Minstrel Changes and Feedback

[Arabani]

One can only hope.
Been playing minnie for 12 years and everything feels so clunky now, not enjoyable as it was. Makes me sad.

Except nothing has really changed rotation or skill wise. The biggest change is that instead of prebuffing with Cry of Chorus and using 3-4 anthems at ones, you now cast one anthem, use the cry , cast the second anthem, then you use your antems once or twice per minute.

I really do not know where people are getting all these clunky and ruined feeling, Minstrel plays absolutely the same as before for me.

[savetheroadtodoriath]

Except nothing has really changed rotation or skill wise. The biggest change is that instead of prebuffing with Cry of Chorus and using 3-4 anthems at ones, you now cast one anthem, use the cry , cast the second anthem, then you use your antems once or twice per minute.

I really do not know where people are getting all these clunky and ruined feeling, Minstrel plays absolutely the same as before for me.

The rotation has FUNDAMENTALLY changed actually, that is if you want to do high DPS. Calls are now mostly fillers in between Ballads instead of the reverse, Coda is our best DPS skill, and we have multiple resets for AoE skills. Red Mins doesn't play at all like it used to either AoE or ST.

The clunkiness is everywhere if you want to go back and actually read the posts explaining it before dismissing them. I'll give an example though since it really is built into the class now, tell me do you not think it is clunky to always have to either
a) not use Anthem of the Third Age asap and thus use skills at lower values and lose time getting your Anthems up
b) use Anthem of the Third Age asap and thus waste its reset here and then not have it for multiple Anthems after as getting each one up takes priority

Either way there is a clunkiness to your choices. And depending on which you pick your next choices present different clunkiness. You either...

a) continue to tier up your Ballads so you can use Coda thus wasting time in getting all of your Anthems up by not using CotC
b) use CotC while you have partial Ballad buffs up to immediately reset your Anthem thus wasting time having used said Ballads

There are sub branches to each of these trees btw, but I won't harp on the issue. Like say you did want to AoE in which case you DO want the Dissonance reset...guess WHAT, you either don't have it or if you do use it as your Anthems come off CD you're refreshing an already extant Anthem instead of getting the rest up, waste, redundancy, clunkiness.

Depending on your choices here you unlock the next tier of redundancy and clunkiness in the chain, but one thing is consistent regardless of your choice, you are wasting time and skill effects no matter what, especially compared to how the class flowed before. A flagrant example is how it's actually a superior choice to use a 4th Ballad instead of say Call to Fate now before you use Coda, but only about 2/3rds of the time because the point is fishing for a proc on PC reset. Do you not see how that's uncomfortable? Not only are you wasting a Ballad build up while you already have Coda available, if the PC reset doesn't proc the waste is compounded even harder, and on top of all this your iconic Call skills are now fillers for your Ballads (which are filler by definition), and you must cycle through these Ballads endlessly and as fast as possible because of the short duration and shared CD of Anthems, which constantly fails anyway because you dropped combat and EVERYTIME any small incidence of failure like this happens you need to start all over building up Anthems because the new consolidation mechanic and the short duration means you lose them and you lose everything. Minstrel is so damn uncomfortable to play now, and I haven't touched on the loss of PC stun or Melody lol.

How the HELL can you say it's not more clunky when before you'd hit your Anthems once every 3 minutes now, and now they interrupt you constantly on top of the annoyances of being in combat only, a longer CotC CD, and needing to constantly Coda too. Like, the math here is super basic. Surely you can see it?

[Arabani]

The rotation has FUNDAMENTALLY changed actually, that is if you want to do high DPS. Calls are now mostly fillers in between Ballads instead of the reverse, Coda is our best DPS skill, and we have multiple resets for AoE skills. Red Mins doesn't play at all like it used to either AoE or ST.

I see where are you coming from. But the thing is, I always played that way even before the change. Cry-ballad-call-ballad-call-balad-coda. Melee strike has also been in my rotation for years. I also healed in melody stance alot, adding my insignificant dps where I could if the content allowed me.

And no, Anthems do not interupt me in any way. On landscape I do not even bother using anthems most of the time, never did. As a Dps I maintain three anthems, two of them are combined. That is literally one button every minute. As a healer, if the incoming damage is low, there is no need to cast defensive anthems-once again one-two buttons per minute at the most. If real healing is required, well, there are priorities-keep people alive first, buff their dps after. If there is no time to maintain dps buffs- so be it. Which is usually not the case, by the way.

