Monster Play Changes in Bullroarer 3

[SSG_Orion]

Orion since you are here, Is it possible for HTF to be disabled in the moors?



okok but seriously: good changes that will incrementally boost engagement in PVMP and alleviate some of the worst PVE grind aspects of having a freep character.

But I highly suspect that the Gordoris fight itself is going to heavily favor creeps and I'm willing to bet that about 70-80% of Gordoris kills will be by creeps, and any fights that happen during the Gordoris fight will be heavily tilted in favor of creeps due to a slew healing and mitigation dynamics which I won't exposit on here.

Basically all mechanics of the fight favor a typical creep 24 man over a typical freep 24 man and especially when both are present in the same location.

Can you be a little more specific about why you think the mechanics favor the monster players more than the players?

[wretchesandkings]

I think it should be pretty clear why we would not do this.

On a similar note, is it possible to keep the previous rank titles even after you rank up? I would like to pvp on warden again, but I rather keep my high warden title!

[Pewpewmidget]

I do see the feedback that there is a preference for moving VXP to a consumable.

It is unlikely that the VXP rewarded from the weekly Ettenmoors quests will be turned into a consumable, for the same reason that we will likely avoid provideing tokens in the tracery reward. While we want to incentivize and reward dedicated play in the Ettenmoors, our objective is not to make it the best way to acquire certain advancement, or item rewards.

This is not remotely close to what your players want sir. VXP consumables and tracery tokens are.

The VXP system that was introduced was a good idea
but you guys did not add the option to refund to reallocate virtue overflow, like we can with the trait point system, or anything to avoid wasting our VXP.
Later, you guys did not want to fix this but went on to cap our virtues at 1 level for each 2 character levels. Something needs to change.
The consumables, as rewarded via mission wrappers, seem to be the only option unless we are given the option to refund our VXP.
Then there are those at virtue cap who will inevitably be wasting earned VXP. Consumables would fix that problem.

The tracery grind relies far too much on rng and there are far too many useless traceries, namely the BPE ones.
Giving us another tracery, most likely one we don't even have a use for, like the BPE traceries, would just make us want to ignore the wrapper altogether.
Giving us a tracery token would mean that we can at least get something that we want and that is what adds incentive to do something.

[SjsharksBoy]

I think they made that decision because they don't want to see players farm Moors to stack VXP/tokens for their main characters

Then make those VXP tokens bound to character (and stackable) or introduce some sort of VXP overflow, it doesn't make sense to fight in the Moors on a character that has capped virtues without those options - why waste time completing a quest where (a valuable) part of the rewards will be wasted on your character...

Honestly, I'm running into this issue with other weekly wrappers as well, I'm just not bothering to do them because it would be a waste of VXP. Mission wrappers are the few weeklies I'm still running.

[Pewpewmidget]

I think they made that decision because they don't want to see players farm Moors to stack VXP/tokens for their main characters

That is honestly a boneheaded decision.
They levied a grind upon us without any way to reallocate our experience from spilling into unwanted virtues.
Not to mention that the grind does not have sufficient enough gains via deeds alone.
There still are instance deeds that do not give any vxp. Same with the majority of Mordor deeds and maybe a few other regions as well.
Skirmish deeds don't grant any virtue experience, which would have made running them slightly better and more rewarding.

SSG should really consider making life easier on their players before they burn out and quit. Most of them already did.
Getting something that nobody wants makes people not want to do anything.
Getting something that we want actually adds incentives.

To me, SSG's way of thinking, regarding incentives, seems backward.

[laundo]

That is honestly a boneheaded decision.
They levied a grind upon us without any way to reallocate our experience from spilling into unwanted virtues.
Not to mention that the grind does not have sufficient enough gains via deeds alone.
There still are instance deeds that do not give any vxp. Same with the majority of Mordor deeds and maybe a few other regions as well.
Skirmish deeds don't grant any virtue experience, which would have made running them slightly better and more rewarding.

SSG should really consider making life easier on their players before they burn out and quit. Most of them already did.
Getting something that nobody wants makes people not want to do anything.
Getting something that we want actually adds incentives.

To me, SSG's way of thinking, regarding incentives, seems backward.

no joke, if i had only just started playing lotro id have quit after seeing the virtue system. it currently takes 2,956,800 virtue xp in total to take a fresh character up to the rank of 85 in every virtue. the typical deed only grants 2,000. and the deed system is in part responsible for a good deal of the lag ontop of that. the entire thing has been prime for an overhaul for some time now. amazing system in the early years of lotro, but progressively worse as the years pass by.

