Thoughts on LM Class Changes?

[Despotis]

Loremaster:
-Instant damage has been increased on several skills.
-Nature's Wrath's periodic damage has been increased.
-Improved Staff Sweep now deals Light damage.
-The cooldown on Knowledge of Power has been reduced from 60 seconds to 45 seconds.
-Ring of Fire now deals significantly more damage in an area burst.
-Wizard's Fire now benefits from and removes Improved Staff Sweep's fire crit chance buff.

Anyone has any values saved pre update? Would be nice to see what the increase has been?


Overall decent changes. Knowledge of Power cd reduction is most welcome!

Where do these notes come from?

[Remcosajax]

Where do these notes come from?

They are in the Release Notes for Update 22.2.2, which is released today (posted by Cordovan)

[Aelir]

I believe you are correct about the Water Lore 'issue' - it is 'Working As Intended'...because what was intended was the removal of the initial heal, and only keeping the pulses. I fail to understand WHY the initial heal was targeted for removal, and disagree that this was a good idea on a squishy class with very few self-heals in the first place. That small, immediate first heal could hardly have been breaking the bank on parses, right? However, no sneaky bug there, very much WAI.

This change to Water Lore was not mentioned in any beta release notes, when there was still a chance to raise an issue over this. Everyone was busy testing the changes that *were* documented, posting their DPS parses, while this fell through the cracks.

Why did the removal of WL initial heal warrant this change, and why did it get smuggled in without any comment or explanation?

[Mirillin]

Has anyone tested if Ring of Fire's radius is able to be doubled again? Or is the 4th point in the trait still useless?

[Napoleon21]

Has anyone tested if Ring of Fire's radius is able to be doubled again? Or is the 4th point in the trait still useless?

Yes, the radius is doubled again by traiting down to 4th trait.

[Mirillin]

Yes, the radius is doubled again by traiting down to 4th trait.

Awesome thanks for confirming, I hadn't had a chance to check myself

[Vilan]

This change to Water Lore was not mentioned in any beta release notes, when there was still a chance to raise an issue over this. Everyone was busy testing the changes that *were* documented, posting their DPS parses, while this fell through the cracks.

Why did the removal of WL initial heal warrant this change, and why did it get smuggled in without any comment or explanation?

Can't remember where, but Vastin said (almost?) all dots/hots had the initial effect removed and incorporated into the dots/hots that followed to make tooltips cleaner.

[balmy_balmy]

Vilan, I like your avatar! Reminds me of the good ol'days...

[Vilan]

Always been one of my favorite cards.

[Elquasso]

I have to differ with your opinion - I believe that LM DPS was increased across the board, and it has really made a difference in my own gameplay with my Red-line LM, thats for sure. Cashout dmg for Lightning Storm now is significantly more, and the behaviour with Ring of Fire is a bug that will be fixed soon. GoW is an interesting change that has me alter my own playstyle somewhat, injecting a bit of fresh air (no pun intended !) into this class for me. I am happy with this first pass of balancing changes for the LM.

Oh, you are correct...versus a single target, LM DPS has now increased, albeit through using more induction skills that were unnecessary before, like Lightning Strike and Gust of Wind. But so what? When fighting landscape mobs, the idea with high-level LMs has always been to pull multiple mobs if possible - that's what our best skills have been geared towards. Shifting us to stronger single target and weaker AOE damage is a net loss, both in time spent in fights, and in our usefulness in groups. Single target DPS LM's are a joke compared to any other class...when we DO contribute in groups, be it small group instances, or in the Moors, or in trash pulls in Raids, we are only useful because of our AOE damage.

Which brings me to my original point: by not fixing the lag issue with Ring of Fire - our #2 AOE damage - and instead just lazily nerfing it, then relegating Wizards Fire to the dustbin by taking away 2 of its 3 effects, especially its most powerful effect (upgrading Burning Embers), the developers have removed the single greatest STEADY DPS capability we used to have - DOTS. Because the greatest steady DPS rotation which was always at the center of any good LM's damage with multiple mobs was (1) Burning Embers, (2) Wizard's Fire (x2 if necessary), (2b-OPTIONAL) Staff Sweep, (3) Ring of Fire, (4) Lightning Storm w/ Fierce Lighting bonus, (5) PROFIT. The BE DOTs were upgraded by WF (with NO induction, mind you), then the RoF would slam every mob with multiple rings of fire (big damage), which would also add further BE DOTs from the Rings themselves, then LS would come in and cash them all out (most of the time every mob had 4-5 dots on it by that point) + massive damage + Fierce Lightning extra damage. It was impressive, and the best way to do burst DPS. This was, without a doubt, our best set of tools for reliable DPS.

Well that's all out the window. Gust of Wind to upgrade the BE DOTs can only be used once every 10 seconds, AND it has an induction to be set back/interrupted, AND you can't move and use it, AND it has no DOT itself, like WF used to have. Lose-lose-lose-lose. Nerfing Ring of Fire takes out the second biggest damage component of the whole chain. Result - our AOE DPS drops precipitously.

But hey, at least we can kill one mob at a time slightly faster!

I'm sure casual LMs who don't Raid, don't Moors, and generally don't care about DPS much will also not care much about this either. But I have been playing my LM for 10 years in all types of content, and I am sad to see the unnecessary AOE nerf. I mean, it's not like we were Barrage Hunters breaking the damage curves, right?

