On Lore-masters and Tamed Creatures

[OnnMacMahal]

Hi everyone, I’d like to kick off a conversation about Lore-masters. Lore-masters (along with yellow-line Burglars) have long filled a unique 'support' function in role and group composition, as evidenced by the dominance of the yellow ‘Ancient Master’ line. However, ‘support’ can mean different things to different players or in difference contexts, and the Ancient Master is only one of three possible trait lines available to Lore-masters. So let’s start talking about Lore-masters: what the class does well, what things bug you, and what you might feel needs a bit of improvement. I’m also going to post some preliminary thoughts and questions below about specific aspects of the class, including pets, DPS skills and ability, and support-primary skills and mechanics, to help guide the discussion.



Pets (more than just the Keeper of Animals trait line)
Do you engage with the ‘pet rotation’? If yes, how do you feel about it? Do you like that it adds activity or raises the skill ceiling, or do you find it overwhelming or even tedious?

Do you find yourself using different pets in different circumstances? Do you feel like your pets actively contribute to your gameplay and your Lore-master fantasy? Do you have opportunities to use the pets you like, stylistically? Or do mostly find yourself locked into a few types, either statically or in a constant ‘pet rotation’ (ie: Catmint raven, boglurker, bear).

Some of you may have guessed at this, but we’re eyeing some changes to pets similar to the changes made to captain pets in U35. Primarily, that would mean a pet summoning cooldown, which would limit your ability to use any given pet skill repeatedly (ie: bypassing the pet skill cooldowns by dismissing and resummoning the pet itself). Like captain heralds, this would still allow you to immediately resummon a pet that you have had out for a while (long enough for its cooldown time to fully elapse) but it would prevent you from using pet skills more than twice in a row without waiting for either the individual skill’s cooldown or the pet summoning cooldown.



DPS
A DPS-oriented Lore-master has some interesting skills and mechanics, but your overall repertoire of damaging skills can sometimes feel quite thin. Are there things you like about the current damage potential at your disposal? What frustrates you when trying to prioritize DPS? Reliance on induction skills? A dependency on tar + catmint raven to maintain high output? Waiting for cooldowns when Burning Embers is already tiered up and Lighting Strike/Storm are on cooldown? What do you like about your core damage rotation? What do you wish you did better?



The Ancient Master – Support-first Lore-master
The Ancient Master line is often the de-facto primary trait setup for Lore-masters, but that doesn’t mean it is above reproach. While LMs are primarily sought after in raid groups, instances, and PvP for their support capacity, that doesn’t mean the ‘support-first’ LM has no room for improvement. For those of you who live and breathe yellow-LM, what do you like about the class and the role? What do you wish were different? Are you frustrated by the fact that your long-mez is also your interrupt skill? Does Water-lore-stacking provide you with something to steadily cycle into your skills, or does it feel like too much necessary upkeep? Do you feel like you contribute meaningfully to the group in moments where there are few/no adds to CC or manage? Do you just wish you had a Wizards Lightning skill to reapply your preferred 'Out in the Cold' or 'Playng with Fire' debuffs?





Edit: Just wanted to update this top post to note that we are not planning to remove the Support role or identity from the Lore-master. Many of you have expressed that you enjoy playing a support class, and that this is part of a group dynamic that makes LotRO unique.

[Elmagor]

1)Since you nerf The Spirit of Nature (with adding CD) and bear (with nerfing agro) LM pets needs to be buffed with maybe increased dps from them (if you worry about having debuffs to powerfull)

2)Red LM need to have more dps in both AoE and solo target if you want to see him as dps in instances

3)Light of Hope needs to be used on LM himself too with more AoE healing around it to keep him as valuable support for groups. Same for Peasant Breeze

3)Knowledge of Lore Master, Sing of Power: See all Ends and Sing of Power: Command must be reworked to be more usefull skills

4)Nature's Fury and Fire Shield needs to be buffed as capstone skills

5)Yes, Blinding Flash too important and usefull, we need 2nd interrupt

6)How about Wisdom of Consul adding bubbles for other memeber for your fellowship around LM?

7)Corruption removing one of weakest parts from LM. Usually you don't want to waste skill what removing CD from CC to just remove another corruption

[Tryplon]

DPS
A DPS-oriented Lore-master has some interesting skills and mechanics, but your overall repertoire of damaging skills can sometimes feel quite thin. Are there things you like about the current damage potential at your disposal? What frustrates you when trying to prioritize DPS? Reliance on induction skills? A dependency on tar + catmint raven to maintain high output? Waiting for cooldowns when Burning Embers is already tiered up and Lighting Strike/Storm are on cooldown? What do you like about your core damage rotation? What do you wish you did better?

Ok, first things first, I firmly believe that to make the LM fun to play, you should just give us the ability to use damage skills on the move (in red), but more on that later.

I like the general idea of debuffing a bit before big (AoE) damage skills. So, having longer cooldowns with "insane" damage can be nice. I don't think the reliance on tar + catmint for big attacks is awful, maybe give tar and Benediction of the raven a -10% fire & lightning debuff, so we do not only get a buff to half our skills. This way we can chain some nice big attacks. Honestly, if necessary, take Wind-lore and SoP: command away in red line.

However, imo the big cooldowns are currently too long and do not do enough damage.
The debuffs are good enough, but the cooldown of lightning storm and tar could be reduced from 90 to 60 seconds (in red),
the cd of Ents can easily be reduced from 300 to 120 seconds,
and I'd also advocate for a reduction of the cooldown of sticky gourd OR Light of the rising dawn from 30 to 20 seconds.

Furthermore, ancient fire and mighty wind could be reduced to 1 trait, which gives space for a 5% crit trait. All classes have this for their dps line, but lm is strangely left out.

All of this doesn't matter though with the clunkiness of the static lm. It feels very outdated and just makes the LM not fun to play. Even if the damage numbers would be increased and the cooldowns would be reduced to 10 times what they are now, it would make the LM an OP but boring dps class. The inductions themselves aren't the big issue, having them for big, rewarding skills feels fine, but let us use them on the move. The same with the animations, please make us a class that can use our damage skills on the move (this doesn't mean that many animations shouldn't be sped up, burning embers for one, is terrible).

It's rather odd, but I'm having more fun running around on my lm pressing wizard's fire 20 times than to stop and do a burning embers and lightning strike. If necessary, I'd even take a 30% run speed debuff while using induction skills on the move, but that might also be a thing that could be removed by traiting high enough into the red line.

Lastly, I'd advocate for upping the damage from cashing out burning embers considerably and making staff-strike and staff-sweep scale from tact mastery. Currently, they really don't feel worth it.

[Vuldyn]

Just a quick thing to mention. Yellow Lore-Masters have and always will be required for 12-man content of any difficulty as bosses are balanced around their existence, and if they aren't then LMs are brokenly OP. For that reason, it is safe to assume that any other trait line for LM will be by default less desirable in end-game content since LotRO often rewards having as many different classes in the raid as possible. This in no way means that Blue or Red should be neglected in fun, but unless somehow either of these specs subvert other staple classes in their role, they won't ever be part of a preferred group comp.

[Pharone]

Pets (more than just the Keeper of Animals trait line)
Do you engage with the ‘pet rotation’? If yes, how do you feel about it? Do you like that it adds activity or raises the skill ceiling, or do you find it overwhelming or even tedious?

Do you find yourself using different pets in different circumstances? Do you feel like your pets actively contribute to your gameplay and your Lore-master fantasy? Do you have opportunities to use the pets you like, stylistically? Or do mostly find yourself locked into a few types, either statically or in a constant ‘pet rotation’ (ie: Catmint raven, boglurker, bear).