[Saruman_Of_Numbers]

Can you be a little more specific about why you think the mechanics favor the monster players more than the players?

1) Healing-to-morale pool ratios:

creep have higher raw HPS:Morale pool ratios than freeps, meaning any kind of percent-of-morale hit will be more easily countered.

creep HPS in general is leagues stronger than freeps, and rightfully so since often freep DPS is leagues stronger than creeps, so it balances out... but against a neutral NPC, creeps will just shurg off hits compared to freep. This is on top of the fact that creeps can generally "tank up" more than freeps on any given class due to blessings and corruptions options (can't get to anything close to 60% mits on something like an RK, but creep "squishy" classes can).

#----#

2) morale-pool-to-damage ratios:

setting aside percent-of-morale damage, creep morale pools are just bigger.... which means that any flat-damage hits (lets say, 1 million morale) will be taken differently by creeps and freeps.

if a creep gets hit by 1 million hit, setting aside the fact that creep raw HPS is stronger, the creep's health will dip less than half its total pool, sometimes much less, a mere tickle to a defiler running 5 million morale and 50% mits.... meanwhile for many freeps that could be well over half, like a rune keeper running 1.6 million pool and at-best 40% mits.

These big morale pools and mits make sense when fighting freeps, but when fighting NPCs it heavily favors creep survival.

#----#

3) AOE healing dynamics:

Creeps have access to very substantial AOE healing in the form of Warleader, and in a sense Defiler acts much like an AOE healer as well, able to stabilize by spreading HoTs around a large number of people. This is in contrast to freeps whose AOE healing is paltry in comparison from a numbers standpoint.... Warleader heals routinely crit into the 2 million or more range for all members of the group.... what classes on freepside can boast anything vaugely similar?

this AOE healing is of course very much needed when fighting freeps, but when NPCs are involved the creeps just survive so much better


#----#

4) Heal debuff dynamics

the "bread and butter" creep heal debuff has basically become the reaver Devastating strike, since its the most powerful potentially-full-uptime heal debuff on creepside. This requires 50% morale threshold. in a theoretical fight where a bunch of random hard-hitting NPCs are spewing random damage or big AOEs, any AOE spike to help bring people down to below 50% threshold is highly favorable to creeps who can have reavers just on random squishy targets pressuring and waiting for a big AOE hit to knock people below the threshold and seal their fate.

no such advantage is gained by freeps, since they have no such mechanics, they just w-key targets and a big AOE hit doesn't necessarily help with the kill since the name of the game on freepside is "kill it before it gets 5 rows of defiler hots".



#----------------------#

In conclusion, creeps just survive way better against basically everything NPCs can throw at them and shrug off basically all mechanics, while freeps suffer major pressure under the same mechanics.... any fight where both sides are engaged under that same pressure will always favor creeps.

The only thing freeps have going for them is raw damage, which in a vacuum makes them able to clear the boss faster, but considering this location is probably going to be camped 24/7 by an AFK spy alt, I doubt that will matter much compared to the creep's ability to just win (and even thrive) under the boss pressure.

[Hilawolf]

1) Healing-to-morale pool ratios:

creep have higher raw HPS:Morale pool ratios than freeps, meaning any kind of percent-of-morale hit will be more easily countered.

creep HPS in general is leagues stronger than freeps, and rightfully so since often freep DPS is leagues stronger than creeps, so it balances out... but against a neutral NPC, creeps will just shurg off hits compared to freep. This is on top of the fact that creeps can generally "tank up" more than freeps on any given class due to blessings and corruptions options (can't get to anything close to 60% mits on something like an RK, but creep "squishy" classes can).

#----#

2) morale-pool-to-damage ratios:

setting aside percent-of-morale damage, creep morale pools are just bigger.... which means that any flat-damage hits (lets say, 1 million morale) will be taken differently by creeps and freeps.

if a creep gets hit by 1 million hit, setting aside the fact that creep raw HPS is stronger, the creep's health will dip less than half its total pool, sometimes much less, a mere tickle to a defiler running 5 million morale and 50% mits.... meanwhile for many freeps that could be well over half, like a rune keeper running 1.6 million pool and at-best 40% mits.

