Class Update - Loremasters

[Fulgurix]

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!

Interesting suggestions (like the new damage skill idea and LotRD debuff). What about simply increasing Burning Embers base damage (not the dot)? That won't affect aoe in any way i can think of, and considered the short cooldown it should have enough impact on a DPS parse.

[B749]

- 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.

The problem is almost all of those DPS skills are AoE, which makes ST dps balancing really tricky It is true the channel duration vs cooldown of Power of Knowledge seems a bit off, but I don't know if Vastin intended it as a main rotational DPS skill or simply added the damage effect to it to give the skill a reason for existing after removing the power drain and self heal effect.

- Not a fan of buffing BE-> brings back to whole thing about SE to be spammed in your rotation

It kinda still is the main thing for sustained DPS though, you just get to use more Lightning Strike now and have the PoK channel.

- Interesting buff for light of the rising dawn, but also circles to much for me around BE

Well another skill also works, but seeing as BE/SE is the main rotational skill for red LM it seemed like an obvious pick

- 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

For burst, cashing out Searing is good. For sustain... less than optimal glad you agree!

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

You mean increase the proc chance of Improbable Lightning Strike? Might work, but it's too much of a RNG based thing for reliable DPS rotations IMO. But yeah, it really is tricky to think of simple changes to boost ST without also boosting AoE, and not revert to a build spamming the same two to three skills over and over again. Was just throwing some suggestions out there that could work

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...

Yeah that's what I mean, wouldn't want to have a 300+k morale pet dealing a ton of damage Currently the pets work great as aggro tool and damage spunge for dealing with groups of mobs (then you can AoE burst them down, which is faster than using CC and ST).

[Arveduie]

Just an fyi for people commenting on single target options, Staff Strike is no longer a traditional melee skill on BR. Its using a modest value of fixed Beleriand damage that seems to be modified by tactical damage rating on the LI (asked Vastin about it a few posts back but he hasn't responded to the question). Tested this by grabbing a low level staff from the skirmish camp with common damage. Staff Strike still listed as something in the ranged of 1800 beleriand damage (and if I remember right, continued to list this damage even with no staff equipped but can't double check with the server down). The downside: its still definitely only being modified by physical mastery.

All of that said, if it were converted to base Fire damage and both it and the flanked effect were given a potency boost to be in line with the direct damage of Burning Embers, with a 3c cd it would fix most of the LM single target issue in Red. I'd also suggest reverting the Sword and Storm trait (which I only ever trait for another stun to cashout while Ancient Master) to the older Sword and Staff trait. +25% crit chance, a modest boost to crit multiplier, and a 2s stun on critical hits spread over the 4 ranks of the trait.

Though I do realize you're running out of time for major changes, so maybe just the damage type change and a boost to numbers before it hits live, Vastin?

[Remcosajax]

The problem is almost all of those DPS skills are AoE, which makes ST dps balancing really tricky It is true the channel duration vs cooldown of Power of Knowledge seems a bit off, but I don't know if Vastin intended it as a main rotational DPS skill or simply added the damage effect to it to give the skill a reason for existing after removing the power drain and self heal effect.

Don't want to improve the channel duration for dps reasons, rather for power reasons... Dps is just an additional gain.

It kinda still is the main thing for sustained DPS though, you just get to use more Lightning Strike now and have the PoK channel. Well another skill also works, but seeing as BE/SE is the main rotational skill for red LM it seemed like an obvious pick

True, but so was Searing Embers.... Which has been a boring single dimension skill spam. I would think of option to buff other attacks then BE. If BE gets even (additional) buffs, then we are back at pre-update, were u forget about other skills and just spam 1 skill.