Sad.

[Granlu]

This change to Water Lore was not mentioned in any beta release notes, when there was still a chance to raise an issue over this. Everyone was busy testing the changes that *were* documented, posting their DPS parses, while this fell through the cracks.

Why did the removal of WL initial heal warrant this change, and why did it get smuggled in without any comment or explanation?

I would like to know this too. I can't for the life of me figure out why they did this. I have tried used water lore a lot since the change and to me it is nothing more than a good out of combat heal now. It is pretty useless in combat because the ticks are so slow, they don't do any good until it's too late in the fight. In my opinion this heal should not have been treated like other dots in the game. I hope they reconsider this change and fix it to make it useful once more.

[Birdflies]

I am mostly happy with the new playstyle. I do think the removal of the initial heal on WL is too much, but then again I just walked into Mordor, and maybe that's the reason for how much harder it's become for me to survive, and not the changes to the skill itself.

[Estelrandir]

I would like to know this too. I can't for the life of me figure out why they did this. I have tried used water lore a lot since the change and to me it is nothing more than a good out of combat heal now. It is pretty useless in combat because the ticks are so slow, they don't do any good until it's too late in the fight. In my opinion this heal should not have been treated like other dots in the game. I hope they reconsider this change and fix it to make it useful once more.

The most hot skills had two initials heals. Something like this: it heals target by 10k. It heals initialy 1k and then 1k every 3s for 27s. So you get at beginning 10k+1k. Thus it is reasonable to move initial heal from hot to the first heal of the skills. And then you have just: it heals 11k. It heals 1k every 3s for 27s.

The problem is that WL didn´t have two initial heals and as the change was general for all hot and dot skills, it removed the only initial heal the WL had.

[Samsgaard]

After completing the Northern Kingdoms content, I was pretty much on "spring break" from Lotro. Since the class changes went live, I've logged on several times to give them a try; so far, only in my red/yellow build for soloing (and daily quests or instances with a friend or two).

The changes to Searing Embers mechanics are proving unbearable for me.

1) I can't get over the loss of mobility. LM is not a class that had any mobility to spare. Of course, those of us who have played the class for a long time had made our peace with the the general lack of mobility. Some of us occasionally called for slight improvement but never claimed that as a high priority. But I don't recall EVER seeing anyone in these forums asking that our already limited mobility be NERFED. In particular, I don't recall anyone ever asking that we be forced to root ourselves in order to upgrade a Burning Ember DoT to a Searing Ember DoT.

2) I can't get over the loss of being able to instantly upgrade each new DoT after it is applied. I am not finding it the slightest bit of fun to have to decide how many DoTs to apply before casting Gust of Wind, and to wait for GoW to be off cooldown. Though LM should be considered a complex class that requires keeping an eye on many things and choosing among many actions from moment to moment, there are plenty of things to do already besides managing the GoW cooldown, and to me they're all more interesting things.

3) I'm even annoyed by GoW's animation. It's the same animation as for Burning Embers; except that after the wind-up, you blow a kiss instead of launching the fireball. So if you cast BE and GoW back-to-back, not only are you rooted back-to-back, but you have to watch pretty much the same animation back-to-back.

I appreciate that some players were bored with the BE->SE part of the rotation ("Boring Embers"). I wasn't. If you were, and if using GoW in place of Wizard's Fire solves the problem for you, congratulations! But it's killing me.

Also, if boredom was a pervasive problem, I would have supported getting rid of Searing Embers entirely. The DPS could have been shifted to the regular Burning Ember DoT or other skills; either way, you'd be free (and indeed required) to use other skills and mechanics to keep your DPS up. Alternatively, the Burning Ember DoT could have been made to self-convert to a Searing Ember after some time. That would have rewarded sustained application of embers on high-morale targets in longer fights, without making trash mobs easier to kill.

I would have supported getting rid of Gust of Wind entirely, too. Among the various class improvements for which LM players have clamored over the years, I don't recall "Get GoW back on our skill bars!" being anyone's rallying cry. Also, cold and frost are associated in Tolkien's world with malevolent forces, so I'm biased against LMs being frost-damage-dealers. Moreover, in terms of gear set bonuses, legendary item legacies, and places to spend points in LM trait trees, I think there are few if any synergies with frost damage. Furthermore, my dream for "Make GoW Great Again!" would have been to make it an AOE knock-down skill. (The power of such a skill could have been mitigated by gating the knock-down effect behind the yellow line; requiring investment of trait points; keeping the AOE to three targets; and putting the skill on a long cool-down.) Another option would have been to make it a channeled skill that slows the target(s) while active. Basically, anything that would have given LMs another utility skill--and would have looked cool--would have been welcome.

Since I can't stand the new GoW as implemented, I guess I'll trying running without it, thereby giving up on Searing Embers. Alternatively, I'll retire my LM and only play my Burg or Captain. Unlike my LM, however, I don't find Burg and Captain to be equally satisfying to play solo, in small groups, and in raids; so the motivation may just not materialize. Especially when there are other games out there, and other things to do besides play games!

Yes, if I don't stick around, you can have my stuff - if it's not bound to account. Oh wait, that's all of my gear, I think . . .