These big morale pools and mits make sense when fighting freeps, but when fighting NPCs it heavily favors creep survival.

#----#

3) AOE healing dynamics:

Creeps have access to very substantial AOE healing in the form of Warleader, and in a sense Defiler acts much like an AOE healer as well, able to stabilize by spreading HoTs around a large number of people. This is in contrast to freeps whose AOE healing is paltry in comparison from a numbers standpoint.... Warleader heals routinely crit into the 2 million or more range for all members of the group.... what classes on freepside can boast anything vaugely similar?

this AOE healing is of course very much needed when fighting freeps, but when NPCs are involved the creeps just survive so much better


#----#

4) Heal debuff dynamics

the "bread and butter" creep heal debuff has basically become the reaver Devastating strike, since its the most powerful potentially-full-uptime heal debuff on creepside. This requires 50% morale threshold. in a theoretical fight where a bunch of random hard-hitting NPCs are spewing random damage or big AOEs, any AOE spike to help bring people down to below 50% threshold is highly favorable to creeps who can have reavers just on random squishy targets pressuring and waiting for a big AOE hit to knock people below the threshold and seal their fate.

no such advantage is gained by freeps, since they have no such mechanics, they just w-key targets and a big AOE hit doesn't necessarily help with the kill since the name of the game on freepside is "kill it before it gets 5 rows of defiler hots".



#----------------------#

In conclusion, creeps just survive way better against basically everything NPCs can throw at them and shrug off basically all mechanics, while freeps suffer major pressure under the same mechanics.... any fight where both sides are engaged under that same pressure will always favor creeps.

The only thing freeps have going for them is raw damage, which in a vacuum makes them able to clear the boss faster, but considering this location is probably going to be camped 24/7 by an AFK spy alt, I doubt that will matter much compared to the creep's ability to just win (and even thrive) under the boss pressure.

It is also much easier for a solo/small group of freeps to snipe the KB from a creep raid. Creeps cannot do this.

[Saruman_Of_Numbers]

It is also much easier for a solo/small group of freeps to snipe the KB from a creep raid. Creeps cannot do this.

which is an equally dumb thing that doesn't encourage good fights, just some suicidal cheesing of KB steals that we've seen a million times, usually involves a solo stealth class.

not exactly a gripping pitched battle between two mighty forces in contention for a prized jewel.

[Menergroth]

Freeps quests give less commendations than creep conterparts.
Trackers badges gives 10 commendations while footman badges gives 75.

[SSG_Orion]

Freeps quests give less commendations than creep conterparts.
Trackers badges gives 10 commendations while footman badges gives 75.

Good catch. I believe that some of the quests were not given the new profiles.

[Aeviternus]

It is absolutely impossible for reavers (and possibly other creeps too) to run out of power, so it does not seem like the power changes made any difference there. Moreover, freeps do not have power drains. I hope this will be addressed before the patch goes live, otherwise I fear prolonged fights will become completely one-sided.

[SSG_Orion]

It is absolutely impossible for reavers (and possibly other creeps too) to run out of power, so it does not seem like the power changes made any difference there. Moreover, freeps do not have power drains. I hope this will be addressed before the patch goes live, otherwise I fear prolonged fights will become completely one-sided.

This feedback helps.

[SSG_Orion]

Fixed today, based off your feedback here and Bullroarer.

Creep skills were re-audited for power use and have been updated accordingly. Too many of the skills used by monster players were still returning power on use.

Bûrzgoth will now patrol a little longer and actually head back over his tracks in Grothum.

There was a string error in the new tutorial for the Free Players entering the Ettenmoors, that has been addressed.

Grodris is definitely going to be scarier. Tuned the damage up, as it was still using older progressions. It is now worthy of a raid. The reset mechanic should now work correctly. The events controlling the spawn of the matron are now more stable so that she should not return within an hour of being defeated by one side or the other.

Reviewed and updated free people quests that were rewarding commendations that were far under the rewards on their monster player counterparts.

[CHEBURASHKA]

Audacity and mastery changes made Creep and Freep damage output too big, in my opinion.

- 1v1 fights are way too short because of that, some classes can't even take advantage of their skill toolkit due to the rapid speed of the fight. A lot of class matchups last for like 30-40s which is extremely fast. They should be like 1-2 min.
- There haven't been any group fights on bullroarer yet, but, judging by what I saw, I believe that it will negatively affect group fights as well.

