On Lore-masters and Tamed Creatures

[Oddessia]

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?

I do engage with the pet rotation yes, but I dont love or hate it. I love the effects and support it provides to the group however the actual act of summon/attack/dismiss/repeat ad nauseum is...not thrilling engagement. What I love about it is that it does make the LM think about the order of summon, which pets to use and when - all based on your group comp. So it does add a level of additional "skill" but nothing thats difficult whatsoever. My biggest beef with pets is their pathing, my god ./facepalm. When Im standing 2m from the boss, summon bear, tell it to attack (its in melee range already!!) the dang thing takes 5 janky strides sideways around some random invisible nothingness, pauses, then attacks. Its painful to watch and an annoying time waster.

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).

As stated above, yep. Different importance order in different circumstances/group comps and I do love that. Exception, on a single boss fight (between phases in HH B2 for example, or Hrimil between ads) then it does revert to a completely static rotation on repeat. That said, even with changing order importance based on comp/boss its always the same 4 pets used, raven/boggy/bear/spirit unless for some reason your comp is missing specific classes. The rest are useless in raids (RIP eagle)
Stylistically yes I find the choices for LM pets fine as is. I suppose my only complaint is that now everyone can get cosmetic pets that look identical. Completely minor complaint, irrelevant really.

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).

Ehh...will be interesting to see how this translates to raid boss balance but Ill reserve judgement until its implemented.

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?

What I love about it is that its so dynamic. Its not an easy class to play well, and because of its massive array of skills it allows the player to think of unique solutions and more interesting gameplay than some other classes. It contributes sooooo much, and for the player that can manage all those options in the moment, is very rewarding.

Am I frustrated with Blinding Flash, YES - but less so for the reason you mentioned. What frustrates me is the ridiculous travel time!! For an INTERRUPT skill, we have to factor in how long it takes to travel to the enemy (seriously who thought of that!?), since it wont apply the effect until after it hits. Interrupts need to be immediate, period. Its an interrupt...not a 'maybe it'll sail across my screen in time, maybe it wont!' skill.

The Water Lore question - Keeping it up is fine, Id say the animation pause interacts with lag weirdly and can feel a bit long. My gripe with it is likely just a lag gripe, 'you cannot do that while moving' meanwhile I have very clearly STOPPED moving, it adds too much time to the induction. Not really sure what I'm trying to say here lol, making WL useable on the move would just be far too OP. Its range can definitely feel a bit short, even with the extension tracery compared to Beacon which is 10m further. But its very useful regardless.

Do I contribute meaningfully when no ads....sometimes yes, sometimes no. A big help to that was the recent Beacon of Hope buff, cooldown/uptime timings are great so that's something we can use much more often. I do feel that on single-boss fights, once all my buffs are up and heals are on cooldown...my few DPS skills feel very unimpactful. However yellow LM is a support class and so Im not expecting to do mega deeps anyways, but ya sorta...meh on that. I'm sure now with people being power-starved all over the darn place, I will have more to do in those situations

Wizards Lightning skill to re-apply Out in the Cold/Playing With Fire debuffs? YES!! And to that, please add Wizards Fire back in yellow - for that exact reason. Burning Embers is cool and all but longer CD and cant use while running make it an annoyance if we're using it to refresh said buffs on multiple targets. (This doesnt apply to solo-boss fights of course, I'm thinking situations like Hrimil ad-phases here.) Especially since Wind-Lore is a Frost skill...so when we use it to refresh lores it also procs the useless buff '-Tactical Mastery Rating," which reduces mob tact mast by...wait for it....1450.



Now that those questions are answered I'll just pop in a couple last ideas.
Knowledge Of The LoreMaster has a cool debuff (if used out of combat.) However...99% of raid bosses are green-barred pre fight and do a long dialogue and then only red-bar once the fight starts and you're in combat anyways. So its effectiveness is basically nil in raids most of the time. And even if the debuff were made to apply while used in combat, the induction is too long.

Pet CDs make me nervous for the simple fact that the pets bug out so freaking often ./facepalm. Or I don't have time to wait for it to unhook itself from some invisible block on the floor to run over and apply its skill. I often get the message 'cannot command companion at this time' for no apparent reason other than its beside a pillar/partially line of sighted and just having a seizure. OR as very often happens, the pet runs into an attack and dies before its skill is fired. If this happens even once, time and pet skill wasted, RIP me. An idea for this (not my idea) would be to make the pet's skills not be applied by the pet themselves but applied by me with the requirement that the attached pet be summoned. That way it doesnt matter what your buggy pet is off doing, the LM controls when the skill activates, from themselves, so long as pet is summoned.

I dont play red all that often (moreso now in the 3-mans yay!) but I find our initial burst is huge....then Im waiting around for looong periods while all my heavy hitters are on CD. Burning embers, gust, lightning strike spam is rather...snore-fest lol.

