Bullroarer Update 21 (#4) - Preview and Release Notes

[BotLike]

I did some more testing on the instance difficulty...

Same here , me and a couple of kinnies just finished some testing on instances on beta build 4.

We rolled with holy trinity build on 3 mans ( guard , minstrel , hunter ). We used t3 gear , t3 relics and maxed LIs.
As vastin mentioned in the past , t3 gear and relics won't be available on live , our actual live gear will be less powerful. ( keep that in mind for later )

First of all , there are some visual bugs on quite a few instances. Ruined city is almost impossible to navigate , there are missing floors , walls etc.
Quays of harlong ships are replaced by a few osgiliath orc raft-boats xD
I am sure there are others too.

Regarding difficulty.

Long story short : Everything considered scaled instance on live at the moment is alright.

Most fights will take longer , but it is certainly a step towards the right direction , some scaled instance mechanics come back into play and so far so good.

However , pellenor instances scaled to 115 are a total different story. The troll fight in Harlond is extremely hard to complete on t2.
And yes , we did avoid khurat's rock throw and interrupted kalmok and all that and we also tried multiple times.
My overcapped mits minny ( 60k+ morale ) got one shotted by akhun's charge attack.
Once , after me and the hunter died , khurat threw a rock on our 100k+ 5-stack fortified and overcapped mits guard, and he got hit for 80k.
Maybe it's doable with lm's CC and debuffs and a lot of luck but still , it's quite broken atm...............
And yeah , you can forget about aoe zerging the trolls , Khurat has 1.6m morale and the other 3 1.3 , while dps is pretty much the same or worse comparing on live ( depends on the class ).

I am guessing similar problems will appear on black serpent last boss and gloom of nurn on SS t2.
Also , i am pretty sure lumithil on RC t2 will sometimes one-shot every non-tank class.

Lastly , throne doesn't seem to be scalable anymore.

I was really sceptical about posting this info , because there is a good chance the fix will be 'nerf everything to the ground' instead of tweaking each instance separately ,
and that would be a huge shame , considering how many instances actually feel better now.

The problem is simple really , some instances on live have difficulty of 1 while others have difficulty of 10 , but they all got the exact same overall difficulty increase.
QQ

Imo , the best fix for this would be tweaking the t2 buffs. Like increase mit penetration , reduce extra damage a bit or whatever the devs see fit.

[Laurelinarien]

[*]Gorgoroth lootbox cannot be opened with Sturdy Steel Key: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1...jR3OUttRVF2OVE[/LIST]

I think that's due to a new kind of key introduced. The Black Steel Key.

[Eruceninde]

Avatar updates:

I really like the improvements to human male face. It looks more realistic. The running animation is okay, looks stiff in the shoulders.

Female human: new face is okay, looks a bit 16 year old girlish. Which I thought of before too. Would like them to have more mature faces. Running animation and idle animation is better.

Male high elf is much better looking to me. Female High elf is still, "meh". BOTH still look too human and need to have an ethereal appearance. I like the ears.
Again, male running looks stiff in the shoulders. Jumping male high elf reminds me of a monkey... sorry.

Female high elf running the legs are too close together. Going to start a fire with the friction there. Jumping is same as male...

Voiceover person for High elf intro needs to be changing. Too nasally and sounds like a child.

I like the new barbershop. Being able to change all aspects of your characters (except race, of course) is awsome. I like being able to fiddle with my toon's appearance. Sometimes what you see in character creation screen is different from game, or you change your mind. So being able to tweak or completely change stuff is amazing.

Good changes overall.

[siipperi]

I think that's due to a new kind of key introduced. The Black Steel Key.

Bets if its store only and drops teal armor pieces? Lmao.

[Arestelle]

I think that's due to a new kind of key introduced. The Black Steel Key.

Haven't heard of that, so I don't know if you're serious or riffing, but the lootbox tooltip says it can be opened with a Sturdy Steel Key, so either way it's a bug.

[Laurelinarien]

Haven't heard of that, so I don't know if you're serious or riffing, but the lootbox tooltip says it can be opened with a Sturdy Steel Key, so either way it's a bug.

