Minstrels: How is your Bolster Courage these days?

[Moondog548]

Cross posting my thoughts from one of the various "fix minstrels!" threads going around. They've all got a lot of good insight but no focus.

My perspective on the class as a whole is pretty limited, as you'll see, but it seems to me that one big obvious problem could be the base strength of Bolster Courage, our bread-and-butter healing skill.

My story follows, I ask that minstrels of all levels and trait lines tell us:

1. What your level and trait line is and
2. If Bolster Courage is working as it should for you in whatever context you feel is appropriate!
3. If you see anything in my following quote that needs be corrected or addressed.

Thanks!

I am and have always been (since beta) a Protector of Song (yellow) minstrel. I can't speak to how things currently stand for a Watcher of Resolve (blue). All I know for sure is that my heals have little to no effect on green bars regardless of stance and skill synergy.

I feel like being primary healer for T1 should require me to make the most effective use of my PoS toolkit and stances. I believe only T2+ should require spec'ing blue to be primary healer.

But currently in yellow spec, no matter how clever I am, I have virtually no burst healing at all, and that rules out being the primary healer. Chord of Salvation and my Coda are the only heals that even have a CHANCE (via crits) to provide the necessary burst morale. (the only thing I know I haven't been using to its potential is Fellowship's Heart). And I know my gear is not optimized for healing (even in terms of what optimized SHOULD mean, nevermind what it means in practice given the current catastrophic state of stat-balance), but again, I'm talking about T1 and about being a player taking full advantage of the versatility offered by the trait line specifically THEMED on it!

I think luckily despite the extremity of the problem, the only URGENT fixes needed are:

1. fix the bugs (make skills work per their descriptions),
2. make Bolster Courage substantially more powerful. I don't want to go back to the bad old days BolsterBots, but I say without hyperbole that it are virtually useless currently.

• BC should be our most reliable tool. It should be the one thing I always know I CAN do but have to be prepared to do exclusively until the emergency is over.
• Currently, casting a (nonzero-induction) BC is literally A MISTAKE! Outside of a tank class making full-pro-tank use of their tank tools, any target WILL take more damage during the induction than BC can even crit for. And that's just in terms of typical sustained incoming dps. Like I said my only recourse in the event of a damage spike is to pray that my CoS or Coda are ready to cast and pray also that they crit.
• Currently Bolster Heal takes SEVERAL casts to refill MY pitiful morale after combat on landscape! That's insane!!!

Other stuff needs tweaking and the other heals need slight buffs for the class (or at least the trait spec I know and love) to be where it should be. However those 2 fixes need to happen asap to make the class fully functional.

EDIT: and if being primary healer on even the easiest difficulty is meant to require a healing trait and/or gear spec, then why do stances even exist? I could live with the PITA implementation of swapping trait lines if fundamental game systems weren't telling me I shouldn't have to.

EDIT2: oh and to be clear... obviously I don't think PoS peak healing should come anywhere near WoS healing, but I don't think PoS baseline healing should match WoR baseline healing either. I think a PoS should be able to primary heal via tactical use of his abilities to maximize overall fellowship defense, offense, and utility (as well as the minstrel's ability to maximize their own situational healing) to the point where heals are only needed as upkeep.

That doesn't broken nature of the status quo nor the urgency in needing a fix! So all of the above still stands as the "easy" fix! The "hard" fix would be to more meticulously buff some TBD combination of skills in the PoS spec to indirectly result in their current heal magnitudes being adequate.

