Minstrel Tweaks

[JFDCamara]

Nice, I'll try giving an overview of what I think could be improved (not that they will all at the same time):

In general:
Minstrel is a good healer, but recently with other classes becoming good at healing (which is GOOD!) the minstrel is kinda a one trick pony as RK is a solid DPSer and Beorning a solid Tank. We can heal... and that's it.
This isn't fundamental as some other classes suffer the same issue (e.g. Guardians) but I think Minstrel could be improved in DPS or Buffing, personally I would prefer the Buffing (aka viable Yellow line).

Bubble skills: right now the ally bubbles take into account the minstrel's morale not the target.


Blue Line:
Some sort of healing buff may be necessary compared to other classes, or instead the other classes should be nerfed a bit and the game take it into consideration, I don't know.

Skill Melody of Battle: this skill is completely useless, the parry rating and reflect are so small they stop being relevant at level 20 or so. If you want to keep it a buffing skill update the numbers or better: make it % based. It can be turned into a debuffing for mobs instead, right now it's just fluff on the quicklsot.

Set Bonus Resolute: block rating on a minstrel does something but the effect is very very small. In most situations this makes no difference so I think other kind of survivability trick would be much better.

Set Bonus Skill Perfect Ending: the main problem with this skill for me is its animation tail. When you are focused on healing an immediate skill is good... but its tail animation makes it awkward and disrupts the healing flow.

Trait Pause for Breath: not a minstrel issue, power nowadays is almost irrelevant in general as almost everyone will have no issues with it. So it makes this trait a bit useless. But it's not a big issue as eventually some power draining boss may make it better.

Trait Resonant Piercing Cry: no need to use this, the effect is too small and in general it's weird to switch from friend to foe while healing unless the mechanics of it are good. Also how much does it improve? Tooltip should say.



Red Line:
The damage in landscape is ok, if you want to make minstrel a viable dps in groups then something has to be done.

Set Bonus Freedom: why would you heal an ally if you're in red line (aka dpsing), and in any case if you would the effect would be minimal as you're nowhere near focused on healing, you have red traits and "red" LIs.

Set Bonus Encore: for a capstone this is lackluster. I don't care about ballad bonuses, they're very small, Anthems are the real deal and they are now unaffected by the Coda. In any case you need something like 3 seconds to ballad up again, which makes this trait a bit useless.

Trait Enduring Morale: not updated in the slightest, at level 120 it gives something like 1500 morale. Make it % based.

Herald's Strength: The problem with this skill is the problem with Herald's Strike. This is the only melee skill and it's weak, so the skill is just ignored. IMHO we either increase the buffing or make it more powerful, because right now why bother?


Yellow Line:
This is the awkward line that is more difficult to balance. This line also needs to decide what we make of it. I would make it a strong buffing line and tone down the half-healing/half-dps attemp.
It's very weird to jump from dps to healing as this class as either one will be too weak. I think in this line the healing should buff and the dps too, so we would use the skills to provide the buffs not for their heal/damage per se.

Set Bonus Invocation of Elbereth: would be good if we needed to fear something, which we rarely do.

Set Bonus Improved Call of the Second Age: This skill needs us to be close to the mob, in serious situations we generally shouldn't, so it's something we won't use much. I actually don't know if the buffs it gives are fellowship wide but they should.

Set Bonus Song of Aid: for such a rare and long cooldown skill it should kick ###, but it doesn't. For most classes it's actually useless. Make sure the bonus provided are relevant and very important for all classes.

Trait Shield Focus: the small block chance makes no difference for this class and the -30% speed makes it even worse.

Trait Improved Hero's Strike: this is nowhere near enough to buff Herald's Strike in order to make a minstrel risk its life to go melee.

Trait Raise Our Spirits: please fix the HoT not applying and make sure it stacks with CoS HoT.

Trait Shielding Cry: how much is the reflect? We don't know because the tooltip doesn't say it. Make sure the numbers are fine (% based?)

Trait Strength of Helm Hammerhand: Please update the ratings, right now it's minimal

Trait Change of Pace - Heal!: as I explained changing from dps to healing every time it's complicated with almost no reward. I would replace it with some sort of fellow buffing if we would do it.

Trait Call to Greatness: it's better than Song of Aid but not enough to make us use it as a rare, strong skill, please make sure the bonuses are relevant for all classes.