Yes, im aware of what the tooltip says. Yet I couldn't open one & idk if it's a bug or intended. People in BR linked the key I mentioned as working for those boxes. And the tooltip for the key did look store-bought

[CivitasAciesAld]

Happy to say that the male high elves are looking much better. I will probably actually roll one now.

As for the update on the human-male hair models I noticed the return to hair models more closely matching what is found on live servers (being more so a re-texturing rather than a remodeling, which is mostly what has been seen with the human-female hair styles on BR). I think this was a smart move as it makes the 'update' a less jarring shift from what players are already used to seeing.

A few things I noticed:
The Human Male hair now seems to have far fewer clipping issues (At least from my testing of changing the body slider to the extremes and running around), however I found that Hairstyle 11 does seem to have a slight clipping issue near the neck.


I've noticed some of the longer hair now has a feature where it wraps behind the character's ears rather than partially covering them, this creates an odd effect where it almost feels like the character's hair is too narrow just above their ears (almost like they're wearing an invisible headband) and then suddenly fans outwards below the ear (which looks good from behind and even the side but somewhat odd from the front).



Apart from that, eye colour is too dark (I imagine this is already well known), the re-texturing on some of the hair makes it almost too smooth, some of the hair styles have a bit too much forehead(?, this could be a problem with the facial ratio rather than the hair styles), and the facial structures have little variation issues (jawlines come to mind).
For my character personally the shift was... uh, interesting to say the least (almost feels as though they came from completely different regions):



Most of my observations seem to be how the new models vary from their original counterpart, so if the goal is to change things up you're on the right track. However, if the goal is to update old models whilst retaining their core features I hope this might help.
(not sure if this needed it's own thread opened so stuck it here)

[Ninsulnil]

Hair style 22 and others, female human...the barber slider for body type shows some horrors. Sliding the body size higher increases the size of your hair/head too. Your skull lengthens incredibly to inhuman proportions. If you super skinny size yourself, your hair shrinks, revealing bald patches of skull.

When running with 'skinny hair' somehow you lean out of your hair, leaving yourself bald on top with just a bun sticking out of the back of your head. Also, the the change in running animation went way too far; now there's a weird exaggerated butt wiggle that makes my heavy armor into twerking stretchy pants as I waggle my poor bald headed person along.

[Elranduri]

Looks like everything is moving in a good direction. Glad to see how the high elf appearances are progressing.

I would like to see the high elf OOC Run speed stack again with class buffs that was a huge incentive to roll one. It is a premium race after all.

[Doril_Bladerunner]

Creeps skill tool-tips look promising, but trying to DPS anything in the moors is slow.

None more so than trying to cap an OP. Several diff toons could not solo kill the CG. (Havnt tried a keep with a small group yet)

Add new corruption? or add finesse to existing one?

Keep up the great work

[siipperi]

New man faces are impression of community after hearing the price model of mordor.

[zipfile]

New man faces are impression of community after hearing the price model of mordor.

Lol

[Norliriel]

Voiceover person for High elf intro needs to be changing. Too nasally and sounds like a child.

I found that voice kind of grating too, to be honest.

Speaking of voices, some of the male High Elf Warden's/Captain's (and presumable Minstrel's, haven't checked) shouts are in a female voice! :O Hopefully that is only a placeholder!

Also, on female High Elves, spears, javelins, and some shields don't show up while out of combat.

Also, could Círdan in the High Elf intro please have his famous beard? His face is a different model from Player Character Elves' faces anyway, so it should be possible to make him bearded. Unless you left off the beard intentionally to indicate that he was younger then? But that could also be shown by giving him a shorter beard (as distinct from the long beard he has in LOTR).

[Joedangod]

Classes

• Above level 105, class trait points are awarded at levels 108, 111, and 114.
• Beorning:
  
• Beorning skills no longer work through walls. Relentless maul still does.
  
• Sacrifice bonus wrath generation now lasts 20 seconds, up from 12 seconds. Base traited yellow with "In Harms Way" and "All on the Line" had sacrifice still only lasting for 12s despite tooltip indicating 20.
  
