Bullroarer Update 19.2 - Preview and Release Notes

[Tybur]

Bullroarer Update 19.2 Release Notes
Welcome to the Update 19.2 Release Notes for Bullroarer, released on Friday, December 2nd. These notes will change over time.
We have updated Bullroarer with a preview of Update 19.2. There has been a character database wipe. Please feel free to use the transfer wizard on your live launcher to copy any of your characters to Bullroarer.

Please note that the LOTRO Store has been disabled on Bullroarer for the weekend.

News and Notes:
Classes

• Hunter trait points have been refunded.
• Hunter's Exsanguinate skill damage now properly scales with weapon damage.
• Hunter's Perseverance trait improves the Press Onward Heal and Power by 10/20/30%, up from 5/10/15%.
• Blood Arrow is now a general Hunter skill that is automatically granted at level 40. Blood Arrow now has normal Power costs instead of Morale costs. The default cooldown is now 20 seconds. This skill heals 10% of Max Morale on-hit.
• The Blood Arrow trait Rank 1 now heals 20% max morale on-hit, while Rank 2 reduces the skill cooldown by 5s.

Deeds

• The Slayer of North Ithilien deed now properly lists 'Easterling-slayer of North Ithilien (Advanced)' as one of its objectives.
• The Explorer of North Ithilien deed now properly lists 'Haradrim Remnants' as one of its objectives.

Housing

• Property Writs are now given in refund for abandoned, foreclosed, or transferred premium housing. These writs are a voucher that can be used to purchase a Premium House in lieu of Mithril Coins, and are Bound to Account. The refund value of the writ will be equal to the purchase during a server transfer, and will have a lesser value when used for abandoned or foreclosed homes.
• Auctioneers have been added to the Cape of Belfalas housing area.

Items

• Pellenor Essences of Morale now drop where Superlative Essences of Morale once did in Throne of the Dread Terror. These essences are item level 270.
• Throne of the Dread Terror - Challenge Chests now have a chance to drop tokens for Legendary Bracelets. They are item level 258 and contain 3 sockets.
• A new tier of Ithilien Infused Essences have been introduced. These essences are item level 258, and cover the following stats:
  
  • Physical Mastery
  • Tactical Mastery
  • Physical Mitigation
  • Tactical Mitigation
  • Morale
  • Critical Rating
  • Might
  • Agility
  • Vitality
  • Will
  • Fate
  
  
• Each crafting profession will get a new, rare ingredient that can be found in The Throne of the Dread Terror, North Ithilien Flora, Featured Instances, and the Yule Festival. These crafting items are tradeable. Crafters will use these ingredients to make a Wild Essence barter item, which is also tradeable.
• The recipes use the new ingredient, a universal solvent, normal crafting components, and any Ithilien Essence. The recipes are free, and are automatically added to your crafting panel in Update 19.2.
• The North Ithilien Herbalists will give you an Ithilien-infused Essence box in exchange for one of these Wild Essences. The box allows you to choose the essence with the stat you desire, and there is even a small chance the essence may be a Legendary masquerading as an Incomparable.
• North Ithilien - Legendary Rings are now available for barter from the herbalists. They are item level 258 and contain 3 sockets.

PvMP

• Weaver's Trapdoor Sanctuary cooldown has been increased from three minutes to five minutes.
• Warg's Disappear cooldown has been increased from three to five minutes.
• Monster Player devastate damage has been increased and unified to a 2.5x multiplier.
• Mitigation Corruptions have been increased.
• Critical Rating Corruption's Critical Rating values have been buffed, and the Corruption now adds 10% Critical Damage per rank.