[Kander]

I don't think that the Minstrel is severely underpowered just a little, it's more that some issues unrelated to Minstrels make them seem like a bad choice

Beornings AoE healing is OP
Revealing Mark is OP
Beo and RK synergize very well

The thing is, DPS heal themselves so much through Revealing Mark that they basicly only need heal some of the time when huge damage spikes occur. The Beo provides that with his raid wide AoE healing which is why we run with no healer in our DPS group. The RK on the other hand can focus on keeping HoTs on both tanks and reducing their incoming damage while primarily healing the main tank. Beo focuses on the off-tank

2 Minstrels or a Minstrel and a Beo/Rk can never have that synergy that Beo+Rk have from their skill set. Which is why precombat Anthems is currently the only reason to take a Mini. Otherwise the combination of Beo+Rk will just beat out Minis whether you buff them and nerf Beos or not

Overall my assessment of healing is:
Minis could use a small buff
Beos could use a nerf - I'm not sure whether the Abyss set will do it. They heal so much and provide a whole lot of support
Revealing Mark needs to be toned down A LOT - like half of what it is
Captain healing on the other hand should be buffed, especially in blue line
RK single target HPS is in a great spot. AoE healing should be buffed. Fate Stone should be nerfed

For non pure damage races captains are brought over an added DPS or a yellow mini basically because of double rezz and rev mark. Remove rev mark and captains have no spot in a raid and minis will be brought only for anthems and remain in yellow the whole raid.

Concerning the feedback I'd say the following:

1- Healers require lots of crit to heal and have always required, Mini is the healer which require it the most because of huge crit magnitude. Until lvl 120 you could "passively" get near crit cap and heal decently with any class so crit stacking was good but not needed, now the difference between a fully crit stacking mini and a bad geared mini can be up to double HPS.
2- even with high crit minstrels heal significantly less and worse St than a Rk and significantly worse than beo on aoe. That said... You have an unique chance to make 3 healing classes viable by slightly reducing beorning single target heal and buffing slightly mini single target and buffing greatly mini group heals. So classes can end at: best tank only healer: rk; best group healer: beo ; most balanced healer: minstrel (able to heal tank efficiently or group efficiently so you can do raid only with minstrels but if you choose other healers you lose somewhere and gain somewhere else. Minstrels can only heal so they should be GOOD at it everywhere, but not the best on everything. So you have minstrel viable everywhere and rk and beo who can do other roles healing best at their own game but not being that balanced as mini are.
3- Fix minstrel traits/bugged heals like raise the spirit HoT or Chord HoT.

Buff Greatly inspire fellows heal (at least by 100%) and remove the cooldown on chorus reset proc.

[Giseldah]

Hey Minis, Vastin here.

I'm taking a look at making a few quick tweaks to the Minstrel lines. I only have a couple days to play with it as we're trying to get this into a near-term patch, so this will NOT be a major revamp, at least not in terms of seriously redesigning any skill trees or anything like that.

Current thoughts are that most of the heals in blue line OTHER than Bolster Courage are kind of under-powered - some dramatically so - with Bolster Courage spam pretty much making up the 'rotation' such as it is, so I'll mostly be looking to buff some of the other heal skills, probably introduce some (short) cooldowns to encourage more interesting rotations, and hopefully have some time to improve a few of the simpler self buffs, as several of those look lackluster as well.

I'm also looking at the Yellow line to see if I can do a couple things there. Feel free to make suggestions, but let me repeat that this is just a quick, simple balance pass, not a 'redesign your trait trees' pass, and I will likely not even have time to address all of the blatantly obvious stuff.

I should note that I have been reading through several of the existing suggestion threads and there seems to be a fair amount of useful feedback there that I plan to incorporate into my changes.

-Vastin

I don't think you need to place a cd on Bolster Courage, just that a good alternative exists for it. Like a Raise the Spirit with HoT component, which in total heal slightly more than BC. If the HoT has a very short duration then it will be very attractive to you use it a lot.

Right now, BC spamming (more than one in sequence) occurs only when you're desperately trying to keep a tank up (and occasionally failing) and Chord of Savation and Coda are unavailable. In other situations spamming BC would just be a waste of time.

It might be a good idea to increase the defense buff % from Inspire Fellows, perhaps doubling it to 8%. I would like to have it standard higher and not only as an armour set bonus.

[hanxcve]

Hey Minis, Vastin here.

I'm taking a look at making a few quick tweaks to the Minstrel lines. I only have a couple days to play with it as we're trying to get this into a near-term patch, so this will NOT be a major revamp, at least not in terms of seriously redesigning any skill trees or anything like that.

Current thoughts are that most of the heals in blue line OTHER than Bolster Courage are kind of under-powered - some dramatically so - with Bolster Courage spam pretty much making up the 'rotation' such as it is, so I'll mostly be looking to buff some of the other heal skills, probably introduce some (short) cooldowns to encourage more interesting rotations, and hopefully have some time to improve a few of the simpler self buffs, as several of those look lackluster as well.

I'm also looking at the Yellow line to see if I can do a couple things there. Feel free to make suggestions, but let me repeat that this is just a quick, simple balance pass, not a 'redesign your trait trees' pass, and I will likely not even have time to address all of the blatantly obvious stuff.

I should note that I have been reading through several of the existing suggestion threads and there seems to be a fair amount of useful feedback there that I plan to incorporate into my changes.