Sign Of Power: See All Ends has to be the most useless skill an LM has...but it LOOKS the coolest! Definitely needs to be made relevant somehow.

Theres more that comes to mind but Im sure others will have it covered. As an aside I completely agree with Vuldyn's point and hope you keep that in mind. LM's don't need red and blue to be raid-viable trees. A yellow LM will ALWAYS have a raid slot, always until the end of time guaranteed. There are other classes without this luxury. I run the new 3-mans on T5 on my red LM just fine, its not necessary to make redline the new hunter dps. Buff em, sure...but not to that level.

[Fantomex]

I'm relatively new to playing Lore-master in group content and I'm really enjoying it as the sort of master strategist that provides some level of support in all directions (cc, buffs, debuffs, heals). The Gundabad instance cluster has been a fantastic case study for the nuance they bring to the table. But I've always enjoyed the Keeper of Animals thematically the most, though it was always clear to me that Ancient Master is the only one worth considering in raids. If class changes can ultimately allow for a second viable trait line that maintains the support essentials, it would take a huge leap ahead of my other alts.


Pets (more than just the Keeper of Animals trait line)

I use the pet rotation. For me I tend to prioritize cc, debuffs, and spot healing before I rotate beyond the first pet that will provide the most dps support (minimum effort for maximum benefit); so the more stable things are the more I'm rotating pets for the aforementioned trio of 'always on' dps buffs.

This isn't as satisfying as I'd like. Especially for the game's premier pet class.

An increased summoning cooldown is only a partial solution, in my opinion. It would force us to be more strategic about when to rotate pets, which is a good thing. But it could also be unduly punishing to not be able to resummon a pet if you misclick the wrong pet, they die to frontals because of wonky AI, you die and get revived shortly after summoning, they get stuck to wonky AI, etc etc.

I would prefer something like (or a combination of) the following:

(a) no cooldown but add a meaningful morale cost for summoning pets; reduced or eliminated in KoA
(b) make partial Fellowship Friend buffs available to all trait lines; full potency in KoA, possibly as an aura instead of crit procs
(c) make Catmint KoA-only; rework pet skill/benefits for more varied combos/usage

A more varied approach would still allow for a slightly weaker version of the current pet rotation at a higher cost (self-healing or healer's attention), while incentivizing more dynamic pet usage according to fight mechanics, and providing a foundation for a more appealing "off-spec".


DPS

My dps as a Lore-master is rudimentary at best so I can't offer much in the way of rotation perspective or specific solutions.

Here are some things I do like:

- The "messiness" of aoe damage, because conjuring the elements to dps should be a messy affair
- The Burning Embers dot/Lightning cashout, which feels proportionally correct compared to similar mechanics on other classes (albeit low overall comparatively)
- Buffs to fire damage that benefits red RKs and Hunters using fire oil (though this is not exclusive to MoNF)


Here are some things I don't like:

- Glut of damage-related traceries required to achieve modest dps (lightning, fire, crit WoC/heraldries; induction WoP/WoC; damage WoP)
- Lack of broader pet synergy besides Raven, which is exponentially more potent with fire/aoe effects
- Lack of meaningful pet damage; it need not be the exclusive providence of KoA


The Ancient Master – Support-first Lore-master

I'm pretty happy with where AM is and adjustments to pets/KoA would pretty much seal the deal for me.

Blinding Flash as an interrupt is perfectly fine, that limitation leads to interesting problem-solving without necessarily needing to rely on someone else. But if you wanted to give us a secondary option, Staff Strike/Sweep would make an interesting candidate. (also the Staff Sweep buff caps at 3 instead of scaling to 7 with aoe targets tracery, working as intended or opportunity to aoe dps play?)

I don't have a problem with needing to use Lightning Storm or Storm Lore to proc the OitC/PwF secondary debuffs en masse, though I suppose while we're on the subject the miniscule tactical mastery rating debuff from Frost Lore + Frost could definitely use a change.

Water-lore is great and the reduced cooldown of Beacon feels fantastic in the 6mans. It's been key to providing meaningful support healing to "off-meta" healers. I guess if I had one real wish to spend on AM, it would be for one more healing interaction to solidify their role and be able to main heal in duos/trios if needed. Maybe something like: Pleasant Breeze heal is doubled on your Air-Lore target. Feels thematically appropriate and would flow well with the rotation/statting.

[TobiasEstForte]

I can really see myself sticking to healer classes and burg when I return to end-game. LM has received so many nerfs compared to QoL improvements in the past year. Just lost bear taunt copy, you're going to introduce cooldowns, DPS and healing is up but that's not been the LM's role. I liked rotating pets by the way, when I learned about it I immediately became far more valuable to my groups than those who were too busy role-playing with their "best friend" pet or too lazy/stuck in their old ways.

