Forced March

[Skillzio]

Well I agree it's a rather pointless click, it's hardly the great deal breaker to me that it is to you. It's left over from the long-long-ago when it had a massive power penalty, so it wasn't something you always wanted to put on. Now it's got now downside, they could even just remove it completely, although people would cry a lot no doubt.

I still think the Warden needs better mobility in combat. We got a potential improvement with being able to use ambush in combat via adroit manoeuvre, only if you trait for it, but the class still has worse in combat mobility than other tanks even with that traited. As the only agility based tank, I am of the opinion that Warden should have the very best in combat manoeuvrability of the tanks, because you know, agility, and would happily sacrifice forced march for it.

As far as Warden QoL goes, forced march isn't the top of my list. Pre-combat buffs is the top of my list, not the fact that they exist, but how clunky and bad they feel, thanks mostly to having to keep re-activating battle prep for each different buff, of which there are 8. Annoyingly, even if you are a DPS traited Warden, you really should still do all 8 prebuffs too. Better to have them than not.

[Halphast]

Annoyingly, even if you are a DPS traited Warden, you really should still do all 8 prebuffs too. Better to have them than not.

8? I only know of 6 although I am traited DPS. 213, 2132, 231, 2312, 2323, 23232. Which two did I miss?

Everyone complains that it's clunky to add them, although battle prep and masteries are faster than ever. Isn't the only realistic alternative to remove some from the game? Aren't more buffs better than fewer?

And I disagree on needing them for every battle- even in higher tier delvings and the new on-level instances as a DPS I only pre-buff for especially tough bosses or really big pulls. For smaller groups of enemies and easier bosses all you need is DPS.

[Tralfazz]

8? I only know of 6 although I am traited DPS. 213, 2132, 231, 2312, 2323, 23232. Which two did I miss?

Everyone complains that it's clunky to add them, although battle prep and masteries are faster than ever. Isn't the only realistic alternative to remove some from the game? Aren't more buffs better than fewer?

And I disagree on needing them for every battle- even in higher tier delvings and the new on-level instances as a DPS I only pre-buff for especially tough bosses or really big pulls. For smaller groups of enemies and easier bosses all you need is DPS.

During the Bullroarer betas, I suggested a one-button prebuff skill with a one-minute cooldown that could only be used out of combat. If you're in a long battle you work the gambits to keep the buffs up. Before a long battle, you push the button so you don't have to stand there pushing prebuff buttons over and over again (while forcing your group to stand there doing nothing). On landscape, you mostly ignore the buffing gambits (and the proposed quick skill) the same way you do now.

[Tepee]

There used to be a -80% max power cost on it, which would decrease your maxium power. If you had 1000 max power, this would decrease into 200 and you had to choose between faster run speed in none threatning areas and turn it off, if you were about to fight and needed more than 20% of your maxium power. If the power cost has been removed, then it propably should work like Hunter's find the path. The initial idea of the mechanic has propably been lost during times and the skill in terms of current enviroment works like a Nokia Windows phone among Androids and iPhones.
I have not been playing since Helms deep/big battles/skill trees since 2012 or 2013, so my apologies if the information is incorrect after Helms deep regarding max power cost. I come to read the forums every now and then for nostalgic reasons, but I have zero intrest to start play the game itself

I am aware of this, I mentioned it in the original post.

My reason is, the dev team wants to simplify skills now, they said it hundreds of times. Clicking on a skill while not clicking on a similar skill is not a downside, it is an annoyance.
If Forced March would stay on, but give something like a +10% Attack Duration debuff or +5% power cost of skills while active, it would be fine for me. It would be a true downside, not an annoyance.

There are 2 ways to effectively kill mobs in landscape, either for deeds or just for quests. My two main characters are a Guardian and a Hunter (I also have a high level Minstrel).

