U35 Return to Carn Dum - Power Update

[Dranak123]

Agree as a LM on live and on legendary I am crazy busy tying to have eyes in back of my head and when some one now says I need power i am like ok when do I do that as debuff need reply there and that mob need a new stun..... tank needs a heal applied.... now..... I have to power entire raid.... sorry what I can see my loved toon going on the shelf.

Wouldn't it be interesting if there were a raid build that benefitted from 2 LM's to share debuffs and power management , allow for certain permanent uptimes , and fire off (did you see what i did there ?) their best hitting single and AoE skills when CD's allow .....thus recreating the dps in the aggregate. Only trial and error will decide if such marvellous changes ( no seriously...i think they look really good ) lead to a new default group/raid set up whether PvE or PvMP. There is a certain level of Frankenfurter anticiPPation with U35.

[Tralfazz]

Why not link power to the magnitude of the damage or healing of your skills? The more power you have, the more effective your skills are, in other words. I don't like how power prevents you from using your skill at all when it runs out (and it never made much sense to me). This would make for more interesting rotational tactics while also removing some of the larger frustrations that (I think) come with power management.

I think making Power relevant is a good thing. However, I think that doing this huge overhaul, which will require adjusting Power totals for characters, mobs, Power regeneration from consumables and other sources, Power restoration from skills, Power drain from mobs and other effects; introduces so many potential problems such that the current official test represents too large a risk to the game system as a whole and player enjoyment specifically.

I would recommend a change similar to the above:
–Power levels, regen, drains, item stats, etc. all remain as they are today.
–Power cost of skills is adjusted upward by some multiplicative factor – be conservative, start with +10%, adjust it upward (or less likely, downward) from there after each live patch (not just a Bullroarer test) based on feedback and in-house playtesting.
–If a character or mob attempts to use a skill when its current Power is insufficient, that skill consumes no Power but does less damage/restores less Morale/Power by some multiplicative factor – no need to be too conservative here, start with -50% and adjust it from there after each live patch (not just a Bullroarer test) based on player feedback and in-house playtesting.
–If a skill costs Power but does no damage/restores no Morale/Power, then it cannot be used until sufficient Power is available. This will affect mostly skills which apply damage or healing buffs in addition to some debuffs and swaps of passive skills (such as stances).

The advantages of this approach are that it does not require adding new skills and effects and adjusting numerical values for an untold number of character classes, mobs, items, and effects. However, once the two multiplicative values are set correctly (one representing an increase to Power consumption, the other being a reduction in skill effectiveness when insufficient Power is available), Power will feel like a "real" resource that must be managed in intense and/or long-duration combats but the players will never feel that they are constrained from acting and using their character's skills when their Power is very low or zero. With an appropriate value assigned to increased Power consumption, players questing and deeding through the Landscape or engaged in other activities of similar mostly-trivial difficulty won't feel penalized by this new system by having to stand around waiting for their Power to return to a level necessary for them to move on to the next mob or group of mobs they plan to engage but will still be encouraged to use Power-restoring consumables and place value in Power-adding and Power-restoring skills, stats, and gear.

[Vastin]

Burglar power costs are significantly too high and the power regeneration is not nearly enough. It's quite common to run out of power within just 15-20 seconds if you're not permanently critting with Subtle Stab. A single good and fast burst rotation can cost a burglar up to 30-40% of their total power within just 1 second. Critting with Subtle Stab only grants power equal to 2.5 skills which is super low.

This is not acceptable and also isn't really comparable to what many other classes experience.

Agreed. I felt it was too high in my own testing, and made some changes to bring it down right before this BR, but clearly not quite enough. I use skill cutting with Burgs, but I'm not as good at it as a serious burglar player, so I can't get my skill play rate/drain rate as high, so my baseline is off. The way burglars play skills really do make their cost structure very different than most other classes.

So I will make some substantial adjustments to them.

As for SS being crit based - I did want to tie its effectiveness into the Burg's crit itemization and abilities - its payoff may need to be larger, but first let me address the spend rate as it sounds so high right now that your power bar will just be bouncing all over the place even if you do consistently crit, which isn't really what I want.

-Vastin

[Vastin]

can you take a look at the power scaling at lower levels compared to the power drains applied by enemy mobs?

for example:
Loremaster level 50 has 900 power (the power regen is fine, the fault isn't so much with that) but the scaling of power drains. either the power of players at level 1-60+ needs to be raised, so not to be so immediately ruined by a single tick of a power drain, or power drains of enemies need to be lowered drastically.

