Recent Minstrel changes make it very difficult to complete class skills

[Digaloo]

With the recent changes to the minstrel class, it is now very difficult to complete two of the class skills.

Lyrics of Bravery requires use Anthem of Composure 1,000 times
and
Strength of Voice requires use Anthem of War 500 times

As these skills are no longer able to be used out of combat and the cooldown is 25 seconds for both of these, it is going to take an absolute age to complete these class deeds now.

I tried to go out on the landscape and try to advance this skill 'in combat' but the increase in DPS that the minstrel has had (especially in Dissonance stance) makes it almost impossible to use these two (in particular Anthem of War) as you tend to kill the mobs way too quickly now. The only way I could get anthem of War to trigger, so I could use it was to use Cry of the Chorus to get 3 ballad buffs and then hit the Mob with my sword on Auto Attack so it didn't die to quickly.

SSG, Please can you either :

Reduce the number required as you've now made the skill that much more difficult to actually use.
Reduce the cooldown so that it can be used more frequently
Put it back to how it was before and allow use out of combat

[Arabani]

That is a good point, reducing the numbers would be nice.

[DoRonRon]

There are Target dummies in the world, find one of the appropriate level and you can remain in combat indefinitely. There's also A Training Dummy Stand from the Curator (when available) that will provide one at your level. @7500 Figments. Could ask for access to use someone else's as well.

It's been the standard procedure to play the game and advance most class deeds until you face the last few tougher ones and knock them out in a session or two via a target dummy, dropping a skills scroll when the blue bar goes yellow, watching something interesting on another screen.

If it had been on the list to adjust it would have been done before moving on to other tasks. It might have escaped consideration if it was a process avoided by a valar or done before the F2P model introduction?

[Plidak]

Currator is on or will be on soon. You get yourself a dummy, use deed book and SMESH.
There are worse class/deed combos, so mini has no right to complain...
If you play on Evernight, go to 6 Roaring Road, Olshal- Thorin`s hall homestead, there are 2 dummyes, they are all yours.

" Smesh ma brada"

[DoRonRon]

Not even 7 hours required; a Box-Set should do it.

[Halphast]

There are worse class/deed combos, so mini has no right to complain...

Ooooo I'm curious - what do you think are the worst ones? I always thought "resurrect a Fellow 500 times" or whatever was the worst.

[DoRonRon]

Ooooo I'm curious - what do you think are the worst ones? I always thought "resurrect a Fellow 500 times" or whatever was the worst.

For me that was my introduction to dual boxing; throw an alt account n00b off a cliff above your minstrel and never except the rezz. Two of 3 sessions maybe, been a while.

Off tree ones were the worst, so better suck it up and head for the target dummy and watch the clock while busy with something irl.

[Plidak]

Ooooo I'm curious - what do you think are the worst ones? I always thought "resurrect a Fellow 500 times" or whatever was the worst.

Op complain of two 5 sec cd skills
Anthem of War 500 times
Anthem of Composure 1,000 times
(often used skills)

Hunter :
Set Trap or Triple Trap skills 350 times (45 sec cd)
Strike enemies with Blindside-icon.png Blindside 500 times. (18 sec cd)
Use Tracking skills (Passage of Nature-icon.png Passage of Nature, Passage of Foes-icon.png Passage of Foes or Passage of Shadow-icon.png Passage of Shadow) 500 times. (30 second cd)
Use Intent Concentration-icon.png Intent Concentration 125 times. ( 3 minutes cd ....)
Hit with Upshot-icon.png Upshot 1000 times. (15 sec cd)
Hit with Heart Seeker-icon.png Heart Seeker 100 times. (50 sec cd)

OP can just use one 30 min skill deed and max all his deeds spamming the dumy, while classes like hunter cant do it. Because the skills they need to use have longer cd`s.

I just pick the first class who pop in google. Wont even go to "complicated" classes like warden.

So ye, they guy just look for a reason to complain.
This game is to be played, dont expect to be pampered just because you are lazy.


About the resurection deed, easy. Get a buddy, go foul waters in angmar. Read deed book. Leth him take a bath, ress.
250 clicks= done.

Enjoy

[eorl67]

Op complain of two 5 sec cd skills
Anthem of War 500 times
Anthem of Composure 1,000 times
(often used skills)
...
So ye, they guy just look for a reason to complain.
This game is to be played, dont expect to be pampered just because you are lazy.

I think you missed that anthems have a 25 second cooldown now (20 with a trait).

The Anthem of Composure deed, untraited, takes longer than every hunter deed you listed. 25,000 seconds, in combat. 3.5 hours of deed accelerator.

