Bullroarer Update 28 - Preview #3 CLOSED

[fmac81]

Yellow wardens are still relevant in the raid - you want to have one in your raid, a warden pretty much only goes red if you already have another yellow warden - their DPS is on a similar level but yellow line increases your raid's DPS by a bit more.

CC is also surprisingly relevant in Remmo. It's useless on first boss, that's true, but it's very useful on 2nd boss to keep flies away from group, first phase of third boss puts a lot of emphasis on FMs (I personally don't like that mechanic much, tbh) and on CCing the 2 adds. And on boss 4 it's absolutely crucial during add phases (not in t1 but in t2+). Remmo actually works quite well for employing CC into fight strategies, but even in boss 1 where there's nothing to CC both burg and LM have enough things to do to not get bored.

RK cleanse is insane and I agree that it should be changed (probably together with DPS RK specs' survivability), but I'm not so sure about buffing warden/champ cleanse. Wardens are more or less fine with one debuff removed every 5 seconds without an extremely long animation and champs can easily make up for their lacking cleanse skill by using CBR and just resisting almost everything. The only change I'd be fine with seeing regarding that would be removing the silly need to have a swappy LI for cleanse cooldown reduction.

This is helpful to know, especially as someone who hasn't run Remno, that Yellow Warden still appears to be viable, so thanks for the insight! I see a lot of yellow warden requests in world chat and usually when I asked the response is "because they can slow boss 1", so I assumed that was their main utility in the raid, much like Yellow burg with double disable or LM with the various lore skills. As someone who focused on yellow warden before it was meta, this makes me happy to hear.

What bothers me most about the cures for Warden/Champ is the power cost is over 10% of my power pool on Warden. Seems the scaling is a bit off in that regard. ~300 power is plenty cost and still would be 5% of the total. Champ is actually not horrible with power cost of the skill - its only 416 power, and decreases to 312 if you have fervor (which is what the warden should be around, is 300-400), yet the 45s cooldown is prohibitive and requires a swap LI, like you mentioned. But I digress

Throllo

[Hephburz-2]

I'm still waiting for the



And then we'll get the real release notes where player feedback has been valued and listened to.

[Markbjorn]

Still no fix for guardian.
Guardian is still the only class unwanted in Shelob T2.
Every other class can easily have a spot on that last boss T2 but not Guardian.
That really show how broken the class is and the joke update only confirm how clueless the devs are about classes in lotro.
Clueless or malevolent i am not sure anymore.

[Elmagor]

SSG specifically asked for "feedback".

We gave feedback.

No changes have been made.



Again.

That's not true, at start we have more bugged missions. So they fix some of them. And even if they fix it, it can be missed in preview #3

This posted over three months ago:



Versus:



Is incredibly disappointing...

@SSG, can you please inform us if we can expect any further guardian changes soon?

If they going to change BPE in whole game, it takes a lot of testing, and takes a lot of time. Looks like Vastin decide what buffing guradian skills on 15-20% and decreasing their CD can't help, and want to dig deeper and change whole BPE system in game. Because their surviving skills benefit from it. If he decide to do it 3 months ago, it's clear what 1 developer can't do such huge job. I expect to see that somewhere in Gundabad, not now.

P.S. Everyone know what yellow warden javelin can slow spiderlings/Bratha only because of bug, and still everyone complaining when developers fix that.

[Geremir]

Amdân Dammul, the Bloody Threshold
"The final battle of the War of Three Peaks has begun. Prince Durin Stonehelmson of the Longbeards leads the Gabil'akkâ, a great host of united dwarves, to the very gates of Mount Gundabad. But Gorgar the Ruthless, son of Bolg, has one last surprise in store for those who would seek to usurp him...."

• Multi-tiered, 12-man Raid
• Discovery Deeds can be found through Javatar in the Eyes & Guard Tavern
• Tier 4 now available!

Unfortunate to see that the new 12 man raid is released already on tier 4. Tier 5 next week? For whatever challenging part is left of this game it is completely ruined this way. For once I decided with my kin not to take part in any BR testing, for the simple reason to be more competitive when the next raid comes up and work our way up to tier 5 in a relaxed way. With the current setting and release I can imagine of some kins (Incl. Portal) the raid is already being steamrolled on the highest tier possible before it is even released. Some people might not consider this small raid to be challenging as the game in general, but a little competition never hurts for the community thats left.

