Update 17 Beta 1 Release Notes & Known Issues - PRELIMINARY AND NON-FINAL - BULLROARER ONLY

[Uvle]

Bullroarer was never meant to be a beta TESTING server... it's a preview one. Palantir is the real stuff as far as testing is concerned.

You can assume that all you want, but a good deal of testing occurs during beta. There'd be no point in previewing if it wasn't also intended as a test.

[fett666]

hey Devs can you please make sure there is a new tier included with the Crafting Guilds? Gondor Master of the Guild etc.

[NickSlaughter]

Yeah what? The BIG whining that everything is now soooo OP? *ROFL*

honestly its real issue... basicaly noone from my friends is staying - i play half year, ppl go to endgame, get bored by grind, or do all, and then are so bored, saying no challenges, single player game with messed up classes etc.

LOL. How disconnected from reality are they?! These buffs are completely unnecessary.
Guess this update proves that devs really don't play the game.

exactly, they probably play only tetris when going underground :P i just cant get it, why turning one of the best lore mmo into simplified singleplayer with awfull world chat?
it will be realy fruitless in long run... as new players dont stick with this game, there are only some sad altoholics and old bones as core - and those will suffer with mad grind for x of their alts. rest is like ppl come, ppl go

also game is pretty locking now, in way of comming back - most ppl logging to check updates, will do, will see the grind, no new instances, will play new BBs and figure out, they dont need new OP gear and uninstal the game in a week or 2again - they will do that few times, then the gap of skipped grind will be too huge and no lust to change it, catch up, without huge payment
this is probably hopeless - i would say Wake up

i'm fairly certain the majority of those worried that big battles are the only thing released in u17 don't consider instance and landsape quests "content". Is it content? yes. Is it what the unhappy folks are looking for more of? heck to the no :P. we want fellowship instances and raaaids!

heh when i was trying to raid smaug to finish off tier1 meta deed, it took few months on Evernight (just no interest or randoms failing t1 over 3hours) - i was told, that for raiding, i play wrong game also before merges, i joined another kin, was one of 2 able to run DoS t2cm on Evernight
--- thing is, with those OP trash, called new gear, ppl will realy bypass most of skills even more - half world chat is recommanding u mini as best solo class... etc. its just so sad
the majority is changing into tatter farmers/grinders, or i dont understand - cuz why should i grind like madman gear, which i dont need at all?
if no lvl cap increase, Minas Tirith cant be much more harder than Osgi - but it will realy ruin all current lvl100 instances - ie Sambrog is joke already, but with so bad loot tables, he is still on top... fail

Bonjour

nice post and only word i understood - probably same for 95%+ others - no offense, but i think many devs etc. dont speak french aswell and then such post can be just useless

[Macroscian]

nice post and only word i understood - probably same for 95%+ others - no offense, but i think many devs etc. dont speak french aswell and then such post can be just useless

Just an aside - google translate says the gamer is pointing out some similar things as a few others: a wish to bump the virtue cap, guild craft tier, questioning the utility of crafting slotted armor with 4-slot readily available since 15 months, bit small map, too easy BB and lastly I think the gamer wishes for a few more NPCs populating the area (unsure about that one).
Ends with saying the graphics and atmosphere works well but that it feels a little rushed for the quality required.

[siipperi]

I just want to drop in and put in a clarify. There is an Epic Story line for Update 17 but it will not be in Beta as we do not want to release any spoilers. However for those concerned that there might only be Big Battles in this release, the Epic story does include instance and landscape quests.

Vyvyanne, new jewellery needs to be looked into, it just gives way too much morale. Its not just going to destroy pve but also totally destroy any kind of a balance pvp might have had. I did some calculating and I think with new socket jewellery + the cloak you can achieve on freep healers about stats such as: 52-53k morale, over 32k mastery, over capped mitigations and close to max critical rating. And that is before buffs. Now if they would use only faramir's 5 set armor, they would be looking closer to 80k morale with buffs, that's insane.

Here is illustration how much damage you can get. that person could easily drop 6-7 essences in favor of morale and obtain huge morale pool.

