Minstrel Feedback on Helm's Deep

[Norwrei]

That dps increase is just plain wrong really, isn't it? Think it's across the board though judging from sounds elsewhere. Nerfbats at the ready for 12.1 I guess. I hope...

Yeah, you're right about an overall upgrade to healing live vs beta. Made similar point way back on beta1. Great to have latest numbers though, thank you. I spent a long time trying to convince myself that the blue line numbers weren't in error (BC's power in particular which really starts hammering up hps output). But what level of healing are we being balanced towards? We've clearly got no idea yet. In relative terms, as we both know, yellow line healing is falling behind - fairly significantly so by your numbers. My personal feeling is that neither dps nor heals are in any way yet at their final numbers but that relative balance betwen blue and yellow will be maintained. Will blue line be the expectation or yellow? And if yellow, what function is that role actually playing? Cos that would mean content is being balanced on 'support' role healing. Scary thought to me because of what then follows from that.

Hope that made sense. Good luck with feedback.

DPS is NOT too much!! No idea whatever makes you think that but the Minstrel is a hybrid and if one chooses the red line then expect it to become a dps class. Personally I think the dps is still lacking and when I see comments like this one I almost feel it is a sabotage to keep the minstrel as a healer or solo dps class only.

Also just to say the increase is not quite that large. I think the AOE radius has increased on a few skills so what was ST on live was AOE in beta

Exactly, it's not quite so large at all, especially considering this is the dps line!

To the people who is working on the Minstrel class:

When it comes to DPS, please remember that what some will consider overpowered, might not be quite that high for some of us. On live I see people brag about how much damage they do, while I'm the same level or higher and still have half of that for some reason. Just keep in mind that while some people will have the best gear from raids and such to boost their power, others will have to make due with gear gotten from landscape quests. Though I'm sure you'll be thinking of that already, I just wanted to make sure because the Minstrel class is very dear to me, and I enjoy playing red-traited and solo

I couldn't have said it better. I also prefer to play my minstrel warrior skald.. all red and I even do so in raids and other group content.

Me too! I love my Warrior-Skald!

I always played a dedicated healer in previous MMOs. I don't want to do that anymore. And for some reason, maybe because of the mobility of the class, I enjoy DPS mini for soloing above all other classes. I really don't want this option taken away from us.

I hate healing! Never do it. There is no reason why a good dps minstrel cannot play that role in group content... especially now.

DPS has been modified across all classes to establish parity and ensure viability. As for healing, the blue line is meant to be the primary healing line with Resonance as its stance, and the Yellow line is more for indirect support via buffs with some healing.

Edit: In general, we've already put in a lot of fixes for the next update. Please keep leaving your feedback and filing bugs as you encounter them! Your contributions were valuable during our beta cycles and will continue to be as we refine things.

Whatever you do PLEASE do not nerf the Minstrel. It has been nerfed enough already. The red line needs more of a boost, not a nerf anyway. I can't speak for the other lines since I never play them. Thanks for all your work. No pressure but just remember that the life of the minstrel is in your hands Egg! .. yours truly a raiding dps mini..

[Atheling]

DPS is NOT too much!! No idea whatever makes you think that but the Minstrel is a hybrid and if one chooses the red line then expect it to become a dps class. Personally I think the dps is still lacking and when I see comments like this one I almost feel it is a sabotage to keep the minstrel as a healer or solo dps class only.

I think you've got the wrong end of the stick there Norwrei; look at the date of that post. It's from the final beta build when we knew (at least I thought most did?) that the dps of every (?) class was excessively high. I've currently got a level 36 minstrel running round on live regularly critting for 2k+ in fairly average gear. It's not a minstrel specific thing though and it's worth waiting til 12.1 before really looking at balancing issues from what our dev and others have said both here and in beta.

