Monster Play Changes for the First Bullroarer

[SSG_Orion]

Welcome back,

Here are the changes that you can expect to find to the Ettenmoors in this first round of Bullroarer testing:

The Isendeep Mine

All of the forces loyal to Angmar or the Free People are out of the mine, replaced by Drakes, drakelings, and hatchlings. Grodris patrols the skies of the mine on a flight patrol and is uninterested in you or your comings and going until you start interfering with her brood within the heart of the mine. Then, after you kill a number, she will descend to where the Captain-General and Tyrant used to be for a raid-style fight.

The fight has 3-stages.

Stage 1, Grodris is rooted in place and takes turns breathing terrible flames on anyone close to her or blasting great balls of fire at random targets outside of here immediate vicinity. If there are no targets in range she unleashes a continuous stream of exploding fireballs.

In Stage 2, Grodris takes flight and rains fire from above, mixing in a new trick where she showers the area around her with liquid fire.

In Stage 3, Grodirs becomes mobile and will wreak havoc in the ranks.

If you pull Grodris out of her battle space - she will go right back to the beginning and start all over again.

Word of caution - be wary of her eggs.

Known Issues:

• The announcements, which are Ettenmoors wide, are a little wonky at the moment.
• The buffs acquired for defeating Grodris are untouched at the moment.
• The map indicator is not working correctly.
• The indicator at the bases to show who controls the mine are not working correctly.

New Monster Player Experience

All new monster player characters entering the Ettenmoors will have a brand new tutorial experience. This will take the player through the acquisition of blessings, corruptions, skills, the execution of skills, travel to Dar-gazag, returning to Gramsfoot via the map skill, explain more about unique abilities in the Ettenmoors, before having you execute your skills on the training dummy and being cut loose into the wild that is PvMP.

Each race has a little flavor to it and the experience should be completable for every class in the Ettenmoors.

Known Issues:

• Return to Gramsfoot skill is still at a 5m cooldown and will be adjust to a 60s cooldown in a future update

General Ettenmoors Changes

The amount of items required to complete quests in the Ettenmoors is halved, in most cases. In some, the number did remain untouched. We also ran a complete audit of all rewards in the Ettenmoors and updated the commendations awarded for completing any quests. Quests now reward between 25 and 250 commendations depending on the perceived difficulty or time investment in the quest. The most common reward is now 100 commendations for quest completion. Additionally, all quests for the Free People now grant a small amount of Legendary Item experience when completed.

Known Issues

• A change made before the shift to Bullroarer may block some quests, specifically those with a token of valour, from appearing. This will be true for bestowers with these quests.

Note: If you find an issue with a quest, difficulty, reward, or otherwise, please mention it here.

Up Next:

• Fixing the Mine
• Updating the Free People Tutorial

[Degelhil]

When can we expect the beta to start? Today?

Thanks in advance and have a nice day!

[Neinda]

If this is a raid type encounter in the Isendeep Mine and will require a raid group to complete, will the full raid get appropriate credit and drops since this is landscape and landscape raids are still broken as far as I can tell.?

[Elmagor]

If this is a raid type encounter in the Isendeep Mine and will require a raid group to complete, will the full raid get appropriate credit and drops since this is landscape and landscape raids are still broken as far as I can tell.?

Previous posts say what only person who land finishing blow get credits, and this is bad way to deal with that content

[SingularityNow]

Could you explain the point of the Isen switch? I thought from your earlier posts that Grodis would literally be a roving threat that forces would roll up on unexpectedly in landscape and fight over. This sounds like you just switched Isen to neutral and Grodis is the new CG/Tyrant of the neutral keep. Why bother? I'm sure you have a reason, I just don't see it here.

[SSG_Orion]

This is a raid that rewards the victorious side of the conflict (freeps or creeps) with beneficial buffs for a period of time. It is not a traditional raid in the sense that you may be thinking.

That said, I am working on a reward structure that is fitting for the Ettenmoors.

[SSG_Orion]

Could you explain the point of the Isen switch? I thought from your earlier posts that Grodis would literally be a roving threat that forces would roll up on unexpectedly in landscape and fight over. This sounds like you just switched Isen to neutral and Grodis is the new CG/Tyrant of the neutral keep. Why bother? I'm sure you have a reason, I just don't see it here.

I suggested in earlier posts that the denizens of the Ettendeep were likely to become roving threats.

Moving the Isendeep to a neutral stance is to provide a little more dynamism to the areas of the Ettenmoors. I chose the Isendeep, because of its inherent "dungeon" feel. It's the easiest spot to build this sort of encounter.

[Skoch]

NPC difficulty differences on Freep and Creep need to be adjusted. My BA, full glass build, can take out NPCs solo with ease, whereas my Freeps struggle quite a bit. Seems not equal in-terms of HP/Mitigation pools and outgoing damage.
I'm only suggesting this due to smaller servers and less active hours having much less capabilities of making a balanced group to get certain quests done or even compete with keep/outpost flips.