Edit. Or do essence rebalancing update, where you nerf morale essence stats by 25-30% each, that would help a lot.

Edit 2. To give you numbers how much essence slots we have as a pvp players after this update: 6x3 on armor, 6x3 on jewellery and 2x on pocket, that means 38 slots just for pvp players.

[Draconfier]

Can we please see some way to add in the +5 Guardian targets to the new LI max tiers past lvl 35?

As an old guardian that remembers tanking prior to trait trees I'm highly concerned about where LI's are heading for all tanking guardians with these new dps/class item lvls. 99% of the tanking guardians that I know have not imbued their tanking weapon as it causes the loss of our ability to hold aggro on large groups of trash in the few instances/raids that we continue to run. By removing this legacy upon imbuement you've forced most guardians, that understand the necessity/mechanics of their class, to skip/miss having our weapon grow with us. Now you've introduced new tiers to other classes abilities to do higher dps, while leaving us unable to catch up. Yes we generate 300% more threat damage based off the current mechanics, but if new tiers are continuously added we will be forced to choose between being able to keep our fellows alive by maintaining aggro on more than 4 trash npc's plus the boss (typical in many instances, skirmishes, raids) or potentially losing aggro on the boss/mobs becaause our 300% ttreat/buff is bypassed/caught up by the dps classes with their increased tiers of dps.

As we are seeing on the current build perhaps you can add the +5 legacy back into the imbuement system as a tier 36 option or instead do as suggested in other threads, adding it into the passives of the tanking lines passives or active skills.

Additionally I uderstand the necessity of continuing our Legendary Items growth, however needing 84 scrolls, 8 Anfalas crystals, and the time\ixp to relevel them to max tier for 2 LI's, seems excessive as others have stated with no apparent way to obtain the necessary scrolls to level, other than a huge grind of re-running the Dol-Amroth training exercise/other DA repeatable quests daily to obtain Silver DA tokens for empowerment scrolls. All other methods are grossly over-expensive; such as Mark/Meds versions from the skirmish vendors, via relic/shard conversions, or even the more time consuming method of running the annoying Osgilliath dailies where we have no milestone to port to, and must deal with an even more grindy quest location for lower rewards vs./time conversions to the necessary currency for scrolls.

[siipperi]

That is a lullaby.
I have tested with a caster and with a tank class.
All the new slotted armours and slotted jewellery + maxed LIs + the maxed new stat scrolls from the shop.

You got an tons of morale, that is right, but you loose to much here and there.
If you cap your mastery, you do not have enough slots free for your def. stats like mitigation etc.
See the second picture you posted. He has dozens of buffs on himself: buff food, scrolls, hope token and and and. But his tactical mitigation is faaaaar away from the cap (Heavy: 23408). With his tact. mitigation he would be a burden for DoS endboss-fight for every group. His finesse is to low for T2 instances for a Champion. His crit. defence is a bit to high. And do not forget: his physical mitigation is coming from heavy armour. The light and medium armour-classes have to put much more effort into the (physical) mitigation. And i'm quite sure, he has bought the new stat-scrolls from the shop, which is 320 for each your base stats. Something what not so much ppl will do immediately just right ater the update is online.

First off, that's basically capped tactical mitigation for heavy armors on PvP (16,6k is cap). secondly if RK can get 40k morale, 75-80k mastery, forget about it.... They can do about 15k heal every 15s which will translate to 1k HPS just with one skill, add to that over 180% damage (over 200% if you are high rank and buffs) and he's hitting with Epic over 20k crits.

Also his mitigations are just fine for pve. I know many tanks who have had under 16k tactical mitigation in DoS and they do just fine.

Lastly most main character players have those stat tomes on their character that I know....

[Durcam]

Heh, Eyes and Guard, Isenguard

[Anurin_The_Wise]

Can we please see some way to add in the +5 Guardian targets to the new LI max tiers past lvl 35?

