Captain Changes and Feedback

[ryanlotro12]

It's true that in your specific situation your HPS towards your duo-partner will be lowered, but at the same time, your offensive capacity will increase greatly. If you're doing really difficult content, you can always trait blue while putting most of your additional trait points into red.

Yes, I think overall the 3 trait lines are stronger and more specialized, which is what you were going for. I think it went a little too far away from the jack of all trades vibe captain had before. Inspire i dont like the changes. It felt good to support the whole fellowship with power and heals, albiet small.
I will say, I am dissapointed with the animation of "hammer stroke" just being a copy of shadows lament. I always thought that was boring and for a really cool sounding skill like hammer stroke on a long cd, I was hoping for something along the lines of "brutal assault" or "hammer down" in terms of wheighty-ness.

Heralds are being buffed moderately in all specs. Their specific +Armour and +Mitigations trait is a red-line trait, but is now much lower in the tree and easily accessible to players specialized in blue or yellow trees.

I noticed their damage felt increased, and I like how they have unique skills between them! And after seeing the trait is low in red i am overall happy with the herald changes.

Please take this "pet" buff mentality and work on loremaster pets in your next round of class reworks. Blue LM deserves a place in this game.

[Aeviternus]

Blue Captain Feedback
I only tested the specialisation in PvMP. Overall, much better healing on your Shield-brother. This is to be expected, since it's the primary goal. Everything else has clearly suffered from this, including self healing. On-demand self-healing is stronger with Gift of Spirit, but it feels less consistent than the current healing pattern on live. The power changes make the specialisation jarring to play, because your biggest heals cost so much power. This is not an issue if there are no power drains, however. Notably, I observed the following:

• The Muster Courage HoT component is laughably weak now.
• The passive healing from melee attacks that goes onto your Shield-brother is completely wasted if anyone else is the primary target. This feels very unsatisfying.
• The new version of Valiant Strike suffers from the above. Having it be limited to your Shield-brother makes it feel clunky.
• The addition of Defensive Strike does not feel very good to me right now, but I'm willing to ascribe that to the fact that I still have to get used to it.
• Gift of Spirit seems like a great ability. I like the design since it rewards you for being engaged in melee combat.
• The new version of Reform the Lines is very nice, but why was the cooldown increased? 2 minutes seems plenty. Especially since it is not even raid-wide anymore.
• Reform the Lines still does not heal the captain. Why?
• Blue Captains lost access to the parry chance from Fighting Withdrawal. This hinders survivability even further.
• Standard of Honour is very strong now, and it is nice compensation for the loss of our other AoE healing (which typically was overhealing - now it can be used when necessary).
• The fact that Rallying Cry only restores power with defeat responses feels very unsatisfying, with the proposed power changes that are present on Bullroarer.

In Conclusion:
The survivability of a Blue captain is absolutely horrendous. This completely disincentivises an otherwise interesting playstyle which involves traiting In Harm's Way. However, we simply do not have the tools to keep ourselves alive. Not just that, we lost tools, when compared to the old version of Blue captain. In return, we got more healing - but only for our Shield-brother. This means the current version of Blue captain will never be able to be the primary healers in raids or PvMP, it cannot sustain an entire fellowship if the incoming damage exceeds the amount of healing provided by Inspire, Gallant Display and Rallying Cry. Of course, Reform the Lines will now provide a great tool to survive large amounts of incoming AoE damage, but with its excessive cooldown, this is not going to solve those problems.

Suggestions:

• Let Reform the Lines heal the captain. Please. It makes no sense from a game design perspective, given the captain's current toolkit. You have removed so much survivability, and what we got in return cannot actually be used on ourselves: Shield of the Dúnedain.
• Change Muster Courage. Its healing is weak (at least the HoT), and as noted before, the self-healing being tied to our AoE removal is not great design.
• Change Valiant Strike. For example: let it be an AoE HoT once again (maybe with an increased cd), and tie the Shield-brother healing to Valour (not as strong as it is now, maybe). Alternatively: make Valiant Strike heal the Captain as well as his Shield-brother.
• Give Blue captains some other defensive utility for themselves. If I'm the one being focused, what am I to do? I cannot use Shield of the Dúnedain, Fighting Withdrawal was removed, Reform the Lines does not affect me, In Harm's Way is more likely to kill me than help me, To Arms no longer reduces my incoming damage, Valiant Strike only heals my Shield-brother, Muster Courage is actually pathetic as a heal, and using Gift of Spirit requires me to be engaged in melee combat. I hope you see my point.

[ryanlotro12]

Suggestions:

• Let Reform the Lines heal the captain. Please. It makes no sense from a game design perspective, given the captain's current toolkit. You have removed so much survivability, and what we got in return cannot actually be used on ourselves: Shield of the Dúnedain.
• Change Muster Courage. Its healing is weak (at least the HoT), and as noted before, the self-healing being tied to our AoE removal is not great design.
• Change Valiant Strike. For example: let it be an AoE HoT once again (maybe with an increased cd), and tie the Shield-brother healing to Valour (not as strong as it is now, maybe). Alternatively: make Valiant Strike heal the Captain as well as his Shield-brother.
• Give Blue captains some other defensive utility for themselves. If I'm the one being focused, what am I to do? I cannot use Shield of the Dúnedain, Fighting Withdrawal was removed, Reform the Lines does not affect me, In Harm's Way is more likely to kill me than help me, To Arms no longer reduces my incoming damage, Valiant Strike only heals my Shield-brother, Muster Courage is actually pathetic as a heal, and using Gift of Spirit requires me to be engaged in melee combat. I hope you see my point.

cosigning all of these suggestions

[Thoronthor]

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. You can still trait into Threatening Shout (which is not passive HPS but nevertheless allows you to support less armoured allies). Depending on your build, you can even trait down to blue or yellow banner, if defensive support is really your goal while specialized in red.

So, I've been playing Captain since pre-launch and this statement right here tells me that you don't understand the Captain's role within a fellowship/raid.

The Captain is the class you bring to make things easier. Your DPSers hit harder, your healers have an easier time and if people die (especially the healer) the Captain can save the day by rezzing 2 people at once.
Obviously the game has evolved and with the introduction of traitlines some specialization was necessary, which led to a solid tank role, a decent enough healer for small group content and the red Captain, who doesnt actually do a lot of dmg or healing himself but does exactly what the Captain has always done, make everyone else shine.