If you can do something, please fix skills that have inductions AND long animations. Tar is especially bad, especially on mobile fights. Perhaps a reduced cooldown and duration so it has more efficacy.

Make blinding flash travel faster. I've gotten into trouble for late CC because of animation and travel time + frame drops/lag. Meanwhile burg's daze is instant.

More corruption removal. Perhaps on the ST sword and staff strike?

Pets could do with more AOE skills. You heard a group of mobs together but it only attacks 1. So you use an AOE skill or heal and that pulls the whole lot, who interrupt your next skills. Not to mention the bear taunt can't even perma hold 1 mob anymore, at least make it an aoe taunt. Can you imagine making all tank classes have only 1 5s ST taunt?

[Loox]

I think LM must be valuable in instances even with red spec, just not with any instance. No, I think he have enough support skills (not only from yellow tree)

Yet SSG calls it a support class. It doesn't say support/healer/damage or any other combination as other characters do at creation.

[Misdirection]

~~Blue Line just has too many traits that haven't scaled well as we continue moving forward. Ultimately, blue should be the utility line which gives pets their different buffs (increases to their buffs) Traits that would boost pets by possibly adding additional targets for pet debuffs making their debuff skills AoE (Raven already is).
~~Keep the induction reductions as they are (Already has 24% which is fine). Possibly add a couple traits that would modify cooldowns on some skills or.. give pet specific traits that you can spec for the currently existing buffs that those pets would give if you were specced into blue. Lynx -10% skill inductions, Raven +5% crit chance, Bear +mits/morale (Buffs for the LM only of course.)
~~Not a fan of the lack of rotational capability in blue since Lm does have a high Cooldown to skill usage ratio.

~~Red Line isn't a total mess as many people seem to make it out to be. What I think holds it back is the fact that 5 targs as a base for aoe (without tracery) is a bit low.. Maybe add a +2-3 target count on AoE damaging skills for speccing red?
~~Lm suffers from the same issues Red rk does.. a mixed bag of skill damage distribution (ST, DoTs, and AoE) without being able to effectively get everything you'd need for dps via traceries.
~~Flanked Effect is extremely unreliable since pets (minus nature spirit) don't have a skill to proc flanked. Why is a DoT buff of 10s in duration tied to an RnG proc, which then must be set up with a slightly low damaging skill such as wizards fire.
~~Making burning embers spread 100% on gust of wind usage would help them in aoe situations as well, not sure why RnG also has to play a part in that still, but 100% spread chance would be a nice boost.
~~Fixing the Sticky gourd trait that is passively bestowed would be nice too.. Burning embers does not apply every 4s anymore since that trait was tooltipped based on the pre-change sticky gourd (ground effect)
~~As many people would agree, at the cost of being stationary you should be dealing more damage. Lm has good AoE right now, but still could use a bit more overall tuning since it is a very stuck in place class.
~~Don't make me trait and channel 3 seconds for inner flame fire/lightning damage buff.. Every other class has a relatively short animation for self buffing.. If I am forced to channel then make the buff much stronger to make up for the loss of other skill usage (wearing 4 set HH to resolve this problem isn't the answer, its a bandaid and not worth it)
~~Yellow Line is in a much better overall state with beacon and healing changes. A few dead traits such as power of knowledge and pleasant breeze (Ground targeted heal isn't ideal and should proc to fellow immediately on gust of wind crits)
~~AC trait is super solid but it just doesn't favor tactical classes enough at a 5:1 Phys/tact mit cut ratio. Perhaps AC could see some adjustment there to bring it in line debuff wise for both sides.
~~As I mentioned target counts for Red dps, why not make yellow line have +2-3 target count on AoE debuffing skills as well?

~~General ideas..
~~Looking as classes with self heals/cds etc.. Wisdom of the council is very outdated. I wouldn't mind seeing the stun/negation proc being removed and adjusting the cooldown to 2~ mins or so.
~~AC as a whole should definitely feel the same effect for tact, phys, ranged classes and not just favor the phys side of things.
~~Make Raven benediction more tactical (rk/lm) oriented since bear shatter arms is giving a nice buff to inc dmg for phys/ranged.
~~Additional target counts on AoE skills will in my opinion help Lms out with tracery selection not being "forced" into having AoE target count.
~~We all know... Inductions + animations on Lm really slow the pace of the class down immensely, cleaning up one side or the other a bit will improve overall feel and flow of Lm.
~~A general CD reduction of some of the longer skills (nature's fury, Lightning storm, Ents, ring of fire)


I'm sure some will have agreements and some will have disagreements on my thoughts, but thats what the discussion is for.

[OnnMacMahal]

First off, thank you all for your responses so far!

