Rune-keeper planned changes with Isengard

[Alad.]

Note: The Rune-keeper Developer Diary is out. I updated this post with the changes in lime.


Let me see if I got the Isengard changes to Rune-keepers right. Below is the excerpt from the official Isengard *beta* Patch notes, and my comments. I have not taken part in the beta testing. If you are in the beta and know that I misinterpreted something, you're most welcome to clear things up. Please give full and precise information and not just an opinion. And please don’t use this thread for other discussions or personal conversations. Thank you.

I won't try to hide my pessimism. I believe the RK class has been damaged. I hope I’m wrong so show me that I am if you have better or more recent information.

I didn’t spend 3 days writing this just to piss you off. I’ve written it primarily for me, to try and comprehend the vast changes that have been made to almost every aspect of our class. And now I’d like to share it with you.

Although if you do get pissed off and raise your voices we may get back what was taken, or at least most of it. Some people are jealous of Rune-keepers it seems. A better way to handle it would be to give those people what they need, rather than take away from our fun so we can become just as miserable.

I’ve reorganized the beta patch notes so as to group relevant information together. So you have a section on Healing, Lightning Damage, Fire Damage, Buffing & Utility Skills (the neutral skills), each containing everything that happened to the skills themselves as well as the class traits and trait set bonuses. This will be a long read, and I hope it will be informative and complete. Go get a drink and a comfortable seat.

I will be using different colors for the patch note text and my comments. So if you don’t want to read my comments, you can simply read the patch note text and benefit from the grouping I’ve done nonetheless.

There are many questions in my comments. Please provide the answers if you are participating in the Beta. Thank you!

Edit: We are sorely lacking precise info about the changes. We would all be grateful if someone could transfer his 65 RK to the beta server and take pics of all his skill and trait tooltips both before and after the transfer, with identical gear and traits, and still at 65. Thank you!



The first thing the beta patch notes describe is a general change made to some Rune-keeper skills, so let’s see what that is.
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[Alad.]

Rune-keepers


Skill changes:

All Damage over time (DoT) and heal over time (HoT) skill have had the formula that determines initial damage changed. They now deal the same damage or healing for the initial pulse as they do for the secondary pulses. At level 1-50, there will be no change. At over level 50, players with on level Legendary Items will see an increase in the initial pulse.

The first part of that paragraph is bad news. The second part seems to be good news. Let’s try to see what the final result is.

Up until this patch, DoT and HoT skills had the initial pulse larger than the following "secondary" pulses. But when you ranked up the Tactical Damage Rating or Tactical Healing Rating legacies, only the secondary pulses were increased. The initial pulse remained unaffected. This caused the fully ranked up legacy to increase the DoT’s latter pulses such that they became bigger than the initial pulse in most cases where the initial pulse was only slightly bigger than the remaining pulses to start with.

So it seems this has changed for the Rune-keeper (but strangely not for the Loremaster who has a couple of skills like that, and perhaps other classes. Perhaps because the RK has more of this type of skill (8), or perhaps just to target us in particular).

If I understood the above statement correctly, it would mean that now, without a legendary item equipped (hence no bonus from those base legacies), the initial heal/damage would be equal to the remaining pulses. The question is how did they do it, did they lower the initial pulse or raise the remaining pulses or both? If you’re in a pessimistic mood and you get a hint from most of the other changes made to RK’s in this patch, you would tend to think they lowered the initial pulse. So far, this would mean a nerf to all DoT and HoT skills.

The second part of that paragraph, however, seems to say that the base legacies mentioned before will also increase the initial pulse now. Which would be perfectly normal and expected.

The net result would be a lowering of the base initial pulse, and raising it up again as you rank up the base legacies of your legendary items (Tactical Damage Rating, and Tactical Healing Rating).

If the initial pulse is lowered by more than it is later raised, then the skill will suffer a loss. Most skills with DoTs/HoTs that have initial pulses (not all DoT/HoT skills do), are such that the initial pulse is only slightly bigger than the rest (about 15-25% as shown in the table below). Considering only these changes (i.e. not another change made to the skill itself), those skills will probably be gaining a bit from this change. The bigger the ratio of initial pulse to remaining pulses today (before the patch), the more chance that the skill will be nerfed with this change, since the initial pulse will have to be lowered more.

(Note: Initial Pulses are written in Green on the tooltip, like so: "Heals xx-yy initially" or "xx-yy Fire Damage initially". If the word initially isn’t there, then this damage/heal is not the initial pulse mentioned here, but a second component of damage/healing. Some DoTs like Fiery Ridicule and Scathing Mockery do not have an initial pulse, and so are not affected by this change. Mending Verse also doesn’t have an initial pulse, but a separate starting big heal).

Here are the ratios I have: (Initial Pulse / Secondary DoT/HoT Pulse)

                      Ratio    Rank 19    Init. Pulse Gain at 19
                      -----    -------    ----------------------
Writ of Fire           1.22     +26.6%         +3.8%
Distracting Flame      1.19     +23.9%         +4.1%
Essence of Flame       1.25     +30.9%         +4.7%
Essay of Fire          1.14     +18.0%         +3.5%
Smouldering Wrath      1.24     +30.7%         +5.4%

Prelude to Hope        1.24     +24.1%         +0.0%
Writ of Health         1.21     +26.3%         +4.4%
Essay of Exaltation    1.19     +24.4%         +4.5%

The level 65 2nd Age legendary item’s Base Legacy (Tactical Damage Rating or Tactical Healing Rating) can be ranked up to 19.
For Tactical Damage Rating, the 19 Ranks add a certain amount of damage to the base skill damage (with 0 Tactical Damage Rating). The Rank19 damage bonus (in %) for the skills with an initial pulse are listed in the table above.

To find out if a skill’s initial pulse will end up losing or gaining with this new change, I assume the pulse will be decreased by the Ratio (divided), and then increased by the Rank19 %. So Writ of Fire’s initial pulse will be divided by 1.22 and multiplied by 1.266, resulting in a net gain of 3.8%, and so forth. The net gains for Rank 19 are listed in the table too. (Note: 3rd Age level 65 can go to Rank 18 only, but even at 18 you will still see a small, albeit smaller, increase in initial pulse for all but Prelude to Hope, it seems, which would suffer a small loss of 1.0% at rank 18.)

Therefore if I understood and analyzed that paragraph correctly, and if it will still work that way on release, the above 8 RK skills will see their Initial Pulses increase slightly, provided you rank up your legendary item’s base legacy to the maximum. The initial pulse being just one of several pulses means that, in the end, the increase for those skills as a whole is minimal.

The new Dev Diary seems to confirm what I wrote above. Here's the most important extract from it:
You will see a damage decrease only if your Legendary Item is of a low level or if your Tactical Rank / Healing Rank has not been increased (to its maximum rank).

[Alad.]

Healing Skills


Mending Verse - Healing on initial pulse decreased. Power cost increased.

This is a big nerf. My Mending Verse heals 500 morale (max) in the first shot (which is not an "initial pulse" in the sense we’ve been discussing above)and about 184 per 2 sec for 10 sec. I.e. 35% of the skill’s heal comes from the initial shot. But the real problem comes from the fact that we RK’s practically only have 2 good healing skills which we are practically forced to use constantly because they don’t heal much initially and they’re all HoT skills. And Mending Verse is one of these two skills.
Now if you reread that description, you could get really scared. Because it talks of the initial big heal as if it were an initial pulse. And if it has become an initial pulse in this patch, then the previous changes applied to initial pulses will have been applied to it, causing the 500 morale to have dropped to 184. If they did that, I would be willing to kill someone.. (at least slap them real hard!)

Someone who knows please tell us what happened to Mending Verse!

Note: Apparently the initial Mending Verse heal is still a lot larger than the latter pulses, so that's good news.



Writ of Health - Reduced healing at tier 1 and tier 2. Tier 3 healing remains the same.

This is the second healing skill, together with Mending Verse, that a healing RK uses all the time. You definitely don’t always have enough time to play this skill 3 times on the same fellow to get it up to tier 3. Definitely a bad nerf! Any numbers on that?



Prelude to hope - Reduced healing.

Again? This is the only healing skill a RK can use while moving. At 65 it heals about 100 morale, then 100 every 5 seconds. Is that too overpowered? 20 hps? How much does it heal now? I use it to try and escape death while retreating; it's not that great for healing others. Squishy class, and won’t even be able to run away now either. Bad robot! Nerf!
Note: The Riffler of Hope now doubles Prelude to Hope’s initial pulse instead of increasing the number of pulses by 2.



New at level 66 - Improved Prelude to Hope - If used on an ally who does not have Prelude to Hope currently active, will grant power back to the Rune-keeper.
From the RK Dev Diary: Returns Power to the RK if cast on an ally who has Writ of Health active.

Note that this is quite different than what it was in the beta patch notes. Now your ally has to have a Writ of Health active on them. But will it now provide power if used mutiple times on the same ally?
Oh, and using it in dps mode as I had suggested below now seems improbable, since you'll have to use Master of Writs to get a Writ of Health on your ally in the first place, and that will cost you 50% extra power. Will the power you gain be more than the power you lose?

Fine. Is that why they nerfed its healing? How much power is returned per shot? Because you’ll only be able to get 5 shots of those every minute or so; and that is if you really can afford to waste time (and power!) using this skill to get power, because your fellows will need real healing. I suppose this could have been nice for a RK in dps mode who needs some emergency power, since the skill can be played at any attunement. The problem is that it sets your attunement back every time you use it, so you have to waste power, and precious time, to get your battle attunement back. Is it viable? I doubt it. Maybe if you get 1000 power per shot.
As a healing skill? It was nerfed just a moment ago, remember?



