Captain Changes and Feedback

[OnnMacMahal]

Changes Outline

A note about x-brother skills:
You might notice below that Shield-brother and Song-brother have switched trait lines. When considering captains in the tanking and healing roles, it didn’t make sense to leave tank-captains with a suite of skills primarily improving the defensives of an ally, and healing-captains with a suite of skills improving the healing of an ally. Going forward, blue-line captains will have Shield-brother skills, primarily oriented towards helping a tank ally; yellow-line captains will have Song-brother skills, primarily oriented towards helping a healer ally. However, the effects from these skills have changed, so you don't simply get your -brother's effect thrown back to you. Generally, your personal effect will be different (and targeted at your current role).

Hands of Healing

Blue (Traits)
The 10% proc heal from specializing in Hands of Healing has been removed. This heal was inconsequentially small and added an unnecessary RNG element to core healing output.

Tactics: Focus
This heal has changed from an over-time heal to an instant 2% heal.
The ‘Focus’ buff is now 5% Incoming Healing, 3% Resistance, and 2% Tactical Mitigation.

Readied Strike
This trait will no longer cause Valiant Strike to apply the Battle-Readied state. Instead, it doubles the healing potency of Revealing Mark (from 2% to 4%).

Tactician’s Prowess
Tactician’s Prowess increases Healing Critical Magnitude by 10% and decreases the cooldown of Defensive Strike by 5 seconds.

Song-brother’s Call
This trait has been replaced by the ‘Reform the Lines’ trait. The Song-brother’s call skill has been removed.

Blessing of the Song
This trait is essentially unchanged, but note that you will no longer gain the same benefits given to your -brother. To-Arms will improve your Outgoing Healing, and Inspire will restore a small amount of your power over time.

Inspiriting Presence > Gift of Spirit
The current effect from this trait has been replaced by a new effect:
Hits you land with melee skills will give you stacks of ‘Inspiriting.’ Each stack will give you 2% Outgoing Healing, up to 5 stacks. At 5 stacks, you are able to use ‘Gift of Spirit’ a skill which consumes all stacks to significantly heal a targeted ally. [note: in Bullroarer 1 this trait erroneously states that the effect tiers up with melee skill critical hits. You no longer need to crit to tier up this effect]
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Skilled Hands and Dignified Spectacle
These two traits have merged into Skilled Hands, since they already give nearly the same bonuses. The final Skilled Hands bonus will give you +5% Melee & Tactical Damage, and +10% Outgoing Healing.

Bolstered Resolve
This trait’s max value has changed from 20% to 10%. This is part of an overall reduction in critical magnitude effects, and the loss in value has been compensated for in higher base healing strength.

Blood of Númenor > Escape from Darkness
Rank 3 of this trait (which turns Escape from Darkness into Cry of Vengeance) is now a trait set bonus, making Cry of Vengeance a Hands of Healing specialization-only skill upgrade.

Revealing Mark
The trait is unchanged, but the Revealing Mark heal has been reduced from 4% to 2%. The 4% heal is only be attainable with the ‘Readied Strike’ trait bonus.

Gallant Display
This trait has been removed, since you already have the Gallant Display skill.

Astute Hands
Critical Magnitude has been reduced from 20% to 10%.

Honourable Blow
This effect will only be triggered by Inspire, rather than Valiant Strike.

Fellowship of the Song > Fellowship of the Shield
The fellowship-wide effect from To Arms will be (traited to maximum potency)
-5% Incoming Damage
+2% Damage

Courageous Convocation
The self-only heal from this trait has been moved from Muster Courage to Defensive Strike.

Reform the Lines > Shield of the Dúnedain
With this trait and skill granted by your Hands of Healing specialization, this capstone trait position in the tree will be replaced by the ‘Shield of the Dúnedain’ trait, granting you the eponymous skill.

Valour
This trait’s effect has been replaced (it was a fairly weak and unreliable heal). It has been replaced by an effect which adds a bonus heal for your Shield-brother to most of your melee skills. These heals will scale with the damage of their relevant skills. As a rule of thumb, if a trait, tracery, buff, etc increases the damage value on a skill's tooltip, it will also increase that skill's Valour healing.
Skills affected: Sure Strike, Defensive Strike, Cutting Attack, Grave Wound, Pressing Attack, Devastating Blow, and Blade of Elendil.


