Greetings! A new day, a new dev, and new ideas

[Kelsan]

Hey all,

I said there would be a formal post, so here it is!

I’m your new Burglar dev and I wanted to say ‘Hello’ and get a discussion started on the topic of the Revamp you’ve heard about.

The twitter chats are great for giving tidbits of information, but obviously leave a lot the imagination. Everyone will draw their own conclusions from our 140 character answers, but I do want to ease some fears that we’re going to outright take your utility away.
It’s true, we want to reduce homogenization… but that is so we can make the unique elements of the class more exciting (without enter face-rolling territory). That being said, we don’t want to take away your ability to be a utility-generalist class (especially if that is the core design).

Okay… with all that said, let’s get to the point. I’d like this thread to be about the top 3 things you’d most like to see changed about the Burglar. These can be sweeping changes, like more control over my Gambles, or small-focused changes, like alterations to specific skills or rotations.

I’d like to avoid the snarky comments/suggestions as that just slows the process down. So please, avoid posting things like:
“Everything!”
“Have you read anything I’ve posted in the last year?!”
“What’s the point? Not like you’ll listen!”

I want you to be honest and critical, but stay on topic and come at this with a desire to see real change.

[Eliaf]

Hello im a new burg..only lvl 32 ^^ but from what i've seen..maby a bit more usefulness to the MM trait set...the bonuses are pretty worthless compared to qk/gambler, i'd also love to see an awesomely fun skill...not necessarly VERY useful..but uber fun ^^ i think that the burg should be the most jolly and awesome class (not op...just fun to play, thats what i mean xD) because its inspired by the best hobbit that ever walked the earth (screw bullroaer and frodo)...and i cant really think of anything more...ill post something if i can think of it and ill let the high lvls that know this stuff more talk ^^

[N.Legler]

I want you to be honest and critical, but stay on topic and come at this with a desire to see real change.

Three things:
I'd like Knives Out to have more utility
I'd like our Legacies to be more economical
I'd like to Not be perceived as 'squishy melee DPS'
Thanks for reading.

[Geno-Max]

1. Make our SoA legendaries feel more "legendary". The only one of the three I use on a consistent basis is Flashing Blades, and even then I usually prefer my other fast skills over it.

2. Reduce the cooldown on Clever Retort. It's a cool skill, very handy for gamblers, but isn't so overpowered that it warrants a 1m30s CD.

3. Rework the MM tree. The traits individually are fairly decent, and so are the set bonuses, but there's little incentive to have multiple yellows since our tricks don't stack.

...Just off the top of my head of course. I'm fairly happy with where our class is (in terms of PvE, at least. I don't PvP).

[Lenton]

Oh? Only three things, and they can be broad or specific? It's hard to say exactly what I want.

I'm tempted to mention power restore abilities, but with all of that changing for Update 10, maybe it won't be as big a deal as it is now.


I primarily go as a gambler burg when I play, simply because I like getting the different mixes of mezes, debuffs, and damage gambles. I especially enjoy taking a low tier gamble and upgrading it to a tier 6. It has been a bit strange to me though that it's a QK burglar that gets more opportunities to open up Fellowship Maneuvers than the gambler burglar, when half our traits revolve around FMs.


Speaking of the FM traits, that's pretty much my first point to change. We have Overwhelming Odds, and Even the Odds. Both traits are useless when questing solo, and questionable in a group. It's not usually freely up to the burglar which color they'll use for the maneuver, so even the buff from Overwhelming Odds may not be ideal. Escape Clause isn't super useful, though resetting the cooldown on Touch and Go can be nice. In a group though, if I have to use Touch and Go even once, things are going very poorly. It would be nice to see these traits and associated reworked into something more generally useful. Perhaps tied into Clever Retort.

Speaking of Clever Retort, besides the Debufff gamble, I've never really gotten much benefit from this skill. The damage from a red is pretty weak. The yellow dot isn't that impressive compared to a T6 damage gamble. The blue rarely restores enough power. And the heal doesn't come close to rivaling Mischievous Glee. Considering it's a random chance for one of those things to happen, I'd really like them to be stronger, or provide some other kind of boost.