New at level 70 - Improved Rousing Words - If channeled for 5 seconds on an ally, they will gain a tier of Writ of Health.

Does Rousing Words require a target? It's a group healing skill and they usually don't. Now it does, I guess. The wording is ambiguous... will all the fellowship get that (nerfed) tier of Writ of Health? If not, then it’s a strange mix of a single-target healing within a group heal skill. Still, it’s an improvement. Unless it no longer heals the whole group.

Note: I've had confirmation that all the fellowship will get that tier of Writ of Health. All except, apparently, yourself! This has to be a bug...


Word of Exaltation - Now provides a bubble (temporary morale). Damage reduction reduced from -40% to -10%. Duration remains the same.

This "bubble" is a new mechanic in Lotro it seems, although I have not seen it explained in any dev notes as a new concept. If I understood it correctly, it adds temporary morale to the target. So, for a limited time, it increases Maximum Morale, as well as fills up that added part with morale.
The added morale appears appended to the morale bar, in a purple colour, and any incoming damage goes towards that morale. It apparently stays for about 10s, and has about 3000 morale in it. When the 10 sec expire, the bubble disappears taking any remaining morale in it with it.

As for the trade-off between the loss of 30% damage reduction (of any kind) and this bubble, it certainly depends on how much morale the bubble is made of, how much dps the victim is receiving and whether his mitigations reduce the damage to the bubble too or not. If the dps is high enough, the 30% reduction would be superior to the bubble. How high?

Assuming that the new bubble's (and mitigation's) duration is the same as the current mitigation's duration (i.e. 3 sec + 2s per tier of Writ of Health on the target), and that the damage the bubble receives gets mitigated by the character's mitigations in the same way that damage he receives would be mitigated:
Break-even damage point between the new bubble and the lost 30% mitigation = Bubble size / 0.3

So for a bubble size of 3000, Break-even damage = 3000/0.3 = 10000
If the incoming damage is > 10000 during the duration of the buff, the previous mitigation buff was better.
If the incoming damage is < 10000 during the duration of the buff, the new bubble is better.



Essay of exaltation - Cooldown reduced to 5 minutes from 10. Healing amount reduced.

This is one of the only 2 heals that we have that affect the whole fellowship, used generally in emergencies due to its long cooldown (I don't count Rousing Words as a viable replacement since it is a channelled skill that ties you down for 6.5 sec and limits your heal/sec to around 120 which is not enough to save the group, and is a lot lower than what you can do with single-target heals if it’s not an emergency).
Reducing the cd to 5 min is a nice thing; you could now use it twice per fight, in extra long fights, which are very rare.
The little group healing that came with it (around 240 per 2 sec for 10 secs), was reasonably low to not make it overpowered (it's nowhere near Fellowship's Heart), but yet make it useful. The cost of that group heal is an increase by 50% of all healing skill power costs for the next 10 secs.
So they reduced the group heal; by how much? Did they also reduce the power penalty? I would actually have preferred to see the power penalty increase rather than see this emergency heal decrease.
Most definitely a big healing nerf given that we only have 2 group heals.

The other point is that Essay of Exaltation, is in fact a group version of Word of Exaltation, with an extra heal. Did they also reduce the damage mitigation on Essay of Exaltation in exchange for that "bubble"? (Apparently, yes).
The duration of the bubble and mitigation for Essay of Exultation is also unclear, since it is 3 sec + 2 sec for every tier of Writ of Health on the target. Does this mean the bubble will disappear faster for people who don't have writ of health active on them?
Will the (reduced) group heal of this skill heal the bubble?

Coupled with the possible reduction of damage reduction from Word of Exaltation, the nerf to this skill is most severe.



New from the RK Dev Diary:
Trait: Author of Exaltation - Now increases duration of the bubble, still increases mitigation by 10%.

So basically, the trait hasn't changed.



Trait: That which does not kill us - Now fully negates the damage of the next skill that strikes an ally effected by the skill (like Do not fall to X used to do). Coodlwon reduced to 5 minutes from 10 minutes. Healing reduced.
(Note: There is no mention of a change to this trait/skill in the Dev Diary. So maybe it'll stay as it is.)

This is a precious Legendary trait which provides a skill of the same name. In fact this skill is the "other" group healing skill we have, together with Essay of Exaltation. Their cooldowns force them into being emergency skills to be used only as panic buttons. This skill today provides 2 heals to each fellowship member:
A heal over time, plus a second powerful heal over time the next time they’re hit.
So what has changed?
-It seems they’ve replaced the powerful heal over time when hit with a simple negation of damage on that hit. That is clearly a nerf in most cases, unless the hit is really huge.
-They’ve also reduced the cooldown to 5 minutes which is really nice of them, although you still won’t be able to use this skill more than once in most fights.
-Lastly, they’ve nerfed the healing! Again!
Can anyone provide numbers, please?
There goes the other of our two group healing skills.



Trait: Master of Allusion - Increased threat reduction to -10%.
(Note: There is no mention of a change to this trait in the Dev Diary. So maybe it'll stay as it is. Which would be a shame because this change was one of the very few buffs we got to healing.)

A clear improvement (was -5%). Thank you guys. I hope the power reduction of -5% on all skills is still there too.



Trait: The Prophetic Word - All defeat removal skills return your ally with 25% more morale and power.
(Note: There is no mention of a change to this trait in the Dev Diary. So maybe it'll stay as it is.)

This trait used to decrease many useful buff skill cooldowns by 20%. I’ve seen RK’s traiting it; I never did. I assume this new version affects our 2 rez skills: Shall Not Fall This Day, and Nothing Truly Ends, and would be specifically interesting for the automatic in-combat rez (Shall not fall), because when rezzing out of combat morale and power don’t really matter. Having seen the carnage being done to us in this patch, I have to ask now: Have they reduced the %morale and power of the ally rezzed with Shall Not Fall This Day?
Is this trait useful? It could be, if you think you can spare a class trait slot. I don’t think I can.
On the other hand, I’ve seen a video with a level 75 tank with 16-17k morale. +25% morale on rezzing them in combat could save you a few minutes (hours?) than trying to heal that much after these healing nerfs. Seriously!



Trait Set Bonuses: Benedictions of Peace (Blue trait line)
Current:
2 Equipped: Rune of Restoration usable at all Attunements and heals 20% more
3 Equipped: -10% Healing Attuned Skill Power Cost, +2 Mending Verse Pulse Count
4 Equipped: Master of Writs becomes a Toggle, -5% Threat Generation
New:
2 Equipped: Rune of Restoration usable at all Attunements and heals 20% more
3 Equipped: -10% Healing Attuned Skill Power Cost, +2 Mending Verse Pulse Count
4 Equipped: (+1%) +2% healing per Benedictions of Peace trait equipped, -5% Threat Generation


2- No change

3- No change

4- They replaced the Master of Writs toggle by a +1% healing bonus per blue trait. The Master toggle is now on the Riffler of Writs; which was nerfed too! It now only reduces the power penalty by 10% at the most instead of 30%; making Master of Writs less interesting to use unless you’re loaded with power or use the writs sparingly.
So is the +8% to +10% more healing you now get from this better? I have to say yes. If for no other reason than their taking away a lot of our healing potential and our having to get back as much of it as we can, if all those healing nerfs are really implemented. I personally will probably still trait Linnod of Subtlety (together with Linnod of Peace) to get a maintainable +10% bonus to healing, and Master of Tragedy for better healing crits, so probably will not slot more than 5 blue traits.



More info, this time reliable (from a post by Zombie Colombus in this thread):
The 4-trait set bonus is 2% outgoing healing per slotted blue trait (not 1%).
Great news! Thanks ZC!

[Alad.]

Lightning Skills



Ceaseless Argument - Reduced damage.

This was a beautiful skill when they first released the class. Required a lot (9?) of attunement to be able to use it, but could spam it with huge damage. That was the reward of building up attunement. Then it was seriously nerfed and turned into a low-attunement skill. Now it will only serve to raise your attunement, basically. But the problem is that it’s in a lot of people’s rotations because it is fast. I can’t see anything it can be replaced with, offhand. Another Nerf. This time god’s anger is falling on our dps role.



Shocking Words - Increased damage, increase power cost.

An increase in damage on a pretty slow skill which can't be spammed like Ceaseless Argument. The increase in power could make it less attractive, but at least it can still stun. Or can it? (nothing mentioned about that). By how much was the damage increased? And the power?



Sustaining Bolt - Decreased damage, though trait set now greatly increases damage, netting higher damage than before this update. Cooldown reduced to 15 seconds from 30 seconds. Power reduction effects added even if the skill is resisted.


The reduced cooldown is moot, since we already have that today from the trait set bonus. (But guess what? Yes, they removed it from the trait set bonus, so be glad it’s been integrated into the skill).
It’s nice to get the power reduction effect even if they resist it. Do you also get it if you miss? Nope, it’s not unheard of; captains get some buffs associated with skills even if they miss the attack.
About the power reduction: The prohibitive power cost of this skill is such that it's a bad idea to use it if you want to save power, unless you get it for free (with the randomly-occurring "charged" buff). At an average cost of 100 power per skill (at 65), you'll probably play 4-5 skills in the 10 seconds the power-reduction buff lasts, thus saving 10% of around 500 power, or around 50 power (let’s be very generous and say 100 power saved), while the skill itself costs more than 300 power. So, NOT a power-saving tool unless it costs nothing.
So, what’s left? Decreased damage = Nerf.
(We’ll analyse the trait set they talk about in a minute to see what they took away to give us the "greatly increased damage" mentioned.)



