Minstrel Tweaks

[Aeowulf]

We're looking at a better fix for older set bonuses in general.

Kind of the point of class set bonuses is to provide classes with unique and powerful bonuses that make for a flashy end-game experience. They are supposed to be kind of game changing, ideally.

However because they are usually designed to be basically overpowered, they also need to age out gracefully - and LOTRO never got around to building in a proper mechanism to do that. It is something we're trying to get in now so that we can go back to introducing fun, OP set bonuses without them going on to break the game for the next 'x' years, or having to do stupid things like people's armor suddenly expiring when they level up, which is kinda terrible.

-Vastin

They could diminish with age as in you loose 10% effectiveness of stats/armour for each level over the max range you get.

Have to admit I was caught off guard in a dungeon once when my captain dinged naked!

~Aeo

[dsltn07]

They could diminish with age as in you loose 10% effectiveness of stats/armour for each level over the max range you get.

Have to admit I was caught off guard in a dungeon once when my captain dinged naked!

~Aeo

Scaling and balancing already being an issue, I’m not sure introducing scaling for effects on scaling skills would be the best move. Yes, I realize that was confusing. Though, if it could be done, perhaps -20% per level, with a complete removal at 5 over would work. So 115 set bonuses would disappear when you hit 120.

[xmorzan]

I haven't read everyone's suggestions, but here's my 2 cents worth, sorry if someone already suggested these.

-Perhaps add a form of potency to low utility and non-used skills that buffs and/or maintains healing output on bigger skills or tiers up the hots we have to be group/wide (for example: adding major ballad healing to most heal skills so that maximum healing requires using most of our skills
-Fix our hots, of course
-Add a skill that resets the cd of one skill (5-10 minute timer?)
-helm of hammerhand has increased inc healing buff added?

Thank you though, for reaching out to the community and for spending some time to make the mini more competitive and fun to play.

[hanxcve]

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.

Agreed 100% bring back old follow up and fix morale trait

[keztryl]

-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).

Mostly agree.

I would like to see Story of Courage become an immediate skill in red (you can keep the ridiculous hunter-like post skill execution animation if you must), but otherwise, is fine the way it is in Blue/Yellow, as it works the same as other induction based healing skills. The existing induction cost forces minstrels to choose between "effect removal" or a healing skill.

When in Red the induction is painful and the skill cost is higher for us than every other class. I am assuming in red that like other healing skills it becomes a self-heal in Dissonance stance? Its a song Song of Courage... we're minstrels: this is suppose to be what we are good at. How are we the worst class for this kind of thing?

[hanxcve]

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.

The main reason minstrel is getting a buff is because of how slow it is compared to other healing classes. What made follow up broken is aoe bolster being completely op. No one cares about spam healing or healing threat as "spamming skills" is needed to maintain buffs on every class, you don't pause for 10s doing nothing while healing just to perfectly time a skill that's stupid

[Smapper]

Agreed 100% bring back old follow up and fix morale trait

I also completely agree with everything that was said.

[Karnage_Arkenstone]

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).

When I said it was a 2.2s induction unbuffed (No Anthems/Sets) I meant in blue line including the LI legacy that gives -10% induction skills but that's not really a buff.

And no one ever takes a yellow warden into any run or have any reason to. With Anthem/Raid set my Bolster and Inspire Fellows induction times are already 0.7s.

And thank you.

[Arabani]

Minstrel doesnt need a healing buff!

Lotro is a really unique game, and lotro players are unique as well. Never before, in any game, and I've played a lot, I've seen someone being against buffing his class. It just makes no sence.

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 same thing here as well: I can hardly imagine someone asking for another class nerf in any other mmorpg. If it were WoW, for instance, everyone would be happy some class perfoms greatly. It means they can do stuff easier if such a class is in thier group/raid, they can play this class after all. Even in Everquest 2, where balance is a very elusive matter and half of the classes are "useless" or underperfom, everyone suggests buffing "left out" classes, but not nerfing the other half.

Can a Minstrel heal? -Yes, he can. Does he do it easily in any type of content and with average gear? -No he does not. Do other healers do it easier with the same level of gear? -Yes, they do. In my book it means MInstrel requires some buffing and rebalancing. I'm also strongly against the old Follow up and 100% cast speed reduction.

[Thodrien]

Lotro is a really unique game, and lotro players are unique as well. Never before, in any game, and I've played a lot, I've seen someone being against buffing his class. It just makes no sence.



The same thing here as well: I can hardly imagine someone asking for another class nerf in any other mmorpg. If it were WoW, for instance, everyone would be happy some class perfoms greatly. It means they can do stuff easier if such a class is in thier group/raid, they can play this class after all. Even in Everquest 2, where balance is a very elusive matter and half of the classes are "useless" or underperfom, everyone suggests buffing "left out" classes, but not nerfing the other half.