. . . you should just give us the ability to use damage skills on the move (in red)

This has come up in several posts, but it is the sort of change that would fundamentally alter the class. One might argue that in LotRO, the Lore-master is the one true induction-based heavy hitter remaining in the game. For players who enjoy that playstyle, what are their other options should anchored inductions be removed from the class? Not to suggest that there should be no changes to inductions, but a categorical change allowing all damaging skills on the move (even if only in red-line) would be a significant shift.

However, imo the big cooldowns are currently too long and do not do enough damage

When traited/geared into maximizing direct, personal damage, I’m inclined to agree with this.

One of the reasons this discussion is valuable is that Lore-masters still have one foot in pre-Helm’s Deep class design. A red-line, full-DPS Lore-master still has a large number of skills which are unrelated to improving your personal damage (or even survivability). Signs of Power, KotLM, Beacon, etc provide you with little to no personal benefit, and this is before considering the fact that a level-capped Lore-master still has a heap of trait points to spend in either blue-line (at least providing some personal benefit through the inner-flame damage bonus and catmint-raven debuff) or yellow-line (where you immediately pick up lores, even if you’re just trying to pull things like the +Lightning Damage passive on Storm Lore traits).
This leaves a DPS-oriented Lore-master with a kit loaded with group support skills, even if they’re running about solo or even (perish the thought) trying to fill a DPS-space in a 3-person group.

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

While this is true of the current state of the game, is there any reason why a yLM should be the only class able to fill that support role? Burglars also have a support trait specialization, but most players don’t turn up their noses at a burglar being able to put out respectable damage while traited and built for maximizing damage output. In abstract, why shouldn’t a yellow-line burglar be able to fill the ‘support’ role for a group while a Lore-master fills a ‘DPS’ slot?

[OnnMacMahal]

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.
. . .
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 core issue with pets (from my perspective at least) is the fact that they were not designed to be re-summoned in combat, let alone ad-infinitum in combat. When folks say ‘we’re just using pet skills’ that’s totally fine until you start dismissing and re-summoning a pet with the knowledge that re-summoning it will reset all of its skill cooldowns. While we have the ability to put an initial cooldown on pet skills (which makes a skill unavailable immediately when a pet is summoned) this isn’t ideal because the cooldown isn’t visible to the player. Our only real alternatives are to either nerf the pet skills themselves (or otherwise prevent them being used, like with bear taunts in instances) or to add a cooldown to the summoning skill itself, which prevents you from resetting your pet skills repeatedly (though you can still do it twice in quick succession, assuming you have already had the pet out for long enough that its summon cooldown has already elapsed).


Speaking of summoning and dismissing repeatedly . . .

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
. . .
Pet rotation is much the same as constant champion weapon swapping

It seems clear that some of you value the ability to engage in the pet rotation, while others find it tedious or avoid it entirely. If I had to pick one main gripe with the ‘normal’ pet rotation, it would be that it’s a lot of actions to apply one debuff for each pet. As a hypothetical, what if your pets no longer had debuff-applying skills, but you had a single debuff skill on your bar which changed depending on your active pet (essentially a dynamic lore skill with higher uptime than cooldown) which allowed you to apply multiple debuffs via either pet cycling or target cycling, but at a lower rate than what is currently achievable via pets?

-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.
Pet CDs make me nervous for the simple fact that the pets bug out so freaking often

If pet summoning skills gained a substantial cooldown, it would likely be necessary to increase the cooldown of ‘Return to master’ but allow it to be used in combat. With at least a 15-20s cooldown, it ought to allow you to fix the errant stuck/broken pet without opening the door to kiting/returning abuse.

To clearly define each pet by giving them more of an identity.

I agree. Each pet should have a viable use-case and raison d'être.

Consider lowering the level at which Water Lore is granted.

I agree. Water-lore should probably drop down to at least level 50, given how impactful it is for the class.

[OnnMacMahal]

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?

Would you support a change that locked more debuff potential behind the Ancient Master specialization, while freeing red-line to deal more direct damage?

[OnnMacMahal]

On trait-lines, specializations, and group roles:

I have observed before that the blue trait specialization, the Keeper of Animals, does not seems to have a clearly defined role. Thematically, it’s the ‘pets’ trait line, but what does that mean for your role and priorities? It has a bit of group support, a bit of personal damage, but mostly ends up being used to moderately enhance red or yellow (or for the occasional cheeky flipped version of those two which are essentially the same but with Murder of Crows in lieu of other capstones).

For this reason, I have floated the possibility of the blue ‘Keeper of Animals’ tree becoming a passive trait tree. Though a number of players have argued that the ‘Ancient Master’ line, being the ‘core’ identity of the class should become passive instead, and at least one player has argued that the ‘Keeper of Animals’ tree should remain a specialization but provide the benefits of a red captain, acting as an alternative choice for offensive group support.