One more thing, there are other people in the group and especially in the raid. Doing such content is a community effort. There is a limit to the number of things one can do.

[Neinda]

At this point we can only hope the mini changes are standalone and not representative of what SSG plans for the rest of the classes.

Mini is a clunky key masher now. For those that like it I am happy for you. I can't play a key masher and I never played a mini for DPS ability on landscape. Red was my least used line. Enjoy your DPS on landscape because that can easily be adjusted downward and has been too often in the past.

Hopefully, SSG will learn from the feedback here that this is not the best direction they can go and when they change all the other classes they will remember the mini and fix it someday down the road.

I am not even rushing to level a replacement for the mini to cap until I see what is done to the rest of the classes. I would rather not replace the mini then find out my next choice will meet the same fate. It would be nice to see a schedule of when each class will get its new look.

Any chance of SSG publishing the class rework schedule? Is the mini on the list for future updates now that it has moved from being a class most people were generally content with to a class that needs some changes to fix the key mashing clunky nature of the skills?

[Neinda]

Except nothing has really changed rotation or skill wise. The biggest change is that instead of prebuffing with Cry of Chorus and using 3-4 anthems at ones, you now cast one anthem, use the cry , cast the second anthem, then you use your antems once or twice per minute.

I really do not know where people are getting all these clunky and ruined feeling, Minstrel plays absolutely the same as before for me.

While nothing has changed for your rotation, it has changed for others. Be happy with the changes but respect that others did not play the class the same as you. Not everyone likes to pound on the keyboard and mash as many skills as possible in the shortest possible timeframe. Some of us played mini because we like to heal not DPS.

If you enjoy the changes that is outstanding and I respect you for it. Give those of us that are unhappy the same respect please.

[savetheroadtodoriath]

I see where are you coming from. But the thing is, I always played that way even before the change. Cry-ballad-call-ballad-call-balad-coda. Melee strike has also been in my rotation for years. I also healed in melody stance alot, adding my insignificant dps where I could if the content allowed me.

I stopped reading here.

[MistyMountains]

If real healing is required, well, there are priorities-keep people alive first, buff their dps after. If there is no time to maintain dps buffs- so be it.

We must be raiding with raid leaders with different expectations.
Before changes it wasn't as challenging to keep up anthems and heal your group effectively. Now it's MUCH more challenging to keep buffs up with effective healing, with one affecting the other in a T3+ raid setting.

[elvenes]

hey guys the minstrel dev showed up in this thread if you're still interested https://forums.lotro.com/forums/show...nication-Lines

[Bio-Flame]

Yeah, it's not complicated to post on Discord. It's even not complicated to post jokes about player's dissatisfaction on discord.
It's not complicated to post on the official forums neither.


But on the feedback thread the Dev himself specifically created for this very purpose?
Oh, it's too difficult and he has to work, can't be replying to every thread.



What a nice way to treat customers.....

./sarcasm off.

[Zyot]

Yeah, it's not complicated to post on Discord. It's even not complicated to post jokes about player's dissatisfaction on discord.
It's not complicated to post on the official forums neither.

Oh man, you definitely whine a lot. Go touch some grass.

[OnnMacMahal]

A few things worth noting:
I never stopped reading this thread, but after 33.2 went live, I had to turn my attention primarily towards other tasks. We have still followed the continued reactions and responses to the minstrel changes, especially because we can’t expect players to organize groups for difficult instance content on Bullroarer. For real ‘minstrel in a group running content’ feedback, responses from the live worlds are invaluable.

Give endgame players incentives for using the Instance Finder and running new and returning players through older content, so healer mains like me won't get frustrated and just return to an MMO where they can easily heal group content. Or, make a trust system like in FFXIV where I can take NPCS in these dungeons so I can learn to play my class.

I understand this complaint whole-heartedly, but ‘fixing the instance finder’ is no small task. Though plenty of people complain about the way the FFXIV Daily Roulette ‘forces’ high-level players into low-level instances (generally limiting their skillset, sometimes to a huge degree) I think it’s clear that they do a better job of integrating non-DPS/group-oriented roles throughout the leveling experience by doing so. While I can’t offer you any guarantees for future changes, this is something we’re keenly aware of.

tl;dr Changes to anthems, inspire fellows, song of aid, fellowship's heart and major ballad were good in beta 3

I’m glad to hear this, and I’ve heard this from quite a few folks. That said, a few minstrel heals still feel a little soft compared to other points in the game’s history. The only real limitations on your healing skills are (a) cooldowns and (b) inductions. Inductions are generally very short these days (though obviously sensitive to change) so most of your healing output is weighed against the cooldowns of individual skills. With more meaningful resource management, we could probably stand to increase the potency of many of these heals. For now, with short inductions, relatively short cooldowns, and a lack of meaningful resource requirements, these skills simply can't heal too much without being terribly overtuned.