My thoughts on the dps role are the same as I expressed at the end of beta. It needs to be viable, it needs to be balanced to prevent our abilities to self-heal becoming overpowered, but it needs to be a viable dps role if this is what trait trees are intended to do. Which is what Deviled_Egg has confirmed and so the thing you've wanted for so long might actually happen over the course of this expansion. If there are still issues for you with sustainable dps, then I think it's really worth you setting them out and seeing if you can get the changes you think are still needed. Only thing I'd caution is that redline also has to be at least fairly robust for those who use it purely for soloing so sacrificing too much survivability may not be wise (be a bit like peeing on a rug.. ). Good luck though!

[Norwrei]

I think you've got the wrong end of the stick there Norwrei; look at the date of that post. It's from the final beta build when we knew (at least I thought most did?) that the dps of every (?) class was excessively high. I've currently got a level 36 minstrel running round on live regularly critting for 2k+ in fairly average gear. It's not a minstrel specific thing though and it's worth waiting til 12.1 before really looking at balancing issues from what our dev and others have said both here and in beta.

My thoughts on the dps role are the same as I expressed at the end of beta. It needs to be viable, it needs to be balanced to prevent our abilities to self-heal becoming overpowered, but it needs to be a viable dps role if this is what trait trees are intended to do. Which is what Deviled_Egg has confirmed and so the thing you've wanted for so long might actually happen over the course of this expansion. If there are still issues for you with sustainable dps, then I think it's really worth you setting them out and seeing if you can get the changes you think are still needed. Only thing I'd caution is that redline also has to be at least fairly robust for those who use it purely for soloing so sacrificing too much survivability may not be wise (be a bit like peeing on a rug.. ). Good luck though!

Oops.. so embarrassed, please forgive me.. I"m really sorry. I didn't see date on post since I was actually looking at Egg's current post quoting you! Speaking of solo.. all classes can basically solo content that is intended for solo purposes anyway. I've never been able to solo group content. To be honest, in the last beta I did not think the dps was too high. It didn't increase much, at least not for mini and still lacks a bit but there is improvement just needs a bit more TLC.

[Kalderic]

I was intimidated by my own dps somewhat yesterday.

on lvl 85 with lvl 85 raiding gear I saw myself dealing loads of 5k+ blows with criticals getting as high as 10k+(highest I saw was 12.5k on call to fate).
cherry on the cake was hitting 3 orcs with one cry of the wizards for respectively 10k, 10k and 6k.

scaled up to lvl 95 in a big battle I felt like the angel of death in person lol.

quite a difference with the occasional 6k crit on a coda that I had gotten used to by now in RoR :P.

[Norwrei]

I was intimidated by my own dps somewhat yesterday.

on lvl 85 with lvl 85 raiding gear I saw myself dealing loads of 5k+ blows with criticals getting as high as 10k+(highest I saw was 12.5k on call to fate).
cherry on the cake was hitting 3 orcs with one cry of the wizards for respectively 10k, 10k and 6k.

scaled up to lvl 95 in a big battle I felt like the angel of death in person lol.

quite a difference with the occasional 6k crit on a coda that I had gotten used to by now in RoR :P.

That must have been an anomaly because I'm sure not getting that.

[Calta]

That must have been an anomaly because I'm sure not getting that.

Could you all do some tests on snowbourne dummies, over time, say 5 mins?
Individual crits are not always informative when it comes to a genuine dps role in a group. If you could run combat anaylsis plugin just for the dummy test even better. also note rotations!

Also be aware-you'll get high dps readings testing on the dummies, partially because of our aoe's -single target is hard to separate.

But any info to compare would be good. i'd love a viable (but not god mode) dps secondary role.

Beenie and I were getting insane dps in skirms but not on landscape. You could both be right and it's buggy.

[Teldra]

Well Orion's minstrel is definitely still there.

...

• Rally! a general skill.<---- Really???

Red line plays very similarly, there are no HoTs meaning you are more squishy, but nothing like pre-ROI WS levels of squishy.

