Bullroarer Update 30: Early Look: Skill Balance Work

[BinaryTertiary]

I'm sorry, but where did you get such high damage values on skills from parrying? I have two legendary weapons with all legacies, but the damage values are very different. All other skills have the same damage rate as yours.

All damage values are given with the respective legendary weapon.

belt has a legacy called "Reactive Parry Damage" which increases parry chain damage

[Rino90]

belt has a legacy called "Reactive Parry Damage" which increases parry chain damage

Lol. I've always thought that this legacy only affects the talent of the same name. Thank you!

[BinaryTertiary]

Lol. I've always thought that this legacy only affects the talent of the same name. Thank you!

it has been said for years that it should be renamed to remove confusion but nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooo we gotta buff captains instead @120

edit: if i may say i would replace guardians ward legacy with the reactive parry one

[Tullkas]

RK Feedback: Summary - Red line improvement is a bit better, but still un-useable in group content. (Side note... while I was drafting this, I watched a HNT on the dummy next to me parsing 185k to 195k and an LM parsing 140k).

• Running Greater RK Remm set, 4 piece, with Critical Flame 5% Fire satchel title. Tact mastery:803, Crit 612. No Scrolls/food etc.
• DPS parses on the dummy are around 120k un-buffed. Better than before, but low comparable Yellow Gear averaging 147k unbuffed similar gear/stats. (155kdps average buffed)
• DPS breakdown - 36% Smouldering, 16% Essay of Fire, 13% Essence of Flame, 7.6% Ceaseless, 7.4% Searing words

• Rotations works... but is very simplistic in nature, there are not enough Fire skills.. rotation requires regular lightning skills. inductions on frost are too long for the bad dps (plus frost = water... not good for fire.. lol)
• Smouldering (1/3rd of our dps averages 120k DPS... thus locking our base DPS). Essence of Flame provides spikes averaging 250k... but all other skills average well under 90k per hits, thus offsetting Essence and reducing DPS
• Fiery Ridicule's and Writ of Fire, our only low CD fire skills have terrible initial damage (less than Scribe Spark).
• Dot Damage is very low... too low... for instance the average Writ of Fire T3 is only on average 6k per tick higher than T2. 4 seconds per tic = 1.5k dps increase. This is nothing... Fiery R only does 3k dps extra from T2 to T3. again... nothing.
• Lightning is fast, shoot on-the-move, no inductions, great AoE, stuns, etc... To be T2+ endgame viable yellow still needs 15-20% DPS increase.
• Fire is slow, long inductions, easily disrupted by hits (even the target dummy causes induction delays). But better range.
• Fire needs an additional +40% to +60% or more to be T2+ viable. Fire given the slower/more rigid playstyle, should parse greater DPS when allowed to stand stationary and uninterrupted (such as at the test dummy) else there is no reason to leave yellow line. HNT should remain the benchmark high DPS, long-range, rapid target switch, where the red RK can only out DPS and approach WRD DPS rate if left stationary for long periods

• personal vote:
• Writ of Fire has terrible initial and dot DPS. No debuffs or buffs (like yellow Writs). CHANGE: 10 sec CD. Initial Damage x 4. + 3% Fire damage per tier.. Max Tier = 10. Should tier down (not cancel)... this again requires long build-up times, but reduces the RKs ability to switch high DPS to other targets (again...leave highest DPS rapid target switch to HNTs). Doesn't do alot of damage on its own, but the buff increases all DPS. Combustion can be used to spread Writs very 15 sec for attunement cash out (good for AD type adds, but not good for things like Remm B1 spider adds)
• Fiery Ridicule's low initial and DOT damage (7k dps) DOT only increases 13-15% per tier. As it stands.. you burst out 3 tiers and then never use it again since Essence refreshes the Dot and the initial damage lower than the worst lightning skill (scribes spark). CHANGE: Tier up to 6. CD to 6sec. initial DPS x 1.5 Dot + 25% per teir.
• Add some additional fire skills to add some complexity to the red line and minimize the use of lightning. Something like...
  