By reducing red Captain to an "offensive support" role you are, in my humble opinion, doing it a severe disservice.

Nevertheless, if it's the road you want to take, than actually make it the offensive support specialist. Right now you are stripping red line of all it's utility, and even some of it's offensive buffs, which according to you is what this line is for in favour of more direct damage.

However, more damage will not make the captain more viable for endgame content. The Champion does excellent AOE ans ST dmg and is a strong class but it barely gets taken in favour of hunters because they simply output more single target damage and can do it from range. Whereas a Champion and even more so a Captain needs to get into melee range, dragging itself through myriad puddles and chasing after random aggroing mobs in order to try and get their skills off. And the Captain on top of that actually needs to target something in most cases where the champ can just rely on AOE?

Are these dps changes bringing us on par with Champions or even Hunters? We all know that's not happening, nor would any real Captain player actually want that. All we wanted was to hit harder than a limp noodle and be able to drag ourselves through missions and landscape quests at a reasonable pace, not exchange some DPS for half our group value.

As far as I can tell, with these proposed changes the damage support role will be taken up by the Brawler, who will probably still output more damage while doing more buffing to the group. Their version of OB will be more powerful, and with the nerfing of our banner and Blade brother skills it's other buffs will outstrip us as well. I'm not a numbers guy, and maybe I'm wrong but I'm sure it's at least a close run thing at the moment, let alone after these nerfs. Red minstrel is probably also not far behind.

So to recap, red Captain is offensive support, but our offensive support is being nerfed (OB shame, banner duration), our ability to support by keeping the DPS alive is being nerfed (no Inspire heal), our ability to revive said DPS after they die is being nerfed (no double rez at higher morale, no group buff) all in exchange for a DPS increase that still won't get us chosen above Champions, Brawlers, red Minstrels or Wardens, let alone Hunters. (and god knows whatever other class gets their red line buffed in the future)

I don't see the logic here?

Sorry, I really don't mean to be negative here and I'd love to give more contructive feedback on these changes, and maybe I will later on, but this comment really struck me (in the face, so to speak)

[Elmagor]

Agree with blue captain feedback above. Blue Captain turns into healing class with unique role what we never have before - healer who can't heal himself, but can heal his brother. Why we need this.... don't know, don't fits in any raids so far. Maybe for future raid?

[Arabani]

Not aiming at anyone in particular, just a general observation based mostly on unoficial lotro discords.- Could developers please remember that it is impossible to balance and develop classes in a PvE game for PvE, based on PvP effectiveness. These are two different types of the game and they require different approaches, skills and numbers alterations and so on.

[andys90]

I have a general Captain question that I've never understood and hoping someone can explain to me.
Why is rousing cry, the trait that gives the damage buff to ralying cry, a blue line trait when it seems like it should be red?

[Atonu]

I have a general Captain question that I've never understood and hoping someone can explain to me.
Why is rousing cry, the trait that gives the damage buff to ralying cry, a blue line trait when it seems like it should be red?

Because it modifies a healing skill.

[Kaeneth]

I've only played a bit so far on Captain, but even with Shadow's Lament missing and bleeds not stacking at the moment I'm really liking the direction of the new Stand Alone stance and the skills which accompany it. Not having to worry about to arms and inspire being tied up by my roaming herald, some of the extra DPS, and especially having a bit more AOE, is making red solo Captain feel much more enjoyable to play. These changes combined with motivating speech getting an increased duration are fixing a lot of the problems for me personally that made Captain feel more like a chore than a joy to play. I'm really looking forward to seeing how it will play once Shadow's Lament and the bleed stacking get returned to it.

With that said there's still a few things I might have taken another look at:

- I would like to see Routing Cry and Cry of Fury be brought up to 5 targets to match the other AOE skills, rather than being stuck at 4.

- Herald damage still seems underwhelming to me, although I think the archer at least has been slightly buffed up. With that being the case, and considering how point hungry Captain is as a class, I don't see Heightened Allies ever being really worth taking outside of maybe the first 50 levels of making a new Captain, especially not for 3 points. I think herald damage still needs to either be greatly buffed, at least for the archer, or just have the whole Heightened Allies trait combined into the Capstone on red of Elite Companions since it's kind of underwhelming for a capstone anyways.

- This is only a personal thing- but I really wish that Captains could at least equip bows even if we had no skills for them, similar to Beornings. Just because on landscape I like to be able to quickly tap mobs with it to pull them, and being able to do that myself is a bit more convenient at times than using the archer, especially if I want to have out another herald for the heal. I also just enjoy the aesthetic of it on my back. This isn't something that's necessarily a priority, or problem, just a personal preference that I've always wished for.

In any case I really appreciate the work being done to the Captain, especially for solo play, and the fantastic communication we've been getting. Thanks for the hard work.

[1Asy1]

Red (Traits)
Tactics: Relentless Assault
The Relentless Assault buff now gives 5% Damage, 2% Critical Chance, an -5% Attack Duration.

I can live with this.

Readied Strike
This trait no longer causes Shadow’s Lament to apply the Battle-Readied state. Instead, it gives you +10% damage.

I don't like this, I can see this creating a pause in the rotation whilst waiting for other skills to come off CD. Rather this was reverted back given how clunky CPT DPS is already

Cutting Edge
The effect given to Cutting Attack by this trait has changed to 10% Critical Magnitude and 3% Critical Chance, with a 10s duration.

I think 10% is too low still.

Lacerate
This trait now causes Grave Wound to spread the Cutting Attack bleed, and Shadow’s Lament to spread the Grave Wound bleed.

Why?

Blade Brother’s Call
This trait and skill have been removed, replaced by ‘Stand Alone’ a toggle skill which you can use instead of Blade-brother to improve your personal DPS at the cost of group support.

Why isn't the class just getting a flat damage increase, why do we need a skill that benefits only the captain, when the class is designed to support the group?

Master of War
This trait no longer affects the duration of Oathbreakers Shame. Oathbreakers Shame now has a 15s base duration.

Insert Brawler instead of CPT for the gut bunch. Consider reverting this please

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

Seems pretty minor compared to the Brawler buff.