I found a list of general mob power effects that I missed in my first pass, so I'm testing the rescaling of those now and they should be in a better place for the next bullroarer.

- Vastin

[StormsFury85]

I found a list of general mob power effects that I missed in my first pass, so I'm testing the rescaling of those now and they should be in a better place for the next bullroarer.

- Vastin

Wonderful, thank you for the update, look forward to testing further.

[Parasomnie]

Greetings,

I tested your power-changes with my loremaster on Bullroarer. The power-costs are much too high and very unbalanced. Even if I use the trait "Level-Headed" from the yellow line (fully skilled 5 points, -15% power-costs) I lose too much power in a too short period of time. And I tested this on a rotation without using any healing-skills. With healing it'll be much faster.

My suggestions would be:
- Lower the power-costs of the skills (about 20% lower should make it more realistic)
- Buff the "Level-Headed"- trait in the yellow line (maybe - when fully skilled - 30%+ reduction-costs?)
- Buff the food-duration. With using buff-food it could be managable, but it only lasts 10 minutes. Higher the duration to 30 minutes
- Give us virtues that boost power-regeneration (in-combat)

[Dranak123]

Greetings,

I tested your power-changes with my loremaster on Bullroarer. The power-costs are much too high and very unbalanced. Even if I use the trait "Level-Headed" from the yellow line (fully skilled 5 points, -15% power-costs) I lose too much power in a too short period of time. And I tested this on a rotation without using any healing-skills. With healing it'll be much faster.

My suggestions would be:
- Lower the power-costs of the skills (about 20% lower should make it more realistic)
- Buff the "Level-Headed"- trait in the yellow line (maybe - when fully skilled - 30%+ reduction-costs?)
- Buff the food-duration. With using buff-food it could be managable, but it only lasts 10 minutes. Higher the duration to 30 minutes
- Give us virtues that boost power-regeneration (in-combat)

as an aside here i would comment on Pleasant Breeze. Its not a skill i think i have ever used but it looks like it procs off of a crit with guff of wind (pleasant breeze indeed). Might it be an idea to increase the CD from 10s to 20 or 30 , and then make it proc solely from a standard cast of GoW. This way it is still in a skillchain but is more reliable to be used when it is highly critical. Furthermore...are there any useless pet skills that could be revamped for a power element (or does one already exist that i and every other LM have never needed until now ?).

[Goatimli]

Furthermore...are there any useless pet skills that could be revamped for a power element (or does one already exist that i and every other LM have never needed until now ?).

Actually, the Eagle companion does provide a passive +in-combat power regeneration aura ("Nobility"). Unfortunately, even if this skill's magnitude was tuned up to a useful level, recent updates to the Lore-Master gated it behind the Blue Line (instead of keeping it as a low-tier Blue trait). If this change were reversed and available in Yellow specialization, I could see Eagles become useful, situational pets for long boss-fights or phases demanding a lot of power usage. Otherwise, adding a power restore aspect to the Spirit pet's skills could be a useful compromise.

[Digaloo]

I have just done some further testing of my Rune-keeper and it would appear to me that the new Power 'balance' is way off.

In the new scheme of things, I now have 57,178 power.

The skill I have called "Smouldering Wrath" is reported to use 8,150 power and 3,500 power per second. As I normally try to use this skill at maximum attunement i.e. to run for 10 seconds, this is going to cost me (3,500 x 10) = 35,000 plus 8,150 = 43,150 power. This is 75% of my power for one skill!!! Currently on live this only costs 550 of my 10,000 power i.e. about 5%. I know the power requirements for things have supposedly gone up a bit but this is ridiculous!

It should also be noted that a Gundabad Celebrant essence now cures 447,112 to 470,644 power. Why on earth would you want a potion to cure that much power if you've only got 57k in the first place. The balance is way off here.

It may also be noted that the rune-keeper skill called "Self Motivation" only cures 20,800 power

[renegade_34g]

I agree with the power consumption, however, you can trait and get the legendary mastery to lower Self Motivation down to 12 seconds. When you use combustion or smouldering wrath, use SM and whenever you can keep it off of CD. I can do normal DPS rotation and keep above 50% power restore just using that.

[theultimatekyle]

The more I try my toons out on beta, the more I get the sinking feeling that this is an absolutely awful change. Did you stop to consider at all whether or not this would be fun to play?

This isnt some great work to balance the universe. Its a game. Games are supposed to be fun, enjoyable, or at least an escape. It doesnt need to be this complicated.

We already have CDs for skills/abilities. We have skill rotations and CD management as a form of resource management. Some classes even have a secondary resource management in the form of ferver, or focus, or mettle, or fortifications, or even battle ready/hardened.