Can a Minstrel heal? -Yes, he can. Does he do it easily in any type of content and with average gear? -No he does not. Do other healers do it easier with the same level of gear? -Yes, they do. In my book it means MInstrel requires some buffing and rebalancing. I'm also strongly against the old Follow up and 100% cast speed reduction.

The problem is:the raid we get will be quite easy even on t3. If you look a bit in lotro history we had only a handfull of really hard boss on t2c/t3 raids/instances.
So if something is hard(whatever that means) people will at least try to take the strongest setup.

My problem there is: I like challenging content. i rather dont get a new raid on the highest difficulty down on the first day.
And how anvil t2 and t3(most likly) looks with the current strong beorning healing and the strong cooldowns on the heal rk(stone) it will be to easy and will be cleared day 1.
if you however take 2 current minstrels as the only healers on T3 progression raids on raid release i have the hope that it will take a few days/weeks per boss to get it down simply by not having any op class.

So my opinion(and only mine and maybe not the most popular):
Bugfixes for mini:yes
Healbuff for mini:no
Changes/Nervs for heal rk+beorning:Yes


thank you

[Krindel]

The main reason minstrel is getting a buff is because of how slow it is compared to other healing classes. What made follow up broken is aoe bolster being completely op. No one cares about spam healing or healing threat as "spamming skills" is needed to maintain buffs on every class, you don't pause for 10s doing nothing while healing just to perfectly time a skill that's stupid

Minstrel has so many immediate skills, that he can cut every animation, so don't tell me he is slow, compared to other healers. If you want faster inductions, invite warden to your group. You have 1s induction on Bolster Courage and Inspire Fellows with all self buffs

[dsltn07]

The problem is:the raid we get will be quite easy even on t3. If you look a bit in lotro history we had only a handfull of really hard boss on t2c/t3 raids/instances.
So if something is hard(whatever that means) people will at least try to take the strongest setup.

My problem there is: I like challenging content. i rather dont get a new raid on the highest difficulty down on the first day.
And how anvil t2 and t3(most likly) looks with the current strong beorning healing and the strong cooldowns on the heal rk(stone) it will be to easy and will be cleared day 1.
if you however take 2 current minstrels as the only healers on T3 progression raids on raid release i have the hope that it will take a few days/weeks per boss to get it down simply by not having any op class.

So my opinion(and only mine and maybe not the most popular):
Bugfixes for mini:yes
Healbuff for mini:no
Changes/Nervs for heal rk+beorning:Yes


thank you

Just to summarize:
-You are posting in the minstrel feedback thread.
-You do not want any changes done to the minstrel class at all.
-you want the other two healing classes severely nerfed until their healing is lower than yours.

Have I got that right?
Surprisingly, your opinion is actually fairly popular, and the reason why I feel I have to defend the class I’ve invested time into, waiting, for five years before some disgruntled minstrels used to being the top of the food chain effectively have my main class removed from the game.

I’ve not made a forum post for the first time in 12 years until I saw all the posts to nerf the Beorning.

If you don’t feel challenged enough in T3, then only take minstrels if that’s all you want. You’re not required to take Beornings and RKs.
The Beorning class is currently broken when healing with the abyss set, it still has many bugs and an incomplete skill lineup. It needs dev time and fixes with balance passes, not nerfs.
The RK honestly seems fairly balanced as things go.

[Thodrien]

Just to summarize:
-You are posting in the minstrel feedback thread.
-You do not want any changes done to the minstrel class at all.
-you want the other two healing classes severely nerfed until their healing is lower than yours.

Have I got that right?
Surprisingly, your opinion is actually fairly popular, and the reason why I feel I have to defend the class I’ve invested time into, waiting, for five years before some disgruntled minstrels used to being the top of the food chain effectively have my main class removed from the game.

I’ve not made a forum post for the first time in 12 years until I saw all the posts to nerf the Beorning.

If you don’t feel challenged enough in T3, then only take minstrels if that’s all you want. You’re not required to take Beornings and RKs.
The Beorning class is currently broken when healing with the abyss set, it still has many bugs and an incomplete skill lineup. It needs dev time and fixes with balance passes, not nerfs.
The RK honestly seems fairly balanced as things go.

You missunderstood me quite a lot.

I want minstrel changes and i am quite unhappy with what friendlyhat did aswell.
What i want is: fixing the hot on raise the spirit+fix that trait in yellow.
i CAN agree with a lot more things about removing that useless block skill or maybe the moral trait in red or maybe changes anthems but: Thats for me not the main problem.

YES beorning heal is broken
Yes heal rk is fine BUT THEIR COOLDOWNS AREE BROKEN. I can tell you for 100% that any fight with 1 tank+3 heal rks will be close to 0 inc dmg and this will be way to strong for T3.