Blue (Skills)
Gallant Display
When traited blue, Gallant Display hasn’t changed much, though it is now an AoE skill. When it hits a target, it applies a moderate fellowship-wide heal, and both its potency and power cost increase if used again within a short window. This bonus is no longer consumed by Inspire (you use Inspire so frequently that it’s practically impossible to tier up the Gallant buff for Gallant Display itself if Inspire consumes the effect).

Valiant Strike
Valiant Strike no longer acts as both a finisher and a Battle-Ready opener. It only acts as a finisher, allowing you to better hold onto it at times, so you can more optimally use it for healing rather than primarily to keep your battle-state cycle moving.
Valiant Strike no longer changes depending on whether or not you have an active Shield-brother. It is once again a fellowship-wide AoE heal/over time.

Standard of Honour
The frequency and potency of healing has been increased. The duration of the banner has been reduced to 15 seconds.

Reform the Lines
In addition to its prior effects, Reform the Lines will now make your entire fellowship act as if they are your Shield-brother for 10 seconds, allowing them to briefly benefit from your brother-targeted skills and effects. This skill now affects the Captain, allowing you to benefit from both its heal and the effect of Shield-brother targeted skills for its duration. Its cooldown has also been reduced (back) to 2 minutes.

Shield of the Dúnedain
This skill has switched from the yellow capstone to the blue capstone, but is otherwise unchanged.

Defensive Strike
Defensive Strike is making a return as a second skill which puts you into a Battle-readied state. In the blue spec, it has a 10 second cooldown and requires you to be in melee range (so it’ll be functionally very similar to how Valiant Strike works right now, for battle state maintenance).

Song-brother’s Call
This skill has been removed. Note that the Leader of Men tree has a new skill called 'Song-brother's Call' which is entirely unrelated to this removed skill.

Lead the Charge

Red (Traits)
Tactics: Relentless Assault
The Relentless Assault buff now gives 5% Damage, 2% Critical Chance, an -5% Attack Duration.

Readied Strike
This trait no longer causes Shadow’s Lament to apply the Battle-Readied state. Instead, it gives you +10% damage.

Cutting Edge
The effect given to Cutting Attack by this trait has changed to 10% Critical Magnitude and 3% Critical Chance, with a 10s duration.

Lacerate
This trait now causes Grave Wound to spread the Cutting Attack bleed, and Shadow’s Lament to spread the Grave Wound bleed.

Blade Brother’s Call
This trait and skill have been removed, replaced by ‘Stand Alone’ a toggle skill which you can use instead of Blade-brother to improve your personal DPS at the cost of group support.

Master of War
This trait no longer affects the duration of Oathbreakers Shame. Oathbreakers Shame now has a 15s base duration.
When you land critical hits with Inspire (not Shadow’s Lament) you and your Blade-brother both receive +50% critical chance for 5 seconds.
The effects granted by Standard of War have been renamed to reduce confusion between the components of this trait.
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Hardened Heart
The potency of this trait has been halved, from a maximum of 30% to 15%.

Arterial Strikes
This trait has gained a rank, making its maximum critical chance 5%, while the critical magnitude given by max rank is now 10%.

Heightened Allies
This trait improve Herald/Archer damage as well as reduces their incoming damage. It also now has a max rank of 3.

Impactful Blows
The maximum effect from this trait has increased from 6% to 10%. This trait is currently not working.

Vital Stroke
The critical magnitude from this trait has been reduced from 50% to 15%.

Fellowship of the Sword
The fellowship-wide effect from To Arms is now (traited to maximum potency)
+5% Damage
+2% Outgoing Healing


Red (Skills)
Gallant Display
When traited red, Gallant Display deals AoE damage and has no healing component. Subsequent uses increase its damage and power cost considerably.

Inspire
This skill now gives you and your Blade-brother a Damage buff and a power restore.

Blade-brother’s Call
This skill has been removed.

Standard of War
The duration of the banner has been reduced to 15 seconds.