Some of you may have guessed at this, but we’re eyeing some changes to pets similar to the changes made to captain pets in U35. Primarily, that would mean a pet summoning cooldown, which would limit your ability to use any given pet skill repeatedly (ie: bypassing the pet skill cooldowns by dismissing and resummoning the pet itself). Like captain heralds, this would still allow you to immediately resummon a pet that you have had out for a while (long enough for its cooldown time to fully elapse) but it would prevent you from using pet skills more than twice in a row without waiting for either the individual skill’s cooldown or the pet summoning cooldown.

First and foremost, I want to point out that I am a leveling Loremaster of 77ish. I do not have any experience with end-game Loremaster or raiding. My thoughts here solely have to do with leveling a loremaster up as a Blue Line pet master (over world, questing, deeds, etc).

Why I stopped playing my Loremaster as my main:
I love my Loremaster, but I changed my main from him to a Champion after I got to the high 70s. The main reason for this is because I leveled my loremaster as a pet master build where I depended a lot on my pet to do the majority of my damage. I pulled, debuffed, and did crowd control as needed, but for the most part, I would tell my pet to kill one of the mobs, and he did so with ease. I used Lynx almost exclusively because it is a DPS machine.

At some point in the 60s, my pet started less and less powerful. In the 70s it got to the point where I was doing the majority of the damage, and the pet felt more like a visual dot. That completely ruined my image of the character I thought I was leveling up.

Only one trait line viable in end-game:
On top of that, I kept hearing from everyone that in the end game, I will specifically be required to be Yellow line and to forget about damaging anything. That was the nail in the coffin because I didn't start a Loremaster with the intent of playing Yellow line. I don't know why there is a Blue and Red line when the class is basically shoe horned in to just using the Yellow line once you hit max level. Now, I get that it is a player-made concept, but the point is that the players wouldn't have come up with that concept IF the Blue and Red lines were actually valuable options for those roles in the end game. That means that Blue and Red need serious help.

Pet Visuals:
I can not stress enough how much I dislike the Bog-guardian pet. I'm sorry to all the people that like it, but that model is one of the uglies ones I have seen in the game. That alone is one reason I never ever use that pet. To add to that, the times I have tried to use it despite the looks of it, the pet constantly flies right up in front of my camera view, so I can't see what I am attacking. Due to the fact that it is tall and it does not move in to fight (due to being a caster pet), it just stands there right in the camera's view. Complete deal breaker for me. Give me any other option for the "caster" pet, and I would use it. As long as it is that Bog thing, nope nope... nope.

While I love the lynx's melee DPS (the main reason I use it the most), I am not a fan of the model. I would much rather have a more aggressive looking pet model. Something that when the mob sees it coming, they would actually be in horror that it is coming to eat their face off. I look at the little lynx, and I can't help but to think that I should toss it a ball of yarn to play with lol. He's adorable, but not what I would think of for a melee DPS mob.

Things I would like to see changed/added:
Pet Dash For Initial Combat Start - Give the melee DPS pets a teleport ability they can use to instantly get to the mob they are told to attack. It would be nice if when I tell my pet to attack a mob, they would be able to get to that mob with out such a long time running to it. The lynx in particular takes longer running to the mob than it does killing the mob. If I send the pet on a mob that is too far away to teleport, then have the pet run towards it until it is with in range, and then teleport the rest of the way. Put it on a cool down timer or something if it is over powered. Just give em a way to DASH in to the fight every 5 seconds or so.

More Powerful Instant-Cast DoTs - Since I am a pet master OR crowd controller, it would be nice if I had more instant-cast Damage-Over-Time spells that I could toss in between telling the pet to do stuff and crowd controlling mobs. Put a small recast on them, so they can't be abused, but make them powerful DoTs, so that I feel like I am contributing to the fight more than just locking down mobs and such. Any casts that require casting time are going to be instantly useless if I am forced to be a Crowd Controller in end game content because if I am spending time casting then that's time I am taking away from doing CC.


Thanks for taking the time to listen to everyone.
Pharone the Gnome

[cdq1958]

I don't particularly like the idea of a pet rotation, though I put up with it. Having a cooldown on summoning them just makes that more tedious.
I miss having the eagle in red or yellow specializations. My pets are there to help me and my group, not me to help my pets. ;p
I would like to see more mobility in red. It doesn't have to happen with all skills; but allowing more induction skills being able to be cast while moving; even if slowed a bit, would help.

One other thing. I miss being able to CC instance and raid bosses. Bring that back, please; while adding adaptability to the bosses so we have to be tactical about it.

[Dranak123]

Just a quick thing to mention. Yellow Lore-Masters have and always will be required for 12-man content of any difficulty as bosses are balanced around their existence, and if they aren't then LMs are brokenly OP. For that reason, it is safe to assume that any other trait line for LM will be by default less desirable in end-game content since LotRO often rewards having as many different classes in the raid as possible. This in no way means that Blue or Red should be neglected in fun, but unless somehow either of these specs subvert other staple classes in their role, they won't ever be part of a preferred group comp.

Err...yes ...yes ...and yes...I think the 3 replies you have cover most of it very well indeed. You can close the thread now.

[Fargasia]

I'm a casual player who doesn't raid, so I don't use yellow LM.

Red LM was first char I ever got to lvl 100, so have a fondness for it. I don't swap pets, except at the start of a fight. So I use bear or lynx when I want mobs bunched up before I use Lightning storm. I have to admit, I really don't use the other pets too much, jus the boggy sometimes.

Only requests I have are :

• Shorter inductions
• Give us Water lore much earlier than lvl 70
• Give us a cosmetic skin for the boggy - just too darn big and can obscure things. (tundra cub skin does this very well for bear, who normally has a very big butt in tunnels!

Thanks!

[Strider5548]

Hi everyone, I’d like to kick off a conversation about Lore-masters. Lore-masters (along with yellow-line Burglars) have long filled a unique 'support' function in role and group composition, as evidenced by the dominance of the yellow ‘Ancient Master’ line. However, ‘support’ can mean different things to different players or in difference contexts, and the Ancient Master is only one of three possible trait lines available to Lore-masters. So let’s start talking about Lore-masters: what the class does well, what things bug you, and what you might feel needs a bit of improvement. I’m also going to post some preliminary thoughts and questions below about specific aspects of the class, including pets, DPS skills and ability, and support-primary skills and mechanics, to help guide the discussion.

As always appreciate your engagement with the community.

Pets (more than just the Keeper of Animals trait line)
Do you engage with the ‘pet rotation’? If yes, how do you feel about it? Do you like that it adds activity or raises the skill ceiling, or do you find it overwhelming or even tedious?

Yes, every LM who does any real group content engages with the pet rotation. This is an integral part of LM gameplay. Some people hate it, personally I like it for the following reasons:

-Increases skill ceiling (you can say it's not hard but doesn't change the fact that it's easier to find LM's who can't do it well vs. those that can).
-Gives the LM more to do. LM's have a lot of skills and types of skills, they can DPS, CC, heal, debuff targets, provide power for the group, provide stun immunity, etc. etc. Without the pet rotation the LM has more than enough time to do all of these things, but with the pet rotation LM's have more to juggle and this can force the LM to have to prioritize what to do.
-Gives the LM more to think about. To build on the point above, if you are busy supporting your group by providing the pet debuffs that are relevant for your group's composition, you have to decide what else is important enough for you to do. In some cases, you have to decide which pets are worth foregoing in favor of maintaining CC, lores on multiple targets that aren't near each other, SI on tank, heals, etc. Pet debuffs also add an element of timing consideration into a fight.

