, it can only rez one person where captains were often relied on in all lines for that double rez (granted I can let this slide IF certain changes are made, which I will talk about below), and yCaptains can no longer support their second tank in a raid environment. In short, there is now no reason to ever use a yCaptain in a raid environment, as pointed out Guardian and Brawler are both substantially better and bring HUGE offensive group utility in the form of Break Ranks & Gut Punch, both Guardian and Brawler are also far superior at aggro management of mob packs and are also tankier in general. I'm sorry but your proposed changes will completely sideline the yCaptain role.

I scratched my head a lot with this.. Aligning your buffs well is how you push raid dps. If that's not expected from a good red captain , what is ?
You absolutely MUST give banner an extra 5 sec duration at the very least , to allow red captains to align all their buffs for the fellowship/raid group.

Yeah I was completly flabbergasted by OnMM's response to this as well.

==
Yellow Captain
==

You need to give Yellow Captains something to bring to the table that makes them worth using now, because you have removed any reason for a raid group to choose a yCaptain over a Guardian+Brawler combination. Either, you need to seriously roll back the changes to healing and defensive utility that Yellow Captain brings to the table, or you need to give them offensive utility capabillites that can rival that of a Guardian or Brawler, only doing either one of these things will fix the impending problem.

Playing devil's advocate, I fully understand why some of the changes have been made, Yellow Captains are by far the defacto tank for 3man content, because in many situations they don't even require a healer, allowing you to take 2 DPSers instead, which is substantially faster than any other combination, that being said, if you are nerfing a Raid Yellow Captain because of the fact they are overpowered for 3man content that really leaves a lot to be desired about future design choices.

There is one general tanking change that I'd also like to suggest for the benefit of general yCaptain tankiness, and that is - for every target you hit with Elendils Fury, it would increase your own Physical & Tactical mitigation by +1% for 10s - yellow Captains have never much struggled with Single boss tanking or mitigating large boss hits, but they have always struggled to a degree in what would be known as the "mob tank" role.

Option One: Defensive Tank

- You should not follow through on the changes you are making to To arms, swapping Song/Shield brother between Yellow and Blue, or at least allow the Yellow version to continue to operate in a similar way as it does on live. I'm sorry but that +25% OGH buff to your Song Brother is, useless, you will not find a single captain main in this forum who will support your choice on this matter, I also refer you back to my earlier post, you are forcing us to use Song-Brother on a healer, where the -% incoming damage buff is invaluable to absolutely ANY class, and in ANY situation, HOWEVER, in order to do this, I still maintain that you should add a +30s cooldown onto To Arms, the uptime of the skill has always been a serious issue on such a strong buff.
- Halved banner duration in Yellow, this alone does not make sense, it's one of the yCaptains greatest defensive assets, especially with the loss of Shield-Brothers Call which is going to be a further +20% incoming healing nerf to yourself and your Shield-Brother.
- You cannot take away Inspire group healing. I will meet you half way and argue that the new version of Gallant display "may" prove to be better, helping with aggro in AoE situations, it was also a spam filler healing skill previously which was perhaps a little too much, but you cannot or rather should not remove inspire group healing (in either red or yellow to be completely honest).
- Now, this is simply a suggestion, but make the Yellow Captains Blade of Elendil buff apply to the group, giving them -20% incoming damage on the next attack, arguably you would need to scale up BoE's cooldown for this, or do something that would prevent reapplication within 30s.

Now, yet another controversial opinion, the new skill you introduced in place of the old Shield-Brothers call basically operates as a lesser version of Shield of the Dunedain, -30% incoming damage for 7seconds on a 1m 30s cooldown. I would urge you to go further, IF the defensive support tank is the option you want to follow. My proposed suggestion would be, -50% incoming damage, for 10seconds, on a 3min cooldown, because I'm going to be honest, -30% incoming damage is not a lot to a non-tank, especially a Champion who was most often the recepient of SoD outside of Raid content, and 7s is too short a duration, I can understand where you are coming from in the desire that it be used to soak a singular boss mechanic, but why are you so heavily limiting what a yCaptain can bring to the table without giving it anything in return?