You mean increase the proc chance of Improbable Lightning Strike? Might work, but it's too much of a RNG based thing for reliable DPS rotations IMO. But yeah, it really is tricky to think of simple changes to boost ST without also boosting AoE, and not revert to a build spamming the same two to three skills over and over again. Was just throwing some suggestions out there that could work

Exactly my point. Agree with rng, just think it's one of the easiest changes, seeing the amount of AoE affected skills loremaster have. Another thing that might work is buffing wizard's fire and make it ST (remove the capstone trait)

Just think in general, a class shouldn't be based on doing damage generated by 1-2 skills. Buffing BE will do this, which I am strongly against.

Yeah that's what I mean, wouldn't want to have a 300+k morale pet dealing a ton of damage Currently the pets work great as aggro tool and damage spunge for dealing with groups of mobs (then you can AoE burst them down, which is faster than using CC and ST).

Pet's just need a lot of work. There needs to be done more then a general damage increase or a health decrease. In my opinion, pet's should be unique in terms of tankyniss (bear, doing low damage. but more health/defences) or utility (raven, with reasonable damage, but less health) and pure dps (lynx/sabre-tooth, with strong dps but the lowest health pool)

[CaerArianrhod]

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.

As you said. Your opinion (and an extremely bad suggestion).

Windlore is the only way (apart from ancient master) you can debuff more than one mob at a time and keep up the debuff!
I have no idea if you raid, but your suggestion would kill the LM as debuffer for the raid! They are other classes/other skills which can apply inc. damage better on the mob.
the 1% is fine as it is (and if it not bugged again) and as a nice side effect but it is not the main purpose of the skill!

[Remcosajax]

As you said. Your opinion (and an extremely bad suggestion).

Yes it's my opinion and it's you opinion it's extremly bad. We all have thoughts, and I speak out what I think is important and u can share your thoughts aswell

I have no idea if you raid

You are joking right? I wouldnt be on the forums if I didn't raid. Maybe read people's signature for once and have some info about the few raiding kins, who are still out there.

Windlore is the only way (apart from ancient master) you can debuff more than one mob at a time and keep up the debuff!

No, as you stated yourself Windlore is defo not the only way and shouldnt be the main way (which it is right now) to AoE debuff targets asap. Wind-lore should be used for refreshing, nothing more nothing less. That's not my biggest concern though. Also, with those changes you can still keep it up, that's not gonna change.

kill the LM as debuffer for the raid! They are other classes/other skills which can apply inc. damage better on the mob.
the 1% is fine as it is (and if it not bugged again) and as a nice side effect but it is not the main purpose of the skill!

Now you are just getting mad. If you have a different opinion, that's fine with me, but these arguments are just shooting wildfire.
The change doesnt change anything to LM capability to debuff! Not at all. I don't ask for a removal of Fire-Lore or Frost-lore.

The purpose of the skill is to spread Fire-lore and frost-lore, and the ability to keep them up. Right now.. It's way to easy. I don't have to watch my debuffs. I don't have to watch the cd on Wind-lore. I can spread them whenever I feel like, whenver I want.
That's not how I see a skill should be. In my opinion that's broken. If you can't manage to refresh it on time on live right now. You should reroll. I want to make it more intenser to watch debuffs and to refresh correctly. If you are really in that much concern of making more then 6 mobs keeping up fire-lore (which is rarely the case), i'd chose to give it more targets over a cd at any time.

The incoming damage buff can stay on 1% for your sake. That was something I thought of as compensation. For me atleast a skill that has a 5 sec cd, is just rewarding players for not watching their debuffs on time. That's not gameplay you should want as a raider.

[jomanjy]

without ancient master, you really don't have any aoe skill to spread fire/frost lore on big amount of mobs except windlore, i don't mind increasing the cd that sounds good but if you do so you need to increase the spread targets from 3 to at least 6-7.

[CaerArianrhod]

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.

Altogether the LM AoE damage is now fine. I just could made only 3 tests for that. in the first the parsed dps was 82K
The 2nd and 3rd is in the picture. For a short time i was a bit over 100K DPS (* see at the end). BUT: during testing a 5% damage scroll was up!




