Minstrel Tweaks

[Oelle]

If you plan on nerfing fates entwined, you will have to work some major bugfixes and skill polish on healing RKs... RK bombastic inspiration has the longest skill delay of any ability in the game, and several other skills have also fallen behind... the only thing keeping healing RK relevant (compared to beorning/cappy and now minstrel) is the fates entwined skill.

I'd argue that any class thats only viable because of one single skill is quite badly balanced...

[dsltn07]

If you plan on nerfing fates entwined, you will have to work some major bugfixes and skill polish on healing RKs... RK bombastic inspiration has the longest skill delay of any ability in the game, and several other skills have also fallen behind... the only thing keeping healing RK relevant (compared to beorning/cappy and now minstrel) is the fates entwined skill.

The fact that you rate cappy healing stronger than RK is funny. Same goes for minstrel, we don’t know what the changes look like yet. Beorn was just promised a nerf and a rework (I’ve been asking for rework since Vastin finally began working on the class a bit \o/ )
Beorn also overheals large amounts and has difficult cooldowns to deal with if you are not careful. If someone takes a large spike in damage unexpectedly it can be hard to catch them because of our cooldowns.

[dsltn07]

Vastin: The new v2 changes look pretty acceptable mate; good job. However, please keep in mind a few things about the minstrel:

1) Minstrels are reactionary healers. Our ability to heal comes from the quick reactions of our skills and ourselves. The heals don't necessarily need to be large; but they need to be fast.

2) Making a skill rotation "Interesting" just for the sake of it being interesting should not be a goal. Having different skills that can/need to be used in a variety of situations IS important. We need skills that:

a) Sustain a target's (tank) morale while he is full.

[This is currently being accomplished with SoS and Bolster Courage, but will be much harder with a long BC cooldown, leading to the tank's morale droppingand us having to play catch-up]

b) Can be used immediately in reaction to a target's (think DPSer) morale suddenly dropping to get him up back up to full.

[Current Skill: Chord of Salvation]

c) Can sustain a fellowship's morale OFTEN ENOUGH TO KEEP EVERYONE ALIVE. This is important when there is distributed damage; think Rakothas in Throne of the Dread Terror

[Currently being done with Inspire Fellows; which will not be feasible after the proposed cooldown increase of Inspire Fellows]

d) Can HoT and be applied to multiple targets so our attention and heals can be placed elsewhere. Ex: when a few DPSers get adds on them for the duration of a boss fight

[This is the job of SoS. With the new cool-down of SoS we will not be able to apply it to more than 2 targets, negating its usefulness in boss-fights]

Good job thus far though mate; keep it up and thank you for listening to the community on this one. We really do appreciate it.

Beorn is also very reactionary to distributed damage, we have a 9s cooldown on our aoe skill, 4.5s on our main ST heal.

[Moondog548]

Okay folks, here's the next pass, based on feedback and further math and contempation - and most importantly, based on much more detailed animation timing than I had before.
The changes below supersede the previous list.

Minstrel Change Log V2.0

Note: Most values below were calibrated on a pure blue spec 120 minstrel with mid-endgame gearing. YMMV.

- Many Minstrel skills/effects that had not been normalized previously have been updated. This should mostly result in a more even experience as you level. In particular low level minstrel DPS is no longer quite so outrageous.
- Animations on several skills have been shortened, some quite significantly (Raise the Spirit, Bolster Courage, Inspire Fellows, Chord of Salvation, Soliloquy of Spirit, Perfect Ending, Story of Courage, others).
- Healers/Heroes/Dissonant strike damage increased by ~800%, and now draw their base dmg from tactical implement. Dissonant Strike now does [Common->Light] dmg.
- Healers/Heroes Strike heals increased by ~550%.
- Major Ballad group heal increased by ~570%. This skill can now be used prior to combat.
- Improved Chord of Salvation group heal component increased by ~300%, cooldown increased [10->12s].
- Fellowship's Heart base heal increased by ~110%. Group HoT by ~20%.
- Raise the Spirit base heal increased by ~150%, animations shortened, base induction increased [1.2->1.4].
- Raise the Spirit's yellow line trait now properly applies a Fellowship HoT (3ticks/2s, 20m radius)
- Coda of Resonance Heal increased by ~150%.
- Coda of Melody's heal increased by ~130%.
- Inspire Fellows heal increased by ~115%, cooldown increased [5->6s]. Base induction reduced [2.5->2.0]
- Perfect Ending heal increased by ~40%.
- Bolster Courage direct heal increased by ~55%, group heal by ~30%, animation times reduced, cooldown increased to 3s, base induction increased [2.5->2.7]
- Triumphant Spirit heal increased by ~30%.
- Legend of Hammerhand's expiry heal is now 2% of each fellowship member's max morale per bubble that expires.
- Soliloquy of Spirit is no longer Immediate and will not interrupt other skill animations.
- Spirit of Freedom is now Immediate and has a very short animation.
- Story of Courage no longer has an induction, it is now a Fast skill with a short anim.
- Song of Hammerhand bubble magnitude increased (10%->30% Max Vital).
- Gift/Legend of Hammerhand bubble magnitudes increased (10%->20% Max Vital).
- Echoes of Battle now does [Common->Light] Damage.
- All Ballad damage increased by ~40%.
- Successive heals will now maintain the Perfect Ending buff once you have achieved a full stack, rather than it expiring if it is not used.