Option Two: Offensive Tank

The main issue with making yCaptain a more offensive support tank is you are probably going to completely strip away the identity of a Support rCaptain in order to do so, and because yCaptain previously was the only defensive support tank. However, here are my suggestions (not that I would suggest you take all of these, but at least multiple):

- Instead of Shield Brothers Call, give yCaptain Blade Brothers Call, giving +30% damage to the recepient for 10s on a 1m 30s cooldown (numbers could be adjusted).
- Blade of Elendil should apply an incoming damage buff similar in strength and potency to Brawlers Gut Punch with the similar mechanic preventing reapplication to the same target within X timeframe, similar to my suggestion above, cooldown would need to be adjusted to compensate.
- Allow the Yellow Banner (and only when specialised in Yellow) to apply the effects of all 3 banners at a halved potency, for 20s (because I still maintain banner duration should only be reduced to 20s and not 15s), so half of the blue line heal, +10% damage and +15% incoming healing, this suggestion would actually work for both the defensive and offensive.
- Give Yellow Words of Courage a +1-2% stacking damage buff (max 3).
- Don't give yCaptains a defensive benefit to using a 2Handed, give them an offensive one, increasing personal damage by +25% whilst using a 2Handed when tanking (and maybe +5% armour and +5% morale to compensate for the loss of the shield, but that is negotiable), this also doesn't force people in to using a 2Handed either if it doesn't suit their style of play.
- I suggested in an earlier post to move Elite Companions in Red down to the last rank of Heightened Allies and give red a new Capstone, this would also allow a Yellow Captain to pick this up and further support the offensive capabilites of the group.
- Add 1 additional rank to "Call them Out", or adjust the final rank in some way to make it so though every stack of Grave Wound and Cutting Attack on the target (From the YCaptain) would increase the targets incoming damage by 1%.
- Turning Point, instead of a stacking +% incoming healing buff on defeat responses, change it to a +% critical chance and +% damage buff on defeat responses, totalling in +10% crit chance and +20% damage at 5 stacks and max rank (push this trait further down in the line to make it less attractive to Red/Blue Captains), you could even go so far as to swap Elendil's Fury with this one, making Turning Point the yellow capstone instead.
- Increase the stun duration on Terrifying Bellow from 3s to 6s.
- Elendils Fury could also increase the targets incoming damage by +5-10% for 5s.

Again, I'm not suggesting that you make all of the above changes, these are just some suggestions on how you could make yCaptain an attractive offensive support tank.

As it exists currently, Inspire for every captain is a big fellowship-wide morale and power regeneration machine. Why should the offensive-support red Captain be pushing out significant, constant healing to the group? You still have Rallying Cry. You still have Words of Courage.

Also, if this is really what you believe, why have you gone ahead and given Warden the capabillity to far outheal anything a yCaptain can do with the buff to Conviction, healing upwards of 60k a tick? This is about 10x as strong as Inspire, and 20x as strong as the Rallying Cry HoT component. So. Really? Even if this figure is not wholly accurate and going to be further adjusted, I suspect this will remain far stronger than anything Cappy has/had access to, and apparently you had a problem with that.

On a further side note, overrall damage for yCaptain AND bCaptain still remains very underhwelming and rCaptain parses I've seen are in the 250k (with +40/50k coming from the Herald) range, which is still substanitally below any main DPS class, need Shadows Lament + GW stacking back to see how this will really compare though, so whilst it's definitely an increase over live, it's not enough.

[Hephburz-2]

Will talk first about things that affect all levels and could lead to exploiting.
Captain herald of hope has a threat copy taunt, if the pet is sustained for the duration of the cooldown, pet cheesing can occur on bosses that cannot function properly when targeting pets. I would suggest not making this skill a threat copy as it will simply lead to exploiting done by certain players in certain environments. A simple 10 second taunt to relieve pressure of of the captain or another player is more than satisfactory and far less risky to have a threat copy on an incredibly tanky herald with a relatively short cooldown on its resummons.

This isn't going to be the issue you described. Resummoning of the same Herald-Type now has a 2min cooldown on it, so you won't be able to dismiss/resummon spam for the forced taunt benefit.

[Arabani]

But hopefully this is looked into as it will affect a lot of players under the level cap.

It is even worse on the level cap where fights are usually more complex and have consistent aoe damage on the whole group or raid.

Not to mention that Blue Captain is very squishy for a melee healer. He basically has nothing but his heavy armor, Battle-hardened buff and group based melee hots (and please do not tell me about Gift: it is an unreliable, inconsistent ability that requires fulfilling a specific condition and in real tough fight can hardly be up faster then 15 seconds. But somehow the skill is treated as a panacea for everything, it seems.) With the BR update the class also lost additional damage reduction of the Brother buff and parry from Withdrawal.

I'd like to see an attempt of Captain healing, let's say, Boss 3 of T5 SV. Because if he can't do it, noone will take him over a Mini or RK. Hence the update has failed.