[Meriadain]

I'm a lvl 120 (blue; with some red/yellow, 91 trait points) minstrel. I only played yellow when I didn't need to fulfill a healing role - during certain instances that are basically dps-races for example, or in any group that already has a healer and could use some extra buffs.
The times of Bolster courage as our bread and butter skill is over imo. At least in the sense that we can't depend on it to fill up the tank AND heal the entire fellowship with just one crit.
With my current gear, I think Bolster courage does what SSG wants it to do. Together with SoS, anthems and inspire fellows it's still part of my basic healing, while I use skills like Chord of Salvation and Triumphant spirit in more dire situations(combined with that 100% crit skill), as well as coda with the instant bolster cast.
To me it feels like the days of yellow healing is over at the moment, and I agree with you that it would be fun to be able to heal more in yellow again. Maybe buffing BC would be the way. I also agree with you that the heal output of BC is a bit at the low end (personally I think the fellowship wide heal could use a little buff and the ST heal could go a bit up as well), but I still frequently use it, especially when cutting off the animations with SoS. But with BC being very soon available, not having the same cooldowns like Triumphant spirit, Chord of salvation or Fellowships heart, it makes sense to have less potency than those skills. I am fine with it not getting myself or the tank up with 1 or 2 BC.

[Moondog548]

I'm a lvl 120 (blue; with some red/yellow, 91 trait points) minstrel. I only played yellow when I didn't need to fulfill a healing role - during certain instances that are basically dps-races for example, or in any group that already has a healer and could use some extra buffs.
The times of Bolster courage as our bread and butter skill is over imo. At least in the sense that we can't depend on it to fill up the tank AND heal the entire fellowship with just one crit.
With my current gear, I think Bolster courage does what SSG wants it to do. Together with SoS, anthems and inspire fellows it's still part of my basic healing, while I use skills like Chord of Salvation and Triumphant spirit in more dire situations(combined with that 100% crit skill), as well as coda with the instant bolster cast.
To me it feels like the days of yellow healing is over at the moment, and I agree with you that it would be fun to be able to heal more in yellow again. Maybe buffing BC would be the way. I also agree with you that the heal output of BC is a bit at the low end (personally I think the fellowship wide heal could use a little buff and the ST heal could go a bit up as well), but I still frequently use it, especially when cutting off the animations with SoS. But with BC being very soon available, not having the same cooldowns like Triumphant spirit, Chord of salvation or Fellowships heart, it makes sense to have less potency than those skills. I am fine with it not getting myself or the tank up with 1 or 2 BC.

Outstanding reply. Right away that tells me a lot about what I didn't know. Thanks!

[Bombolllo]

Hi Im a 120 mini who primarily plays classic blue mini (e.g. bit of red for anthem of war and yellow for composure, etc) I would agree with most of Meriadain's comments that I believe BC is actually in a pretty perfect position right now as the go to stable heal for mini, whilst chord and TS work as emergency burst skills. BC currently is spammed alongside with the animation cutting from soliloquy in order to keep a tank topped up whilst the other skills act as burst for when tanks/dps take a big hit. I believe it could probably use a 10-20% heal buff both to the ST and AoE portions so that its non-crit version is a little more effectual and keeps mini's in line with other healers however overall it is current imo at its most balanced.

That is not to say I believe that mini healing in general is perfect currently just the BC is not the cause. Rather I would argue that minstrel's rotation could be made more interesting and a few of its older skills need to be quickly updated to be viable at 120. The primary issue currently is minstrel's niche, I see many posters saying minstrel is LOTRO's main healer and as such should be the best healer which im not sure I agree with, rather each should fulfill a niche. I am absolutely fine with beorning having the highest HPS and high AoE healing, whilst simultaneously I think RK's should provide the best single target healing and the potential for preemptive damage prevention with bubbles but then where does this leave minstrels...Well in my opinion minstrels should be able to heal all content fine but bring significant damage buffs (similar to the old days of yellow minstrel) to a party as a replacement for the slightly lower healing as the concept of an "inspiring minstrel suggests." This could also open the door for example for one beorning healer in the tank group in raids and one minstrel in the dmg group, etc allowing for that bit more variety.

How could this be achieved? I believe the anthem/coda system has room for far more interesting mechanics that the game currently employs as the current loop is just Cry of the Chorus, activate all 3 anthems then wait 2-4 minutes before re-applying them, whilst not only an incredibly un-interesting gameplaying loop the effects themselves rarely feel actively powerful (particularly as buffs like 7800 mastery are tiny in comparison to the 200k plus mastery pools of most dpses at endgame. While I wont take the time to outline my ideas for the system here I just believe there is so much more potential to make the minstrel an exciting class providing timely, impactful buffs and heals that could really separate the great minstrels from the good and force some much needed decision making into the gameplay loop.