Skipping all the rest of your comment, REALLY? Try in production right now. The only way to get to Rally is to trait blue. That being the case, I would have test all your list later today?

edit: I have seen the "retrait 4 or 5 times until Rally shows up" comment and I was unable to make that work. The Rally icon has a blue background for me and theres a tier 6 red already in place.

Telda

[Teldra]

I was intimidated by my own dps somewhat yesterday.

on lvl 85 with lvl 85 raiding gear I saw myself dealing loads of 5k+ blows with criticals getting as high as 10k+(highest I saw was 12.5k on call to fate).
cherry on the cake was hitting 3 orcs with one cry of the wizards for respectively 10k, 10k and 6k.

scaled up to lvl 95 in a big battle I felt like the angel of death in person lol.

quite a difference with the occasional 6k crit on a coda that I had gotten used to by now in RoR :P.

Completely consistent with my results from yesterday as well.. I think my peak hit was 12k but I was still picking my jaw up off the floor so I might have missed it. As a side note, you will probably need that damage as my defiler in the Moors is 42k morale.

Teldra

[Gedrevn]

The only healing skill to trust on when having mobs on us is chord of salvation atm and it got its hot removed making it even worse to pre-HD.

Yeah losing traited non-interruptable Bolster is kinda sucks but Chord HoT is available within blue line. With the traits, trait set bonuses, and cooldown reduction Chord is pretty significantly more powerful than it used to be.

That must have been an anomaly because I'm sure not getting that.

10-12k crits sounds about right for Call to Fate. Most of my regular Ballad hits were 1-2k, and 3-5k hits from other skills.

Skipping all the rest of your comment, REALLY? Try in production right now. The only way to get to Rally is to trait blue. That being the case, I would have test all your list later today? edit: I have seen the "retrait 4 or 5 times until Rally shows up" comment and I was unable to make that work. The Rally icon has a blue background for me and theres a tier 6 red already in place.

Same problem, and Rally has a direct Blue Line Trait Set bonus icon, so it looks like this change may have been reverted so Rally is a healer-only skill >_< Kinda blows pretty hard.

[Caelven]

Raise the Spirit has been and still is my main self-heal, I do use the leg that buffs it. Now that I don't have SOS while red-line I have been using Chord of Salvation more often, which is to say, ever. But I do like the effect of taking SOS away while redline, it makes soloing feel more like the Minstrel class of old...

(I do have a Rally icon in red-line, I haven't tested it yet though.)

BTW, more than any other class, the Minstrel is going to have it's changes happen at the end of a beta, because it has to be calabrated against all the other classes. I strongly suspect that no single person gets to just design and manage the Minstrel class, that of all the classes it is the most group-managed. However, back in MoM I think we saw no one being in charge of advocating for the class, instead of it just winding up as whatever leaves the other classes balanced.

While I haven't explored blue or yellow lines yet, so far it doesn't feel that way at all with this expansion, solo play feels like someone cared about making it fun, and so far it's great. And nothing like MoM pre-1.1 at all...

Speak friend and enter
And hope your assisted
Grinding in Moria
Your songs are resisted.
Burma Shave

[elendurfarseeker]

Can someone point me to an explanation of what skills were lost and gained for each traitline? I'm super casual and don't really know the names of everything, I just notice I lost a bunch of buttons off my toolbar of my level 58 minstrel. I was traiting all red. I've retraited to get all the skills that appear to be available in the red line.

I see that rally, a big insta heal is gone, and tales of heroism I think. There was a skill that buffed the melee still, like auto refreshed it 3 times, that seems gone. I think everything else was an anthem that I wasn't using anyway. Is there only one coda available?

I'm actually glad to have a reduction of button on my interface, I play pretty causally as a solo/duo dps. Just don't want to be missing anything.