If I were to guess, most minstrels won't actually reach Hunter damage numbers.

And they don’t appear to be, at this point. This is due to a few factors, namely the fact that minstrels currently have less frequent AoE than hunters, and the fact that Orome reduces less overall mitigation than it did before (while hunters benefit from inherent mitigation penetration as well as light/fire/armour debuffs from other players, depending on the situation).
In fact, this more broadly reflects the current disparity in potential maximal DPS output between physical and tactical classes. In the future, we’d like to have better parity between both personal DPS potential of individual classes and maximum DPS support potential for different types of damage dealers in raid groups. You shouldn’t be encouraged to stack hunters for DPS only because you can reduce target mitigations for a hunter’s damage more than for other classes.

After trying out Mini on live (not just me, but other kinnies), we were thinking if it were possible to consider changing the way stances swap. The duration & CD of using those skills made some of us think stance swapping during boss fights would be much better if the skills behaved like the Warden stances. It plays a bit clunkier since we relied on Mini CR so much.

This is something we considered. Ultimately, I didn’t want the changes to heavily encourage frequent stance swapping. If it’s immediate, inductionless, or otherwise easier to swap stances, it might feel better, but it also might feel like we want you to swap stances all the time, or it might just become an expected part of playing the class. Frankly, I think most players agree that swapping stances just to press one or two skills before swapping back feels like an unnecessary annoyance. The stances ought to each feel like they have their own identity, without demanding that you constantly switch to stance X for one skill and stance Y for another, making each of those skills redundant in their ‘imperfect’ stance form.

How is it more dynamic? Almost all the effects are recycled, they are just staggered and slower to use now. That's the polar opposite of dynamic, in basically every way. Sure in very long fights you have more Anthems, so what? Yellow wasn't useless. In high level content most people already brought a Yellow/Red Minstrel along with a Blue, in that respect Blue line itself didn't really gain anything new (except longer inductions) and I and others who liked playing Yellow lost their spec.

It’s worth noting that the ‘in high level content’ reason for bringing a yMini was basically ‘to cast Orome to support the hunter stack in Hiddenhoard’ and little else aside. That identity of support Minstrel still exists in the R/y traiting, especially in Melody stance, where you sacrifice overall damage output, but have more utility and group support: PC corruption removal, Cry of the Valar corruption removal, faster and more frequent anthems, Call to Greatness and Song of Aid, as well as bubbles and spot-healing potential.

And in short fights where you don't need that 2nd Minstrel? You are genuinely worse off in every way because our Anthems are now weaker in exchange for having more of them to waste your time. 5% Attack Duration from Prowess instead of 10, no AoW, Third Age Harmony was better than Free Peoples is, etc... maybe you could argue CtG is an improvement but honestly it's totally common to prefer the old version since at least it was good for Hunters, this new one...wow great we can reset Oathbreakers while the debuff is still up. Solid.

I know you feel these are weaker, but overall group support with these anthems has improved, especially since the %-based bonuses benefit ratings-capped players. Call to Greatness is not perfect, but claiming it only ‘resets Oathbreakers while the debuff is still up’ is also willfully ignoring the fact that it offers many other potential benefits (as well as the fact that almost every raid fight involves switching targets more frequently than the Oathbreakers target-based cooldown).
Call to Greatness and Song of Aid provided great benefits to hunters before, but these are fellowship/raid effects which should have meaningful benefits beyond a single class (despite, or even because of the fact that hunters are currently the dominant raid-DPS class).

Lol, it's so very clear that the "nature" of this update was to re-use whatever resources were already available to avoid making an effort. Why do you think they refuse to get rid of Melody? Even after all the changes to force it, I NEVER see ANYONE using it.

