Class Update - Loremasters

[Vastin]

Good to hear. I'm pretty sure we'll be doing another pass after the next release to even up some of the DPS numbers of the various classes (and fix any glaring errors), Sounds like LM single target damage could probably afford to come up a bit more, though I'd love to see more parses and reports from players working over the dummies.

Still, we've got to be careful about going overboard with AoE. it doesn't take too much to turn instances into an impromptu episode of 'Does It Blend' if the AoE dps ticks up too high, and that makes 6/12 man content far too boring.

Honestly we just allow too many targets on many of the AoE skills currently. If we bring those down some we would be able to be a bit more generous about the actual damage on them.

-Vastin

[B749]

Good to hear. I'm pretty sure we'll be doing another pass after the next release to even up some of the DPS numbers of the various classes (and fix any glaring errors), Sounds like LM single target damage could probably afford to come up a bit more, though I'd love to see more parses and reports from players working over the dummies.

Still, we've got to be careful about going overboard with AoE. it doesn't take too much to turn instances into an impromptu episode of 'Does It Blend' if the AoE dps ticks up too high, and that makes 6/12 man content far too boring.

Honestly we just allow too many targets on many of the AoE skills currently. If we bring those down some we would be able to be a bit more generous about the actual damage on them.

-Vastin

Yeah, LM has some quite potent AoE burst potential and decent sustained AoE even on live without the changes. It just underperforms a bit on the ST side of things, which is difficult to directly address as many skills and effects are either AoE or spreadable (looking at you, Embers!). Though, you'd be surprised how much Pinion loves to put in a few reflecting mobs to keep our 'Does It Blend' experiments interesting (and mildly suicidal for glass cannon DPS builds )

Still, seeing what you've done with the red line so far in terms of core functionality, I trust you'll figure the number tweaks out too

[jomanjy]

redline is fun now ty for the changes, some skills could still use some buffs but its overall much better imo.

share the power still has a cd, this really has awful effect on pvp.

i would like to suggest some yellowline changes that might help melee classes in raids.

change warden knowledge from +10% incoming tactical damage/ +4% power cost to + 10% incoming tactical damage/ +10% melee damage

change bog lurker root strike debuff skill from +5% incoming ranged crit chance to +5% incoming crit chance ( so it affect both melee and ranged)

Ancient craft still bugged.

frost lore animation is way too long

i would like to see - ranged damage debuff ( maybe -25% ranged damage) would be really good

PVP bug: wind lore doesn't refresh fire/frost lore on creeps.

[sahanto]

Good to hear. I'm pretty sure we'll be doing another pass after the next release to even up some of the DPS numbers of the various classes (and fix any glaring errors), Sounds like LM single target damage could probably afford to come up a bit more, though I'd love to see more parses and reports from players working over the dummies.

Still, we've got to be careful about going overboard with AoE. it doesn't take too much to turn instances into an impromptu episode of 'Does It Blend' if the AoE dps ticks up too high, and that makes 6/12 man content far too boring.

Honestly we just allow too many targets on many of the AoE skills currently. If we bring those down some we would be able to be a bit more generous about the actual damage on them.

-Vastin

Remember to fix the share the power skill as of rn its worthless (BR) just remove the CD keep the magnitude (1-2k) the same since 1-2k really is not a lot it becomes a difficult skill to use and ruins a good lms rotation is it wont be use a lot but in some situations when u have no other job then to spam it (nazguls -throne) it becomes fine

[Xhiu]

is there even a power-drain on any freep class actually?
I thought, LMs lost their power drain years ago already... never really used the skill anyway, but I thought, it just restored morale and power over the last years and lost the drain-part with HD traitlines or at another time some years ago...

This is what I thought too. My friend and former duo partner was very disappointed when that happened as it made a pretty decent debuff. *I* thought she overused it but draining pve targets didn't seem to hurt anyone. Pvmp targets on the other hand...

I'm not sure where or who is using it to drain. Bueller...

[Nleuter]

@Vastin. If I could make a suggestion for a short term fix, would you make wind lore count as a lightning skill? Currently wind lore and frost lore both count as frost type skills which just thematically begs the question as what is the difference. It would also have the effect of enabling some measure of control over your secondary debuff effect. This would be a workable bandaid till yellow line gets some proper attention.

[Estelrandir]

I'd love to see more parses and reports from players working over the dummies.

I was doing around 22-24k dps on single target dummy and around 80k dps on 4 dummies. (I don´t play LM for dps, so there is enough space for improvement).

[Arathrinn]

Good to hear. I'm pretty sure we'll be doing another pass after the next release to even up some of the DPS numbers of the various classes (and fix any glaring errors), Sounds like LM single target damage could probably afford to come up a bit more, though I'd love to see more parses and reports from players working over the dummies.

Still, we've got to be careful about going overboard with AoE. it doesn't take too much to turn instances into an impromptu episode of 'Does It Blend' if the AoE dps ticks up too high, and that makes 6/12 man content far too boring.

Honestly we just allow too many targets on many of the AoE skills currently. If we bring those down some we would be able to be a bit more generous about the actual damage on them.