Wasn't it the initial idea just to release tiers 1-3 on the release of this mini-expansion? Then why already release tier 4 here? I might hope you release tier 5 on your own though and not on BR.

[*]Guardian

• Cooldown for Thrill of Battle heal reduced to [20->8s].
• Stoic bubble now provides damage reduction during its effect rather than a heal on expiration.
• "Bellow" trait reduces Challenge cooldown by 5s per rank. Trait tooltip has been updated to reflect this.
• Break Ranks now applies a group-wide buff rather than individual.
  
• The skill is now triggered by Shield-taunt rather than Shield-smash.
  
• This buff can only be triggered once every 60 seconds.
  
• Fortification can now begin rebuilding immediately after being cashed out.

These changes are not going to cut it. How long do we have to moan further on the forums and stream to know that the Guardian remains a dead class after this stage? Or are we working behind the scenes already on the Brawler class, so there is no time left for Guardian? I won't say these changes are bad, but give people a reason to choose a Guardian over a Captain....

The initial increase Guardians need is a bigger morale pool, as Captain(33%), Beorning(25% + Ferocious Buff), Warden (25%) and Champion (20-25%) all have additional morale increase from their tanking line, so what about the Guardian?

This stuff is about to release next week or so and this way all former main Guardians can wait another two years for additional changes, because all changes are taken for granted and strong enough. This is simply not the case at the moment, this is your moment to shine and fix the actual problem at hand. And I already gave you the first hint to make them more competitive by adding a morale buff to their initial tanking line.

[Joedangod]

The initial increase Guardians need is a bigger morale pool, as Captain(33%), Beorning(25% + Ferocious Buff), Warden (25%) and Champion (20-25%) all have additional morale increase from their tanking line, so what about the Guardian?

Bit misleading, the Beorning/Warden/Champ numbers are wrong and the ferocious buff for bears is like non legacy warriors heart without the heal. So...terrible.

[Geremir]

Bit misleading, the Beorning/Warden/Champ numbers are wrong and the ferocious buff for bears is like non legacy warriors heart without the heal. So...terrible.

Sometimes you have to be misleading to get what you want, but you are right.

Wardens are 20% passive morale increase from blue, Champ/Beorn have a traitable 9,5k vitality buff from their respective lines. Yet with a 4,5-5x vitality multiplier thats still up to 42750 - 47500 extra morale on top of other buffs. The more passive morale you have the more you gain with hope, duty bound, captain motivation and other buffs, so the increase gets even bigger there.

Yet Captain still gets 25% passive + 8% extra from steeled resolve. You cannot go up against that with the current state of the Guardian.

[HolyDuckTape]

Yeah it really sucks that t4 has been released on BR, it takes the fun out of raiding progression as a lot of peeps now know all/most the mechanics before it's even out on live.

Let's hope there will be many more mechanics on the live server cause i don't think t5 (t3c) will be any different from t4 apart from like 1 mechanic and stats.



Also now with the news that creep vs freep balance will be targeted the first patch after U28, can we expect guardian balance anytime soon too or are we just gonna be ignored?

[zaboch]

can we expect guardian balance anytime soon too or are we just gonna be ignored?

Kinda sad how Creeps are gonna get an update before Guards

[Kotal]

well i really had high hopes for this BR, even the first built was promising, but the fact that nothing happened on guardian since (besides fixing a bug that came up in the first built), just leaves us utterly disappointed. there are tons and tons of ideas from the community to consider implementing. no need to implement them immediatedly, but at least a response to some of the feedback you get regarding the class and the tanking meta as a whole would be nice.

i considered buying the full price expansion this time, but unless we get some serious changes for the class or a hard nerf to cappies (like significantly class changing), i honestly don't feel like spending this much money on a new raid that will leave me again excluded on my main cause cappy gotta stay in their fancy spot.



DPS meta is in a really good spot (better than in like the last 3 years), healing meta is decent rn, every support class has their unique uses that will grant them an open spot in any raid....... only the tanking meta is broken in a very bad way, even tho literally half the roster has tanking lines. and this tanking meta is ruled by a class that would get taken into any raid even if it didn't have a tanking line at all. even tho i think the tanking meta should not be ruled by any class, imo it would make sense, if the one class that is ONLY a tank, should be the best at it, cause otherwise noone would care to give them a spot in a raid.



PS: please don't give that "brawler" class a tanking line. please don't make that happen, not when it already takes you so much time and effort to fix the tanking meta

[Hephburz-2]

Yeah it really sucks that t4 has been released on BR, it takes the fun out of raiding progression as a lot of peeps now know all/most the mechanics before it's even out on live.