New at level 72 - Improved Sustaining Bolt - When used at 9 Battle attunement, restores some power in addition to reducing power expenditures in the future.

The power restoration at 9 attunement is new, and it’s a clean bonus, I guess. Can't see anything fishy here, except that they could have reduced the power cost of the skill itself instead of restoring some power. Unless the power restored is bigger than the skill’s cost, of course. Is it, guys? But the real reason they did it this way is because this skill can cost zero power at times. So how would you reduce zero? Clever devs. (Give us back our class, please! Take 1 sec off the Bolster Courage induction and they’ll kiss both your feetses and let us live in peace..)
If you need power, then you should still remember to never use this skill unless it costs zero power.



Essence of Storm - Small damage increase.
(From the Dev Diary: Increased Damage and Power cost.)

This is our high crit skill. You should always use it as soon as it becomes available. So that's good news too. How "small" is the damage increase? Does it still have +3% crit chance per battle attunement? Does it still have a crit magnitude bonus of +100%?

The increase in power cost announced later in the dev diary is definitely not good news. It would all depend how much more power it will cost, but this change doesn't look good at all.



Trait: Winter Storm - Change to: critical hits of Essence of Storm will reset the cooldown of Essence of Winter. Further, the Power cost of Writ of Cold is reduced 10%.
From Final Dev Diary: Essence of Storm critical hit resets the cooldown of Essence of Winter. Also reduces all Frost skills power cost by 5%.

This trait currently affects all lightning skills; it will henceforth only affect Essence of Storm. I consider this change to be an improvement since the current 5% chance to stun is simply too small a probability compared to Essence of storm's much bigger chance to crit (should be around 37-42% at 9 attunement for most people). Essence of Winter is a nice AoE damage and debuffing skill, too, which has a 20 sec cooldown so you probably can only play it once or twice normally per fight against multiple trash mobs. This will allow you to play it one more time depending on the length of the fight. (For shorter fights of around 20-30 secs the old trait is better, but those fights are no problem anyway).
Writ of Cold's huge power cost can use a reduction as well. So this is all sweet.



Epic Conclusion - Damage increase.

That's great news! Why is there a rumour that it was actually nerfed? (read on..)



Trait: Closing Remarks - Changed from +50% damage per effect, to +15% critical chance and +15% damage per effect.
The recent Dev Diary confirms it is (+15% crit chance and damage) per effect.

This concerns Epic Conclusion (EC).
The description is a bit ambiguous... Does the trait give a constant +15% crit chance to EC, and a +15% damage per effect? Or does it give [+15% crit chance and +15% damage] per effect, meaning +30% crit chance and +30% damage if you have the 2 effects on? If anyone in beta would care to answer, please.
We're being forced to gamble, since we now have one extra stage of randomness: a chance to crit or not.
So which is better the old or the new trait?
It depends on your Epic Conclusion normal crit chance, its normal Critical Multiplier and the number of effects that are on.
After some quick calculations, I have found the following:
- With no effects on, old is equal to new. Unless new includes a constant +15% crit chance independent of effects, in which case new is better.
- With 1 effect on, old is better than new. (Unless the normal crit multiplier of EC is greater than about 4.0, which it isn't.)
- With the 2 effects on, old is better than new. (Unless the normal crit multiplier of EC is greater than about 3.5 in case the new buff is +30% chance and +30% damage; or unless the normal crit multiplier for EC is greater than about 8.8 in case the new buff is +15% chance and +30% damage).
So, unless they have more than doubled the crit multiplier for EC (or increased it by more than 200%) and are not saying anything about it, the old Closing Remarks buff with +50% damage per effect is superior to the new one.
I guess it's safe to call this trait change, by itself, a Nerf.

But they also increased the damage of Epic Conclusion! The result is a flattening out of the range of damage that Epic Conclusion can do, raising the low end, and much lowering the high end, as well as favouring people who don't have a high Tactical Critical Rating:
Right now, you get +50% extra damage per effect. Tomorrow you'll be getting +x% damage to the skill, +15% damage per effect and +15% crit chance per effect.
1) The +15% crit chance per effect will count as a bigger contribution to crit chance for people with a low base Tactical Crit Chance (including lower level Runekeepers). The higher your Tactical Crit Chance, the less the increase in crit damage this extra +15% will represent. People who will have a base crit chance of 20% will have 35% with the bonus, but those who only have 5% base will have 20%! Thus the higher your base crit chance the lower the proportion of extra damage you get from the effects.
2) By lowering the extra damage per effect from +50% to +15%, they're making those 2 effects do a smaller increase to EC damage. But since they're raising the base EC damage, you'll have a situation where EC damage will be higher without any effects, but lower with both effects on, than it is now before the patch.

The net result is a flattening out of the Epic Conclusion maximum damage, especially for those who have the highest base Tactical Crit Rating already. In other words, they're reducing those exceptionally high damage points (that some RK's like to boast about), but also raising EC's low tier damage hits.

Conclusion: Untraited EC has improved. Traited EC has improved for people with low Tactical Crit Rating and who don't try to manage the 2 bonus-adding effects; and has probably been slightly reduced for people with high Tactical Crit Rating and who try to get those 2 effects up before using EC. Hard to say what the effect on Epic Conclusion's overall dps will be but it could well not have changed much.



Trait: Thunderous Words - Now increases Finesse.

This concerns Scribe’s Spark. I assume the other conditions remain unchanged (1950 rating at level 65, 15% chance and 20 sec duration). If so, then it's an improvement, since Finesse is supposed to affect both resistance and avoidance (B/E/P), while the trait now only affects Tactical Resistance.



Trait: Master of Tragedy - Now increases critical rating.

This trait simply increases Tactical Critical Rating (around 1.5%). The change to "Critical Rating" makes sense since Tactical Critical Rating doesn't exist anymore. It’s a slight improvement since it will now also improve your auto-attack (melee) crits. Provided the increase in Rating remains the same, of course. Is it?



Trait Set Bonuses: Solitary Thunder (Yellow trait line)
Current:
2 Equipped: Chilling Rhetoric usable at all Attunements and -10s Cooldown
3 Equipped: +30% Fury of Storm Critical Multiplier, -5 Shocking Words Cooldown
4 Equipped: -15 Sustaining Bolt Cooldown, +3% Run Speed
New:
Note: The following seems to be old news! See the paragraph further down for a more recent version of the trait set!
2 Equipped: Chilling Rhetoric usable at all Attunements and -10s Cooldown
3 Equipped: -5 Shocking Words Cooldown, +50% Sustaining Bolt damage
4 Equipped: +5% Fury of Storm Critical Multiplier per Solitary Thunder trait equipped. Occasionally gain the "charged" buff, which makes Sustaining Bolt free.

2- No change.

(The data regarding the following analysis has now changed. The crit multiplier bonus is maintained in the 3-set bonus, but at 25%, and we get +2% lightning damage per yellow trait slotted in the 4-set bonus, plus 40% sustaining bolt damage. See below).

3- They replaced +30% Crit Multiplier to ALL lightning skills (including Epic Conclusion, Essence of storm, the high crit chance skill), with +50% damage to Sustaining Bolt skill only.
This is a tough one to evaluate; let’s see:
They reduced the damage of Sustaining Bolt (by how much? They say that this +50% (+40% now, see below) will get you above the current damage, but how much more?). They reduced Sustaining Bolt CD, but we had that already from the 4 trait set bonus (see above). They made it give back some power at 9 attunement but only at level 72+ when you get the Improved version.
The question is, how often will you use Sustaining Bolt?
The skill only becomes free now (power-wise) if you trait 4 yellows (no more chisels to do that). The "charged" buff which makes it free, occurs randomly every 20-40 secs or so and lasts around 6 sec IIRC. The skill’s CD is 15 sec.
If you insist on using this skill (as I do) only when it’s for free, you will probably end up using it at best every 20 secs. If you’re above 72 or you don’t care about the power cost because the fight is short you may afford to use it every 15-16 sec at best.

So what would you prefer? Getting +xx% (to be confirmed) damage from Sustaining Bolt every 16 secs at best, or getting +30% Crit Multiplier on all your lightning skills including Sustaining Bolt itself?
A quick calculation (I’ll show the details below if I have time and space), shows that:
- +30% Crit Multiplier is equivalent to around +3% to +6% of your lightning skills dps. Let’s be conservative and say +4%.
- Say your dps is 350 (be modest, and remember the coming nerfs that would mean you get 14 dps extra from the 4%.
- How much increase in the current Sustaining Bolt damage, played every 16 secs at best, would result in +14 dps ? Say the current damage of the skill is 550 (average). Played every 16 secs means 34.4 dps. To increase that by 14 dps we would need to increase the damage by 14/34.4 = 41%.
- So, if the damage of the new Sustaining Bolt at level 65 with 3 yellow traits slotted (+50% bonus) is more than 41% bigger than the current damage of Sustaining Bolt (so at least 775 instead of 550), this change in the trait line bonus will be to our advantage. If not, it will be a.. (you know the word..) Nerf.
- In other words, if they decreased the raw Sustaining Bolt damage by more than 6%, it would be a nerf (1 – 1.41/1.5).
- If you insist that your lightning skill dps is much bigger than 350, then you can say with certainty that the yellow 3-trait set bonus has been nerfed. But keep on reading : )

4- The 4-trait set bonus, on the other hand, is a very clear improvement over the current one. It appears you can get back the lost +30% crit multiplier, and even +35% by slotting 7 yellow traits. I would keep a slot for Linnod of Subtlety though, because it allows you to get +10% damage to all skills using Calming Verse. Other traits, such as Writ of Blazing Fire, may also be more interesting than a +5% crit multiplier, but that’s up to everyone’s tastes.