-Vastin

I did some more testing now that the burning/searing embers can be stacked again. (56k crit rating and 217k tactical mastery - single target test dummy E&G tavern)

Test 1:

DPS target dummy says, 'Thou didst maintain a DPS of 32,332.955 over the last three minutes of our momentous conflict!'
DPS target dummy says, 'For the entirety of our match, I hath suffered 5,819,932 damage!'

https://gyazo.com/786ad2b5cfec9fbf105ac235ae46f2bb


Test 2:

DPS target dummy says, 'Thou didst maintain a DPS of 32,731.600 over the last three minutes of our momentous conflict!'
DPS target dummy says, 'For the entirety of our match, I hath suffered 5,891,688 damage!'

https://gyazo.com/73b3c42cfce3d61370aef9ecd6b56b14

Burning and searing embers are the majority of our dps currently, followed by lightning strike and lightning storm. The cashout damage is relevant as well, which is good considering lightning strike does quite a lot of damage with only a 10s cd.
Even Gust of Wind does some decent amounts of damage because you want to use it every time it's up. I'm still disappointed in for example Nature's Fury, considering it's a keystone trait for red.
Overall I'm quite happy with the damage output for LM, although some skills still need adjusting.

On a seperate note:

The Wizard's Fire morale heal on flank is still awful (Wizard's Fire: Istari Healing applied a heal to Arathrinn restoring 1,009 points to Morale. and Wizard's Fire: Istari Healing applied a critical heal to Arathrinn restoring 2,371 points to Morale.) The power restoration and base damage are fine as it is.

[flamestrom]

Hey, everybody. I would like to share some of my observations after the changes with the Lore-master. I will show you damage comparison between Arkenstone and Bullroarer training dummies at Glan Vraig. All measurements are made in a preferred for me blue line.

This is a few of my LM-stats:
Tactical Mastery 228 840 (426%)
Critical Rating 55 380 (21,9%)
Finesse 96524 (20,1%)

Some abbreviations:
Arkenstone = (A)
Bullroarer = (B)

There was a good critical damage from a Lightning-storm with an Ancient Craft effect. Now the strength of this effect will be significantly less.

Ancient Craft on the Heavy Training-dummy 80,975(A) 51,247(B) -37% decrease
Ancient Craft on the Medium Training-dummy 80,923(A) 51,214(B) -37% decrease
Ancient Craft on the Light Training-dummy 89,031(A) 56,345(B) -37% decrease

Lightning-storm on the Heavy Training-dummy 62,363(A) 59,612(B) -4% decrease
Lightning-storm on the Medium Training-dummy 62,323(A) 59,574(B) -4% decrease
Lightning-storm on the Light Training-dummy 68,567(A) 64,564(B) -6% decrease

Now let's see to the average damage from new Power of Knowledge (regular and critical damage). Here are some examples...

Heavy Training-dummy Power of Knowledge (7,050-8,139-8,893)(B) - (15,789-17,604-21,083)(B)
Medium Training-dummy Power of Knowledge (6,413-7,580-8,158)(B) - (14,648-18,117-19,783)(B)
Light Training-dummy Power of Knowledge (7,114-8,174-9,703)(B) - (17,812-18,812-20,732)(B)

I didn't see too many critical hits. Maybe it's because of my critical rating. But for a skill with 1 min cooldown and long induction, the damage should be much bigger. Something between Light of the Rising Dawn and the Lightning-storm. For now it's not even a close to RK's Smouldering Wrath (also a channeled skill).

Wizard's fire... No doubt, a huge boost with comparison what we have right now on Arkenstone. Here the numbers aren't important.

The long-suffering Gust of Wind still doesn't deserve a place on the skill bar. I don't wanna place it because of too long cooldown for burning embers improvement, huge induction (justified for a hurricane) and still low-frost-damage (why not the lightning?). That' why I think it's a waste of trait points for this skill. We have much more important traits. Maybe you think different, it's up to you.

In General, at least as I understand it, the damage reduced and scattered in different skills, the application of which is not in any way compare in efficiency with "big-ones". Is it worth the hypothetical total damage from all skills? Do we have a lot of opportunities for their use in PvMP? By the way, the damage on creeps about 30% lower than on the dummies.

So, we have minor damage improvements on a few skills and huge decrease on another, more headache in yellow line and no other role in group except debuff or off-healer. In this case i have a simple question - for what purpose a lore-master have so many AOE-skills if we completely stuck as a supports?

[Remcosajax]

Hello Vastin!

First up, I want to say thank you, for taking the time to upgrade the class and make QoL changes to it. I want you though, to take a critical look at what should and shouldn't be changed. AoE is quite potent now, which it should. I have focused a bit on looking at the class itself and actually see what is not working at all or what is even broken on the class! I will continue to update this post and follow the thread now. Sorry for being a bit late. I hope you will take a look at ALL TRAIT LINES. Not just Red-line.

Red Line

Staff-Sweep Staff-Strike are very underwhelming. Even though they give some buffs and are not attacks for the main kit the average damage off both attacks are around ~4k damage.
I'd suggest to change these attacks to light damage and give them even a bit of a boost.