Overall, I'd really just like to see Gambler become more versatile. QK is the straight out damage dealer, while Mischief is the debuff/mezer. Gambler could do a middle road between the two, offering it's current gamble Mez and Damage, but also offering a bit more utility and some survivability. Some buffs to our healing from Glee would be nice, or more ability to dodge and avoid attacks would be interesting as well. Maybe a bit more...flash with the gambles as well. The dice roll is kind of neat, but Burglars do typically feel like the least amazing class compared to the spectacle of a Runekeeper's lightning.



Edit: That scared me for a second. Got logged out while I was posting. Really wish they would fix up these forums....

[Hepheastus]

These are some of the things I would like to see adressed. I play burg as my main in pve, but also bring it to the moors pretty often.

1. Up our mitigations. In my opinion, it's rediculous that a burglar, being MELEE dps, can get 1 shotted in raids by a random aoe attack that barely even harms our brothers and sisters in heavy arms. We need to get rid of the image that burgs are so squishy that they get one shotted in high level raids, and are often not invited because of it.

2. Some of our legendary traits do not feel legendary and could use some adjustment. Especially Sweep The Leg / Stick and Move. Their effects are so minor I probably would not even trait them if they were normal traits instead of legendary ones. Flashing blades is a good one, but since it's so essential in pretty much any burg's rotation, this trait has turned into a "must have", leaving us with only 2 other slots to fill.

3. Burgs would really benefit from a move to handle slows. Every melee class has one, sprint, charge, make haste etc. giving these classes a way to counter a kiting method (this is mostly moors orientated). Even the melee classes on the opposite site do. A burg is pretty much useless as soon as we get slowed (unless we are lucky enough not to have hips on cd, which is almost never), and with the increasing amount of spiders, we are nearly always slowed and then kited to death without barely getting even a single blow off.

My 2 cents on what the class could really use.

EDIT. I know I can only name the top 3 things I would like to see adressed, but there is one more I read which I just have to note as well.

4. Improve burglar mounted combat. Compared to pretty much all other classes, burglar mounted combat is a laugh. I've noticed my dps is way higher when I just dismount and continue dpsing on foot as soon as the target (like Bugud) is dismounted, which is exactly why I barely even bother fighting while mounted.

[schizoid19]

1. We are too squishy. In PVE, light armor wearers tend to have more mitigations than us unless I build like a tank. Burglars are melee so we have to take many AOEs and we get hit hard and die frequently.

2. Something needs to be done about us in PVP. TNG no longer serves a purpose in the moors except against NPCs. With HIPS, we can be tracked during it and spider pets still attack after HIPSing. Audacity has seriously lessened the effect of our CC, which is a huge part of the burglar class. The new crit changes have also ruined our burst DPS.

3. Conjunctions need to be revamped because only blue/green ones are useful. Any half decent group can out DPS a CJ.

4. Mischief and gambler lines need to be made more useful to group content.

[Haladanras]

Hi there! it's good to see someone taking care of burglar class. There are more then three topics i'd like to discuss but guess this thread is for tthe most important things.
1. Burglars are suffering in terms of survivability so here are my ideas. A revamp to burglars basic survivability skills KO,TnG and glee.
KO: This skill has a lot of potential but it's kinda wasted cuz its only affects melee.
My idea: Why don't just make it against all types of attacks and since it's not really a game breakjng skill perhaps one or two legacies to increase duration and decrease cooldown.
Glee: I have two ideas for this skill either make this skill grants a huge but short bubble or make it hot better.
2.More economical legacies like combining feint attack/snag and lucky strike legacies together.
3. Revamp to MM trait line and especially scale counter defence properly.
Ty for ror reading.
P.S. :

[Ozthorn]

1) Some sort of mitigation versus AOE attacks, whether a flat reduction or a skill that gives us brief immunity (Dive For Cover).
2) Mounted combat is weak. We use our single trick once per combat. Let us do something like throw marbles or caltrops under the hooves/feet of enemy mounts to slow them and possible proc a dismount.
3) Fix pets and NPCs attacking stealth classes using HIPS/Disappear.