Keep in mind, it’s not a guarantee that any line would become passive in an eventual Lore-master revamp, but feel free to add your thoughts on the matter in this thread.

[Elmagor]

Between blue and yellow spec, if one of them must go away, it must be blue spec. Blue spec less used between on LMs and you can use all pets in other specs anyway. While yellow spec working fine, used everywhere and too important for instances. You can use same style of playing without blue spec. Yes, some poor LMs leveling on blue spec, but they can do same thing (or even better) with using red line + buffs from blue tree. For me, blue trait tree always looks like "we have some skills what don't fit into red or yellow, so we put them into blue". Support LM trait healing skills in blue spec anyway

Talking about pets, if you against re-summoning pets every minute, you can keep all functionality from pets, but make them have only one debuff on target in one time. If pets debuff overwrite each other, we have reason to use just one pet during combat and still can decide what pet debuff must be used in different situations. LMs already punished when bear role as tank was nerfed, why punish them even more?

[Misdirection]

Would you support a change that locked more debuff potential behind the Ancient Master specialization, while freeing red-line to deal more direct damage?

Totally a good way to look at things. All or nothing for the damage output or debuff output in a way.

[Loox]

On trait-lines, specializations, and group roles:

I have observed before that the blue trait specialization, the Keeper of Animals, does not seems to have a clearly defined role.

.. LMs used to be proud of their pets before spec trees came into play.

Thematically, it’s the ‘pets’ trait line, but what does that mean for your role and priorities?

.. I chose a pet class because of the pets 16 years ago, the KoA because of the choices when trees were created.

It has a bit of group support, a bit of personal damage, but mostly ends up being used to moderately enhance red or yellow (or for the occasional cheeky flipped version of those two which are essentially the same but with Murder of Crows in lieu of other capstones).

.. True, because there are no attacks in the blue line, just pets.

For this reason, I have floated the possibility of the blue ‘Keeper of Animals’ tree becoming a passive trait tree.

.. You would end my desire to exist in Middle Earth.

Though a number of players have argued that the ‘Ancient Master’ line, being the ‘core’ identity of the class should become passive instead, and at least one player has argued that the ‘Keeper of Animals’ tree should remain a specialization but provide the benefits of a red captain, acting as an alternative choice for offensive group support.

.. Absolutely!! Buffs and debuffs are both support. Don't kill the tree, fix it.

[Elmagor]

.. I chose a pet class because of the pets 16 years ago, the KoA because of the choices when trees were created.

.. You would end my desire to exist in Middle Earth.

How with turing blue spec into buff spec LM stop being pet class?

[Strider5548]

It seems clear that some of you value the ability to engage in the pet rotation, while others find it tedious or avoid it entirely. If I had to pick one main gripe with the ‘normal’ pet rotation, it would be that it’s a lot of actions to apply one debuff for each pet. As a hypothetical, what if your pets no longer had debuff-applying skills, but you had a single debuff skill on your bar which changed depending on your active pet (essentially a dynamic lore skill with higher uptime than cooldown) which allowed you to apply multiple debuffs via either pet cycling or target cycling, but at a lower rate than what is currently achievable via pets?

I think this could be interesting. Personally I really don't mind the extra steps to execute a debuff from a pet skill, but I get some players find this too hard (or tedious). If we went this route I'd like to see spirit pet brought into line with the other pets again. I think it would be best if there was consistent uptime/CD between all pet debuffs, but as you described the nature of the single 'lore' skill would allow you to employ multiple at once but not all so some thought would have to go into it. I guess the question would then be, is there any reason to dynamically select which pets you use, or will people just pick the pets that support their raid's highest DPS classes? Spirit pet is certainly situational, but the rest are all just damage buffs for the group/raid. Continuing to think out loud, maybe if the pet debuffs switch from promoting certain damage types to different forms of DPS buffs (i.e. mit debuff, increased crit chance, + % damage) that might incentivize a more thoughtful process to prioritizing them (as well as remove any biases towards particular DPS classes).

Would you support a change that locked more debuff potential behind the Ancient Master specialization, while freeing red-line to deal more direct damage?

Absolutely. I think this is a necessary change if red line is to become a viable DPS option. I think you put it really well in another post that red line has an overload of excess trait points that end up going into half-baked group support instead of personal DPS impact. This leaves red LM's in a weird spot where their support isn't good enough and neither is their DPS output.

On trait-lines, specializations, and group roles:

I have observed before that the blue trait specialization, the Keeper of Animals, does not seems to have a clearly defined role. Thematically, it’s the ‘pets’ trait line, but what does that mean for your role and priorities? It has a bit of group support, a bit of personal damage, but mostly ends up being used to moderately enhance red or yellow (or for the occasional cheeky flipped version of those two which are essentially the same but with Murder of Crows in lieu of other capstones).