That's about it. Probably not going to be able to get much else done save for a minor number polish pass after this, as I really need to move on now.

This, frankly, is probably overdoing it on the healing scale - cutting the animation times bumps the base output considerably, even taking the loss of animation breaking into account - but I simply don't have a good way to run realistic numbers in-house in this time frame so I'll see what I can do about getting a version of this to Palantir or Bullroarer quickly. In any case, I'm still taking feedback based on this listing, though I may not have time to act on it soon.

-Vastin

This is one of the happiest days of my Hobbity life.

[Oelle]

I'd just like to point out to all the people complaining that healing|inductions|whatever is too OP with full specced endgame raid gear, the answer is to nerf your gear, not everybody else.

well... no.
The goal should be getting everyone on acceptable powerlevels, which will partly happen by itself as soon as the ILI revamp hits.
After everyone is on acceptable powerlevels, raiders with perfect gear should still face challenging content, but things totally should get scaled with them in mind. Not with people like "I ignore all mechanics and fight naked and the game should be easy".
If your ILI are okayish (which they'll be after the revamp) and you still cant deal with T1 instances or landscape, its in most cases your fault, not a balancing issue.
Obviously, a too large gap between casuals and raiders helps no one and is bad for the game...
But with T3 having six times the numbers of T1 and equipment differences being nowhere as big as sixfold, balancing should totally be done with best equipment and skill.

And I write this as someone that doesnt do competitive raiding. I just raid for the story in T1 or look at T2c/T3 raids years after their release. I still play T2 and T3 content with several chars... but there is nowhere top equipment from all party members required outside of raids or badly scaled instances.

[Zvim666]

Vastin, please do not forget that there is another healer that needs fixing-Blue Captain. The class requires significant changes, new healing skills, traits and so on to be able to heal as well as the rest of healers.

I think structurally, blue captain is fine. The problem is the HoTs are tiny and scale poorly, blue captains would take less effort to fix than these Minstrel changes, all you would need to do is significantly increase the base values and make them scale a lot better with outgoing healing/tactical healing rating from LIs and runes.

[Oelle]

I think structurally, blue captain is fine. The problem is the HoTs are tiny and scale poorly, blue captains would take less effort to fix than these Minstrel changes, all you would need to do is significantly increase the base values and make them scale a lot better with outgoing healing/tactical healing rating from LIs and runes.

Heals scaling with tactical healing is/was already strong enough to create issues (because of imbalance between maxed out / runes or not).
But yep, the base magnitudes of most cappy healing abilities should go up, at the cost of a hefty nerf for revealing mark. Totally.

[dsltn07]

Revealing mark is an interesting 30k HPS for a dps character doing 150k dps. For humor and frame of reference, that’s better than some 3 minstrels stacked together healing a tank, applied to all dps.
It may come about that aoe healing becomes far more valuable after its nerfed, and with the recent nerfs to Beorn and Minstrel aoe capability things could get interesting, especially raid boss 1+4.

[Elemiire]

- Raise the Spirit's yellow line trait now properly applies a Fellowship HoT (3ticks/2s, 20m radius)
- Coda of Resonance Heal increased by ~150%.