Staff-sweep
Flanking effect is not working on BR. Even though the tooltip says it does restore power-over time.


The power-over time was already underwhelming and should recieve a boost when it comes back

Flanking
The morale and power restore is to weak. It needs a boost.


Ring of Fire
So I have a few problems with the skill.
The second damage hit (maybe u can even remove it) is just 'damage'. Think it would be a small fix to add a damage type here. Also it never crits.


I don't really get why there is a bpe reduction on a fire skill as a tactical class that far in the red trait line. Also the whole trait is kinda meanlingless. The 4th traitpoint even makes this skill rather laggy then actual usefull. I hope there could even be a visual fix, as this skills tend to lag out raids hard.
I'd suggest looking to the visual appearance of the skill (to reduce lag) and remove the trait or change the traitbonus. Also remove the bpe and maybe add it to a yellow thing (maybe even to tar as someone suggested)


Migthy wind
Useless trait. Sticky gourd is already used to keep up burning embers on multiple targets. This trait doesn't make gust of wind a better skill.


Fend them off
I'd rather have a short mitigation bonus, then a evade/parry bonus. Think that's quite unneeded on all tactical classes. Also the fire bonus is rather weak in comparisation with inner-flame (30% vs 12%) with even a shorter duration and a 1 min cd)

[Remcosajax]

Fire-shield
Think it's still a broken trait. Can't link the effect sadly, but this shield should only reflect against initial hits. Not dot's.


Ent's go to War verus Lightning Storm



As u can see both induction and max targets on these skills are the same, BUT

the damage on both these skills are quite significant*. More then that: the cooldowns on both skills are in favour of lightning storm aswell. I'd suggest to change the damage on both skills accordingly to cooldown.*

* I am in favour of nerfing lightning-storm slightly and then buffing Ent's go to War by a bit.
*Note that I did had both lightning damage as Ent's go to War damage legacy equipped.

Nature's Fury
Even though some say to remove frost damage (also on gust of wind), I say: NO. But both of these skills are very underwhelming, because of the lack of support for frost damage in both the trait-line and the legacy. Making the difference even bigger.
To make both of these skills more viable I suggest to either make a seperate trait in red-line or update the damage output.

Nature's Fury -Lightning Strike
The proc change is ok, i'd say, the damage output for a capstone trait/skill is not. Needs a small boost.


Nature's Fury- Fierce Lightning
Still one of the weakest dot's in the game. It's on 1 skill with a 1.30 min cooldown. Needs a boost to make it more viable


Sticky goud
The initial hit is good! The dot certainly is not. Same as Fierce Lightning, needs a boost. Fierce lightning should hit more though, not less.


Wizard's fire
Not really sure what to think of this skill now. Think it's an a ok'ish state at the moment, but it feels rather useless in the kit now (apart from the flank). I don't think this skill needs to be aoe anymore though. Atleast I don't see the use of this anymore. I rather would change the passive trait shifting towards making the proc change for the second hit of lightning strike. From 20% to 50%

Lightning Strike
As above, I think this would be a good change for the skills. I would however suggest to increase the cooldown from 10s to 20s.

[Remcosajax]

Yellow
Power of knowledge
Either needs a longer channel duration or a increase in the amount of power restore. With full power restore traits and even the legacy, it just reaches the amount of power a loremaster has. The damage seems quite ok though.*


(*haven't tested how this new skill with lightning damage interacts with the ancient craft 3th bonus)

The Ancient Master
There is a few things here I'd like to see gone/removed or even fixed
The skill says it makes fire-lore and frost-lore hit 6 targets


The trait line of Ancient Master says that fire-lore and frost-lore will deal an additional 4 targets


But when activated the skill still says 6 targets


Unfortunate I have been unable to test if it can affext up to 10 targets, so I'd like to know if I am reading something wrong or the tooltips are bugged. I've been unable to test this atleast.

Stored Power
As you can read above: whenever u use the ancient master, you store power and unleash it when the effect ends, but it's really buggy.
When it actually procs u get:


Which seems to be very low to me...

But most of the time u get this:


The effect is still there, yet nothing is happening.
Needs a fix in terms of stack (would say max 5 instead of 10). An increase in restoration (~3 or 4k without critted) and needs a better desciption in terms of radius or visible cast.

[Remcosajax]

Playing with Fire/ Out in the Cold
Needs to be better designed. I would say that after the use of fire-lore or frost-lore the next skill you use will make one of the three buffs proc. Duration needs to be increased from 15 to 30 sec, with also a 30 sec cooldown, so you can proc the effect once. Right now, these effects are being ping-ponged in terms of debuffs. I would like this to be more controllable, but also that there will be more thought as of which skill type to use next, after the use of fire-lore and frost-lore.

Two debuffs needs to be changed though
Power cost is useless. Even more on landscape. How about an extra melee skill damage debuff? Or a resistance debuff?




Needless to say it's to weak. I would like to change it to a percentage.

Wind-Lore

It's already way to easy to keep fire-lore and frost-lore up in my opinion, so I would like this skill to be changed:
+5% incoming damage
10s duration
20s cooldown

5 secondes is just to spamable. There should be some risk into late refreshing. Right now, It's to easy to keep both buffs up atleast and I would like to trade it to a more usefull bonus.