You will probably have to slot 4 yellows in any case to get the charged buff which you can only get this way now, so you’ll be getting some of your Crit Multipliers back. For those fiery dps Rune-keepers who can’t slot 4 yellows, but would like to slot 3, the previous discussion becomes a lot more relevant. (This whole discussion is obviously irrelevant when healing-traited).



NEW! From the Build 2 patch notes and a recent screenshot:
* Traits - Solitary Thunder 3 set bonus: Critical bonus reduced to 25% from 30%.
* Traits - Solitary Thunder 4 set bonuses: No longer decreases Sustaining Bolt cooldown. Now increases Sustaining Bolt damage. Now increases all lightning damage by 2% for each equipped Solitary Thunder trait.

So, the new set bonuses will be: (hopefully, they won't change again)
2-set bonus: no change
3-set bonus: +25% Fury of Storm Critical Multiplier, -5s Shocking Words Cooldown
4-set bonus: Occasionally become Charged granting increased Critical Damage and making Sustaining Bolt free; +40% Sustaining Bolt damage; +2% lightning damage for each yellow trait equipped

This is all good news! The 4-set has 3 bonuses now, and +2% lightning damage per yellow trait will certainly help get back some of the lightning nerfs.




And some more info found in Beta Patch Notes, Build 2:

Legendary Items:
Implement damage on Legendary Items has been increased over level 64. This will bump up the damage of all Tactical classes.

I don’t really know what to make of this. I think "Implement damage on legendary items" refers to the Tactical Damage Rating legacy found on our weapons, and the amount of increase in tactical damage each rank of that legacy gives.
It may have only been a bug in the beta, that they have fixed. Does it mean the disappointment over dps in the beta was due to this bug and that dps will not be as low on live?
Update from the Dev Diary: There is indeed a problem with the Tactical Damage Rating and Healing Rating legacies for all tactical classes that has been discovered late in the beta. Whether this has been corrected or not for launch, is unclear to me.

[Alad.]

Fire Skills


Fiery Ridicule - Induction reduced from 3 seconds to 1.5 seconds. Damage reduced to compensate. Power cost reduced to facilitate a higher cast rate.

Damage nerfed. By how much? Shorter inductions are always an improvement. They seem to want us to spam fiery ridicule. Why? (If they had made the sound fx a mocking laughter I’d have used it more often . Does it still have no cooldown? Does its damage still get increased by 1% per attunement?
Note: The trait Conflagration of Runes now turns Fiery Ridicule into a 3-target AoE skill.
Note: The red 2-trait bonus makes Fiery Ridicule inductions immune to setbacks.



Trait: Conflagration of Runes - Bonus damage reduced to 10% per DoT on the foe. Now makes Fiery Ridicule into an area of effect skill that can strike up to 3 targets.
(From the Dev Diary: That’s right, a spammable AOE skill! I was very tempted to fully remove the DoT increase, but I settled on just reducing it. Time will tell if an AOE focused Rune-keeper over performs.)

I’m neutral about this. They reduced the potential damage (was 40% for the 1st DoT effect), but turned it into an AoE and cut its induction by half while reducing its damage (see above). OK, maybe this is an improvement after all if you use fire skills. I just don’t like induction skills.. Take them all and give them to the Loremasters. That’s their specialty.

Further analysis: We now (before the patch) have 4 different possible Fire DoT's other than Fiery Ridicule's: Writ of Fire, Distracting Flame, Essence of Flame and Scathing Mockery. The max damage bonus to Fiery Ridicule's DoT is therefore +70% (40 + 3*10). 2 things have changed with this patch: 1) Improved Scathing Mockery (see below) will not apply its own DoT any more, but a tier of Writ of Fire. That's one type of DoT less. 2) Essence of Flame will not longer have a DoT (see below); that's a second type of fire DoT less. Remaining: Only 2 types of DoT's.
So with the nerf in this trait, you'll be able to increase Fiery Ridicule's DoT by only +20%. Your consolation is that you can now hit 3 targets with it. The question remains of whose DoT's must they be? Only yours, or another player's as well?



Essence of Flame - No longer a DoT. The full damage will be applied when the skill is used. Induction reduced by 1 seconds, cooldown reduced by 5 seconds. Damage reduced.
Latest Dev Diary no longer mentions a reduction in damage. Wait and see.

Damage nerfed, but the 3-red trait set bonus adds +30% to Essence of Flame damage (will you slot 3 red traits?). This change makes it the only fire skill with no DoT. I hardly ever used that skill because of its induction of 3 sec. Is it more interesting to use it now? Well, there was a trait set bonus that reduced the induction to 2 secs, which has disappeared. Does it still do +20% damage for every tier of Writ of Fire on the target?



Writ of Fire - Reduced power cost

Good news. Somewhat. Its power cost was the lowest of the 3 writs already. Still a good skill to use when traited. So I’ll take one of those, please.



Essay of Fire - Now usable at all attunements. Power cost has been doubled. While at 6+ Battle attunement, Power cost is halved.

This is a nice-on-paper skill that is already very expensive power- and induction-wise (6 sec induction, 279 power), usable only at 6+ battle attunement. So the change is that you can now pay 560 power to use it before 6 attunement (maybe to start the fight). It puts a tier 3 Writ of Fire DoT on the target. Did you ever try to play a skill with 6 sec induction? Even if you have a modest dps of 300 (at 65), that's 1800 damage lost in the induction, assuming the mobs will let you pull it off. And the skill does about 60dps for 20sec (untraited).
Conclusion: Meh. Too slow.



New at level 68 - Improved Essay of Fire - The next fire skill used will have no induction time.
The new Dev Diary confirms: For the next 5 seconds, your Wrath of Fire skills have no induction.

This sounds really nice, since Fire skills have annoying inductions. How long does the window of opportunity last? Remember that essay of fire has a 6 sec induction and it costs 280 power (at level 65, more at 75) at least.
Fire skill inductions range from 0.8 sec to 3 sec, with the exception of this 6 sec skill. Will you spend 6 sec in order to save 3?
Or can you spam it once you've used it the first time, i.e. does it eliminate its own induction? Hmm... even if it did, it wouldn’t work; it has a 1 min cooldown and I bet the window doesn’t last that long.
I guess the best skill to play after it would be Essence of Flame to make use of the tier 3 writ of fire bonus (if it still exists) of +60% to Essence of Flame, and the +30% trait set bonus.
Now if they’d said it allowed me to play a skill of my choice irrespective of attunement (battle or healing), then I’d have seriously considered spending those 6 seconds and power.
But wait! If you’re willing to slot 4 red traits, the induction drops to 1.5 sec! Then, and only then, will this feature become interesting to some/truly powerful.

Edit: It seems the buff that comes with Improved Essay of Fire is: No induction to fire skills for the next 5 seconds.
This alone seems to be the reason why people in the beta are saying that fire skills are the future. That would obviously be very cool indeed if it stays that way, even though I dislike being forced into choosing fire alone, when I was given 2 damage lines to choose from. But still I can't refuse such a gift. Beware of the aggro you're very liable to attract, though. Especially if you fall into the trap of wanting to use this skill at the start of a fight against multiple mobs, before the tank has gotten hold of the aggro.



New at level 74 - Improved Scathing Mockery - DoT component of the skill has been removed. It now will apply a tier of Writ of Fire to all effected targets.

That sounds like an improvement, since the Writ of Fire DoT dps should be a bit higher than that of Scathing Mockery. Since Scathing Mockery is AoE, this would allow you to apply an AoE Writ of Fire to 5 mobs in one go. Problem is, the CD of 20 sec makes it impossible to use this skill 3 times to apply a tier 3 since the Writ of Fire itself only lasts 20 sec.

The following discussion was valid when the CD reduction was supposed to be 5 sec. It is no longer valid:
Now, they have also modified a trait (Frost Burn) that allows uses of Writ of Cold to reduce by 5 sec the CD of Scathing Mockery. If this reduction is cumulative 3 times (tier 3 Writ of Cold), Scathing Mockery CD would go down to 5 sec. Adding 3 sec induction brings the total time to 8 sec, making the AoE tier 3 Writ of Fire seem possible. It would still require 3 Writs of Cold (13 sec) followed by 3 SM (19 sec), requiring 32 sec. This assumes the CD reduction effect lasts 32 sec, and your inductions aren’t being set back. Can the cd be reduced by 15 sec at all? Will playing 3 Writ of Colds back to back cause the CD reduction to last 32 sec? (Does the CD reduction effect refresh itself as well as stack?)
If the CD reduction doesn’t stack to 15, Scathing Mockery’s induction + CD would be 18 sec. With the Writ of Fire lasting 20 sec, you’d have a rough time tiering up the Writ of Fire effect, especially with setbacks. You’d have to play 3 Scathing Mockeries back to back and precede each one with a Writ of Cold (in the SM cooldown). It would then take a minimum of 40 sec to pull it off (and being fully sober).

Whether the CD reduction stacks or not, that effect would have to last more than 20 sec to be safe, and any SM induction setback could break the whole scheme. Is it worth all this trouble? The whole thing reeks of a lengthy 40 sec combo. What are we, slow wardens?