Do you find yourself using different pets in different circumstances?

In a group context I use every pet that would benefit the group. This means almost always Raven (helps hunters/RKs immensely), always bear, bog lurker if there are any ranged DPS in the group, and spirit pet in very specific situations due to the last nerf to its uptime. Eagle was only ever useful for self rez, Sabretooth is almost never used, and Lynx is useless.

Bear used to have a nice situational use for absorbing large hits or drawing a single add away temporarily, but this is no longer the case in instances.

When solo or running DPS as second LM (rare), raven is the only pet I keep out for consistent DPS boost, swap to bear if I need a tank to grab aggro.

Do you feel like your pets actively contribute to your gameplay and your Lore-master fantasy? Do you have opportunities to use the pets you like, stylistically? Or do mostly find yourself locked into a few types, either statically or in a constant ‘pet rotation’ (ie: Catmint raven, boglurker, bear).

They contribute to gameplay in the sense that the core pets are powerful and personally I enjoy leveraging them for different purposes within the game. I don't think we need access to more pets than we already have, and the variety we have now is pretty good. There are pets that are hardly ever used or never used, that shouldn't be the case.

From a fantasy perspective, I think if LMs had to tame their own pets in the wild (like hunters in WoW) there would be a greater sense of attachment towards them.

Some of you may have guessed at this, but we’re eyeing some changes to pets similar to the changes made to captain pets in U35. Primarily, that would mean a pet summoning cooldown, which would limit your ability to use any given pet skill repeatedly (ie: bypassing the pet skill cooldowns by dismissing and resummoning the pet itself). Like captain heralds, this would still allow you to immediately resummon a pet that you have had out for a while (long enough for its cooldown time to fully elapse) but it would prevent you from using pet skills more than twice in a row without waiting for either the individual skill’s cooldown or the pet summoning cooldown.

As a proponent of the pet rotation, I can get on board with having a CD on pet summoning but would suggest you consider the following:

-Pets can die easily or bug out, you don't want to create a situation where the LM is forced to dismiss their pet (or pet gets one shot) shortly after summoning, and now they are basically unable to do anything useful.
-There might be some merit in exploring whether a pet specific CD makes more sense than a global CD. This would prevent things like bear spamming to indefinitely taunt a target, but would still allow the LM to get a proper rotation going between different pets.
-Summoning a pet and just having it auto attack a boss is not fun. There's nothing engaging about this at all and the fact that LM pets have useful skills and can be rotated keeps the player engaged with the pets throughout combat. I'm not offering a solution here, just stating a problem that if the LM simply picks the pet they think is best and lets it autoattack for 30 seconds, a minute, whatever, that's not engaging gameplay at all.

DPS
A DPS-oriented Lore-master has some interesting skills and mechanics, but your overall repertoire of damaging skills can sometimes feel quite thin. Are there things you like about the current damage potential at your disposal? What frustrates you when trying to prioritize DPS? Reliance on induction skills? A dependency on tar + catmint raven to maintain high output? Waiting for cooldowns when Burning Embers is already tiered up and Lighting Strike/Storm are on cooldown? What do you like about your core damage rotation? What do you wish you did better?

LM burst DPS is actually pretty massive if you unload all your big skills at once, the problem is that every large hitting LM skill has a massive cooldown, so their sustain is awful. In today's game, waiting more than a minute to re-use a DPS skill just makes no sense at all. Between long inductions and long CDs LM DPS simply can't keep up with other DPS classes. I don't think there's any issue with having to leverage tar/raven to maximize your own DPS.

The Ancient Master – Support-first Lore-master
The Ancient Master line is often the de-facto primary trait setup for Lore-masters, but that doesn’t mean it is above reproach. While LMs are primarily sought after in raid groups, instances, and PvP for their support capacity, that doesn’t mean the ‘support-first’ LM has no room for improvement. For those of you who live and breathe yellow-LM, what do you like about the class and the role? What do you wish were different?

I think the LM is one of the most unique classes I've played in any MMO. I love that it has a core role in LOTRO that sits outside of the heal/tank/DPS paradigm. I always felt like a really good LM can make or break a group, especially in 3/6 person content. Their toolkit is very versatile and when played properly they can make a T5 instance so much easier. I think there are few classes who are able to tip the scales as effectively as an LM, and personally that's one of the things I really like about playing the class.

Are you frustrated by the fact that your long-mez is also your interrupt skill?

I think it would be good to give LMs an immediate interrupt skill in addition to the one associated with blinding flash.

Does Water-lore-stacking provide you with something to steadily cycle into your skills, or does it feel like too much necessary upkeep?

I'd say more the former. You can save time by foregoing water lore but in most challenging content you'll want to keep it stacked. I like that personally, and I like that having it stack 3x can give you more choice (i.e. do I put it on someone else this time who is taking or about to take some damage).

Do you feel like you contribute meaningfully to the group in moments where there are few/no adds to CC or manage? Do you just wish you had a Wizards Lightning skill to reapply your preferred 'Out in the Cold' or 'Playng with Fire' debuffs?

I think fights with a lot of CC definitely make things more engaging, challenging, and fun for the LM. I'm ngl before red maiden got changed that was one of my favorite instances on an LM, keeping all 6 mobs CC'd the entire time basically made it so the group could bypass all mechanics so it had to be changed, but as the LM doing the CCing I was having a blast. I still think LMs are interesting in fights where no CC is involved, especially if the LM needs to dip into a broader set of their skills to add value in that fight.


Thanks for reading all the feedback here, looking forward to see what you do with the class (and keeping my fingers crossed champ is next on your list!)

[alearon]

First things first, I appriciate you making a post so we as players can put in feedback.

My name is Alerond and I play Lore-Master on Landroval; they know me as Photon. This is from a raiders perspective, so what I'm about to write is verry biased. Next to that I'm most of the times put in lore-master because some people don't really like the class or think its either too much responsibility, or what I think repetitive.

So First things first, whenever you make a character you will see dedicated roles supposed to be for wich class. Lore-master is assigned support. So far, ever since trait lines were introduced, yellow line has been by far the most popular in raids since you have the best supportive skills. a basic Lore-Master knows that you want to have fire and frost lore up to reduce outgoing damage on the boss most players will know this, even if they play outside of the raiding communities.

Here is where things will become confusing for people who are more casual and don't really care about higher difficulty content.

Now things get real, and i'm going to be straightforeward.

Lore-Masters are boring (to me), not because I don't like the class, no no, it gets repetetive and tedious while carrying a lot of responsiblities over the raid.

Lore-masters are essential in all raids to be succesfull, that is because the lore-masters arsenal is HUGE, like it cannot be understemated how versatile a lore-master can be. *But it isn't* your skillbar is filled up to the max so you can have many different tasks; however for the last year my task has been : Lores, AC, tar Daze, Root, water-lore, stun and repeat. Throw in the tedious pet-cycling so you get to see your catminted raven for 1 second, your bog lurker for 0.5seconds your bear for 6 seconds to catch up to the target and then they're gone, or like its more often then not the case, back to the raven to benediction, bog lurker the next target. that is going to be smushed by the hunterstack since the LM debuffs are the strongest for the hunters. Lore things back up and then keep things dazed and then repeat for a twenty minute bossfight. Oh yeah there is a spirit pet wich was too strong, but now you never whip it out since the cooldown is so long and you wait untill one of the healers goes down basicly. (1.30M cd would fit better, 3M is huge)

Lore-masters to me were fun when you had access to lighting storm and assisted in taking down mobs, that is what the majority of Landroval things they are doing anyway by using damaging skills instead of pet debuffs, not knowing that the fight goes so much quicker if you just stick to the debuffing stuff.