Don't ask for gold, 'cause after upgrading three toons' gear probably five times over since Mordor was released, I'm broke.

[Mithithil]

I must admit I'm using GoW in group play as a minor healing supply with Pleasant Breeze more than getting fussy over BE>SE upgrades. Outside Caras Tilion landscape mobs are happy to focus on a bear while they burn to death, just more slowly. I do miss GoW's AoE debuffing effect which I always felt to be its primary use.

[wispsong]

I had some thoughts too, mostly about how Red line was working out

1. Fierce Lightning damage is still terible - 5 trait points for a 100% chance to do another 2-3K damage per mob does not feel like points well spent.
2. Whilst DPS seems ok, Gust of Wind feels very clunky to use as others have stated and you feel you are always waiting to upgrade DOTs. If you don't get 2 Embers DOTs I feel I want to wait till I get 2 so as not to waste the upgrade and have to wait 10 seconds for the next opportunity. Reducing the cooldown seems a fair idea, maybe to 5-6 seconds versus 3 seconds cooldown for Burning Embers so you can get one in every two BE's?
3. The use of a random chance to spread Embers via Gust of Wind I think should be replaced by critical hits with Gust of Wind spreading Embers i.e. same mechanism as Pleasant Breeze. The Gust of Wind damage Legacy could then be changed to give Gust of Wind crit chance (up to 25% like with Burning Embers) then damage. This legacy would have a synergy with both Red and Yellow lines and I'm sure a benefit for Blue could be thought up too.
4. I'm not sure I like the idea of using an AOE skill (i.e. GOW) to upgrade Burning Embers in Yellow/Blue lines. Remeber we used to use Wiazrds Fire for this effect which was single target in Yellow/Blue. Using AOE to achieve best single target DPS feels a bit odd. Then there is the risk of breaking CC. Does Gust of Wind need to be AOE outside of Red line? Perhaps Mighty Wind could be repurposed to give increasing numbers of GOW targets (+1, +2, +3?) if the spreading of Embers works on Crits instead as my earlier suggestion. Then I can choose if I want an AOE or single target GOW (when deep in Red).
5. Pleasant Breeze feels like it procs too infrequently (but that could be improved via the previously proposed legacy change as above) and the actual heal feels a little small.
6. Hasten's effect on Ents is too small. its only 15 seconds reduction on a 5 minute cooldown versus 10 seconds on a 90 second cooldown for Lightining Storm or 5 seconds on 30 seconds Sticky Gourd. This could be increase to 30 seconds to a minute if Ents cooldown has to stay at 5 minutes.
7. Ents damage is also massively underwhelming and I use it as a emergency AOE stun only. Seems a shame for this cool skill. I may have mentioned this before....
8. Cracked Earth damage feels lacking in red and its associated trait seems pointless, a small increase to a low damage skill. A buff here would help with those that have commented the AOE seems weaker. Perhaps a large increase in the bonus offered by the trait?

9. Flame of Arnor (final red line trait bonus) - +2 Wizards Fire targets feels very underwhelming now. Perhaps a buff to Ents and Cracked Earth (in fact all AOE fire skills?) could sit here? Or something for staff skills?
10. The Wizard Fire Crit Chance/Damage legacy seems a bit pointless now. Legacies for Sic Em, Water Lore, Pleasant Breeze or Power of Knowledge may be appropriate?

4. GoW takes aggro of my pet and gets all non-direct pet targets running toward me. I don't like it. So right now I just play without SE. No problem in Dale land with great gear but Mordor would have been worse especially with heal removed from Knowledge of Power and Water Lore not having an initial heal.

[ColMcStacky]

The changes to Searing Embers mechanics are proving unbearable for me.

1) I can't get over the loss of mobility. LM is not a class that had any mobility to spare. Of course, those of us who have played the class for a long time had made our peace with the the general lack of mobility. Some of us occasionally called for slight improvement but never claimed that as a high priority. But I don't recall EVER seeing anyone in these forums asking that our already limited mobility be NERFED. In particular, I don't recall anyone ever asking that we be forced to root ourselves in order to upgrade a Burning Ember DoT to a Searing Ember DoT.

2) I can't get over the loss of being able to instantly upgrade each new DoT after it is applied. I am not finding it the slightest bit of fun to have to decide how many DoTs to apply before casting Gust of Wind, and to wait for GoW to be off cooldown. Though LM should be considered a complex class that requires keeping an eye on many things and choosing among many actions from moment to moment, there are plenty of things to do already besides managing the GoW cooldown, and to me they're all more interesting things.

3) I'm even annoyed by GoW's animation. It's the same animation as for Burning Embers; except that after the wind-up, you blow a kiss instead of launching the fireball. So if you cast BE and GoW back-to-back, not only are you rooted back-to-back, but you have to watch pretty much the same animation back-to-back.

I appreciate that some players were bored with the BE->SE part of the rotation ("Boring Embers"). I wasn't. If you were, and if using GoW in place of Wizard's Fire solves the problem for you, congratulations! But it's killing me.

Also, if boredom was a pervasive problem, I would have supported getting rid of Searing Embers entirely. The DPS could have been shifted to the regular Burning Ember DoT or other skills; either way, you'd be free (and indeed required) to use other skills and mechanics to keep your DPS up. Alternatively, the Burning Ember DoT could have been made to self-convert to a Searing Ember after some time. That would have rewarded sustained application of embers on high-morale targets in longer fights, without making trash mobs easier to kill.