The effects granted by Standard of War have been renamed to reduce confusion between the components of this trait.
______________________________ __________
Hardened Heart
The potency of this trait has been halved, from a maximum of 30% to 15%.

Again, I think this should be increased, 15% is too low. Bleeds are the single biggest source of damage for a CPT

Arterial Strikes
This trait has gained a rank, making its maximum critical chance 5%, while the critical magnitude given by max rank is now 10%.

Minor offset, when you consider the other nerfs.

Heightened Allies
This trait improve Herald/Archer damage as well as reduces their incoming damage. It also now has a max rank of 3.

TBC as there has never been a need for this trait, however a 2min CD on heralds, seems a bit steep considering how often they die.

Impactful Blows
The maximum effect from this trait has increased from 6% to 10%. This trait is currently not working.

TBC

Vital Stroke
The critical magnitude from this trait has been reduced from 50% to 15%.

Single biggest DPS skill of the CPT gets significant nerf, and should be increased. All bleeds need scaling or new traceries creating to compensate

Fellowship of the Sword
The fellowship-wide effect from To Arms is now (traited to maximum potency)
+5% Damage
+2% Outgoing Healing


Red (Skills)
Gallant Display
When traited red, Gallant Display deals AoE damage and has no healing component. Subsequent uses increase its damage and power cost considerably.

TBC

Inspire
This skill now gives you and your Blade-brother a Damage buff and a power restore.

Why not the group?

Blade-brother’s Call
This skill has been removed.

Standard of War
The duration of the banner has been reduced to 15 seconds.

One of the single biggest reason to take a Captain. Reducing to 15 sec, on top of the other nerfs, please increase

Stand Alone
This toggle skill disables Blade-brother and transforms a selection of your ally-oriented skills into variants that provide you a direct, personal benefit.

Stand Alone: Inspire > Self-determination
Self-determination is a melee attack that gives you +20% Damage and -5% 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 is a strong melee attack which gives you a 30% Damage buff.

Stand Alone: Words of Courage > Courageous Heart
This skill gives you +20% Mitigations for 10s, with a 50s cooldown.

Stand Alone: Escape from Darkness > Cry of Fury
This skill deals AoE damage, applies an Outgoing Damage debuff to enemies hit, and gives you a strong self-heal over time.

Not a fan of any of the standalone components, assuming this a mastery buff, i'm already capped mastery. The class is designed to complement a group. Based on this build, there is more reason to take a Brawler right now than a CPT. All this class needed was:-

- Flat damage buff.
- SOD back into Yellow.
- Flat increase to ST healing.
- Mit or BPE in yellow.

Massively over complicated this.

[Denthemen]

1. I like the companion changes, well needed, just need a junk load of new cosmetic choices to go with them.

2. I like the stand alone change.

3. Maybe Blade of Elendil could get a 25% chance 3.5 sec cower reaction from a single target to add something to it, just throwing that out there.

4. Perhaps for a blue line skill for survivebility as some have said that the blue line healer is squishy: the healing skill of your companion turns into Self-Sacrifice: heals75% max morale, kills companion, summon cooldown length to be proportional to heal. Or you could add a max morale modifier to the blue line like in yellow.

[Capt.Hunor]

Captain Blue line don't fits any raid configuration. It's far a way to be a better healer as a Rune keepers, so he will have no place in a raid.
Red Captain has no Cry of Vengeance, that means his support is reduced by 60%

Sincerely, on the live server I don't know a single captain who use the Blue line. They are tanks or red captains

[theultimatekyle]

So, reading through this topic. The biggest take away I'm getting is that this "rework" has ultimately killed off Captain viability in endgame. Blue Captains will still not be being taken after update, yellow will now most likely be replaced by another tank. And it wouldn't surprise me if red captains also get the shaft at endgame also.

I thought we were a class that functions with group play in mind. Sounds like the rework is kind of going the opposite..

Thats not completely fair to say. I disagree with a number of the changes, and the general philosophy Onn seems to have with captain tanking, but the class wont be dead at cap.

With a few tweaks to blue cappy, such as more/better options for self heals or damage mitigation, and hopefully taking valiant back to a fellowship heal, the blue cappy will be in a pretty good spot. Probably not on the same level as RK, mini, or bear, but you should be able to heal instanced content well enough, and blue cappy may even have a niche role for some raids.

The new red group changes will make the cappy's "always on" buffs like relentless from sure strike stronger, and the changes to Too Arms coupled with the new mastery changes means that players who are at mastery cap will see a very slight buff in Too Arm's effectiveness (though players at significantly lower than mastery cap will be getting a Too Arms nerf). The biggest changes in the Captains group utility will be lower burst window support, with the nerfing of banner and oathy duration. But non burst group damage should really be higher after these changes go live. Group burst nerfs may just be meant to synergize better with changes for other classes coming up, or maybe even the new planned class.

The solo stance seems fine. Its only meant to make solo questing easier on cappy, and thats really all itll do. You wouldnt take a solo stance cappy over a real dps in group content right now, so its effects are minimal for the class. Its hard to have a strong opinion atm though because of its poor power management, but thats a flaw with the games new power rework, not necessarily the captain alone.

Yellow captain will still be serviceable. It will just be worse than guards, and for some group content that needs faster dps on particular mobs, the brawler will be the preferred tank. The yellow captain group utility nerfs make it feel worse to play, and I think it hurts the identity of the class role, but its not going to necessarily bury the captain. Just make it more mundane and tedious to play. But at least the new front line resilience is interesting.

[thymos]

So, reading through this topic. The biggest take away I'm getting is that this "rework" has ultimately killed off Captain viability in endgame. Blue Captains will still not be being taken after update, yellow will now most likely be replaced by another tank. And it wouldn't surprise me if red captains also get the shaft at endgame also.

I thought we were a class that functions with group play in mind. Sounds like the rework is kind of going the opposite..

Chicken little, we're clearly in an extremely early build of Bullroarer, it should be obvious that all of the changes are currently in their crudest form where bugs and placeholder values are everywhere.

This is how betas work, you iterate forward based on testing and feedback. Which is your post? If you see an issue why don't you specify what it is...the operative word here being specific.

