Dev Diary Feedback: Lore-master Advancement Beyond Level 50!

[Clover]

As we prepare to enter the Mines of Moria™, the Lore-masters of Middle-earth continue to reveal new secrets about their abilities while recovering lost knowledge.

Read more about Lore-master 50+ advancement and post your comments here!

[Castegyre]

Thanks for throwing these up here


I am curious about this:

Lore-masters as always will have access to Legendary Books and Staffs that will continue to bolster the power of their skills. Many of the new modifiers on weapons will focus on the reliability of skills and increases in the damage output of the Lore-master.

I am guessing this means that LMs will have access to a new tier of books above the one's they can use now, but the way it reads one could be given the impression that LMs will be able to have Legendary books as a part of the Legendary weapons system. Could we get some clarification on this please?

[Nordak]

Sounds interesting, especially the two new pets. Not sure that I will use them often, but what would really be great is a RELEASE DATE!

[Golledhel]

Thanks for throwing these up here


I am curious about this:



I am guessing this means that LMs will have access to a new tier of books above the one's they can use now, but the way it reads one could be given the impression that LMs will be able to have Legendary books as a part of the Legendary weapons system. Could we get some clarification on this please?

I believe they said in the past that Class Items would also be part of the Legendary system..

[Gumawerian]

Saber-tooth cats? Bog-lurkers? Please -- does anybody else think this sounds kind of silly?

[Myte]

"Its default attacks injure multiple opponents at a time and thus halve the chance of kicking off fellowship manoeuvres in group situations."

I dont get this... I thought the only thing that effects FMs are stuns? Aka a mob has stun immunity therefore no FMs during that time. Maybe it means HAVE ie the big cat can perform FMs?

Dibs on calling my Bog Lurker - Mulch

[Castegyre]

I believe they said in the past that Class Items would also be part of the Legendary system..

Ah, I must of completely missed that.

[cedwin]

Saber-tooth cats? Bog-lurkers? Please -- does anybody else think this sounds kind of silly?

Not really, considering the range of animals to choose from in the game are mainly evil.

I can understand including the saber-tooth, since it is also a "beast", and it would be the logical step up from the lynx. But, what's the deal with a bog lurker? Aren't they creatures of nature?

[Castegyre]

... But, what's the deal with a bog lurker? Aren't they creatures of nature?

It's a pre curser of things to come. The Ent Wives are really in a hidden boot camp somewhere in the far east being trained by a secret society of Hobbit Lore-Master Pastry Chefs so they'll be ready when the time comes... about book 47 or so... to run pies from the Shire to Rohan.

[swattz101]

"Its default attacks injure multiple opponents at a time and thus halve the chance of kicking off fellowship manoeuvres in group situations."

I don't get this... I thought the only thing that effects FMs are stuns? Aka a mob has stun immunity therefore no FMs during that time. Maybe it means HAVE ie the big cat can perform FMs?

Dibs on calling my Bog Lurker - Mulch

I hope it is the HAVE the ability instead of cutting the ability by 50% or HALVE it. If there is more than one LM in a group with a ST Tiger, does that mean there is no chance, or does it halve each time, in other words, with 2 there is only a 25% of the original chance. (ie-50% of 100 is 50, 50% of that is 25.) I can already hear groups telling me to get rid of my tiger as he is hurting their FM chances.

As for the Bog Lurker, it should be interesting. I like the idea of the range attack, but... (trying to come of with another animal that has some sort of ranged attack and all I can think of is monkeys that throw things, not a pretty picture, and probably lore breaking.)

[brasswire12]

Not really, considering the range of animals to choose from in the game are mainly evil.

I can understand including the saber-tooth, since it is also a "beast", and it would be the logical step up from the lynx. But, what's the deal with a bog lurker? Aren't they creatures of nature?

Sabre-tooth makes perfect sense to me. At the very least I don't see enough of a difference between it and a bear, or a lynx to get upset over lore-wise.

Bog-lurker is a little more strange. I thought they were more "creatures of nature" like Ents or Huorns, as opposed to Beasts. Although I guess it's not that big of a stretch. There are even some friendly bog-lurkers in some areas of the game already (ie near Dol Dinen). If they can attack from range and have a root attack (oi bad pun) then they will certainly have uses.