Can NPC difficulty scale based off how many players are within its vicinity, say 90m?
This way solo or small group players can experience moors and work toward gearing up/commendations while a craid or fraid would still need to be actively aware of fighting the npcs and not facerolling through.


I just feel there's a difficulty issue, willing to go out on a limb to say it.

[DickDastardly]

Welcome back,

Here are the changes that you can expect to find to the Ettenmoors in this first round of Bullroarer testing:

The Isendeep Mine

All of the forces loyal to Angmar or the Free People are out of the mine, replaced by Drakes, drakelings, and hatchlings. Grodris patrols the skies of the mine on a flight patrol and is uninterested in you or your comings and going until you start interfering with her brood within the heart of the mine. Then, after you kill a number, she will descend to where the Captain-General and Tyrant used to be for a raid-style fight.

The fight has 3-stages.

Stage 1, Grodris is rooted in place and takes turns breathing terrible flames on anyone close to her or blasting great balls of fire at random targets outside of here immediate vicinity. If there are no targets in range she unleashes a continuous stream of exploding fireballs.

In Stage 2, Grodris takes flight and rains fire from above, mixing in a new trick where she showers the area around her with liquid fire.

In Stage 3, Grodirs becomes mobile and will wreak havoc in the ranks.

If you pull Grodris out of her battle space - she will go right back to the beginning and start all over again.

Word of caution - be wary of her eggs.

Known Issues:

• The announcements, which are Ettenmoors wide, are a little wonky at the moment.
• The buffs acquired for defeating Grodris are untouched at the moment.
• The map indicator is not working correctly.
• The indicator at the bases to show who controls the mine are not working correctly.

New Monster Player Experience

All new monster player characters entering the Ettenmoors will have a brand new tutorial experience. This will take the player through the acquisition of blessings, corruptions, skills, the execution of skills, travel to Dar-gazag, returning to Gramsfoot via the map skill, explain more about unique abilities in the Ettenmoors, before having you execute your skills on the training dummy and being cut loose into the wild that is PvMP.

Each race has a little flavor to it and the experience should be completable for every class in the Ettenmoors.

Known Issues:

• Return to Gramsfoot skill is still at a 5m cooldown and will be adjust to a 60s cooldown in a future update

General Ettenmoors Changes

The amount of items required to complete quests in the Ettenmoors is halved, in most cases. In some, the number did remain untouched. We also ran a complete audit of all rewards in the Ettenmoors and updated the commendations awarded for completing any quests. Quests now reward between 25 and 250 commendations depending on the perceived difficulty or time investment in the quest. The most common reward is now 100 commendations for quest completion. Additionally, all quests for the Free People now grant a small amount of Legendary Item experience when completed.

Known Issues

• A change made before the shift to Bullroarer may block some quests, specifically those with a token of valour, from appearing. This will be true for bestowers with these quests.

Note: If you find an issue with a quest, difficulty, reward, or otherwise, please mention it here.

Up Next:

• Fixing the Mine
• Updating the Free People Tutorial

Seriously ? Is this it ? You are having a laugh aren’t you ? To fix pvp you introduce more PVE ? Have you seen all the changes to Freeps coming in ? You think Creeps will continue to put up with this nonsense ? What’s the point in responding to you ?

[Saruman_Of_Numbers]

I'd be curious to see how many people want to slog through the fight for as menial a reward as "1 hour of increased infamy/commendation gain", after herding 24 cats to go there and grind through some massive morale pools at the risk of having the whole kill get stolen by a single stealthed enemy who gets informed by a built-in callout mechanic.


The risk+effort to reward ratio is tilted too massively on the side of risk/effort. Why slog through such a fight when you could just shuffle and get more reward for less risk and effort.

[SSG_Orion]

I'd be curious to see how many people want to slog through the fight for as menial a reward as "1 hour of increased infamy/commendation gain", after herding 24 cats to go there and grind through some massive morale pools at the risk of having the whole kill get stolen by a single stealthed enemy who gets informed by a built-in callout mechanic.


The risk+effort to reward ratio is tilted too massively on the side of risk/effort. Why slog through such a fight when you could just shuffle and get more reward for less risk and effort.

I did list that the buffs being untouched is a known issue. Current thought is that the buff will last for 6 hours.