[1Asy1]

Comprehensive post

Should I be getting ready to say goodbye to my main of 16 years?

I'm not seeing any reason to favor CPT over GRD/Brawler or RK/Bear.

[Hephburz-2]

Currently in beta it seems some blue captain heals are way overtuned.

I disagree. Given the fact you have to unlock Gift via 5 melee skill plays and from what I can tell, designed to be your main tank heal, it's perfectly fine as it is, given it is single-target and will take anywhere between 10-20s to build back into depending on the situation. Valiant Strike, probably a bit too much on the ST heal side, and WAY WAY WAY not enough on the AoE Heal side.

But honestly, the fact that unless you are able to be in melee, you cannot have access to your two biggest tank heals, is a horrific design.

[Hephburz-2]

Should I be getting ready to say goodbye to my main of 16 years?

I'm not seeing any reason to favor CPT over GRD/Brawler or RK/Bear.

Without some actual changes, yeah, there is no reason why you would ever pick either a bCapt or a yCapt.

[Khluzainn]

Dont have shadows lament yet and still figuring out optimal rotation but the numbers I am seeing on RED Cappy is looking promising when in solo stance.

I wont speak on yellow or blue as I am not an expert but the damage increase is really appreciated and desperately needed. Been waiting almost 6 years for tthis.

Edit: After 10 parses here is my feedback.

Still need shadows lament to judge. Overall damage feels good. Bleeds are a reasonable percentage of overall damage. LOVE how hard dev blow hits when fully buffed. Hopefully Shadows lament hits harder than dev blow but obviously less often.
Feels burst, while at the same time having a longer window to get your burst combos in. One of my only complaints about previous red captain was your burst had a 5s window to hit and if it missed you had to wait a long time to get another attempt at it.

Overall damage is a good chunk under Hunter/Burglar single target damage. ~20%, granted still no SL. I think being 10-15% behind the best dps classes is fine. For reference our damage has almost tripled and we are still 15-20% behind other dps classes LOL, but again for a captain as long as its bursty that is ok.
Just good to see captains able to do most of the content in the game now and not take 3-4 times longer than everyone else. Will this be enough to see red captain dps in raids? T1-T3 yes, T4+ no.

My only complaint is Gallant Display damage. Hmmm... Its hard to judge but even when hitting 5-6 targets the AoE damage did not seem significant. In single target it does not seem using which is fine if its an AoE ability only.
Get some other players feedback on its damage I guess but its the only skill that seems too low in dps, even in aoe.

Disclaimer. I am pretty good at animation cutting but there are better captains/champs than me out there so higher numbers are def possible and better rotations will be found more than likely.

Ok apparetnly gallant display hits really hard now...? I must have had a bug or somthing because my first 10 parses had it hitting for like 40k a hit. Now its hitting for 700k.... What

[1Asy1]

Dont have shadows lament yet and still figuring out optimal rotation but the numbers I am seeing on RED Cappy is looking promising when in solo stance.

I wont speak on yellow or blue as I am not an expert but the damage increase is really appreciated and desperately needed. Been waiting almost 6 years for tthis.

Edit: After 10 parses here is my feedback.

Still need shadows lament to judge. Overall damage feels good. Bleeds are a reasonable percentage of overall damage. LOVE how hard dev blow hits when fully buffed. Hopefully Shadows lament hits harder than dev blow but obviously less often.
Feels burst, while at the same time having a longer window to get your burst combos in. One of my only complaints about previous red captain was your burst had a 5s window to hit and if it missed you had to wait a long time to get another attempt at it.

Overall damage is a good chunk under Hunter/Burglar single target damage. ~20%, granted still no SL. I think being 10-15% behind the best dps classes is fine. For reference our damage has almost tripled and we are still 15-20% behind other dps classes LOL, but again for a captain as long as its bursty that is ok.
Just good to see captains able to do most of the content in the game now and not take 3-4 times longer than everyone else. Will this be enough to see red captain dps in raids? T1-T3 yes, T4+ no.

My only complaint is Gallant Display damage. Hmmm... Its hard to judge but even when hitting 5-6 targets the AoE damage did not seem significant. In single target it does not seem using which is fine if its an AoE ability only.
Get some other players feedback on its damage I guess but its the only skill that seems too low in dps, even in aoe.

Disclaimer. I am pretty good at animation cutting but there are better captains/champs than me out there so higher numbers are def possible and better rotations will be found more than likely.

Can you link a parse with breakdown, please?