[Castegyre]

Well, seriously, what other pets could they add? Though I would love a pet Auroch to call "Tauren" just to annoy people, or a wolf maybe, there are not a lot of actual 'animals' in the game to pull from. Especially not animals with ranged attacks, and having that could be very handy sometimes. I suspect that the cat will likely be very situationally useful and looked down upon by some groups if they lower FM chances, though. What I am really curious about with them is if they will proc flanks on par or more than my eagle. I guess we will get to see in a few weeks.

[ararax2]

Auroch!

You know you want it!

[776i]

The new pets seem really cool. I like the fact they are bringing a new beast in the picture, and adding a new "type" of pet in. Since "LMs are a friend of most of the natural creatures of the wild. They preserve the natural balance of the world, knowing that they are part of nature, and that man and nature must coexist; but sometimes when that balance becomes disturbed, Lore-masters will need to call upon the aid of creatures of the wild and nature to right it."
It seems like they should use this form of pet even if they r creatures of nature. At least they aren't making spiders a pet or the snow/hill/peikko things (reason being is that the peikkos r just annoying at least in my point of view).

[drsmoothsrs]

seems like all the trait setups are focused on damage/debuffs. i'd love to see one that enhances our CC/healing potential! i hope that with the RK, we don't get forgotten as secondary healers.

[APErebusAU]

seems like all the trait setups are focused on damage/debuffs. i'd love to see one that enhances our CC/healing potential! i hope that with the RK, we don't get forgotten as secondary healers.

There was the comment in the last trait set (the debuff one) that there was trait(s?) that affected blinding flash.

I suspect that your CC/Healing traits are in that section.

EDIT:Here is the quote:

as well as increasing the reliability of blinding flash with Explosive Force.

[greenie30]

These are my personal thoughts on what I'm reading.
Yes, it's long and I did try to color code it and make it easier reading.
Of course, my rant about what I would like to have follows in small text.
There are a few questions in there also if you can clarify anything further and thanks for the updates.

TRAIT SETS

THE KEEPER OF ANIMALS

TRAITS IN THE SET:

The traits that are in this set are largely familiar to the Lore-master, as the focus of this set is to increase the fortitude of your animal companion, restore morale, and give your companion bonuses in combat to drive off the Shadow that is creeping over Middle-earth. The addition of “The Wild and the Ward” trait enables your animal companion to better stand against some of the non-common damage types in the game.

I like the sound of non-common damage type resistance for pets also - they don't get the scroll buffs that players use BUT they can get sign of power : protection to mimic the 5% defensive aspect. I don't see this addressing their output damage being mostly common from what the combat logs look like.

TRAIT SET BONUSES:

The bonuses of the Keeper of Animals set focus on enhancing the capacity of animal buffs and their magnitude. Chances are if a Lore-master is going to focus on their relationship with their animal companion, they are familiar with their abilities to buff and enhance their pet’s performance in all situations. The set bonuses focus on enhancing these bonuses in both duration and magnitude.

So to use these we sacrifice the eagle if the slot is legendary?
Be sure that no one is untraiting sword and staff for a mild pet improvement or longer buff pet duration when noone traits that already. From the trenches, the most common build is Sword and staff and the Eagle.


CAPSTONE SKILL: FRIEND OF CATS

This skill enables the Lore-master to summon a saber-tooth cat to aid in The War of the Ring. The saber-tooth is not a fan of careful crowd control, however. Its default attacks injure multiple opponents at a time and thus halve the chance of kicking off fellowship manoeuvres in group situations.

What do you mean halve the chance of fellowship maneuvers?
If this little guy is a mez breaker, he will never see a group setting, it means nothing really what he can do regarding fellowships. It sounds most to me like a lynx with the 2 aoe attacks on auto cast when ready in a new sabre tooth skin.

Definately a solo pet in my eyes and maybe not often. Considering that as an LM your skill lies in ccing or avoiding dmg when fighting multiple mobs, what good will this guy be if he interrupts that control. Instead if you whip him out just to fight single mobs, you are wasting the potential aoe. This cuts it down to usage to grey mobs perhaps.

I don't think we need an aoe dmg pet. We need an aoe HEAL pet. Something like the effect from inner flame and let the pet sit there channeling instead of the LM

If this pet has no buff and is a cc breaker I expect it will never see a group setting.