Pleasant Breeze
Although I kinda like the morale restore, it needs some tweaking.


I would increase the base healing output slightly, but the max targets from 7 to 3, but improve the radius from 7 to 15m. Also


The tooltip still says power restoration, needs to be adjusted. The trait is working though.

Futhermore, crit is not a main stat for a yellow loremaster. I highly recommend to change the crit on gust of wind as a proc, to just whenyou hit gust of wind to proc it, but with a cooldown on the heal for 20-30s.

Level-headed

Useless trait. Yellow loremaster have barely any skills (most are in red-line) that consume morale. I doubt anyone traits this.

[Remcosajax]

Power of knowledge (Trait)

Needless to say there is no morale draining from power of knowledge anymore. Needs a better use (maybe increase of channel duration as suggested before)

Improved Knowledge of Cures (yellow)

Decrease the cooldown from 15s to 10s (only in the yellow). Makes loremaster a better all-around utility class.

Beacon of Hope (yellow

Improve the hot radius from 4m to 15m

Cracked earth vs herb-lore


Think both skills should be adjusted. Both should have the same targets for the root and the same radius. Kinda weird why Herb-lore has max 3 targets.

Storm-lore
Feels a bit out of place in yellow line and would fit in more in the red trait line.

Ancient craft
Change the armour bonus from 5% to 10%. The armour bonus gives roughly ~1.2k mitigations which is hardly worth traiting

Enfeeble
Bugged as Always. Most of the effects are not even double

[Remcosajax]

Enfeeble (continues)

Sign of power commands


Sign of power see all ends


Ancient craft


Share the Power
Just needs to be changed. I agree the skill doesn't need to be spamable. But the current output is just way to weak. Leave the cooldowns, but change the output

[Remcosajax]

Blue

Pets
There needs to be so much change here. Most pets tooltips haven't been updated to 115, the damage output of pets are just to weak in my opinion. Some numbers:

Only with the +25% damage trait (no attack duration legacy)

Lynx
~686 dps

Bog-lurker
~1.380 dps

Bear
~343 dps

Raven
~465 dps

Eagle
~813 dps

Sabre-tooth
~420 dps

I would first suggest to make all pets have a danage type. And then tweak them to viable numbers.

Fully traited is atleast an improvment

Lynx
~2.6k dps

Eagle
~1.5k dps

This still feels to weak though. The blue line is mostly focused around the pets so there needs to be some love here.

Stamp out the Fire
Not working. There is no significant increase in the dps output from pets with or without burning embers


Wisom of the Council (Peerless Wisdom)
15% negation change is to low in my opinion for a 5 min cd skill. I'd suggest to change it from 10% increase to a 20% increase.
Also the reflect damage needs to be scaled. 68 light damage on 115 is way to low


Inner-flame
Heal needs to be slightly adjusted or channel duration needs to be longer.

Prepare for War
Adjust the mastery gain to 115 level or percentages

Don't interupt Me
Change the percentages and add a cooldown
1st trait: 7% base to 5%base
2d trait: 7% to 10%
3d trait: 13% to 25%
This effect cannot occur more then once every 15s

Sic'em
Very buggy trait/skill. Pet's sometimes don't attack a target at all (mostly when they killed an inital target).
Also the spirit seems to only do the flank effect.

Spirit
Spirit doesn't seem to crit anything, giving no buff for the fellowship (fellowship-friend)
I suggest to make it able for the spirit to either be able to auto attack or make atleast the attacks able to crit.

Critical coordination
Remove the free induction, but keep the ciritcal component.


General changes
Polish the post animation on atleast frost-lore, gust of wind and Ent's go to War. The post animation of these skills are just way to long.

That's kinda it for now. As I said I am open for discussion and I know I have been asking for a lot in my post. I will try and update this post in a later stage, according to feedback!

[Arveduie]

DPS target dummy says, 'Thou didst maintain a DPS of 29,607.334 over the last three minutes of our momentous conflict!'

Consistently seeing parses in that range with 222k tactical mastery, 56k crit, and 74k finesse.

Few questions though. How are the changes to Staff Strike and Staff Sweep mainhand being calculated? They seem to be using a set base of Beleriand damage calculated through tactical damage rating on LI but then are still classed as "a physical melee skills" benefiting from physical mastery?

Whatever the case, it would be nice if these were using Fire, Light, or Lightning damage as a base so they benefit from other legacies. As is, Staff Strike is listing roughly 5500-7200 Beleriand, much improved from live but still not enough to be a meaningful part of dps. Cathorant scored a hit with Flanked! Improved Staff Strike on the DPS target dummy for 1,516 Light damage to Morale. Add in that being the damage of the flanked effect with Ancient Craft applied and Staff Strike, specifically, is very underwhelming. If both the flank and skill damage were brought up more in line with burning embers direct damage, it would help boost LM single target parses and give the class a viable option during fights where napalming large areas is undesirable (think Glinghant where everything has to die within 10s for challenge so you don't want indiscriminate aoe until the very end of the encounter).