Stand Alone
This toggle skill disables Blade-brother and transforms a selection of your ally-oriented skills into variants that provide you a direct, personal benefit.

Stand Alone: Inspire > Self-determination
Self-determination is a melee attack that gives you +20% Damage and -5% Incoming Damage for 18s. By using this skill more-or-less off cooldown, you can maintain this buff for 100% of the time you’re in combat while standing alone.

Stand Alone: To Arms > Masterful Strike
This is a strong melee attack which gives you a 30% Damage buff.

Stand Alone: Words of Courage > Courageous Heart
This skill gives you +20% Mitigations for 10s, with a 50s cooldown.

Stand Alone: Escape from Darkness > Cry of Fury
This skill deals AoE damage, applies an Outgoing Damage debuff to enemies hit, and gives you a strong self-heal over time.

Leader of Men

Yellow (Traits)
Tactics: On Guard
The On Guard buff is now 2% Physical Mitigation, 3% Parry Chance, and 5% Critical Defence.

Elendil's Boon
The effect from this trait now lasts for 4 seconds, rather than being consumed by the next hit you receive. This effect is now statistically an improved version of Battle-hardened, and will not stack with Battle-hardened. However, you can re-enter the Battle-hardened state 'under' this buff, so you are encouraged to use Blade of Elendil, rather than punished for it.

Defensive Strike > Defensive Blade
This trait has been renamed to avoid confusion with the skill, and will cause Defensive Strike to give you an Incoming Damage reduction buff for 18 seconds. It also still increases your Parry Chance by 5%.

Shield-brother’s Call
This skill has been transformed into one which requires you to target an ally. That ally gains -30% incoming damage for 7 seconds.

Blessing of the Shield
The effect from To-Arms granted by this trait would reduce your Incoming Damage, rather than mirroring the effect granted to your Song-brother.

Exemplar
With Shield of the Dúnedain in blue, the cooldown reduction here would shift to ‘At the Fore.’ This cooldown reduction already has a significant internal cooldown, so its trigger has been relaxed from 'Incoming Critical Hits' to 'When you receive damage'
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Noble Mark
Noble Mark range is now 25m. Noble Mark no longer applies a DoT. Noble Mark now reduces its target's critical chance, and causes the marked target to heal and buff allies when hit. That means Noble Mark's heal is no longer triggered by you the captain hitting any enemy while the mark is toggled on. Instead, the marked enemy will heal & buff you or your allies when making attacks.

Brother’s Keeper
When the 7 seconds of protection from Song-brother’s Call expire, 20% of that player’s threat is transferred to you.

Fellowship of the Shield > Fellowship of the Song
The fellowship-wide effect from To Arms is now (traited to maximum potency)
-2% Incoming Damage
+2% Damage
+3% Outgoing Healing

Shield of the Dúnedain > At the Fore
This is a new skill that has taken the capstone place formerly occupied by Shield of the Dúnedain. For details, see below.


Yellow (Skills)
Defensive Strike
When traited yellow, Defensive Strike grants you a -5% Incoming Damage buff for 18s.

Gallant Display
When traited yellow, Gallant Display deals AoE damage and heals you. Subsequent uses increase its damage, healing, and power cost.

Strength in Numbers
The potency of this heal has been increased, especially when it hits the maximum number of possible targets. The range of Strength in Numbers (for the purposes of how many allies are nearby) has been increased to 15m

Standard of Valour
The duration of the banner has been reduced to 15 seconds.

Hammer Stroke
This is a new melee skill that deals significant damage and gives you a 30% Parry Chance buff for 15s, with a 45s cooldown.

Song-brother’s Call
This skill gives an ally a -30% Incoming Damage buff for 7 seconds.

At the Fore
When used, this skill negates 50% of incoming damage for 10s. Incoming damage during this period will build stacks of ‘At the Fore.’ These cap at a maximum of 10. When the initial damage reduction expires, you gain +100% Melee Damage, and your melee attacks will spend stacks of ‘At the Fore’ to heal you (5% Maximum Morale per attack). This skill has a 3 minute cooldown, which is reduced by the Exemplar effect and is reset by Call to Greatness.