1. Speed up, gather mobs, AoE them. Melee way, every melee class have a skill to contribute for it. Guardians and Champions are the best examples, as they have Charge/Sprint, and very good AoE skills. (Guardian is faster at gathering, Champion has better AoE, but basically they are on the same level at this.) Wardens do not have a convenient in-combat run speed boost, so this way is not that great for them. I know, they can gather mobs in Assailment stance, but for weak mobs they would be better to use:

2. Ranged picking them off one by one. Blue Hunter is the best in this style, not only cause the +30% (automatic) run speed, but the ability to induct skills on the run. Minstrels are also not bad (altough they don't have inherent run speed boost, mine have a little cause it is a high elf), and yes, this is the best way to use Warden most of the time for landscape. Not every time, but where mob density is low. And Forced March helps it a lot, putting it on the same level as Hunters - again, Hunter has more burst damage, but Warden runs faster, so the overall speed is roughly the same I think (just like Guardian-Champion).

I don't think my proposed change to not click would cause any balance issues, but if it would somehow (PvMP, idk), then some tiny combat-based debuff would balance it. The result would be that players who just used it for travel wouldn't see any difference, but it would bring Warden (especially the "yellow", ranged one) to the same level of soloing as a Hunter.

Speaking of travel, the current form of the skill, aka +38% is worthless if you have a mount. The most basic ones have +62% speed, and all of my mounts have +78%. Why would I use it then?
For landscape pew-pewing mobs, Hunter +30% is super nice, but worthless otherwise. Same for Wardens. Okay, I get it, you can use these in closed areas, dungeons etc, but still, the main use of this skill is to more conveniently pick off mobs one after another, and it is just a pain that I have to choose if I want to kill 20 mobs and press 20 more buttons, or I kill that 20 mobs ~25% slower.

Another thought is that there are many RPGs that allow you to set a macro that e.g. "use this skill automatically after exiting combat". LOTRO doesn't have this for some reason, and I'm not complaining about it, BUT if I have no choice to set these preferences, then please try to minimise the inconvenience of the skills.

[Thurallor]

My reason is, the dev team wants to simplify skills now, they said it hundreds of times. Clicking on a skill while not clicking on a similar skill is not a downside, it is an annoyance.
If Forced March would stay on, but give something like a +10% Attack Duration debuff or +5% power cost of skills while active, it would be fine for me. It would be a true downside, not an annoyance.

It wouldn't be fine for me. That would just mean I would have to deactivate it before combat AND activate it after combat; thus doubling the number of keystrokes.

Speaking of travel, the current form of the skill, aka +38% is worthless if you have a mount. The most basic ones have +62% speed, and all of my mounts have +78%. Why would I use it then?

Why doesn't everyone mount up between mob pulls? After all, everyone has mounts.

• Mounting up takes a second. There is a tradeoff between the initial delay and the increased speed. For short or medium distances, it doesn't make sense. Forced march has no such tradeoff, since it activates instantaneously.
• While mounted, most of your skills are unusable. Want to refresh some self-buffs while you run? Can't do it while mounted, but you can do it when using Forced March.
• When you get to your destination, you have to dismount before you can attack. Not so with Forced March.
• In many places (e.g. interiors and instances) you can't use mounts at all. But Force March has no such restrictions.

Forced March is an extremely handy skill, and I hope nobody gets the idea from this thread that most wardens would be happy with it being nerfed in any way.

Edit: I missed that you were asking why you would use it for long-distance travel. Nobody actually uses it that way, so it's a bit of a moot point.

[Halphast]

If Forced March would stay on, but give something like a +10% Attack Duration debuff or +5% power cost of skills while active, it would be fine for me. It would be a true downside

It's hard to believe you're serious with this. The amount of outrage this would cause.... do you want Hunter to get a debuff for their always-on run speed boost? After all, Warden's boost is self-only while Hunter's speed boost affects the whole fellowship. Why not give Hunters a -20% damage debuff as long as they're using Find the Path? Good grief.

[Tepee]

It wouldn't be fine for me. That would just mean I would have to deactivate it before combat AND activate it after combat; thus doubling the number of keystrokes.

It's hard to believe you're serious with this. The amount of outrage this would cause.... do you want Hunter to get a debuff for their always-on run speed boost? After all, Warden's boost is self-only while Hunter's speed boost affects the whole fellowship. Why not give Hunters a -20% damage debuff as long as they're using Find the Path? Good grief.