Overall though, the changes are brilliant. Gameplay is more dynamic and involved and Red feels like a viable option for small group play and dailies once again. Keep up the good work, Vastin, and know that many in the community appreciate it.

[EndlessWalker]

Looking good so far. Been testing on 115 mobs in Dale, Red now feels a lot safer to be in, especially when facing more than one mob. Glad to be back in red line after traiting to blue so I could survive mordor. Overall some modest DPS increases to most red skills. Light of the Rising Dawn only got a very slight increase. Power of Knowledge looks interesting now as it has a channelled lightning damage effect! 10,641 - 15,201 damage every 1 second (duration 5.5s)

Wizards fire is now a straight up damage skill. I wonder if it could be used with a chance to reduce the cool down on lightning strike to give it some interest.

Glaring issue: Ring of Fire, there is no change to the radius of effect, and the visual certainly looks to be generously exaggerated compared to the 5m radius. I am assuming radius should be 10m with trait fully maxed?

Details of testing below:

Live Server: my stats

Phys mast: 97,493
Tact mast: 167,269

Phys mit: 56, 962
Tact mit: 65,075


Live - Staff Strike
2414-3825 Bel damage

Bullroarer - Staff Strike
5,862 – 7,606 Bel damage

Live - Improved Staff Sweep
2,174 – 3,585 Bel damage
2,303 – 3830 Com damage

Bullroarer - Improved Staff Sweep
4,397 – 5,705 Bel damage
5,581 – 8,637 Com damage

Live - Improved Burning Embers
6,984 – 9,977 Fire damage
1,646 Fire damage initially

2,916 – 3,137 Fire damage 2/16 secs

Bullroarer - Improved Burning Embers
7,956 - 11,365 Fire damage

3,427 – 4,896 Fire damage 2/16 secs


Live - Improved Sign of Battle: Wizard’s Fire
961 – 1,373 Fire damage initially

1,744 – 2,491 Fire Damage 2/10 secs

Bullroarer - Improved Wizard’s Fire
6,205 – 7,277 Fire damage

Live - Lightning Strike
23,764 – 33,948 Lightning damage + proc

Bullroarer - Lightning Strike
25,964 – 37,092 Lightning damage + proc

Live - Improved Sticky Gourd
10,549 – 15,071 Fire damage
1,646 Fire damage initially
2,196 – 3,137 Fire damage 2/16 secs +

Bullroarer - Improved Sticky Gourd
11,032 – 15,760 Fire damage
3,427 – 4,896 Fire damage 2/16 secs +

*** Duration 26s Every 4secs ^ effect (26 is odd as 4 does not divide evenly into 26?)

Live - Nature’s Fury
11,076 – 15,822 Frost Damage + effects

Bullroarer - Nature’s Fury
18,062 – 25,802 Frost Damage + effects

Live - Lightning Storm
3 attacks
23,764 – 33,948 Lightning damage
23,764 – 33,948 Lightning damage
23,764 – 33,948 Lightning damage

Bullroarer – Lightning Storm
25,964 – 37,092 Lightning damage
25,964 – 37,092 Lightning damage
25,964 – 37,092 Lightning damage

Live - Ents Go To War
23,506 – 33,580 Fire damage

Bullroarer – Ents Go To War
25,023 – 35, 747 Fire damage

Live - Ring Of Fire
10,549 – 15,071 Fire damage + effects

Bullroarer – Ring of Fire
11,032 – 15,760 + effects

*** trait: says radius is doubled at max rank: showing 5m on both live and bullroarer *** Strange thing is that the visual effect looks like 30m radius – any chance to scale this visual correctly? Does not change from 5m when only traited 1 deep for Ring of Fire Trait *** BUG???

Live - Gust of Wind
5,905 – 8,436 Frost damage

Bullroarer – Gust of Wind
8,877 – 12,681 Frost damage
Burning embers > searing embers

Live - Light of the Rising Dawn
19,658 – 28,082 Light damage

Bullroarer - Light of the Rising Dawn
20,916 – 29,880 Light damage

[Nleuter]

There used to be a set bonus for Red line where Light of the Rising Dawn got a 30s cooldown. Could we possibly look into getting that back somewhere, maybe baseline? It would help with giving an extra stun so that yellow line can use the trait line mechanic to combine the stun and burning embers more frequently.

[Zvim666]

So, tried some stuff out on today's BR build.

DPS parses: was able to do pretty consistent 30k single target. Rotation can probably be optimized by a fair bit still tho! That was with 208k mastery and 53k critical rating. Using two of the nerfed tactical damage runes; I thought they were supposed to be unslotted but they haven't been? Not sure what's the goal for those and whether we should test with or without them.
Most of the damage coming from Embers in both its forms, followed by Lightning Strike and Lightning Storm. After that comes Blast of Flame (embers Lightning cashout effect) and Power of Knowledge channel. Other effects were pretty small, dealing very little damage overall because few uses (due to CD or proc luck) or underwhelming base damage.