Personally, I rarely used Melody on my own minstrel. I didn’t have a need for it, especially since several of its variant effects (like Echoes of Battle) were strictly inferior to other versions in every context. However, I was swayed by a number of players who told me about how they primarily play in Melody, and why. There are players who play in leveling group with small groups of non-optimal group compositions who like that Melody allows them to do a bit of damage and a bit of healing, as they might be running in a duo pair with a guardian or a hunter, who alternatively need more damage support and less healing or vice versa. There are others who essentially play ‘backup’ in a group, and who really like the ability to provide targeted utility/support where needed, filling in the gaps of their fellows. At the end of the day, the stance should feel now like it has a clearer identity, with obvious benefits of buffs, debuffs, and utility, even if it still isn’t an optimal choice for any top-end PvE or PvP content.

[DoRonRon]

Have you seen much in the way of a Red Minstrel raiding "feedback"? That was the hypothesis wasn't it; to make all main trees viable even if the "welcoming" part
is in the hands of the raid leaders. I might be persuaded if it wasn't likely the leader would say "sorry m8, can you heal instead?".

I've only had a brief session on the garden target dummy, as a solo player these days, most figuring out how they would be the choice spec in providing Anthems over other builds. Down to the 50% RNG against the 33% RNG from elsewhere. I didn't even bother to activate combat analysis the overheads were demonstrating the power up-turn, loads of ballads to pop a coda and watching to see if ICotC refreshed had eyes glued on that one skill. I dare say I could use various add-ons to configure it better and be more aware of wider concerns in a raid environment, not as if you have to keep anyone alive during this build up process.

With Chromite's confirmation of raid wide Anthems, I haven't raid healed since the advent of wet lettuce armoured morale stacks and what felt like a "sweatshop" spam healing role, it seems that the future will evolve into still a single Minstrel requirement, as it presumably is now. But that would be the Red Minstrel as it currently stands. Any number of classes that are competent healers, if not quite now, after they've been given similar attention and will bring their own little extras to the party?

Are all the Raid Healing Minstrels blind to this notion? Sure, it will take time to filter through. "Sorry m8, can you go Red Instead?"

It's hugely expensive to make the physical in-game changes, however the mindset change might be too much for many.

I bow to any Red raiders out there with more tangible feedback... We all like to watch a tower bring demolished... just continuing an amusing, to me, theme

[Bio-Flame]

I am a raider myself, did almost all raids at T3, some at T4 and a few on T5.
Beware that most raiders don't mind playing boring classes like the mini is now so as long as the raiders get more powerful.
Hence, Raiders feedback does not take into consideration if a class if fun or not, just that it's stronger.



Mini is more powerful now, due to the Anthems, that is undeniable.
But it is also less fun to play, due to the Anthem spam fest that it has now become.


Why don't you try on BR to increase Anthem's duration and lessen the shared cooldown?
What is keeping you other than not wanting to admit that these complaints exist?


Don't you care that some players stopped playing their long time characters because of a change you did and refuse to rollback?
Does LOTRO really want to lose long time paying customers because one Dev refuses to listen to feedback?

[OnnMacMahal]

Have you seen much in the way of a Red Minstrel raiding "feedback"? That was the hypothesis wasn't it; to make all main trees viable even if the "welcoming" part
is in the hands of the raid leaders. I might be persuaded if it wasn't likely the leader would say "sorry m8, can you heal instead?".

I'll let others speak for their own experiences, but someone today posted their Combat Analysis overview of a T3 Hrimil fight playing as a red minstrel, with an overall DPS of 603k. Mind you, this is from one of the players who put up very impressive parse numbers on the 33.2 Bullroarer, but it is an encouraging sign. In general, it seems minstrels are still a notch or two below hunters in the Hiddenhoard environment, though that's not unexpected. Playing a red Minstrel at this level is not an easy task, and tactical classes in general still lag a little bit behind (though minstrels do have the benefits of being capable damage dealers who are both at-range and mobile).

The vast majority of all of the 6/12-person feedback I've seen in recent weeks has been from minstrels playing blue-line/resonance in groups. While a blue & red mini in the same group may have some diminishing returns in group support, they should both be capable of putting up respectable healing and damage.

[OnnMacMahal]

I am a raider myself, did almost all raids at T3, some at T4 and a few on T5.
Beware that most raiders don't mind playing boring classes like the mini is now so as long as the raiders get more powerful.
Hence, Raiders feedback does not take into consideration if a class if fun or not, just that it's stronger or not.



Mini is more powerful now, due to the Anthems, that is undeniable.
But it is also less fun to play now, due to the Anthem spam fest that it has now become.