-Vastin

Adding a cd to bolster will make the class even more slower and rotation even less complex

If you wanted to make the rotation more complex add 15s cry of chorus cooldowns and old follow up before friendlyhat massacred the class, the skills and healing is completely fine but even Beorning and RK heals are more fast paced than mini currently is atm

[Karnage_Arkenstone]

-Please keep the minstrel as an induction class: DONT revert the changes to follow up.

-Please revert the huge duration on anthems. That serves nothing and just makes pre-combat traitline switching better. There is no need for more than a minute anthem durations. And make us lose anthems with Coda again.

-Nerf the duration of the mounted combat buff for +10% incheal / +10% outheal down to less than a minute, like any other MC buff. It shouldn't last entire raidfights and is too good for a raidwide buff that can be applied outside of raids and be used inside.

-Please buff several heals: Fellowship's Heart, Perfect Ending, CoS-HoT component, Inspire Fellows, Triumphant Spirit, Coda and fix the yellow Raise our Spirits trait and make its HoT meaningful.

-Reduce Story of Courage Induction time. 3s Induction (I know can be reduced by buffs) is FAR too long, especially compared to everyone elses (but LM) cure skills (I might be wrong, but I think, everyone besides Minstrel and LM have inductionless, quite fast and/or more potent anti-debuff skills).

I 100% agree with everything here.

Reverting Minstrel back to what it was will make it even more AFK while healing. It will also close the skill gap between people playing Minstrel.

[hanxcve]

I 100% agree with everything here.

Reverting Minstrel back to what it was will make it even more AFK while healing. It will also close the skill gap between people playing Minstrel.

Legit everything he said there will close the skill gap and make the class even more useless in terms of utility xDDDDD the only reason it felt like afk healing was because of aoe bolster being ridiculously op and not having to tab targets at all in pve

[sapienze]

Hey Minis, Vastin here.

I'm taking a look at making a few quick tweaks to the Minstrel lines. I only have a couple days to play with it as we're trying to get this into a near-term patch, so this will NOT be a major revamp, at least not in terms of seriously redesigning any skill trees or anything like that.

Current thoughts are that most of the heals in blue line OTHER than Bolster Courage are kind of under-powered - some dramatically so - with Bolster Courage spam pretty much making up the 'rotation' such as it is, so I'll mostly be looking to buff some of the other heal skills, probably introduce some (short) cooldowns to encourage more interesting rotations, and hopefully have some time to improve a few of the simpler self buffs, as several of those look lackluster as well.

I'm also looking at the Yellow line to see if I can do a couple things there. Feel free to make suggestions, but let me repeat that this is just a quick, simple balance pass, not a 'redesign your trait trees' pass, and I will likely not even have time to address all of the blatantly obvious stuff.

I should note that I have been reading through several of the existing suggestion threads and there seems to be a fair amount of useful feedback there that I plan to incorporate into my changes.

-Vastin

Cry of Chorus timer doesn't work at times to activate Ballads. Also while out of combat Ballads can go grey ignoring the preset combat timer for expiration. I can active Cry of Chorus and have ballads go grey before applying the second of three Anthems in a redline trait set up. Also happens in a blue heal trait set up too. It doesn't matter if I am in combat during an extended fight or at the onset of a fight.

This has been broken for some time. Maybe a few years.

[Oelle]

Legit everything he said there will close the skill gap and make the class even more useless in terms of utility xDDDDD the only reason it felt like afk healing was because of aoe bolster being ridiculously op and not having to tab targets at all in pve

You call it closing the skill gap, which alone is a good enough reason to do it.
I'd call it fixing things or stupid mechanics that quite surely were never intended that way, aka exploits.
And... less utility? the only thing you'd lose is having the yellow anthem while being in blue traitline. You could still trait for permanently having the other three anthems while in blue.
Sure, minstrels healing was ridiculous because of stupid levels of BC aoe healing. That was fixed. But I and many others always asked for a better skill balance, which has nothing to do with the whole induction-discussion. -100% inductions on a class that has inductions on most skills doesn't make sense. End of discussion. Rework the class to not have inductions: fine. Buff it to -100% induction duration: stupid.

[Karnage_Arkenstone]

Legit everything he said there will close the skill gap and make the class even more useless in terms of utility xDDDDD the only reason it felt like afk healing was because of aoe bolster being ridiculously op and not having to tab targets at all in pve

You requesting the old "follow up" will make it AFK healing though lol.

In-regards to the current -X% skill induction buffs that the Minstrel currently has,

Anthem of the Third age (-25% skill inductions), Landing a critical heal (-15% skill inductions) = -40% skill inductions already and these 2 are permanent buffs.
On top of that, Those who have the new raid set (me being one) have -10% skill inductions. With all 3 that's -50% skill inductions which bring Bolster and Inspire Fellows down to a 0.7s induction.