Right now its unfortunate that the Lynx and Sabre-Tooth tigre can't be summoned unless you are actively trying to slow the raid down. Pet debuffing is fine, but at least make every pet usuable and make them 1M long so at least you can see your pets. The rescue eagle rez being in blue-line only is also kinda lame to me being able to put down a emergency rescue rez before something was about to clobber you was hilarious and always was led to good banter with the raid.

Something else that grinds my gears is Wizards frost.

So you are using fire-frost lore and you upgrade it by using a fire,lighting,frost skill correct? Pretty dope. However -1k tactical mastery on a lvl 140 mob is so bad, next to the increased powercost wich I guess is meant for moors players. Most of the time you refresh your lores every 30 seconds so you have tier 3 windlore on the boss and they will automaticly get the worst "upgrade"debuffs. It would have been cool if those three different upgrade debuffs were actually versatile ( more -tac damage, miss chance on like a boss aoe or something) to make it feel like good lore-masters could actually care about changing the bonus debuff after wind lore, cuz right now nobody really cares about that.

Sorry about the rant.

my thought on the three traitlines?

Pets (more than just the Keeper of Animals trait line)
Blueline is not my cup of tea, feels like it should get the yellow mini yellow warden treatment to me

would like if crowthies were actually in yellow line cuz then you could deal some damage while having fun hehexd

DPS


So for this I think red LM needs a GIGANTIC CD cut on your high damage skills, 5 minutes for ents go to war? come on man that's wayyyy too long unfortunately, or you know make it a 10 milion base power hit if its gonna be that long. Next to that the other big skills are like too long, you're mostly using burning embers and then like cracked earth gust of wind and light of the rising dawn untill you finally have your true skills back up ey. (if you don't pet swap wich most people won't). casting is fun it is kinda awkward


The Ancient Master – Support-first Lore-master
I like Yellow, concept is fun but right now the raid is way to LM heavy and its more tedious then fun to CC something. It should get like a new skill that would be a fun to use skill. so at least it doesnt feel like you slap something with a wet noodle.

#vuldyni needs to make his minstrel Vuldynstrel make it happen peeps he knows he wants to

Hope this helps!

[istvana]

Pet rotation is much the same as constant champion weapon swapping - tedious and annoying and keeps the LM from having time to actually use her own abilities. Please eliminate it the way champion weapon swapping was eliminated.

The LM pet hasn't been nearly as effective since the buff giving it three extra levels was eliminated and then belatedly replaced with something not nearly as good. That was even before the latest pet nerf. I used to love blue LM but it just is too ineffective now.

I agree with changes that make it harder to use the pet to kill things while the player is afk.

I agree with making effects less flashy to reduce lag - yes that means murder of crows.

[Vilan]

Pets

On landscape, I just go red and don't bother summoning my pet because it gives no noticeable assistance, other than occasional bear tanking on a particularly tough mob. Pet DPS needs a huge increase for them to be impactful.

For group content, rotating through pets is IMHO a stupid concept and probably contributes to lag too. Disable pet summoning in combat. It would make your choice of pet for a given fight require some thought, and encourage you to watch over your pet to keep him alive rather than have it kamikaze the boss and just summon another when it dies. Alternately, pet summoning in combat could be added as a blue capstone. This would allow pet cycling to continue to exist (if that's your philosophy on the class) while giving blue something special which it currently doesn't really have. It would open up the possibility of a raid with 2 LMs, one doing pet debuffs and one doing other stuff.

Also remove the 3 min CD on the spirit pet. Nothing says "we don't know how to balance this" like asymmetrical summoning times. If the catmint 10% healing mark is too much, just cut the heals in half, 2.5% normal and 5% catmint.

DPS

Personally I don't mind the induction-based DPS play of the LM. I know many people despise it, but to me it lends a unique flavor to the class. If people prefer fast pew-pew or shing-shing, there's other classes for that. I feel like there's enough variety of attack spells that there's always something off CD. Lowering the CD on Ents would be nice though.

Some kind of lightning debuff skill would be handy as we have quite a few lightning skills. Speaking of, there seems to be a large focus on reducing fire mits, to the point where many other classes feel obliged to do fire damage to tap into these debuffs. Meanwhile frost only has the obscure sabretooth debuff and lightning gets nothing.

Support

LMs are always welcome in raids, usually accepted in 6 mans, and sometimes grudgingly allowed in 3 mans. We don't fit into the group trinity. We can't heal well, we can't DPS well, we can't tank well. When someone advertises for a 3 man healer, nobody is hoping for an LM to volunteer, unless stun immunity is important like Puglakh. Some extra heal skills would be a big help. Stronger debuffs would work too, but I realize that would destabilize raiding. Maybe in yellow Wisdom of the Council affects nearby players too. Or give us an in-combat rez. We need something. Alternately you could boost our DPS to the point that we can sign up for a DPS spot without feeling embarrassed.

[Osglinthor]

The way pets are currently used is terrible gameplay and it needs to go. I dont mind full support LM, but most of it needs to come from LM. There is nothing "high skill" about current pet rotation. All that can be achive with LM skills, different CDs and so on. Pet summon CD is fine, provided they get way tankier and bug out less offten. Their use should be to compliment LM/Group depending on fight, their skills should be more impactfull(not in way of mental -20% fire mit debuff and such) but something you can rotate trough and maybe work in with different LM skills. So that LM isnt as it is now. Extremly boring to play in almost every scenario only fun you have is when you have to manage some CC where you feel like you actualy do something.

[Elmagor]

SSG should listen to end game content LMs, and not low level LMs in blue line who never have any instance experience. Because LM role in instances so important and so easy to screw

[Eloriena]

As stated somewhere else: Please keep the unique full support role alive and don't force us to be half-heal or half-dd, but make us more useful/impactful.
One of the current major problems of LM: Our corruption removals ar not optimal in comparison to other support traitlines and we have too many skills in yellow and not enough fast/non-induction skills in red.

Blue LM: I love LM pets but currently they are more like skills than pets, please make them more useful, give each pet a working role, maybe different stances/skills for solo and group play for some pets. Give every Pet a corruption removal skil. Maybe think about it as an offensive support traitline, that deals DMG via Pets and makes pets pets, not just skills.
e.g.:
Bear: Tank for solo or small fellowships, Damage reduction and resistance debuffs in 6-man or raids
Boglurker: Sufficient ranged DD / offensive support for ranged DMG
Lynx: stealthed debuffer with single target melee damage
Eagle: Power reg/Heal and self-rezz
Raven: Medium tactical dd with tactical DMG buffs / debuffs
Sabertooth: Melee aoe dd with interrupt skills
Light: Heal with incoming heal debuffs

Auras for pets giving constant buffs to the fellowship might be nice.

Red LM: i am not really a red LM, but i really like the heavy impact skills like lightning storm, but it is annoying to be rooted in place for a lot of skills.

Yellow LM:
I really like the maiar approach of things in terms of: we help and may save the day, but we do it subtle and only sometimes with a flash. We can heal, when we chose to and not because we are forced to do it, we can do a little damage, but we won't have to. We can do neither and still be usefull for our fellowship. I like the flexibility to chose in every situation what i will and can do with my skills and time as a yLM. It makes it a quite complex class, but lotro would be a different game without it. I love that lotro hasn't the holy trinity of dd/heal/tank, but a special place and heart for support.

BUT: we have too many skills, some of them broken vor years. I see the yLM as an defensive debuffer and CC traitline, that can use the help of pets, depending on the playstyle they chose for a fight, but shouldn't rotate through pets like they are just skills.