I wouldn't exactly call Anthem of Composure often used, either. Maybe in challenging content, where you would presumably want all your trait points already. It's not something I'd ever normally bother with in open world content, as it takes time to build up the ballads, it's not instant, it does no damage, and there are other anthems more conductive to murder (like, for example, War).

So yes, your best option is to find a dummy, grease the wheels of commerce, and queue up an extended edition of one of the films on another monitor. Riveting gameplay.

The cooldown is also shared now, so you can't work on both those deeds at the same time like you can most skill deeds.

[Tralfazz]

Ooooo I'm curious - what do you think are the worst ones? I always thought "resurrect a Fellow 500 times" or whatever was the worst.

The deed is Graceful Demeanor and it requires Enlivening Grace/Improved Enlivening Grace to be used 100 times with a 15 per day maximum.
https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Gra...meanour_(Deed)

With an accelerator, such as the 30 minute free one obtainable with the infiltrator/turtle quest...
https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Que...es_in_the_Soup
...(which itself takes about 10 minutes to complete) this can be done all in one go and takes about 12 minutes. All you need is a willing partner to jump off a cliff or something and then go AFK for 12 minutes while you use the skill repeatedly. Then it's done. There's really nothing to it, it takes less time total than to do a single slayer deed in the Lone Lands. Or if you regularly play with a group which does decently challenging group content, you'll probably get it done before level cap without putting any special effort into it.

Anthems went from a 5 second individual cooldown to a 25 second shared cooldown. So to do the Lyrics of Bravery deed (Anthem of Composure) requires about 7 hours and you can't advance any other anthems at the same time. Even a full 6 hour accelerator and the willingness to sit in front of a training dummy for that long isn't enough! Then you still have to do Anthem of Prowess 300 times and Anthem of War 500 times. Don't get me started on how long this would take to complete while "just playing" because when soloing the only anthem of these 3 that you're likely to use at all is Anthem of War – and besides the cooldown it can only be cast in combat and, just like before, only after you have 3 ballad buffs active. Most of the time, I don't even bother using Anthems when soloing because stuff dies too fast to bother – and if I'm bothering just so I can advance the deed I still can't do it every 25 seconds because of the timing of ballad buff expiration and the in-combat requirement.

I provided my feedback to the Minstrel changes during the beta period so I won't repeat any of that here. Except for the note about the number of iterations required for anthem deeds which I made both during the beta period in the Bullroarer forum and after the changes were made in the Suggestions forum.

[DoRonRon]

Tried playing the Minstrel as now "intended". I got fed up one shotting mobs with my opening ballad and watch the anthems go grey.

Is says much for how little appreciation of what we face with the poor server performance the Devs have taken on board. Maybe I'm lucky to play on Evernight because the general lag we face includes a delay in our drop out of combat.

So it's a case of queuing up an Anthem on hitting a ballad, the lag allowing firing the Dissonance Anthem even if the mob died, then ICotC (to reset CD), ballad/War Anthem on the next mob. But I'm no longer looking to wait another 45 seconds for adding in a Composure. I'd rather refresh the two of choice to a soloer.

With Lyrics being from level 50 onward you might hope to start it then, but you should delay it until you get the Improve Cry of the Chorus at 54 which has the benefit of resetting Anthem CDs that the standard one doesn't. With the Cry of the Chorus Tracery slotted you are in the vicinity of a 48 second CotC rather than a 1m 15s one and a 20+ hour endeavour.

Another advantage of course is the lengthening of the Slayer and Skill Deed Boost to 6 hours. Joy: almost enough to cover the 6 hours 40m. Maybe get 32 done before you present yourself before the target dummy?


P.S. Could wait until you get Improved Coda of Fury (Red) and spam 3 ballads with a coda to reset Calls (50% chance) including ICotC and keep all the Anthems up and refreshing too.

[TobiasEstForte]

Captain has make haste 500 times, 2 minute cooldown. People still manage it.

Can't you switch to resonance and use the healing ballad to tier up?

[DoRonRon]

Captain has make haste 500 times, 2 minute cooldown. People still manage it.

Can't you switch to resonance and use the healing ballad to tier up?

That's missing the critical step of getting into combat required to fire off an Anthem imposed recently.

Make haste is a useful skill and can be used whenever and advances with gameplay so isn't amongst the crop of class deeds advanced by generally un-spec'ed or un-useful skills that aren't part of general gameplay levelling.

Digressing:
One of the beauties of my former raiding as a MT Guard and as MT Healer Minstrel often, is the awareness you build up of what skills your other Minstrel is using given the queues of their soundtrack. Having the Minstrels use particular but different instruments (and not ones that assault you senseless) regularly, further distinguishes who is casting what and when and so the chance to adapt accordingly. That all breaks down for the MT when the other Minstrel's boyfriend is the hunter in the raid and "your" heals get directed elsewhere... My particular nightmare a Pibgorn/Bagpipe combo; hard to equate with the concept of the "uplifting" of morale! Harp/Lute and Theorbo for me

[Bio-Flame]

I feel your pain my fellow Mini.
Alas, our class Dev didn't really thought all the (needless) changes through.