-Vastin

Thank you for not increasing the cooldown on coda and for making inspire fellows a little better.

[Demosthenes11]

Okay folks, here's the next pass, based on feedback and further math and contempation - and most importantly, based on much more detailed animation timing than I had before.
The changes below supersede the previous list.

Minstrel Change Log V2.0[...]

Generally speaking, the richest the rotations, the better. Requiring the use of more abilities to come up with the same healing output is a very, very good direction for changes and a goal in itself. As for the notes, animation shortening and values increase of certain forgotten abilities is much welcome. Other than that, there's an alarmingly wide set of healing increase that might overpower the class. Will wait to test for myself. Congratulations on your activity.

[Zvim666]

Heals scaling with tactical healing is/was already strong enough to create issues (because of imbalance between maxed out / runes or not).
But yep, the base magnitudes of most cappy healing abilities should go up, at the cost of a hefty nerf for revealing mark. Totally.

Well, it is far from a problem for blue captains atm. I am not sure how viable they want Captain to be in blue, they used to be able to heal fellowship content.

I think the Marks should get the Anthem treatment and be specific to the spec or be moved a lot further down the trees, this will piss off most if not all Captains who are getting a lot of utility nerfs as it is, but revealing mark for a raid is way too strong.

That being said, Blue and Red captains need to be a lot more viable in their role. Yellow can tank well and is probably the best boss tank in the game.

[Mechrophilia]

This is a completely exaggerated post. Vastin's already said he play tested at level 50 and was able to comfortably kill elite mobs. Minstrel dps has been over the top at low levels for a long time now, so really it's about time this sort of change was made. Finally, Vastin has also mentioned multiple times theses changes will be play tested either on Palantir or Bullroarer, which would give additional chance to review dps numbers.

50 is not low level. likely half of the players online at any given time are under 50. ...And why would you care if you're a raider? Lets not make life miserable for everyone else...

[Fureo]

Okay folks, here's the next pass, based on feedback and further math and contempation - and most importantly, based on much more detailed animation timing than I had before.
The changes below supersede the previous list.

Minstrel Change Log V2.0

Note: Most values below were calibrated on a pure blue spec 120 minstrel with mid-endgame gearing. YMMV.

- Many Minstrel skills/effects that had not been normalized previously have been updated. This should mostly result in a more even experience as you level. In particular low level minstrel DPS is no longer quite so outrageous.
- Animations on several skills have been shortened, some quite significantly (Raise the Spirit, Bolster Courage, Inspire Fellows, Chord of Salvation, Soliloquy of Spirit, Perfect Ending, Story of Courage, others).
- Healers/Heroes/Dissonant strike damage increased by ~800%, and now draw their base dmg from tactical implement. Dissonant Strike now does [Common->Light] dmg.
- Healers/Heroes Strike heals increased by ~550%.
- Major Ballad group heal increased by ~570%. This skill can now be used prior to combat.
- Improved Chord of Salvation group heal component increased by ~300%, cooldown increased [10->12s].
- Fellowship's Heart base heal increased by ~110%. Group HoT by ~20%.
- Raise the Spirit base heal increased by ~150%, animations shortened, base induction increased [1.2->1.4].
- Raise the Spirit's yellow line trait now properly applies a Fellowship HoT (3ticks/2s, 20m radius)
- Coda of Resonance Heal increased by ~150%.
- Coda of Melody's heal increased by ~130%.
- Inspire Fellows heal increased by ~115%, cooldown increased [5->6s]. Base induction reduced [2.5->2.0]
- Perfect Ending heal increased by ~40%.
- Bolster Courage direct heal increased by ~55%, group heal by ~30%, animation times reduced, cooldown increased to 3s, base induction increased [2.5->2.7]
- Triumphant Spirit heal increased by ~30%.
- Legend of Hammerhand's expiry heal is now 2% of each fellowship member's max morale per bubble that expires.
- Soliloquy of Spirit is no longer Immediate and will not interrupt other skill animations.
- Spirit of Freedom is now Immediate and has a very short animation.
- Story of Courage no longer has an induction, it is now a Fast skill with a short anim.
- Song of Hammerhand bubble magnitude increased (10%->30% Max Vital).
- Gift/Legend of Hammerhand bubble magnitudes increased (10%->20% Max Vital).
- Echoes of Battle now does [Common->Light] Damage.
- All Ballad damage increased by ~40%.
- Successive heals will now maintain the Perfect Ending buff once you have achieved a full stack, rather than it expiring if it is not used.