[Kevpain]

Captains have lost quite a bit of their survivability in blue and red with these changes. Alot of are self-healing is gone. Muster courage self-heal is still really low and now is pushed further down the blue line. Valiant strike was not working for me when testing it. I would recommend keeping the Hot on the skill and making it a burst heal for the shield brother. It sounds as if you have to toggle shield brother off to get the hot, which doesn't make sense to me. I do like the burst heal skill from melee attacks. Reform the lines should really be like a 45 second cd as the heal itself is not that powerful. Make the CD on par with Minstrels Triumphant spirit. Words of Courage initial heal needs a boost on par with the heal over time. Galiant display I welcome as a stand alone skill for every line. Nice to have another aoe skill.

Redline captain I do enjoy the dps boost but the survivability again has taken a hit. With no inspire hot and muster courage self-heal being farther down the blue line makes it harder to survive. Its like are self healing was traded for more dps which I personally don't like. Are Escape from Darkness being converted into a aoe and heal with a long cd in solo stance makes no sense. Loosing are parry buff from fighting withdrawl sucks now its only yellow line and another skill. The mitigation buff from words of courage is not right. Make words of courage a self-heal instead when using the solo stance like minstrels war speech self-heal only. Oathbreakers shame I feel like could use a rework for solo and raid play. I would reduce the incoming damage down to 10% and give 10% damage return to heals for 10-15 seconds duration. Would make it great for solo and raid but not being too overpowered with still a decent cd. I welcome the herald changes, thank you.

Yellowline captain I have not had the chance to test out, but I would like to point out that the extra bleed damage in yellow line is useless. At least on the live server. Makes no sense to give bleed damage in yellow line when tanks are well... tanking and not thinking about damage output. I would switch that out with something else like Block, parry, and evade ratings or finesse buff?

[Hephburz-2]

Thats not completely fair to say. I disagree with a number of the changes, and the general philosophy Onn seems to have with captain tanking, but the class wont be dead at cap.

I think yCaptain is definitely going to be dead at cap if nothing gets changed.

With a few tweaks to blue cappy, such as more/better options for self heals or damage mitigation, and hopefully taking valiant back to a fellowship heal, the blue cappy will be in a pretty good spot. Probably not on the same level as RK, mini, or bear, but you should be able to heal instanced content well enough, and blue cappy may even have a niche role for some raids.

These things are definitely a must, but what there is also more.

• There was no reason to increase the cooldown on reform the lines. The fact reform the lines is no longer a raid wide heal AND no longer heals the captain is completely baffling, this skill now really is a horrible version of relentless maul. The ability to provide brother buffs to your group for 10s should be an entirely seperate cooldown skill on its own, it shouldn't require you HAVING to use reform the lines to do so.
• Blue Captain needs AoE Valiant Strike back, it's an absolute must.
• Blue Captain needs some self-heal now that Muster Courage self-heal has been nerfed to the ground.
• Blue Captain needs some sort of self-mitigation, they are a melee healer, that are required to be in melee in order to heal, and currently, squishy beyond belief, without some increase to survivabillity for what purpose are you taking a bCapt when they're only going to die?
• Blue Captain still offers limited offensive support to rival that of either yBeorning or bMinstrel which means their competitor in the group is a bRK and these changes are not going to make groups or raids drop bRK for a bCaptain.

The new red group changes will make the cappy's "always on" buffs like relentless from sure strike stronger, and the changes to Too Arms coupled with the new mastery changes means that players who are at mastery cap will see a very slight buff in Too Arm's effectiveness (though players at significantly lower than mastery cap will be getting a Too Arms nerf). The biggest changes in the Captains group utility will be lower burst window support, with the nerfing of banner and oathy duration. But non burst group damage should really be higher after these changes go live. Group burst nerfs may just be meant to synergize better with changes for other classes coming up, or maybe even the new planned class.

But the problem is, Lotro raid fights are often designed around those burst moments, Thossolun, Shelob, even boss 2 in HH as well as Hrimil once you hit the 20% mark, all of these moments are "burst" moments, that require the synergy of everything you have available to boost that group dps, not being able to do that, or a reduction in the overrall abillity to do that requires a complete rethinking of lotro instance design, because it doesn't matter if the first 75% of the fight goes quicker (because sustained buffs have been slightly increased), if you don't have the tools or skills to overcome the nuke/burst phases of boss fights, the lower duration on banner & OB are significantly going to effect this, and I don't think it's been thought through at all.

Alone the nerf to OB makes it an even less desirable choice than Brawler Gut Punch.

The solo stance seems fine. Its only meant to make solo questing easier on cappy, and thats really all itll do. You wouldnt take a solo stance cappy over a real dps in group content right now, so its effects are minimal for the class. Its hard to have a strong opinion atm though because of its poor power management, but thats a flaw with the games new power rework, not necessarily the captain alone.

Solo stance wasn't required to improve solo questing, a damage buff would have been more than sufficient, developer time could have better been spent elsewhere, if the solo stance isn't enough to get a rCaptain a DPS spot then it was a wasted endevour.

Yellow captain will still be serviceable. It will just be worse than guards, and for some group content that needs faster dps on particular mobs, the brawler will be the preferred tank. The yellow captain group utility nerfs make it feel worse to play, and I think it hurts the identity of the class role, but its not going to necessarily bury the captain. Just make it more mundane and tedious to play. But at least the new front line resilience is interesting.

I completely disagree, there is already extremely little value to taking a yCaptain on live when you compare it to a Brawler OR Guard, both are tankier and bring more to the table offensively, and in the case of brawler with One for All, defensively, more than anything a Captain can now do, yCaptain is currently a heal bot, with SoD and a double rez, and these changes remove all of those factors and give nothing in return.

Conclusion:

If you are going to follow through with these changes to yCaptain, then I'm sorry but you also need to nerf bBrawler at the same time (because letting these changes go through, without adjusting bBrawler is going to remove any reason to take a yCaptain, and I'm not going to even talk about the new defensive utility you've just given to bWardens either), if group utility is your problem with yCaptain then you really don't understand how this class is meant to function, OR how other classes are currently functioning.

[Arabani]

It is actually funny to realise that Guardian and then Brawler got offensive buffs to compensate the utility of yCapatin in the first place. I clear example of what happens when a bandaid is used instead of curing the problem.