  • NEW: Flame Strike - no induction, quick hit 100kish damage. 1s CD
  • NEW: Stoke - moderate initial damage. 5s cd. next skill +50% initial damage.
  • NEW: Flare Up - 1s induction big hit, + DPS per Fiery ridicule tier, 3s CD
  • NEW: Ignition. medium hit. 2s cd.
• Moving should hurt attunement. However, left uninterrupted and stationary, the RK should parse between HNT and WRD DPS peaks. (IE 130kdps first min, 180k DPS second min, 220k DPS third min +).

There are lots of other ideas in the forums even better. But Fire RK, while improved, it not strong enough to be used in groups.

Agree with most of your findings and suggestions here, Please consider tweaking damage numbers more in line with other DPS class's so RKs are not left out of this upcoming raid and other higher tier group content moving forward.

[Joedangod]

~ Cleansing Flame ~

~ Searing Words ~

First of all let's start with Searing Words. Since I've been gone it now stacks with other RK's (yay) but you no longer have the ability to have multiple tiers active at once from a single RK (boo). So obvious play here is to return the ability to proc multiple tiers of Searing Words at once. Rotation would now revert to the original U16 or so to ~U24 style, during the first 30 seconds of a fight the RK will hold out on using writ until Searing Words procs, once Searing has procced from that tier they will play writ and attempt to proc it again on the new tier.

So with the above change we no longer rush writ of fire to provide Tier 3: Searing Words, instead we monitor procs on the target and upgrade writ as needed.

Naturally this leads to the old issue RK's had, massive burst in the first 20-30 seconds that steadily drops off since we can't really afford the DPS loss of waiting for writ to tier down and eventually drop off so that we can stack Searing Words tiers again.

~ How do we fix this? ~

We come up with a way to cash out our active tier of writ of fire. Now in the current world of RK frost skills have somewhat fallen to the wayside and thematically I like the idea of applying an icy touch to that burn* so let's look at the options we have available:

*Tssssss sound effect would be mandatory



Flurry of Words omitted as it already has a kinda neat effect and it'd be weird to add more to it.

Either of these skills would work as our cashout however Chilling Rhetoric seems to be the more ideal candidate due to being ST...and mostly useless as is. Where do we put this wonderful new feature you ask?

Right about there should do it.

Writ of Blazing Fire after all is a bit of a niche trait that's only valuable in a scenario where you've stopped DPSing but want to tickle your foe just that little bit longer. I shan't miss the ultimate AFK value of combusting a T3 writ and going off to make a cup of coffee whilst it ticks away that glorious 84 second timer.

So now we spend our time working in around 20s cycles of building up our Searing tiers before chasing out Writ and going back to building Searing from the bottom. Success, it's active, it's fun and it lets you kill spiders with fire. To improve our Searing uptime a little bit we're also going to want to increase DoT pulses by 3 for Searing Words and also a 2 pulse increase for Essay of Fire as this helps smooth out the rotation a fair bit.

That's all that's needed, right?

WRONG

~ Final Thoughts ~

For our final Red RK change we're gonna make Essay of Fire a baseline bonus for speccing Cleansing Flame, we're then going to move Master of Connotation and Extreme Heat up to fill the space left by Essay and add a new trait in above Seething Truth. This new trait will function as follows:

Combustion and Smouldering Wrath will proc Searing Words on all affected targets.

This bonus trait will basically let us guarantee Searing Procs when we need them as well as improve sustained AoE DPS a bit.

[Lotro_Dancer1]

YELLOW LINE SUGGESTIONS
I love the Yellow RK play-style... med-short-range... shoot & scoot... its a great and fun class with great self heals, slows, stuns, descent AoE etc... But! Yellow dps is not ok. DPS RK's are not taken on T2+raids with a few boss exception where the DNF's are asked for. We've done many kin-house dummy parses with fellow kinnies and with full Remm Set + the new Closing Remarks/Aftershock trait change, Yellow RK is still about 15-20% behind assuming DNF stays as is... if I could add suggestions:

- CHALLENGE: the closing remarks/aftershock is too RNG dependent... sometimes over a minute to proc... other times it will proc every few seconds.. can often time-out before Epic Conclusion refreshes = DPS gap
- CHALLENGE: Yellow skills rotation is a bit clunky and limited. either CD are slightly off, or needs +1 skill to have better flow and choice during combat
- CHALLENGE: Concession and Rebuttal has useless Sustaining Bolt and Shocking Word benefits, EPIC Conclusion Dot is meh.
- CHALLENGE: Sustained DPS is still too low by 15-20%
- CHALLENGE: Many unused skills

• Frost skills are never used in-combat.
• Shocking Words (one of our bigger hits) is eliminated from rotations since the attunement loss causes greater DPS loss.
• Sustaining bolt is useless heal and kills your DPS = Never use
• Shocking Touch sits in the never-use category (except for occasional solo'ing)

SOLUTION 1: SHOCKING WORDS unused in DPS rotation due to attunement loss

• CONCESSION AND REBUTTAL: Shocking Words adds 6 attunement. <-- can now advance, rather than reduce DPS
• OR.
• CONCESSION AND REBUTTAL: Shocking Words 75% chance next skill will Devastating Crit
• OR.
• CONCESSION AND REBUTTAL: Ceaseless Argument prevents Stocking Words attunement loss (2sec buff. must be used prior to Shocking for effect.. ie player needs proper rotation to benefit)

SOLUTION 2: CLOSING REMARKS management:

• SCRIBES SPARK increase damage by 10% (so it is in between Writ and Ceaseless when at full attunement), add + 10% Thunderous Words proc chance
• ORATORS SPARK (new skill) exact as Scribes Spark except +10% Harsh Debate proc chance (make icon for ORATOR and HARSH DEBATE the same)
• HARSH DEBATE (add -1s Scribes Spark CD), THUNDEROUS WORDS (add -1s Orators Spark CD)
• players now have more skill choice and advanced players can monitor buffs and alter rotations to improve closing remarks proc' chances. + slight DPS bump in base skill DPS

SOLUTION 3: Shocking Touch (un-used skill)

• SHOCKING Touch: +10% LIGHTNING damage on target boss for 10s (non-stackable), keep the 20s cd. Increase initial DPS by 50% as it is far behind other DPS skills. (must be fully traited)
• Provides an average 5% increase if triggered on every refresh. Plays into the RK moving to short range to maximize damage.

SOLUTION 4: New Trait: INDUCTION

• Moving In-combat gives the RK an INDUCTIVE CHARGE buff. +10% crit chance. 2sec. (= an average 5% DPS boost and accentuates the RK Shoot-and-scoot player style.
• Out of Combat. Running adds Red Attunement. (This is more for solo'ing but allows for an explosive entry into combat)

SOLUTION 5: Static Surge arc is too narrow (90').
--- I'd recommend it is widened to 135' or 180'.

SOLUTION 6: FROST SKILLS

• Remove inductions from all frost skills. Now usable in all lines without significant rotation interruption. Remove damage (it hasn't been scaled properly anyways) (Remove Forst DMG LI)
• FLURRY OF WORDS. Ground Targetable. Increase to 5%. 20m AOE benefit, sustainable throughout combat if player is focused. (non-stackable) (increase to 5% DEVASTATING for blue line)
• CHILLING RETORIC (instant) -50% run does NOT break on damage, next skill is +5m range
• ESSENCE OF WINTER: (instant) add, next skill is 10m Aoe (works on blue as Aoe 20m heal)

Other Non-DPS Improvements

[U] Non-DPS 1: SUSTAINING /U]
--- CONCESSION & REBUTTAL: Sustaining Bolt. Add 3% morale heal per attunement consumed. <-- now worth using occasionally as a save-your-butt skill.

DNF's
--- Please don't change DNF's. Learning to manage a double DNF in combat adds a fun level of complexity to the class where you have to pay attention to raid mechanics, and often change DNF focus on different boss phases. It also adds benefits to smaller groups and higher Teir small groups. The proposed raid rez limits will already de-value the DNF for 12man content.

[hunter4215]

Guard:
-DPS increase is only to initials not bleeds; Bleeds are main source of DPS. DPS increased by maybe 5-10k.
-Why no mention of the Finesse added to Relentless Assault? Nice change, but had to look for it!
-Can we get some kind health bonus added to fortifications? Per fortification stack you get 2% morale?