Let's hope there will be many more mechanics on the live server cause i don't think t5 (t3c) will be any different from t4 apart from like 1 mechanic and stats.

From my understanding of what Cord said about the new raid structure there is not going to be any additional stat increase between t4 and t5, just simply the addition of "challenge mode".

Also now with the news that creep vs freep balance will be targeted the first patch after U28, can we expect guardian balance anytime soon too or are we just gonna be ignored?

I would have thought their continued silence on the matter was answer enough for you?

DPS meta is in a really good spot (better than in like the last 3 years), healing meta is decent rn, every support class has their unique uses that will grant them an open spot in any raid.......

I disagree on this. It was better under Anvil for DPSers, they were much closer together, currently, RK's are hardly even considered for anything above T2, so I am not sure how you can say th DPS meta is in a really good spot. Healing meta is also the same, RKs have no place, they bring no offensive utility to the table in comparison to Beorning and Minstrel.

PS: please don't give that "brawler" class a tanking line. please don't make that happen, not when it already takes you so much time and effort to fix the tanking meta

Agreed with this though.

[Kotal]

I disagree on this. It was better under Anvil for DPSers, they were much closer together, currently, RK's are hardly even considered for anything above T2, so I am not sure how you can say th DPS meta is in a really good spot. Healing meta is also the same, RKs have no place, they bring no offensive utility to the table in comparison to Beorning and Minstrel.

wasn't dps during anvil just stacking fire rks and hunters? and then only 1 champ/warden for adds and boss 2?
i agree, rks should be a lot better than they are rn, but other than that all the other dps classes are very close to each other, aren't they?


from what i have heared rks can have the highest and most consistant healing output (synergizes well with our fotm tank cause of high morale pool and stupidly high inc healing). yes, they don't have a lot of dps support (other than flurry), but iirc they are optimal for undermanning stuff (if you're into these kinda things). they do have some pretty good defensive utility.

[Hephburz-2]

wasn't dps during anvil just stacking fire rks and hunters? and then only 1 champ/warden for adds and boss 2?
i agree, rks should be a lot better than they are rn, but other than that all the other dps classes are very close to each other, aren't they?

I don't know what your experience of Anvil was, but from your comment it seems as though not at the high-end. My Raid team and others on my server who ran T3 weekly would use 1 of every main DPS class (1 Hunter, 1 Warden, 1 Champion, 1 Fire RK) and then the 5th spot as either another hunt/rk or a red burg, and we would use that for every single boss fight, it was by far the superior set up because only by utilising all buffs/debuffs from ALL the DPS classes would you achieve the best DPS for every class. This is not to sound condescending, but there is a very wide gap between the T2 pug runs I saw, and the kins / raid groups running t3 multiple times a week, and it shows.

By the end of Anvil the DPS Meta was; RBurg > Hunter > Champ/Warden > RK.

At the lower tiers and lower-skilled runs, yeah, sure, Hunter/RK was the meta, because range is king amongst lower-skilled players and very few champions can weapon swap effectively to output comparable DPS numbers.

However, the second part of your statement is accurate, under Remmo, Burg, Hunter, Warden and Champ remain very close together in terms of DPS however RK is so far down the ballpark they aren't even considered, which is NOT what we had in Anvil.

from what i have heared rks can have the highest and most consistant healing output (synergizes well with our fotm tank cause of high morale pool and stupidly high inc healing). yes, they don't have a lot of dps support (other than flurry), but iirc they are optimal for undermanning stuff (if you're into these kinda things). they do have some pretty good defensive utility.

They definitely do have the highest ST healing, I never said they didn't, but with no offensive utility to compete with Beorning or Minstrel, as such they still aren't taken becuase the nature of Remmo fights are all DPS races, and raw HPS is not an issue.

[Omen_Kaizer]

I have limited interests so I'll speak to that: raiding, gear & class builds, cosmetics, dorf lore. But I try to play through and savor story once ever, there's no replay value to it for me so I didn't mess with that here. Don't care about missions at all.

Good:

• Mini-raid seems neat from <2 hrs exposure to it. We had fun, nothing deep to say since it hasn't stewed.
• Cosmetics are re-done stoutaxe gear, which is appropriate for folks who don't have the race, and a new set with new textures & maybe half new meshes. Excited to make something out of it. Kinda goofy looking on non-dorfs, but they need something for themselves.
• Warden bug fixes are appropriate. Jav skills still proc Sieze the Moment, which I understand from Cord's last stream is by design. Thank y'all for that.
• Gold shinies
• I see and appreciate the different itemization for teal tank bracelets, though they'll get replaced by the golds.