Note: Sticky Gourd and Fierce Lightning floor damage effects are still doing very little damage:



I think all things considered, it's still below the mark (regardless of whether or not we're supposed to have two Tactical runes available). Suggestions to increase DPS output:

Increase damage on the following effects/skills:

• Sticky Gourd (floor effect) by ~100%
• Fierce Lightning (floor effect) by ~100%
• Gust of Wind by ~75%
• Power of Knowledge channel by ~50%

Those changes would hopefully bring the DPS closer to the 40k mark, possibly slightly beyond.

Also -- you need to address the Yellow line "Power of Knowledge" trait; make it do something relevant to the skill in its new form, like + channel duration maybe? Or make critical hits with Lightning Strike and Storm Lore reduce the active cooldown by 2 seconds? Just some ideas!

Overall the red line feels fun to play now, though the single target damage output is still a little underwhelming. The AoE potential is pretty good, though!

Just using sticky gourd and gust of wind, and nothing else, I was doing about 70k dps on the 5 target dummies (about 14k each), and my dps gear is garbage; 198k TM, 30k crit rating, 88k finesse and one ####ty 67.2 enchantment rune. My single target dps is garbage but I am not sure what the optimum rotation is. With the current setup, I think it is difficult for them to boost single target damage up to something more reasonable using area of effect abilities without making the AE damage problematic.

My only real gripe, if you would call it that, is that the parses look okay over a long period of time and 3 minutes is a long period of time when you are talking about landscape content. There are significant spikes when you use longer cooldown abilities and it flattens out over time to probably be some kind of ballpark figure that they are happy with but in realist the class is overkill when lightning storm is up and very flat when it is not. While the multi-target damage overall is okay, I don't know what scenario I am going to be in where I want to be doing damage to 5 mobs at a time, because that is 5 mobs that will kill me well before a burning ember gets to deliver a quarter of it's payload.

It just feels... awkward, maybe I have just fallen out of love with the LM after 11 years, and that may be something, but I don't really have any desire to do lower end content in red spec.

I really like what you guys did with the Guardian class, I am looking forward to doing landscape stuff in red spec, it is not as powerful as it used to be in terms of doing area of effect damage, but the rotation has been simplified and it flows well. Half tha time when BE is on cooldown i don't know what I should be hitting, it feels like there are deadzones, it doesn't seem to flow very well and there isn't a decent single target rotation and a area of effect rotation, it is in an odd place with its cast-time to cooldown ratios where to me the gameplay feels disjointed and awkward. It also seems to be difficult to max out damage on a single target if you are for instance relying on dazing some adds.

I was watching a fully kitted out LM dpsing away on the same targets and he wasn't exactly blowing me out of the park, it kind of seems convoluted, there are a lot of buttons and a complex mechanics with dot upgrading for not a whole lot of bang. I think i would do more damage with my hunter just using a couple of inductions.

I hope I am missing something and I am doing something spectacularly wrong, but I feel we lost an opportunity to make the class flow a lot better. If we are ultimately never going to raid dps, why does the class have to be as awkward as it is?

[flamestrom]

I have a feeling that a suicide squad has landed in this thread, or we have a conflict of interest. Some players definitely know the problems of LM in PvE content, but blind, deaf and dumb to everything about PvMP. No one in their right mind will talk about the speed of induction or how long you throw the embers at nearest targets in the case of a quick and usually unequal battle. We add here the server lag and many macro players. Decided to mez someone? In this case, there are purchased items from lotro-store. And in general, an arsenal of anti-control is quite wide. So keep inducting or wave your stick while someone tearing you apart.

Here I read... Lightning-storm is too strong, and the Ents go to War are unreasonably weak at cooldown in 5 minutes (by the way, I'm surprised that someone uses them). It is argued that the skills gained in force. I disagree. A couple of stick strokes and a new Wizard's fire are not enough. Like the new Power of Knowledge either. At the same time, some people are dissatisfied with Nature's Fury and still asks to leave it's frost damage (lightning from this skill is generally weak). Then suggested to improve the ability Don't Interrupt Me... Say so... It is useful only for those who unhurriedly mutters spells without any noticeable positive result. LM has too little health and too holey armor. And yes, reflected damage will not be high. And if we had it, we'd be dead by now. Maybe someone likes to get extra attacks during induction, I don't.

There was a suggestion to transfer from a yellow line skill the Storm-lore. I support this in terms of transfer, but with transfer to the blue line. And a Lightning-storm with a Lightning-strike also. Please, leave all clean energy to nature. And leave for yourself all the delights of Pyromania and Cold. You could destroy the Training-dummies every day by the temperature difference and with all these new modern changes in searing enbers, Gust of wind, etc. I think all of this, and skill Don't Interrupt Me too, will be a fair offer for those who such wanna these changes. And don't forget about 15 secs cooldown for Don't Interrupt Me as were told earlier.

Now a few words about Critical Coordination... I'm not sure that everyone here plays for LM. Because some of the offered changes very strange and unwelcome. And the point in to deprive this line of its main creative beginning, its alpha and omega. Which gives to LM his first and last ultimate argument in open confrontation. The argument which dispels all illusions of an easy victory over LM. It's the cornerstone of all blue line. It's the most valuable thing. All LM's zoo is not so important as this. But despite this, we are offered to abandon instant-cast. There are already have 15 seconds of cooldown and no one has ever offered to remove them. What else do you need?