For this reason, I have floated the possibility of the blue ‘Keeper of Animals’ tree becoming a passive trait tree. Though a number of players have argued that the ‘Ancient Master’ line, being the ‘core’ identity of the class should become passive instead, and at least one player has argued that the ‘Keeper of Animals’ tree should remain a specialization but provide the benefits of a red captain, acting as an alternative choice for offensive group support.

Keep in mind, it’s not a guarantee that any line would become passive in an eventual Lore-master revamp, but feel free to add your thoughts on the matter in this thread.

To be honest, up until now I was very confident that yellow should become passive for the following reasons:

1) As you noted above, it is the core identify of the LM and already gets utilized by blue/red LMs today.
2) Yellow is consistent with what has been done with other classes, consistency is good.

However, reflecting on the red line dilemma (too much support, not enough DPS), I am now rethinking this. You picked a tough class to rework.

[Hephburz-2]

On trait-lines, specializations, and group roles:

I have observed before that the blue trait specialization, the Keeper of Animals, does not seems to have a clearly defined role. Thematically, it’s the ‘pets’ trait line, but what does that mean for your role and priorities? It has a bit of group support, a bit of personal damage, but mostly ends up being used to moderately enhance red or yellow (or for the occasional cheeky flipped version of those two which are essentially the same but with Murder of Crows in lieu of other capstones).

For this reason, I have floated the possibility of the blue ‘Keeper of Animals’ tree becoming a passive trait tree. Though a number of players have argued that the ‘Ancient Master’ line, being the ‘core’ identity of the class should become passive instead, and at least one player has argued that the ‘Keeper of Animals’ tree should remain a specialization but provide the benefits of a red captain, acting as an alternative choice for offensive group support.

Keep in mind, it’s not a guarantee that any line would become passive in an eventual Lore-master revamp, but feel free to add your thoughts on the matter in this thread.

I would aruge, Blue should definitely be made passive, and allow your pets to be more meaningful and assist you in the role you are performing otherwise, in yellow with debuffs/buffs, and in red, with damage.

[Moskva]

According to my personal observations and experience of playing for this class, I want to say the following. LMs are only nerfed, but they do not provide anything significantly new and interesting. No pets, no skills, nothing. Perhaps this will change in a future revision.

Now let me remind you about how in 2015 the blue LM line was finally devalued, when the crow gives a maximum 3k mitigation to the group ... which now looks ridiculous. The blue branch of the LM has no experience in instances, as Elmagor wrote, and he is completely right, since there is nothing essentially useful in it now, but only to use it in tandem with the red and yellow, thereby strengthening himself.
Let me remind you that the blue branch is mostly run by beginners, but it does not have worthwhile buffs, it does not have good dps, it does not have debuffs. The blue line is 90% useless in the game. The red line is full DPS, which is what it is designed for, and the yellow line is for debuffs in the group / raid.

I sometimes get the feeling that the developers do not have an understanding of the balance and what they generally want to do with the class. Constant rework without clear reasons for in-game examples.

Can I raid in the blue branch? - no, the blue lm has nothing to do there, do you want to inflict dps in the raid in the yellow line? Delete your character then please, you don't seem to know how to play this class. They take lm in the yellow line so that it would apply debuffs, and not cause damage, since all the main dps is in the red line and players forget about it. In order for the LM to deal damage, he needs to accelerate and rotate, in the yellow branch you will not do this. It’s better to debuff in the yellow branch, heal and become, you actually have a lot of things in this line. Now Lm forgot that mana should be distributed to the group, after they carried out the reform with energy, when I go to play with another class, not one LM did not throw mana ... not alone, and you still want to deal damage ...
The blue branch must be removed and made secondary or completely redone, so that it makes sense to go to the raid or you can swing alone. I don't think there is any other way.

I've been playing this class since Shadows of Angmar, this is food for thought.

[Brinuw]

Would you support a change that locked more debuff potential behind the Ancient Master specialization, while freeing red-line to deal more direct damage?

I dont see that as solving the problem, in fact I see it as doubling down on it.

Yellow Line as it is already has the strongest debuffs locked behind it because of Force of Will increasing the uptime on Ancient Craft. That is one of only two only things that a yellow LM can do "better" than a red; everything else is just lowering the maintenance cost for Lores (longer duration and thus easier to keep up). The other being Warding Knowledge, which only applies to tactical damage which up until the most recent mini changes was low on the damage dealing totem pole (rip RK's)

It could be argued that what you are suggesting is what is already the case, and thus only yellow LM's are considered because they provide the strongest mathematical increase to the group.

So if Yellow Line's power is just due to 1 skill and 1 trait that increases the uptime of a universal skill, why not just make that the utility line?