LEGENDARY CAPSTONE TRAIT: FRIEND OF NATURE

The current crop of Lore-master companions don’t attack at a range, leaving the Lore-master without any ranged attacking pets. This is particularly an issue in high end instances. The new Bog-guardian pet will enable the Lore-master to attack at range with his walking plant friend, fulfilling a much-needed ranged pet role.

Hey now, that's interesting.
This may alleviate some of the keeping pets on passive all the time issue and just being used as a group buff instead of contributing physically.

Since they will be near us and won't be able to flank from auto attack I think an excellent buff from a "Bog-guardian" would be a personal one. Something around 1% damage we do is returned as morale! How cool would that be to put in to solve the lack of flanks.

I could see this one as a pet I might use with that sort of buff for kiting. The only reason I don't think it should be a group buff is because that would be more coding and touch more classes while this keeps it centralized to us but will give us a leg to stand on to use the pet over an eagle in groups, it helps heal in a way.

THE MASTER OF NATURE’S FURY

The Lore-master possesses a few tools in his arsenal that allow him or her to do direct damage to the foes of Middle-Earth. Master of Nature enables the Lore-master to focus on the power of nature, and his knowledge of the ancient secrets of Middle-earth to enhance the potential for damage dealing with the Lore-master’s chosen element of fire.

Yes, we have one fire improvement trait for dmg.
Please say this converts Improved Staff Strike damage to fire during instead of always light...

TRAITS IN THE SET:

This set includes several of the direct damage enhancements that Lore-masters had access to before, including Improved Staff Strike and Harmony of the Body. This line also includes Improved Storm Lore and Improved Sign of Power, both of which raise the effectiveness of these damaging skills.

Do you mean Awareness of body here? Could be an old skill name.
Hmm Improved Storm Lore, this skill I use most often for the stun effect when being overwhelmed for a moment to get an induction off. Increasing the stun time would aid, otherwise, the damage is not so important to improve. I guess I'll see on this one what direction the improvement sways.
Improved sign of power.... oooo hope that includes wizardry! Tank and flank is an LMs joy.

TRAIT SET BONUSES:

The Master of Nature’s Fury focuses on giving enhancements to one of Nature’s most powerful elements: flame. This raises the damage potential of many of the Lore-master’s fire skills, at the cost of some of the blasting powder from Blinding Flash, causing the latter to have a shorter duration.

Oh you dirty, dirty boys. More damage but less cc hmmm. Well, with the diminishing return changes I suppose this might work out for the pvp LMs. It's already low durations and eventual immunity, what is it going to hurt to reduce 1 second to 1 second. If dr is already against you, why not profit from it by increasing your damage.

CAPSTONE SKILL: STICKY GOURD

This skill is a direct damage attack that deals explosive fire damage to your enemy.

Explosive? That sounds like aoe. I can see this working if it's on a cooldown similar to Cracked earth. See, when I build for fire dmg I use that but the root portion makes the pet back off. If instead we had this aoe to use, that could keep pet micromanaging down.

LEGENDARY CAPSTONE TRAIT: IMPROVED STICKY GOURD

This enhancement enables your Sticky Gourd to become an AOE hotspot that burns enemies who linger within its radius, while doing no damage to allies.

Mmmm even more damage. Will this stack with Sticky Tar fire resistance and perhaps our Warding circles for increased tact dmg? Hope so. Being either or is not another skill in your repertoire, instead it is an alternative.

THE ANCIENT MASTER

The Ancient Master trait line focuses on enabling Lore-masters to raise the effectiveness of debuffs the ancient lore provides. This line provides increases in magnitude and reliability to the skills in their portfolio.

Ok, better debuffs, I wasn't aware that what we had were in need of improvement.

TRAITS IN THE SET:

This line includes a larger slice of the new class traits, including magnitude increases with "The Study of the Lore of Wind" and "The Study of the Lore of Fire" as well as increasing the reliability of blinding flash with Explosive Force.

Wait, say that again, blink, INCREASES THE RELIABILITY OF BLINDING FLASH WITH EXPLOSIVE FORCE. Are you saying aoe blinding flash or just that it will shake off early less often?.


TRAIT SET BONUSES:

The Trait Set bonuses of this line focus on enhancing the power of some of your already existing debuff skills, such as reducing the time before the root for Cracked Earth takes effect, or increasing the type of targets your Warding Lore skills effect.