So, what should be done?
I think it would be for the best if damage on both sides was reduced by at least 25% [or maybe even more] compared to what it is now on beta (by changing the audacity dmg reduction modifier).
Also some class specific dmg adjustments are probably needed too. I'm not sure about freeps but my first impressions was that spider, reaver and red defiler are the main candidates for that. Their dmg (when combined with their class utility) seems too high compared to BA or Warg. It's already the case that reaver/spider/dps defiler outperform BA and warg on live servers, but mastery and audacity changes on bullroarer just highlight this problem even more. I haven't tested it but I suspect that the reason for that is the fact that %-based dmg buffs became more potent on the beta server:
- 2 spider traits that increase "Tainted/Mephitic kiss" and "Piercing Attack" by 50%
- defiler dps stance +40% skill dmg buff and 20% dot buff
- reaver GiV 10% and 50% from Reckless buff
Warg and BA also have %-based buffs but they are smaller.

[galrodan]

Feedback on reaver on br:
- I feel like in general reavers got a buff. Especially compared to other creepclasses which is not needed at all. Quite the opposite actually.
- With the new GiV, it does feel like i'm relying less on RNG but to me, the constant heals just feel a bit weird.
- Even with a defeat response, you will still get the 'Glory in future Victory' instead of 'Glory in Victory'.
- Defeat responses in general seemed bugged. Of like 15 kills I only got a defeat response 2 times. Heard that it's also bugged on the live servers but I haven't ran into it.
- I like that GiFV costs a lot of power but without any active powerdraining, reavers will never run out of power. I'm not sure what the end result of the power update should be. It seems to me that freeps in general are having more power problems. Both sides should have power issues or none.
IF the goal is to go back to the old power management system I feel like freeps are getting the short end of the stick at this point. With power management IMO, it's better to start out on the side of power being a non-issue and slowly turning up the power costs over multiple updates till its in the right spot.
- If power management is going to make a serious comeback I'd be for changing Time-out back to giving power.
- The new Tireless Warrior is good.

Some general thoughts after some 1v1s on BR:

- Shadow wargs need a serious buff. IMO in the survivability/mitigation department. I'm no warg expert but holy #### are they #### rn. Especially when comparing them to reavers.
- Because of the general damage increase on creepside it felt more balanced to fight against top geared freeps. However, this means that any t2/3 geared freeps are most likely going to be destroyed.
- The tactical mitigation buff from traiting all 6 pieces went from -30% to -15%. I'm not sure if this is different wording (like audacity) or an actual nerf. Havent tested it.
- The tincures are bugged af. Completely tanking your outgoing damage and increasing your incoming damage. Before adding them back in the moors, this needs to change.

Also +1 to what Oiz is saying above about outgoing damage buffs. On reaver I didn't really feel a big difference in the length of fights. When I went pure glass I did run into this problem but I feel like that comes with the setup. Tank-traited fights actually lasted longer compared to live (when not getting GIV)

Mulatic
R15 Reaver
Arkenstone

[OnnMacMahal]

Audacity and mastery changes made Creep and Freep damage output too big, in my opinion.

- 1v1 fights are way too short because of that, some classes can't even take advantage of their skill toolkit due to the rapid speed of the fight. A lot of class matchups last for like 30-40s which is extremely fast. They should be like 1-2 min.
- There haven't been any group fights on bullroarer yet, but, judging by what I saw, I believe that it will negatively affect group fights as well.

Which matchups were you looking at? Were these fights basically DPS races? Even a fight as short as 30-40s should be enough time for both players to use their sustain/defensive skills at least once. Also, are these fights consistently tipping towards a particular side or a particular class, or is it just that you think a lower TTK overall is an issue?

As a note, damage reduction from Audacity is currently x0.5 Incoming Damage for both sides (assuming the freep is wearing adequate moors gear) so 'base' damage reduction ought to be lower for both sides in solo encounters, relative to BR 1 & 2. That said, any class that was capable of stacking significant Incoming Damage reduction in the past will find that strategy much less effective now, so incoming damage should increase significantly for targets in raid collisions where a large number of those effects are in play.