Cappy:
-Battle Shout is now a force taunt and Blade of Elendil isn't- not mentioned in notes. This is pretty problematic. Yellow Cappy now has no way to keep on On-Guard or Stay in Battle Hardened without force taunting, outside of Time of Need or Tonics. This will be a huge issue in fights needing two tanks with nothing to taunt besides the boss (which bosses in dual tanking scenarios are usually punishing for taunting when it's not your turn). Huge and unnecessary nerf.

Beorning:
-Expose Buff isn't working as intended. Expose (Man) and Expose (Bear) doesn't matter which form you're in. It's more like (Man) = 1 Handers (Bear) = 2 Handers.
-DPS Increase is not where it should be. Old expose gave -40% mitigations. So this new expose is nice for raid-wide encounters, but kept DPS generally the same, only a 10-20k DPS increase based on the tooltip increases.

Red RK:
-All damage is from Smouldering Wrath. Every skill breakdown has Smouldering doing 8-10m while everything else around 1-2m or 2-3m. Only way Red RK is decent and getting 150k is going Red/Yellow and relying off Yellow lighting buffs to proc Harsh Debate.
-Combustion is really underwhelming
-Did Searing Words get a buff? Can it's resist rate get lowered? With 300k+ Finesse still getting resist.
-Frost skills are so pointless, can these either be deleted, re-worked, or something?

[Lotro_Dancer1]

Red RK:
Only way Red RK is decent and getting 150k is going Red/Yellow and relying off Yellow lighting buffs to proc Harsh Debate.

This! I think this is problem. Harsh Debate should be reworked to +15% Lightning. Otherwise we are just reverting Red RK back to highly-variable hoping for yellow line proc'd buff and working as many lightning skill into the rotation as possible to proc a +15% increase to Fire. Red line should be getting that DPS increase via red-line work.

This also incents you to trait Vivid Imagery... which puts the RK back into short 5.5m range... not the long slow burn fire mode...

[Zaheer]

Yeah, no. The roll for partials and the roll for full BPE are done the same way, adding them all together and rolling against that total. SSG changing full BPE to use a different system compared to partials would be weird, if you're going to keep spouting this nonsense you're gonna need to cite some evidence.

iirc they wanted to change the way the attacks roll through pBPE and BPE, as to where attacks used to roll fully against BPE, they changed that to rolling for each avoidance. Which could explain why BPE acts weirdly as a whole. But pBPE was changed to be rolled on fully, being stacked up. As these used to be reversed in the opposing way. This was described in the U18 patch notes, for reference https://www.lotro.com/en/game/articles/combat-changes


Here they state what they changed, but I believe that if I do recall correct, there was a deeper explanation to what the changes exactly were. Though I'll have to look through old patch notes in order to find it.

Could I be wrong? I could be, but I am not speaking nonsense because of all that I've stated I've only seen you argue about my BPE statement, which is so obvious for to point that if you think I am wrong there. People usually try to find weak points when they argue and whenever they cant rlly find one, they go over into personal attacks. Either that, or when they think they found one, they proclaim that the person is talking bull####.

I'm very disappointed and thought you couldn't go lower than being already pretty narrow minded. But that's just my opinion, disappointment in you not overseeing the greater issue which isn't class related but rather the way the endgame operates as a whole.

Unless you want to argue that it's fine to scale classes on a system where avoidance stats do not operate properly, or defensive stats can be stacked to reasonable amounts in order to be some what effective in compare to just stacking morale and allow the tank with most passive morale % boost to win the race.

Anyway, if SSG is going to push through with these stupid changes I'll just quit, because when we look at level 130 expansion, we can see that the majority of people just stack morale and those classes that rely on other defensive stats are basically screwed over. Which isn't only the case for warden and guard. Because as captain I have personally a preference for a different setup with more stability instead of watching my pool go up and down from 100% to 60-50% because defensive stat stacking is not worth and useless with the way mechanics are executed by bosses in instance content. I really hate brawling setups, stacking morale and relying heavily on your healer, hoping some RNG crit burst mechanic doesn't crit and kill u.

and you know I dont care a single bit for the captain it's nerfs, I give my opinions but I am well aware that these changes are just futile. My idea is that everything is just doomed, many external factors rather than the classes themselves, a complete mess.