I would have supported getting rid of Gust of Wind entirely, too. Among the various class improvements for which LM players have clamored over the years, I don't recall "Get GoW back on our skill bars!" being anyone's rallying cry. Also, cold and frost are associated in Tolkien's world with malevolent forces, so I'm biased against LMs being frost-damage-dealers. Moreover, in terms of gear set bonuses, legendary item legacies, and places to spend points in LM trait trees, I think there are few if any synergies with frost damage. Furthermore, my dream for "Make GoW Great Again!" would have been to make it an AOE knock-down skill. (The power of such a skill could have been mitigated by gating the knock-down effect behind the yellow line; requiring investment of trait points; keeping the AOE to three targets; and putting the skill on a long cool-down.) Another option would have been to make it a channeled skill that slows the target(s) while active. Basically, anything that would have given LMs another utility skill--and would have looked cool--would have been welcome.

Since I can't stand the new GoW as implemented, I guess I'll trying running without it, thereby giving up on Searing Embers. Alternatively, I'll retire my LM and only play my Burg or Captain. Unlike my LM, however, I don't find Burg and Captain to be equally satisfying to play solo, in small groups, and in raids; so the motivation may just not materialize. Especially when there are other games out there, and other things to do besides play games!

Sorry to hear that you may be calling it quits, Sams. I had similar frustrations when the changes first went live, but there's a few things I just learned to adapt to.

1) The loss of mobility is still hard to get used to; I still find myself kiting and throwing a Wizard's Fire... Old habits die hard I suppose. Really, if Gust of Wind had its induction reduced to maybe 0.5-0.7 seconds (before induction traits), I don't think it would be nearly as bad as it is now, because right now it can be pretty painful in some situations. A trait to increase Gust of Wind from 3 targets to maybe 5 or 6 would also be nice, as 3 targets is rarely enough. Maybe replacing the capstone Fire Shield with this?

2) One thing to keep in mind would be that, at least in my experience, the new Burning Embers damage is nearly what the old Searing Embers damage used to be. When taking that into consideration, it isn't as imperative as it used to be to upgrade our DoT's immediately. I'm not saying you shouldn't, but you can let them last longer. I see your point about the Gust of Wind cooldown though. What I find particularly painful is that the cashout on Lightning skills always prioritizes Searing Embers instead of Burning Embers (and gives no extra damage on cashout because of it, from what I've seen). In my opinion, that is one of the little quality of life improvements we need to actually alleviate a lot of the problem in Red line, especially since the cooldowns on Lightning Strike/Storm were reduced.

3) I never noticed this, but I guess thats what I get for playing on a toaster that gets single-digit FPS.

The idea about having Burning Embers auto-upgrade to Searing Embers on expiration is a really good idea actually. I like that a lot. And what you said about Frost and cold is true, hence Forochel being a winter wonderland because of the malice of Morgoth while on the same latitude as Angmar for example. Or Caradhras being considered a manacing tower over the Mines of Moria. The only synergy with Frost damage in the game that I know of is the Sabre-tooth pet which also does Frost, and can debuff Frost mitigations by -10%.


Personally, I do like the Gust of Wind change over what we had with Wizard's Fire, and I would argue it is better, so long as the induction and lightning cashouts are looked at. One reason being the trait Mighty Wind is actually useful now, and in AoE, you can really spread a lot of Burning Embers pretty quickly because of it. My only complaint with it is the lack of mobility that you mentioned. If most people feel similarly, maybe the Gust of Wind induction could be cast on the move? I would just be wary of that because it'd be a slippery slope to start giving LM's mobile inductions on some skills and not others.

[XSR2]

First, I would also like to thank Vastin for his involvement in these discussions.

I would like to start by thanking you for strengthening certain aspects of LM damage. In regard to landscape I find the damage fine except for one issue. On landscape the damage is good when a tank is present, but more difficult in solo play as the damage in red line exceeds the pet's ability to tank, in particular against gust of wind. With the main source of constant damage being searing embers and the only way to apply it being an AoE skill, it is hard to manage who it hits for the sake of CC or agro-ing off the pet. Allowing an AoE skill to apply SE is convenient and enjoyable, but for better control of where it is, I would suggest changing WF to not be area of effect and restoring its ability to upgrade BE, while keeping GoW's ability to do this on groups.

I think that the yellow line LM in a raid is given too much to do, they are required to: maintain the power of everyone in their raid; maintain fire/frost lore on their enemies; assist the healer with their very limited healing abilities; help the group to manage pots; maintain CC on the enemies that can be CC'ed; and try to maintain the correct debuff from "Out in the Cold" and "Playing with Fire". I think that to help lighten the load given to the LM, the abilities and traits such as mending lore; advanced knowledge of cures; air-lore; beacon of hope (yellow spec version); and pleasant breeze could be transferred to blue line and perhaps returning improved inner flame (old blue trait for AoE heal) and maybe even proof against all ills(AoE knowledge of cures), as these would be a great benefit to the pet, LM, and even a group. The blue line as I understand it is focused on strengthening the abilities of the pet to support the lore master. And I believe these abilities could be of great benefit to the blue line.