So, what should be done?
I think it would be for the best if damage on both sides was reduced by at least 25% [or maybe even more] compared to what it is now on beta (by changing the audacity dmg reduction modifier).
Also some class specific dmg adjustments are probably needed too. I'm not sure about freeps but my first impressions was that spider, reaver and red defiler are the main candidates for that. Their dmg (when combined with their class utility) seems too high compared to BA or Warg. It's already the case that reaver/spider/dps defiler outperform BA and warg on live servers, but mastery and audacity changes on bullroarer just highlight this problem even more. I haven't tested it but I suspect that the reason for that is the fact that %-based dmg buffs became more potent on the beta server:
- 2 spider traits that increase "Tainted/Mephitic kiss" and "Piercing Attack" by 50%
- defiler dps stance +40% skill dmg buff and 20% dot buff
- reaver GiV 10% and 50% from Reckless buff
Warg and BA also have %-based buffs but they are smaller.

We'll take a look at these (and other) specific bonuses and see if anything was overlooked. Most of these buffs are to skill damage, which was already multiplicative with Mastery, but it's possible that some weren't, or that the damage increase from creep Audacity becoming multiplicative is too large.

[Saruman_Of_Numbers]

Which matchups were you looking at? Were these fights basically DPS races? Even a fight as short as 30-40s should be enough time for both players to use their sustain/defensive skills at least once. Also, are these fights consistently tipping towards a particular side or a particular class, or is it just that you think a lower TTK overall is an issue?

just because both parties got to use a skill once doesn't mean that both parties will see the same benefit.

in 1v1, some classes benefit from drawing out the fight into a longer conflict and repeatedly using moderately strong skills with moderate cooldown to win... a more endurance / sustain fight.

Examples include Spider, Loremaster.

.

other classes win by front-loading massively powerful but long-cooldown skills and trying to get the kill before they run out of powerful buttons / cooldowns to press.

Examples include burglar, champion.



What this update has done is effectively made the front-loaders more powerful at the cost of back-loaders. This was already a problem for group v group before the update with basically most DOT-based classes getting utterly sidelined/outshined by front-loaded burst..... now we're going to see that x10 in group v group and it will leak into the 1v1 scene.. where champions / reavers have already dominated for a long time and spider was the last viable holdout of the control-fight archetype.


this marks the final death of the DOT-based sustained control class as a thing in PVMP.

RIP loremasters and spiders.

[OnnMacMahal]

just because both parties got to use a skill once doesn't mean that both parties will see the same benefit.

in 1v1, some classes benefit from drawing out the fight into a longer conflict and repeatedly using moderately strong skills with moderate cooldown to win... a more endurance / sustain fight.

I did not mean to suggest that any one skill is de facto equivalent to any other. Only that with a very short TTK (say 1-10 seconds) many players/classes are literally incapable of even pressing the skills they rely on to sustain and survive. If a 1v1 lasts 30 seconds, I assume both players are able to hit relevant cooldowns. For example, I'd expect a hunter who died in 30-40s did manage to press Press Onward and Blood Arrow at least once, potentially twice (for BA) and maybe even used some other moderate cooldowns like Cry of the Hunter or Bard's Arrow. Even if it didn't change the outcome, there's a significant difference between 'my skills were not enough to overcome my opponent's DPS/HPS' and 'the fight was over so quick I was unable to react.'

What this update has done is effectively made the front-loaders more powerful at the cost of back-loaders. This was already a problem for group v group before the update with basically most DOT-based classes getting utterly sidelined/outshined by front-loaded burst..... now we're going to see that x10 in group v group and it will leak into the 1v1 scene.. where champions / reavers have already dominated for a long time and spider was the last viable holdout of the control-fight archetype.

Other than anecdotal TTK from 1v1s, what makes you say that? Are you thinking primarily of (at least loosely balanced) 6v6 scenarios? If your metric of success is who contributes most towards a short-window burst on a single priority target, that will, essentially by definition, never be a steady output DoT class.

[Dranak123]

I did not mean to suggest that any one skill is de facto equivalent to any other. Only that with a very short TTK (say 1-10 seconds) many players/classes are literally incapable of even pressing the skills they rely on to sustain and survive. If a 1v1 lasts 30 seconds, I assume both players are able to hit relevant cooldowns. For example, I'd expect a hunter who died in 30-40s did manage to press Press Onward and Blood Arrow at least once, potentially twice (for BA) and maybe even used some other moderate cooldowns like Cry of the Hunter or Bard's Arrow. Even if it didn't change the outcome, there's a significant difference between 'my skills were not enough to overcome my opponent's DPS/HPS' and 'the fight was over so quic