Buffs and Debuffs a yLM should keep:
- All Lores, Ancient Craft, Tactical DMG Buffs/Debuffs (Tar / Warding Lore), CC

What should be reworked:
- Signs of Power, Corruption skills
- Knowledge of the Loremaster - if re-working the skill to interact with the actual values isn't possible maybe a list of possible effects like possible corruption effect and immunities could be displayed.

Im absolutely curios what your plans are and i hope we don't have to wait too long for a first preview.

[Alcor]

First, thank you for looking at the LM class.

Although my LM is 140, I am mostly a landscape player along with small T1 instances. I have played blue for that because I always found it most enjoyable. However, the pet contribution has gradually been whittled away. It began when pet levels were reduced to be on par with the LM. This probably makes sense in the red and yellow lines, but not blue where the pet is the whole point of the line. I mostly used the bear for solo as he was a decent tank. But since I don't do the higher tier instances I never learned about pet rotations in the first place but the concept seems a bit silly to me. Personally I just enjoyed blue more than red.

The only comment I have regarding yellow is the wound removal. We used to have a trait (before trait trees) called, "Proof against all ills," which made our wound removal fellowship-wide. IMO, if any class should have a group-wide wound-removal it should the a yellow LM. IIRC, even the purge poison for hunters is fellowship wide in its yellow line and it does more than poison now too.

[CaerArianrhod]

Pets (more than just the Keeper of Animals trait line)
Do you engage with the ‘pet rotation’? If yes, how do you feel about it? Do you like that it adds activity or raises the skill ceiling, or do you find it overwhelming or even tedious?

Do you find yourself using different pets in different circumstances? Do you feel like your pets actively contribute to your gameplay and your Lore-master fantasy? Do you have opportunities to use the pets you like, stylistically? Or do mostly find yourself locked into a few types, either statically or in a constant ‘pet rotation’ (ie: Catmint raven, boglurker, bear).

Some of you may have guessed at this, but we’re eyeing some changes to pets similar to the changes made to captain pets in U35. Primarily, that would mean a pet summoning cooldown, which would limit your ability to use any given pet skill repeatedly (ie: bypassing the pet skill cooldowns by dismissing and resummoning the pet itself). Like captain heralds, this would still allow you to immediately resummon a pet that you have had out for a while (long enough for its cooldown time to fully elapse) but it would prevent you from using pet skills more than twice in a row without waiting for either the individual skill’s cooldown or the pet summoning cooldown.

In my opinion, they are tow bigger issues with pets.

The first is only a related issue: the instance design. What ever SSG did in the past, player found a way to use a pet in a way SSG did not expect. (why not buy the way? 90% of those pet usages were "just using (pet) skill". Yes, sometimes quite creative, but still not exploits). Each time, the response from SSG was to nerf a pet. Just like the latest one for the bear's aggro skill.
The fact that we still have Honey and Oats with Perceived Threat shows how rash and thoughtless this change was. This pet food is completely useless now.

The second one: pets did not scale well with the game since level 70 level-cap time.

Do you engage with the ‘pet rotation’? If yes, how do you feel about it? Do you like that it adds activity or raises the skill ceiling, or do you find it overwhelming or even tedious?

Do you find yourself using different pets in different circumstances? Do you feel like your pets actively contribute to your gameplay and your Lore-master fantasy? Do you have opportunities to use the pets you like, stylistically? Or do mostly find yourself locked into a few types, either statically or in a constant ‘pet rotation’ (ie: Catmint raven, boglurker, bear).

Engage? Absolutely yes. It is (imho) the "cherry on the cake" for a good LM and yes sometimes it is tedious too.
There is only one pet rotation and you named it: bear, lurker, raven (depending on the classes in the group/raid) and depending on the situation: Spirit of Nature.
Lynx does nothing, you killed the eagle, sabercat does noting (they are just too few frost skill in the game to be interesting to call the cat for Frostbite).

Some of you may have guessed at this, but we’re eyeing some changes to pets similar to the changes made to captain pets in U35. Primarily, that would mean a pet summoning cooldown, which would limit your ability to use any given pet skill repeatedly (ie: bypassing the pet skill cooldowns by dismissing and resummoning the pet itself). Like captain heralds, this would still allow you to immediately resummon a pet that you have had out for a while (long enough for its cooldown time to fully elapse) but it would prevent you from using pet skills more than twice in a row without waiting for either the individual skill’s cooldown or the pet summoning cooldown.

The idea is not bad, but the planned implementation is rather "catastrophic".
Instead of adding a CD for the pet itself, you should add a CD for the skills only. Many times an LM prepare a pet for usage (esp. Spirit of Nature) but then the pet is killed before we can use their skills. And now we are here with a CD on summoning. Also, the summoning time for a pet is far too long for the current game. What I would like to see is a unified duration and cool down for the pet skills (actually, it varies between 30 sec and 1 min. in duration and between 10 sec and 2 min in CD).
So if you plan to add any kind of CD, do not add it on the pet, but on their skills and lower the summoning time please. Spirit of nature and captain pets are the examples how it should not have been done.

DPS
A DPS-oriented Lore-master has some interesting skills and mechanics, but your overall repertoire of damaging skills can sometimes feel quite thin. Are there things you like about the current damage potential at your disposal? What frustrates you when trying to prioritize DPS? Reliance on induction skills? A dependency on tar + catmint raven to maintain high output? Waiting for cooldowns when Burning Embers is already tiered up and Lighting Strike/Storm are on cooldown? What do you like about your core damage rotation? What do you wish you did better?

The most frustrating - as already mentioned - is that the LM is the most static and slow class in a game that SSG is making more and more dynamics (because everybody loves those puddles sooo much).
I am not sure about decreasing the CD of the LMs big skills. But either that or a slight increase of those skills damage. I like the idea that an LM can/could do a very good burst damage. Unfortunately, the single target damaging skills are too weak to bridge the gap until the big skills are ready again. Also, the induction time plays a big role. Long induction time + easy to interrupt = low DPS.

The Ancient Master – Support-first Lore-master
The Ancient Master line is often the de-facto primary trait setup for Lore-masters, but that doesn’t mean it is above reproach. While LMs are primarily sought after in raid groups, instances, and PvP for their support capacity, that doesn’t mean the ‘support-first’ LM has no room for improvement. For those of you who live and breathe yellow-LM, what do you like about the class and the role? What do you wish were different? Are you frustrated by the fact that your long-mez is also your interrupt skill? Does Water-lore-stacking provide you with something to steadily cycle into your skills, or does it feel like too much necessary upkeep? Do you feel like you contribute meaningfully to the group in moments where there are few/no adds to CC or manage? Do you just wish you had a Wizards Lightning skill to reapply your preferred 'Out in the Cold' or 'Playng with Fire' debuffs?

1. Aso here Movement. Some improvement was made, but the LM is still the most static class.
2. Finesse: Why an LM need much more finesse as any other class in the game to apply its skills to a mob?
3. Corruption Removal: Since SSG is using more and more stacked corruptions instead of various ones, the "ultimate" debuffing & CC class became the worst corruption removal class in the game. Some changes to that are needed. (maybe something instead of Level-Headed and/or Flow of Power)

Are you frustrated by the fact that your long-mez is also your interrupt skill?

Yes.

Does Water-lore-stacking provide you with something to steadily cycle into your skills?

Absolutely yes and the first good change, that was made to LM, was to lower the CD on Beacon of Hope.

Do you just wish you had a Wizards Lightning skill to reapply your preferred 'Out in the Cold' or 'Playng with Fire' debuffs?

