Developer Diary : Minstrel Class Changes in Helm’s Deep

[Sapience]

Greetings! Deviled_Egg here again to talk about changes to everyone’s favourite singer-songwriter: The Minstrel.

http://www.lotro.com/en/game/article...E2%80%99s-deep

[LethalLethality]

It's not mentioned, but does Warrior Skald lose access to heals entirely? It's not brought up in the description at all.

[Tecro]

I look forward to seeing these changes and learning what works best with these new skills. I am concerned about the new dps of the mini, you mentioned single target as our main attack, I disagree with this, we have 5 really nice AoE skills that do nice damage when traited for dps. It is alot of fun to aggro several mobs then bring them down all at once. I hope the devs kept these skills in the trees.

[Belnavar]

It's not mentioned, but does Warrior Skald lose access to heals entirely? It's not brought up in the description at all.

I'd be surprised if they did, given it seems the three stances are remaining. It wouldn't make sense to have a DPS, healing and middle-ground stance if you could only do one of the three.

-Bel

[bastiat1]

RIP the Orion Minstrel. September 1, 2011 - September 26, 2013.

[Yaksha42]

I am concerned about the new dps of the mini, you mentioned single target as our main attack, I disagree with this, we have 5 really nice AoE skills that do nice damage when traited for dps.

Losing our AOE DPS skills is my biggest worry with the Minstrel changes.

[bastiat1]

That new Call to Greatness skill sounds incredible. I wish we had something like that on live now.

[Leixy]

I agree that if war-speech / skald minstrels lose their 5 AoE attacks, which is pretty much what is described in the diary, they will lose their primary dps ability other than the cash out coda for single target. If you do eliminate that large amount of AoE attacks, at least throw a bone to minstrels for single target by making their DPS equal to the new single-target berserker champ. Right now the primary benefits of War-speech shows up around lvl 60+ with rapid succession and fast cooldown AoE. Stack 3 major ballad buffs, anthem of war, and bam, spam AoE dps skills doing massive damage. Sounds like they plan to completely eliminate this ability.

The changes to Harmony/Protector of song sounds fine and seems to closely resemble what a current harmony minstrel does.

Watcher of Resolve / Resonance, this sounds like a very significant change to healing. Mainly, right now you can stack 3 healing ballads for +21% outgoing healing with another 10% with third age anthem as well as 25% reduction in cooldowns, keeping these 4 buffs up gave you amazing heals, however, coda canceled them out. At least on my minstrel, my goal was never to use a coda unless absolutely necessary while in watcher gear to keep these buffs, however, if you are now moving those buffs to being dependant on executing after a coda, that will significantly change how you heal on minstrel since your goal will be to use a coda every 15-20 seconds regardless whether you wanted it or not, just to keep your outgoing healing buffs up. that's a pretty significant nerf from buffs being dependant on ballads to now being dependent on the coda. I'm willing to adjust to this mechanic, as long as the developer understands that this is a huge change that will likely mean that anthems will be basically useless in favour of the coda cash-out. the only way I can think of to balance this is to make the coda cash-out buffs last a long time, like maybe 45seconds to 1 minute.

I hope I'm wrong, but it seems like the devs in these diaries log in as a lvl 30 minstrel and base their decisions off of what each class looks like around there instead of how a lvl 85 minstrel plays and then try to improve / change the class from there. Its almost like they are looking at the current classes from lvl 40+ and saying woah, those skill improvements were mostly mistakes, lets recreate everything after that. If that's the case, I'd love to see turbine acknowledge this in some capacity.

[Anurin_The_Wise]

That new Call to Greatness skill sounds incredible. I wish we had something like that on live now.

I see what you did there.

[Mennhabar]

Losing our AOE DPS skills is my biggest worry with the Minstrel changes.

I agree. That would be VERY disappointing.

[Namesse]

Why the change to stance names? What was wrong with War Speech and Harmony? It's confusing to rename Harmony to Melody when Melody was previously in use as Null stance. So is the new Resonance a true stance rather than the absence of one? Will Dissonance/War Speech still have useable dps skills even if we aren't traited red?

Why a reduction in cool downs on our dps skills when they're mostly 10 second cool downs? Agree with above, our dps skills have a good component of aoe, is that disappearing and now we're only single target dps? Why is Call of Orome even in a skill tree, it should be a base skill.

Why am I dps'ing to unlock heals when I'm heal traited (Resonant Piercing Cry)?

Is the buff on Inspiring Finish more or less than the ballad buffs that disappear when we use a coda?

Are minstrels the new captains when in Protector of Song? I thought guardians were the new captains. Are we meant to keep up 5-6 anthems like today and that's where the power is?

If we can dish out damage while in Harmony/Melody but not excel at it, can you clarify how the level of "dish out" compares to anything?

How is the interplay between stances and trait lines? You've just stated that Orome is in the red line, is there any value to running a stance other than War Speech / Dissonance while traited red? Similar question arises with the other lines and stances as you state that potent healing abilities open with the healing stance, yet the entire goal of skill trees is to lock us out of all our skills. Just need further explanation here.

How effective are all these buffs if we're up near soft cap? Doesn't crit rating top out at 20% Building so much on top of events that only happen that often seems arbitrary, yet somehow follows from Turbines's love of complete randomness rather than predictability and base ability.