General Skills
Defensive Strike
This is a standard melee skill which gives you the Battle-readied buff. It has a 15s cooldown. This effectively replaces the Battle-ready functionality of Valiant Strike and Shadow’s Lament, while giving yellow-line captains access to a second Battle-ready opener skill.

Fighting Withdrawal
Fighting Withdrawal has lost its parry buff. The parry buff is capable of greatly increasing your damage mitigation, but tying it to your CC-breakout skill makes it feel bad to use just for parry or just for CC removal. For captains specialized into yellow, this parry buff has been shifted into ‘Hammer Stroke.’

Purge Corruption
Purge Corruption retains its 15s cooldown, but when used while Battle-readied, it has only a 5s cooldown.

Blade of Elendil
Blade of Elendil no longer removes corruptions, and no longer has a force taunt when you’re specialized in the yellow tree. Blade of Elendil no longer gives allies a 'chance to deal additional light damage.' It now gives allies a 10s buff, increasing their Light Damage, Shadow Mitigation, and Critical Defence.

Grave Wound
Grave Wound now has an inherent 15% Block/Parry/Evade resistance penetration.

Muster Courage
The Muster Courage resistance buff has been reduced, and this skill now only affect members of your fellowship.

Motivating Speech
The effects of Motivating Speech now last 20 minutes.

Time of Need
Time of Need now costs a percentage of your max morale to use and will restore a significant amount of power to you, in addition to its existing effects.

Escape from Darkness
The induction duration for this skill has been reduced from 4 seconds to .8 seconds. This induction will not be set back by damage.



Specialization-based Variants

Inspire
Shield-brother: Moderate Heal and HoT
Self: Power restore and PoT
Fellowship: Weak Heal and HoT

Blade-brother & Self: Minor damage buff (7.5% Damage, -3% Inductions, -10% Attack Duration, -5% Power Costs) weak power restore, and Master of War (50% Critical Chance for 5 seconds when Inspire critically hits).
[note: this effect is currently not being applied to your blade-brother. It is only applying to you at the moment. This has been bugged, and will be fixed in the next Bullroarer]
Fellowship: +4% Damage and a weak Power restore and PoT

Song-brother: Moderate Power restore and PoT
Self: Morale Heal and HoT
Fellowship: Weak Power restore and PoT


To Arms
Shield-brother: -15% Incoming Damage
Self: +15% Outgoing Healing
Fellowship: -5% Incoming Damage, +2% Damage

Blade-brother: +15% Damage
Self: +15% Damage
Fellowship: +5% Damage, 2% Outgoing Healing

Song-brother: +15% Outgoing Healing
Self: -15% Incoming Damage
Fellowship: -2% Incoming Damage, +2% Damage, +3% Outgoing Healing


Gallant Display
Blue: AoE Damage and AoE Healing; subsequent uses increase Power Cost and Healing
Red: AoE Damage; subsequent uses increase Power Cost and greatly increase Damage
Yellow: AoE Damage and personal self-healing; subsequent uses increase Power Cost, Damage, and Threat


Tactics Buffs
Blue: Focus 5% Incoming Healing, 3% Resistance, 2% Tactical Mitigation
Red: Relentless Assault 5% Damage, 2% Critical Chance, -5% Attack Duration
Yellow: On Guard 2% Physical Mitigation, 3% Parry Chance, 5% Critical Defence

Traceries

A few traceries have had their values adjusted slightly or their passive stat changed. One tracery has been made obsolete by the changes above, and a couple new ones have been added.
No existing traceries will be removed. Please do not delete your existing traceries.


Noble Mark Damage will become Noble Mark Buff and Debuff Potency

Battle-readied and Battle-hardened Traceries
These traceries have had some of their value shifted out into the base effects. For endgame players, this will likely mean little-to-no change, but it will be an improvement for anyone at lower levels or with less-optimized LIs.

Muster Courage Fear Resist
The value of this tracery has been reduced.


New: At the Fore Healing
This tracery increases 'Melee Healing' from At the Fore.

New: In Harm's Way Damage Reduction
This tracery reduces damage taken by the fellowship while In Harm's Way is active.