Everybody talks about "if it were always on it would be unbalanced".
Jeez, decide please if you consider it too OP or it could be "buffed". No click is is not a buff anyways, it is a convenience. My idea was that you can use it as deeding/defeating stance, but you would deactivate it in hardcore content. +5% power cost is nothing if you are questing, it only impact group content, but there you wouldn't use it anyway.
I just can't understand this... Anyway, no, I wasn't serious about this. I'm throwing ideas, and trying to get a common ground, mainly by trying to understand Warden people. I don't want to force my opinion to you, I want to understand things, and your reaction to my ideas helping me. Except if you are offensive, that is not helpful...

Anyway, he thing with long distance vs short distance travel is the following btw: for long distances, Forced March is useless, for short distances, it isn't OP imo. That is why the keystroke can be removed.

And comparing it to the Hunter: +30% group speed vs +38% self speed. That +8% is for that it don't affects the group. Already a downside compared to Find the Path, so why exactly would it require a keystroke too?
Beornings' Wanderlust is understandable to have a keystroke as a downside, because it can be much more useful for longer distances.

So my opinion about Forced March compared to other speed boosts:
- Is it worth to use it instead of mounts? Only when on a defeating session (not just travelling), and creature density is pretty low, otherwise it is better to just not use anything.
- Is it better than Find the Path (Hunter)? In group, definitely not, in solo only when creature density is lower.
- Is it better than Wanderlust (Beorning)? Definitely no, the ability to use ranged skills not worth the +24% run speed Wanderlust has.
- Is it better than Charge (Guardian)? In most cases no, Warden should benefit from an in-combat run speed boost, to gather and AoE mobs effectively. The +RS% Guardian has in combat is much more useful, believe me, even if it only has a 35-50% uptime.

To top it off with another idea: if the run speed boost were let's say 50-60%, then a lot of comparisons above would be more equal. Either this, or the keystroke removal. Any opinions on this?

Please understand that I am not proposing any changes other than the removal of the keystroke, and I just want to get an impression from you Wardens why this skill is good/bad as it is. We're just discussing things.

Until now, the only useful comment for me amongst the "conservative" opinions was this (and it was only about flavour):

I even like the drumbeat sound that accompanies the skill. It tells everyone around me "okay, let's not loiter, let's go" as I zoom off down the trail.

[jani16]

I am aware of this, I mentioned it in the original post.

My reason is, the dev team wants to simplify skills now, they said it hundreds of times. Clicking on a skill while not clicking on a similar skill is not a downside, it is an annoyance.
If Forced March would stay on, but give something like a +10% Attack Duration debuff or +5% power cost of skills while active, it would be fine for me. It would be a true downside, not an annoyance.

There are 2 ways to effectively kill mobs in landscape, either for deeds or just for quests. My two main characters are a Guardian and a Hunter (I also have a high level Minstrel).

1. Speed up, gather mobs, AoE them. Melee way, every melee class have a skill to contribute for it. Guardians and Champions are the best examples, as they have Charge/Sprint, and very good AoE skills. (Guardian is faster at gathering, Champion has better AoE, but basically they are on the same level at this.) Wardens do not have a convenient in-combat run speed boost, so this way is not that great for them. I know, they can gather mobs in Assailment stance, but for weak mobs they would be better to use:

2. Ranged picking them off one by one. Blue Hunter is the best in this style, not only cause the +30% (automatic) run speed, but the ability to induct skills on the run. Minstrels are also not bad (altough they don't have inherent run speed boost, mine have a little cause it is a high elf), and yes, this is the best way to use Warden most of the time for landscape. Not every time, but where mob density is low. And Forced March helps it a lot, putting it on the same level as Hunters - again, Hunter has more burst damage, but Warden runs faster, so the overall speed is roughly the same I think (just like Guardian-Champion).

I don't think my proposed change to not click would cause any balance issues, but if it would somehow (PvMP, idk), then some tiny combat-based debuff would balance it. The result would be that players who just used it for travel wouldn't see any difference, but it would bring Warden (especially the "yellow", ranged one) to the same level of soloing as a Hunter.