Warding circles do leave out some pretty common creatures. Like uh Humans, Orcs, Goblins, the list goes on and on. I would like to see something generalized like "Humanoid" just for space on the toolbars. It would likely not be that sweeping huh.

CAPSTONE SKILL: SIGN OF POWER: SEE ALL ENDS

This skill enables players to reduce the enemy critical chances for a short time, creating a zone of very predictable damage output from their enemies.

So, while all other classes increase their critical chances from skills, we will decrease the enemies critical chance. I worry about the power cost on all these debuffs. Can only hope you keep this one low because as it stands it can cost over 500 power just to debuff a mob. Picky picky I know


LEGENDARY CAPSTONE TRAIT: FORCE OF WILL

Force of Will duration and magnitude are increased with this capstone trait, giving Lore-masters unparalleled control over enemy critical chances. This enables the Lore-master to ensure that his Fellowship’s Tank won’t be wiped out by an unexpected devastating strike.

Yikes, so not only are we rotating stun immunity, air-lore, wound, disease removal on the tanks there will be something new?

Is this something I can cast on myself or my pet? Can't say I've been pleased that I can't air-lore myself. Is the +12 or so dmg really that much of an issue. You know we like to tank and flank. Please don't let this skill follow that path of skills that are only good to cast on others. Remember, we still only wear light armor and are the only class that can never upgrade. For that reason crit really can hurt us more than others.

I don't see some of our commonly discussed topics included in these class updates. So I'll air them if you haven't seen previously.

I saw nothing that addressed an LM as a secondary healer role.

Inner flame improvement, look around, it's unused in general because it takes you out of a battle too long unless you are fighting a single target and is less healing than a lvl 40 potion.

What if innerflame could be converted into group wide and decreased cooldown to about 1.5 min? It would still be channeled and keep us out of doing something else but allow us to contibute a different heal at times. It wouldn't be any stronger than the heal component in "Noble Cause" from a minstrel.

Increased hit chance for tactical skills! We don't seem to have a stat to improve this but melee is able to increase their odds to actually hit a target with just general stats. Stats are found on gear, weapons, in virtues, and in some traits which means that the opportunities to improve hit chance for melee are easily attainable.

The same is not true for tactical skills - there is not a stat that transparently increases our chances to improve our chances to perform. This is even more detrimental to the class because many skills are morale reducing and on induction timers. So not only do you not do the damage but you have also lost morale, time, and power. Not to mention that receiving more than 2 resists in a row makes it extremely difficult for a group to trust your crowd control. Since that is the main reason your class was needed, you do them no service to not perform.

Make it fair, noone resists a heal, stop making it so difficult for a Loremaster to just perform crowd control in a group.
I have seen up to 3 cc classes taken in a 12 man group just because of the amount of resists out there. That can't be healthy.
We don't take 3 tanks and we don't take 3 healers. But it is mandatory anymore to have a backup cc and a backup for them lately simply because the resist rates are staggeringly unpredictable.
Myself I have been resisted 4 times on blinding flash in a row.
That was cast the skill, use my 10 min cd reset skill, cast the skill again, stun the mob, wait, cast blinding flash again and see a resist, then stun the mob again and once more cast blinding flash to see a resist.
You are talking about nearing 1 minute just to get a skill to stick!!! That is not excusable, I'm sorry and is an eternity when the mobs are slapping ppl around.

My solution would be to drive it by stats, the same way that melee classes improve with agility.

Let's have a look at agility...

Defensive perks:
+ evade chance
+ parry chance

Damage perks:
+ crit chance
+ ranged dmg
- miss chance

One way to think of it is that agility is both an offensive and defensive buff in one stat. You can hit more often, do more damage, and defend better from attacks facing you or from behind.

My opinion is that it should tie into fate. Fate is lacking in punch in comparion but an important tactical build component for both Loremaster and Minstrel for the regeneration during combat.

Now a gander at Fate...

Defensive perks:
+ power regen in combat
+ morale regen in combat

Offensive perks:
+ tact crit chance
+ tact crit dmg
---- see something missing here?

The hit chance is gone. It doesn't matter if you can do 1000 points of damage in one hit if you CAN'T actually hit anything In fact, the more often you miss and resist the more you are taxing this stat's value because now you have lost the regen amount for the power spent on a skill that did nothing.