Gust of Wind:
the induction time says now 1.1s but the animation is still going longer than that.
You may want to check the new red trait, if it applies the reduced time correctly to the skills.

Honestly we just allow too many targets on many of the AoE skills currently.

Not on the LM! 5 targets are mostly we can hit with AoE Skills. Other classes can hit more. However, we do not need more but also we do not need less!

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.

Yes and no. (and please do not close BR so fast!)
I think if you combine some legacies the single damage would be fine. (for example: Light of the Rising Dawn Base Critical Damage + Light of the Rising Dawn Damage or Burning Embers Initial Damage + Burning Embers Critical Chance and Burning Embers Critical Magnitude) . We just have to many damage legacies (and to few support/animal legacies). Basically we need a staff for AoE and a staff for single target damage.

In this test i was mainly skilled for AoE damage, with the legacies for not AoE skill damage in think the DPS would be around 20-22K

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.

For all tests:
tact. mastery 202K (380%), crit: 60K (23%), finesse: 123K (23.3%) + 5% damage scroll. no other buffs, like buff food etc.
I unslotted the tactical dps relic from the book!
staff legacies:
- Tactical Skills Direct Damage
- Nature's Fury Skill Damage
- Lightning-storm Base Damage
- Sticky Gourd Base Direct Damage
- Ring of Fire Damage
- Fire Skills Critical Damage
- Lightning Skills Critical Rating

Book legacies:
- Fire Damage Over Time
- Light-type Damage and Lightning-type Damage
- Fire Skills Critical Rating
- Target Resistance (Fire Skills)
- Target Resistance (Damaging Skills)

[Remcosajax]

without ancient master, you really don't have any aoe skill to spread fire/frost lore on big amount of mobs except windlore, i don't mind increasing the cd that sounds good but if you do so you need to increase the spread targets from 3 to at least 6-7.

Didn't thought about that at first, but think this is a great idea. I am full aware the skill is of importance, but it's to easy and to forgiven as of now. I really encourage to make it hit 6-7 targets and increase the cooldown (15-20s)

[Fasin]

Not on the LM! 5 targets are mostly we can hit with AoE Skills. Other classes can hit more. However, we do not need more but also we do not need less!

Skills that hit more than 5 targets: Ring of Fire secondary, Sticky gourd hotspot (and the burning embers that stack from it), lightning storm hotspot, Nature's fury,
Skills that hit only 5 targets: Cracked earth, ents go to war, sticky gourd initial damage, lightning storm, Ring of Fire initial

That is hardly mostly 5 targets. Even looking at your aoe parse, much of the damage came from abilities that are greater than 5 targets.

[Siddharta]

No, as you stated yourself Windlore is defo not the only way and shouldnt be the main way (which it is right now) to AoE debuff targets asap. Wind-lore should be used for refreshing, nothing more nothing less. That's not my biggest concern though. Also, with those changes you can still keep it up, that's not gonna change.


The purpose of the skill is to spread Fire-lore and frost-lore, and the ability to keep them up. Right now.. It's way to easy. I don't have to watch my debuffs. I don't have to watch the cd on Wind-lore. I can spread them whenever I feel like, whenver I want.
That's not how I see a skill should be. In my opinion that's broken. If you can't manage to refresh it on time on live right now. You should reroll. I want to make it more intenser to watch debuffs and to refresh correctly. If you are really in that much concern of making more then 6 mobs keeping up fire-lore (which is rarely the case), i'd chose to give it more targets over a cd at any time.

Totally agree!