In terms of some more mundane changes I would advise adding a minor incoming healing buff element to each stack of SoS which would make single target healing on tanks that bit more effective whilst also rewarding good minis for upkeeping stacks of SoS on the other members of the party. Also it would be good to see either a buff to the heal potency or reworking of inspire fellows as currently it is used not really to heal just to keep the 4 (potentially 9 or 12)% damage reduction up on the party. In a similar vein a heal potency buff to fellowships heart would be appreciated as an extra panic button as currently it acts essentially as applying an extra slightly strong stack of SoS rather than the powerful skill of the past. Similarly the AoE bubble skill should ideally scale off of fellowship members own morale rather than the minstrels or else be removed entirely. I believe the currently entirely counter-productive block % skill in yellow should be replaced with a trait that reduces the induction time of Story of Courage to allow minstrels to help remove conditions easier and then would appreciate (but understand why it likely wouldnt happen) making our interrupt piercing cry instant as currently by the time you have cancelled your current induction and wound up the PC animation the enemies induction is already past. I think perfect ending should be reworked into some form of single target or aoe buff the extra heal is overkill and rarely ever used and finally it would be great if possible to find a way to use flops again without breaking the game because it made losing aggro, a key part of minstrel sometimes, far more efficient than running round kiting till you tank finally pulls the mobs.

These would be my general suggestions sorry about the wall of text and would appreciate any feedback

[Seschat]

Yellow Line Mini at 110. I duo with my hunter partner, and have a mix of points in red and blue now that I've gotten what I want from my main tree. Bolster Courage saw a minor nerf for me with the class update, but nothing horrific. (Then again, it's never been AoE in Yellow). My Coda of Melody heal got nerfed heavily with the update, and keep in mind that at my level, I don't have access to Mordor LI runes yet, so that reduction in heal power never affected me.

[dsltn07]

Beorning heals are only strong because of a combination of bug fixes and new bugs meshing incorrectly. The class needs more balance and its current situation should be considered temporary. If you consider the base skills, the beorning has the best raid healing, but supporting a fellowship with non tank members taking spikes in damage can easily overtax a bear healer and lose people. A great example would be champions and burgs standing in aoe or frontal attacks, or puddles like you find in TG.

Currently our main heal Encouraging roar should be considered broken when used with the abyss set bonus. The abyss set bonus is bugged and healing 3x more than it should, AND our tactical healing rating was simultaneously fixed, it used not to work, but now it does. This combination has led to bear heals healing the fellowship for an amount equal to our strongest heals on a tank.

EDIT; To further elaborate: Encouraging roar is our strong single target heal, which applies a HoT to the tank. Without the abyss set we can only reasonably use an aoe heal called bellow every 9 seconds. I would not qualify ONE aoe heal as the strongest aoe heals in the game, it’s actually extremely poor and we need a weaker secondary utility aoe heal. We also have relentless maul which was just partially fixed, but it has its own set of issues including a 30s cooldown.
The problem is that the class is now being balanced around an old set bonus that should be integrated into our base class skills.

I only write this here so that the minstrel is not compared to a class that is currently undergoing serious issues, and also to educate people that the beorning was unintentionally broken and needs more work overall. I’m not saying the bear needs nerfs, the bear is awesome. It needs more bug fixes and utility heal skills along with a proper fix/removal of the abyss set bonus.

[Bombolllo]

Yup agreed with everything your saying right now, particularly in regard to beorning heals being abnormally large due to abyss set bonus making them a little too powerful but I am mainly just trying to say that I think that all the different healers should have their benefits and drawbacks and so I think it would be absolutely fine for beorning to be better AoE healers than minstrels so long as each has its own strengths. So yes beorning healing still requires work to be balanced alongside all other healing classes I'm just hoping SSG takes the time to do it right. Also on champs and burgs/people standing in puddles I think that is a problem for all healers these days which is exactly how it should be requiring dps to move rather than just out healing mechanics (having said that melee-unfriendly mechanics either need to be rethought or just give champs the highest damage in the game to reward the risks).