Now I am curious whether SSG is ignoring the fact that their overall stat system & its issues is flawed, or that they're completely oblivious to the fact that it has got so much issues.

[Joedangod]

This was described in the U18 patch notes, for reference https://www.lotro.com/en/game/articles/combat-changes


Here they state what they changed, but I believe that if I do recall correct, there was a deeper explanation to what the changes exactly were. Though I'll have to look through old patch notes in order to find it.

Could I be wrong?

You are wrong, and yeah, I tested those changes during the U18 beta periods:

Decided to test an avoidance guardian build which could reach 100% avoidance purely from guardians ward being active.

The article you've linked even explains how it all works:

Currently, increasing your Block, Parry, or Evade rating brings your chance to avoid an attack up to a cap of 25% for each avoidance. The same rating increases your chance to get a partial avoidance, which caps at a 10% chance and reduces your damage by up to 15%. When an attack comes in that can be Blocked, Parried, and Evaded, your chance to fully avoid the attack is equal to your Block chance plus Parry chance plus Evade chance. For example, a character with 20% block, 15% parry, and 10% evade has a 45% chance to fully avoid an attack. It works the same way for partial avoidances.

The specifics are complicated, but I'll bottom-line it for you:... [snip] ...and the new full avoidance cap will be 13%.

[Strider5548]

Can we actually get some blue warden fixes? For starters a rework to percentage based and massive buff to self heals is in order. There are 50 things that need to be done to fix blue wardens, but the highest impact and lowest effort one of them is increasing self heals. It's very simple and would be a great first step.

[mikkye]

[IMG] https://ibb.co/F5NVmqY [/IMG]

Smoulder could do slightly more but not much the main buffs you should focus on are Fiery ridicule, writ of fire and essay of fire.


Essay of fire could be better [IMG] https://ibb.co/fXyK6g2 [/IMG] very low imo for a long induction main ST skill.


Fiery ridicule even at max stacks it does less than 10k dps [IMG] https://imgbb.com/upload [/IMG]

Writ of Fire also does very low dps even at max stacks [IMG] https://ibb.co/bWCgG5j [/IMG]

Would be cool if our runestone could tick about 40-50k or so it is very cool skill that can aoe enemies it does about 80k a cast on a 30 second cooldown which is pretty low [IMG https://ibb.co/SJZzpd5 IMG]

Scathing mockery if i remember correctly is a aoe skill but atm it will do higher than our single target dot's [IMG] https://ibb.co/6N2cqPc [/IMG]

Take into account fire rk in essence lost all the self mitigation bypasses they had passively. You can use molten flame still but losing mystifying flames imo requires a separate buff on top of just catching the fire rk up to modern 130 dps levels

[Kornic]

If you plan to nerf Burglars again please address and fix things like Relish Battle heals which is a joke self heal or Coupe de Grace damage which is also a joke for "ultimate" skill in red trait line, most burglars never use it in dps rotation. Also lots of other jokes like throw dagger. cunning attack bleed damage and duration, caltrops, marbles, knifes and hatchets outdated... ahh and fellowship maneuvers if you don't plan to remove from game completely.

[Kaeneth]

I'd still rather see Captain's SoD get reworked a bit when used on yourself rather than totally lose the ability to do so, even if it means less potency and/or up time. I feel there's got to be a better compromise somewhere since it really limits when and where the ability will actually be useful if it can't ever be used on yourself. A nerf for it was understandable, but I think that was just a bit too much. Only using it on others doesn't even feel like something that should belong in the yellow tree. The only other thing I really wish yellow captain had was one more ability that lets them enter battle ready stance. Same thing I said in the other locked thread.