Why don't you try on BR to increase Anthem's duration and lessen the shared cooldown?
What is keeping you other than not wanting to admit that these complaints exist?

I was about to respond to you in the other thread, but this is a more appropriate place anyway.

But, no I'm not too proud to admit it anything. In fact, I added 15s of base duration back weeks ago, though of course that's not quite public yet.


By the same token, it's also worth reflecting on statements like 'boring classes like the mini is now' and 'due to the Anthem spam fest.'
Is it boring, or is it demanding too much? These statement are contradictory, which makes it hard to understand where you're coming from. I asked before, but I'll ask again: what did you find more compelling about the previous mechanic of pressing all your anthems in a row every ~2m53s? How is pressing a single button more often but with more meaningful decision making 'button mashing' relative to pressing all your anthems at once and then forgetting about them for nearly 3 minutes? How does spacing out your use of anthems make the class a 'spam fest'?

[DoRonRon]

Then again if a healing minstrel retains top dog status a second to keep them and all else buffed may have them more easily fulfil their role, to heal.

[DoRonRon]

I think it's was about refreshing all Anthem at an opportune moment in proceedings over being tied to a production line that if you were too busy one would fall off the conveyer. I grew up on "Candid Camera" though.

The boring bit is solo if you haven't figured out Lag-Anthems and can't be bothered to buff anymore. Used to be my opportune moment was between pulls, now it's waiting to line up 2 mobs I one shot each time ICotC pops.

[Bio-Flame]

I was about to respond to you in the other thread, but this is a more appropriate place anyway.

But, no I'm not too proud to admit it anything. In fact, I added 15s of base duration back weeks ago, though of course that's not quite public yet.


By the same token, it's also worth reflecting on statements like 'boring classes like the mini is now' and 'due to the Anthem spam fest.'
Is it boring, or is it demanding too much? These statement are contradictory, which makes it hard to understand where you're coming from. I asked before, but I'll ask again: what did you find more compelling about the previous mechanic of pressing all your anthems in a row every ~2m53s? How is pressing a single button more often but with more meaningful decision making 'button mashing' relative to pressing all your anthems at once and then forgetting about them for nearly 3 minutes? How does spacing out your use of anthems make the class a 'spam fest'?

I'll give you my answer, but bear in mind that plenty of other players are complaining that the Mini is now a button-smasher, not just me. It's the most common complaint of all the changes that you did.


A little bit of context: A button-smasher is not something that it is demanding too much. I play wardens, and they are 200% more button smashers than Minis. If you know the game Guild Wars 2, I play Elementalist there and that class playstyle is compared to a piano. Frankly, I think it's more of a piano while playing guitar at the same time.


I say this so that you know that for me at least, it's not that I am feeling daunted by the amount of key presses, nor is it too demanding. Not at all. I can do it quite easily.



The crux of the problem is that Mini was never like that. It wasn't the Mini playstyle. Not there's anything wrong with being a spam-fest class, like Wardens are (I play wardens so no insult meant).
But that's not what the Mini has been for more than a decade now.
There's a playstyle to Blue Mini, or used to be, until your changes come along and made it into an Anthem spam machine.
Again, there's nothing wrong with that, except.....except that's not how Minis used to play. And you removed that from us.
If I wanted a spam-fest char, I'd go play Warden. If I want a ranged playstyle, I'd go hunter. If I wanted a Mini playstyle, I'd go Mini.
And THAT is the issue here.


For all your good intentions, and I never doubted that you have them, you changed the Mini so much that it lost it's "feel", the Mini feel.
During the first 90 scds of a fight, we're busy spamming Anthems, and then, every 25 scds, we're reapplying them.
That's what makes it boring.


It's boring because now we're jumping through hoops and 90 scds of playtime just to do the same thing that we did on 6 seconds (all 3 anthems up and running). And not needing to reapply them for 3 minutes, compared to 1 minute now.
It's very different. It's boring because instead of healing, we're spamming Anthems.


Please be mindful that I never once mentioned that it is tougher, nor that it's more difficult or more engaging. No. Not at all. It's just boring to spend so much time and effort to do something we used to do in 6 scds or less.


You seem to have the opinion that having to reaply the Anthems 3 times more often than before and during a 90scds period is more engaging and more of a "meaningful decision".
It is not the opinion of the vast majority of the players on this thread.
Of the 64% negative feedback posts here, almost ALL of them state that needing to spam the Anthems and reaply them so often is not engaging nor more fun. It's boring.