Idealy i want the Lv 85 pre HD mini back with single target bolster+strong inspire fellows+strong fellowships heart.
but things simply change.

I am playing for T2c/T3 progression to get server/world first kills.
Ofc i would take only minstrels because they are in MY opinîon balanced to the content. But ofc i will take whatever is the best to kill the raid as fast as possible.
And i rather do it with 2 minstrels as a world first kills after the raid is on t3 like already out for like 3-4 weeks.
Then with 2 beornings/heal rks on day 1. because i simply like a well balanced and challenging raid.

A good example is The Unbroken T2c in throne with a super hard fight and one of the most fun fights to heal where a good minstreö can really shine. Not because of something being op but because of having a fast reaction speed+good coordination+class knowledge

[Fureo]

Minstrel has so many immediate skills, that he can cut every animation, so don't tell me he is slow, compared to other healers. If you want faster inductions, invite warden to your group. You have 1s induction on Bolster Courage and Inspire Fellows with all self buffs

Yes you can cut animations and you are able to use a lot of skills in an short amount of time, but it is always in the same speed. He probably means, that it is way to slow in change of pace. With the old follow up you were rewarded when using other skills making you a faster healer. The change of speed was the best thing with that buff. Now you are always having the same slow rotation. The induction buff is up all the time. It is not about having -100% induction time up all the time it is about getting rewarded using other skills to cast bolster, raise our spirits and inspire fellowship "faster". Putting those instant skills in between normal/fast skills to chain and hoping to get 3-4 buffs of follow up is the dynamic stuff which made the minstrel fun to play. That's what other describe as slow. You wanted to get to a point when interrupting wasn't as effective as just "casting" a skill. With that change Story of Courage didn't had a high induction etc. so that would be good for that aswell

Now you are spamming Bolster, interrupting with SoS, waiting for the tank to take a big hit, press chord and perfect end, a random cry of the chorus between that. Sometimes chaining raise of the spirits at the end and using coda if really necessary. And of course for a lot of group damage, Triumphant Spirit. Always in the same speed.
You needed to be a good minstrel when old follow up was real, unfortunatly Bolster was so op back then. I would actually compare that to weapon switching like a good Champion does. Having to do something to get maximum damage. In my opinion follow up was a comparable mechanic to that.

[CaerArianrhod]

The essence that you mention is confirmed broken, does not work.

The essence "Essence of Nature's Roar" is working, see: https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...57#post7904957

[CaerArianrhod]

I'd rather argue why the nerf shouldn't happen or why the current state is "good for the game" than being denied on my opinion because of not running T3, especially when I actually did. I already did T3 content with my minstrel. Both Thrumfall and Glimmerdeep. It was hard, but possible. Stupic mechanics should be nerfed. Buffs should be done to make minstrels viable. But if anthems are meant to stay at 3min durations, then they could just as well be turned into permanent effects, Auras, which vanish if you switch traitlines. I'd be fine with permanent anthems that way. But that would change the whole idea of how minstrels always worked. Basic minstrel gameplay was: activate 3 ballads, that unlocks anthems and coda, anthems buff coda. Activating ballads already gets ignored by most with CotC and with anthems being roughly permanent... whats left?

Sorry, but this is not about stupid mechanics (albeit in that point you right), it is about how slow and clumsy/clunky the minstrel is at the moment. Glimmerdeep: we did it on T3 with guardian, hunter and champion. So this instance is not an argument at all to say anything about minstrels in T3 content. Thrumfall: let me guess, you didn't had any champion or burglar or warden in your group for the end boss fight?

The instance designer should play all classes on the live server to see what they are doing. Many fight contains a lot's of movement: out of field/auras etc. etc. It is a nice idea to create more dynamic fights, but only if the classes get the dynamic too. The minstrel is the second most stationary class right after the LM.
The first boss in the Anvil has 135 million morale on T2 and on T3, you can guess, it will have around 240-250 million. You will need everything you have, to do that much damage. Cutting anthems duration or bounding them to Auras (what basically would be nothing else as we already have with the "Tales") would make the minstrel much less useful. You do not finish the new raid bosses on T2 and then on T3 in 3 minutes. But having the 3 minutes of anthems IS and will be very helpful.

Asking for not removing the slowness from the class, and in the same time ask to remove one important ability of the class, IS asking for nerf and that only because of unawareness.
The minstrel need buff and not nerf!

[the319]

@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.

About the most sensible post so far, reverting follow up is a step back for sure.

Quick fixes along with the above for me would be Call to Ioreth, Coda and Cry of the Chorus be instant, animation on all feels clunky on skills that need to be instant when in a jam.

Id like to see Raise the Sprit have traited tiered hot that possibly affected everyone in its radius, hopefully not interfering with sos. i.e The hot would go up a tier everytime applied.