Also when on the topic of being able to use abilities on ourselves, I'd really love to see inspire and to arms be able to be used for our own benefit when not attached to a blade brother. The function of them doesn't need to change, they just shouldn't be greyed out when not attached. There's times where having a herald out honestly feels like more of a chore than anything else. Particularly in tight corridors and such where they often seem to get lost and can't follow very well, or times when you might get a bit too far from them and the skill resets mid combat, locking you out of those two important abilities. There's also times where the blade brother skill just turns off when loading in areas, or other instances it just decides to randomly. Outside of the small buffs, and heal that they bring, heralds don't do anything else but get in the way. At low levels at least the archer is a lot of fun because he can do solid damage, but at 130 he just forgets to load his bow with arrows when shooting. It's far from an urgent issue, but I do wish it would get visited at some point.

[Daenirion]

I'd still rather see Captain's SoD get reworked a bit when used on yourself rather than totally lose the ability to do so, even if it means less potency and/or up time. I feel there's got to be a better compromise somewhere since it really limits when and where the ability will actually be useful if it can't ever be used on yourself. A nerf for it was understandable, but I think that was just a bit too much. Only using it on others doesn't even feel like something that should belong in the yellow tree. The only other thing I really wish yellow captain had was one more ability that lets them enter battle ready stance. Same thing I said in the other locked thread.

SoD shouldn't be more than -25%, but it should still be useable on yourself + Last Stand should be removed from the game entirely. If SSG wants Raids to be more challening, then Last Stand would be the first skill on my list that needs a nerf yet there's no mention in the patch notes

[LokiRK]

Lore-master
The sheer magnitude of fire lore and frost lore debuffs are considerably above where we're comfortable with for large group content.

- Fire Lore traited effect reduced (35->10%)
- Frost Lore traited effect reduced (30->10%)
- Unimbued fire lore buff reduced to a max of +2.5%

If the LM debuffs are considered to have too high of magnitude in "large group content" then have them scale based on group size. Why take LMs out of the 3 man and 6 man content; to address the skills in 12 man raids?

Do 30% lores if 3 or less, 20% lores if 4-6, and 10% lores for 7-12?

This allows LMs to remain as alternate healers in 3 and 6 man content (value) and keeps the core of your raid designers plans in over reduction in debuffs for "large group content".

[Daenirion]

If the LM debuffs are considered to have too high of magnitude in "large group content" then have them scale based on group size. Why take LMs out of the 3 man and 6 man content; to address the skills in 12 man raids?

Do 30% lores if 3 or less, 20% lores if 4-6, and 10% lores for 7-12?

This allows LMs to remain as alternate healers in 3 and 6 man content (value) and keeps the core of your raid designers plans in over reduction in debuffs for "large group content".

I'm pretty sure they don't have the tech for that

[LokiRK]

Can we actually get some blue warden fixes? For starters a rework to percentage based and massive buff to self heals is in order. There are 50 things that need to be done to fix blue wardens, but the highest impact and lowest effort one of them is increasing self heals. It's very simple and would be a great first step.

The true forgotten class is Warden tank.

My suggestions:
1. Convert self heals to % total moral to scale, since WRD has no ability to improve healing statistically (no tac mastery gear, no healing LI with healing rating rune etc).
2. Leave DC as just an AoE taunt on 20-25 sec CD, and create a separate skill that serves as a massive mit buff (+15-20%) lasting for 20 sec on a long 3min CD. This gives wardens an "opening move" that buys them time to stack BPE and mit buff gambits in the first 20 seconds of each pull; so when it expires, the warden has built his own defenses back up to similar levels as the skill sets initially. And for boss fights a nice 20 sec "last stand" type survival skill to help wardens on large damage spike dynamics.

The first 20 secs of most pulls is where WRD tanking gets chaotic. 2 simple fixes and we can be back on the menu as a "premium tanking class".

[LokiRK]

I'm pretty sure the don't have the tech for that

That would be sad, cause the code is simple.

If group_type = "small fellowship" then 30%
Else if group_type = "fellowship" then 20%
Else if group_type = "raid" then 10%
Else 30% (solo)
End

When you join a group it is marked by group size innately.

