A Revisitation to yellow Minstrel?

[tansquare]

Hello all!

I'm interested to hear the minstrel community's thoughts on the current state of yellow-line spec in terms of viability and possible changes!

I love yellow lines theme of helping the fellowship, and landscape feels way better with the DPS tweaks. Plus I'm addicted to the AOE coda and spamming anthems

Here's a few things I feel could be addressed, updated or improved:

Anthem benefits/Coda bonuses.

War: Great damage bonus for fellowship, and coda crit rating. No changes needed here.

Third age: Another damage bonus, but also additional healing rating. Handy but the coda benefit actually hurts you, as critting sets the duration to 60 seconds regardless of traceries or traits. I'd say to give it a small finesse and healing crit chance boost to keep in theme with the double-dipping.

Prowess: Attack speed increase and some armour and evade rating boosts (It'd be nicer if it gave %partial chance though)Coda benefit is fun with hero's strike having no cooldown, but is relatively useless as piercing cry does as much damage as 4 hits with the skill. I think a generic BPA or critical defence increase would be good here. That or make the next strike daze and crit.

Composure: Good skill, with a resistance rating buff that lets you eat up some damage-over-time effects. Coda benefit is a power restore which isn't wholly necessary, but having the option is pleasant. This leads us into the next section.....

The great power crisis

Perfect ballad giving power benefits makes me sad. Giving the fellowship bonuses from ballads and applying them as debuffs makes me even sadder that this skill doesn't do much. It'd be a fair bit nicer if it went the melody theme of healing/damage, with either a damage/healing increase or a minor induction/attack duration benefit. This effect applies with call of the chorus which kind of compounds the confusion as to why power is relevant. The only time I've ran out of power in the last year is due to those darn defilers or those gundabad wights that drain it.

Song of Aid/Greatness

Song of Aid/Call to Greatness are severely underpowered/outdated across all classes (save hunter). It'd be cool if Aid was updated to reduce longer cooldown skills for classes, such as battle fury for brawlers, true heroics for champions etc, never surrender for wardens etc. I get that buffing captain emergency buttons would be a bit strong though, so maybe give them battle-readied and battle-hardened and things of that sort. Initially I had a longer list detailing what I thought was best, but on second though it's probably to hear from the mains of these classes themselves to hear what benefits you'd feel were balanced!

The three biggest offenders for Aid is the fact it does nothing for brawlers, giving a defeat response for champions (ancient) and just a reduced shield-piercer cooldown for wardens.

This and call to greatness kind of overlap so even if they were merged into one skill I don't think anyone would mind, and it would leave room for yellow-line to sneak in another skill/mechanic.

Misc

Tale of tales would love a generically helpful modifier, such as +1 to hope or -2% attack duration/5% induction speed/5% movespeed. The stats are generally useless for non will/fate classes.

Shield focus feels not great either, as the benefit is not worth the run speed. Shields however, have a place on minstrel and feel forgotten, so I'd suggest this: I'd love a provoke-like mechanic from burglar/charge mechanic from guardian/champ where critting with a coda grants 50% block chance for the next incoming attack, with a proc cooldown. Maybe the combination of aid/greatness would give another passive trait bonus allowing this to be procced more in yellow-line, while still permitting the other lines to access it (since call of the first age was recently buffed to enhance kiting/managing aggro, this'd help a lot too).

Change of pace is an AWESOME minigame to play, but often feels as though it's limited to just increasing heal crit chance. It'd be fun if EITHER effect could proc off the coda, since it technically does both heal and crit.

Anyhow, thanks for reading. Any criticism/advice/thoughts are welcome. I like to try and suggest changes that don't make the class feel OP or necessary, so do say if any of these are too wild or tame.