As for the rest, once again, could we please hear the developers' vision of the class and its roles?

OnnMacMahal, you are keep saying that you want every spec to be viable and competitive, but unless a bCatain can heal EVERY T5 instance in the game and can keep a group alive in a raid-he's not a healer and the update is a wasted endevour, as Hephburz put it. And it is just pure healing wise, not even taking into consideration offensive buffs, which are always the priorty for choosing a class for you group or raid. The same goes for the other specs and roles.

[1Asy1]

Redline captain I do enjoy the dps boost but the survivability again has taken a hit. With no inspire hot and muster courage self-heal being farther down the blue line makes it harder to survive. Its like are self healing was traded for more dps which I personally don't like. Are Escape from Darkness being converted into a aoe and heal with a long cd in solo stance makes no sense. Loosing are parry buff from fighting withdrawl sucks now its only yellow line and another skill. The mitigation buff from words of courage is not right. Make words of courage a self-heal instead when using the solo stance like minstrels war speech self-heal only. Oathbreakers shame I feel like could use a rework for solo and raid play. I would reduce the incoming damage down to 10% and give 10% damage return to heals for 10-15 seconds duration. Would make it great for solo and raid but not being too overpowered with still a decent cd. I welcome the herald changes, thank you.

10% for Oathbreakers shame (Raid) would be c.1/3rd of Gut Punch or the equivalent of telling mark and damage tome.

For capstone skill and one of the historic core reasons to have a red captain in the group, this is way too low in my opinion.

[1Asy1]

Chicken little, we're clearly in an extremely early build of Bullroarer, it should be obvious that all of the changes are currently in their crudest form where bugs and placeholder values are everywhere.

This is how betas work, you iterate forward based on testing and feedback. Which is your post? If you see an issue why don't you specify what it is...the operative word here being specific.

I don't disagree with your sentiment, but I very much doubt there will be anything other than configuration changes, there won't be any opportunity for material change.

[1Asy1]

Yellow (Traits)
Tactics: On Guard
The On Guard buff is now 2% Physical Mitigation, 3% Parry Chance, and 5% Critical Defence.

Can we consider adding tactical mitigation to this, to bring it on par with other tanks?

Defensive Strike > Defensive Blade
This trait has been renamed to avoid confusion with the skill, and will cause Defensive Strike to give you an Incoming Damage reduction buff for 18 seconds. It also still increases your Parry Chance by 5%.

Will this stack with Hardened?

Shield-brother’s Call
This skill has been transformed into one which requires you to target an ally. That ally gains -30% incoming damage for 7 seconds.

TBC, the initial impression seems a bit weak and underwhelming compared to SOD.

Blessing of the Shield
The effect from To-Arms granted by this trait would reduce your Incoming Damage, rather than mirroring the effect granted to your Song-brother.

Exemplar
With Shield of the Dúnedain in blue, the cooldown reduction here would shift to ‘At the Fore.’
______________________________ __________
Noble Mark
Noble Mark range is now 25m. It has received a moderate damage increase, but is still not quite where we want it to be.

Dead skill, rarely used. Assuming the reveal mark will be usable in Yellow, it will be used over Noble.

Brother’s Keeper
When the 7 seconds of protection from Song-brother’s Call expire, 20% of that player’s threat is transferred to you.

Given the way threat works in Lotro, i can't see this being of much use.

Fellowship of the Shield > Fellowship of the Song
The fellowship-wide effect from To Arms is now (traited to maximum potency)
-2% Incoming Damage
+2% Damage
+3% Outgoing Healing

Shield of the Dúnedain > At the Fore
This is a new skill that has taken the capstone place formerly occupied by Shield of the Dúnedain. For details, see below.


Yellow (Skills)
Defensive Strike
When traited yellow, Defensive Strike grants you a -5% Incoming Damage buff for 18s.

Gallant Display
When traited yellow, Gallant Display deals AoE damage and heals you. Subsequent uses increase its damage, healing, and power cost.

Given damage in yellow is negligible, I don't really see the benefit of this, swapping damage for BPE or mitigation would be preferable.

Strength in Numbers
The potency of this heal has been increased, especially when it hits the maximum number of possible targets.

Arguably still a useless skill, past content has meant the CPT is largely tanking solo. Given Last Stand is the only main CD a Captain has, it would be better to remove it and give SOD back to the CPT as a personal CD

Standard of Valour
The duration of the banner has been reduced to 15 seconds.

Please revert back to the duration it was before.

Hammer Stroke
This is a new melee skill that deals significant damage and gives you a 30% Parry Chance buff for 15s, with a 45s cooldown.

Song-brother’s Call
This skill gives an ally a -30% Incoming Damage buff for 7 seconds.

At the Fore
When used, this skill negates 50% of incoming damage for 10s. Incoming damage during this period will build stacks of ‘At the Fore.’ These cap at a maximum of 10. When the initial damage reduction expires, you gain +100% Melee Damage, and your melee attacks will spend stacks of ‘At the Fore’ to heal you (5% Maximum Morale per attack). This skill has a 4 minute cooldown, which is reduced by the Exemplar effect and is reset by Call to Greatness.

Again, what is the point of the damage buff? i have no mastery or crit in yellow line. 50% incoming damage reduction, then the potential for a 50% heal, i'd rather you gave captain SOD again as a self CD, given we only really have 1 fundamental CD at present - Last Stand.

[Kevpain]

10% for Oathbreakers shame (Raid) would be c.1/3rd of Gut Punch or the equivalent of telling mark and damage tome.

For capstone skill and one of the historic core reasons to have a red captain in the group, this is way too low in my opinion.

Kinda why I am suggesting it change. If the only reason to bring a red captain or a tanking brawler is for Gut Punch or oath breaker shame to zerg a boss or something down, needs a change. The 10% extra damage with 10% damage return (like the old revealing mark but was 15%) I feel like is a good compromise. You get to help out dps and healing. Good for both. Just my opinion though.