As for the yellow line, I find the traits "Out in the Cold" and "Playing with Fire" to be too complex. This is simply my opinion. However their durations (15s) are very short making them difficult to maintain in any large group. My recommendation would be to allow regular skills to apply these debuffs, as they were in SoA, such as miss chance from GoW. I would recommend returning Wind-lore to its former ability of reducing ranged damage. Finally I would recommend adding debuffs to defences similar to hunter's penetrating shot, and rune keeper's flurry of words, such as stunned/CC targets take X% more damage while stunned/CC.

These ideas are simply food for thought and discussion, and could allow more LM's to be in a raid like anteku mentioned. Please I do not do the ettenmoors, if any of these changes could effect PvMP, badly please comment on them.

[ColMcStacky]

I think there are some good suggestions in here that XSR2 made, but also a few things I would argue against.

On landscape the damage is good when a tank is present, but more difficult in solo play as the damage in red line exceeds the pet's ability to tank, in particular against gust of wind.

Yeah, pet damage really needs to be scaled in all three lines if you ask me. I don't go blue often so I couldn't tell you there, but in red/yellow, depending on which pet I'm using, they usually do between 300-800 dps. That is honestly negligable, and only useful for flanking. And since the flank power restore with Staff-Sweep was removed...

With the main source of constant damage being searing embers and the only way to apply it being an AoE skill, it is hard to manage who it hits for the sake of CC or agro-ing off the pet. Allowing an AoE skill to apply SE is convenient and enjoyable, but for better control of where it is, I would suggest changing WF to not be area of effect and restoring its ability to upgrade BE, while keeping GoW's ability to do this on groups.

Having Wizard's Fire upgrade Burning Embers still, but only on a single target would definitely be nice as it would fix the loss of mobility that we suffer from in landscape/PvMP situations now. I would miss the AoE from Wizard's Fire though to be honest, since it is useful for resetting Lightning Storm with the Abyss raid set, but I would say the tradeoff would be worthwhile. Maybe have a trait in Red to change it from single target to AoE so we can decide for ourselves (at the cost of maybe a 5s cooldown when traited AoE maybe, so as to not completely replace Gust of Wind again?). I do like the new Gust of Wind though, especially with the synergy it has because of the Mighty Wind trait. It really works well if you ask me, the only issue with it being the loss of mobility that XSR2's suggestion would alleviate.

I think that the yellow line LM in a raid is given too much to do, they are required to: maintain the power of everyone in their raid; maintain fire/frost lore on their enemies; assist the healer with their very limited healing abilities; help the group to manage pots; maintain CC on the enemies that can be CC'ed; and try to maintain the correct debuff from "Out in the Cold" and "Playing with Fire".

You forgot doing pet-swap rotations every 30s too . I would disagree here though. There is a lot for a Loremaster to keep track of in a raid setting, but that is honestly one thing I love about the class. I will agree though that the learning curve might be a bit high for some people. I just love the versatility that it gives us though. We can debuff, cc mobs, help heal, power restore (although not really anymore...), and throw some damage every so often depending on how we trait/build all at the same time. It's definitely possible to do all of these jobs at the same time though because many of our debuffs and cc effects have high durations, so we have downtime to spend doing other jobs as well.

I think that to help lighten the load given to the LM, the abilities and traits such as mending lore; advanced knowledge of cures; air-lore; beacon of hope (yellow spec version); and pleasant breeze could be transferred to blue line and perhaps returning improved inner flame (old blue trait for AoE heal) and maybe even proof against all ills(AoE knowledge of cures), as these would be a great benefit to the pet, LM, and even a group. The blue line as I understand it is focused on strengthening the abilities of the pet to support the lore master. And I believe these abilities could be of great benefit to the blue line.

As I said above, I don't necessarily think yellow LMs need a helping hand to "lighten the load", but the above suggestions I wouldn't be against so long as the traits are low enough in blue that you can still pick them up in yellow while traiting down to both the yellow capstones. Before trait trees, healing was in blue line. With the introduction of trait trees, it was moved to yellow. Honestly, I would be fine if they moved healing into either line, so long as they do it completely. Either bring the old Inner Flame trait back, scale the heal to something thats actually useful (maybe x10 of the current heal), and then make a decision: is all healing supposed to be in yellow like they said when trait trees were released, or should it go back to blue like we used to have it, at the very least to give blue some utility for a group-setting as a quasi-healer? Another mechanic I miss is flank heals, and them being able to affect out Air-Lore target...

As for the yellow line, I find the traits "Out in the Cold" and "Playing with Fire" to be too complex. This is simply my opinion. However their durations (15s) are very short making them difficult to maintain in any large group. My recommendation would be to allow regular skills to apply these debuffs, as they were in SoA, such as miss chance from GoW. I would recommend returning Wind-lore to its former ability of reducing ranged damage.

This I completely disagree with. The secondary debuffs (as I've taken to calling them at least) are an interesting touch that I really enjoy. To be fair though, they are only useful on trash mobs, not on bosses. Bosses can't miss, and for the most part, attack duration debuffs don't do all that much to them since the hits you have to worry about are all scripted, not autoattacks. For trash, you can simply replace your pet-swapping rotation with a bit of extra effort to maintain the secondary debuffs in an AoE setting, and all is fine. They are situational, but I feel they are something that really adds to the class, and I personally love the complex feel of them.