And yet here are people still requesting for the old "follow up" just to sit there and spam Bolster. No thank you.

[Unknowned]

Hey Minis, Vastin here.

I'm taking a look at making a few quick tweaks to the Minstrel lines. I only have a couple days to play with it as we're trying to get this into a near-term patch, so this will NOT be a major revamp, at least not in terms of seriously redesigning any skill trees or anything like that.

Current thoughts are that most of the heals in blue line OTHER than Bolster Courage are kind of under-powered - some dramatically so - with Bolster Courage spam pretty much making up the 'rotation' such as it is, so I'll mostly be looking to buff some of the other heal skills, probably introduce some (short) cooldowns to encourage more interesting rotations, and hopefully have some time to improve a few of the simpler self buffs, as several of those look lackluster as well.

I'm also looking at the Yellow line to see if I can do a couple things there. Feel free to make suggestions, but let me repeat that this is just a quick, simple balance pass, not a 'redesign your trait trees' pass, and I will likely not even have time to address all of the blatantly obvious stuff.

I should note that I have been reading through several of the existing suggestion threads and there seems to be a fair amount of useful feedback there that I plan to incorporate into my changes.

-Vastin

minis only need some bug fixing. they don't need big buffs, beornings need a nerf. in raid they crit for a 100k+ with ER ( a skill with a 4s cd) AND THAT'S ONLY 1 SKILL idk how you are okay with that.

[Kakistos]

I think there are a lot of good suggestions in general and we all agree that something has to happen. I've had people in my kinship for 12 years now, counting them as as friends and they say as main minis: " until changes come I take a break from lotro "and I do not think that the goal of ssg players is to lose. In that case you should not spend too much time to really lose those loyal players

[dsltn07]

I don't think that the Minstrel is severely underpowered just a little, it's more that some issues unrelated to Minstrels make them seem like a bad choice

Beornings AoE healing is OP
Revealing Mark is OP
Beo and RK synergize very well

The thing is, DPS heal themselves so much through Revealing Mark that they basicly only need heal some of the time when huge damage spikes occur. The Beo provides that with his raid wide AoE healing which is why we run with no healer in our DPS group. The RK on the other hand can focus on keeping HoTs on both tanks and reducing their incoming damage while primarily healing the main tank. Beo focuses on the off-tank

2 Minstrels or a Minstrel and a Beo/Rk can never have that synergy that Beo+Rk have from their skill set. Which is why precombat Anthems is currently the only reason to take a Mini. Otherwise the combination of Beo+Rk will just beat out Minis whether you buff them and nerf Beos or not

Overall my assessment of healing is:
Minis could use a small buff
Beos could use a nerf - I'm not sure whether the Abyss set will do it. They heal so much and provide a whole lot of support
Revealing Mark needs to be toned down A LOT - like half of what it is
Captain healing on the other hand should be buffed, especially in blue line
RK single target HPS is in a great spot. AoE healing should be buffed. Fate Stone should be nerfed

A lvl 75 beorning has a 4-6 times higher single target healing output than it's mini counterpart. I expect this getting worse as you advance towards lvl 100.

All of this is as simple as saying that you do not understand a class, but they have a bigger number than you so you want it nerfed.
If you don’t understand how another class works then please go be informed first before asking for nerfs and large scale changes for that class. There has been plenty discussed about what needs to be changed for the Beorning and why. The short answer for you is that the class needs far more work than the minstrel because it is still undergoing many changes and bug fixes. A five year old bug was fixed that increased Beo healing by a large amount to begin with, for one example. This requires balancing and work on the class, not nerfs.

Further, everyone seems to think the Beorning received a major rework. This is false. Vastin did a lot of work cleaning up messes left behind on the unfinished class, but many of the old bugs still exist. Only one skill was drastically changed, for dps. We gained heavy armor, there’s a whole debate that goes into why, but the simple answer is that we should have been heavy armor from the start for simplicity’s sake.
To address the “op” Beorning healing, we have two aoe heals: Bellow, a 20m aoe heal on a 9s cooldown that costs 20 wrath, and relentless maul, a 30s cd, 15m aoe, 8.5s channeled heal that is frequently bugged and cancels.

Any other aoe heals should be considered bugged on the verge of exploiting due to the bugged abyss set (yes, it has been actually bugged not working as intended for months.)

[dsltn07]

minis only need some bug fixing. they don't need big buffs, beornings need a nerf. in raid they crit for a 100k+ with ER ( a skill with a 4s cd) AND THAT'S ONLY 1 SKILL idk how you are okay with that.

Just stop. You edited your post and you’re still wrong.