[Meriweather]

Greetings! It's exciting to actually have a dedicated burglar dev to talk to, and I believe it bodes well for the future. My ideas pretty much line up with those you have already seen in this thread, but I wanted to throw in some more weight behind them. For perspective, I am in a PvE raiding kin and I also PvMP.

1) The Mischief Maker trait line needs to be reworked. As Geno-Max mentioned, the traits individually are helpful, but there is little incentive to trait yellow when tricks don't stack.

2) Survivability! Other posters have mentioned that Touch and Go is nearly useless in the Moors because most damage is tactical, tracks still work when I HiPS and spider pets follow me, and in PvE I can be one-shotted by AOE attacks that the heavy armor classes next to me hardly notice. I'm not asking for godmode, just a working model for survivability skills and the ability to remain effective as a melee class.

3) I agree with Hepheastus in that burgs need a skill to handle slows. He makes valid points in how disadvantaged we are in the moors because we don't have this.

[Nakiami]

I would like some sort of sprint skill.

I'd also like the Creorth Sacrificial Blade to not have common damage. (Alternately: a new dagger recipe with non-common damage and even more dps-focused stats than the Skillful Dagger of Éomer)

Finally, I capped my burg when 75 was the cap, and she's now 85. I still haven't earned Confound the Fools, Honed Wit, nor Complicated Terms. For Complicated Terms, nobody ever resists Riddle because of Finesse. I shouldn't have to walk in to a 3-man solo, take off all my gear, ideally find a signature or above mob, then spam Riddle in order to earn this. That's boring. For the other two, make Mischief more useful in solo or group play so that we can earn them naturally.

[RJFerret]

Well, I believe burglars are in a great place, sure, there are some specifics that folks would like to improve, but the core of the class is really solid the way it is.

1. Flashing Blades animation, having to use Addle after every Flashing Blades is just... ...really? (If the Flashing Blades animation isn't shortened, than perhaps provide another interrupt skill so we could, you know, actually do interrupts?)

2. I agree Knives Out became effectively useless.

3. The survivability issue might already be resolved with U10 changes, prior to that, I would have been on board with this cry as well. It used to be that burglar combat was creative, because you'd have some morale left, and could hit a skill like Touch and Go (or Knives Out back when it was useful) and with clever use of skills survive. The Isengard days changed all that, medium armour mitigations became like light armour, and combat became either you were one-shot by a crit with no chance of playing the game, or you weren't.

4. Confound. We're a mêlée class. Having a skill that does a daze 15 seconds from when we use it typically means we are dead by the time the daze kicks in. ;-) In a group setting, if my Riddle is resisted, I can stun the MOB for 8 seconds and Confound, shout at others to not hit the MOB, then watch as DoTs and tanks break the mez when it kicks in with the MOB at half morale. The Finesse debuff added to it isn't enough to warrant me going into the stance to use it if I'm not specifically in a CC role.

However, the changes to Crit Defense coming with U10, as well as fixing the damage magnitude bug, might totally resolve this already! :-) So I'd like to comment in a week or two, rather than commit to the issue of medium armour mitigations now.

I'm one of the rare burgs who traits rainbow. One concern I have about changes, is Lotro has been losing it's reactive classes, of which the burg is a primary example. Minstrels used to be more reactive, their big overhaul totally changed the feel of the class. I thought it was brilliant design that of the game's two primary healing classes, one was reactive, the other more proactive, something for each mentality, now the closest thing you can come to a reactive healing class is a captain. I hope burg refinements maintain our oodles of options for approaching situations and flexibility. :-)

[minnimeepouch]

Pvp burg what i would like to see fixed/improved.