Now about damage. Did it grows or not? I insist it is not. And to confirm these words I'll show a few screenshots. I did not include some of the red-line skills because I don't have a legacies for them. But I'll give you the numbers that I have without legacies (they a little bit higher then I saw from another players with correct legacies as they claim, maybe it's because they don't have tactical-cap). So... The Ring of Fire (18454 - 26363 at Arkenstone and 17109 - 24441 at Bullroarer) and the Ents go to War (29348 - 41926 at Arkenstone and 27382 - 39119 at Bullroarer). By the way, does anybody worries that the legacy for Sticky Gourd simultaneously boosts the Rings of Fire... Should we "fix it" also?

Play for fun, but don't stop others from doing the same. Offer only the most necessary, and not all at once. Especially if it is something that you obviously do not use constantly, and you don't have much interest in keeping it. And now a few screenshots as I promised.

[Vastin]

Looking good so far. Been testing on 115 mobs in Dale, Red now feels a lot safer to be in, especially when facing more than one mob. Glad to be back in red line after traiting to blue so I could survive mordor. Overall some modest DPS increases to most red skills. Light of the Rising Dawn only got a very slight increase. Power of Knowledge looks interesting now as it has a channelled lightning damage effect! 10,641 - 15,201 damage every 1 second (duration 5.5s)

Thanks for the detailed breakdowns I'm getting from all of you - those are super helpful.

I always spreadsheet out all my changes so I can see what I'm doing with the various cooldowns, damage ratios and so on, but only for a very generic build and gearing set. I simply don't have the hours in the day to play with the all the new potential variations that might arise from my modifications, so seeing what you folks achieve with more attention to your specific traiting, gearing and rotations is extremely useful feedback.

One thing about these current damage numbers, I know we haven't forced the unslotting of the previous tactical relics, so please make sure that your current BR tests are done with only ONE DPS and Healing relic, as that will be enforced on live - *if* we have another BR build it should be enforced there as well.

As an aside, I'll be looking at updating pet damage when next I come around to the lore-master. That wasn't a can of worms I wanted to open on this particular pass, and they seem to be doing a decent job as off-tank/distractions for the time being.

-Vastin

[Remcosajax]

Thanks for the detailed breakdowns I'm getting from all of you - those are super helpful.

I always spreadsheet out all my changes so I can see what I'm doing with the various cooldowns, damage ratios and so on, but only for a very generic build and gearing set. I simply don't have the hours in the day to play with the all the new potential variations that might arise from my modifications, so seeing what you folks achieve with more attention to your specific traiting, gearing and rotations is extremely useful feedback.

One thing about these current damage numbers, I know we haven't forced the unslotting of the previous tactical relics, so please make sure that your current BR tests are done with only ONE DPS and Healing relic, as that will be enforced on live - *if* we have another BR build it should be enforced there as well.

As an aside, I'll be looking at updating pet damage when next I come around to the lore-master. That wasn't a can of worms I wanted to open on this particular pass, and they seem to be doing a decent job as off-tank/distractions for the time being.

-Vastin

I did unslotted my tact dps relic on the tooltips I've shown. I know that can be a bit misleading and I also encourage people to unslot them, as the value of numbers with it is not representable.

Thanks for reading and paying attention to our posts! But rather the implying new things, fix things that are obviously not working as intended or are simply broken. Thanks for taking a look at pets though. They need some desperate love (even though I am not really fond of the blue line). I will try to post some dps parses for you Vastin but... It's not really 100% representable, as some interactions are still not really optimal (For red that's mainly post-animation of ent's go to war and gust of wind and both staff-strike/sweep skills).

[B749]

Thanks for the detailed breakdowns I'm getting from all of you - those are super helpful.

I always spreadsheet out all my changes so I can see what I'm doing with the various cooldowns, damage ratios and so on, but only for a very generic build and gearing set. I simply don't have the hours in the day to play with the all the new potential variations that might arise from my modifications, so seeing what you folks achieve with more attention to your specific traiting, gearing and rotations is extremely useful feedback.

One thing about these current damage numbers, I know we haven't forced the unslotting of the previous tactical relics, so please make sure that your current BR tests are done with only ONE DPS and Healing relic, as that will be enforced on live - *if* we have another BR build it should be enforced there as well.

As an aside, I'll be looking at updating pet damage when next I come around to the lore-master. That wasn't a can of worms I wanted to open on this particular pass, and they seem to be doing a decent job as off-tank/distractions for the time being.

-Vastin

Yeah I feared that might be the case; in that case you'll need to bump at least the ST damage up significantly (AoE might still be plenty strong with one relic only). I'd go test to give you parse numbers with only one relic but it seems BR is currently closed Worth noting though: this tactical relic nerf you did, in combination with buffs to physical classes, means none of the tactical classes is competetive anymore as a group content DPS. They just fell behind by a fair bit (RK DPS with one relic is sub 40k, Hunter is over 60k with same quality of gear for example, and the RK's fire mit debuffs would increase the Hunter damage even further if they were in the same group). Also it nerfed Red minstrels, which were actually in a nice spot with 2x tactical damage relic. I'd encourage you to consider tweaking Tactical Damage rating on tactical classes' ILI's to get them in a somewhat decent position compared to the physical classes.