Bad:

• Maybe an overhaul is coming with Gundabad, but U28 tank class balance will still be way captain-heavy. Guard changes are a start, but that's it. Meta won't change. Wardens and Bears and Champs won't challenge Capts either, and the goal should be the differences between classes being less than the differences between good tank players and great tank players, and it isn't (though that's an admittedly squishy metric).
• DPS class balance is OK, with 4 out of the big 5 being valid for high tiers. (the 5th, RKs, being brought purely as bubblers on T3-T5 Rukhor, not present in Thoss, and just relegated to heal in Shelob). Bears & guards would be easy to buff into the meta if you just throw some crit & damage stuff in there (unique to red line in the case of bears, to limit cross traiting as heals)--they're maybe 60% there already.
• As much as I love new shinies to chase in and of themselves, why even have all these stats if Remm has got healers and DPS capped on their primary role stats (crit chance and OGH/mastery? All that's left to do is bulk or cheese (anvil & throne 2-sets)
• Some broken stuff remains, like Never Surrender no longer working as it had for around a decade. I'm a hypocrite for saying this, but throne set @130 ought to just be either legitimized or buttoned up.
• Tact crit multipliers on teal heavy and medium drops from the 6man? Really? Is that a typo for just plain any crit multiplier, in which case I'd move it up to "good"?

[HolyDuckTape]

Kinda sad how Creeps are gonna get an update before Guards

Yeah it sucks, months of complaining and they finally plan to update guards, nothing happens in even more months time and all of a sudden they just do a whole 180, have enough time and resources to balance pvmp in less than a month? It's a bit strange for sure, kinda seems like the whole ''will give shield use rank something'' situation all over again kek.

From my understanding of what Cord said about the new raid structure there is not going to be any additional stat increase between t4 and t5, just simply the addition of "challenge mode".

Yeah cordovan said something along the lines of ''a new raidwide mechanic'' tho, that alone sounds a bit strange, couldn't they just add a challenge mode to t4 then? They really don't seem to like the original challenge mode but we will see.

I would have thought their continued silence on the matter was answer enough for you?

Just like Juggernaut + pledge combined weren't enough to bpe anything in the new raid and die in seconds time!

[MrChupie]

Yeah it sucks, months of complaining and they finally plan to update guards, nothing happens in even more months time and all of a sudden they just do a whole 180, have enough time and resources to balance pvmp in less than a month? It's a bit strange for sure, kinda seems like the whole ''will give shield use rank something'' situation all over again kek.

Lmao, they got time to do pvmp balance in a month time but don't have time to give guardians a single useful buff in multiple months time. The break ranks change is literally the only somewhat useful thing that guardians got after all these months and it isn't even implemented correctly to benefit guards............... Most dead and ignored class ever.

[Simba-]

Yellow wardens are still relevant in the raid - you want to have one in your raid, a warden pretty much only goes red if you already have another yellow warden - their DPS is on a similar level but yellow line increases your raid's DPS by a bit more.

CC is also surprisingly relevant in Remmo. It's useless on first boss, that's true, but it's very useful on 2nd boss to keep flies away from group, first phase of third boss puts a lot of emphasis on FMs (I personally don't like that mechanic much, tbh) and on CCing the 2 adds. And on boss 4 it's absolutely crucial during add phases (not in t1 but in t2+). Remmo actually works quite well for employing CC into fight strategies, but even in boss 1 where there's nothing to CC both burg and LM have enough things to do to not get bored.

RK cleanse is insane and I agree that it should be changed (probably together with DPS RK specs' survivability), but I'm not so sure about buffing warden/champ cleanse. Wardens are more or less fine with one debuff removed every 5 seconds without an extremely long animation and champs can easily make up for their lacking cleanse skill by using CBR and just resisting almost everything. The only change I'd be fine with seeing regarding that would be removing the silly need to have a swappy LI for cleanse cooldown reduction.

or you could just make Warden's cure on Blue line remove more effects and RK cure on Red/Yellow line remove only one.

[Kotal]

I don't know what your experience of Anvil was, but from your comment it seems as though not at the high-end.