But worse still, is when you, like so many other minis, start to feel it's so clunky and so unfun to play Mini that you'll shelf it.

[OnnMacMahal]

This is a known issue, though as other have pointed out minstrels are not unique in this regard. In general, the number-of-use requirements coupled with long cooldown timers, lack of reason to use some skills while leveling, or trait-specialization requirements make at least a few of these deeds for each class very difficult to complete through normal play.

[greendarner]

This is a known issue, though as other have pointed out minstrels are not unique in this regard. In general, the number-of-use requirements coupled with long cooldown timers, lack of reason to use some skills while leveling, or trait-specialization requirements make at least a few of these deeds for each class very difficult to complete through normal play.

What kind of a non-answer is this? You know about it but you're doing . . . what?

[Bio-Flame]

This is a known issue, though as other have pointed out minstrels are not unique in this regard. In general, the number-of-use requirements coupled with long cooldown timers, lack of reason to use some skills while leveling, or trait-specialization requirements make at least a few of these deeds for each class very difficult to complete through normal play.

So, why has nothing been done then? If you are aware of the problem and you still go ahead and change the skills, making the problem even worse....I mean, that's poor quality service right there.

[DoRonRon]

What kind of a non-answer is this? You know about it but you're doing . . . what?

It's been a thing for many classes for a long time is all. If you can by-pass stuff like this with a valar or the boss/manager only plays valared chars there's never any appreciation of context to direct funds to make some changes.

In my book it's more a rite of passage to figure how best to accomplish the task of completing these last few class deeds. Those that feel they are "owed" immediate changes can wait........ or /shrug and suck it up. There are loads of bad choices to make!

I offered up my thoughts on how and when I'd seek to finish the stragglers off. But they are more about playing the game on level and advancing without so much concern. Review where you are at by all means but you can avoid actually having to play an un-useful setup via a target dummy. Play what been delivery rather than wait.

On Level ofc: It does not help having every means to turbo charge exp thrown at us and take those advances away from us; however, that's the DDO masters stuck in their DDO levelling/reincarnate mindset. Stones are cheap! Even "Marketing" has finally gotten that message with an offering in the $99 package, only taken 7 years!

[Plidak]

Guys , back in UO, taming progress per mob was 0.01% and the taming game timer was 1.5 up to 2 min with 1 min waiting time if you want to try to tame same mob. Skill max was 100. And btw skill progreses only on sucsesful tame, so yea, you do the math
We have what we have. Game is 16y old and there are tons of ppl with maxed deeds. Why not you?
Soon ppl will want to be able to cast revive/resurec on living targets, just because they want to progress deed faster.
Now you even have scaling on lvl dumies, which doesnt even need to be yours. Also deed books duration was increased to 6 hours ........
What more do you want ?
Instead of complaining on forums, go in game, smash some keys and have your deeds done. Or just play the game and they will be done at some point.
Getting your 5 SP later or sooner wont make you bad or pro player.

Cant stand when sm1 complain for no reason and want something NOW.....

Want it NOW ? Then work for it, or buy it. Like the rest of us. You are NOT special, so there wont be special changes, just because YOU are LAZZY.

[istvana]

The phrase "known issue" implies that the system isn't working as well as the developers wish. Failure to follow this with anything along the lines of "and so we are going to" or "and so we are looking into" is just as glaring as others have pointed out.

I note that, at maximum level, the ability to get more trait points than a character can use does ameliorate the issue. We can simply skip some of them.

I further note that preventing us from getting to capstone abilities in two different lines also ameliorates the issue. It simply isn't that important except for a hard core min/maxer to spend every single spendable point.

[OnnMacMahal]

The phrase "known issue" implies that the system isn't working as well as the developers wish. Failure to follow this with anything along the lines of "and so we are going to" or "and so we are looking into" is just as glaring as others have pointed out.

Indeed, we have already addressed this issue, though that change is not yet on the live servers. I encourage you to keep an eye on the U34/Bullroarer release notes, and know that when Before the Shadow goes live, this should no longer be a roadblock to your character advancement.

[Neinda]

Indeed, we have already addressed this issue, though that change is not yet on the live servers. I encourage you to keep an eye on the U34/Bullroarer release notes, and know that when Before the Shadow goes live, this should no longer be a roadblock to your character advancement.

Thank you.

[istvana]

Thanks for the additional information.