New discussion:
Frost Burn trait will now cause Writ of Cold to only reduce Scathing Mockery CD by 3 sec instead of 5 (as announced in the RK Dev Diary):
The whole point of my analysis here is as follows:
If Scathing Mockery now applies an AoE tier of Writ of Fire instead of its own DoT, can we tier up that WoF to tier 3? And maintain it? If yes, then it's a very nice enhancement. If not, then it just a little enhancement and the wording of the Scathing Mockery change is misleading. Instead of saying "a tier of Writ of Fire", ZC should have just said "a tier 1 Writ of Fire".
As long as the mechanics are not known in all their details, it is impossible to tell if tiering up to 3 is possible. What's certain, though, is that with the CD reduction of 3 sec instead of 5, it is much less likely. I believe he wouldn't have made that last minute change otherwise.



Trait: Frost-burn - changed to: writ of Cold reduces the active cooldown of Scathing Mockery by 5 seconds.
(From the Dev Diary: Writ of Cold reduces the cooldown of Scathing Mockery by 3s)

How long does the cooldown reduction last? Is it cumulative with tiers of Writ of Cold? Does it refresh its own duration? Does this trait still reduce Writ of Cold’s CD by 2 secs ?
Before the level 74 Improved version, Scathing Mockery is an AoE fire skill with pulses every 6 seconds (too long) for 30 sec, 3 sec induction and a cd of 20 sec. Even if this trait would reduce its cooldown cumulatively down to 11 secs, why would you want to spam a skill with 3 sec induction and which lasts 30 sec anyway? Does Scathing Mockery tier up? No (not until level 74). I wouldn't spam it. Frankly, fire skills are slow, get interrupted and the dps isn't that good. Decreasing this skill's cd by 3 sec won't make me use it more often.
The trait loses the ability of Writ of Cold to refresh the Writ of Fire on the mobs it hits. Perhaps not a great loss but a nice mechanic.
If we lose the -2 sec CD on Writ of Cold, which tiers up and is a great debuffing as well as damaging skill, then this trait change is a sure Nerf as far as I’m concerned.

At level 74, Scathing Mockery gets modified to Improved Scathing Mockery (see above), and it’s clear that this trait was changed in an attempt to make it enhance that skill.
Did we gain or lose with this change? Up until level 74, I think it’s a loss. At 74+ it’s dubious to say the least. See discussion above.



Trait Set Bonuses: Cleansing Fires (Red trait line)
Current:
2 Equipped: Fiery Ridicule usable at all Attunements and -.5s Induction
3 Equipped: -5 Essence of Flame Cooldown, -1 Essence of Flame Induction
4 Equipped: -4.5 Essay of Fire Induction, -X Penetrate Target Resist
New:
2 Equipped: Fiery Ridicule usable at all Attunements and can’t be knocked back by damage
3 Equipped: +30% Essence of Flame Damage, Scathing Mockery Induction -.5s
4 Equipped: -4.5 Essay of Fire Induction, +1% fire damage per Cleansing Fires trait equipped


2- The Fiery Ridicule skill got its induction reduced to 1.5 sec by default, so no loss there, and the immunity to induction setbacks is a boon. Result: Cool!

3- The current Essence of Flame cooldown reduction is useless IMO. I much prefer the new increased damage. But the loss of 1 sec induction is a big hit IMO since it turns a tedious, risky, 3 sec induction into a lighter and safer 2 sec, with a higher dps too (due to the decrease in induction only). I would have much preferred it (-1 sec Essence of Flame) to -0.5 sec on Scathing Mockery. Result: Not good enough.

4- +1% Fire damage per red trait is nice to have even if it’s very small. The question here is: Who is going to slot 4 fire traits? Are you? Let alone 7 fire traits (to get +7%). Result: Very dubious.



Some more info from the Build 2 Patch notes:
* Traits - Cleansing Fires 3 set bonuses: No longer reduces the cooldown or induction of Essence of Flame. Now increases the damage of Essence of Flame and reduces the power cost of all fire skills.
* Traits - Cleansing Fires 4 set bonuses: Now increases all fire damage by 2% for each equipped Clesning Fires trait.

This would mean, compared to what we just analyzed:
1) They replaced the 3-set Scathing Mockery -0.5s induction reduction with a reduction of power costs for all fire skills (how much? From Dev Diary: 10%)
2) They increased the fire damage bonus per slotted red trait from 1% to 2%. (From Dev Diary: And add a [Level x 6] to your Finesse, instead of the Penetrate Target Resistance which exists now.)
This is good news, if it’s true.

[Alad.]

Buffing and Utility Skills


Do not fall to X (fire, frost, storm) - No longer fully negates the next elemental attack, instead greatly reduces the damage. Now leaves a trailing buff to tactical armor after an attack triggers the resistance. Attunement shift increased to 2.
(From the RK Dev Diary: The trailing buff lasts 15 sec)

Ambiguous wording, since I don’t know what "tactical armor" is and I’m not certain how "resistance" is involved with this skill. I think they mean:
- Nerfed the damage reduction: next damage will only be reduced (by how much?) instead of being completely negated as it is now
- Nerfed Attunement shift to neutral: will set you back by 2 instead of just 1
- New buff that increases the ally's Tactical Mitigation (by how much?) (i.e. versus fire, shadow, acid, etc...) for some seconds (how long?), but only if the ally gets hit by the specific type of damage thereby triggering the one-shot damage reduction (triggers the "resistance").
Is this skill better than before? It depends on the missing numbers.

A small afterthought: ZC's use of the words "triggers the resistance" to mean triggers the damage reduction, reminds me of partial parries/evades/blocks. Partial Resistance doesn't exist in the game, it's either all or nothing like full parries/blocks/evades. Or does it exist now? (It would only be fair that partials exist for avoiding tactical skills just as they do for avoiding melee and ranged skills).



The blade shall not wound / The fang shall not poision - Resistance rating replaced with a flat % chance to avoid debuffs of the appropriate variety. The skills now stack with each other (can have both active). Attunement shift increased to 3.

- The approx. 1000 wound resist rating that skill adds at 65 corresponds to about 3.5% on my character (who has about 1000 resist to start with). How much is the new flat % chance? How will a mob's finesse affect it? (Can it be wiped down to 0% or is it guaranteed to stay?)
- Stacking both wound and poison is a nice option to use just before the fight begins
- Attunement shift from 1 to 3 sets you back by 2 more (or 4 more if you use both skills). So if you want to use both skills during healing/combat you'll be set back by 6 attunement and have to start over building attunement again. I call that a nerf to both healing and dps.



New, from the RK Dev Diary:
Weapon of X -The debuff the skill applies on foes struck in melee has changed to a flat % increase in damage from elemental source type.

This skill is our only self buff (we can give it to others too, but only one at a time). It gives us a meager +1% tactical damage (and ranged damage), and allows melee attacks on the mob to put a buff on him that reduces his mitigation to whatever the X is (lightning/fire/frost) depending on the runestone equipped. So now it will increase the damage by a certain % (which will probably depend on level?). Any idea what that % is?
It seems an improvement, since some/most mobs won't have any mitigation to start with that our debuff can reduce. An increase in incoming damage would be better in most cases.



Armaments of X - renamed to "Improved Weapon of X"

OK.



Master of Writs - Usable outside combat.

OK. What will you do with it outside of combat? (Tiering up Writ of Health before starting a fight was nice, but they nerfed that already and made Writ of Health only usable in combat a while back.)



Self-motivation - Attunement shift increased to 4.

Another nerf (was 3 attunement shift). Self motivation gives you power. Need some power now? Then waste some power getting back to your previous attunement. Equivalent to reducing the power obtained from the skill and reducing you choice of battle or healing skills. Any increase in attunement shifts on any skill is a nerf to both dps and healing.



Do not fall this day - Cooldown reduced to 10 minutes. Can now be used on any player, regardless of fellowship status (though still not on the Rune-keeper himself.) Modifications that reduce the cooldown of the skill have been toned down slightly. Attunement shift increased to 6.
Do Not Fall This Day can now only be used while in combat, and on a target who is in combat.

While it is nice to be able to use this on the tank of the other fellowship, the cooldown reduction still doesn't allow you to use it more than once in the fight. The increase of attunement shift from 4 to 6 is a bad nerf. They really want to make us pay for wanting to use our buffing skills. Why not remove them altogether?
The "Modifications" they mention refer to the satchel’s minor legacy "Do Not Fall This Day Cooldown" which can reduce the skill’s CD by 160 sec (that’s 2.66 min), and that has been reduced (to how much?). (Note: There is no mention of this slight toning down in the final Dev Diary.)



Shall not fall this day - Renamed to "Improved Do not fall this day". Duration has been changed to the duration of combat. No longer increases defenses of the player.

The duration increase is nice. The removed buffs (1300 Melee, Ranged and Tactical Defence rating, which result in around 4%-5% damage reduction from all sources), and which lasted for 1 min, made this skill one that you could use as a... buff! To protect someone. And no, we can't use this skill on ourselves; only to protect others.
Now it's only useful to rez them when/if they die. Again some signs that indicate they don't want us to buff.
This skill being the replacement of Do Not Fall this Day, all the changes in the previous paragraph apply to it too, including the Attunement shift increase from 4 to 6. This too is a huge nerf.
From the final Dev Diary:
ZC Fun Fact: If you use this during the beginning of a long fight, you can have two or more active at the same time! Only one per ally, of course.
OK. Given its 10 min cooldown, the fight would reeaaally have to be long. There are hardly any fights that long right now.