Yellow Line Suggestions:

1. Increase 'Wind-Lore' cooldown to 10s, remove incoming damage debuff
2. Decrease 'Gust of Wind' Induction to 0.5s
3. Add +3% incoming damage debuff to 'Gust of Wind', duration 10s (maybe as trait replacement for 'Power of Knowledge)
4. Make 'Pleasant Breeze' available after any usage of 'Gust of Wind', not critical only ('Pleasant Breeze' trait); Increase 'Pleasant Breeze' cooldown to 30s
5. Insrease Fire-Lore\Frost-Lore cooldowns from 0s to 3s

[CaerArianrhod]

You are joking right? I wouldnt be on the forums if I didn't raid. Maybe read people's signature for once and have some info about the few raiding kins, who are still out there.

https://www.lotro.com/forums/profile.php?do=editoptions

[Siddharta]

Btw, 'Wind-lore' stacks up to 3% , i think this was the main idea of 5s cooldown (to keep it active on a target). But this has gone too far with debuff renewal.
In my understanding 'Wind-Lore' must not renew any debuffs on the main target and only spread them.

[flamestrom]

So... Now "we need" the Wind-lore which can't renew debuffs effects on targets (which is the main purpose for this skill)... It means that in some moments big-bad-boss and his friends could hits us with special attacks undebuffed... Are you serious believe that it would be so interesting for LM's and for entire raid (especially for tanks)? I suggest to all people who write it just for fun, please leave LM's thread and come back to your own classes.

[Nleuter]

You guys all seem to be forgetting several things.
Firstly, the secondary debuff effect of fire and frost lore changes depending on the type of the last skill you hit the target with. Adding a cooldown to fire lore or frost lore means that now we need to find another way to fix a procing BE if it drops out the frost secondary debuff. Further, any changes to wind lore should come with a corresponding change of it's typing to a lightning skill. Right now, we have three types of secondary debuffs, but only two kinds of primary debuffs.

What I would suggest is reworking wind lore to be a proper lightning style debuff, so move say 5% ranged damage reduction from the lighting secondary debuff, and then add a lightning typing to wind lore, this means we now have the ability to properly move between the three kinds of debuffs. Along with this, I would do a cooldown reduction of maybe 20% to ancient master, and make gust of wind spread the debuff effects. This means we now condense the skills used to spread, and have a properly fully featured set of debuffs. to summize.

1. Make wind lore have a cooldown of 0 and add a reduction to ranged damage of 5%. Wind Lore no longer spreads debuff effects.
2. Change Wind Lore's typing to be a lightning type skill.
3. Add the debuff spreading interaction to Gust of Wind
4. Decrease the cooldown of Ancient Master by about 20%.


This should help to adjust the way debuffs work towards being consistent. You could even do the transfer of Stormlore to say Nature's Fury, and have a third line for wind lore as a proper debuff.

The other bonus is that of symmetry, this change would mean that the three base elemental lores, Wind, Fire, Frost, which can be seen to correspond with the three elven rings now operate in the same manner.

[flamestrom]

Gust of Wind deals damage which breaks CC, the Wind-lore is not.

[WorrBinpike]

In my opinion the debuffing on the loremaster is nice as it is. Don't change to much over there.

The only reason it could be boring in future is, that you don't have to deal with power of hunters, since they don't need power anymore.

But other than that, the LM has more than enough to do in AoM T2(c).

[BotLike]

I honestly don't see what the problem with wind-lore is.

Have they fixed the finesse bug ?

Loremaster is the only class that requires 200k+ finesse to get 0 resist. All that due to wind-lore spreading.
As a result, you are required to use agility gear while supportting due the well-known sloppy Mordor will itemisation.

Fix that first , then we talk windlore cooldown.

Till then it needs to retain its current form for lore-masters that don't have the finesse build.

Ancient master for the pull part ( trash pulls etc ) , windlore to maintain debuffs , nothing wrong here.

It sounds easy , i know , low cd , 45 sec buff renewed , but every experienced lm here knows your hands are full anyway. I'd rather not have to worry about windlore being on cd or not when i finally get the time or see a good opportunity to use it. ( mobs moving around random attacking etc )

[flamestrom]

Here are too many theorists and not enough practitioners. That is why the joy for the first is the headache for the second.