As an old guardian that remembers tanking prior to trait trees I'm highly concerned about where LI's are heading for all tanking guardians with these new dps/class item lvls. 99% of the tanking guardians that I know have not imbued their tanking weapon as it causes the loss of our ability to hold aggro on large groups of trash in the few instances/raids that we continue to run. By removing this legacy upon imbuement you've forced most guardians, that understand the necessity/mechanics of their class, to skip/miss having our weapon grow with us. Now you've introduced new tiers to other classes abilities to do higher dps, while leaving us unable to catch up. Yes we generate 300% more threat damage based off the current mechanics, but if new tiers are continuously added we will be forced to choose between being able to keep our fellows alive by maintaining aggro on more than 4 trash npc's plus the boss (typical in many instances, skirmishes, raids) or potentially losing aggro on the boss/mobs becaause our 300% ttreat/buff is bypassed/caught up by the dps classes with their increased tiers of dps.

As we are seeing on the current build perhaps you can add the +5 legacy back into the imbuement system as a tier 36 option or instead do as suggested in other threads, adding it into the passives of the tanking lines passives or active skills.

Turbine would see a 100% return on investment from this suggestion.

As Draconfier indicates, the loss of preferred tanking legacies such as +Guardian's Ward Duration and +Guardian Area Effect Melee Targets upon imbuement is one of the primary reasons why many Guardians have chosen not to invest in the imbued LI system for their 1H tanking weapons.

Suggestion: Rather than the currently proposed legacy changes for Guardians, which don't seem to make logical sense in terms of their pairings:

Guardian's Pledge Cooldown now gives Retaliation Damage after Tier 35.
Guardian's Pledge Magnitude now gives Shield Swipe Damage after tier 35.
Turn the Tables Cooldown now gives Turn the Tables Damage after tier 35.

Why not make the following changes?

• Add +Guardian's Ward Duration back as a secondary effect of the current +Guardian's Ward Damage legacy
• Add +Guardian Area Effect Melee Targets back as a secondary effect of the current +Area Effect Skill Damage legacy

These two changes would be sufficient for me to imbue my tanking 1H and invest in the imbued LI system.

[Gardhik]

You can assume that all you want, but a good deal of testing occurs during beta. There'd be no point in previewing if it wasn't also intended as a test.

It's hard to see Bullroarer as a testing server when devs don't fix bugs submit by testers... We are just here to see previews... and when game is live, some things are not what they were on the last bullroarer build... and the really big bag bug are not corrected.... Things always got fixed after a few weeks/months actually.

[Xiblar]

Vyvyanne, new jewellery needs to be looked into, it just gives way too much morale. Its not just going to destroy pve but also totally destroy any kind of a balance pvp might have had. I did some calculating and I think with new socket jewellery + the cloak you can achieve on freep healers about stats such as: 52-53k morale, over 32k mastery, over capped mitigations and close to max critical rating. And that is before buffs. Now if they would use only faramir's 5 set armor, they would be looking closer to 80k morale with buffs, that's insane.

I would see that as a new chance to bring some balance into pvp. Pve is already way to easy, so it doesn't matter much in than case - my opinion.
With the new gear and with it the higher morale, both sides could get closer regarding their morale, damage and healing. But therefor turbine need to balance Freep vs Creep on basis of high freepmorale, which would cause that freeps have to stack morale or getting destroyed.
But with the current essencesystem there will always be a huge difference in freeppower regarding to their choosen gear.


In general I like the new area, good job like always. I appreciate the new crafting items, lesser grind for good gear, maybe it would be better to make it a bit weaker than gear from instances but don't make a major difference between them.
BB's....yeah I just don't like it, would like to some real instances/raids with the old loot and ID system.


I just hope you have some love for creeps in this update, since you promised us "Creep Love" which I havn't felt till now.


I'm sorry if my post isn't understandable, I'm no nativ english speaking person.