Abrupt words - Renamed to "Final Word"

OK.



Final Words - Renamed to "Improved Final Word"

OK.



Armour of X - Now provides tactical armour, instead of armour only against the affinity of the skill.

This is good news. The first improvement in a buffing skill. The new Tactical "armour" (they mean Mitigation I suppose), works against Fire, Shadow, Acid, Lightning, Light and Frost damage.



All Fates Entwined - Renamed to "Improved Fates Entwined"

OK.



Fall to X - Now increases incoming damage of the affinity (i.e.: increased incoming lightning damage). No longer reduces resistance chance.
New description from the Dev Diary: Changed resistance bypass to an increased incoming damage of type X by a flat %.

It seems they replaced the Tactical Resist Rating debuff with a debuff that increases incoming damage. Although the effect in the beta is actually a 5% reduction in X's Mitigation, which, depending on how they handle negative mitigations (in case the mob doesn't have 5% mitigation to start with), can be inferior to a buff of +5% incoming X damage.

This skill reduced the foe's Tactical Resist Rating by 780 for max 1 min, so all your tactical skills no matter what the damage type is, and all tactical skills of people in your fellowship (including debuffs and cc's) had a better chance to hit. Not a negligible debuff. I.e. you can put a Fall to Frost debuff on the mob, knowing very well that it will not receive any frost damage, thus assuring that the debuff to its tactical resistance will stay for the whole minute!
Removing this debuff can be considered a nerf since the decrease in mitigation (or increase in incoming damage) that replaces it only affects one type of damage and is not as general-purpose as a lowering of Tactical Resistance. A debuff which decreases the mob's Tactical Mitigation and which only gets removed by damage of type X, would have been more equivalent (not yet equivalent, since it wouldn't help the success rate of CC skills and further debuffs).

The other effect was a 20% chance that one attack of the affinity type (Frost/Fire/Lightning) would in fact cause the mob to receive an extra -500 morale (not 500 "damage"). This reduction to morale is exactly that, meaning the mob cannot mitigate it, since it isn’t "damage". And that is irrespective of who or what caused the damage (including from a DoT) that luckily triggered the morale reduction. This effect appears to be still present.



Trait: Fall to our Wrath - No longer grants a new skill, now buffs "Fall to X". All damage types will now trigger the damage. Significantly increases the damage of the skill. Increases incoming damage from all sources while the debuff persists. Reduces the Resistance of the foe while active.
(Note: This trait change was not mentioned in the final Dev Diary. It is therefore possible it will not change.)

This is a precious Legendary trait (called "You shall Fall to Our Wrath") and which gives a skill called Fall To Our Wrath that is almost identical to Fall to X (and that can stack with it), with this difference:
The morale deducted is about -1200, and it has a 10% chance of being triggered by *any* damage type (contrary to Fall to X).
The skill also applies the same -780 Tactical Resist Rating debuff for 1 minute.

When the two skills are used together, you therefore have:

• -1560 Tactical Resist Rating for 1 min (which reduces the chance that the mob will resist your tactical damage and debuffs – i.e. you and your fellowship hit with tactical skills more often).
• 20% chance to deduct 500 morale once, on any Fire or Frost or Lightning damage (depending on the runestone’s affinity), and
• 10% chance to deduct 1200 morale once, on any damage.

So what they’re doing here is making this legendary trait add its bonuses to the Fall to X skill instead of being an independent skill. Let’s see what the new combined skill does according to the above description:

• -XXX "resistance" (What exact type of debuff is this? Is it Resistance, Finesse, Tactical Mitigation? How much? For how long?) In order for it to be equivalent to what it is now, it would have to be Finesse or Tactical Mitigation, not Resistance.
• X% chance to deduct YYYY morale once, on any damage (what is the % chance, and how much morale is deducted?) In order for it to be equivalent to what it is now the product of X% and YYYY would have to be equal to 220 (0.20x500 + 0.1x1200). And it must be morale deduction which bypasses mitigations, not damage.
• +Z% incoming damage from all sources for T minutes (how much % and for how long?)

The new description, once again, is lacking since no numbers are given, so I can’t really say if the change is an improvement. The good thing is that they appear to have added the incoming damage debuff.
Can anyone provide the numbers, please?

One disadvantage of having combined the 2 skills into one is that it wouldn't be possible to put the resist debuffs on 2 different mobs any more (to facilitate 2 mezzes, for example).



Calming Verse - Attunement shift increased to 3.

Calming verse is a skill that increases your healing and damage by 10%, therefore it's a must to keep it on at all times, which is possible when traited (Linnod of Subtlety and Linnod of Peace). It used to have an attunement shift of 2, which was ok to handle. The shift increase to 3, together with the increases in shifts from other neutral buff skills is not good news. Nerf to both damage and healing.



Shocking Touch - Attunement shift increased to 3.

Attunement Shift up from 2 to 3. This is an emergency skill you use to make a mob stop hitting you (daze) for 5-10 sec while you save a fellow from dying. You may now have to waste one more skill to get back to the proper attunement. A waste of time (fellow could die) and of power.
Again a nerf. But I think we're seeing the clear pattern of these changes.



Trait: Confounding Principles - Reduces the attunement shift on Shocking Touch from 3 to 2.
(Note: This trait change was not mentioned in the final Dev Diary. It is therefore possible it will not change.)

Did they remove the added 5 sec daze from this trait? And the added resistance to the skill? If they did then it’s a clear Nerf of this trait.
If reducing the attunement shift is the only effect of this trait now, it would be an epic example of lameness and lack of imagination. Want to create a new trait? Nerf a skill and then make a trait to overcome the nerf (see Shocking Touch above). There’s so much they could have done other than this. Or do they want to force the healers to slot a yellow trait?
This trait does something precious right now, it increases your Shocking Touch daze by a meager but precious 5 more seconds (so from 5-10 sec to 10-15 sec), and reduces the chance the mob will resist it. It just keeps one mob off of you for 5 more seconds! If they took that away it would be a real shame.



Steady Hands - Removed power cost. Induction can no longer be knocked

A legendary trait/skill. Supposed to let you more quickly switch from a healing role to a dps role and vice versa (it takes you back to the neutral attunement point). It also gives you 15 secs of immunity to being Silenced and free power cost for your skills.
I find it a waste of a legendary trait slot because everything else is designed to hinder attempts in shifting from strong dps to strong healing or vice versa in the middle of a fight. I don’t do that.
So now those who do use it (every 5 minutes cd), can save 159 power! Good for them Having said that, it’s interesting to note that all the nerfs in attunement shifts back to neutral are actually going to make switching roles faster, thereby somewhat reducing the utility of this skill. Perhaps this is why they felt they had to buff it up a bit.
The induction was pretty short at 1.5 sec so the value of making it immune to setbacks is relative; why not make more important inductions that last much longer more robust?
I think it still won’t be getting one of my precious Legendary trait slots, though, even though this change is an improvement.

[Alad.]

Chisels and Rifflers


All Chisels and Rifflers - All chisels and rifflers now increase both tactical damage and healing rating, no longer one or the other. In addition, they provide the following benefits:

This is a nice change, making those tools more useful. One non-negligible consideration, though: We lose 6 slots in our bags now



Basic Chisel: Increases Finesse.

It’s both good and worrying to see that. Does this mean we’ll be need a lot of Finesse with the way we’ve been nerfed?



Chisel of Fire: Increased power regen.

Again, nice for those long fights, and power-sucking diseases.



Chisel of Lightning: Increased Critical Hit rating.

I bet this will be one of the favourites, because Crits improve both damage and healing.



Basic Riffler: Reduced threat from all sources.

Healers will love that one. I know I’ll use it when healing. If I can still heal at all. But you can use it while doing damage too, apparently. An improvement over the current one.



Riffler of writs: Now makes Master of Writs a toggle. Power savings reduced to 5% / 10%

That’s the chisel which you have to now equip to be able to get the toggle. When Master of Writs is active, you can use any of the 3 Writ skills irrespective of your current attunement, although they will still shift your attunement right or left as usual, so abusing of this, unless that’s what you’re looking to do, will make you lose a lot of attunement.
I have found the toggle very useful on occasion, while traited for healing, in a 3-person group which didn’t have enough dps. I could then contribute a bit to the damage while healing. Quite useful.
While the toggle is on, the Writ skills cost 50% more power. The current Riffler of Writs reduces the power penalty by 20% or 30% if it’s a critted riffler. This reduction seems to have been nerfed down to 5% and 10% respectively, so use those Writs sparingly. It’s easy to forget that the toggle is on.



Riffler of Hope: Increase the potency of the initial pulse by 100%

This at first got me all excited, because I thought it would amplify the initial pulse of any skill! Including damage skills! LOL, that was a nice dream. This yet another lacking description obviously refers to the skill Prelude to Hope only. Which is not a bad think, since that skill can be used at all attunements, and is pretty weak (heals about 90 morale, average). This Riffler will be a must for escaping or when the occasional nutty fellow will ask you to kite.
The change is an improvement over the previous +2 Prelude to Hope pulses this riffler gave.
This is the only boost to healing that there is in this dreadful list of changes, other than the +1% healing per blue trait slotted.
Might as well make use of it.



----------------------------------



To conclude, I have only one message to the devs:

Please don’t take away things you already gave. That’s just ugly. Nobody likes that, not even you would. Learn to balance by raising rather than lowering. And take away only extremely rarely and when no other alternative is possible. Your job is to create fun and entertainment, not disappointment. No business can get away with disappointing its customers.