[Remcosajax]

I honestly don't see what the problem with wind-lore is.

Have they fixed the finesse bug ?

Loremaster is the only class that requires 200k+ finesse to get 0 resist. All that due to wind-lore spreading.
As a result, you are required to use agility gear while supportting due the well-known sloppy Mordor will itemisation.

Fix that first , then we talk windlore cooldown.

Till then it needs to retain its current form for lore-masters that don't have the finesse build.

Ancient master for the pull part ( trash pulls etc ) , windlore to maintain debuffs , nothing wrong here.

It sounds easy , i know , low cd , 45 sec buff renewed , but every experienced lm here knows your hands are full anyway. I'd rather not have to worry about windlore being on cd or not when i finally get the time or see a good opportunity to use it. ( mobs moving around random attacking etc )

An official repsonse as of why loremasters need such high finesse to get zero resists would be nice ye. That beings sad. I completed all t2 chalanges on Abyss on loremaster with 110k finesse. The only reason why I was able to do that, is that I didn't had to worry much about not refreshing the skill on time or it being resisted.

The essence of the skill also remains the same, as it will be used to refresh debuffs, that's nothing wrong.
I also agree that a loremaster has many jobs (most are additional tasks) and is maybe one of the few classes which is hardest to pull off but I just want Windlore to be changed, because I think it's a broken mechanic for various reasons previous explained.

It's quite frustrating as a loremaster on endgame to see so much resistance to a (not even a big) change. The cooldown becomes bigger, but it will affect more targets. That's hardly a nerf.

[Herwegur]

Thank you, Vastin, for your close attention to this thread. Very happy with the current beta changes, and especially with having both Wizard's Fire and Power of Knowledge back.

When it comes to LM Red Line, may I bring up one area that hasn't received any focus yet in this beta: LM melee skills. Staff Strike and Staff Sweep have sadly remained neglected and underpowered ever since Helms Deep trait changes.

Associating LM with melee might sound unlikely to those who only alt this class, but it's no secret to main-LM players that one of the most fun (and challenging) ways to use a red-line LM is to maximize its melee potential. Staff strike/sweep might seem like mere fringe or 'flavor' skills, but it's actually about strategic positioning, survival-based rotations, and overall having more tools in our arsenal on how to manage fights.

Just wanted to clarify this crucial distinction. Requests to increase LM melee DPS don't come from same sources as generic clamoring to "make [class] stronger!" etc. Requesting to increase LM melee DPS is based upon the earlier, pre-Helms-Deep LM gameplay and the strategic affordances it offered - specific to, and rooted in, original LM play style that has been lost with HD changes.
After five years (!) of hoping for LM class updates and hoping that Staff melee skills would get a closer look - Please consider these requests.

Others in thread are sharing same concern:

Make Staff Strike and Staff Sweep Tactical Skills dealing light damage and with damage scaling based on Tactical Damage Rating. Having a meaningful set of staff skills will return some of the pre-HD risk/reward where DPS will be greater if you risk being in melee range, gives us something to do against fire resistant bosses and will make our single target rotation more interesting than Burning Embers spam. Plus its cool.

• Melee damage needs to be scaled (Staff-Strike, Staff-Sweep, Autoattacks). Maybe make melee skills do Light damage so they scale with Tactical Damage Rating? This seems like an easy fix that someone else in the thread recommended.

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

I'd also suggest reverting the Sword and Storm trait (which I only ever trait for another stun to cashout while Ancient Master) to the older Sword and Staff trait. +25% crit chance, a modest boost to crit multiplier, and a 2s stun on critical hits spread over the 4 ranks of the trait.