[Phindecano]

heh when i was trying to raid smaug to finish off tier1 meta deed, it took few months on Evernight (just no interest or randoms failing t1 over 3hours) - i was told, that for raiding, i play wrong game also before merges, i joined another kin, was one of 2 able to run DoS t2cm on Evernight
--- thing is, with those OP trash, called new gear, ppl will realy bypass most of skills even more - half world chat is recommanding u mini as best solo class... etc. its just so sad
the majority is changing into tatter farmers/grinders, or i dont understand - cuz why should i grind like madman gear, which i dont need at all?
if no lvl cap increase, Minas Tirith cant be much more harder than Osgi - but it will realy ruin all current lvl100 instances - ie Sambrog is joke already, but with so bad loot tables, he is still on top... fail

Nothing really new here, unfortunately. We've already seen all these easymode updates, like U12 and U13 when FttLM t2c could be 6manned, skraids t3 1manned etc. And those awful loottables with no correlation between difficulty and loot at all.

P.S. We spent 1,5 or 2 hours to do Erebor t2c some days ago and the only useful thing we got were some t6 relics. Turbine just laughs at raiding community.

[den2011301]

Will there be added bow-skill(s) for beornings? Or auto attack only?

[Coeprandua]

Will there be added bow-skill(s) for beornings? Or auto attack only?

Let fly! Ftw

[Rhunar]

Imbued Legendary Items:

Guardian

Guardian's Pledge Cooldown now gives Retaliation Damage after Tier 35.

Guardian's Pledge Magnitude now gives Shield Swipe Damage after tier 35.

Turn the Tables Cooldown now gives Turn the Tables Damage after tier 35.

These don't make sense to me. If you don't want the legacy to grow past 35 as-is, why introduce a DPS buff to a mostly tanking skill? Why not introduce a buff >35 that's related to the original legacy we picked upon imbuement?

Perhaps others see this differently, but as a tanking guardian, I see no reason to invest in the new tiers for these legacies.

totally agreed.

Those legacies apply to tanking skills. The damage dealt by a tanking guardian is marginal at best. The whole build in the blue line is for survivability, aggro management, mitigations, taunt and propably skills to help the group.

Please, please let higher tier tanking legacies remain a support for tanking.

Some alternative suggestions:

> - Litany of Defiance cooldown
> + Fray the edge fellowship manoeuvre chance
> - Engage Target Run Speed
> + Finesse
> + Guardian's Ward partial block chance
> +Guardian's Ward partial parry chance
> + Bash / Shield Smash Stun duration
> - Shield Wall Power cost

Rhunar

[CaerArianrhod]

honestly its real issue... basicaly noone from my friends is staying - i play half year, ppl go to endgame, get bored by grind, or do all, and then are so bored, saying no challenges, single player game with messed up classes etc.

I can not unterstand why some ppl are unable to face the reality. For a real PVP it would be necessary to separate PVP gear from PVE gear, like many other games doing this. As long as this is not the case it is nearly impossible to create gear and other items that will fit the requrement for both (PVP and PVE) at the same time without beeing OP for one of them.
After a couple of years ppl already should know that free2play means in reality pay2win. There is a huge grinde factor in lotro at the moment. Do i like it? No. But i (i.e. we) have to face the music. The reality is, that endgame is always boring after you have the knowledge, the tactic and the gear for it. No gaming company can bring new endgame content as fast as ppl are saying "the endgame is boring".
I'm sure not the one who use to defend Turbine, but it is true: if you want a challange create it for your yourself. e.g. do Doom of Stars with less than 6 ppl etc. etc.

[kickman77]

What level of character power is the new region and new group content balanced for? What assumptions did the developers make about legendary weapons and armor?

I have many L100 characters, but due to the extremely time consuming nature of acquiring Anfalas Scrolls of Empowerment, Anfalas Star-lit Crystals, and Anfalas Crystals of Remembrance, not one has a fully ranked weapon. Most have not imbued their weapons at all. Are those characters now essentially unplayable, like taking an L90 character into L100 content?

How are characters just now reaching the level cap supposed to catch up and participate? How much time do developers expect it to take for a fresh L100 character to reach a playable state for the new content without using the store?

Thank you.

and this has always been a problem because of the Eyes and Guard. First thing majority of players do is head to the tavern, and max out their toon with the best gear, jewlery and max out their LIs than run out onto the landscape and shout this is a cake walk.