Again: instead of healing and looking at the fight, we're busy spamming Anthems. It's not a meaninful decision, it's a chore. Hence, it's boring.



Last but not the least, I must repeat this point: Blue Minis had a playstyle to them and you changed it substantialy. Players did NOT enjoy your changes.


Question: since you were decided to remove Yellow line (a mistake in my opinion, removing choices from players is from 2010, not from 2022 but that's neither here nor there), why didn't you took the opportunity instead to do a complete and total overhaul to Yellow Line spec, and do as you please, while at the same time sparing the Blue and Red playstyle?
To clarify: why didn't you made all these changes that you did but ONLY for the Yellow spec, keeping Blue and Red as is? Why not?



PS - not that I need "credentials", but I've done almost all raids on LOTRO since launch most on T2, T3, a lot of T4s and a few T5s.
I've played Wildstar on the best guild in the world and was one of the few people that cleared both raids there (they were super tough).
I've done all GW2 raids.
I've played PvP in GW1 and reached top 7th in the world with my guild.
I've played Magic the Gathering semi-professionaly, allowing me for some years to fly around to world and getting paid enough to go to the next big tournament.


I say this so that you know that difficulty doesn't scare me. I like challenges.
Also, Changes don't bother me all that much, heck, Magic the Gathering changes completely every 3 months.


The issue here is that you are removing the Blue playstyle that was there for years. You took away "our toy" and gave us a new toy. Yes, it's new, but we prefered the old one.
You could have easily changed Yellow line without changing so much of the blue line.


PS 2 - I also told you before that I disagree with making Red Mini so powerful. There are classes that only have a DPS slot and they currently have no slots in raids because Hunters take all the DPS slots.
Minis already had a garanteed role - the healer. Now they also have a DPS slot. It's unfair to the other classes - wardens, champs, Brawlers, etc..

[DoRonRon]

In times past trying to heal a sub optimum group in the egg room in Helegrod had me so exasperated I sent the other 5 into a corner to twiddle there thumbs while I switched to red and kite nuked the room 'til clear for the denouement. Could afford two builds back then. Sometimes offering to heal another is the poorer choice, you both suck in that case.

[DoRonRon]

Hard to quantify the utility of a mobile damage dealer such as a Red Minstrel. I play Blue Hunter on landscape as well as the Yellow RK so I see the distinct advantages despite the lesser damage. The Red Hunters are largely static but for some who have the wherewithal to push on those bounds. Some just have zero kiteing ability or just are not adept at it. Delays in moving out of puddles when you have inductions to complete mean additional raid resources to combat. It's not like Boss AI is up to the standard of a Dragonfly seeking out prey (QI fans) so mobile damage dealer can be less of a burden. Frankly a static MT appals me when they could be ducking and diving to keep mobs getting into melee around their comrades.

We can literally run rings around the opposition, so what of those other mobile trees when they get a parse?

B'Ah, there's me wasting valuable low pop performance game time, again.

[OnnMacMahal]

A little bit of context: A button-smasher is not something that it is demanding too much. I play wardens, and they are 200% more button smashers than Minis. If you know the game Guild Wars 2, I play Elementalist there and that class playstyle is compared to a piano. Frankly, I think it's more of a piano while playing guitar at the same time.

I appreciate you being willing to engage earnestly with my question. I think I better understand now what you mean when you say ‘button smasher.’

The crux of the problem is that Mini was never like that. It wasn't the Mini playstyle. Not there's anything wrong with being a spam-fest class, like Wardens are (I play wardens so no insult meant).
But that's not what the Mini has been for more than a decade now.

We may have to agree to disagree on this point, but I appreciate that we’ve gotten closer to the heart of why this change bothers you. Conversely, I and many other minstrel-players have long felt that anthems were a boring and uninteresting part of the class. Obviously you were not among them, but it seemed counterintuitive to have so many active skills attached to buffs which, in practice, were effectively passive power increases (always-on, expected by group members, and at little to no cost). In the distant past, anthems had greater limitations and shorter durations, so in one respect this change is a return to form. But as I said, we may have to simply agree to disagree on which style of skill is better in this respect.

It's boring because now we're jumping through hoops and 90 scds of playtime just to do the same thing that we did on 6 seconds (all 3 anthems up and running). And not needing to reapply them for 3 minutes, compared to 1 minute now.
It's very different. It's boring because instead of healing, we're spamming Anthems.
. . .
Again: instead of healing and looking at the fight, we're busy spamming Anthems. It's not a meaninful decision, it's a chore. Hence, it's boring.