For reference - Here was the original Staff trait and its effects, until Helms Deep trait tree changes just threw it away entirely without any discussion or explanation (many wanted it back during HD beta) -



Instead of all that... we ended up with a once-a-minute bonus lightning damage + stun effect ("Sword and Storm" trait), literally something that can't proc more than once every 60 seconds. This trait was literally just thrown at us as it is, and remained exactly the same since then, despite numerous suggestions to add extra tiers to this trait boosting melee/melee crit damage with each tier, to resemble the functionality of the original lost trait.

It was one of the hardest things to lose in HD class changes, as I had built my LM to rely on that melee dps boost (when red-traited) - with maxed mitigation virtues while still leveling, LM is FUN in melee range. Extra damage on flanks made the flank procs more exciting too: giving you choice how to consume the flank effect, resulting in more vigilant engagement during fights. Losing that melee trait affected and disrupted my entire playstyle in red line.

(You know how LM players are addicted to strategic complexity in skill rotations... This is just to show there is much more happening in LM melee than just hitting stuff with a stick. LM melee is never just about melee, it's about high risk/high reward situations and creating own survival strategies - a whole different dimension in red LM play, brings even more adrenaline rush than just blasting everything from safe distance. )

If melee staff skills can get some up-tweaks or boosts, it will mean more than just raw stats: it will open the door to more rotation customizations, more positioning strategies, and overall more diversity in battle scenarios for red-line LMs... a door that was closed long ago and remained locked too long.

• Perhaps the cleanest way to address it is to add extra ranks to current "Sword and Storm" trait, each rank granting more +staff damage% and more +staff critical damage%.
• Capping this trait at all ranks could result in staff skills becoming Light damage type (as in original trait and as many suggested above). To tie it thematically, storm does involve flashes of light... no clash with trait name.
• Would even be ok with staff skills becoming Lightning damage instead (the once-a-minute lightning effect can stay for visual flair, it's fun) - the underlying request is to convert staff skills to tactical damage, so they would scale easier. If converting to tactical damage unlocks only by capping all ranks of this trait, it's buried deep enough to require a trade-off somewhere else, per original trait line intentions of having to make choices.
• Alternatively, +staff damage% and converting to tactical skills could be tacked on to existing "Fend Them Off" trait as additional effects on its tiers, and hence no need to create brand new tiers for "Sword and Storm". Since unlocking "Fend Them Off" requires activation of "Sword and Storm" trait, it is equally consistent to have these additional effects here instead. Plus it's buried even deeper in red line.
• +staff damage% and converting staff skills to tactical dmg could be a red-line exclusive - for example, same way as accessing upper tiers of Ancient Craft trait is "incompatible" with red line.

If time is running out in current beta to address LM staff skills in any way - could it please be added to the list of issues to be tested in next round of LM updates? Staff skills really are more integral to LM than how it seems.

Thank you for your consideration.

[GrayTalon]

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'm glad to see the red line get some attention. However, please remember you are working with the only real pet class that LOTRO has. Keep that in mind when you think of the class for general use. Raid spots for LM's will always remain as debuffing/cc, but we should be trying to make sure small fellow and even fellow spots find blue line LM's useful. (And of course I'd rather see more complicated pet / LM / party interactions over simple DPS, but I'll take what we can get)

[Aelir]

I'm glad to see the red line get some attention. However, please remember you are working with the only real pet class that LOTRO has. Keep that in mind when you think of the class for general use. Raid spots for LM's will always remain as debuffing/cc, but we should be trying to make sure small fellow and even fellow spots find blue line LM's useful. (And of course I'd rather see more complicated pet / LM / party interactions over simple DPS, but I'll take what we can get)

It's been confirmed that next round of LM updates will focus on pet stuff. And really keeping fingers crossed that LM yellow line will get attention too.

New increases to LM healing in this update are very and truly welcome, something that is useful in blue (not just in red) So it's not just one trait line getting attention over others: other aspects of LM will also be looked at, ahead. This particular beta just started with red but it won't end there.

[ainor]

Hi Everyone!