Its like when the Beorns were ebing Beta tested,,, Tions of people were in the tavern during the first build og that beta wanting to autolevel to 100 even with the GMs and Devs saying in world chat over and over it was not going to happen please test low level content. A few people did, and they bugged things... but when Beornms went live and this and that was not wroking properyly at low levels, those same people were the fkiest ones throwing hissy fits.

Now that we can copy account info over... I truly believe the only options we should have in the tavers with a copied toon is the free tp to test store purchases. No Skirm marks, no medallions (unless we are needing to test a armor set ect.) Np Li vendor ect.

Bullroarer was never meant to be a beta TESTING server... it's a preview one. Palantir is the real stuff as far as testing is concerned.

Than why is this called a BETA 1 build> The thread is a Beta 1 build patchnotes thread. Only people who want to complain later will call it a perview server... Oh wait... Look below

It's hard to see Bullroarer as a testing server when devs don't fix bugs submit by testers... We are just here to see previews... and when game is live, some things are not what they were on the last bullroarer build... and the really big bag bug are not corrected.... Things always got fixed after a few weeks/months actually.

If you knew anything about programming it is not so easy to find and repair a bug. They fix what they can between builds and than fix what they can after live. They have to find what is causing the bugf, get an engineer to look into the code to see what will break if they fix it and go from there.

So yes, this is a beta, and people who use Bullroarer as a preview are a major part of the problem which is why I made a statement ages ago that all beta should be invite only and people who dont file bug reports dont get invited again

[CaerArianrhod]

First off, that's basically capped tactical mitigation for heavy armors on PvP (16,6k is cap). secondly if RK can get 40k morale, 75-80k mastery, forget about it.... They can do about 15k heal every 15s which will translate to 1k HPS just with one skill, add to that over 180% damage (over 200% if you are high rank and buffs) and he's hitting with Epic over 20k crits.

Also his mitigations are just fine for pve. I know many tanks who have had under 16k tactical mitigation in DoS and they do just fine.

Lastly most main character players have those stat tomes on their character that I know....

All what i can read in your answer is: "if, if, if".
Why on earth didn't you tested what you are saying?!?
I tested with my main LM the new armours and jewellery: 23K moral without any essence. Put the needed essence for mitigation into the slots and after that the essences for mastery & crit & finesse. I ended with around 51K mastery (less as what i have now with mixed osgiliath and BB jewellery and with the 5 and 4 slots armour). Sure i could max it to 80K but then i will lose something else mitigation or crit or finesse.
Back to the picture: his tact. mit. is a pain in the backside for every healer in the group (in reality has maybe around 12K without all the buffs he has running).

Show me the picture with the stats of an RK/Mini/LM with 40Morale, 80K mastery, capped mitigations and crit and enough finesse without any buffs and you will have me on your side.

PS: about the tank: the tank is the main target for healing! Sure "they do just fine". (but i can tell you from my own experience which tank is easily to heal and which not)
You know the rules:
if tank is dead, healer's fault
if healer is dead, tank's fault
if LM is dead, bear's fault
if hunter is dead, own fault.

[spelunker]

All what i can read in your answer is: "if, if, if".
Why on earth didn't you tested what you are saying?!?
I tested with my main LM the new armours and jewellery: 23K moral without any essence. Put the needed essence for mitigation into the slots and after that the essences for mastery & crit & finesse. I ended with around 51K mastery (less as what i have now with mixed osgiliath and BB jewellery and with the 5 and 4 slots armour). Sure i could max it to 80K but then i will lose something else mitigation or crit or finesse.
Back to the picture: his tact. mit. is a pain in the backside for every healer in the group (in reality has maybe around 12K without all the buffs he has running).

Show me the picture with the stats of an RK/Mini/LM with 40Morale, 80K mastery, capped mitigations and crit and enough finesse without any buffs and you will have me on your side.

PS: about the tank: the tank is the main target for healing! Sure "they do just fine". (but i can tell you from my own experience which tank is easily to heal and which not)
You know the rules:
if tank is dead, healer's fault
if healer is dead, tank's fault
if LM is dead, bear's fault
if hunter is dead, own fault.