[laundo]

Quote Originally Posted by Hephburz-2 View Post
I'm not sure I understand the changes to Reform the Lines? Does this mean, for example, if we use To Arms in the 10s period after Reform the Lines everyone will get the -15% incoming damage buff as opposed to the fellowship To Arms effect? Or am I misunderstanding? That being said, Reform the Lines is horribly weak in all situations, I said before in the other thread, it is a worse version of Beorning Relentless Maul, with 4x as long a cooldown. The set bonus from this raid made the skill somewhat interesting to play around, but how will it compare once that goes? Raid Sets shouldn't be required to make a skill worth-using.

Your first supposition is correct. It means that in the period immediately after you hit Reform the Lines, any Shield-brother effect is applied to your whole fellowship: that means To Arms, Inspire, Valour, and Valiant Display.

can i suggest a secondary manner of producing a similar effect? after using blade of elendil the next(only one) inspire/valiant strike effect is applied to your whole fellowship. short duration buff(3-5 seconds), as timing the use of blade of elendil with the active cooldown on the desired skill/effect should be a key thing to consider.
this lesser effect would have no interaction with to arms at all as using such a strong effect on the fellowship should be gated by a lengthy cooldown.

this would replace blade of elendil's current function of adding potency(20%) to valiant strike. to counter this increase blade of elendil's base healing by 20%, then add to this to the new blade of elendil effect: -20% healing for valiant strike/inpsire.

valaint strike without blade of elendil's effect: hits only the shield brother and has the 20% modifier(granted passively)
valiant strike with blade of elendil's effect: hits up to 6 targets -20% modifier
inspire without blade of elendil's effect: functions as normal.
inspire with blade of elendil's effect: hits up to 6 targets -20% modifer

and as a side note, turning revealing mark into a toggle/stance with the following effects:
you count as a shield brother
you have a -30% incoming healing modifier until toggled off. (toggling off sets a long cooldown) this creates a bit of self sustainability but at a cost.
a small % of all damage done by you is turned into healing for nearby fellowship memebers. (kinda like the old revealing mark but only effected by the captains damage rather then everyone being healed based on personal damage, as the heal often times overheals rather then be helpful even a small boost to hps is better then rng)

[Hephburz-2]

Kinda why I am suggesting it change. If the only reason to bring a red captain or a tanking brawler is for Gut Punch or oath breaker shame to zerg a boss or something down, needs a change. The 10% extra damage with 10% damage return (like the old revealing mark but was 15%) I feel like is a good compromise. You get to help out dps and healing. Good for both. Just my opinion though.

The old revealing mark was stupid - your DPS group NEVER required a healer, because when you have a hunter putting out 600k+ DPS, and 15% (or 10% in your suggestion) of that is returned in healing, for what reason do they ever need a designated healer, you'd be healing yourself for 60k HPS, just keep hitting stuff and you'll never die unless you get one shotted.

The new revealing mark is stupid - all it does is encourage EVERYONE to morale stack, in fact, ALL % based healing skills do is encourage people to morale stack.

In regards to your comments about Oathbreakers, many fights in Lotro are designed with these burst/nuke phases in their mechanics, and without things like Oathbreakers, they are sometimes impossible to get past - nerfing or changing Oathbreakers requires a complete revision on how lotro instances and boss fights are and have been designed - you also cannot nerf Oathbreakers and then leave Brawlers Gut Punch where it is.

[Geremir]

Red (Traits)

I have posted the things I like in Green which can be kept in the way you designed them.
The things in Red need a change or an increased buff or update.
The things in Orange is something I am unsure about.

Tactics: Relentless Assault
The Relentless Assault buff now gives 5% Damage, 2% Critical Chance, an -5% Attack Duration.

Decent change, can keep this for sure, rather percentage added then people that are already at mastery cap. Good change!

Readied Strike
This trait no longer causes Shadow’s Lament to apply the Battle-Readied state. Instead, it gives you +10% damage.

Bad change. The strength of the former Red Captain always lay in building battle-readied and battle hardened state at these points and keeping them up as much of the time. This will cause a flaw in the DPS rotation of red captains or making a missing gap for other overlapping skills. Currently there is already a tracery giving damage to the battle-readied state, so I don't need any reason to add damage and remove an effect of Shadow's Lament at all. I rather see this reverted.

Cutting Edge
The effect given to Cutting Attack by this trait has changed to 10% Critical Magnitude and 3% Critical Chance, with a 10s duration.

10% is way too low. Since Captain is not a DPS class in the first place the 30% critical magnitude may have felt too high, but the seven seconds it lasted does really make up for that in the first place. Should be changed, more critical rating % is irrelevant.

Lacerate
This trait now causes Grave Wound to spread the Cutting Attack bleed, and Shadow’s Lament to spread the Grave Wound bleed.

This confuses me, In my humble opinion I think bleed damage should be increased across the board. Grave Wound bleed used to be the biggest DPS skill before the new LI's where introduced. Grave Wound is doing LESS damage on live as we speak then with my weapons which required Scrolls of Empowerment. Bleed Damage Tracery is still missing. And not a piss poor 10-15%, but rather looking at 50%-55% tracery there at first. As for the spreading thing it might alter a nice change, but it feels like overcomplicating it. Rather make Grave Wound spread Cutting Attack and Cutting Attack spread Grave Wound then what you are doing now.

Blade Brother’s Call
This trait and skill have been removed, replaced by ‘Stand Alone’ a toggle skill which you can use instead of Blade-brother to improve your personal DPS at the cost of group support.

Don't remove this skill. I rather see the ''Stand Alone'' stance happening, but for solo play and not in a group. Blade Brothers Call can remain there as it serves the captain it's sole purpose to support a group. Instead give the ''Stand Alone'' buff a raw 50% damage buff to the Captain in case you perform solo content or start leveling a new region.

Master of War
This trait no longer affects the duration of Oathbreakers Shame. Oathbreakers Shame now has a 15s base duration.

If you do this Captain will be set aside in the raids as they will happen. Currently the Brawler has a 20% incoming damage buff that lasts for 20 seconds and can be used on every nearby target. Nerfing ''Oathbreaker's Shame'' makes the Captain absolute redundant at this point. If you want to make the Captain more viable you should remove ''Oathbreaker's Shame'' as a capstone and make it a skill that can be traited in either blue or yellow as well to make it more viable. If a Brawler has access to a similar buff that can be used on multiple targets, then why not a Captain have it in any additional line as well in case they choose for it?