While I might take issue with the fact that you describe this as ‘boring’ I appreciate you illustrating what you mean in greater depth. Do you think anthems would feel less bad if they had a more direct impact on your ‘main’ role? IE: if anthems also pulsed an AoE heal while you were blue-line or in Resonance, or dealt damage while you were in red-line or Dissonance? Are the Invigourating Anthem effects (formerly anthem-coda effects) too insignificant to impact your moment to moment play, or is it just that you feel the anthem cycle is too restrictive for those effects to even enter the equation?

Question: since you were decided to remove Yellow line (a mistake in my opinion, removing choices from players is from 2010, not from 2022 but that's neither here nor there), why didn't you took the opportunity instead to do a complete and total overhaul to Yellow Line spec, and do as you please, while at the same time sparing the Blue and Red playstyle?
To clarify: why didn't you made all these changes that you did but ONLY for the Yellow spec, keeping Blue and Red as is? Why not?

Any change to the yellow line has an impact on the other two trait trees. While some have described the change as ‘deleting’ or ‘destroying’ the yellow tree, the fact is that the yellow tree still certainly exists, and as a non-specialization tree, it’s even more tied into the other trait lines than it was before.
Any class change will have some knock-on effects, and in this case some of those were that the remaining specializations would be able to access a significant number of yellow-tree traits and bonuses which were previously inaccessible. Even if nothing at all had changed in the blue/red trees, the simple fact of making yellow more accessible means that the other specializations would feel the changes as well.

PS 2 - I also told you before that I disagree with making Red Mini so powerful. There are classes that only have a DPS slot and they currently have no slots in raids because Hunters take all the DPS slots.
Minis already had a garanteed role - the healer. Now they also have a DPS slot. It's unfair to the other classes - wardens, champs, Brawlers, etc..

The thing is, improved minstrel DPS doesn’t come at the cost of those other classes. It’s unfortunate that in higher-tier Hiddenhoard runs, hunters are basically the DPS choice, but that’s not the fault of minstrels, and competitive minstrel DPS will not serve to hurt those classes in this respect any more than they already were. At the end of the day, the red-line/Dissonance minstrel spec is one which is primarily focused on DPS, and brings little else to the table. For players who want to play their minstrel as a damage dealer, and who use this specialization, it’s unfair to punish them with miserable DPS potential only because they could technically also choose to heal. Any player who forgoes all healing, tanking, support, etc potential in favor of maximizing raw DPS ought to find that their maximized DPS is at least competitive.

[DoRonRon]

For a button smasher; skills going into and out of the (hidden from view) skill queue UI element, see official streamers/CMs.

For me, pressing a particular set of keys in order to achieve a result is somewhat boring. The much used and hailed "Rotation". Makes little sense with the introduction of RNG elements and pop-up indicators than the standard UI can't be changed to players' particular requirements; largely visual. It's far less boring to have every key you press coming after a choice made on if that is the best skill to use. That's why my combat is interesting and engaging, brain cells engaged with every skill used.

It's tedious for me having to repeat ballad/Dissonance, ICotC, ballad/War every 45 seconds as a solo Minstrel. Muscle memory is for those tedious elements of play and that only comes over time. I'm still at the "darn it stage" as I missed queuing the anthem quick enough. This can't be the intent can it?

In a group the order might be slanted towards the defensive Anthems for the challenging encounters. Still boils down to ballad, anthem, ICotC, ballad, anthem, ballad, coda (50% Warrior Skald in Dissonance stance to reset calls and ICotC every 25 seconds without any indicator or 33% in Melody stance to reset Anthems, a stance swap maybe) and ballads to reduce CD of ICotC just in Resonance, minusculely. Whichever the choice it's not the classic Watcher of Resolve in Resonance at the start of the fight. The effect is to take the use of coda out of our hands for a choice to use as appropriate and make it necessary to use on whatever target to benefit our initial buffing process. Is why I dislike the multi effect skills, used for one good reason and then unavailable for its best (situational) usage. Woe betide a Silence effect and 40s CD on ICotC now, guess you can pot.

I get wanting to limit stance dancing, but it's ensuring at least one for each pull until all required Anthems are up and manageable, but then how narrow is the window going to be to reapply in order to keep everyone's favourites up and what if it comes with the regular server freezes even a short one.