1/ Fix pet chasing after hips both sides.
2/ Give 10secs immune to tracking after hips so we have some chance to escape from creeps that like to stay out of combat for the epic hips kill.
3/ Be nice to have something to combat slows give us a chance against the dreaded range kite 99% have brands so our cc can't slow them down(blind fury works great against ba but pointless against weaver) maybe improve to gray bar few weaver skills.
4/ Fb animation still sux way to long.

and the list goes on to fix/improve one of these is a start thx for reading.

Regards Pouch.....

[Southpa]

Welcome, Kelsan.

1. Overall survivability. As already stated, medium and melee (and not tank-ish) is a bad combo. We're a liability in many situations relative to Champs. The fact that tactical damage dominates requires changes to our skills/traits/bonuses in-turn.

2. Moors. Audacity has made our life pretty miserable. Pervasive tactical damage has largely nerfed our survival skills. I dare say, Burgs are the weakest class in the Moors next to Guardians. The PvP game has evolved and left them behind. Please catch us up again. Not Mirkwood OP catch-up, but something so that I feel like I have a fighting chance against all but the highest-ranked Creeps.

3. Trait-lines other than QK. MM-line trait-line bonuses are basically dedicated to Poison removal? Please change that. Make a Burg have options to do something effective in a raid other than DPS. Also agree with the Clever Retort CD: Gambler is hella fun to play, but could use some tweaks.

[Gylve]

Great thread!

1) Squishiness - some of this is hopefully getting addressed with the incoming changes to damage scaling, but burgs were squishy even in RoI before the RoR damage scaling bug was introduced. As has been said by others, healing-traited light armor classes always outmitigate burglars on live and all light armor will easily outmitigate us come come U10. Since we have zero ranged DPS, we're much worse off than champs/guards/wardens who all are more survivable (even in glass cannon builds) and have the ability to put out some level of DPS from range if mob AoE is so extreme that melee DPS is off-limits. We can evade and parry pretty well, but these do nothing to prevent incoming damage from 360-degree AoE attacks and unavoidable tactical damage. I'm struggling to think of a lore-appropriate way to up our survivability, as raw mitigation seems out of place and bubbles are becoming too ubiquitous already. Since we're supposed to be positional fighters, maybe we could have some sort of chance to totally avoid mob AoE attacks when we're in position?

2) Traits - Lots of traits are either useless, difficult to get, or both. Clever Retort is a staple of the Gambler but its long cooldown and the necessity to be in mischief to use it (until you finish the gambler trait) mean it's a pain to get. Heck, I'll just go through them:

QK:
Hidden Dagger - fine as is.
Strike from Shadows - good now that it works even when not stealthed.
Cunning Wound - great for burgs who want to stack bleeds.
Focused Eye - fine.
Strategic Planning - good for the Moors I guess, or when you can retrait for boss burn fights.
Spatial Sense - trash because WPS is worthless even with it. The only time I ever use WPS is vs. mobs that have a damage reflect.
Sharp Wit, Sharp Blade - This is ok, but I think provoke needs its threat looked at in general.
Ambidextrous - fine.

Gambler:
Swift and Subtle - ok. Debuffing resistance is much less useful now that people can gear for finesse.
Cruel Odds - could be expanded to 2% crit for all damage sources.
Side-step - Of limited value. Now that we can stack agility through the roof, our natural evade % is already very high.
Footpad - fine.
Leaf-walker - fine.
Overwhelming Odds - difficult to unlock since you can't do FM's while leveling, and FM's have been devalued to the point where you don't execute very many in group content either. Naturally this also reduces the effectiveness of this trait in general.
Honed Wit - Annoying to unlock because it's a blue trait that requires you to run around in mischief to unlock, and Clever Retort has a long cooldown. I think Clever Retort needs a buff - it could have the shorter cooldown and Gambler utility from the get-go, and this trait could make it stronger somehow.
Escape Clause - see Overwhelming Odds.