[Bombolllo]

Dsltn this thread along with many others are focused on buffing mini's not nerfing beornings, I think most people here including yourself accept beorning needs some fixes or "balancing" in your words, definitely on the abyss set and then see how things are from there I dont believe you need to turn every minstrel thread into one about beorning heals - right now beornings are best-in-slot for AoE heals period. When the abyss set has been fixed this may change but nowhere on this thread has Vastin said he is going to be nerfing beorning healing other than that, I think that the majority of the people on this thread would just like minstrels to be at least the equals of rks and beornings when it comes to healing the new raid whereas currently mini's are simply weaker when it comes to healing it and in need of some minor changes to see that happen which is hopefully what this thread should be focused on.

[Oelle]

You requesting the old "follow up" will make it AFK healing though lol.

In-regards to the current -X% skill induction buffs that the Minstrel currently has,

Anthem of the Third age (-25% skill inductions), Landing a critical heal (-15% skill inductions) = -40% skill inductions already and these 2 are permanent buffs.
On top of that, Those who have the new raid set (me being one) have -10% skill inductions. With all 3 that's -50% skill inductions which bring Bolster and Inspire Fellows down to a 0.7s induction.

And yet here are people still requesting for the old "follow up" just to sit there and spam Bolster. No thank you.

You forgot Quick Melody Trait (-20%) and LI legacy (-10%).

[dsltn07]

Dsltn this thread along with many others are focused on buffing mini's not nerfing beornings, I think most people here including yourself accept beorning needs some fixes or "balancing" in your words, definitely on the abyss set and then see how things are from there I dont believe you need to turn every minstrel thread into one about beorning heals - right now beornings are best-in-slot for AoE heals period. When the abyss set has been fixed this may change but nowhere on this thread has Vastin said he is going to be nerfing beorning healing other than that, I think that the majority of the people on this thread would just like minstrels to be at least the equals of rks and beornings when it comes to healing the new raid whereas currently mini's are simply weaker when it comes to healing it and in need of some minor changes to see that happen which is hopefully what this thread should be focused on.

Those I’m replying to are talking about nerfing the Beorning in this thread instead of minstrel changes. I’m doing my best to educate them on why they’re wrong and keep repeating that instead of asking for nerfs to a class they don’t know the slightest thing about, they go read about and discuss it elsewhere. If they insist on discussing it here though, I’ll discuss it here. At least half of the posts related to minstrel now are in direct comparison to the Beorning. It’s bugged and should not be used as a comparison. The RK is in a good spot, but everyone’s ignoring the RK though it would make for a better comparison towards balanced healing.

Edit: Also, the “balancing” I’m talking about would require extensive work on the class, it’s been entirely riddled with bugs related to almost every single skill for five years and now some have been fixed along with new ones being introduced. Of course it’s not balanced. I keep asking for fixes but everyone else wants direct nerfs instead of fixed so their class is not outperformed.

Edit 2: Rereading your comment bombollo: “the majority of the people on this thread would just like minstrels to be at least the equals of rks and beornings when it comes to healing the new raid”
This is exactly the problem. I DONT think the Beorning is in a good place right now, but the vast majority posting don’t care about the Beorning class, they just want to make sure their preferrred class is the strongest regardless of balance. Repeating what I’ve said before, I’m happy minstrel is getting work, but insisting that you be buffed to be equal to a currently broken class is just selfish, as is asking for a class to be worse than yours on principle.

[Moondog548]

HUZZAH!

A lot has already been said, but I won't hesitate to repeat it for emphasis!

OK so my feedback wrt Protector of Song (yellow):

• FIX Raise Spirit
• All heals need a SMALL buff. (casting Bolster Courage is literally counterproductive with any induction)
• Long-cool-down "emergency" heals need a LARGE buff (yellow doesn't have Triumphant Spirit, so I'm referring to Chord of Salvation and Codas of Melody/Resonance... as far as I can tell, Fellowship's Heart is fine as an emergency HoT.)
• Song of Aid and Call to Greatness are complicated, but need a comprehensive review/tweak to remain useful as our special signature skills
• Song of Courage could use a shortened induction (1s), but its main problem is a problem for all our skills....
• Many of our skills have a LONG ANIMATION and the skill effects do not trigger UNTIL THE ANIMATION COMPLETES.
  
  
  • This would be tolerable if many of our skills (especially emergency skills) didn't have BOTH AN INDUCTION AND AN ANIMATION.
    
  • All skills need to be changed to have the effects come at the start of the animation and let the animation lock us out of other actions for its duration.
    
  • Remove or drastically shorten animations on skills that also include an induction.
  
  
• yellow-tree anthems (Prowess & Composure, at least) need a bit of a buff. Compare their values to typical character ratings for those same stats and adjust them to a useful proportion. This should be the yellow minstrel's primary contribution to the fellowship, remember!
• Shield Focus is obviously a niche skill, but I honestly think it's ok for that! However adding some Parry and Evade would make it a lot more justifiable as one of the tree's core skills.
• Story/Song of the Hammerhand: the flat-10% morale magnitude is fine. However they'll never be be useful for more than a split-second unless they act as a DAMAGE GATE. (i.e. the damage from the single attack that breaks them should NOT overflow to morale). You can even give them a longer cool-down if you want, but they need this change to be relevant tools, instead of their current state as a very small over-heal.