This power change isnt just unnecessary, its a pure detriment to the game.

You can promise to scale it back if it interferes with play, but this is awful in concept, and no amount of scaled back implementation can take a bad concept and turn it good in practice. You'd just have to rework power again, change the concept again.

Theres so many other things players have been asking for, lower hanging fruits that you could have been targeting instead.

I've enjoyed playing lotro for years, some caps more than others, but overall Ive liked the raiding environment, and the community in game.
I really do want to see the dev team succeed. But this just isn't it. Its like a race to see how much of the player base can be burned out of the game the quickest.

[reranger]

The more I try my toons out on beta, the more I get the sinking feeling that this is an absolutely awful change. Did you stop to consider at all whether or not this would be fun to play?

This isnt some great work to balance the universe. Its a game. Games are supposed to be fun, enjoyable, or at least an escape. It doesnt need to be this complicated.

We already have CDs for skills/abilities. We have skill rotations and CD management as a form of resource management. Some classes even have a secondary resource management in the form of ferver, or focus, or mettle, or fortifications, or even battle ready/hardened.

This power change isnt just unnecessary, its a pure detriment to the game.

You can promise to scale it back if it interferes with play, but this is awful in concept, and no amount of scaled back implementation can take a bad concept and turn it good in practice. You'd just have to rework power again, change the concept again.

Theres so many other things players have been asking for, lower hanging fruits that you could have been targeting instead.

I've enjoyed playing lotro for years, some caps more than others, but overall Ive liked the raiding environment, and the community in game.
I really do want to see the dev team succeed. But this just isn't it. Its like a race to see how much of the player base can be burned out of the game the quickest.

I feel like this captures my feelings perfectly. I've really been trying to reserve judgment for when this goes live, but everything behind the philosophy of this change feels...not fun. I struggle to envision how this change won't isolate more casual players who may want to try group content, punish more skilled players who have learned to optimize cooldowns and maximize aps, and ultimately leave everyone feeling annoyed. I appreciate the need for updating how power scales and hope this is done successfully with this update but reeeaaaaalllllyyy hope making power relevant is reconsidered.

[Roga]

Minstrels & Runekeepers
- As the two 'main' healer classes that concern themselves with power, these are likely to be the two classes most substantially affected by the power changes. Our goal is to make sure their healing throughput - particularly from their bigger heals - is substantially improved at a premium power cost, while their smaller heals and HoT based skills are intended to be cheap and efficient.
- Both are still very actively in progress, so while feedback is definitely appreciated, please be gentle. They are due for some substantial further changes to their power consumption and healing CDs/magnitude.


As a Runekeeper you use Rousing Words to keep up Writ of Health Level 3 on your fellowship. So you use this skill every 15 seconds. In this build this skill cost 1/3 of my power (Initial Power Cost + 6.990 Power every second, the skill runs 4,5 seconds). So I need to use self motivation on cooldown too, in order to dont run out of power after 45 seconds of combat.
The power cost of Rousing words should be reduced significant.

Minstrels can skill in the blue line to get 125% of Power cost of a healing skill back, a runekeeper not.

[Aurora7]

Vastin:
Wonderful, you are still here and posting!

Please remember that the regular servers and BR are on "easy" difficulty. Treebeard and Shadowfax have higher difficulty levels. There is a good probability that these difficulty levels will be implemented later this year on the regular servers.
(BR does not appear, at present, to have the capability for higher difficulty levels.)

The difficulty levels affect not just landscape, but also skirmishes, missions and delvings.

Higher difficulty fights can last much longer as the monsters are tougher, the character has reduced damage and the monsters can more readily BPE attacks. Add short respawns, "wandering" monsters and "wandering" bosses, these make for much longer fights.

Thus "landscape" may also have power shortages.

To keep the "ear ache" down I suggest that you approach this cautiously and build slowly over this year's patches.
Tralfazz's excellent suggestion (further up) is a good approach.

Regards
Aurora7

[Digaloo]

I have just been testing the new power changes on Bullroarer and found something which concerns me.

In the new scheme of things I now have 57,178 Power

The Runekeeper skill "Smouldering Wrath" now uses 8,000-ish power PLUS 3,500 power per second. As most Rune-keepers use this skill on maximum attunement (i.e. 10) to get maximum effect, it will run for 10 seconds so will use 8,000 + (3,500 x 10) = 43,000 power which is 75% of my power for one skill! As opposed to 5% currently on live.

This sounds to me like this cannot be right.