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

Good change, but make it a tiny bit longer then before, rather 10 seconds. With the amount of critical rating or % most classes have, 5 seconds is not much time considering you have classes that need to induct or need to build up their damage skills with fervour, focus, gambits or other things.


The effects granted by Standard of War have been renamed to reduce confusion between the components of this trait.

Makes sense
______________________________ __________
Hardened Heart
The potency of this trait has been halved, from a maximum of 30% to 15%.

With the tendency of the game and classes scaling in damage, I do not think you wanna change this further down, but rather keep it as it is. Captain is not a main DPS class, nor will it ever be. 30% critical multiplier won't do harm to excessive numbers. Therefore leave it be.

Arterial Strikes
This trait has gained a rank, making its maximum critical chance 5%, while the critical magnitude given by max rank is now 10%.

Is fine, if you keep Hardened Heart as it is and not reducing it.

Heightened Allies
This trait improve Herald/Archer damage as well as reduces their incoming damage. It also now has a max rank of 3.

I like the idea of improving the pet damage, but since they intend to die quite fast or a lot considering their 700k health, either the health of them needs to be increased or some other change needs to come through otherwise this is pointless.

Impactful Blows
The maximum effect from this trait has increased from 6% to 10%. This trait is currently not working.

If it does work under this change, then it is a decent change!

Vital Stroke
The critical magnitude from this trait has been reduced from 50% to 15%.

I stick with what Lob said earlier: Single biggest DPS skill of the CPT gets significant nerf, and should be increased. All bleeds need scaling or new traceries creating to compensate

Fellowship of the Sword
The fellowship-wide effect from To Arms is now (traited to maximum potency)
+5% Damage
+2% Outgoing Healing

Red (Skills)
Gallant Display
When traited red, Gallant Display deals AoE damage and has no healing component. Subsequent uses increase its damage and power cost considerably.

Seems fine to me. Good to add a bit more AoE skills to the Captain since he lacks that a little bit, also considering tanking. Don't see the point for Outgoing Healing though when in most DPS groups there might be max one healer present. TBC

Inspire
This skill now gives you and your Blade-brother a Damage buff and a power restore.

Should be group-wide not just for the Captain. Your sole reason is support, then make the captain support. Also with this big power change coming up you want to share power in different manners.

Blade-brother’s Call
This skill has been removed.

Get this skill back, it lends good support to your blade-brother. Otherwise make the damage buff from Inspire a tiering effect or increase the duration of the 50% critical rating effect from it on crits.

Standard of War
The duration of the banner has been reduced to 15 seconds.

Needs to be reverted back to 30 seconds instantly! This change is terrible sorry to say! Most groups nowadays use Captains with the option of having 2 potential banners, yellow and red. Reducing this effect makes Captain even more redundant at this stage!

Stand Alone
This toggle skill disables Blade-brother and transforms a selection of your ally-oriented skills into variants that provide you a direct, personal benefit.

Stand Alone: Inspire > Self-determination
Self-determination is a melee attack that gives you +20% Damage and -5% 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 is a strong melee attack which gives you a 30% Damage buff.

Stand Alone: Words of Courage > Courageous Heart
This skill gives you +20% Mitigations for 10s, with a 50s cooldown.

Stand Alone: Escape from Darkness > Cry of Fury
This skill deals AoE damage, applies an Outgoing Damage debuff to enemies hit, and gives you a strong self-heal over time.

THE COOLDOWN ON THIS SKILL IS WAY TOO LONG! 5 minutes for Cry of Fury?? The damage output on it is mediocre at best at this moment.

I like the concept of the Stand Alone stance, but in group play the Captain is demanding to support the group. If the sole purpose of this stance is to enhance the captain for solo content and questing it is fine, but do understand that is has no function whatsoever in groupplay. You can swap for the mitigation buff, but you don't provide anything regarding the group.

This class is supposed to be a support then make it support. These following things are the most important things to change or revert in red stance:

1. Flat damage increase for the Captain. Tooltips are simply not high enough.

2. Blade Brother's Call should be coming back, it was a good skill for the sole-purpose of support of a single target and yourself, rather grey it out in case you use the ''Stand-Alone'' stance.

3. Banner buff needs to be back at 30 seconds, not 15. Currently this skill is one of the sole purposes to trait for a cappy regardless of line.

4. Oathbreaker's Shame should be back at 20 seconds. If you intend on making it 15 seconds, then there are two ways you can go with this. Reduce the internal cd of the skill to make it useable on another target (just like Brawler in his tanking line). Or make ''Oathbreaker's Shame'' traitable in blue and yellow line, by removing it as a capstone trait from the Captain in red stance. This way other lined Captains can also benefit from this skill.

5. Bleeds (Grave Wound/Cutting Attack, but also light bleed from Elendil) should be MASSIVELY increased across the board. For this you can change the trait ''Call them out'' from yellow to red and increase the tiers considerably, but also increase the base damage of the bleeds. Currently will full mastery and things ''Improved Cutting Attack is a 16k bleed per tick and Grave Wound just at 18-19k. Also there should be a tracery added with ''Bleed Damage up to 50%(incomparable) and 55%(golden) to increase bleed damage across the board. In general bleeds should end up in a stage where they are at least 2x, but rather 3x as strong as they are right now. Around 50-60k minimum for skills like Grave Wound and Cutting Attack with all changes and added traceries.

6. Pet's should be increased in mitigations, but mostly morale across the board. I don't personally like the change of making them on a 2 minute cd timer, but if you intend to make a timer for them make sure you can either control them more properly or don't make them die as fast as they do right now.



Keep an eye out for support of other classes. At this stage Brawler is banging on the door of the Captain (better damage buffs, better incoming damage buffs with Gut Punch and often even replacing it as Captain). Brawler is designed to be a tank/DPS, Captain is designed to support. Currently with these changes Brawler fulfills the role of the Captain, whilst Captain is just a bot to be added as 13th player in the raid for 10% morale buff once in every 20 minutes. It simply fits no purpose with most of the changes you have made. You have overcomplicated the entire situation for yourself. Additional changes could have been way more basic then you were suggesting.

[Geremir]

Yellow (Traits)

I have posted the things I like in Green which can be kept in the way you designed them.
The things in Red need a change or an increased buff or update.
The things in Orange is something I am unsure about.