Please give us back our fun!



And a few days after this post, Zombie Colombus, the RK dev, showed up here to say hi with some good news and cookies:

Just a heads up, a few of those patch notes ended up getting either changed or removed. I can't easily do an itemized list of which changed, but I can promise that in information in the RoI final release notes and the Dev Diary will be up to date.

I'd like to point one thing out:
A lot of people are taking the "laser focus on one thing and make proclamations based on that one data point" approach to these changes. For example, when looking through the healing changes one at a time, it's easy to call a lot of individual things a nerf, and to create the impression of global nerfs. However in practice, with the 4 set bonus (which is up to 2% per trait now) with potentially a 5th, 6th and 7th healing traited added in, net healing has in no way been nerfed. Much like Orion's changes to the Minstrels (who received blanket reductions in all heals) the class did not truly suffer, because of the bonuses in the traitlines and skill plays. I urge you to look at details, but then to step back and think holistically.

To Alad: I really enjoyed reading your analysis, though I found it a little surprising to read the word nerf over 40 times, often called out in red. You'd think the RK was going to stop being an engine of unbridled destruction and restoration! I can't wait for you to see the Dev Diary, and to hear your analysis once you get your hands on a well geared level 75 keeper ^_^

Thank you for reading!

[Alad.]

reserved reserved 8

[Cial]

Nice post Alad.

I've been on test for a while, but I haven't spent nearly enough time to test every new change to the RK. But I can tell you a couple things:


1. Fire is op (at least in my opinion). Fire traited, Essay of Flame plus the following the 5 seconds of insta casts amounts to huge burst damage. Basically you can start a fight with EOF, which I believe is 4 second cast traited, and then follow it up with 5 seconds of any Fire ability on an insta cast. I tested it spamming fiery ridicule, and I had 5 seperate fiery ridicule procs ticking on the target including the initial damage. My parser was hitting 1500-2000 in that initial 5 second burst. I was also using a 65LI and 75 pvp gear, so I can't even imagine how much raid geared RKs are gonna do on live. Expect this to be the new hotness when RoI hits. Other classes are gonna qq about RK's Fire.

2. Healing....I was primary healer on our MT during Draigoch and tbh I didn't see much difference. The bubbles kind of suck unless the target actually takes a lot of damage after you put it on them. Basically a purple bar representing the bubble will appear on the target's morale bar that "absorbs" x amount of morale. I think it's around 3000. If the target isn't hit during the 10 second duration, that free morale poofs and they don't get any further benefit. So it's kind of so-so, it's not as good as 40-50% mitigation but it's not horrible.

Rousing Word's new ability is bugged, no one is getting a writ of health after 5 second channel. I'm assuming it will be everyone in the group, however. As long as they are in range long enough to be affected by RW for 5 seconds. So that's pretty hawt.

There's a couple other nerfs related to how effective each heal is now, but I really didn't see much difference. I'm one of the primary healers in our kin for OD on live, so I have a lot of experience healing. I didn't feel "gimped" on test, but this could change on live depending how everything scales at 75. Again, I only really tested any type of group healing on Draigoch.

3. Lightning I barely tested, but I got some 4-5k Shocking words crits so it might still be viable. However, Fire is gonna be super fun and much more dynamic imo.

Hope that helps!

[Raven-EU]

Have you taken the new stats changes into account when analyzing the beta patch notes? For example:

• The (Tactical) Offence Ratio is now unbound, i.e. we can get more than +30% Tactical damage.
• The Outgoing Healing cap has been raised to 50% (from 30%) thus giving us a possible +20% overall healing capability compared to SoM.

Add to this that it seems that +% critical crit multiplier is a very (like VERY) rare animal on the +65 level gear. The new raid-set seems to offer something in the scale of 600+ Will so Rune-Keepers will probably run about with 1000+ Will at level 75.

I wish people would stop deriving Doom and Gloom from the beta release notes (especially without taking the stats changes into account) and I truly wish that ZC would come to us explaining what the changes are and how they affect us (i.e. don't just say "CA: -10% base damage", say "CA: -10% base damage counterbalanced by easily obtainable 20% higher tactical offense ratio yielding a (possible) net damage increase of +8%").

[Leinad312]

Sounds like it might be time to unslot That Which Does Not Kill Us, what a shame. I've pretty much always kept that skill slotted, but it sounds like it'll have very limited utility now.

[Alad.]

Have you taken the new stats changes into account when analyzing the beta patch notes? For example:

• The (Tactical) Offence Ratio is now unbound, i.e. we can get more than +30% Tactical damage.
• The Outgoing Healing cap has been raised to 50% (from 30%) thus giving us a possible +20% overall healing capability compared to SoM.

Add to this that it seems that +% critical crit multiplier is a very (like VERY) rare animal on the +65 level gear. The new raid-set seems to offer something in the scale of 600+ Will so Rune-Keepers will probably run about with 1000+ Will at level 75.

I'm fully aware it's in beta and can still change. In fact that's why I spent the time to do this now, with the hope that it will change!

The new stat changes and cap removals affect every class. Everyone will be able to benefit from those. They didn't nerf every class, and what I'm comparing is the difference between what is and what will be. I feel it's a fair and legitimate comparison.
I hope to be wrong in many of my conclusions, that's another reason I wrote this.

[Closetomefeet]

Thanks for the effort you put in Alad.
Sorry for all those RKs who've spent months/years perfecting their Healing and Lightening set-ups. Until I play my Toon with the new changes can't really comment.

Personally I never really liked the Lightening Line - just too spammy - and whilst can I main-Heal just fine at the mo. Always preferred to play support in that role. However as a dyed-in-the-wool pyro junky ever since MoM release. I'm 'tentatively' very happy with the proposed changes to the fire line. 'bout time the 'Real' RK skills got some love Burn baby burn.

[Alad.]

Nice post Alad.

I've been on test for a while, but I haven't spent nearly enough time to test every new change to the RK. But I can tell you a couple things:


1. Fire is op (at least in my opinion). Fire traited, Essay of Flame plus the following the 5 seconds of insta casts amounts to huge burst damage. Basically you can start a fight with EOF, which I believe is 4 second cast traited, and then follow it up with 5 seconds of any Fire ability on an insta cast. I tested it spamming fiery ridicule, and I had 5 seperate fiery ridicule procs ticking on the target including the initial damage. My parser was hitting 1500-2000 in that initial 5 second burst. I was also using a 65LI and 75 pvp gear, so I can't even imagine how much raid geared RKs are gonna do on live. Expect this to be the new hotness when RoI hits. Other classes are gonna qq about RK's Fire.

5 seconds during which all fire inductions are zero? That's very cool indeed. The patch notes only say that the next fire skill is instant. Do you have info about which of the two versions will stay?

2. Healing....I was primary healer on our MT during Draigoch and tbh I didn't see much difference. The bubbles kind of suck unless the target actually takes a lot of damage after you put it on them. Basically a purple bar representing the bubble will appear on the target's morale bar that "absorbs" x amount of morale. I think it's around 3000. If the target isn't hit during the 10 second duration, that free morale poofs and they don't get any further benefit. So it's kind of so-so, it's not as good as 40-50% mitigation but it's not horrible.

Rousing Word's new ability is bugged, no one is getting a writ of health after 5 second channel. I'm assuming it will be everyone in the group, however. As long as they are in range long enough to be affected by RW for 5 seconds. So that's pretty hawt.

There's a couple other nerfs related to how effective each heal is now, but I really didn't see much difference. I'm one of the primary healers in our kin for OD on live, so I have a lot of experience healing. I didn't feel "gimped" on test, but this could change on live depending how everything scales at 75. Again, I only really tested any type of group healing on Draigoch.

3. Lightning I barely tested, but I got some 4-5k Shocking words crits so it might still be viable. However, Fire is gonna be super fun and much more dynamic imo.

Hope that helps!

Yes, it helps a lot, thank you! I'll update my post with info about the bubble. Shocking words wasn't nerfed and it does nice damage when it crits.

Would you be so kind as to spend a few minutes to fill in a few blanks (questions) from my post the next time you're on your RK (even if he's not 65, which would be ideal) on beta? In particular, that bubble: how is it's size and duration determined? Does Essay of Exaltation also have the (lowered) damage mitigation buff? What kind of mitigation is it? How much %? How long does it last?

Again, thanks for the info.

[Nevril]

I feel that the 5-sec no induction is actually a bug.
The machanic should be "In 5 sec, the next skill you use will have no induction. When fired the buff goes off."

[Unixbomber]

Master of Writs - Usable outside combat.
OK. What will you do with it outside of combat? (Tiering up Writ of Health before starting a fight was nice, but they nerfed that already and made Writ of Health only usable in combat a while back.)

I asked the same question and never saw a response; writ of health remains unable to be used outside of combat and makes this change perplexing, to say the least.

Shall not fall this day - Renamed to "Improved Do not fall this day". Duration has been changed to the duration of combat. No longer increases defenses of the player.
The duration increase is nice. The removed buffs, which lasted for 1 min, made this skill one that you could use as a... buff! To protect someone. Now it's only useful to rez them when/if they die. Again some signs that indicate they don't want us to buff.
This skill being the replacement of Do Not Fall this Day, all the changes in the previous paragraph apply to it too, including the Attunement shift increase from 4 to 6. This too is a nerf.

To add clarification to exactly what was removed regarding the increased defense - Shall Not Fall This Day currently provides 1,300 rating or 5.2% defense to Melee, Tactical and Ranged damage.