I would also like to point out that a Gundabad Celebrant Essence potion cures 447,112 to 470,644 power. Why on earth would you want a potion which cures that amount of power if you only have 57k.

Also, the rune-keeper skill "Self Motivation" which returns power, only provides 20,800 ???

[Alderk]

Wieso macht ihr das jetze und nicht erst im November mit dem Level up auf 150? Jetze wo die 140 er ausgerüstet sind und unzählige male die Instanzen gelaufen sind , fangt ihr an und baut die Klassen um. das Hat die folge die jetzige Rüstung ist unbrauchbar weil da die Werte dann nicht mehr Stimmen. Wir waren alle froh das wir von der Kraft wegwahren. Nun machen sie es so wie zu 75 Zeiten. Entwicklung geht anders das ist ein Großer Schritt zurück. Nur bedenkt das es zu 75 Zeiten nur den T2 Modus gab mit Hardmode . Wollen sie die Kompletten Instanzen anpassen? Weil die ja aktuell auf dem Jetzigen Stand sind mit dem CD und nicht mit der Kraft die da benötigt wird.?
Meine Meinung ist macht das wenn das Update im November kommt weil da sowieso neues Gear benötigt wird. Nur jetze werdet ihr Spieler verärgern und ein Spiel soll Spaß machen und kein Frust erzeugen. Was es nach dem was sie jetze vorhaben passieren wird.
mfg Alderk

[Sherush]

What my brain keeps going to is the raids and bosses that enrage.... if dps can't go full out ect I see not many doing the raids anymore.... I also see possible issues with HH 2nd boss if dps isn't able to go full out too he will enrage..... Every time you guys do something big like this other issues come up. When I went back to live part time in November and got to 140 the power drain from some mobs was over drive was not fun and died a lot (as no power)..... finally a few weeks later you guys fixed the power drains at 140.... now seems we will have these issues again but in another form.

[DoRonRon]

What my brain keeps going to is the raids and bosses that enrage.... if dps can't go full out ect I see not many doing the raids anymore.... I also see possible issues with HH 2nd boss if dps isn't able to go full out too he will enrage..... Every time you guys do something big like this other issues come up. When I went back to live part time in November and got to 140 the power drain from some mobs was over drive was not fun and died a lot (as no power)..... finally a few weeks later you guys fixed the power drains at 140.... now seems we will have these issues again but in another form.

It all sounds like a return to the raiding of the past where control of the encounter was more important than parses. Just can't do it in isolation with rage timers still in play at the same difficulty when trait points and essence are being shifted from a primary use to power options.

Too many balls in the air all at once?

[kerbelettos]

nor have we gotten much feedback yet on how their power is playing out. In general our intention is that Guardians shouldn't have much difficulty with power as they are primarily a tanking class. ....... umm i wonder why ..just saying ... y folks ignore whole class many many years now ...

[Neinda]

Question for SSG: How are these power changes affecting creeps in the Moors? Is anything changing now or in the future creepside?

[shino047]

Please revert the power update, it cripples high end gameplay and it is absolutely ridiculous that high APS is penalized

[Flinn_to_Win]

Making power relevant again is an overall positive change for the game. What people fail to realise for the most part in this thread, is that in the peak (at least in player population) of lotro's history, around Moria era of the game, power management was a big part of your impact as a player, and if you disregarded power, you would have difficulty in getting through content. Players survived back then, and they will now, it will just take some adjusting to get back used to thinking about power once again. While some of the numbers do look off in this beta, it is after all a beta test; it is subject to be changed, balanced and tweaked before making it into the live servers.

I do however, think that it is a prime time to review Fellowship Manoeuvres (Conjunctions), perhaps not in update 35, but within the near future. Making FMs impactful, rewarding group coordination once again, will make for more engaging group play, with FMs being once again part of instances and raids going forward. When the second round of legendary servers were first announced, I made a reddit post outlining the possibilities of changing FMs then, with the intent to post on the forums when I could, which I forgot about until reading this thread and proposed changes with power, sparking new interest in reviving the once great system of Conjunctions - if you are interested in reading the older post on reddit, most of the legendary-server-only information is irrelevant once the Treebeard/Shadowfax difficulty system was revealed, for the most part the Fellowship Manoeuvre ideas and concepts are still very relevant to the game. I am unsure whether posting links is allowed within the forum, so if you do wish to read the original reddit post, it is found on the Lotro reddit page, titled "Legendary "Difficulty" Server - Return of the Fellowship Manoeuvre", or found by looking for my reddit user going by the same name as this account (Flinn_To_Win).