[nightday]

Thoughts on each:

Watcher of Resolve: I do like the general modifications they've made to this line, although I hope there's some sort of fellowship heal in there amongst all the single-targets. Resonant Piercing Cry sounds intriguing, although I do hope they'll have a Dissonant Piercing Cry that still stuns in some fashion. Or at least some sort of stun somewhere. Stuns are the coolest things ever.

Warrior-Skald: No love for AOE? I love my AOE moves. Sadface. It'll be nice to get our single-target damage up, but not if it means that we lose all our AOE. Also, is there a self-healing reduction in war-speech/dissonance (other than the reduction that naturally comes from not being traited for strong heals)? That would be the WORST POSSIBLE THING.

Protector of Song: Will anthems still have buffs of their own, or do they activate only upon using the coda? In big fights, I often run up three ballads (or hit Cry of the Chorus) and only hit the coda in case of an emergency, letting me use anthems repeatedly for buffs. What do they mean by "maximum stacks"? Can we layer our ballads beyond just three now? Some clarification would be nice. Also, will we still have our tales? Those were great buffs without a timer, and I'll be very sad to see them go away.

Overall: I'm interested to see how stances combine with the trait trees; what does it mean to run Dissonance while traited for heals? I am cautiously optimistic, but we'll see how the actual implementation works.

[LurtzArcher]

Losing our AOE DPS skills is my biggest worry with the Minstrel changes.

Exactly! I would prefer my survivability not be based on a rotation of DPS-Heal-DPs-Heal...

[Fiohn]

Stances, I though these were being removed for all classes, that's what talent trees are supposed to allow.

Hoping to get more clarification too on what is happening to AoE cries and self-healing.

Would've like more clarification on the new system of the interplay between ballads and codas, is it only when traiting 'Inspired Finish' and 'Haste', and how anthems fit into it.

[timmyloo22546]

"The Protector of Song is the Minstrel’s support line. This specialization shines in group play, giving you the ability to cast powerful buffs to enhance you and your fellows, as well as strong debuffs to hinder your foes."

Minstrels now get debuffs along with their buffs? Curious to what they are. Minstrel anthems were fairly potent and for 95% of group play they could simply go 3 watcher 4 protector to keep their anthems running. It sounds like their support line will be even more potent. I hope you give RKs something half ways decent otherwise there will be no incentive to bring a healing RK

[lordmattabir]

They don't even mention our AOEs, they just state that we are Single target destruction , I'm sure we still have our AOEs or Turbine would of mentioned them.

[lordmattabir]

Plus it said we get Call of Orome in the Warrior Skald tree, which is an Aoe

[Siquayetsga]

They don't even mention our AOEs, they just state that we are Single target destruction , I'm sure we still have our AOEs or Turbine would of mentioned them.

I wouldn't be so sure. From what I can tell, Turbine rarely comments on what they are taking away. Understandable since it's often hard to sell something as, "Now! With less!"

No mention of AOEs may indeed mean NO minstrel AOE DPS skills. I'm not saying that this will be the case, only that at present we have zero evidence of minstrel DPS AOEs after the apocalypse. It is also possible, albeit unlikely, that AOEs weren't mentioned since the Devs expect them to remain more or less the same as they are at present. This might make the subject seem unworthy of comment by the Dev.

[Scruffynerf]

Hm, no mention of HoTs, hardly any mention of Fellowship heals. Much less the Fellowship HoTs that'll keep a group alive in BfE's Inferno

Emphasis on single-target, no discussion of the AoE ability.

Has this dev even seen a Minstrel in action at level cap? I know that Deviled_Egg introduced themselves as the Guardian dev awhile back, and we never heard anything from him/her since.

Also, in none of the Dev diary discussions that I've seen has a dev ever come back in and engaged with the playerbase (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong).

This appears to be quite the nerf.

--

Edit: Actually, with all the layering talk, it sounds like they're turning mini's into a reactive RK, along the healing side.

[Atheling]

Words cannot adequately convey my feelings upon reading this. I am instead performing an interpretive dance routine whilst wearing a spandex body suit and a curly wig.

[tkroll]

I see what you did there.

I saw it too!!!! beat me too it- thats what I get for rereading A Memory of Light....

My initial reaction to this is kinda meh...not enough details, not enough info, overall it seems like the goal is to make the minstrel more focused on one set up....perhaps I am wrong about that. The healing stuff looks good on paper (I mostly heal) but I also usually carry some warspeech traits as well- enough to do a fair amount of damage should I need them. removing the aoe's from the ws line is disappointing. And the buffing line....I rolled that line for a long time and while the buffs are nice if you are the only healer or even just the main healer in a group it doesn't bring enough to the table, perhaps that's changed with some of the updates.

That all being said I still can't wait to try it....doesn't sound like the minstrel got the lovin the LM did, or the hunters belatedly received.

[auximenes]

I am instead performing an interpretive dance routine whilst wearing a spandex body suit and a curly wig.

[bastiat1]

Orion, I hope you're having fun on "Infinite Crisis". We miss ya over here brotha.

Here is what a real Dev Diary looks like- for posterity's sake....

[bastiat1]

[bastiat1]