[Elmagor]

I dont see that as solving the problem, in fact I see it as doubling down on it.

Yellow Line as it is already has the strongest debuffs locked behind it because of Force of Will increasing the uptime on Ancient Craft. That is one of only two only things that a yellow LM can do "better" than a red; everything else is just lowering the maintenance cost for Lores (longer duration and thus easier to keep up). The other being Warding Knowledge, which only applies to tactical damage which up until the most recent mini changes was low on the damage dealing totem pole (rip RK's)

It could be argued that what you are suggesting is what is already the case, and thus only yellow LM's are considered because they provide the strongest mathematical increase to the group.

So if Yellow Line's power is just due to 1 skill and 1 trait that increases the uptime of a universal skill, why not just make that the utility line?

Ok, let's see what yellow spec can bring to LM:

+10% incoming damage to boss
AoE heal self-centred on target
Group power share (used without targeting other players)
AoE Root (usefull CC)
Insta-remove wounds from anyone
+4 targets for Ancient Craft and Sign/Lore
Additional stun

Now you can remove all that and look what usefull you can get from blue spec...

Eagle
+2% damage for pet
+1% Crit for pet
+2% BPE for pet
+2% speed for pet
+5% Morale/Power for pet
No induction if your pet crit

You can leave all of that.

[Pharone]

The core issue with pets (from my perspective at least) is the fact that they were not designed to be re-summoned in combat, let alone ad-infinitum in combat. When folks say ‘we’re just using pet skills’ that’s totally fine until you start dismissing and re-summoning a pet with the knowledge that re-summoning it will reset all of its skill cooldowns. While we have the ability to put an initial cooldown on pet skills (which makes a skill unavailable immediately when a pet is summoned) this isn’t ideal because the cooldown isn’t visible to the player. Our only real alternatives are to either nerf the pet skills themselves (or otherwise prevent them being used, like with bear taunts in instances) or to add a cooldown to the summoning skill itself, which prevents you from resetting your pet skills repeatedly (though you can still do it twice in quick succession, assuming you have already had the pet out for long enough that its summon cooldown has already elapsed).

What if you apply a debuff to the player when a pet ability is used. That way, if they dismiss the pet and resummon it, the debuff would keep them from recasting that exact same pet ability until the debuff counts down and is removed. Make a debuff for each specific pet type, so you can rotate pet abilities by swapping out pets, but you can't machine gun the same one by doing the dismiss/summon dance.

Then you can add on top of that an ability to instantly remove the pet debuff(s) via a line in the Blue trait tree seeing as it is the Pet master line. Set the recast on the pet debuff removal based on how many points put in to that tree. That potentially adds a little value to the Blue line, but it still needs way more.

It seems clear that some of you value the ability to engage in the pet rotation, while others find it tedious or avoid it entirely. If I had to pick one main gripe with the ‘normal’ pet rotation, it would be that it’s a lot of actions to apply one debuff for each pet. As a hypothetical, what if your pets no longer had debuff-applying skills, but you had a single debuff skill on your bar which changed depending on your active pet (essentially a dynamic lore skill with higher uptime than cooldown) which allowed you to apply multiple debuffs via either pet cycling or target cycling, but at a lower rate than what is currently achievable via pets?

Could add all the pet debuff skills as LM abilities on the Blue line and make it so that you can use any one of them with out having the needed pet summoned, but if you have the specific pet out, it gets a bonus to its effectiveness.

[Elmagor]

What if you apply a debuff to the player when a pet ability is used. That way, if they dismiss the pet and resummon it, the debuff would keep them from recasting that exact same pet ability until the debuff counts down and is removed. Make a debuff for each specific pet type, so you can rotate pet abilities by swapping out pets, but you can't machine gun the same one by doing the dismiss/summon dance..

Also they can revamp LM pets as Captain heralds. Turn their debuffs into buffs working for everyone when that pet was summoned.

[Turin347]

On trait-lines, specializations, and group roles:

I have observed before that the blue trait specialization, the Keeper of Animals, does not seems to have a clearly defined role. Thematically, it’s the ‘pets’ trait line, but what does that mean for your role and priorities? It has a bit of group support, a bit of personal damage, but mostly ends up being used to moderately enhance red or yellow (or for the occasional cheeky flipped version of those two which are essentially the same but with Murder of Crows in lieu of other capstones).

For this reason, I have floated the possibility of the blue ‘Keeper of Animals’ tree becoming a passive trait tree. Though a number of players have argued that the ‘Ancient Master’ line, being the ‘core’ identity of the class should become passive instead, and at least one player has argued that the ‘Keeper of Animals’ tree should remain a specialization but provide the benefits of a red captain, acting as an alternative choice for offensive group support.