That's about it. Probably not going to be able to get much else done save for a minor number polish pass after this, as I really need to move on now.

This, frankly, is probably overdoing it on the healing scale - cutting the animation times bumps the base output considerably, even taking the loss of animation breaking into account - but I simply don't have a good way to run realistic numbers in-house in this time frame so I'll see what I can do about getting a version of this to Palantir or Bullroarer quickly. In any case, I'm still taking feedback based on this listing, though I may not have time to act on it soon.

-Vastin

Hey Vastin,

Just some stuff which came into my mind.

You changed Echoes of Battle to Light typ damage. This skill is doing now like at Max Damage etc. ~3000 Damage. I think it would be a fine change that it also scales better with tactical damage or at least scales with tactical damage if it isn't doing that now. Like you changed Healers/Heroes/Dissonant strike damage.

I know Red Mini wasn't on your list, but ~3000 + the ~67% Light Damage on your Book, is still not good. And when you are updating "outdated" skills, take a look at Red Capstone "Echoes" The DoT which has a 33% chance to proc does around ~1200 - ~1800 Damage that is just poor

RED Minstrel Damage is far from good. It can wait for another time and i don't want Red Mini valuable in a group/Raid, but right now it's poor and in generell dependent on Critical Hit otherwise there is no damage coming out.


I probably have to thank you for the work you put in even tho you "killed" the fun/skilled part of the Minstrel and I can't forgive you that. I hope you can bring it on Palantir and Bullroarer so some can test it before it goes Live!

[Thorebane]

With new raid armour and full essence jewellery setup you can get 180.000 morale as a minstrel even with crit and mits capped (and outgoing healing)
Then this bubble will suddenly become much better

Just curious if you could screenshot your build please.
Even on BR I've not seen any buffed mini's reaching this morale, with crit capped, OH capped and both mits capped.

I've got all new armour, AND tested with full essence jewellery, full of Vit essences after reach crit/OH/mits capped and I'm only reaching mid 165K with every buff and hope token available - and I'm the only mini I've seen around to hit that on Evernight.
Just super curious !

[sapienze]

RED Minstrel Damage is far from good. It can wait for another time and i don't want Red Mini valuable in a group/Raid, but right now it's poor and in generell dependent on Critical Hit otherwise there is no damage coming out.

Your assessment is based on what? I hope you don't say in comparison to a glass cannon Hunter, because lol. I've only reached about 85% potential of what a Red Minstrel can do at 120 and I am fine anywhere I go in this game. My overall damage exceeds half of the classes outright. The dps part of this class is made to be crit reliant and it is absolutely no problem to make this happen. This is red trait line primary with yellow finishing 90 trait points.

I'd really like you to explain your position on this because at this point I have to disagree 100%

[Zvim666]

Your assessment is based on what? I hope you don't say in comparison to a glass cannon Hunter, because lol. I've only reached about 85% potential of what a Red Minstrel can do at 120 and I am fine anywhere I go in this game. My overall damage exceeds half of the classes outright. The dps part of this class is made to be crit reliant and it is absolutely no problem to make this happen. This is red trait line primary with yellow finishing 90 trait points.

I'd really like you to explain your position on this because at this point I have to disagree 100%

I kind of agree with that poster that the class is TOO dependent on crits, when you crit with a call you do great damage, however, you don't crit with them 70%+ of the time and it feels god awful when you get strings of non-crits. I can infrequently two shot a 200k morale mob but quite often get long strings of non-crits and stuggle on an 80k trash mob. It is the significant variance or extremes which while it feels nice when you get the big crits, when the majority of your time is spent not critting it isn't a fantastic experience.

Given the class is a non-DPSer, so doesn't put out enough damage as it is to be a dps class, it wouldn't be a negative imo if the class had better non-crit damage output at the expense of a bit less zing on the crits so it feels a lot better overall. You can crit more often with ballads but they don't do spectacular damage.

If we keep the damage output on average identical but it is not a rollercoaster I think it would feel better. More often than not, my crits tend to overkill a lot, so a fair chunk of what theoretical damage isn't really doing that much for us. A more consistent base damage is in most cases far more desirable. That big spikey damage does have it's moments though.