Speaking of travel, the current form of the skill, aka +38% is worthless if you have a mount. The most basic ones have +62% speed, and all of my mounts have +78%. Why would I use it then?
For landscape pew-pewing mobs, Hunter +30% is super nice, but worthless otherwise. Same for Wardens. Okay, I get it, you can use these in closed areas, dungeons etc, but still, the main use of this skill is to more conveniently pick off mobs one after another, and it is just a pain that I have to choose if I want to kill 20 mobs and press 20 more buttons, or I kill that 20 mobs ~25% slower.

Another thought is that there are many RPGs that allow you to set a macro that e.g. "use this skill automatically after exiting combat". LOTRO doesn't have this for some reason, and I'm not complaining about it, BUT if I have no choice to set these preferences, then please try to minimise the inconvenience of the skills.

I can understand the buff being nearly useless now since sounds like the mounts are way easier to come by than 10-15 years ago on low levels. I now recall the run speed effecting the animation speed of battle prep, so I always wondered, that why Forced March and battle prep were not made as a one skill, which gives out of combat run speed and allows mastery usage outside of combat. Would be one way to make it more usable. And there were many clicking skills like shield piecer and the mitigations javelins, that could have been one skill.
I did have a hunter too with blueline fleetness and the Orthanc set, which made PS spam as the primary way of playing, so I guess you are refering something similar to that with the movement of Hunters or War-speech Ministrel, who could dps on a move. Assailment Warden was very slow in terms of geting gambits off, hopefully it is better now. I personally would have made the gambit default on a 2-3 second cooldown from the normal 1 second and masteries on a 0 second cooldown in Assailment stance to decrease the lagg/attack speed animations with what the game eventually comes by with, since the single builder javelings significantly slowed the gambit building and were a joke.
I guess there could a toggleable skill to activate all none targetable gambit buffs with decreased buff duration and you can manually increase the duration to the default buff duration by preping the gambit yourself, if needed. Not sure if it is how possible to create in game out of combat macros for this particular game. The developer quality had a massive drop with Helms Deep, at least the new Warden dev in Helms deep and before the expansion made the class kind of a joke with short duration finishers and so many yellow line clickies.

[Tepee]

I can understand the buff being nearly useless now since sounds like the mounts are way easier to come by than 10-15 years ago on low levels. I now recall the run speed effecting the animation speed of battle prep, so I always wondered, that why Forced March and battle prep were not made as a one skill, which gives out of combat run speed and allows mastery usage outside of combat. Would be one way to make it more usable. And there were many clicking skills like shield piecer and the mitigations javelins, that could have been one skill.
I did have a hunter too with blueline fleetness and the Orthanc set, which made PS spam as the primary way of playing, so I guess you are refering something similar to that with the movement of Hunters or War-speech Ministrel, who could dps on a move. Assailment Warden was very slow in terms of geting gambits off, hopefully it is better now. I personally would have made the gambit default on a 2-3 second cooldown from the normal 1 second and masteries on a 0 second cooldown in Assailment stance to decrease the lagg/attack speed animations with what the game eventually comes by with, since the single builder javelings significantly slowed the gambit building and were a joke.
I guess there could a toggleable skill to activate all none targetable gambit buffs with decreased buff duration and you can manually increase the duration to the default buff duration by preping the gambit yourself, if needed. Not sure if it is how possible to create in game out of combat macros for this particular game. The developer quality had a massive drop with Helms Deep, at least the new Warden dev in Helms deep and before the expansion made the class kind of a joke with short duration finishers and so many yellow line clickies.

You made me think... You know what would be cool? If Assailment Stance would give the current Forced March run speed boost, and Forced March would either be an activated in-combat run speed boost; or removed from the game and In the Fray Stance would passively give +10-20% unconditional (in-combat too) run speed.
That way Wardens would have a ranged speed boost compared to Hunters and a melee speed boost compared to Guardians.