[tkroll]

Can someone point me to an explanation of what skills were lost and gained for each traitline? I'm super casual and don't really know the names of everything, I just notice I lost a bunch of buttons off my toolbar of my level 58 minstrel. I was traiting all red. I've retraited to get all the skills that appear to be available in the red line.

I see that rally, a big insta heal is gone, and tales of heroism I think. There was a skill that buffed the melee still, like auto refreshed it 3 times, that seems gone. I think everything else was an anthem that I wasn't using anyway. Is there only one coda available?

I'm actually glad to have a reduction of button on my interface, I play pretty causally as a solo/duo dps. Just don't want to be missing anything.

think you will find all you need here
https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...mmary-Minstrel

[elendurfarseeker]

think you will find all you need here
https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...mmary-Minstrel

Thanks!

So maybe missing Rally when red traited is a bug?

Also the Emboldening Finish trait mentions Coda of Dissonance, do they mean Coda of Fury?

[Gedrevn]

I'm not sure on Rally, it was said at the end of Beta that it was supposed to be a general skill, which would be awesome.

Then it didn't get changed at the end of Beta and supposedly it was a bug that could be fixed by retraiting a bunch of times.

But after HD went live, retraiting doesn't seem to fix anything, and Rally is still listed as the Tier 6 Blue Line Set Bonus, so it seems like that change may have never made it and we got screwed on in-combat res outside of blue.

[elendurfarseeker]

I realize now it's Triumphant Spirit I'm missing, not Rally. I almost never revive as a solo/duo player. Before I could drop out of warspeech and hit Triumphant Spirit in an emergency. Oh well.

[Atheling]

I'm not sure on Rally, it was said at the end of Beta that it was supposed to be a general skill, which would be awesome.

Then it didn't get changed at the end of Beta and supposedly it was a bug that could be fixed by retraiting a bunch of times.

But after HD went live, retraiting doesn't seem to fix anything, and Rally is still listed as the Tier 6 Blue Line Set Bonus, so it seems like that change may have never made it and we got screwed on in-combat res outside of blue.

Yeah, very last beta build saw Rally! become a blue line only skill again. Guess it's wait until 12.1 now to see where Deviled_Egg has the class, as she has said for a few weeks that what we were seeing was a few builds behind what she was working on. Can see some logic behind saying 'trait blue line to get your in-combat rez' but not keen on the idea in any way at all if that's the reason and it stays like this. Perhaps having it so that minimum investment in blue opens it up would work as a compromise if the idea is that it has to be tied to blue line?

Just on the defiler morale comment, that's part of the rushed fix for the mad dps increase. Creeps were getting one shot on the moors so we begged the devs to rush out something to help at least prevent that. Was fairly surprised to see the massive morale boosts on live, but it is what it is right now. Personally, would expect changes as things get balanced (pve and pvp) over the next few months.

[Beaniemooch]

Yeah, very last beta build saw Rally! become a blue line only skill again. Guess it's wait until 12.1 now to see where Deviled_Egg has the class, as she has said for a few weeks that what we were seeing was a few builds behind what she was working on. Can see some logic behind saying 'trait blue line to get your in-combat rez' but not keen on the idea in any way at all if that's the reason and it stays like this. Perhaps having it so that minimum investment in blue opens it up would work as a compromise if the idea is that it has to be tied to blue line?

Just on the defiler morale comment, that's part of the rushed fix for the mad dps increase. Creeps were getting one shot on the moors so we begged the devs to rush out something to help at least prevent that. Was fairly surprised to see the massive morale boosts on live, but it is what it is right now. Personally, would expect changes as things get balanced (pve and pvp) over the next few months.

The high creep morale will make it tough on a minstrel in the moors then because to get increased dps we have lost a lot of the ability for self-heals. If we can't burn through their 40k+ morale before they burn through our 8-10k morale we won't be very sustainable for soloing. And if our only role is to raid/leach heal in the moors that's a pathetic life to wish on us.