[Zaheer]

You are wrong, and yeah, I tested those changes during the U18 beta periods:



The article you've linked even explains how it all works:

I don't think it's all explained indepth, I just think this is a quick explain

Anyway I don't think it matters, I realized a long time ago that the (p)BPE is not of any value to a captain, atleast in my case (except for FW during certain situations can be useful)

Why? because it's unreliable for captain tanks, it's nice with bringing off some pressure from the tank but it's not always the case and with increased burst dmg that ignores BPE, I completely dismissed these stats as being useless for multiple factors.

1. Unreliable for captain tank wont mind explaining in more detail
2. Stats not working as intended, being very RNG opposed to what their tooltip stats.
3. Current meta being incredibly dumb, basically slot as much morale as u can and ur done, no depth and no complexity to setups
4. Current meta circumvents a lot of defensive stats, e.g. (p)BPE, Mitigations
5. Stat being worthless in gain opposed to vitality which is linear
6. BPE not working as intended which causes guardians and wardens to fail

And since I do research a lot of #### for PvMP/PvE I did completely dismiss BPE. Even when tanking I use a will shield for captain instead of a might one, the block is worthless, it doesn't offer any stability, esp with the way it works now that goes hand in hand with the way content operates as a whole currently.

Hence BPE doesn't offer any stability and it's only logical that the guardian and warden are currently a complete failure. People keep screaming for fix on guardian, but none of them actually addresses the real issue here and that's the ######## design of the way the BPE system currently works, as for the way current content and boss mechanics work. It's triggering me that people like you keep screaming that even when this gets fixed, captain gains again something out of that, well no ####, like I mentioned, fix the fkin system first and then balance everything. Unless you want SSG to turn the warden and guardian into another 20000000MIL morale class without any defensive stats and just being a meat sack for the boss.

You keep screaming and screaming captain is OP, it's not like I don't know that yellow is broken af at this moment. But I think SSG should address the issues with the stat system & content mechanics first so guardians and warden can operate properly again. Then start scaling the tanks properly. this means that captain would stay perhaps still in a strong position, but atleast warden and guardian would be viable enough again to work properly as they're intended. Perhaps not as strong but they can do the job.

At this moment, people care about only a few things:

DPS: cap mastery -> overcap crit and balance out morale & #### mitigtions
Tanks: Stack as much morale as u can, just 1 stat and #### the rest
Healers: cap outg heal, (over)cap crit and stack morale.

Where's the mitigations? Ah yes, there's simply not enough gain due to the ridiculous curve and since gear basically offers enough, you just stack morale cuz more gain.

it's so incredibly stupid that I am really considering to just quit this game.

But I sympathize with you, I understand that that from ur point, captain pretty much replaces guards constantly. For me it's frustrating to watch my class becoming more dumb by the day due to external factors.

[Strider5548]

The true forgotten class is Warden tank.

My suggestions:
1. Convert self heals to % total moral to scale, since WRD has no ability to improve healing statistically (no tac mastery gear, no healing LI with healing rating rune etc).
2. Leave DC as just an AoE taunt on 20-25 sec CD, and create a separate skill that serves as a massive mit buff (+15-20%) lasting for 20 sec on a long 3min CD. This gives wardens an "opening move" that buys them time to stack BPE and mit buff gambits in the first 20 seconds of each pull; so when it expires, the warden has built his own defenses back up to similar levels as the skill sets initially. And for boss fights a nice 20 sec "last stand" type survival skill to help wardens on large damage spike dynamics.

The first 20 secs of most pulls is where WRD tanking gets chaotic. 2 simple fixes and we can be back on the menu as a "premium tanking class".

100% agree with #1, they should be % based heals. In fact, it would make sense to convert all of our bpe and mit buffs to % based, the ratings just don't scale well over time.

I know most people agree with #2, I kind of like how DC and mits are tied together but am not opposed to seeing it changed. One thing that might help is if they extended the mit buff from DC to 60 seconds. This way you could use it to establish aggro at the beginning of the fight, but once the DC CD runs out you still have 30 seconds to strategically use it to grab aggro without having to lose your mits.

They also need to revamp all of our LI legacies which are mostly useless. We absolutely need a better "oh ####" skill, some group utility, in combat run speed bosts, and higher base finesse. There are a lot of other things the blue warden needs, but just a few simple changes will go a long way.