[dsltn07]

Encouraging roar is our strong single target heal, which applies a HoT to the tank. Without the abyss set we can only reasonably use an aoe heal called bellow every 9 seconds. I would not qualify ONE aoe heal as the strongest aoe heals in the game, it’s actually extremely poor and we need a weaker secondary utility aoe heal. We also have relentless maul which was just partially fixed, but it has its own set of issues including a 30s cooldown, wrath bug that stops the skill, 15m range, and interruptable channel.

The problem is that our one skill, roar, does everything:STRONG burst, 4.5s cd, and STRONG aoe HoT all because of the set bonus. This needs to be split up and specialized again. The way to do that is remove the set bonus and incorporate a secondary aoe HoT as a core skill.

I hesitated to post again, but aoe is a beornings weakest core role, not strongest.

[Moondog548]

Thanks for all the replies, Minstrels!

Hmm. Alright, so far we have two Blue mini's happy with their BC. So probably "straight buff" is not the optimal solution for all.

@Seschat, do you spend a lot of your time healing? You said BC was nerfed a little for you, but for me it's literally counter productive, so I'd just like to hear more about your experiences if you can elaborate.

And I def need to hear from more minstrels overall, especially yellow.

[Bombolllo]

Sadly going yellow these days is pretty much entirely counterproductive, it used to be a really good spec but now its pretty much like trap hunter, has some fun sides but no reason to play it for anything other than that. Out of interest OP what level are you, I'm assuming 120 but could be wildly wrong. My advice is that BC when not critting is a pretty weak so you want to be focusing completely on increasing your crit to try to get as close to 30% as possible (completely ignore outgoing healing as a stat it wont help you at all) then when you are critting often healing becomes a lot smoother. I even run an old set-bonus for an extra 5% crit healing (also the 5% crit from red line is vital as well).

Then the other thing I would do if you are 120 is grab a healing rune from the rep vendor which should increase your healing nicely as well, in the same vein make sure your legendary book/weapon is maxed (a pain with the many levels they now have, including maxed on crystals for the healing rating). I agree that BC feels infinitely weaker than its old form and the truth is it is, but this version of it is so much better for minstrel design (back at 115 it was possible to 1 man full heal abyss t2c with a mini spamming BC-SoS-BC on a tank with the splash keeping everyone else topped up). This requires you to use the kit more effectively and target your healing and in a good way no longer allows mini's to overheal everything.

[Meriadain]

Completely agree with Bombollo here. Btw, if you don't know about it yet, he wrote an amazing guide about minstrels a while back (Mordor or Northern Mirkwood times, can't remember exactly)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-vc..._B2AB3TBc/view
It really helped me getting a bit more insight in the class, learned some things I never knew before (of course, some things are a bit different nowadays, but I think the general idea still is very viable). Also, I must add that I am fine with my bolster courage stats because it is not OP like before, and I get kinda decent numbers from it (not necessarily life-saving, but a steady ST heal output when we're not in an emergency situation). A big part of those decent numbers is just gear (crit rating >25%, LI's maxed with best runes etc.) and having all 91 trait points and spending them wisely helps too.

[Moondog548]

Sadly going yellow these days is pretty much entirely counterproductive, it used to be a really good spec but now its pretty much like trap hunter, has some fun sides but no reason to play it for anything other than that. Out of interest OP what level are you, I'm assuming 120 but could be wildly wrong. My advice is that BC when not critting is a pretty weak so you want to be focusing completely on increasing your crit to try to get as close to 30% as possible (completely ignore outgoing healing as a stat it wont help you at all) then when you are critting often healing becomes a lot smoother. I even run an old set-bonus for an extra 5% crit healing (also the 5% crit from red line is vital as well).