Do you mean, to bring it back?
'Out in the Cold' or 'Playng with Fire' have been fantastic traits until level 50 and until someone stole us Wizard's Fire lately.
Deep Freeze (-1450 Tactical Mastery Rating) and Winter Strom (+15% Power Cost) are meaningless.
The other procs would be still great if we would have an easy way to reapply one of them as we need. But most of the time as an LM we have too much to do (speaking of endgame 6/12-man group content) to use Burning Ember/Cracked Earth/Sticky Ground or Strom-Lore/Lightning Strike/Power of Knowledge to change the proc.
But even if not, as soon as we use Wind-Lore we are ending always with Deep Freeze and Cool Off. Removing Wizard's Fire from any skill tree but red, was a bad idea. Wizard's Frost does exactly nothing for us regarding debuffing (even if someone tries to promote the skill with a class essence).
If you plan to bring Wizards Lightning, you really could consider bringing back Wizard's Fire too.

[Hephburz-2]

Suggestions:

The following is a list of proposed changes to the Loremaster pets as well as associated more general changes to the class and its respective blue line as a result of the proposals. The idea behind these changes is to give each pet a more definitive identity, whilst also clearly defining each pets function, we believe the changes will result in a much more interactive playstyle for the Loremaster when it comes to their pets and will also require an important decision to be made based on group composition and the content at hand when deciding what pet should be chosen, the fundamental idea being that it shouldn’t be possible to have or use more than 1 pet in combat at any time. It could also open up potential avenues at a later date following a more comprehensive rework of the blue line to allow more than one Loremaster to be taken in groups/raid settings.


Key Features:

• To clearly define each pet by giving them more of an identity.
• To give each pet a new skill that will be a character-based fellowship and/or raid buff. Thus, making choosing the right pet for the right situation even more important.
• To address current issues that the pets have.

Spirit Pet (Healing Pet):

Aura Skill: Grants a fellowship/raid HoT effect that would restore like 0.X% morale every Y seconds (Ex. 0.5% morale every 6s (effectively a 5% heal over 1 minute)).
Skill 1: Flashing Flank, reworked, daze 10 targets in a 10m radius for 2s. Cooldown 2 minutes.
Skill 2: Nature’s Gift, no change.
Skill 3: Nature’s Light, reworked to place an effect on the target, when hit by a player, it will grant said player a +10% incoming heal buff for 15s, the duration cannot be refreshed until expired. Skill duration 17s, Cooldown 1 minute.
Catmint would increase the +% incoming healing buff on Nature’s Light to +15%.

Bog-Lurker (Physical Damage Pet):

Aura: Grants a fellowship/raid buff to increase +4% physical damage.
Skill 1: Angry Bees should be a bigger, more impactful DoT.
Skill 2: Root Strike, incoming crit chance buff, applies to all damage sources as opposed to just ranged and is +2.5% instead of +5%.
Skill 3: Bursting Root, 50% chance to start a fellowship manoeuvre.
Catmint would increase the % chance to start a fellowship manoeuvre to 100%.

Bear (Tank or Mitigation Pet):

N.B: When summoned it should take the Lore-Master's morale into account and add it to its own base morale, Ex. If the bear has 300k base morale, and the LM has 500k morale, the effective morale of the summoned Bear would be 800k. The bear needs a much higher threat-modifier for its basic attacks, but not higher than that of actual tanks. Similarly the bear's basic attacks should hit in either a 90 or 180 degree arc, or should hit 3-5 targets by default.
The taunt / threat copy issue is resolved by skill cooldowns not resetting when dismissing resummoning pets. The bears whole identity is geared for tanking difficult solo content / 3mans, as it is unlikely a LM would use this pet in a 6man or raid setting, and could not be used on the fly as a result of the 1 pet limit.

Aura Skill: Grants a fellowship/raid buff that would increase fellowship/raid physical and tactical mitigations by +1 or 2%.
Skill 1: Roaring Challenge, 10s taunt duration, 3x threat copy, 30s cooldown. Should also apply a +% mitigation buff to the Bear for 15s (something like 10 or 15%).
Skill 2: Shatter Arms, +5% incoming damage, as opposed to +10% incoming melee and ranged damage.
Skill 3: Bear Hug, stun duration should be increased from 3s to 5-10s.
Catmint would make Roaring Challenge a 5 target AoE taunt.

Afterthought: Instead of Bear Hug being a stun, Bear Hug could essentially allow the bear to act as your "shield" for 10 seconds, any damage you take during this time will be redirected to the bear, cooldown 2minutes.

Raven (Tactical/Fire Damage Pet):
(For the most part, the Raven is actually in a good spot).

Aura Skill: Grants a fellowship/raid buff to increase, +5% tactical damage.
Skill 1: Evasion, the effects should apply to the LM and not the Raven.
Skill 2&3 Unchanged.
Catmint continues to operate as it does.

Lynx (Personal Damage Pet):

N.B: AoE skills should be 5 targets.

Aura Skill: Grants a fellowship/raid buff to increase Critical Chance by +1%.
Skill 1: Surprise Strike should be able to be used in combat. It will consume a max tier windlore, and in exchange it will double the effectiveness of the incoming damage buff on the target for 15s. Windlore cannot be restacked during this time. Cooldown 90 seconds.
Skill 2&3: Feral Strike and Slashing Claws, apply a debuff to the target(s) that increase the LMs next damaging skill against the target(s) by +15%. Cooldown 1 minute.
Catmint would increase the debuff strength applied by Feral Strike and Slashing Claws making the LMs next damaging skill against the target(s) deal +35% damage.

Sabretooth (PvP pet):

Aura Skill: Grants a fellowship/raid buff to increase, +5% run speed both in and out of combat.
Skill 1: Frost Bite, reworked, 3 targets -30% slow. Skill duration 15s, Cooldown 45 seconds.
Skill 2: Fury of Winter, reworked to apply a -X high value armour rating. Skill duration 15s, Cooldown 45 seconds.
Skill 3: Throat Slash, reworked, 3 targets -30% incoming healing debuff to the target. Skill duration 15s, Cooldown 45 seconds.
Catmint would increase the strength of all 3 debuffs by +33% on the next skill play ONLY (-40% Slow, -40% incoming healing (official numbers for the armour debuff TBD but for Ex. -100k armour debuff would go to -133k)).

Eagle (Survivability Pet):

Aura Skill: Grants a fellowship/raid buff to increase, +5% morale, does not stack with Motivation and Motivation would override said buff.
Skill 1: Fan the flame, reworked, applies a debuff to every target affected by any tier of your burning ember DoT to deal -10% less damage for 10s, 2min cooldown.
Skill 2: Sacrifice, reworked with the ability to revive any fallen fellowship member, Cooldown 15 minutes. The Eagle will default always revive you if Sacrifice is off-cooldown, otherwise, you would target a friendly player and then press sacrifice (same as any other rez skill), the eagle flies to their location, dies, and rezzes the player.
Skill 3: Beak Rend, reworked, fears the target for 5s (100% break on damage after 2s), and applies a 25% morale heal to the Lore-Master.
Catmint could either increase the morale heal on Beak Rend or increase the debuff applied by Fan the Flames.