Keep in mind, it’s not a guarantee that any line would become passive in an eventual Lore-master revamp, but feel free to add your thoughts on the matter in this thread.

I like the blue line and I play it very differently compared to the other lines when roaming alone. I would not want to see it go away instead of being revamped.
The only thing that keeps the Lms from being just "another support" or "another (mediocre) DPS" is the pet system, that update after update got butchered and kept behind.

Should u want to revamp the LM, you should not aim to make it "the same as other classes with a different appearance", u should work on and improve its peculiarities, which in the case of lms these are pets. Pets should not be just a "one more click to apply a buff".

For ex bring back the concepts of flanks (with a proper re-design), make the blue pets synergize with skills, contribute to DPS and spread heals and buffs, in a meaningful way.
The blue line that has never been updated should make the class rely 50% on pets. Else, what's the meaning of a pet class with such a roster?
The pet value should be 50% of another player, not 50% of a single skill.

[Vilan]

Having pet debuffs overwrite each other, allowing only one debuff on a boss at a time, is one solution. You could still put different debuffs on different mobs at the same time, but that's rarely necessary.

Or you could turn pet debuffs into an aura that surrounds the pet. When the pet dies or is dismissed, the debuff goes with it. That would make pet cycling pointless and encourage you to keep your pet alive.

[cdq1958]

On trait-lines, specializations, and group roles:

I have observed before that the blue trait specialization, the Keeper of Animals, does not seems to have a clearly defined role. Thematically, it’s the ‘pets’ trait line, but what does that mean for your role and priorities? It has a bit of group support, a bit of personal damage, but mostly ends up being used to moderately enhance red or yellow (or for the occasional cheeky flipped version of those two which are essentially the same but with Murder of Crows in lieu of other capstones).

For this reason, I have floated the possibility of the blue ‘Keeper of Animals’ tree becoming a passive trait tree. Though a number of players have argued that the ‘Ancient Master’ line, being the ‘core’ identity of the class should become passive instead, and at least one player has argued that the ‘Keeper of Animals’ tree should remain a specialization but provide the benefits of a red captain, acting as an alternative choice for offensive group support.

Keep in mind, it’s not a guarantee that any line would become passive in an eventual Lore-master revamp, but feel free to add your thoughts on the matter in this thread.

Personal preference here is that the blue line become passive, if you go that route. My pets are there to help me and my group; not otherwise. Others, naturally, will have differing opinions.

[Fantomex]

I'm broadly against the rate at which third specializations are being converted into utility trees. It's quite literally making classes two dimensional and of all classes I would argue Lore-master should have the most depth. Every class does not need to be dps plus X.

Also consider the renewed interest/investment being made in PvMP. Binary classes make for less interesting fights where the opposition can easily identify you as one spec or the other and respond accordingly. The third spec is the wildcard, the paper to go with rock and scissors as it were.

The issue with Keeper of Animals is not that it lacks identity, it's simply not been scaled properly for years.

[Brinuw]

Ok, let's see what yellow spec can bring to LM:

+10% incoming damage to boss
AoE heal self-centred on target
Group power share (used without targeting other players)
AoE Root (usefull CC)
Insta-remove wounds from anyone
+4 targets for Ancient Craft and Sign/Lore
Additional stun

Now you can remove all that and look what usefull you can get from blue spec...

Eagle
+2% damage for pet
+1% Crit for pet
+2% BPE for pet
+2% speed for pet
+5% Morale/Power for pet
No induction if your pet crit

You can leave all of that.

Not really sure what you are trying to point out regarding the yellow stuff. Sure that is all there (cept the +10% incoming damage, no idea where thats coming from) but Omn specifically said Debuff, which none of those are. They are great utility, but I wouldnt say they 'define the Identity' for yellow LM the way the Ents/Sticky Gourd/Natures Fury does for red line or the Pets do for blue.

I would like to point out that your blue line break down does paint that line is a pretty bad light, because 6 of the 7 things you listed are just pet buffs, and considering how weak the pets are its effectively a wash with those no matter how much you buff them; however, I would like to point out a few things that blue line can do that no other line can;

The only 'debuff' would be Murder of Crows; +10% Inc Dmg plus a strong DoT on target, plus a strong AoE DoT. I'd compare it to Warding Knowledge since they are both 10%, but one is single target and all damage while the other is AoE and just tactical but with half the cooldown.

That said, I dont think Blue LM should just be a debuff centrick line when it has such potential to also bring buffs to the equation. As Omn has said in other posts that it could be akin to a red captain in sorts, still bringing its debuffing potential with Lores, but also providing group buffs via Fellowships Friend and Raven's Protection. The framework for that system is already in the class, its just that the durations are too short, things haven't scaled correctly, and since pet rotating dominates the LM time its really hard to focus on that while rnging your way to extra buffs.