[Thurallor]

Please understand that I am not proposing any changes other than the removal of the keystroke, and I just want to get an impression from you Wardens why this skill is good/bad as it is. We're just discussing things.

I don't think any wardens would object if this skill were changed to "always on". We only object when you try to bargain on our behalf -- we don't agree with the tradeoffs you are willing to make. And if devs are going to spend their limited time on improving the class, we would rather they spend it on issues that we think are more important.

[Halphast]

And comparing it to the Hunter: +30% group speed vs +38% self speed. That +8% is for that it don't affects the group. Already a downside compared to Find the Path, so why exactly would it require a keystroke too?

First, thanks for putting up with my annoyance. At the time I wasn't sure what your motives were- but you seem to be discussing this in good faith (even if you and I disagree on some points).

Second: yes, I do think 30% group speed versus 38% self speed is a decent balance- but a dev might not agree. So asking for a keypress/click removal risks other changes being made, such as lowering the % boost. Maybe I just have trust-issues, but that's why I'm bringing up balance so much.

[Plidak]

Huh??

I must be using Forced March wrong...

I use it for the plus +38 percent movement and run speed!
Wardens are the fastest runners in the game!

Beor 62% ....


And to the OP. Use Battle Preparation. It not just helps you with keeping your current gambits on out of combat, but also you can prepare new ones.

I do agree that FM should work like hunter skill. You togle it once, done.
It was ven promissed with the u35 update, from OMM but it never go live.
Question "Why " was simply ignored.
Nothing new ...

And if devs are going to spend their limited time on improving the class, we would rather they spend it on issues that we think are more important.

Ahhahahhaaha. You realise it require just a slight change how skill work right ?
Limired time .... Pls dont!!!
Your white steed go this way =====>

Most importand changes.
Like adding 25% HP and 8% mits out of the blue.
Or flooding BA with quest rings just to please some MF who is lazy enough to open the instannce finder panel.

And AH yes. The new 140 "lets milk them all" Valar boost.
With this logic they can just FIX the skills like FM and put them on store / the fixes i mean. 500 lp each.
Il buy it. Will pay thousands to be hones.
You realose that every speed boost overwrite warden FM right? Cancel it even.
Also if you have a hunter with FtP on, his aura overwrite /but not canceling/ your FM one. So your movement speed decrease.
Is that not enough for a fix?
Ye, it doesnt bring profit=ignored.
Even after the main dev who worked on u35 wrd changes promised it.

"ah yes, why not, deal"

Ah yes but not ...

[Tepee]

I don't think any wardens would object if this skill were changed to "always on". We only object when you try to bargain on our behalf -- we don't agree with the tradeoffs you are willing to make. And if devs are going to spend their limited time on improving the class, we would rather they spend it on issues that we think are more important.

First, thanks for putting up with my annoyance. At the time I wasn't sure what your motives were- but you seem to be discussing this in good faith (even if you and I disagree on some points).

Second: yes, I do think 30% group speed versus 38% self speed is a decent balance- but a dev might not agree. So asking for a keypress/click removal risks other changes being made, such as lowering the % boost. Maybe I just have trust-issues, but that's why I'm bringing up balance so much.

Thank you for your understanding. So basically we are on the same side, but I'm a bit more radical in this matter, because I'm a beginner of this class, and found myself more annoyed by these things, cause I used to my Hunter, and you are just used to how it works. It's good to hear.

I wasn't bargaining in your behalf, sorry if I made you assume that in some way. English is not my first language, so I may not be subtle enough sometimes.

And finally, I can understand your frustration about dev choices and priorities. Guardian, my main will be the next class that will be reworked, and I can tell... Well, they trying rebuild it in the worst ways possible. There were two proposed change list from the devs in the last few months, and they just don't understand how the class is played, and want to shift the direction in a way that noone wants... And they did it twice...

So, yeah. But I found that the speed boost stuffs are very much "untouchable" because any buffs would make a huge balance change, and any nerf would make riots. This is why I see very little chance to this keystroke removal, even though this wouldn't be a buff, it would be just a simplification, which corresponds to the way of the current development.