[xmorzan]

LOL at all you minis who are saying current dps is fair/not too much. You really think you should be on par with pure dps classes? Should hunters and champs get a healing line to main heal raids too?

Seriously, despite what some people say, we've been soooo spoiled the last two expansions. It's literally hilarious to hear people defend us having best AOE dps in game and be capable of putting out serious heals.

Dear Devs,

Just because a few of us got used to godmode, or didn't take advantage of it the past 2 xpacs doesn't mean it's a good thing and should be continued. Please fix.

thanks <3

[Beaniemooch]

LOL at all you minis who are saying current dps is fair/not too much. You really think you should be on par with pure dps classes? Should hunters and champs get a healing line to main heal raids too?

Seriously, despite what some people say, we've been soooo spoiled the last two expansions. It's literally hilarious to hear people defend us having best AOE dps in game and be capable of putting out serious heals.

Dear Devs,

Just because a few of us got used to godmode, or didn't take advantage of it the past 2 xpacs doesn't mean it's a good thing and should be continued. Please fix.

thanks <3

Our AOE dps is not best in game. And since the new content caters to dps classes that's who we have to compete with for a spot. If I have to compete with a champ for a spot in a BB shouldn't I have dps on par with them? Or an RK who's currently hitting 25k and up crits? Or hunters who have ridiculous dps? Because there's no role for healers in there.

The trait trees were theoretically brought about to give us 3 distinct roles. If one of ours is a dps role, we need dps on par with a dps class. Otherwise this is all a lie.

[Atheling]

The high creep morale will make it tough on a minstrel in the moors then because to get increased dps we have lost a lot of the ability for self-heals. If we can't burn through their 40k+ morale before they burn through our 8-10k morale we won't be very sustainable for soloing. And if our only role is to raid/leach heal in the moors that's a pathetic life to wish on us.

The high creep morale is a rushed fix so has to be taken as being purely that, with all kinds of side effects which won't be good. Moors 'balance' (however that gets defined) will be sometime long in the future. Really wouldn't judge the Moors as anything but 'stuck together with spitballs' currently. The only thing it's an improvement on is where it was at in the final beta, where it was just broken. Definitely one where what happens on the Moors will follow-on from changes made to PvE and Moors player have to suck it up til then. (Play as r11 weaver and r9 reaver and say that with the usual sigh and thoughts of 'what could be instead').

[Naraca]

Beenie and I were getting insane dps in skirms but not on landscape. You could both be right and it's buggy.

Haven't tried high-level minis with the new system yet, but just to chime in here: I've been noticing and reporting all sorts of bugs with Hunters that affect DPS. Mostly, Red-line passive traits are sticking around when I switch to a trait page that doesn't actually have them anymore. Might wanna make sure that's not what's happening if you're getting inconsistent results.

[Wiser]

The high creep morale will make it tough on a minstrel in the moors then because to get increased dps we have lost a lot of the ability for self-heals. If we can't burn through their 40k+ morale before they burn through our 8-10k morale we won't be very sustainable for soloing. And if our only role is to raid/leach heal in the moors that's a pathetic life to wish on us.

All the new crafted gears give ridiculous amount of vitality. I was sitting in around 17k morale with all teal crafted armors & jewels at 95 and my vits was around 2100+ in the very last beta. DPS & vits of all classes has spiked, if it isn't due to the 40% mits cap I'll be sitting at around 60% tact mit without buff.

On a side note, I mentioned I'll be testing more on the trait tree in the beta forum before it closes. Sadly, I won't do that due to the ridiculous gold cost just to retrait. But here's a few changes which is not mentioned in any release notes:
1) Rally! is INSTANT-CAST, but you can't use it while moving. I'm truthfully shocked.
2) Our ranged corruption removal is now in Piercing Cry, instead of Echoes of Battle/Timeless version.
3) Call of the Second Age cooldown has been reduced back to 30s.