Other than anecdotal TTK from 1v1s, what makes you say that? Are you thinking primarily of (at least loosely balanced) 6v6 scenarios? If your metric of success is who contributes most towards a short-window burst on a single priority target, that will, essentially by definition, never be a steady output DoT class.

ok OnnMacMahal (tell me you are a Scotsman please ) i believe the basic premise of your post is correct. Not only within the confines of the moors but the game as a whole and also most other games there exists the concept of 'the exploit'. This may take the form of an extreme exploit which attracts a hotfix , or a mild exploit which flies under the radar for some considerable time. However , there is also another force at work which potentially comes under the banner of 'unintended consequences' . Certain Classes have often been able to string together a chain of skills against a particular character or class that is almost indefensible. Whilst initially you must 'tip your hat' to these enterprising and well informed and skilled individuals....ultimately the opportunity highlighted will spread and be to the detriment of the game and should quite rightly be closed off via whatever means are felt necessary. Therefore , the ability of any given class (freep or creep) to drop an opponent so quickly as to deny their opponent a 'FAIR' chance of survival/escape or 'balanced response' is in need of some adjudication and adjustment.

[OnnMacMahal]

ok OnnMacMahal (tell me you are a Scotsman please ) i believe the basic premise of your post is correct. Not only within the confines of the moors but the game as a whole and also most other games there exists the concept of 'the exploit'. This may take the form of an extreme exploit which attracts a hotfix , or a mild exploit which flies under the radar for some considerable time. However , there is also another force at work which potentially comes under the banner of 'unintended consequences' . Certain Classes have often been able to string together a chain of skills against a particular character or class that is almost indefensible. Whilst initially you must 'tip your hat' to these enterprising and well informed and skilled individuals....ultimately the opportunity highlighted will spread and be to the detriment of the game and should quite rightly be closed off via whatever means are felt necessary. Therefore , the ability of any given class (freep or creep) to drop an opponent so quickly as to deny their opponent a 'FAIR' chance of survival/escape or 'balanced response' is in need of some adjudication and adjustment.

Your quote pointed out the fact that my prior message was clipped at the end, but it seems it still made sense.


But yes, considering cases like a rBurg in stealth executing an opening combo on an unsuspecting target - if that is reliably effective enough to kill a creep in just the opening combo, I'd be more worried about that than 1v1s between two 'maxed' players on Bullroarer being unable to sustain a fight for longer than 40s.

Now, also keep in mind that we have made some steps towards addressing cases like the former. In principle, I think it's fair to say that a burglar who has committed fully to a glass cannon, stealth-combo playstyle should be rewarded for doing so, but we've also given greenie creeps much stronger baseline states with blessings, as well as the ability to choose more defensive blessings to partially mitigate being such an inherently soft target. Additionally, it bears repeating that the current Audacity damage reduction is x0.5 for both sides right now, meaning that imaginary r0 Blackarrow being targeted by a rBurglar is going to take something in the neighborhood of 25-30% less damage from that opening salvo when compared to live (assuming no other damage debuffs were in play other than Reveal Weakness, which was previously reducing the DR from Audacity additively, and thus more effectively, than it will going forward).

[CHEBURASHKA]

Which matchups were you looking at? Were these fights basically DPS races? Even a fight as short as 30-40s should be enough time for both players to use their sustain/defensive skills at least once. Also, are these fights consistently tipping towards a particular side or a particular class, or is it just that you think a lower TTK overall is an issue?

1) matchups that seemed a lot faster than live: primarily fights with RK/mini/LM vs reaver/spider/red defiler. Warden/burg/hunter vs reaver/spider/red defiler also looked shorter but to a lesser degree. Again, this was just my impression, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit so we need other people's opinions too. If no one else notices this issue then, I guess, I might be wrong.

2) spider feels stronger than live to the degree that it's impossible to win a 1v1 only against a really good 1) burg 2) bear. In comparison, on live it's impossible to win a 1v1 against a really good 1) burg 2) bear 3) guard 4) champ 5) RK 6) blue hunter that perma kites and yellow hunter 7) mini that perma kites and stance swaps (note: I did not list the classes from the weakest to strongest or vice versa, it's random). So, imo, spider dmg should go down.
I can't say which other classes seem overtuned cuz I didn't have enough time to test it (and also because there weren't enough people at the arena).