Associated general class changes & changes to Blue-Line:

• Catmint cooldown would have to have its cooldown increased to 75s up from 45s to make it a more meaningful choice when to use it, rather than just always having it active. Perhaps even longer to account for set bonuses that reduce catmint cooldown. Argument being that in many cases already on live, in a static fight the designated catmint buff or debuff is active 100% of the time (I.e. Benediction of the raven) this does not encourage any decision-making or interesting skill plays.
• Eagle trait removed. You should have the ability to always summon the eagle like every other pet.
• New trait in place of the old Eagle trait; activates the pets fellowship/raid buff skills. There are several ways these skills could be implemented, but we would opt for allowing these buffs to have a 100% uptime, as such, 5-10min duration, 1min cooldown, these fellowship buffs do not persist if the relative pet is dismissed or defeated, as such one LM can not stack or have active more than one at a time. However multiple LMs using different pets can have their fellowship buffs stack with one another (but still limited to 1 per pet (ergo having two lynx pets would not then result in you having two +1% crit chance buffs, you’d only get one, but if it was a Lynx and a Bear, you’d be able to benefit from the buffs of both pets)).
• Goes without saying that you would only ever be able to summon one pet in combat, in lieu of the removal to the weapon swapping, it might be an idea to allow the LM to attune the class item (the stickpin) to a specific pet, thus only being allowed to summon that pet whilst that item is equipped OR you gain a "buff" that will only allow you to summon X pet when in combat, for example, if you enter combat with the bear pet you will only be able to summon that pet, if you enter combat with no pet, the first pet you summon will apply said buff, the buff persists until you are out of combat OR you could be prevented from summoning any other pet for 60s after your current pet dies or is dismissed, there will be no penalty for resummoning the same pet though.
• Dismissing and re summoning pets will no longer reset the cooldown on their skills.
• Pet damage and general survivabillity significantly increased across the board. Pet speed should be defaulted at the same speed as the LM however they should not be susceptible to slows that take run speed below 100% but can benefit from +% speed buffs like make haste.

[Hephburz-2]

A DPS-oriented Lore-master has some interesting skills and mechanics, but your overall repertoire of damaging skills can sometimes feel quite thin. Are there things you like about the current damage potential at your disposal? What frustrates you when trying to prioritize DPS? Reliance on induction skills? A dependency on tar + catmint raven to maintain high output? Waiting for cooldowns when Burning Embers is already tiered up and Lighting Strike/Storm are on cooldown? What do you like about your core damage rotation? What do you wish you did better?

When the last bout of changes to LM went through, and blue line received Murder of Crows, the best DPS a LM could output was by going Blue-Red (or so I experienced), with the HH Set and the Inner Flame buff. A key issue currently is that a Red LM (if taken) is still expected to serve as a modicum of their other roles, to heal, and debuff, and not taken as a DPS class in it's own right, except in rare cases. Thus LM damage needs to actually be substantially higher than it currently is, that the Red LM can simply DPS without being expected to do it's other things (unless in a dire situation), as such heals and debuffs should be substantially weaker, nerfed, or have increased cooldowns whilst in Red Line.

LM misses a key "buff" cooldown skill. That would increase Xdamage or reduce induction speed by X (or both) for X duration with X cooldown, this is 100% required.

Flanked effects should be changed or buffed, most are irrelevant.

Ents go to War still has a ridiculously long cooldown for little reason, if you were to compare this with, for example Fury of Blades + Horn from a Champion which = the same effect, I don't understand the reason behind why this skill still has the type of cooldown it does. It would be interesting overall to see more skill interactions with one another (Much like the old AC + Lightning Storm), LM has a lot to work with, Ents could do more damage to targets affected by Cracked Earth as an example. Ents go to War or Lightning Storm/Strike could increase targets incoming damage for X duration. Etc. Etc.

[Khluzainn]

Loremaster has a ton of potential.

I wont go into a massive novel.

Yellow is great as it currently stands. The main issue I have with yellow line is that most of its potent effects are easily available if not completely baseline to the entire spec. Blue line in my opinion has never been a serious line at any point in lotros history. It is a good questing and solo line at certain level caps but that is long lost.

If there is to be a dps line it should be red and in my opinion it should be petless. Pets at their core are buff/debuffers. The biggest thing holding redline back is its ability to get 80% of the support skills that yellow has including pets. If redline is ever to be a true dps line that can do instances at even a mildly competitive level it needs to be stripped of most but not all its support abilities including pets. The idea of pets being reworked to actually contribute a ton of dps themselves is not a good idea in my opinion. I believe pets should continue to provide strong support when playing solo or when debuffing in yellow. Red line should still have access to pets for solo but when instances are being done as dps and you dont have a summoned pet you should get a buff similar to lone wolf from WOW.

The final comment I have on red is that through most of its burning embers iterations it has been very fun to play even if it didnt make sense many times. I have a big outstanding concern with munching burning ember ticks however. I have posted about this alot in discord. Currently if you get off your timing on BE it will cancle its own ticks like old champion deep stikes bleed used to. If you recall OnnM champs would crit so fast that they would constantly reapply the bleed and 2s would never go by so it would never actually tick even in a 10min fight. BE actually can work similarly if you are not careful. With so many skill either refreshing, upgrading, or downgrading BE you can get in a loop of constantly upgrading and downgrading it and with most of our inductions being 1s it can often go 4-5 casts before BE of any tier actually ticks. I have documented this with combat metrics as proof. Over a 3min parse I had BE on the target 100% of the time. So I should have had around 85-90 ticks of BE of all tiers combined. However in some parses, using the exact same rotation I had as few as 45-50 ticks of BE of all tiers added up. I dont mind the tiered gameplay but please consider a solution to this in your plans. Or if you get out of rhythm you will cancel almost half of your own dot ticks just for playing the class correctly.

As for blue line honestly I think the tree should be turned into a non specable tree like many other classes yellow tree has. Half the tree should provide buffs and bonuses to pets when solo or in yellow line. The other half of the tree could be used for general traits that we would want both a support and dps LM to have access to.

I am afraid that if we try to make pets work for everything OR if we try to keep blue line around as a second dps line it will just hold back the potential of the class. LMs have never truly had even a single dps spec be good in its history. We dont need to ruin its chances by trying to make 2 work. In my opinion I would not trust pets and pet AI in LOTRO to do great and meanful dps. So I hope the 'lone wolf' style for red is taken seriously.

Thanks for reading.

[Hephburz-2]

Loremaster has a ton of potential.

I wont go into a massive novel.

Yellow is great as it currently stands. The main issue I have with yellow line is that most of its potent effects are easily available if not completely baseline to the entire spec. Blue line in my opinion has never been a serious line at any point in lotros history. It is a good questing and solo line at certain level caps but that is long lost.

If there is to be a dps line it should be red and in my opinion it should be petless. Pets at their core are buff/debuffers. The biggest thing holding redline back is its ability to get 80% of the support skills that yellow has including pets. If redline is ever to be a true dps line that can do instances at even a mildly competitive level it needs to be stripped of most but not all its support abilities including pets. The idea of pets being reworked to actually contribute a ton of dps themselves is not a good idea in my opinion. I believe pets should continue to provide strong support when playing solo or when debuffing in yellow. Red line should still have access to pets for solo but when instances are being done as dps and you dont have a summoned pet you should get a buff similar to lone wolf from WOW.

The final comment I have on red is that through most of its burning embers iterations it has been very fun to play even if it didnt make sense many times. I have a big outstanding concern with munching burning ember ticks however. I have posted about this alot in discord. Currently if you get off your timing on BE it will cancle its own ticks like old champion deep stikes bleed used to. If you recall OnnM champs would crit so fast that they would constantly reapply the bleed and 2s would never go by so it would never actually tick even in a 10min fight. BE actually can work similarly if you are not careful. With so many skill either refreshing, upgrading, or downgrading BE you can get in a loop of constantly upgrading and downgrading it and with most of our inductions being 1s it can often go 4-5 casts before BE of any tier actually ticks. I have documented this with combat metrics as proof. Over a 3min parse I had BE on the target 100% of the time. So I should have had around 85-90 ticks of BE of all tiers combined. However in some parses, using the exact same rotation I had as few as 45-50 ticks of BE of all tiers added up. I dont mind the tiered gameplay but please consider a solution to this in your plans. Or if you get out of rhythm you will cancel almost half of your own dot ticks just for playing the class correctly.