A general minstrel concern:

• Please double check the # values for Melody/Echoes/Timeless Echoes of Battle
• Please double check to see if Echoes and Timeless Echoes actually do damage as described

A general concern:

• Outgoing Healing, the stat, does not appear on the Character Panel. It'd be nice if it did, especially since it's a possible gear stat!

also if you hadn't already seen... a semi-focused thread on yellow minstrel problems/solutions here: https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...&p=7909021#top

THANK YOU, VASTIN!

[keztryl]

Fix the yellow Raise our Spirits trait that it actually applies a hot!
Fix or revamp blue trait Resonant Piercing Cry to make it work/useful so that it is worth to skill it... like a bigger outgoing healing buff or a -5s cd on Triumphant spirit on every use of resonant cry...

Although an new, additional HoT from Raise our Spirits might be good, I wouldn’t mind seeing the yellow line trait for RoT provide a buff to incoming healing or something “supports allies with powerful buffs”.
The issue with Resonant Piercing Cry regardless of its potency is that it would require Minstrels to slot finesse in blue (and likely substantial finesse for t3) so if it is going to be improved it ought to be a guaranteed (low damage) attack, and the effect not dependent on a critical hit. I think this trait belongs in the yellow line, not blue.

The thing I want to mention here is useless defensive traits we have after the last major change. I'm talking about Resolute Blue line set bonus, which increases block rating, and Shield Focus in yellow Tree, which increases block chance. They do not help surviving by any means.

Agreed. What is even more odd is that the +2.5% Block Chance requires a sacrifice of -30% Run Speed. Like minstrels need to be able to move in response to line of sight issues. Why would a defensive stat buff lead to a potential loss in one’s ability to heal? Very useless trait atm. A short 10s +60% block chance with a 2 minute CD might make sense as a survival skill (I wouldn’t mind if my mini shield was more than just a stat bump). But it would need to be about that potent to be useful.

The main problem I have is a lack of good aoe healing. Fixing the aoe component on the Raise the Spirit trait could really help here.
I would prefer to see [bubble skills] remain/become a long cooldown panic skill. Maybe raise the base bubble to 25%, and change the bubble magnitude trait to be +incoming healing or -incoming damage.

5)Herald's strike: 8% incoming healing buff to fellowship, or 20% incoming healing buff to self
6)Call to the second age: Radius: 15 meters, duration: 15 seconds, buff 10% outgoing damage

I like these ideas, although I would prefer if Legend of Helm Hammerhand had a 1 minute CD. I would also really like to see an increase to “Call to the Second Age” radius. You have to be standing right on top of the person as it is now.

Fellowship's Heart could use like.. doubled healing. Base heal is less than bolster, HoT component is like 10% higher than 3 soliloquys.

FH last 30 seconds, heals the entire fellowship (within 20m), and takes considerable pressure off of the mini as a large number of HoTs with high crit mag/crit chance make this a powerful heal. I don’t see a need to change FH (imho). I would rather see improvements to Legend of Helm Hammerhand to make this an effective skill that is frequently included in one’s rotation when contending with high fellowship wide damage.

Another skill that needs rework is The Melody of Battle. The parry buff and reflect are useless at the moment. I would prefer if this skill interacted with Soliloquy of Spirit and Inspire Fellows, enhancing their effects (i.e., if the target of your SoS is the recipient of your Melody of Battle buff, they will be granted an additional 9.6k parry per SoS, and if the target of your inspire fellows has MoB, the reduction of incoming damage is doubled, capping at -8%).

[Fureo]

So i want to add something to what i said in a few posts before.

Yellow tree: (still relevant when playing in blue line)

- Fix the yellow Raise our Spirits trait that it acutally applies a hot.

Blue Line:

- Fix or revamp blue trait Resonant Piercing Cry to make it work/usefull so that it is worth to skill it... like a bigger outgoing healing buff or a -5s cd on Triumphant spirit on every use of resonant cry...

- Revert the change from last year, that follow up can only be stacked once and has 20s duration.
Should stack without a Limit , induction time deacrease to -10% or less, duration 6s again .
Reason why i think that must change is minstrel was more dynamic back then. After the change was introduced, most complained that minstrel was boring to play. Back then it was AFK Healing because the group heal of Bolster Courage was higher then the ST healing. That is not the case right now. You won't be able to AFK Heal in a Raid with a Bolster Makro these days.

- Fix/buff the 4th point put into blue trait improved chord of salvation that the fellowship wide heal is not something between 300-600.