You're right, i didn't run much more than the occasional (selective) pug t2... and hunters + red rk stacking was pretty much what i saw. Fairly new to raiding and the fact that my main class is literal trash atm doesn't help either...

[Laurelinarien]

Thanks for these, the price is fair.

[Brinuw]

They definitely do have the highest ST healing, I never said they didn't, but with no offensive utility to compete with Beorning or Minstrel, as such they still aren't taken becuase the nature of Remmo fights are all DPS races, and raw HPS is not an issue.

And to think that the framework of dps support is already built into the class. a simple buff to Flurry (+2 to 5%) and changing Fates stone to a +% damage buff (+15-20%) rather than its useless mastery would make things a lot closer.

[Joedangod]

And to think that the framework of dps support is already built into the class. a simple buff to Flurry (+2 to 5%) and changing Fates stone to a +% damage buff (+15-20%) rather than its useless mastery would make things a lot closer.

Also have the option of bumping the armour debuff duration of Molten Flame from 8s to 20s or so and fixing the level on the debuff to not always be level 3 (and thus perpetually resisted). Would be nice to see heal RK's having to balance mixing some damage attunement via the odd fiery ridicule.

[Joedangod]

As far as super quick and dirty fixes to Guardians go:

• Give blue line a vitality bonus for speccing it. (Probably in the region of 8k at level 130 or so)
• Rework Litany:
  
• No longer redirects damage from fellows.
  
• On use gives fellows in range 20% bonus mitigations for the duration.
  
• Bump CD to 2-3 minutes.

Point 1 puts Guardians on similar morale pools to Bears/Wardens/Champs.

Point 2 gives Guardians an answer to IHW/Last Stand. Litany also works as a self panic button with these changes.


Is it great to go this way? Nah, we're not addressing the core problems at all. Does it give Guards the tools to start doing Remm T3+? Probably.

[Morellian]

As far as super quick and dirty fixes to Guardians go:

• Give blue line a vitality bonus for speccing it. (Probably in the region of 8k at level 130 or so)
• Rework Litany:
  
• No longer redirects damage from fellows.
  
• On use gives fellows in range 20% bonus mitigations for the duration.
  
• Bump CD to 2-3 minutes.

Point 1 puts Guardians on similar morale pools to Bears/Wardens/Champs.

Point 2 gives Guardians an answer to IHW/Last Stand. Litany also works as a self panic button with these changes.


Is it great to go this way? Nah, we're not addressing the core problems at all. Does it give Guards the tools to start doing Remm T3+? Probably.

I agree, these would be nice simple changes. I realise I sound like a broken record but a use for all those shield use belt ranks we can happily spend star-lit crystals on would be very nice as well.

[Kotal]

As far as super quick and dirty fixes to Guardians go:

• Give blue line a vitality bonus for speccing it. (Probably in the region of 8k at level 130 or so)
• Rework Litany:
  
• No longer redirects damage from fellows.
  
• On use gives fellows in range 20% bonus mitigations for the duration.
  
• Bump CD to 2-3 minutes.

Point 1 puts Guardians on similar morale pools to Bears/Wardens/Champs.

Point 2 gives Guardians an answer to IHW/Last Stand. Litany also works as a self panic button with these changes.


Is it great to go this way? Nah, we're not addressing the core problems at all. Does it give Guards the tools to start doing Remm T3+? Probably.

some other little ideas that won't fix the issue, but would be a nice bandaid:
bump the melee crit chance on red line WF to 5%
add parry response skill damage to shield damage legacy
add hammer down damage to shield smash legacy

boom, easy number fixes and you'll even make the red guardians happy

if you wanna be fancy, replace shield use rank with finesse (30-50k at 130) or something...

[zaboch]

bump the melee crit chance on red line WF to 5%

Far too few, 3% won't make a change

add parry response skill damage to shield damage legacy

There's already a dedicated legacy for it (Reactive Parry damage increases Parry chain skill damage)

add hammer down damage to shield smash legacy

Hammer Down was affected by Reactive Parry damage legacy, until they decided not to do it anymore. Base damage was somewhat compensated for it, but it's a far cry now that we've rolled up 10 levels.

boom, easy number fixes and you'll even make the red guardians happy

Not really, Red suffers from far too many issues regarding general gameplay (unavailability for parry responses on a parry response based playstyle, low critical multiplier and general utility)

if you wanna be fancy, replace shield use rank with finesse (30-50k at 130) or something...

Plenty of finesse can be found on gear pieces.