[DJ_JD]

@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.

Quoting as I agree with this post for blue line. The issue with Bolster Base heal is something that is problematic with Triumphunt Spirit as well. The gap between critical heals and non-critical heals is too big.

[Mechrophilia]

-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.

I and others like the way anthems work now. So we disagree on this point I guess.

[ertr]

We're looking at a better fix for older set bonuses in general.

Kind of the point of class set bonuses is to provide classes with unique and powerful bonuses that make for a flashy end-game experience. They are supposed to be kind of game changing, ideally.

However because they are usually designed to be basically overpowered,

In this case I'd say that your design goals are wrong.
The set bonuses should not be so powerful as to be overpowered, or so powerful that they will make people want to use old sets long after they should have been obsolete.
The downsides of using gear that is many levels out of date should be greater than the upsides of whatever set bonuses that gear may bring.

So if the set bonuses are too good, then make them less good.

[Rimenuir]

So if the set bonuses are too good, then make them less good.

Or make new ones that are better.

[liverpaste]

We're looking at a better fix for older set bonuses in general.

Kind of the point of class set bonuses is to provide classes with unique and powerful bonuses that make for a flashy end-game experience. They are supposed to be kind of game changing, ideally.

However because they are usually designed to be basically overpowered, they also need to age out gracefully - and LOTRO never got around to building in a proper mechanism to do that. It is something we're trying to get in now so that we can go back to introducing fun, OP set bonuses without them going on to break the game for the next 'x' years, or having to do stupid things like people's armor suddenly expiring when they level up, which is kinda terrible.

-Vastin

Simples. Have the set bonus expire when you reach a certain level, not the armor itself. That way people aren't left naked and are also compelled to get better gear.

[Vilda]

We're looking at a better fix for older set bonuses in general.

Kind of the point of class set bonuses is to provide classes with unique and powerful bonuses that make for a flashy end-game experience. They are supposed to be kind of game changing, ideally.

However because they are usually designed to be basically overpowered, they also need to age out gracefully - and LOTRO never got around to building in a proper mechanism to do that. It is something we're trying to get in now so that we can go back to introducing fun, OP set bonuses without them going on to break the game for the next 'x' years, or having to do stupid things like people's armor suddenly expiring when they level up, which is kinda terrible.

-Vastin

Or, disable just the set bonus at certain level, like X-1 (where X is the current cap level) and not the entire armor piece. In this case you can use the armor, but not benefit from overpowered set bonus.

edit: lol, just the same answer like the one above me was writing it without looking at last post

[Mar-Evayave]

I can't contribute much at all on raiding, but I'd really like to see some more very small fellowship love. With red-line being self-heal only, more healing buffs into yellow would be nice. I'm talking about duoing on landscape with quest gear and poor ILI's (the on-ramp to catching up with ILI's is nauseating and I'm too far behind now to catch up with all my classes), not running Abyss with raid gear.

Also, the one redeeming trait in yellow-line (IMO) is Sharing a Story, so I do hope that doesn't go away. It's literally the only reason I use yellow-line at all, and I sacrifice half my points away from red to pour into yellow to reach that trait, which is what the trait trees were all about -- making sacrifices/choices.

[Happychappy]

You missunderstood me quite a lot.

I want minstrel changes and i am quite unhappy with what friendlyhat did aswell.
What i want is: fixing the hot on raise the spirit+fix that trait in yellow.
i CAN agree with a lot more things about removing that useless block skill or maybe the moral trait in red or maybe changes anthems but: Thats for me not the main problem.

YES beorning heal is broken
Yes heal rk is fine BUT THEIR COOLDOWNS AREE BROKEN. I can tell you for 100% that any fight with 1 tank+3 heal rks will be close to 0 inc dmg and this will be way to strong for T3.

Idealy i want the Lv 85 pre HD mini back with single target bolster+strong inspire fellows+strong fellowships heart.
but things simply change.

I am playing for T2c/T3 progression to get server/world first kills.
Ofc i would take only minstrels because they are in MY opinîon balanced to the content. But ofc i will take whatever is the best to kill the raid as fast as possible.
And i rather do it with 2 minstrels as a world first kills after the raid is on t3 like already out for like 3-4 weeks.
Then with 2 beornings/heal rks on day 1. because i simply like a well balanced and challenging raid.

A good example is The Unbroken T2c in throne with a super hard fight and one of the most fun fights to heal where a good minstreö can really shine. Not because of something being op but because of having a fast reaction speed+good coordination+class knowledge

Maybe the other classes are too OP. Maybe dps and tanking need lowering. They are insanely good also. Why pick on healing all the time? Healers need to feel powerful also and not just dps and tanks. The amount of self healing on tanks and dps needs lowering perhaps. And nerf Revealing mark.