As for blue line honestly I think the tree should be turned into a non specable tree like many other classes yellow tree has. Half the tree should provide buffs and bonuses to pets when solo or in yellow line. The other half of the tree could be used for general traits that we would want both a support and dps LM to have access to.

I am afraid that if we try to make pets work for everything OR if we try to keep blue line around as a second dps line it will just hold back the potential of the class. LMs have never truly had even a single dps spec be good in its history. We dont need to ruin its chances by trying to make 2 work. In my opinion I would not trust pets and pet AI in LOTRO to do great and meanful dps. So I hope the 'lone wolf' style for red is taken seriously.

Thanks for reading.

I definitely support blue being made into a passive spec, though I don’t support making pet’s redundant. Even with Lotro’s basic combat system pets can still be interesting and integrated well, they just have some glaring issues which I tried to address in my above post.

And 100% support what you said about BE.

[Brinuw]

I currently do engage in pet rotations and while I do think that it raises the skill ceiling of the class quite a bit, I do not think it does so in a fun and engaging manner. There are 3 offensive pets and 1 pseudo-healing pet options but since Shattered Arms benefits both melee and ranged damage it will always be in the rotation unless you are only running RK’s and Mini, which is a complete edge case scenario. At the same time Benediction of the Raven debuffs fire mitigations which Hunters can use oils to make the majority of their skills deal fire damage, therefore it’s a must if there are any hunters in the group at all and also benefits fire RK’s if there are any of those even still playing. Then there’s Root Strike, which again benefits hunters, and only hunters. So depending on the group composition an LM rotating pets can go from only rotating 1 pet (raven for themselves and fire RK) to having to run 3 because a single hunter joined the group. The healing pet thankfully got nerfed hard already so its now only used in moments where high incoming damage is coupled with high outgoing damage to keep the damage dealers alive. There is no high damaging Frost wielders to justify bringing out the Sabercat, and the Lynx only deals direct damage which is so pathetic that landscape enemies laugh at them. On top of all that, the durations of the effects are not consistent so you have to summon bear and bog lurker twice as often as the raven just to maximize uptime, and that is only taking into consideration a single target, which Shatter Arms and Root Strike effect. So the Pet Rotating LM’s rotation is heavily dominated by summoning and dismissing pets over and over again, while doing other utility stuff like Lores, CC, and offhealing in between. Lastly there’s Catmint, which just makes Benediction even better and since that directly effects hunters damage numbers it’s a constant demand. That means a debuffing LM is now locked into yellow/blue and while they can pick up some red skills to use some damage abilities it’s a spit in the ocean at best.

That all said I do not wish the system to abandon the idea of pet rotating entirely, as the added skill ceiling does give opportunities for growth, I just think that the current game lends the practice far closer to exploiting the system rather than embracing it. Therefore I suggest thus;

• Pet skills are purely for their damage or healing effects, no debuffs or buffs. This removes the issue of re-summoning as dismissing the pet in the first place would reduce their damage.
• Light of the Rising Dawn or Lightning Strike gain an added effect based on the active pet, allowing for the application of the debuffs to still occur but now it is an active player action rather than a pet application. Since both of these skills have rather low cool downs (20s for LotRD, 10s for Lightning Strike) there remains the option for multiple targets to get the debuffs, but that means using the player’s skill to do so, not the pets.
• Pet specific debuffs have a duration of 60s. Standardize the effects to make it easier to maintain and less micromanaging.
• All pet summoning skills share a cooldown of 20s. After 20s you are free to summon a different pet, or you can chose to keep the current pet active and refresh the pet specific debuff or apply it to another target.

Diversify the Pet Specific Debuffs as right now there are as I mentioned only 3 offensive options and 1 defensive option. With 7 current pet options there’s plenty of room to make some varied but niche effects that would reward the player for using the right pet for the right situation.


As for DPS, I really like the mini-system of tier up of my Embers DoTs and cashing them out with Lightning Skills, and the rotation overall for red LM leads to a pretty tight 30s of keeping DoTs active, with 60s windows of burst with Lightning Storm all aided by the Hasten effect and proactively using Staff-sweep to reduce cool downs. The issue is that even when ignoring pet rotating and focusing on just damage and the maintaining of Lores (you'd keep the wind lore debuff up anyways for more damage so not out of the question) the dps of a highly geared LM drastically pales in comparison to even a poorly geared captain and much less than any true dps. Over the last two years LM main utility has dropped with the nerf to Fire/Frost lore and the more recent nerf to AC but they have not gained any personal or offensive utility to offset that loss.

That all said a flat damage buff would not make the trait line perfect; Wizard's Fire is an awkward skill to use and the damage over time only lasts for 6s so maintaining its uptime is incredibly taxing for a skill that deals such little damage. There is not alot of pet utilization potential in red line beyond the Raven, and while you could use the Saber cat you really only have two frost skills that deal any major damage. Lightning Storm is still bugged from the last time LMs got a damage buff, making only the first hit of the three dealing significant damage and the other two dealing hundreds of thousands less. Nature's Fury can feel really awesome to use in a big group of enemies, but if the enemy you targeted with it dies before the duration ends then so does the effect.


Regarding Ancient Master I think it is probably the most used and least interesting trait line for LM's.
Red LM has the identity of wielding all of the elements and big flashy attacks, it just doesn’t have the game math to back up that power fantasy. The same could be said about Keeper of Animals where they specializing in bringing forth the fauna of the world against their foes, but those animals just got declawed and muzzled. Ancient master is.... you know stuff. The identity of the class is just debuffs, which the same could be said for the other two, and crowd control. The only reason it’s so popular is because it is the mathematically strongest option as it provides the most group utility while only having to sacrifice pet damage and personal damage potential, which already established as too low at base. In addition the main core of LM's utility comes in Fire and Frost lore and the ability to maintain those buffs, which the other two lines would likely be picking up from the yellow line anyways as an LM without Lores is just a bad RK so you are already using Ancient Master as a utility line; so why not just make it one?

Move Warding Circles, Herb lore, and Fellowship Share the Power out of the core traits, make Air Lore a universal skill, and Beacon of Hope and Knowledge of Cures added as traits that upgrade the base skills; then lastly put Force of Will, Herb-lore, and Ancient Master as the yellow capstones (kill Enfeeble, its caused too many bugs and deserves death).

Now any LM traited red or blue can bring the suite of utility that the LM is known for, but incorporate it into the way the trait line is played.

[Khluzainn]

I definitely support blue being made into a passive spec, though I don’t support making pet’s redundant. Even with Lotro’s basic combat system pets can still be interesting and integrated well, they just have some glaring issues which I tried to address in my above post.

And 100% support what you said about BE.

Pets have always been an LM thing so I understand them sticking around. Its just my preference that id like to see them removed from red. Its not required.

I think pets should be part of the solo and yellow line completely though. I dont want pets removed from LM by any means.

[Ryvick]

My advice, all LM pets should be able to tank equally well. (This would satisfy me as a solo LM being able to choose any pet I want to use and not feel locked into any particular one pet) Other than that they should continue having their unique identities and, as Hep posted, enhanced.

[Iwner]

About the blue line. Maybe a talent tree for pets? Everyone plays only on yellow. The Red and Blue lines also deserve attention