Well why not just build your Loremaster for agility? Simple answer, passing power - the one thing this class does better than any other. A Burglar can mez, a Hunter can root, a Minstrel can fear but not a one of them can directly pass power to someone like us. Other classes step on our toes for cc but in one way we have a particular niche. Banners are most comparable but still deal with range issues. To perform that power passing over long battles you must have good regeneration in combat. The other secondary reason is that the majority of LM skills are tactical, not melee. Technically there is only 1 melee skill.

[Ryvick]

The statement should say HAVE not Halve. All pets have the chance to start a fellowship manouever (Including Heralds). The fact that the Sabre-tooth will be able to do a multi-enemy swipe simply means it will have a higher chance of starting a FM like Guards Champs Hunters and other AoE attacks in group situations. The only part that is not CC friendly is that like AoEs it will not discriminate against mezzed that are in range.

[drsmoothsrs]

There was the comment in the last trait set (the debuff one) that there was trait(s?) that affected blinding flash.

I suspect that your CC/Healing traits are in that section.

EDIT:Here is the quote:

i did notice that, but it's pretty clear that line of traits is focused on debuffs. i would like to see something with a CC/healing "legendary capstone." i just really don't care about damage or pets, probably because i rarely play solo. i dunno why i'd expect anything different though, it's been made very clear that Turbine views the LOTRO crowd as a primarily solo players. anyways, it's way too far along to hope for anything more than what's described i'm sure. i'll reserve judgement for after i've played with the new stuff

[FredegarKadere]

Wizard's Fire seems like a redundant ability if it functions like the Lore-master's current Wizardry skill. I imagine they would both share the same timer and if that is the case there should be some difference to the heal they give.

Keep the current one the same but make the Wizard's Fire a Heal Over Time (HoT) for maybe slightly more morale total. That would then make the two abilities situational. Wizardry heals for +580 morale instantly, whereas Fire heals for +150 morale every 2s for 10s (+750 total). The Wizardry one for the 'going to die' moments and the Fire for 'need to top off' moments. Or perhaps a Power Heal instead of a Morale Heal.

Will the Inner Flame focus heal be improved at all? Currently from the high 20's to 50 it is not worth the time to use. +32-34 health a second for 16 seconds is not worth the time staying out of the fight nor will it help your pet stay alive at all. The Hunter's Power of Earth is being improved, something similar for the Inner Flame focus ability would also be nice. Note: Extending the duration from 16 seconds to 24 seconds would not be an improvement.

I was really hoping to see some improvement to group healing, but maybe I am being greedy. Perhaps a trait/focused ability similar to Inner Flame that heals morale group-wide.

[ACOstud77]

Saber-tooth cats? Bog-lurkers? Please -- does anybody else think this sounds kind of silly?

OMG shut up we get a ranged PET!!!

[APErebusAU]

i did notice that, but it's pretty clear that line of traits is focused on debuffs. i would like to see something with a CC/healing "legendary capstone." i just really don't care about damage or pets, probably because i rarely play solo. i dunno why i'd expect anything different though, it's been made very clear that Turbine views the LOTRO crowd as a primarily solo players. anyways, it's way too far along to hope for anything more than what's described i'm sure. i'll reserve judgement for after i've played with the new stuff

Good point.

It's hard to say without seeing an exact list of the traits and what they effect.

I don't play an LM tho so i can't really comment on what I want in MoM...

[Trantor]

The pets are cool I guess but I wish we would of had more focus on CC/Healing.

[a99barnsey]

Some of this sounds kind of meh, but other parts are interesting.

DPS/nuker stance- pretty good idea I suppose. Flexibility is always good.

Bog lurker pet- Bleh. I can't stand those things, and I don't want one as a pet. I'm just not convinced that the pet path won't be considered a terrible path to follow.

I'm pretty disappointed that nothing was said about FROST LORE!!! I was really hoping to get several frost abilities since frost damage was introduced.

[Gravious]

"Its default attacks injure multiple opponents at a time and thus halve the chance of kicking off fellowship manoeuvres in group situations."

I read that as "because this pet's auto-attacks are aoe, the chance for it to start an FM is half that of other pets".

My eagle tends to kick off quite a few FM's, so having a pet who's auto-attack is aoe would be too much of an FM chance with multiple targets. I mean, not even a champion can aoe with auto-attack (yet?).