3) yes, my main thesis was that a lower TTK overall is an issue. The reason why I think it's an issue is that complexity of the fights goes down when the fights are too short, and a 30-40s fight is really short for a lot of classes like warden/LM/spider/red defiler, etc. Tactical decisions play a lesser role in the fights because you're just in a hurry to do as much dmg as possible as you're both losing morale really fast. It's hard to give a short and sound argument why complexity of the fights goes down without talking in depth about all aspects of every matchup (which is too time consuming) so I'll just give one example:
You can take advantage of your CC skills only after you force your opponent to use CC cleanse skill/pot/brand. In order to do that you need to take CC DR into account and use your CC every 20s otherwise your CC will be so short that it doesn't help you at all (as your opponent does not need to cleanse it because it disappears super fast). If the fights are like 30s long you can force your opponent to use CC cleanse skill/pot/brand and then the fight is over, so you don't even have a chance to take advantage of your CC cuz it just gets cleansed. In other words, if the fights are short - using CC skills basicaly means wasting time (on animation and inductions of the skills).

-------------------
Anyway, let's see what other people might say on that topic to know if fights are actually faster now or not.

[Saruman_Of_Numbers]

there's a significant difference between 'my skills were not enough to overcome my opponent's DPS/HPS' and 'the fight was over so quick I was unable to react.'

the scenario I'm talking about isn't necessarily "too fast to react" so much as "more and more classes/playstyles are being made irrelevant because they are bad at front-loading compared to other classes, so they will consistently underperform. If your goal is to distill LOTRO PVMP down to a single playstyle and further homogenize classes more than they have already been homogenized, and sideline already weaker classes, then you're succeeding.

Other than anecdotal TTK from 1v1s, what makes you say that? Are you thinking primarily of (at least loosely balanced) 6v6 scenarios? If your metric of success is who contributes most towards a short-window burst on a single priority target, that will, essentially by definition, never be a steady output DoT class.

As Oiz (aka CHEBURASHKA, probably the best 1v1 player in the game right now) pointed out, the TTK in 1v1 likely bodes ill for group fights.

if a single player can kill a single other player in half the time, this indicates that the TTK for group fights will also likely be at least half the time for any kind of group fight and likely less than half the time as you can now race further ahead of any healing or HoT pulses. Kills already happen so fast from burst that this might render healers completely irrelevant.... something which was NOT asked for by anyone.... people were asking to limit or mitigate healstacking (by making healing more difficult, remove HTF, etc), not to make irrelevant due to insane killspeed.


also, over time we've seen the continual erosion of all "slower" forms of DPS like DoTs, since the typical DoT's strength has fallen far behind the typical HoT's strength and the effectiveness of front-loaded damage and the perpetuation of more AOE healing / selfhealing... With this update, it makes DoTs nearly irrelevant since any target getting hurt by DoTs will either 1) be dead before more than a single tick of the bleed 2) get outhealed effortlessly by background healing because it doesn't co-exist with enough other damage to overcome it, or get hard-countered by something like a bubble since there is time to react.


Ask yourself a question, why would you ever bring a DoT-based class with 5-10s rampup when you can bring a front-loader who raises to the same DPS cap in a faction of a second and can maintain it?

the front loader will get the kill when combined with other front-loaders before the target gets *any* heals or *any* bubbles.... the DoT-based class is just asking to be countered and outhealed.

This update effectively seals the DoT-based DPS classes into irrelevance by promoting front-loaders with this faster TTK.



The solution would be to reduce HoT / AOE healing, increase single target initial healing , increase DoT potency compared to initial damage, and increase TTK such that front-loaders are not favored so strongly for their ability to "fullbar" someone.... this could balance out the class relevancy.


but something tells me this lowering of TTK is by design and not going away, as a remedy for lag generated by large fights (hey more dead people with less buffs and interactions = less lag, problem solved!).

[OnnMacMahal]

As Oiz (aka CHEBURASHKA, probably the best 1v1 player in the game right now) pointed out, the TTK in 1v1 likely bodes ill for group fights.

if a single player can kill a single other player in half the time, this indicates that the TTK for group fights will also likely be at least half the time for any kind of group fight and likely less than half the time as you can now race further ahead of any healing or HoT pulses. Kills already happen so fast from burst that this might render healers completely irrelevant.... something which was NOT asked for by anyone.... people were asking to limit or mitigate healstacking (by making healing more difficult, remove HTF, etc), not to make irrelevant due to insane killspeed.