Then the other thing I would do if you are 120 is grab a healing rune from the rep vendor which should increase your healing nicely as well, in the same vein make sure your legendary book/weapon is maxed (a pain with the many levels they now have, including maxed on crystals for the healing rating). I agree that BC feels infinitely weaker than its old form and the truth is it is, but this version of it is so much better for minstrel design (back at 115 it was possible to 1 man full heal abyss t2c with a mini spamming BC-SoS-BC on a tank with the splash keeping everyone else topped up). This requires you to use the kit more effectively and target your healing and in a good way no longer allows mini's to overheal everything.

First off, sorry for somehow managing to type so much without including that I am indeed 120.

I have the Gorthorog-tier relics on my weapon, but forgot to save them for transfer to my current songbook (I will never forgive myself for that ).

Sounds like you both advise going all in on crit to cope with the current terrible state of affairs, and I appreciate that advice and will heed it!

However, for the purposes of this thread, I'm still primarily concerned about identifying how the class itself can be corrected. That's not something we can control, but it's something I feel worth hashing out in view of the folks that can control it!

Completely agree with Bombollo here. Btw, if you don't know about it yet, he wrote an amazing guide about minstrels a while back (Mordor or Northern Mirkwood times, can't remember exactly)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-vc..._B2AB3TBc/view
It really helped me getting a bit more insight in the class, learned some things I never knew before (of course, some things are a bit different nowadays, but I think the general idea still is very viable). Also, I must add that I am fine with my bolster courage stats because it is not OP like before, and I get kinda decent numbers from it (not necessarily life-saving, but a steady ST heal output when we're not in an emergency situation). A big part of those decent numbers is just gear (crit rating >25%, LI's maxed with best runes etc.) and having all 91 trait points and spending them wisely helps too.

Thanks for the link! And thanks again to both of you for your input and advice.

I'm still looking for more input on how well folks feel each trait-line performs (including their opinion of how it SHOULD perform), and whatever they can identify specifically contributing to that level of performance.

I started the thread with a focus on Bolster Courage, but consider that just a starting point.

[Bombolllo]

Just my opinion again would love to here others but my general summary of each trait line would be that mini is not in a terrible state currently just could use some minor buffs to get it back to usual, particularly for non-geared healers:
Blue healing: Could use some corrections to bugged skills and minor buffs to skills e.g. 10% to BC and the buff to SoS mentioned earlier but overall is absolutely fine and can heal all current content (will have to see when t3 of the raid comes out but assuming it will still be fine then)

Red damage: Not competitive in sustained instance environments but more than adequate for all landscape content with nice burst along with it (e.g. can solo all EM dailies and mini-bosses).

Yellow buffing/healing: Can do neither of these well currently and the traitline in general is largely irrelevant (would be nice to see a reworking of most of the traits and a return to triple anthems)

Also quickly on relics i really do advise picking up the ered mithrin rune that gives 62 healing rating as its a signficant buff for just 100 of the EM currency and you by no means need to go all in on crit its just most of the other stats are unsubstantial on mini, the only ones you want are crit/vitality and tac/phys mit the rest are for the most part unimportant/irrelevant.

[Moondog548]

More great stuff, thanks again.

"Triple Anthems" was something I never fully grasped before it was taken away. Am I correct that it refers to stacking 3 instances of the same Anthem (and that anthem was always War )? If so, that's obviously useful, but doesn't strike me as great gameplay.

I don't have a preponderance of data to back me up, but when I have been in groups (and not trying in vain to primary heal), I feel like a fine contributor in terms of contributing primarily with buffs and supplemental dps and heals. I probably haven't done a lot of that in T2, however.

But at least on paper, I KNOW I really like all 3 yellow anthems plus War from red, and the fact that I can keep all 4 up on the fellowship for minutes at a time. I love how almost everything I do gives a small buff to the fellowship. It might even be insignificant, but they add up because there are just so damn many!

[Bombolllo]

Yeah the issue is that you can offer all most those anthems in blue or red (other than anthem of prowess which isnt all that great and anthem of the third age which is actually offers far less than the 15% dmg apparently added) and then the other buffs currently are genuinely non-existent offering 3000 tac/phys mast and 4.5% tac mast dmg. I tested it when they first made the changes and did parses on target dummies one with blue line heals and one with yellow line heals cos i was hoping minis could become a buff/dmg class like red cappies but the actual increase in damage was tiny despite all the small buffs making blue just a better version even on a buff front in some respects because it can add some incoming damage buffs and mit increases to tanks.