[Arabani]

To be honest I'd like to see Red being a true dps line, competitive with the rest of dps lines, and dps in Blue and Yellow buffed to somewhere around curent Red line level. I like the idea of Skald/War Priest/Whatever you call it, when one can heal and add an average dps at the same time (up to 50% of a real dps class). I'm a long time d&d and everquest player, so I used to doing such things and it always irritates me a little when I can't

[Fureo]

Just curious if you could screenshot your build please.
Even on BR I've not seen any buffed mini's reaching this morale, with crit capped, OH capped and both mits capped.

I've got all new armour, AND tested with full essence jewellery, full of Vit essences after reach crit/OH/mits capped and I'm only reaching mid 165K with every buff and hope token available - and I'm the only mini I've seen around to hit that on Evernight.
Just super curious !

So Tact mit isn't capped at 151k with the Hymne, but why would you cap that with that Moral... and the rings are the ones with OH so that is overcapped, but i can't really go down with it ^^because i loose so much other stats



and thats with HK-Set ... yes crit goes down but 0.x% who cares



I've slottet 5 critical raiting essences and 2 Physical mitigation rest vitality and you could leave the 2 mitigation out and put in more vitality because that's on something where i don't have switch gear yet, but i need it for the Ettenmoors

[Fureo]

Your assessment is based on what? I hope you don't say in comparison to a glass cannon Hunter, because lol. I've only reached about 85% potential of what a Red Minstrel can do at 120 and I am fine anywhere I go in this game. My overall damage exceeds half of the classes outright. The dps part of this class is made to be crit reliant and it is absolutely no problem to make this happen. This is red trait line primary with yellow finishing 90 trait points.

I'd really like you to explain your position on this because at this point I have to disagree 100%

I would love to see the Mini being less crit reliable, but still wan't him to have crits like he hits now.


And if that isn't possible because questing with a Minstrel isn't a problem right now with the huge burst damage he has. That is a good thing... but there is no Damage over Time, no sustained Damage. And Damage over time wouldn't change a thing for leveling and questing, because you would still two/three hit everything.

I'm arguing from a point where Red Mini, last update (115), was sick playing Solo in the Moors. Yes everything was OP then, but with 120 the Damage didn't increase a lot(+- stayed the same) compared to Moral pools etc. Why shouldn't there at least be updatet dots. Do you think dots and Echoes of Battle a relevent right now besides Echoes of Battle debuffing cry and song resistance. And adjusting those two things wouldn't change a lot for leveling and landscale in my opinion.

bla bla Moors are dead and they won't do anything for PvP... i know and i don't care, so let me still argue from that point ^^

[Maryam]

I'm arguing from a point where Red Mini, last update (115), was sick playing Solo in the Moors.

Red Mini was OP at 75/85 cap, solo Red Mini at 105/115 was just free points for wargs, an occasional good fight with say a spider.

[Aedfrith]

There are a number of these really overpowered group buffs/boss debuffs bouncing around that we need to gradually weed out. They make our instance designer's lives very difficult because they can often be used to completely negate major mechanics or just render an instance trivial if stacked in creative ways. Buffs of this magnitude either need to go or have very short up-times.

-Vastin

If you're talking to instance designers, tell them that RNG-based unavoidable greybar mechanics (non-pottable fears, perma stuns etc) are not fun, and neither is giving trash adds 8 million morale.
Look at Dungeons of Naerband for how NOT to design an instance, and the In their Absence cluster for how to design one properly.

[Fureo]

Red Mini was OP at 75/85 cap, solo Red Mini at 105/115 was just free points for wargs, an occasional good fight with say a spider.

Never said Mini was OP, probably was the "balanced" class at that point, just freeps in generell were OP thats why Mini was at least decent. And i can't agree that they were free points...(every class were free points if you were not good equipped)

[sapienze]

I would love to see the Mini being less crit reliable, but still wan't him to have crits like he hits now.


And if that isn't possible because questing with a Minstrel isn't a problem right now with the huge burst damage he has. That is a good thing... but there is no Damage over Time, no sustained Damage. And Damage over time wouldn't change a thing for leveling and questing, because you would still two/three hit everything.