[Saruman_Of_Numbers]

I did list that the buffs being untouched is a known issue. Current thought is that the buff will last for 6 hours.

ever so slightly better, but still not worth the trouble. I got the 1 hour number from the BR patch notes, which gives more details than you posted here (but may be out of date?)

https://forums.lotro.com/forums/show...35-Beta-1-OPEN




regardless of all of that, this entire mechanic is massively tilted in favor of creeps, mainly because creeps perform better against the typical neutral NPC than a freep, due to the fact that creeps have larger morale pools and proportionally better HPS-to-morale-pool ratios, and are able to tank themselves up to a significant degree on every class, as well as access to much much better AOE healing capabilities. I predict that creeps will be able to handle this boss with ease while freeps will struggle and be more vulnerable during the fight regardless of who has aggro on the boss.


these blind zone-wide buffs to gains are not something that really excites people or motivates them to do anything other than "we have nothing else to do so might as well take [insert buff] while [other side] sits in [safe zone] and waits for us to disband. catching an opposing raid trying to take a boss like this usually isn't some kind of gotcha moment that can swing a fight in your favor, and when it is, it usually only applies to one side.

[Dranak123]

I did list that the buffs being untouched is a known issue. Current thought is that the buff will last for 6 hours.

ok...another of my batpoo crazy ideas. Firstly make completion of killing the Big Flappy Thing in Isendeep reward every raid member a big chunk of Tokens of Valour but Bind on Aquire. Secondly , make the third phase of the combat tied to either freep/creep somehow. Thirdly , with the status of 2 types of token of valour BoA and BtA use the former for some scaled rewards from a vendor. One example of this would be a selection of r1-r15 boxes that cost the same tokens to purchase but offer an appropriate reward of renown that is concomitant to your rank (i.e. exponential increase). This may incentivise higher level players to become motivated to participate , as currently large amounts of renown are only really gained by killing the opposition and not PvE content.

[CHEBURASHKA]

A small bug I noticed:
In-combat and non-combat morale and power regeneration has been reduced almost to zero on creepside. That affects:
1) base morale regeneration (across all 6 classes)
2) food
3) all racial and class traits
4) WL banner that buffs creeps (Command Post)
5) WL banner that debuffs freeps (Banner of Terror)

For example, my spider has 211k in-combat morale regen (on Live servers) with racial trait and food. And on Bullroar it has only 3.5k morale regen with racial trait and food.

[CreepNeedBuff]

About skill March, use any skill can cancle March. its very boring to click March to move ,click March to cancle before fight,again and again all the time.

[Aeviternus]

A small bug I noticed:
In-combat and non-combat morale and power regeneration has been reduced almost to zero on creepside. That affects:
1) base morale regeneration (across all 6 classes)
2) food
3) all racial and class traits
4) WL banner that buffs creeps (Command Post)
5) WL banner that debuffs freeps (Banner of Terror)

For example, my spider has 211k in-combat morale regen (on Live servers) with racial trait and food. And on Bullroar it has only 3.5k morale regen with racial trait and food.

It is now showing as the amount regenerated per second, instead of per minute. That's why you now see 211k/60=3.5k.

[CHEBURASHKA]

It is now showing as the amount regenerated per second, instead of per minute. That's why you now see 211k/60=3.5k.

Ah, my bad. Thanks for the clarification!

[CHEBURASHKA]

Could you please fix 2 Lore Master's skills and 2 traits which don't work correctly if you use them on creeps (they work fine on NPCs) when you have time please?

Skills:
- Nature's Fury
- Ring of Fire
What's the problem?
Aoe dmg component of the skill does not work when the skill is applied. Only the initial hit (single target) works and that's it.

Traits:
- Wild Fire
- Chill Wind
What's the problem?
Wind-lore does not spread the debuffs.

Thank you in advance.

[Nouri]

I like the New Monster Player Experience and General Ettenmoors Changes. Quite honestly, I doubt the changes to Isen will mean much. Seems like a lot of time and resources being put into something where most servers no longer have the player base to do this sort of thing... or the proposed tiered weeklies for that matter. How is Isen something different than DoF? For tiered weeklies? There are only two servers where you still find raid-sized groups anymore: Arksnestone and Evernight. No players on other servers will ever have a chance to participate in these things. And even on Ark and EN, the map has become very static......fewer players to flip stuff and inflated NPC morale levels make it so, so much more difficult to do so.

Highly-inflated NPC morale levels have had a huge impact on the game! They've closed options for solos players and small groups, and it has resulted in maps that tends to be very static.

[Vilan]

Makes more sense to me to set things up so when Grodris dies, the game calculates how much damage was done to her by freeps vs creeps and hands the bonus to whichever side did more. Easy math and it avoids last-second sniping.

[Nouri]

I'd like to know what prompted changes proposed to SM? What was the analysis thought-line here? Was it that RKs were crushing stuff in content? Probably not since you just gave them a big DPS increase.

I'd suggest you actually watch some PvMP 1v1s...or even try some... before you make these changes.
btw, you will only find champs, burgs and reavers at 1v1. Nerfing RK survivability is the last thing we need!!!

[subadar]

another update, another round of FoTM....no thanks