Since a lot of the discussion is about the debuffing part I’d like to add my 2 cents, or rather vote for a few suggestions made by others and add a few of mine. I haven’t been on BR so I won’t comment on any numbers. If anything seams off, feel free to ignore. I have played LM a lot back in the days and it has always been my favourite class, especially the AM traitline. I’ve been following this thread and I just couldn’t resist to add some of my thoughts.

As I see it the debuffing system has two main problems.

a/ The debuffs change depending on damage type. This was not a good idea and it will never be because LM has a lot of AoE skills. This has also been mentioned by others e.g. post #72 by Nleuter.

b/ Several of the debuffs are far too weak! (As mentioned by Turin 347, post #67.) Two out of six debuffs are completely useless. (-Tactical mastery and +Power cost. debuffs)

So, what to do?

One suggestion that came up on the forums some years ago, made by Tatharil, if I remember correctly. (I hope you don’t mind me bringing it up!) This suggestion is to totally remove the lightning from the debuffing system. I have thought about this and I think it’s a great idea. Then I thought, maybe we could combine it with removing the underwhelming parts of the debuffs. This will not remove the problem with debuffs changing with damage type, but it will simplify it. Just to give you an idea, here is an example:

Playing with fire
Fire-lore+fire: +15% attack duration
Fire-lore+frost: +10% miss chance
Out in the cold
Frost-lore+frost: -xx% ranged damage (adjust uptime and % so it won’t be too strong.)
Frost-lore+fire: +20% skill inductions

With current build on BR, gust of wind is tied to BE. Wizards fire is used for flanking. To make it even more clean, please remove the damage type (frost) from Wind-lore. Instead it will be damage type WIND and will NOT affect debuffs. It will be used to spread debuffs. This suggestion shouldn’t be too hard to implement as it is mostly about removing a few things, not adding new stuff.

Another way to fix the underwhelming debuffing system is to do as Jula suggests (post #77). Enfeeble trait have been bugged for ever! If you can’t fix it, change it to a new trait that adds +2 targets to fire and frost-lore. I really like this suggestion! Maybe it could be combined with the one above, but with the difference that Wind-lore (instead of Frost-lore+frost) would get back it’s ranged damage debuff back. As I said before, if it’s too OP, just lower its % or uptime. Frost-lore+frost would be like now, -tactical damage, but please change it to percentage.

There have been many fine suggestions in this thread and it’s great to see the devs communicating and even listening to feedback. I never thought I’d see that, at least not in a thread dedicated for the LM-class. Even if you don’t change anything with the debuffing system, I hope you will consider changing the following, which have been mentioned by many others already.

· Fix the Enfeeble-bug. If you can not, change it as Jula suggests. Come on devs, it has been bugged since it was first introduced!

· Increase radius of Beacon of Hope. Currently this is a single target heal!

· Increase Melee damage, Staff strike and Staff sweep. There is a very fine post by Herwegur. (Post #147) Please read.

· Delete Pleasant Breeze, a rng heal from crit is useless. Please remove. Instead create a new trait: make improved flanking come back! (Flank heals now heals your Air lore target.)

· The trait Level-headed is useless. Please delete or change to something actually useful. Maybe you could add a five meters range on Water-lore on top of the -moral cost, just add something to make it a little more appealing?

· Since HD and the trait trees, I always thought that red and blue LM has too much access to CC and debuffs. To address this, one very simple change would be to change the yellow line cap stone (left column) Force of Will to also include +15 s. on Blinding flash. (Blue and red will have 15s. Yellow 30s.) Not sure if I remember correctly, but I think Jula suggested something similar.

/a

[Oelle]

· Delete Pleasant Breeze, a rng heal from crit is useless. Please remove. Instead create a new trait: make improved flanking come back! (Flank heals now heals your Air lore target.)

I read somewhere, that its somehow possible to put air lore on multiple people.
I dont know how, but that should be fixed, before flankheals for airloretarget come back.