Finally I would recommend adding debuffs to defences similar to hunter's penetrating shot, and rune keeper's flurry of words, such as stunned/CC targets take X% more damage while stunned/CC.

These sound like a good idea, but in practice, I think they aren't really practical if they are single-target debuffs like that, unless the magnitude of the debuff is ridiculously high. Would it work for only stuns, or all cc: stuns, dazes, knockdowns, FM's, roots, and fears? My biggest reservation is that bosses are typically immune to all forms of crowd control, and trash mobs typically don't stay cc'd very long for the debuff to really be applied and taken advantage of. Most stuns are 3s, with us being able to apply 5.5s and 7.5s (and 9s if you trait weirdly). Then you have the 10s downtime afterwards. If you ask me, this would just speed up single target kills on trash pulls. If something like this is added, I would much rather see some sort of AoE utility provided, or give the pets some use again. Maybe this can be changed to making flanked targets take extra damage? I just really miss pets being useful for something other than specific debuff skills...

I don't really PvMP on my LM anymore, as I've dropped my VIP since being disappointed with Mordor, but None of these suggestions seem particularly class-breaking in PvMP, XSR2, at least from my limited experience in it.

[ColMcStacky]

Also, I posted a suggested rework for blue-line in the Bullroarer forums that I just want to repost here. I'm curious what other people think of it. I doubt that we will get it, as it would be a pretty substantial rework, but maybe if the devs can take bits and pieces to incorporate into blue, that'd be cool.



Out of curiosity, for when they finally get around to blue changes, what does everyone want to see from it? I don't really play blue very often myself (and haven't since before trait-trees ruined it in my opinion), so I'm curious what the general impression of those who do play it is. Do you want it to have more dps, more survivability, group-utility, etc.? Do you think it's close to the mark currently, or that it needs a substantial rework? I'm wondering what everyone thinks since it would probably be a good idea to get the conversation on this started before the changes on this trait-line are underway.

For me, I would be interested in seeing blue become a sort of "jack of all trades" line where the pet(s) we are currently using helps boost certain aspects of the class/group. In my opinion, the dps should not be as good as red, but it should be more survivable. There should be more synergy with pets, maybe having a way to reduce pet skill cooldowns like how we can reduce cooldowns of Lightning Storm, Sticky Gourd, and Ents go to War in red line. I would love to really see this become a lot more pet-reliant, giving stronger fellowship buffs depending on the pet being used (maybe there will be room for a blue/yellow lm in raids situationally?) The way I'm thinking, a skilled blue LM when grouping, depending on how they hybridize, could help any role. Bear for offtank/group survivability, spirit for healing/heal-support, bird for tactical/range dps support, cats for melee support, or something along those lines. Also, I think there should be some sort of incentive to keep a pet in combat rather than switch it out every 10s like we currently do to maximize our group utility. Maybe its fellowship-wide buffs become stronger the longer it's active, the more damage it does, the more skills it uses, or something like that? I feel like the traitline isn't too far off the mark, but it does fall short often, and need to be reworked on some traits. I think currently blue-line is weak because most traits lean towards dps buffs without realizing that red-line will (and should) always overshadow blue dps. It's kind of the same situation Hunters have with their main line (red or blue, take your pick right now) compared to yellow. It needs a different purpose.

Some random changes/reworks I'd like to see:

• Pet updates/improvements:
  