Tactics: On Guard
The On Guard buff is now 2% Physical Mitigation, 3% Parry Chance, and 5% Critical Defence.

Seems fine to me, although I rather see Physical Mitigation on the Focus Buff from blue and 2% tactical mitigation on the On Guard buff. Tactical mitigation as a tank is usually a bit more important then Physical mitigation.


Defensive Strike > Defensive Blade
This trait has been renamed to avoid confusion with the skill, and will cause Defensive Strike to give you an Incoming Damage reduction buff for 18 seconds. It also still increases your Parry Chance by 5%.

If it stacks with Battle-Hardened I don't see any issues with this skill, sounds decent.

Shield-brother’s Call
This skill has been transformed into one which requires you to target an ally. That ally gains -30% incoming damage for 7 seconds.

Why are you removing Shield of the Dunedain from Yellow Line and add it to blue and add another weaker skill(existing skill) to take it's place. It makes no sense to me??

Blessing of the Shield
The effect from To-Arms granted by this trait would reduce your Incoming Damage, rather than mirroring the effect granted to your Song-brother.

Exemplar
With Shield of the Dúnedain in blue, the cooldown reduction here would shift to ‘At the Fore.’

Shame! Unforunately ''At the Fore'' is not a very good life-threatening cooldown for the Captain.
______________________________ __________
Noble Mark
Noble Mark range is now 25m. It has received a moderate damage increase, but is still not quite where we want it to be.

This skill is absolutely useless, you need to come up with something else to make this skill viable once more. Even if you added a bleed of 30k to it, nobody would use it in Yellow. Therefore you are missing it's purpose. Why don't you make ''Noble Mark'' a negating damaging mark from a targeted mob for lets say 10-15%. If you keep it as it is, under the same buff with more damage it will just be standing there in yellow, with nobody using it.

Brother’s Keeper
When the 7 seconds of protection from Song-brother’s Call expire, 20% of that player’s threat is transferred to you.

Does not feel like a massive improvement to me, but won't do much harm either I guess.


Fellowship of the Shield > Fellowship of the Song
The fellowship-wide effect from To Arms is now (traited to maximum potency)
-2% Incoming Damage
+2% Damage
+3% Outgoing Healing

Used to be 10% less incoming damage with the traits from yellow, making it weaker now. This is unfortunate it should be reverted.

Shield of the Dúnedain > At the Fore
This is a new skill that has taken the capstone place formerly occupied by Shield of the Dúnedain. For details, see below.

Yellow (Skills)
Defensive Strike
When traited yellow, Defensive Strike grants you a -5% Incoming Damage buff for 18s.

Gallant Display
When traited yellow, Gallant Display deals AoE damage and heals you. Subsequent uses increase its damage, healing, and power cost.

Will stick here with what Lob said in his post earlier: Given damage in yellow is negligible, I don't really see the benefit of this, swapping damage for BPE or mitigation would be preferable.

Strength in Numbers
The potency of this heal has been increased, especially when it hits the maximum number of possible targets.

I have tested this cooldown, but considering the fact that with multiple targets you are still talking about a HOT that is lower then 20k, this skill remains useless and should not be traited. Considering the cooldown of this skill this should be a HOT that heals a portion of health over time, 5% every tick for 5 ticks. 1% more for every target nearby just like the mitigation buff from Brawler increasing it's potency for more targets around, including nearby pets. Also considering a Guardian being able to heal 35% of Health with Catch a Breath that seems fair to me.

Standard of Valour
The duration of the banner has been reduced to 15 seconds.

Please revert it back to 30 seconds.

Hammer Stroke
This is a new melee skill that deals significant damage and gives you a 30% Parry Chance buff for 15s, with a 45s cooldown.

Decent, but seeing the state of the current game BPE rating is unfortunately not having the same potency to what it used to be. Negate damage 15-20% instead maybe?

Song-brother’s Call
This skill gives an ally a -30% Incoming Damage buff for 7 seconds.

Why are you removing Shield of the Dunedain from Yellow Line and add it to blue and add another weaker skill(existing skill) to take it's place. It makes no sense to me??

At the Fore
When used, this skill negates 50% of incoming damage for 10s. Incoming damage during this period will build stacks of ‘At the Fore.’ These cap at a maximum of 10. When the initial damage reduction expires, you gain +100% Melee Damage, and your melee attacks will spend stacks of ‘At the Fore’ to heal you (5% Maximum Morale per attack). This skill has a 4 minute cooldown, which is reduced by the Exemplar effect and is reset by Call to Greatness.

No point for a damage buff as Captain does not have the required stats to do massive damage with a one-hander in tanking line. You get 50% less incoming damage and a buff for a heal instead. Rather give Shield of the Dunedain back to the Captain and allow it to use it on himself again. As Captain only has one cd at this moment this change from the past should be reverted to themselves again.

These following things are the most important things to change or revert in yellow stance:
1. Banner buff needs to be back at 30 seconds, not 15. Currently this skill is one of the sole purposes to trait for a cappy regardless of line.

2. No need for reducing damage buffs in yellow line for a Captain and add an additional cd like ''At the Fore'' or Song/Shield-brother's call to reduce further damage. Just move Shield of the Dunedain back to Yellow and make it useable to the Captain himself. Make Song-Brothers Call or any additional skills a little weaker if you intend to revert the SoD change.

3. Compliment Noble Mark more then you intend to do, rather add a negating damage effect on the mark(read above add a 10-15% negating damage effect on a target from it. You can also make this only beneficial to the Captain and not to anyone else, thats your choice), because under the current circumstances even if you had a 30k DOT to it, nobody cares to use it. If you make it more worthwhile people will consider traiting and using it.

4. Don't put the emphasis of the Yellow captain on damage buffs or something damage orientated. Since yellow, blue and red captains in the newest raids all play with sword and shield there is no real damage output anyway, making the choice you made redundant to both yourself and the people playing captain. Rather put the emphasis for the yellow captain on surviving a bit better when they try to control multiple targets or a target with a lot of damage. Allow the Captain to be a bit stronger as it is today, otherwise it will be a moralebuffing bot that has no place in the current raid rather then providing 10% extra health. Captains need a proper extra cd that they can also use on themselves, SoD would be the best to do this.