I have to wonder if that DPS parse actually included buffing anthems as well as maintaining them? Are Healing parses showing maintaining several Anthems? It's beyond me. Taking all my concentration trying to maintain four or five, I am rusty after all. I guess they only bother that their HiPS and DPS are up over before the changes, so they are totally on side. Could be they have the muscle memory for it now?

[Arabani]

I'll give you my answer, but bear in mind that plenty of other players are complaining that the Mini is now a button-smasher, not just me. It's the most common complaint of all the changes that you did.

So far I've seen only you and Neinda saying so. And another guy saying "the Minstrel is boring now".

Tastes differ, but I find Minstrel very interresting to play and I do not press more buttons then before. After the update I have more helaing otions, more buffs (even if half of them are somewhat useless ), more dps. I seriously do not understand people who say something about the amount of keystrokes now being much higher then before. There is little, if any, difference. Or did people do nothing before? Just casted a couple of heal once in a while?

There are several things I'd like to change about the Minstrel though:

1) one ballad instead of three. Why do we even have them? Yes sure, differen buffs, different damage, one of them can heal...But honestly, does anyone really bother to use specific ballad all the time? I don't -I just circle through the ones that are off cool downs. I prefer the ones the most profitable of course, but I do no sit there and wait for it to go off cd and just use a differen ballad. So please make one ballad, with no cd that would function pretty much as a ranged autoattack or small heal, depending whether you target an enemy or friend;

2) stances-get rid of them, go back to roots when we only had War Speech as a flat dps buff, which blocked helaing others as well. That would solve any stance dancing (though I do not really know why would anyone do it a lot in the first place). Get rid of stances, make War Speech 25-50% dps buff, and put 15-30 seconds cd on entering war speech;

3) include Call of Orome, Of Fate, War Cry into the base class kit and make them accessible regardless of the stance (and/or get rid of the stances of course).

In short, I do believe that healers need to heal and able to add their dps to the team at the same time, especially if there is little to heal. Just standing there and doing nothing -that is the real boredom. I'm experimenting with Blue-Red-Yellow (little in blue-most in red) and Red-heavy Blue builds for t3 and below content, but it is not really the same as just having dps abilities regardless of the spec. The worst part of the hybrid specs is if something goes wrong-you have limited tools. Look at the vanila concept of minstrel once again- almost every spell and ability is in the core kit, traits just enchance the way one plays, can enter war speech and help with dps and drop it at once to keep healing. I'd like to see this playstle back.

[Belnavar]

While I might take issue with the fact that you describe this as ‘boring’ I appreciate you illustrating what you mean in greater depth. Do you think anthems would feel less bad if they had a more direct impact on your ‘main’ role? IE: if anthems also pulsed an AoE heal while you were blue-line or in Resonance, or dealt damage while you were in red-line or Dissonance? Are the Invigourating Anthem effects (formerly anthem-coda effects) too insignificant to impact your moment to moment play, or is it just that you feel the anthem cycle is too restrictive for those effects to even enter the equation?

I quite like this idea. An AOE heal or AOE damage, centred on the Minstrel, when using an Anthem would add a lot to them, imo.

-Bel

[Paddymus]

I appreciate you being willing to engage earnestly with my question. I think I better understand now what you mean when you say ‘button smasher.’

We may have to agree to disagree on this point, >…………...

When I’m not playing LOTRO - which I have as a minstrel main since 2011 I also play duplicate bridge at a pretty high level (Level 3 international) and we have a saying at the bridge table - “When you are in a hole - stop digging”
Trying to justify what you have done after the event normally just makes a really bad situation worse.

For SSG’s note I have ‘parked’ my 2011 minstrel as a result of what your developer has done to the class and am now bringing my RK and Beorning up to instance/raid (t1-t3) healing level.
I’m not going to stop playing the game as a result of these unnecessary changes but - actions have consequences - I have just bought the next expansion at $19.99 standard edition rather than the $99.99 ultimate fan package which I normally would have bought to support the game, so what your developer has done is:
1) Lost a playing minstrel (no big deal on a corporate level) and
2) Lost SSG $80 (Small change for 1 customer but if you loose 1000?)

All of this was totally unnecessary and counter-productive. You have a miriad of issues which need to be resolved but you waste developer time and effort on something which seems to have been nothing more than an ego trip. ( And who knows what he is planning to do to the wardens as his next project)