  • Pet skills sometimes are unable to be used even after they are off cooldown. I am not sure what causes this (also true for Captain and Spider).
  • Pet clock faces on skills don't always accurately display the remaining cooldown of the skill (also true for Captain and Spider).
  • Pet autoattack/skill damage needs to seriously be looked at. For example, bleeds from the cats have not been updated since I can remember. They still do about 100 damage every 5s for 15s if memory serves. Every pet has issues like this with skills/procs (across every pet class).
  • Cooldowns on purely damaging skills from pets should be substantially reduced to allow pets to be more of an active resource for us. Certain effects such as crowd control, debuffs, etc. should not have large cooldown reductions.
  • Raven: scale damage from Distraction and buff from Evasion.
  • Bear: The Bear pet should get a threat multiplier attached to its damage the way tanks do. A 3x multiplier would probably be good enough to help it hold agro as an off-tank. Also, the Bear's taunt should also be made a threat copy (possibly for blue-line only). Currently on live, if you taunt with the bear off a tank, after the force-taunt expires, the enemy runs right back to the tank. This forces you to dismiss and re-summon the bear over and over if you want to keep something away. This would be a small quality-of-life fix for the LM.
  • Lynx/Sabre-tooth: Scale skill damage/bleeds. For the Saber-tooth, Frostbite needs a rework/replacement. No one uses Frost Damage anymore, so the skill is obsolete.
  • Bog-Lurker: Scale damage from skills, and maybe allow Bursting Root to guarantee a Fellowship Maneuver when used with Catmints (it would make it more interesting than simply giving bonus damage and an improved chance.)
  • Spirit pet: I would recommend allowing the Spirit pet to auto-heal similarly to how other pets can autoattack. Give it an AoE heal of 1-2k or so with a 15-20m range/radius to stick with the non-combat, heal-support style of the Spirit pet. Also, I would reduce the cooldown on Flashing Flank to 20s from 45s. The Spirit pet can't flank randomly, but forces flanks through that skill use. The cooldown is just too long, though, to really take advantage of it.
  • Eagle: Fan the Flames doesn't currently say how long it fears the target for, or what the break-condition for the effect is; these should be added to the description. Beak Rend should be reworked, in my opinion, to restore morale to the group, not just the Eagle. I would recommend renaming the skill Eagle's Nobility, and having it deal damage to enemies (currently 3-target AoE), and whatever damage is done will be healed to the fellowship every second for 5 seconds.
• Catmint: The skills says it increases damage of pets, but skill damage on every pet is unaffected by it. I didn't test autoattack damage.
• Go for the Throat: I feel like this should affect both the pet and the LM to give it better use, both for dps and healing.
• Prepare for War: the mastery buff currently provided is pretty useless. I would like to see this changed into something different entirely, maybe allow this to be what reduces cooldowns for pet skills? It could become something like every time Wizard's Fire consumes a flank when this is traited, pet cooldowns are decreased by 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 seconds (to also give Wizard's Fire some utility again).
• Inner Flame: This should be group-wide when using the Spirit pet.
• Don't You Touch Him! and After Battle Treat: These are examples of damage buffs that I mentioned above that should be reworked/changed to be more utility-based than simply dps-based.
• Prepared Materials and Synchronized Movement: These are fine where they are, but I think the magnitudes of each need to be swapped (Synchronized movement should be -15% to give pets a larger benefit).
• Don't Interrupt Me: should make pets immune to stun at max rank.
• Stamp Out the Fire (t1 sidebar): I don't necessarily think this one is bad, but from what I hear the bonus it provides is nearly nonexistent (I certainly haven't noticed the extra damge when I've tested it). I would suggest that this bonus should increase pet damage by at least 20-30%, and should be sure to work with the Burning Embers spread by the red trait Mighty Wind (since Saber-tooth does AoE damage, this AoE spread would presumably increase its dps against each target).
• Peerless Wisdom (t2 sidebar): I feel like this is kind of a throwaway just to fill a spot rather than something that actually fits with the purpose of the trait line. I would recommend making this buff permanent for every trait line since Wisdom is on a 5 minute cooldown. I don't think this would be too overpowered, but it would help us survive better since nowadays most damage is fast spike damage, compared to the slower damage taken in the earlier days of the game. To replace the bonus, I would recommend taking Fend Them Off from red-line as inspiration, and fitting it slightly more mechanically with blue-line:
  
  • Instead of the current Fend Them Off buff that proc's with Staff-Strike, I would recommend having this buff proc when your pet flanks with no internal cooldown. It should increase the Avoidance of your pet as well as your own, and increase pet damage (or heal magnitude from Spirit).
  • If this is done, then Fend Them Off needs to be replaced, preferably with my suggestion stated in a previous post here.
• Raven's Protection (t3 sidebar): while helpful at lower levels, is fairly useless at level cap. In instances, people go in with maxed mits so as to not rely on it. I would recommend either making this percentage based, or changing it entirely to align with the purpose of the raven (tactical dps buff). I also think this sidebar trait should do something special for every pet instead of just the raven. Maybe rename to Companion's Protection or Companion's Aid or something like that. Two options that I see are either mimic the buffs that Feral gives to the LM for the entire group, or do something unique for each pet so that they don't make the Feral trait obsolete, and so they are more useful to classes other than the LM:
  
  • Raven: Tactical damage buff (additive percentage)
  • Bear: Physical Mitigation buff or Incoming Damage reduction, and/or max morale increase (additive percentage)
  • Lynx: Attack/Induction Duration buff (won't help Beornings though since every skill they have is Fast)
  • Sabre-tooth: Physical damage buff (additive percentage)
  • Bog-Lurker: Critical Chance buff (additive percentage)
  • Spirit: Incoming Healing buff (additive percentage)
  • Eagle: Fire damage buff (additive percentage)
• Critical Coordination (t4 sidebar): I think it would be interesting to give Air-Lore or a similar, new skill to blue-line (described below in final bullet-point). This new skill will take advantage of Critical Coordination to make Melee, Ranged, or Tactical skills (damage and/or heals) force-crit instead of only applying to the LM, depending on which pet is being used.
  
  • The Spirit pet can't attack currently, so would not be able to get this buff if it is left as it is on live. I would recommend, in the interest of not making Spirit pet heals too overpowered, reducing the Critical Magnitude of the Spirit pet. If the critical heals are even the same strength as non-crit heals, and just count as a crit to proc this trait, that would be fine in my opinion.
• Fellowship Friend (t5 sidebar): I think this should be adapted to increase the tier/magnitude of the fellowship buff from Raven's Protection. It can work on pet critical hits as it does now*, or apply different tiers of the buff on a timer, or by the number of skills the pet has used since summoned**.
  