MM:
Perplexing Riddle - necessary if you're expected to CC. Fine I guess.
Trickster - fantastic trait that makes debuffing multiple foes much easier.
Disabling attack - could be more potent.
Opportunist - essential for DPS-race type fights.
Blind Fury - Lol? Of very limited use. Bringing ranged mobs over to melee range can be nice, but not usually if it also means they're attacking random targets.
Appraising Eye - see Opportunist.
Complicated Terms - extremely annoying to unlock now that we have finesse, and also pretty useless because we have finesse.
Confound the Fools - 200 uses to unlock? Uuuugh. Confound is just too hard to use effectively, since it has a long cooldown, vaguely contradictory benefits and the one way we can really buff it via legacy actually makes it harder to use in conjunction with a riddle.

In short, lots of traits are pretty useless and could use some looking at, especially for MM which doesn't offer enough useful traits, traitline bonuses or a good capstone to be worthwhile. You can get truckloads of utility out of slotting two yellows at a time (Opportunist + Appraising Eye for bosses, Trickster + Perplexing Riddle for trash).

3) Combat flow/attack animations - the nerfed cooldown on addle revealed that burglar DPS was/is broken. Our DPS is only respectable due to abusing the combat system, mainly by using addle to cut too-long skill animations. I would like addle to be removed from our DPS rotation entirely (it should still be immediate, but should not cut the animation time of the skill currently being executed) and instead have obnoxious skill animations and delays (flashing blades, reveal weakness, surprise strike and cunning attack in combat, provoke and exposed throat to a lesser degree) shortened. Flashing Blades is trash unless you addle it, which is decidedly un-legendary. I like that the burglar DPS chain is complex and shifts, but I'd prefer not to have to resort to addling skills.

[Beoras]

Finally, I capped my burg when 75 was the cap, and she's now 85. I still haven't earned Confound the Fools, Honed Wit, nor Complicated Terms. For Complicated Terms, nobody ever resists Riddle because of Finesse.

Same for me, and I'm someone who likes to finish all deeds possible. Nor do I have an incentive to do these deeds, as my burglar is very good without them.

I like the burglar, a lot. I like to solo in QK, the first hit from stealth followed by the crit chain is awesome. I always raid 5 deep in MM, as the group will benefit more. I only fooled around with Gambler - I'm personally not into non-deterministic effects. Experienced groups know how useful a burglar can be in raids and even 6-mans, it's a class very fun solo too...

Bottom line, I like the Burglar, a lot. However, there are two main issues that I have with it.

The first is how squishy it is, combined to the melee-only skills it has. All other classes that are forced to fight in melee range are heavy armour (or wardens, who are supposed to be tanking). The others can fulfill their role from range.. we can only apply Reveal Weakness and eventually Quite a Snag... Yes, we can stay behind a boss, but many have AoE. And we should have a survivability of more than 1 hit. My suggestion would be a mitigation bonus deep in a trait line (MM, my preference). Or an evade bonus while in combat, in position (behind), maybe also linked to a trait line.

My second issue is the lack of AoE. I don't want to be a champion, but at least allow me to apply my tricks to more targets at a time (not just Dust in the Eyes). Of course, when properly traited, or via legacies, whatever. Maybe even an AoE DoT, anything... the recent 3-mans have basically shunned the burglars. Either serious AoE was needed, or ranged attacks (Iorbar's Peak).. none of them available to burglars.

There are many minor issues, such as non-stackable tricks (though i'm quite fine with it, i like to have to choose what to use), the lack of great legacies on weapons and too many nice on tools, etc.

As for a more philosophical debate, I see burglars as a support class. Yes, we can provide great DPS in some conditions, but my role in groups is to help the group. Helpt the group either to kill faster and to get hit less. I have never understood the gambler line. For me a burglar has always been one of these three: stealth (solo), increase the group's dps, decrease the group's incoming damage. I don't mind having to think well of what is needed, of having to retrait deep, to grind for several different LIs and armour sets - as long as, when really specialized in one of these three, I will really shine in my role. I want in tough boss fights when it's very hard to stay alive, the raid to say "let's bring a 'defensive support' burglar with us" and then the fight to be EASY. Or in DPS-races boss fights, an 'offensive support' burglar to be the first thing on the to bring list.