[Joedangod]

I don't think it's all explained indepth, I just think this is a quick explain

Ok, stop. This isn't up for debate. The dev diary tells you straight up that "your chance to fully avoid the attack is equal to your Block chance plus Parry chance plus Evade chance". That's how it works, it adds them all together and rolls against that. The same method applies for partials which we were able to prove on that other thread I linked by getting a character to 100% combined partial avoidance chance and observing that said character was never fully hit during a 10m parse of multiple mobs constantly attacking them. If avoidance was three separate rolls against each avoidance individually instead of a combined roll that character would have received quite a lot of full hits. So we do know 100% how BPE works.

BPE is working as intended, it's just getting devalued by a number of factors. The main one here is just how much rating you need to get to reliable BPE rates, this is the ratings curve for full BPE chance:

To cap out full avoidance chance on your character panel you'd need ~630k block rating, which is pretty insane. That's actually not even enough block rating to truly have 13% either as mobs in instances have various amounts of avoidance penetration that effectively reduce how much rating you have (but you don't actually get to see this at all). You're complaining that BPE is "very RNG" but it's designed to be RNG, having say, 20% block chance doesn't mean that each fight you'll block 20% of all incoming attacks, it means that given a large enough sample of attacks you'll eventually average out to see ~20% of them were blocked.

So yeah, of course it isn't worth stacking avoidance on your Captain right now, you'd need to stack a ton of essences and it would only serve to make you take less damage from physical attacks which aren't necessarily all the notable in an encounter. You're trading in a universal defensive stat (morale) for a situational one (avoidance) and you're doing it at a terrible exchange rate.

Now you've suggested several times around these forums that "fixing" BPE would change the meta and bump Guardians up in value compared to Captains but in reality it wouldn't do much. Captains gain about as much from improved BPE as Guardians do (admittedly not quite as much as Wardens do). It's kinda one of those things that affect almost everyone to the same degree, it ain't gonna change the meta; it's just going to maintain it.

[Hephburz-2]

Now you've suggested several times around these forums that "fixing" BPE would change the meta and bump Guardians up in value compared to Captains but in reality it wouldn't do much. Captains gain about as much from improved BPE as Guardians do (admittedly not quite as much as Wardens do). It's kinda one of those things that affect almost everyone to the same degree, it ain't gonna change the meta; it's just going to maintain it.

But again, this is false, it may maintain the meta, but it would also not hinder the other tanks.

As explained in my earlier post, the content we are provided, gifts us with b/p/e ignoring, high damage or tactical damage mechanics, which makes b/p/e useless. No one here is out right saying that fixing bpe will automatically mean Guardians will return to their top spot, the point being, is that Guardians currently struggle with the content provided, because they are not designed with the current mechanics in mind, that is not their tank style, essentially they could be good tanks for tactical damage mechanics but there is no point even trying to cap tactical mit because just stacking more morale accounts for the loss in mitigation. No one is arguing that Guardians can also not NOW do the content, but could they do it on release? No. Did they have to wait several updates and several gear increases to be able to get into the content? Yes (at least with respect to Remmo).

So, no, whilst fixing BPE and any further instances/mechanics will not alter the "meta", it will however mean you are no longer completely unable to take a different tank, because you no longer just need "a morale soak".

[Hephburz-2]

....

Can you please highlight the edit/changes that were added today please to make them more discernable from Wednesday's notes - thank you.

[TheStormKing]

Captain

• 
  
  • 
    Yellow Line:
    
    • Shield of the Dunedain LI legacy cooldown bonus reduced from (+10->+5s) (total duration reduced from 20->15s), Shield of the Dunedain can only be used on others.

The only thing I don't really like is this. SotD in tank line is only good on yourself. If it's only targetable on others, as an endcap skill, it is mostly useless in yellow.

I think SotD should be moved to be an endcap skill in BLUE, as it is more in keeping with its nature, especially moving to a "only target others" idea. That would make this workable, rather than have an endcap skill that is mostly worthless.

A new endcap could be a huge Strength of Morale boost for Men, and a huge rez boost for High Elves.