And yes the old idea of yellow mini was you would stack 3 anthems of war on your party to give them a big damage increase (particularly if they were RKs) whilst you would stack 3 anthem of the 3rd age - resonances on yourself so your heals were bigger and had no inductions which meant that even though the healing was less than blue minis because it didnt have aoe it was still able to keep up thanks to the 3 healing anthems on them.

[Seschat]

Thanks for all the replies, Minstrels!
Hmm. Alright, so far we have two Blue mini's happy with their BC. So probably "straight buff" is not the optimal solution for all.

@Seschat, do you spend a lot of your time healing? You said BC was nerfed a little for you, but for me it's literally counter productive, so I'd just like to hear more about your experiences if you can elaborate.
And I def need to hear from more minstrels overall, especially yellow.

Admittedly, I'm slowtro-ing with my partner, as it is her first time through the game. Against landscape, I only have to toss off a heal after the fight. More serious fights, I heal about a quarter to half the time, depending on how fast my Hunter is killing things.

In Yellow, BC heals about 1/5 of my morale, while Chord of Salvation a little over a quarter (we won't talk about Raise the Spirit). What got nuked in the "update" was Coda of Melody, which now heals a whopping eighth of my Morale, where before I saw roughly 20-30%. If I could get the Ballads off fast enough, Coda was all I really needed in a good fight. Nowhere near the output of pre-Nerf BC in blue, but sufficient to my needs, plus decent damage output. (Still does 10-15k AoE, which I'm happy with at this level. We'll see how Mordor looks.)

Quick changes I'd like to see in yellow to start? Restore triple anthems, replace Shield mastery with almost anything else, and replace Song Of Aid over in set bonuses with something that has a use... 200% buff on bubbles, maybe.

[Xanovaria]

Blueline lv 120

My bolster sucks a lot more than it used to

make Bolster Courage substantially more powerful. I don't want to go back to the bad old days BolsterBots,

Blue minstrel can't even effectively heal t2 at all. Minstrels dead

[Bombolllo]

Lol how is it that I have managed to heal all of new instance cluster on t3 with mini (minus caverns cos no % heals) and t2 of raid?

[Moondog548]

Cool, thanks again for the ongoing input!

Serious question: Do you really want triple-anthems as a game mechanic, as in- you think that casting the same skill 3 times in a row for a bigger effect is a good/fun game mechanic in your opinion? Or do you just want the numbers to be bigger than they are right now? Would you expect to triple up your anthems sometimes and single or double cast them at other times?

Because if it's just a case where "the numbers should be bigger" then let's do that and design the mechanics to be fun/useful in some other ways, rather than requiring 3 button presses for a single standard action.

EDIT: YAYYYYYYYY be sure to post in this thread for Vastin! https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...76#post7908776

[Bombolllo]

Triple anthem was good because it does allow variety, e.g. if necessary you could go double anthem of composure and single anthem of war, etc, also this was pre-absurdly long anthems so keeping them up took a little more effort/cost and also having triple anthem of the third age - resonance on yourself would mean -75% inductions and 30% outgoing healing just because of one skill. So no I am fine/prefer the triple anthem system because it required more decision-making than the current "just apply all possible anthems", though the tendency was to just do triple anthem of war because that why you were being brought and had more cost to apply and keep up. That isnt to say I dont think anthems and their interaction with healing and the fellowship couldnt be improved but in the short term I believe it was far more effective as it allowed yellow minstrels to be effective healers and buffers without being overpowered whilst now yellow minstrels can do neither of these things.

*Also it is worth noting that when yellow minstrel was a thing it existed purely for the triple anthem bonus, the build itself would put almost no points into the yellow tree (instead going almost exclusively into blue) so yellow traits have always sadly been useless even when yellow mini was good