Then I would really feel as a support class, but one that can also have a lot of fun solo, sneaking around...

Good luck, and thanks for taking the time to read the above!

[Palentian]

I totally agree that the MM line is not worth the time. I also agree about the legendary traits. It might be nice if we had some sort of power restore. And Misch. Glee should have a bigger morale return. Other than that, I quite enjoy the burg. As a solo burg, I really only use about half the skills though.

[Frisco]

1. Crit defense and mitigations--Burgs have been the squishiest class since RoI, and that includes light armour classes who can kick back at range.

2. Flashing blade animation. Still annoying 6 years later.

3. Make CJs useful again. So much fun, and players should be rewarded for being able to pull off the difficult ones. I saw that you mentioned this in the twitter feed, so I think you know how often people just ignore the CJ because they don't do anything more important than stun.

4. Many useless traits, but since we're in a good place DPS-wise, can't imagine making them TOO much more useful.

Mainly, I think if Burgs could take a hit, I'd be happy. But the other 3 things would be really nice. Otherwise, still having loads of fun on Burg.

[ScionofAngmar]

Three concerns:

1. Survivability. Burgs are too squishy at the moment for a melee class. One thought is to add a self-buff to our tricks that increases our physical mitigation, tactical mitigation or crit defense. You can space these out so that we have to choose whether we use a weaker trick and get more defense or a more potent trick but less defense.

2. Improve the MM line. Do not turn this into a CC line but focus on the unique benefits that a burg brings to the group, namely debuffs that increase mob vulnerability. Make the MM line give an increase to the various trick vulnerabilities as we trait deeper into it. And the capstone legendary trait can allow us to put two tricks on a target (or change the "legendary" trip cooldown legacy to allow for this).

3. FMs. This suggestion comes from an earlier one someone else made. Make Burgs the kings of FMs again and give us the option to remove and replace colors from an FM.

Bonus suggestion: I hate chasing mobs around on my burg. Give us an in-combat running boost or increase our melee range.

[Trinstar]

1. Improve the MM and TG lines to be on par with QK. Though this is in large part also due to the fact that there just isn't any content that requires more CC and debuffs than you can put out in QK.

2. Change the capstone cooldown legacies to be one legacy for all capstones. Improving trait lines to be equally useful is great, but let us switch between them effectively without needing to level up new LIs for each line.

3. Slight improvement to survivability. This is mostly noticeable in the moors where evade has become significantly less useful than it once was, and in some raid content where melee dps takes unavoidable hard hits.

4. I’m sure you have tons of metrics to look at under used skills and traits. Other than the obvious (WPS, etc), Surprise Strike and Cunning Attack need work. SS is great if you’re using the QK moors set, otherwise the only time to use it is to finish off a feint buff. Most of the time subtle stab does equal or greater damage for less power, shorter animation, and shorter cd. Cunning attack is also a slower animation and not great damage compared to the rest of our main DPS skills.

5. Make it worth while to do the trickier CJs. There’s no point in hitting anything other than greens and blues currently.

[Delaney]

Thanks so much for the posts, Kelsan. It is truly appreciated.

That being said, we don’t want to take away your ability to be a utility-generalist class (especially if that is the core design).

1) Please *restore* this ability to the burglar. It's ironic that one of the original utility classes seems to me to be one with the least current utility thanks to a long history of skills being blocked (no boss mezzing in instances or large skirmishes, "adaptive" behaviors to block crowd control, wholesale blocking of skills as in the turtle raid), a lack of development for the FM system, and the unbalanced development of the class into a single target DPS dealer. QK is certainly fine as an option and likely useful for those who like to play in the 'Moors, but it should not define the perception of the burglar's abilities nor be the only skill deemed of use to offer to a group. If I wanted to play a melee DPS class, I'd be a champion.

2) Towards this end, when creating a new character, the burglar info screen mentions the class as masters of debuffing with stealth abilities. I would love to see that description be true again. Please consider giving us more in the way of AOE debuffs or stronger single target debuffs, perhaps as a part of a desperately needed revamp of the Mischief Maker line. Getting rid of the absurd restriction on stealth while in Mischief would also be key.