The TLDR of the above post is:
- Keeping the difficulty of FMs, so that challenging manoeuvres will reward those who dare to attempt them
- Having FMs be classed as Offensive or Defensive manoeuvres. Typically named manoeuvres starting with Red or Yellow are Offensive, and those starting Green or Blue are Defensive.
- Changing the Offensive FMs (those FMs starting with the contributors such as Ent's Strength - Red, or Spider's Guile - Yellow) so that they have other effects other than damage - +% incoming damage for example, could make FMs worth hitting, making entire raid parses better for x time. Similar to Oathbreakers Shame immunity, already ingame, is the system to make enemies unable to be attacked by FMs again for a certain time, which means these skills can hit for very strong damage, without the fear of the meta becoming spam FMs and win.
- Changing the defensive FMs (featuring contributions such as those starting with Eagle's Cry - Green) with effects such as +% damage reduction on those doing the FM, or -% outgoing damage on the target affected by the Fellowship Manoeuvre.
- Potentially adding corruption removal over time effects, so that creatures encounter with stacked/tiered corruptions.


Not in the original post, however some other things to consider changes to FMs could include:
- Having players contributing the different colours to the overall FM buff, should receive a relevant buff to whichever colour was contributed to the FM (as well as strength and duration of these individual buffs proportionally to the length/complexity of the FM completed.
For example, the famous Wings of the Windlord, the players contributing blue receive a -power usage buff, whereas, the players going for the red/yellow contributors could do more damage (or +% crit chance??)/increased amount of DOTs (like mini/short duration versions of the blessings featuring Creepside PvMP), and finally the players going for green could receive more incoming healing for a time. This would incentivise group leaders to organise an order of the FM to maximise the individual group members potential, whilst still having the overall effect giving by the named Fellowship Manoeuvre.
- Have certain named manoeuvres be specific in what they do. If one FM is the best in every way, why would players ever hit anything else? Make the choice of which FMs to hit, and when, important to the success of a group.
- Some basic ideas for the length six straights (probably the hardest ones to hit)
- Thunder of the Oakenshield (RGYBRG) | Gives all players in the Fellowship a boost in damage, crit chance, crit mag and finesse.
- Wings of the Windlord (BRGYBR) | Gives all players in the fellowship a power bubble to double their usable power pool, which to my knowledge, is only used in the Tower of Orthanc raid, with the Ring of Acid during the Saruman fight.
- Dawn on the Deep (YBRGYB) | Removes target of a % of mits, puts on a debuff to remove a corruption removal over time.
- Whispers Under the Mountain (GYBRGY) | Puts a strong bubble on the Fellowship (Potentially -% incoming damage could result in players absorbing damage for a period of time, which is why a strong bubble is likely a better option)


To the devs, thank you for addressing the power problems (that being the irrelevance of the entire power system), good luck with the ongoing changes. Please consider taking a meaningful look into Fellowship Manoeuvres.

Thanks for taking the time to read if you got this far!

Cheers - Flinn

[Dranak123]

nor have we gotten much feedback yet on how their power is playing out. In general our intention is that Guardians shouldn't have much difficulty with power as they are primarily a tanking class. ....... umm i wonder why ..just saying ... y folks ignore whole class many many years now ...

this is interesting also with regard to the moors. It would appear that all classes will be able to 'sprint' certain short pulls of a decent solo enemy or a mob of lesser enemies without running out of puff (power) . Therefore i guess solo and landscape play is largely unaltered. However more prolonged encounters (group content ? ) will no longer necessarily be a 1500m sprint from start to finish. Unless you are a Guardian - if i am reading this correctly. So if your classic dpsers cannot get a constant flow of power they will have to learn to 'pulse' their dps even more then they currently do. It occurs that this will be critical in the moors. The easiest way to kill a raid will be to drop the power suppliers -Lm Cappy RK, then the rest will soon run out of puff......unless you are a Guardian !! i.e. will the Guard be able to maintain its somewhat lower dps on a constant basis and not suffer with power ? Will the Guard see a revival and be more viable in the moors ? Do Beornings get off scott free too for that matter ?

[auximenes]

I do however, think that it is a prime time to review Fellowship Manoeuvres (Conjunctions)

I miss them being relevant (and I'm not even a Burglar player). I remember many times how critical getting off an FM to heal or restore power in a tough fight was. With power being back on the menu that it's definitely a good opportunity to tweak FM's to relevant levels. They just need to have the numbers scale, nothing else needs to be done.

[bjute]

Cool to see power management being a thing again. It just needs to be a bit more forgiving, other than that good job.