- Maybe take a look at the power cost scalling from the trait "Pause for breath" Chord of Salvation and Inspire fellows seem way out of place.





red line :

- "Enduring Morale" trait scale the Moral given from the trait right now it is worthless.
Examples:
- Change it to vitality (make sure it is not to high) like max rank 2500 or 3500 ( we are healers and don't need that much like a champion who has a hard time getting HP)
- Make it % moral like 1 - 1.5% for every point
- Just lift the flat amount of moral

Side Notes:

- Also, if you fix the yellow Raise our Spirits trait make sure the heal is different to the chord of salvation heal since they are the same right now and skalling both with the points put into the raise our spirits trait.

[keztryl]

Weakening Echoes of Battle: the critical defense debuff needs to be greatly increased, and suggest that it cap out with a -10% light damage mitigation buff. This would allow minstrels to debuff light damage resistance (along with Call of Orome) to the same extent that a LM debuffs fire damage with Raven/Benediction increasing their own damage but also providing an alternative to fire debuffs for wardens and hunters.

Melody Stance: should provide +10% finesse. Yellow minstrels need the finesse b/c they still need to be geared for healing, but now need to hit things as well and the Finesse trait is too far down the red line to be readily accessible.

Perfect ballad: replace the 3% power cost buff/debuff with 2% attack duration, reducing attack during for allies (capping at 10% if used 5 times) and increasing attack duration on foes if Strike a Chord is traited.

Strength of Helm Hammerhand should have the equivalent buffing strength of a red captain banner, but offer defensive and offensive bonuses instead. My preference would be to keep the existing bubble, but reduce the skill CD to 30s, with a +20% to tact/physical mastery buff applied to the target and +20% crit magnitude buff lasting 20s (when in Melody stance).

Word Spreads should be increased to +4 targets (assuming close proximity).

Call to Fate: as stated above please increase the radius of the fellowship effect to at least 10 meters, preferably 15m.

Call to Greatness: in my mind, this capstone should be as significant as captains’ oathbreakers in terms of buffing efficacy, but the current class specific buffs are problematic in that the importance of different class skills has/can change over time. My preference would be for this skill to reduce skill inductions by -15% for 15s and attack during by -5%, while increasing the duration of the following class specific skills by 5-10 seconds:
Hunter: Burn Hot
Champ: Controlled Burn
Captain: Time of Need
Warden: Recklessness
Lore Master: Sic ‘Em
Guardian: Warrior's Heart
Beorning: Call to Wild
Burgler: Coup de Grâce (effect)?
RK: Mystifying Flames? (I really have no idea what would be good for RKs or Burgs).

The CD for Call to Greatness would need to be increased to 3 minutes, given suggested increase in potency. If this is too much work, the skill should at least provide a nice (defensive/offensive) stat buff , such as a high critical defense bonus (~25%) combined with a 5-10% mitigation bypass bonus and/or critical magnitude buff.

Please keep in mind that stacking buff classes at the cost of DPS classes results in a loss of DPS in most cases. Also unlike Captain banner/OB/telling, yellow minstrel buffs are mostly limited to the fellowship they are in.

[Karnage_Arkenstone]

@Vastin

It would be highly recommended for you to not focus your attention to those who have no knowledge of the class as it does not make any sense how they are trying to give you feedback or points on the class when they have nothing to give.

Also I am not being disrespectful, I am just being honest and being open on what a member of the Lotro team needs to see/hear.

Now for what needs to be fixed, given back or taken away from the Minstrel class is honestly very simple.


To start off with,

Raise the Spirit - The skill that is only used when it is miss clicked (that's if anyone has it on their bar). Why? Because for a long time the skill itself has not been scaled properly to the point where it basically heals for nothing. If Raise the Spirit was to be scaled to heal higher along with fixing the current bug it has which is not applying a fellowship wide HoT when it should be when traited from yellow line then it would be useful and used. Make the HoT useful please.

Bolster Courage - In my opinion the single target heal is fine where it is but the base heal could be raised so the skill itself is not always relying on a crit in desperate times or in general. However, the AoE heal from Bolster Courage (Bolster Our Courage) is low and needs work but not to the point where Minstrels just spam it and everything is fine, just so we can see a good difference.

Inspire Fellows - Inspire Fellows has a 5s cooldown and that is fine. The heal of it overall needs to be buffed as it is low.

Chord of Salvation - Chord of Salvation fellowship wide heal needs a buff.

Triumphant Spirit - I would prefer this skill to have a 30s cooldown rather a 45s one. This would slightly cover up the needs of the old "Follow up" buff for consistent burst AoE heals.

Fellowship's Heart - Reduce cooldown from 5m to 3m. Buff the HoT.

Perfect Ending - The snowball tier requirement is fine and the 10s duration for it being available is also fine. Buffing it would make sense since it is not always available and only for a short duration unlike Chord of Salvation and yet Chord of Salvation is healing higher than Perfect Ending, Please buff it. I also feel like the skill itself is a little too dry and boring since it is mainly a single target skill that is not always available so a +10% incoming healing buff or -10% incoming damage that lasts for 12 seconds from it on the target would be nice.