You're going on about pve stats, while the people you are quoting are primarily talking about pvp, where rank based bonuses give an average of about +10% morale, outposts give about 7k in free mastery, and there is no innate mitigation penetration.

PS, champs don't need much finesse regardless of tier.

[Aegadir]

- BEORNING: Beorning tanking needs a lot of work. They're great healers and OK DPS but a tank that can't block or evade well?

Oh it would be great if a beorning in blue line could block with a 2-handed Weapon like a yellow guardian.

[Scirocco]

I can not unterstand why some ppl are unable to face the reality. For a real PVP it would be necessary to separate PVP gear from PVE gear, like many other games doing this. As long as this is not the case it is nearly impossible to create gear and other items that will fit the requrement for both (PVP and PVE) at the same time without beeing OP for one of them.
After a couple of years ppl already should know that free2play means in reality pay2win. There is a huge grinde factor in lotro at the moment. Do i like it? No. But i (i.e. we) have to face the music. The reality is, that endgame is always boring after you have the knowledge, the tactic and the gear for it. No gaming company can bring new endgame content as fast as ppl are saying "the endgame is boring".
I'm sure not the one who use to defend Turbine, but it is true: if you want a challange create it for your yourself. e.g. do Doom of Stars with less than 6 ppl etc. etc.

Fair points.

Especially your last one. This is how I constantly push the upper edge of what I can do solo in order to give myself the maximum challenge.

This is also why I am never OPed for my upper edge challenge. Double my stats, and I'm off pushing the upper limit even further. I add challenge to correspond to added power.

I do this solo because there is no greater personal challenge. But I understand that some players want to do this only in the form of instanced content. Your suggestion of undermanning it is the equivalent way to up the challenge for groupers.

[siipperi]

All what i can read in your answer is: "if, if, if".
Why on earth didn't you tested what you are saying?!?
I tested with my main LM the new armours and jewellery: 23K moral without any essence. Put the needed essence for mitigation into the slots and after that the essences for mastery & crit & finesse. I ended with around 51K mastery (less as what i have now with mixed osgiliath and BB jewellery and with the 5 and 4 slots armour). Sure i could max it to 80K but then i will lose something else mitigation or crit or finesse.
Back to the picture: his tact. mit. is a pain in the backside for every healer in the group (in reality has maybe around 12K without all the buffs he has running).

Show me the picture with the stats of an RK/Mini/LM with 40Morale, 80K mastery, capped mitigations and crit and enough finesse without any buffs and you will have me on your side.

PS: about the tank: the tank is the main target for healing! Sure "they do just fine". (but i can tell you from my own experience which tank is easily to heal and which not)
You know the rules:
if tank is dead, healer's fault
if healer is dead, tank's fault
if LM is dead, bear's fault
if hunter is dead, own fault.

I don't have beta client on the computer that's why. Just did calculation.
With same buffs that person is having those stats are possible. I never claimed without the buffs. PvE is irrelevant when we look PvP builds.

[Rwraith]

I guess we'll find out in the next patch notes or two if the Devs intend to listen to feedback or if it will be a release as is and tweak over the following updates.

[Starkorm]

I guess we'll find out in the next patch notes or two if the Devs intend to listen to feedback or if it will be a release as is and tweak over the following updates.

Released as is like usual, naturally.

[CaerArianrhod]

PvE is irrelevant when we look PvP builds.

If PVE is irrelvant, why are some ppl complaining here about the PVE gear?
Just don't use it. Just don't use that golden lvl 100 essences in your slotted etten essence armour. Just don't use the bufffod, the scolls etc.
Oh wait ... you like to use all that stuff? You like to be OP. Then do not complain about PVE stuff. Pleas don't tell me, that you only play creep and never a freep, becaus i will not belive it.
Ask Turbine to separete PVE gear from PVP gear and you have done the way half to a balanced PVP, but do not complain about the PVE stuff if you are using it in PVP!
The only answer for such a kind of whinig is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asEP6olraAc Yes yes, you are still the sweetest freep in Glân Vraig.