  • *The spirit pet can't attack currently, so would not be able to get this buff if it is left as it is on live. See above under Fellowship Friend.
  • **Different pets have different cooldowns on skills, so the magnitude buff of each tier, and possibly the number of possible tiers, would have to be balanced differently for each pet if this is the route taken.
• Noble Savage and Tutelage of the Brown Wizard (t6 and t7 sidebar): I'm not sure if this suggestion is too overpowered or not, so feedback on this would definitely be welcome. I'd suggest removing the bonus damage from Noble Savage, and combining these into the t6 sidebar trait. The t7 trait should be replaced with the ability to summon two pets at once. This would allow the LM to apply two of the seven possible fellowship buffs, and roughly double flank procs and pet damage. They would probably need separate pet bars for both the individual skills, and to give the LM the option to use them against different targets and position them differently. They need to be able to act independently because without this separation, I think it would be a bit too clunky.
  
  • Because of this trait, pet damage would have to be looked at, which is why I would suggest removing flat damage buffs for pets from blue-line traits, to help narrow some variance that would appear between having fully buffed and unbuffed pets. Ultimately, I don't think this line is should necessarily be a dps line, but a rounded utility line. Because of this, I would say the damage with two damage-buffing pets and an LM focusing on dps skills should still only be about 70-80% of red-line damage simply because of the sheer amount of survivability and group utility the buffs in this line would provide.
• Adding a new skill to mark an ally in your group could help with more potent buffing, and if the suggestions above are too overpowered, they can only apply to the target of this skill (and the second pet can only be there for skill use/dps, providing no buffing to the group). I would recommend having its effect change depending on which pet(s) is/are in use. Maybe for this purpose, have a primary and secondary pet (if the suggestion above to allow two happens), where the primary pet is the one used to interact with this skill (and to apply Critical Coordination), and the secondary one is there for group buffs/damage. The primary pet's "group" buffs (described above under Raven's Protection) only apply to the target of this new skill, while the secondary pet's buffs affect the entire group. There should not be a way to swap the primary/secondary pets' purposes with one another without dismissing and re-summoning both. Maybe have the skill name change similarly to how the Captain skill Blade/Shield/Song-Brother's name changes. This can be called <pet>'s Protection, depending on which pet is applying it.

This suggestion is a pretty substantial rework for blue-line, making it more in line with what I would like to see from it. I know there are people who enjoy the current blue-line though. I'd really appreciate feedback from them on what they think about this, and would like to see or not see. Overall, I just want the line to have some sort of color or flavor that is missing from the class, being the only real pet-class in the game. As it stands currently on live, it is fine for solo play, but has no purpose whatsoever in groups. My suggestions were to try to make it viable for both of these situations while at the same time trying to get the most synergy out of the pet interactions.

Another option they can follow is to make blue a less buff-heavy line, and simply make it a single-target dps line whereas red is AoE, and scale the damage to match, but I honestly don't think that would be as interesting. Sorry for the wall of text, haha.

[-Tanyc-]

What's going on ? Blue lines in Lm forum ? Time to download the client again.

Sign of Power righteousness cooldown 4sec again? Wind-lore back to -50%? Embers on the move now?

[CaerArianrhod]

What's going on ? Blue lines in Lm forum ? Time to download the client again.

Blue for the LM was an option since mordor came out.
Tanking with Blue LM & Pets the Seregost T2 3-man on lvl 115 is not a problem. A new tactic for the Thron-Raid ID4 CM is a blue LM where the bear is tanking the 3 adds.

[XSR2]

I think there are some good suggestions in here that XSR2 made, but also a few things I would argue against.




You forgot doing pet-swap rotations every 30s too . I would disagree here though. There is a lot for a Loremaster to keep track of in a raid setting, but that is honestly one thing I love about the class. I will agree though that the learning curve might be a bit high for some people. I just love the versatility that it gives us though. We can debuff, cc mobs, help heal, power restore (although not really anymore...), and throw some damage every so often depending on how we trait/build all at the same time. It's definitely possible to do all of these jobs at the same time though because many of our debuffs and cc effects have high durations, so we have downtime to spend doing other jobs as well.

This I completely disagree with. The secondary debuffs (as I've taken to calling them at least) are an interesting touch that I really enjoy. To be fair though, they are only useful on trash mobs, not on bosses. Bosses can't miss, and for the most part, attack duration debuffs don't do all that much to them since the hits you have to worry about are all scripted, not autoattacks. For trash, you can simply replace your pet-swapping rotation with a bit of extra effort to maintain the secondary debuffs in an AoE setting, and all is fine. They are situational, but I feel they are something that really adds to the class, and I personally love the complex feel of them.

You say you enjoy the complexity and the learning curve you mentioned. Perhaps the devs could allow two trait setups, perhaps blue/yellow vs yellow that are useful in raid settings one complex and with the high learning curve you like, and another more simple but equally desirable in raids for those like me who find current yellow too complex.

[Estelrandir]

You say you enjoy the complexity and the learning curve you mentioned. Perhaps the devs could allow two trait setups, perhaps blue/yellow vs yellow that are useful in raid settings one complex and with the high learning curve you like, and another more simple but equally desirable in raids for those like me who find current yellow too complex.

LM is marked as a advanced class. I wouldn´t welcome simplification of the class.

The biggest complexity of the class lies within the yellow line. Thus just curious: How do you imagine these two yellow lines, one simple and one difficult? Introducing the forth line? Removing blue or red line? Something else?

[Tatharil]

LM lost flanking and melee due to simplification. Worthless since HD simplification wave.
Beware what you wish for.