• Nature's Mend no longer behaves like a wrath consuming skill. Encouraging Roar is now broken to not give the free heal to any skill.
  
• Grimbeorn's Spirit and Bond of Trust no longer override each other. Grimbeorns spirit will only apply once, you need to either swap trait trees or relog to have it apply again. Further testing had it work, sometimes...and only after we used a very specific trait setup.
  
• Vicious Claws will only refresh one instance of Bash bleed, and no longer remove others. Only refreshes newest bash on the target, not too much use for bash uptime.
  
• Claw Swipe and Slash bleeds no longer replace each other. Works.
  
• Expose now affects all Beorning damage skills. Currently untested.
  
• Fate stat contributions have been improved. Minimal impact on the class, there's no reason to stack fate as other stats give greater return.

Build #4, all listed class changes for this expansion are still either bugged or of little-no impact. Loving your class balance work, SSG.

[Norliriel]

Once you reach level 110 speak to Eomer just inside the Black Gate to pick up 'Men, Elves, Dwarves, and Hobbits'. Join an allegiance and begin your quests. We welcome your feedback.

But we can't get to just inside the Black Gate right now. So how are we supposed to test this?

[idontcare789]

Might as well address the pvmp elephants while youre asking for the feedback. Minstrel healing HAS to get tied to mastery. Stop the scaled heals. Spiders: Toxin has to got to be done differently. stacked x2 at 5-600 power(crit ticks) power is gone instantly. Either lower the tick, lengthen the cd or remove stacking. Spread the warg dps across their skills, move it off of claws. Also NO class should have ANY buff up at ANY time that gives them 90-100% crit chance unless it comes with a VERY heavy sacrifice(no escape cds, no bpe something).

I suggest removing animation from spider webs. Its a serious cause of lag. Remove it, make it smaller with the same border areas...idk..fix it.

[BotLike]

I also rolled on SS t2 today on beta build #4, lvl 115.

It seems my suspicions were correct , all 3 pellenor instances ( BS , Quays , SS ) are way too overtuned on BR atm. ( that applies for t2 only)

We made it to the last boss , the trash before that are a pain , especially the gloom spirits. They throw ranged attacks around , hitting for 25k while oneshotting most classes with distributed.
Gloom of nurn , hits fortified and capped mits guards for 50k , while earnill can one shot everything ( so revealing mark doesnt do much ).
However , we didn't have a lm (( Couldn't get one.
So , i'm guessing its doable but overtuned nevertheless.

Just need to repeat this once again though.
The above only stands for PELLENOR INSTANCES and ONLY for t2, the rest like scaled and Osgiliath are FINE , and need NO nerf whatsoever.
Some osgiliath instances have other problems though , like missing walls and floors , like RC and DoS. Already did /bug.

Also , loot is not scaled in pellenor , still dropping 105 stuff and armor with no set-bonuses.

[Belechael]

But we can't get to just inside the Black Gate right now. So how are we supposed to test this?

Aye, Devs please do a hotfix or something so that we can test Allegiance, only 1 more weekend to test after all.

[Elflord410]

Aye, Devs please do a hotfix or something so that we can test Allegiance, only 1 more weekend to test after all.

There's a stable horse route into Mordor from Dol Amroth.

[Elflord410]

• New loot profiles have been added for all Gorgoroth monsters.

• The dwarven forge workers in Udun are dropping Rusted Dwarf Tools from Moria

[Srale]

there is human char bug:





website for uploading photos

[Arestelle]

There's a stable horse route into Mordor from Dol Amroth.

The problem isn't getting into Mordor; it's getting to Eomer "just inside the Black Gate" to get that alliance-choosing quest.

[Arestelle]

High elf ladies have too much booty-shaking going on when they run.

[Norliriel]

There's a stable horse route into Mordor from Dol Amroth.

Yes, but we can't approach the Black Gate from the inside either because of the "you die if you go too near" effect.

[Mukor]

Still no high-elf passive skills as

Diminishing of Mankind: -7 Will.
Easily Inspired: +5% Incoming Healing.
Gift of Men: +15 Fate.
Strong Men: +15 Might.

for men