Back to the LM specifics - the easiest way to achieve higher ST is to make Power of Knowledge a lot stronger, but obviously we wouldn't want a RK-type scenario where one or two skills are generating the majority of the damage. Lightning Strike is already hitting quite hard and on a short cooldown so I don't think further damage increases to that one are a good idea either. That leaves Light of the Rising Dawn, which is on a 30s cooldown (and for a reason, it being a short induction 3s hard stun, the duration of which can be extended with Yellow line traits). Staff Strike is also ST but it's melee and low damage, only worth using for procs associated with it.

• I think the most elegant way to bump ST damage without risking AoE OP-ness is adding an additional single target skill, either hooked up behind a trait or as an auto-grant while levelling. Short to medium cooldown, high ST damage. Or a longer CD but with a potent bleed or channel.
• Otherwise, you could just increase Embers damage but that would obviously have an effect on AoE dps as well.
• Or, you could add an effect to Light of the Rising Dawn that will cause the target to suffer increased damage from Embers for 20s (LotRD is on a 30s CD so that means 66% uptime). That would increase ST while leaving AoE where it is.
• You might also want to look into how cashing Embers out behaves; it currently prioritizes Searing Embers over Burning if both are present on the target, which is obviously less than optimal for sustained DPS. While we can sort of counteract this with a clever rotation, making it pick Burning instead of Searing by default would already help the DPS a bit as well.
• Or several of the above if you have time just throwing some suggestions around!

Pets: while you're at it, you might want to double check the amount of morale pets gain when blue specced is WAI, they can go over 300k health at level 115 which is more than a fully geared tank class gets. Especially if you plan to update their damage (which I am happy to hear!) we don't want them to be too powerful, right?

[Remcosajax]

Yeah I feared that might be the case; in that case you'll need to bump at least the ST damage up significantly (AoE might still be plenty strong with one relic only). I'd go test to give you parse numbers with only one relic but it seems BR is currently closed Worth noting though: this tactical relic nerf you did, in combination with buffs to physical classes, means none of the tactical classes is competetive anymore as a group content DPS. They just fell behind by a fair bit (RK DPS with one relic is sub 40k, Hunter is over 60k with same quality of gear for example, and the RK's fire mit debuffs would increase the Hunter damage even further if they were in the same group). Also it nerfed Red minstrels, which were actually in a nice spot with 2x tactical damage relic. I'd encourage you to consider tweaking Tactical Damage rating on tactical classes' ILI's to get them in a somewhat decent position compared to the physical classes.

Back to the LM specifics - the easiest way to achieve higher ST is to make Power of Knowledge a lot stronger, but obviously we wouldn't want a RK-type scenario where one or two skills are generating the majority of the damage. Lightning Strike is already hitting quite hard and on a short cooldown so I don't think further damage increases to that one are a good idea either. That leaves Light of the Rising Dawn, which is on a 30s cooldown (and for a reason, it being a short induction 3s hard stun, the duration of which can be extended with Yellow line traits). Staff Strike is also ST but it's melee and low damage, only worth using for procs associated with it.

• I think the most elegant way to bump ST damage without risking AoE OP-ness is adding an additional single target skill, either hooked up behind a trait or as an auto-grant while levelling. Short to medium cooldown, high ST damage. Or a longer CD but with a potent bleed or channel.
• Otherwise, you could just increase Embers damage but that would obviously have an effect on AoE dps as well.
• Or, you could add an effect to Light of the Rising Dawn that will cause the target to suffer increased damage from Embers for 20s (LotRD is on a 30s CD so that means 66% uptime). That would increase ST while leaving AoE where it is.
• You might also want to look into how cashing Embers out behaves; it currently prioritizes Searing Embers over Burning if both are present on the target, which is obviously less than optimal for sustained DPS. While we can sort of counteract this with a clever rotation, making it pick Burning instead of Searing by default would already help the DPS a bit as well.
• Or several of the above if you have time just throwing some suggestions around!

Pets: while you're at it, you might want to double check the amount of morale pets gain when blue specced is WAI, they can go over 300k health at level 115 which is more than a fully geared tank class gets. Especially if you plan to update their damage (which I am happy to hear!) we don't want them to be too powerful, right?

- Don't think I want even more option for dps skills on my bars to be honest. As for Power of Knowledge, buff the channel duration, not the damage of it. U can even chose to interrupt it urself then.
- Not a fan of buffing BE-> brings back to whole thing about SE to be spammed in your rotation
- Interesting buff for light of the rising dawn, but also circles to much for me around BE
- True, but cashing out searing embers does more damage then cashing out burning embers. I do however agree that it's still a slight dps loss

I would not increase lightning strike damage, but increase to make the 2d hit from lightning strike hit. I would improve the cd for that slightly though
Not sure really how to buff ST dps properly without mezzing with other interactions or centralizing dps rotation back to 1-2 spamable skills

For pets maybe a slight health nerf, in favour of a damage boost might be justified, BUT mits are defo not the same for pets as for tanks on level cap, so uncomparable...