I'm arguing from a point where Red Mini, last update (115), was sick playing Solo in the Moors. Yes everything was OP then, but with 120 the Damage didn't increase a lot(+- stayed the same) compared to Moral pools etc. Why shouldn't there at least be updatet dots. Do you think dots and Echoes of Battle a relevent right now besides Echoes of Battle debuffing cry and song resistance. And adjusting those two things wouldn't change a lot for leveling and landscale in my opinion.

bla bla Moors are dead and they won't do anything for PvP... i know and i don't care, so let me still argue from that point ^^

Assuming the screen shots you show above are what you have in relation to your comments about the Red Minstrel and its ability to crit, I see the problem. You have zero Finesse. The gear and jewelry looks nice but its a healing set up, completely or it would have a finesse value. U22 I had my Finesse upwards of 130k plus. Finesse is an integral part of a Minstrel doing damage.

The usual red line rotation is intended to enable critical hits and it works quite well. The only thing I would change about the current redline approach is to have Call of Orome become a toggle for single attack and Aoe attacks but its just a fluff idea and no one needs a toggle for it anyway.

You quoted Vastin's list and near the bottom is a huge boon for Minstrels and likely overpowered. This is the added 40% damage to all ballads. This comment depends on what Vastin means by saying at near the top of his list "- Many Minstrel skills/effects that had not been normalized previously have been updated."


I miss the days when a Minstrel could be the do-all healer and dpser on the go using every skill they had before trait trees. Today a Minstrel needs two sets of ILI's and two sets of gear and one of gear sets needs Finesse.

[sapienze]

I would love to see the Mini being less crit reliable, but still wan't him to have crits like he hits now.


And if that isn't possible because questing with a Minstrel isn't a problem right now with the huge burst damage he has. That is a good thing... but there is no Damage over Time, no sustained Damage. And Damage over time wouldn't change a thing for leveling and questing, because you would still two/three hit everything.

I'm arguing from a point where Red Mini, last update (115), was sick playing Solo in the Moors. Yes everything was OP then, but with 120 the Damage didn't increase a lot(+- stayed the same) compared to Moral pools etc. Why shouldn't there at least be updatet dots. Do you think dots and Echoes of Battle a relevent right now besides Echoes of Battle debuffing cry and song resistance. And adjusting those two things wouldn't change a lot for leveling and landscale in my opinion.

bla bla Moors are dead and they won't do anything for PvP... i know and i don't care, so let me still argue from that point ^^

I don't use Echo of Battles unless I expect the fight to last more than say 15 seconds on a single target. I almost never use it in PvMP because other skills are more productive to my goal.

[Fureo]

Assuming the screen shots you show above are what you have in relation to your comments about the Red Minstrel and its ability to crit, I see the problem. You have zero Finesse. The gear and jewelry looks nice but its a healing set up, completely or it would have a finesse value. U22 I had my Finesse upwards of 130k plus. Finesse is an integral part of a Minstrel doing damage.

The usual red line rotation is intended to enable critical hits and it works quite well. The only thing I would change about the current redline approach is to have Call of Orome become a toggle for single attack and Aoe attacks but its just a fluff idea and no one needs a toggle for it anyway.

You quoted Vastin's list and near the bottom is a huge boon for Minstrels and likely overpowered. This is the added 40% damage to all ballads. This comment depends on what Vastin means by saying at near the top of his list "- Many Minstrel skills/effects that had not been normalized previously have been updated."


I miss the days when a Minstrel could be the do-all healer and dpser on the go using every skill they had before trait trees. Today a Minstrel needs two sets of ILI's and two sets of gear and one of gear sets needs finesse.

The screenshots are just for Healing, that was the point of the guys who wanted screens, I think^^

For Update 22 which was released in March there was no reason at all to equip Finesse on red line. I never had more than the finesse given in Red trait line which are around 20k after the rework! With Echoes of battle and LI legacie there was basically 0% resist etc. So I actually don't no why 130k would be necessary.

However if you mean U.23 which we are in right now you need around 70k to be fine with all the resist stuff... probably even less 50k to have a non respectable amount of Resist in Ettenmoors. Since i don't have full Damage gear, I can't change a lot with my finesse right now lowering it to a point it is fine.

And in PvE there isn't anything resisting in away that it would bother me while having 0 Finesse

And still the DoTs are not up to date right now...