Coda of Resonance - This 100% needs a buff.

Soliloquy of Spirit - Cooldown and duration is fine but the HoT needs a buff. The animation of it needs to be worked on as it takes nearly 2 seconds to follow up another skill after it.

Story of Courage - Should remove 2 debuffs off every fellowship member instead of just 1. Reduce induction from 2.2s to 1.5s (unbuffed).

Cry of the Chorus - This should be reverted back to the old version where you cannot gain the reset effect more than once every 15s which allows the usage of Coda of Resonance being used more often and of course the healing % buffs from Cry of the Chorus itself.


Bubbles -

Allow the bubbles to scale off the targets morale rather than the Minstrels.

Song of the Hammerhand (Can only use it on yourself) - Add a -10% incoming damage buff that lasts for 5s.

Gift of the Hammerhand (Can only use it on a fellowship member) - Reduce cooldown from 2m to 1m. Add a -10% incoming damage buff that lasts for 5s.

Legend of the Hammerhand (Applies to everyone in the fellowship) - Add a -10% incoming damage buff that lasts for 5s.


Now with the general stuff.

Please do not bring back the old "Follow up" buff which allows people to sit there and spam one skill (Bolster) after landing multiple critical heals because than it feels like a AFK healing class. It is the healing skills themselves that need a buff and you cannot fix healing skills which are low by allowing people to just instant cast/spam them. You could however bring in a new trait line set bonus in blue line that allows the Minstrel to unlock another -15% induction buff in a certain way instead of allowing the same buff applying multiple times with no limit.

Anthem duration's are sort of fine, I find them a little too long but that isn't that important. Anthem of the Third Age should be removed if it is used with Coda of Resonance. Meaning, it needs to be reapplied after Coda of Resonance if the Minstrel wants Anthem of the Third Age buff again.

That is all I have to say for now, I hope you look into the Minstrel class in the right way.

Thank you.

[Oelle]

Story of Courage - Should remove 2 debuffs off every fellowship member instead of just 1. Reduce induction from 2.2s to 1.5s (unbuffed).

Story of Courage induction unbuffed is 3s.
And no, please no additional -induction buffs.
Minstrels already have too many of those which can go down to permanently -80% inductions by themselves, which is already no inductions with a yellow warden (Anthem of the Third age (-25%), Follow Up (-15%), new raid set (-10%), Quick Melody Trait (-20%) and LI legacy (-10%)). If anything base induction times should be reduced and all these -induction% buffs nerfed or changed to something different.
Otherwise, I totally agree (and on all other points too).

[glfftroll]

General changes:

1) Minstrel healing skills need a buff across the board. Probably by about 10% or 15% to remain competitive with other healers like Rune-keeper or Beorning.
2) It would be best if all minstrel skills had their healing range normalized to 25m or 25.2m.
3) Minstrels are not designed to a damage dealing class, but similarly to healing, a buff of about 15% seems in order at the moment as they are one of the weakest classes for dealing damage.
4) The inclusion of a separate outgoing heal rating section to be added underneath 'Tactical Mastery' in character panel offence section.

Trait-line changes:

1) The blue-line trait 'Improved story of Hammerhand' should really include bubble potency for the skill 'Legend of Helm Hammerhand' as well
2) Blue line trait 'Resonant Piercing Cry' has a bonus so small that its imperceptible or not even applying at all. An incoming heal rating buff would be nice (5%?)
3) Yellow-line trait 'Perfect Performance' really needs to give stronger potency bonuses to be worthwhile. maybe 3% per tier?

Skill Changes:

1) Chord of Our Salvation fellowship heal needs a massive buff
2) Raise the Spirit fellowship Heal-over-time is missing from the trait bonus

[Thodrien]

Minstrel doesnt need a healing buff!
What we need are bug fixes as posted multiple times before on the raise a spirit aoe hot that never happend+his bug trait.


What we really need in terms of making the raid balanced is:Nerv beorning heals(abyss set bonus+crit heal magnitude) and nerv rk cooldowns(either rk stone up to a high cooldown like 3min or nerv the duration down to like 5 seconds or nerv the magnitude down to 20-30% dmg reduce!).

The heals mini can provide are fine for the given content, even for the new raid getting released on t3.

Some people who say here that minis are not getting taken into t2 raids have simply bad raidleaders/grps. I mean the world first kill + at least 3/4 kins who did the Anvil raid T2 on the release day took a mini.
100% minstrels will be in raids of t3 progress raids.

[Krindel]

Please, do not revert Follow Up trait change from last year, this was one of the best things, Frienly Hat has done. With stackable induction buff from Follow Up, you were forced to spam heals over and over again, this was causing massive over healing and aggro generating. Healing skill inductions are short enough in blue line, no need for more induction buffs. Just reduce cooldown of Story of Courage.