Fall to X - Now increases incoming damage of the affinity (i.e.: increased incoming lightning damage). No longer reduces resistance chance.
It’s unclear to me what they changed here. Did they replace the Tactical Resist Rating debuff with a debuff that increases incoming damage? Did they remove the one-time negative morale hit?

If I'm not mistaken, each stone offers an affinity of -5% mitigation on your target for either Lightning, Fire or Frost and still has a 20% chance to be removed on applicable damage. Rune-keepers will already be running fairly high finesse ratings; this change looked like a method of allowing additional damage without adding additional finesse advantages to the class.

Mending Verse - Healing on initial pulse decreased. Power cost increased.[/COLOR]
This is a big nerf. My Mending Verse heals 500 morale (max) in the first shot (which is not an "initial pulse" in the sense we’ve been discussing above)and about 184 per 2 sec for 10 sec. I.e. 35% of the skill’s heal comes from the initial shot. But the real problem comes from the fact that we RK’s practically only have 2 good healing skills which we are practically forced to use constantly because they don’t heal much initially and they’re all HoT skills. And Mending Verse is one of these two skills.
Now if you reread that description, you could get really scared. Because it talks of the initial big heal as if it were an initial pulse. And if it has become an initial pulse in this patch, then the previous changes applied to initial pulses will have been applied to it, causing the 500 morale to have dropped to 184. If they did that, I would be willing to kill someone.. (at least slap them real hard!)

Someone who knows please tell us what happened to Mending Verse!

I've seen the initial hit on live from mending verse hit for over 1k and base healing across the board for all classes was lowered. Keep in mind that incoming healing can now be up to 25% where as previously it was 15% - in addition, if you're traiting outgoing healing tailored items you'll have the option of going above the prior outgoing healing cap of 30% to 50% - technically 60% assuming a rune-keeper was able to hit 50% and used calming verse.

Trait: Master of Allusion - Increased threat reduction to -10%.

A clear improvement (was -5%). Thank you guys. I hope the power reduction of -5% on all skills is still there too.

The latest beta notes indicated the Benedictions of Peace 4 set bonus was now an increase of 1% for each Benedictions of Peace trait and no longer mentioned the -5% reduction in threat; I wasn't able to verify the change but I believe this may have been rearranged from adjusting the 4 set bonus of the line.

Ceaseless Argument - Reduced damage.
This was a beautiful skill when they first released the class. Required a lot (9?) of attunement to be able to use it, but could spam it with huge damage. That was the reward of building up attunement. Then it was seriously nerfed and turned into a low-attunement skill. Now it will only serve to raise your attunement, basically. But the problem is that it’s in a lot of people’s rotations because it is fast. I can’t see anything it can be replaced with, offhand. Another Nerf. This time god’s anger is falling on our dps role.

So while I was testing out the changes, I had a devastating hit with Ceaseless Argument on a rank 15 reaver for 1,175 Lightning damage to Morale; I then thought about everyone that would be freaking out over the reduction in damage mentioned and wondered if they would consider the skill will still be hitting like a truck when it crits, especially for a skill that has no cooldown. I heard god is chill.

[ShammWoww]

I feel that the 5-sec no induction is actually a bug.
The machanic should be "In 5 sec, the next skill you use will have no induction. When fired the buff goes off."

The tooltip in beta actually says 5 seconds of no inductions, and it works that way right now.
I think it is there to allow the fire RK to quickly get DPS going on a target, since stacked DoTs are the way to do that with fire.
I was parsing generally equivalent numbers on the Eyes and Guard training dummy with a full lightning setup as I was with a full fire setup, which included lvl 75 lightning and fire stones with tact offense fully maxxed and correct legacies, along with satchels with appropriate damage type.

[Anoir]

Thanks for the OP for adding this. +Rep

However, Ive read most of these changes about month ago, would love to see some newer Beta patch notes since its pretty obvious that our Dev will ignore us forever.

So if anyone from Beta could post newest possible patch notes to RK id be happy

[ANewMachine]

Re: Master of Writs OOC: It allows you to start with Writ usage without a penalty (MoW sans toggle has 2 Neutral attunement). So you can start a fight with Writ of Fire. This is going to be important to Fire RKs, who are getting other boosts as well (though less huge now that FR has a shorter induction).

[Overtone]

I won't try to hide my pessimism. I believe the RK class has been damaged. I hope I’m wrong so show me that I am if you have better or more recent information.

I don't think the RK was damaged so much as dramatically changed. In order to bring Lightning in line with Fire, Zombie buffed Fire in a major way and nerfed Lightning.

Yes, our Healing was also nerfed. Strangely enough, so was that of the Minstrel (from what my Minstrel friends tell me). Not sure what the reasoning behind that is except for possibly the Store. Anyway, the reason is speculative, but it did happen.

What this amounts to is that we are no longer top tier DPS. In fact, Orion has said as much in the Champ thread:

Quote Originally Posted by apb8808 View Post
"In testing, it appears that the Fervour stance has reclaimed the title of top dog for sustained DPS. Of course, being in the mix is a dangerous endeavour."

I'm assuming this was in comparison to other DPS classes, and not comparing between champion stances?
Yes, this is tested against other DPS classes. It's close between Hunters and Champs.

The top DPS is now held by Champs and Hunters, and that is by design.

I think we are still top tier Healers and will fill that roll nicely in Fellowships and small group encounters. However, I think Minstrels are the clear choice for endgame raids due to their additional group buffs and better AoE heals.

That is the reality of RoI. Now it is up to us to adapt and attempt to excel beyond the roles redefined for us. Yes, Hunters and Champs should be the ST DPS Kings by design. But that won't prevent a good RK DPS build from still outshining a Hunter or Champ player that doesn't know how to maximize their class or build. For the first time in a long time, skill will be a defining factor in how our class is perceived. This is a good thing.

Since F2P and the last RK update, it's been a pathetic ezmode faceroll for our class and other FoTM players have dragged the perception of our class through the mud. We now have the opportunity to transcend the limitations and rise above the rabble.

[DelgonTheWise]

Yes, our Healing was also nerfed. Strangely enough, so was that of the Minstrel (from what my Minstrel friends tell me). Not sure what the reasoning behind that is except for possibly the Store. Anyway, the reason is speculative, but it did happen.

I'm still wondering if, when balanced by stat cap changes that will almost certainly cause:
1) Higher incoming healing on targets
2) Higher outgoing healing from RK
3) Higher crit rates from RK

Our heals will end up being really nerfed. Yes, skills LOOK nerfed, but with all that combined what will be the actual impact on heals per second?

And that is without chucking in a Captain Song Brother...

[stock]

So while I was testing out the changes, I had a devastating hit with Ceaseless Argument on a rank 15 reaver for 1,175 Lightning damage to Morale; I then thought about everyone that would be freaking out over the reduction in damage mentioned and wondered if they would consider the skill will still be hitting like a truck when it crits, especially for a skill that has no cooldown. I heard god is chill.

I'm not trying to kill your buzz, but this is possible now, at lvl65. Hell, I'm just waving my e-peen at this point, but I've dev'd 1250+ on r6+ reavers on live, with no bracelet or hat dev mag buffs. That makes me sorta sad, but as I've posted before, CA was THE face-rolling skill, it had it coming. I'm guessing this looks pretty good by comparison considering I have to wear my Annuminas + DN robe setup to hit that kind of damage now, and how rare Tac Crit multi is at 75 (from what we've seen.) This surely won't be the end of CA's usefulness, it is too cheap w/ no cooldown for that.

OP, check out some of the other post-NDA threads, a few of your questions are answered One I've had several different people confirm, is that TWDNKU is now our only skill that provides a full absorption of the next attack, and there is still a HoT component. Likewise, the changes to mitigation skills (formerly referred to as bubbles, now actual morale bubbles) are better used on someone who isn't at full health, to provide protection while your HoTs bring them back up to full.

As others have noted, healing across the board (most/all classes) has been nerfed, possibly to compensate for the increased limits for incoming/outgoing healing, no stat caps etc. Also, seems likely that the introduction of Finesse is intended to supplant the use of our current habit of stacking -pen resist everywhere. If that is the case, I welcome it.

[ANewMachine]

Yes, our Healing was also nerfed. Strangely enough, so was that of the Minstrel (from what my Minstrel friends tell me). Not sure what the reasoning behind that is except for possibly the Store. Anyway, the reason is speculative, but it did happen.

My theory on the healing nerfs: Healing in the game was overpowered. Hunters and Fervour Champs tanking end-game content was only possible because healers could sufficiently paper over the cracks and keep them up through 6-man boss fights. So, most of the survivability in a group came from a class or role you're bringing with you either way - a healer. Thus, why would you want or need a tank, when they bring less survivability to the group, and what they do bring is overkill when compared to the healers?

So, one solution: Take survivability off of the healers (by nerfing heals) and move it to tanks (increased mitigations, BPE, morale, etc). That way you bring tanks because the survivability they bring isn't overkill. They could also have just increased mob damage significantly and given only tanks the tools to survive it, even with increased healing, but decided to go this route instead.

[Chris91]

Hunters complain about there class getting slaughtered and 75 Hunters parsing 20% less than 75 RK?

Don´t understand that comment by Orion, maybe he just forgot about us, seems to me more like Fire RK will be THE Ranged DPS

[Eldrandir]

Hunters complain about there class getting slaughtered and 75 Hunters parsing 20% less than 75 RK?

And several examples of parsing the same as we do live. No increase at all.