3) Refresh the FM system to once again have relevance in group play. It doesn't have to be all scaled damage and healing, though the levels of such could bear scrutiny. It would be neat to see this as another mechanic to debuff mobs, for instance.

I look forward to seeing what awaits us in the revamp.

[bastiat1]

Kelsen, do the class revamps include a move to Talent Trees as opposed to our current Trait System, as others are speculating? That would be helpful to know as a basic principle before adding more specific feedback.

[Kelsan]

We are experimenting with Trees so feedback inline with that concept would be fair game.

[xDementedx]

You have no idea how excited I am to see a dev post in this forum! Forgive my past pessimism.

Utility and survivability have been addressed so I will address some other concerns I believe have not been mentioned as thoroughly.

[Quiet Knife]

One of the things Quiet Knife burglars I believe are concerned with is Flashing Blades. This animation is too long between skills to be of efficient use. We unfortunately have to use addle to "fix" this issue and costs us our viability to interrupt. With the addition to our cooldown reduced to a minimum of 10s our options on its use has become much more limited. Traiting red-line means we are there to do damage and we will use whatever means necessary to achieve those results thus addling Flashing Blades has become a norm. I'm quite sure using an interrupt to fix an animation was not in Turbine's design or intention so I would ask if you could see to this issue in some way:

1) Reduce the animation post-delay so that its speed is on par with Exposed Throat.

2) Change the animation into a cross-arm swipe so that the animation fits the duration (a bit similar to the addle animation with more vertical pizzazz). *May require name change to fit the skill **I realize this is probably a much taller order to ask than the others.

3) Change the skill into a fast skill (it is a legendary after all) but this might add more complications to skill rotation for some and I'm myself a bit concerned about such an option.

[Gambler]

As someone has already stated before, our best debuff is on a 1m30s cd that needs a trait just so we can use it in gambler stance. The duration is 15s so we end up fiddling our thumbs for 1m15s doing mediocre damage. This is probably the single and most important reason I choose to be a quiet kinfe burglar, the cost does not feel it equates to the reward it gives to a raid group or fellowship.

There is however a new Erebor set-bonus that reduces the cool down of trick consuming skills I believe. I will edit to confirm later. So it might change slightly if this set becomes powerful enough to make it viable. I do not believe however that a set-bonus should be a solution to the issue.

[Mischief-Maker]

Since the recent changes to Mischief have been mostly positive I don't have much concern about it. I do not however like the trait Blind Fury. I do not see any situation where this trait makes the difference between a successful and unsuccessful run. If we are going to make an enemy target random members, there needs to be a reward to it besides +5% incoming range damage since we are making non-tanking classes susceptible to being hit. At this point we have pre-boss fight mobs 1-shotting non-tank classes thus the cost should be used for tactics. Here are some examples of what the trait could and would, of course, be adjusted appropriately.

1) Perhaps the trait can give a minor contribution from all of the other debuffs?
+5% Miss Chance, +5% Attack Duration, +1% incoming critical chance, -5% melee damage

2) The trait gives +2% incoming Melee and Tactical Damage.

3) The trait gives +2.5% more ranged damage for a total of 7.5%.

4) Cool down is increased to 30s and now causes the target that is enraged to have 50% miss chance for 5 seconds. (Does not stack)

Just some examples... ohh I know I'm going to be shot down for some.

[Delaney]

I like the free-form trait system we have much, much better than the strict trees the mounted combat system uses. If we had to trait our characters to conform with a pre-set tree, it would devastate the ability to customize one's character to match with one's playstyle. This would be a huge loss. It's not the trait system itself that isn't working right now, but some of the traits/lines within it.

The only way I can even vaguely imagine trees being viable would be if we could slot the traits we wished into the structure, and have the resulting combinations give us some sort of ability or bonus. But that's really nothing more than expanding the current "line" traiting to include hybrid combinations. That could indeed be fun, but I imagine anything like that would be a massive undertaking.