I'm not disagreeing with this logic, which is generally sound. I was merely trying to gather more nuance, as there are 3 main factors at play in changing the overall DPS in the moors with this update:
(1) Mastery changes have broadly increased damage across all classes on both freepside and creepside. On it's face, this shouldn't in and of itself unbalance one side against the other, though it does lead to greater value in DD/burst classes and lower overall TTK
(2) Creepside Audacity now gives a multiplicative offensive bonus, rather than an additive one (which was pretty much washed away by high mastery values prior to this update). Again, similar outcome to #1, except the benefit here is going specifically to creeps.
(3) Incoming Damage reduction from Audacity is now a fixed, multiplicative x0.5 value. This means that in a 'neutral' 1v1 situation, where a player was previously taking -30% damage (freep) or -40% Damage (creep) they're now taking less. This is even further reducing your damage taken in situations where your incoming damage is being debuffed, by things like Telling Mark or Reveal Weakness. Conversely, it means that in situations where a group was specifically maximizing Incoming Damage reduction (via effects from bRK, yCap, etc) players should be taking more damage, more of the time.

(I know you know this, but restating just for clarity)

Taken together, the Audacity reduction ought to increase TTK in solo/small group encounters, while lowering TTK in large group encounters, especially when both offensive and defensive plays were centered on pushing and pulling someone's 'Incoming Damage' value.

Now, that said, it seems like (anecdotally at least) points 1 and 2 are currently outweighing point 3, leading to a lower average TTK, despite the Audacity change. We're certainly open to making some further tweaks where necessary so that this ends up having a more positive overall impact.

also, over time we've seen the continual erosion of all "slower" forms of DPS like DoTs, since the typical DoT's strength has fallen far behind the typical HoT's strength and the effectiveness of front-loaded damage and the perpetuation of more AOE healing / selfhealing... With this update, it makes DoTs nearly irrelevant since any target getting hurt by DoTs will either 1) be dead before more than a single tick of the bleed 2) get outhealed effortlessly by background healing because it doesn't co-exist with enough other damage to overcome it, or get hard-countered by something like a bubble since there is time to react.

The only additional comment I'll add here is that classes generally bring more to the table than just DoT vs non-DoT damage profiles. Spiders and LMs in particular have always had significant value in control & debuff utility, which is hard to quantify in a simple damage profile comparison. The very fact that Oiz is suggesting spider is currently too strong (along with red defilers, which are also DoT-primary) suggests you might be a little overzealous here in claiming the demise of every DoT-first class

This update effectively seals the DoT-based DPS classes into irrelevance by promoting front-loaders with this faster TTK.

I think this is slightly premature, but to echo Oiz, I am more than happy to hear from anyone else who was either watching or experiencing combat on Bullroarer.

[J-Moneyforever]

Piggybacking on Oiz and Dread here about fight duration with the caveat these are general observations as I haven't spent time on BR.
As they have said low TTK fights bode ill for group play and they make 1v1's nearly untenable for some classes. But it's worse than that imo. Even classes that are on top are restricted into very specific playstyles because in a meta where TTK is very low and frontloaded specs are on top, you are forced into those specs. Red burg is very strong right now, blue burg is viable, but if you lower TTK so that every fight is a rush to output max DPS, then specs like blue burg or any LM spec that isn't based around one shotting with LS are on the wayside.
Additionally being able to use sustain skills doesn't necessarily create *sustain* in a fight. A class like LM will get behind in a fight and then they will never catch up because they seek a ramping playstyle. They'll use wisdom/Water lores etc. But at the end of the day they're just delaying the inevitable because in fights that last 30-40s they simply don't have time to execute their playstyle properly.
A lot of this is tinted by my own personal preference I'll admit. I personally think that longer fights create more skill ceiling because there's more room for creative play or appropriate and strategic CD usage. However, I concede that lower TTK fights have their own skillset that is more frenetic. And also I see how longer TTK in 1v1 can translate to infinite TTK in Group V Group if done wrong.
I do appreciate the communication and thoughtful discourse about it though regardless of what you decide are appropriate fight lengths.

Edited for your last post: I like the ideas behind the changes and am happy to see that's the overall philosophy. My points are generalized and still stand but glad to see clarification on what you're trying to do with fight pace. Whether or not it's working I'll leave to those who have more hours on BR than me