A few bugs that arose/hasn't been fixed:
1)Both "Gift of the Hammerhand" & "Improved Gift of the Hammerhand" exists at the same time. They share the same cooldown but works differently, as intended in the tooltip.
2)If you trait yellow, somehow, your Coda of Melody will only heals for double digit. I suspect this is a problem with ONE of the traits in the yellow tree, but I'm not going to try & test which one is that.
3)Piercing Cry will be reset-ed on every use of any ballad(offensive only?), regardless of the ballad crit or not, if you traited for it in the yellow tree.

I have heard a few people saying that yellow tree is fun. But sadly, it's *almost* useless in group. One reason is the inaccessibility to Rally!, another reason is that the defensive buffs it gives is really useless because of the ridiculously high amount of vitality present in all kinds of gears starting level 85. If the mitigation cap is removed, I guess we can even give the guards 100% mitigations!

Sorry for the repeated used of the word "ridiculous". It summed up how I feel about all these stat changes at the time being.

[00CloughRN]

That must have been an anomaly because I'm sure not getting that.

Its consistent to me, the highest hit I've seen is 15.5K on the landscape. Where are you testing? Remember dummies/instances will be lower due to increased mitigation/crit defence. I discussed this in beta, basically your crits/devs hitting for half on on-level dummies what you get on landscape/skirmishes looks to me to be correct.

Skipping all the rest of your comment, REALLY? Try in production right now. The only way to get to Rally is to trait blue. That being the case, I would have test all your list later today?

edit: I have seen the "retrait 4 or 5 times until Rally shows up" comment and I was unable to make that work. The Rally icon has a blue background for me and theres a tier 6 red already in place.

Telda

Yeah that comment was from beta 5, I thought I had posted again later saying it had changed back, but frankly I've lost track of what I posted here vs Beta feedback. It does seem to be buggy, when I logged in I traited Red and had rally was lit up, I then did my blue build and when I switched back to red it dispapeared.

I have heard a few people saying that yellow tree is fun. But sadly, it's *almost* useless in group. One reason is the inaccessibility to Rally!, another reason is that the defensive buffs it gives is really useless because of the ridiculously high amount of vitality present in all kinds of gears starting level 85. If the mitigation cap is removed, I guess we can even give the guards 100% mitigations!

2x AoW
1x AoP
(+30% physical, +20% tactical, -5%AD.)
Buff from coda up constantly.
(+5% Damage, +5% tactical damage)
Buff from ballad
(+4.5% tactical)
Tale
(77 will, fate and vitality 1000 finesse)
EoB debuff
(-1000 crit defence)
iCotSA
(10% off inductions & AD.)
PC damage reflect
(15% damage reflect up constantly)
+CTG and SOA should it become useful.

There are plenty of offensive buffs, enough to show back of the envelope that in a 6 man fellowship of Tank, Healer, You +3 DPS you're better going Yellow than Red. It's no more useless than going Red in a fellowship.

[Norwrei]

Its consistent to me, the highest hit I've seen is 15.5K on the landscape. Where are you testing? Remember dummies/instances will be lower due to increased mitigation/crit defence. I discussed this in beta, basically your crits/devs hitting for half on on-level dummies what you get on landscape/skirmishes looks to me to be correct.

Just questing at the moment but still not seeing anything close to that.. lots of things vary like gear, traits, etc.. will, etc and I'm geared ok.. first age weapon and book but maybe my will is not impressive since I usually get more fate and critical stats than will.

Yeah that comment was from beta 5, I thought I had posted again later saying it had changed back, but frankly I've lost track of what I posted here vs Beta feedback. It does seem to be buggy, when I logged in I traited Red and had rally was lit up, I then did my blue build and when I switched back to red it dispapeared.

I have rally and I'm always red so maybe it is bug if changing specs or something?

[Gamortin]

I can use Rally! in red, could rez a fellow (with instant cast) twice so far. Switched only occasionally to yellow and back and Rally! stayed. Haven't tried switching to blue, though..