Quests and other Adventure Areas

• Seventeen new quests and deeds have been added in North Ithilien, including 9 repeatable quests.
• Fixed various typos in Helegrod, Gondor, Mirkwood, Rohan, and North Ithilien.
• The Thorin's Hall Task: Monstrous Scales will be removed from any character that had it underway as the needed items no longer drop in the Misty Mountains.
• In the 'Fire Beneath the Shadow' instance, Aragorn and Mithrandir no longer have incorrect tool tip information when you have the Foe-slayer of Osgiliath deed in progress.
• Attention North Ithilien herbalists: The ranger Ereblen has recently discovered more flora growing around the south of the Cross-roads in Ithilien.
• Orcs in Narchost will no longer have peculiar-looking entries in the Combat Log.
• The Rangers in Narchost will no longer move incredibly slowly when the text says they're moving quickly.
• Book IV.7.7 'The Ambush' now properly notes that the instance is a Solo-only quest.
• The door out of Zudrugund could be used to break 'Instance: An Echo of Days Past', so the door is now unusable during that instance.
• The Ranger Orndil stumbled over his words when you encountered him in IV.7.6, 'The Window on the West,' but now his typos have been corrected.
• There is now a billboard for defeating enemies in Osgiliath during IV.7.4, 'A Loud Departure.'
• Most beasts in North Ithilien will no longer count as foes for the purposes of IV.7.5 The Garden of Gondor.
• Enemies in Bingo's Week 38 quest are now labeled with their correct region of origin.
• Bingo Week 35, 'Enter the Easterlings' will no longer stall at 11/12 enemies defeated until you empty your pending loot. Now the quest will progress automatically instead.
• Pebble is a good doggie, and can no longer be slain in Central Gondor.
• Made the boundary transition between North and South Ithilien more natural.
• Rosie Cotton in Tookland has settled on a consistent hair style.
• A certain Elder Brown-bear in the Norcrofts will stand on all four paws now instead of attempting to balance on only two.
• The Farmers Faire quest 'Restocking the Market' will no longer allow mithril travel.

Misc

• Throne of the Dread Terror - It will no longer be possible to swap in an alt or other player to loot chests during the looting phase on any boss in the raid. Players must be present when the boss is defeated to receive loot.
• Many more NPCs should now make ambient sounds more appropriate to their clothing and weapons.
• The Mounted Combat panel should now be much more reponsive when you click on a trait tree to enter.
• The water authority has adjusted various fountains and other water sources throughout Middle-earth to again obey the laws of gravity. Various other particle effects for skills, mobs, and fellowships should behave more normally as well.

[DRNA]

Bullroarer Update 19.2 Release Notes
[*]Warg's Disappear cooldown has been increased from three to five minutes.

This is an
ABOMINATION
and makes absolutely
NO
sense at all!

Shame. Shame. Shame.

[Spilo]

***************** scored a devastating hit with Bestial Claws on Hoarhallow Farmer for 34,813 Fell-wrought damage to Morale.

Full review coming tomorrow, stay tuned.

[Otdanon]

[*]The North Ithilien Herbalists will give you an Ithilien-infused Essence box in exchange for one of these Wild Essences. The box allows you to choose the essence with the stat you desire, and there is even a small chance the essence may be a Legendary masquerading as an Incomparable.

This is kind of harsh. So first you grind for the North Ithilien essence. Then you grind for the special ingredient/solvent. Finally, you craft an essence...and most of the time it ends up being worse than the currently available supremes. Why so much rng? Imo, the output of such a recipe should be a granted Legendary, otherwise it's too much of a hassle to get involved with this cumbersome process. It is so frustrating to spend so much time and to obtain a useless teal...

[Ethirielll]

No fix for red line guardian? Really?

[mmogaming]

This is kind of harsh. So first you grind for the North Ithilien essence. Then you grind for the special ingredient/solvent. Finally, you craft an essence...and most of the time it ends up being worse than the currently available supremes. Why so much rng? Imo, the output of such a recipe should be a granted Legendary, otherwise it's too much of a hassle to get involved with this cumbersome process. It is so frustrating to spend so much time and to obtain a useless teal...

Agreed. This is brutal atm. The current system, we did grind but we have the results. Now its all about being "lucky".

Data I have so far:

-100 Foragers Flora Turn in and 0 crafting ingredients.
-It is 3 Fragments to obtain an essence box.
-It is 3 Scraps for an Essence Reclamation Scroll.

-You can run the daily every day and obtain one Essence box and one Reclamation Scroll.
-100 Foragers Flora and not 1 ingredient? Have they been added in? That is to low.

[dselden]

This is an
ABOMINATION
and makes absolutely
NO
sense at all!

Shame. Shame. Shame.

I don't understand your rage... do you honestly think a 1m 30s cd on disappear was a good idea in any form? Did it lead to good pvp? The simple answer is no.

[LabadalofDorlomin]

• Warg's Disappear cooldown has been increased from three to five minutes.
• Monster Player devastate damage has been increased and unified to a 2.5x multiplier.
• Mitigation Corruptions have been increased.
• Critical Rating Corruption's Critical Rating values have been buffed, and the Corruption now adds 10% Critical Damage per rank.

[Macroscian]

This doesn't cover yellow tree for hunter. I'm about to very nearly give in and give up.

[Antophant]

Blood Arrow heal is nice (5k non-crit healing at 24k Morale, 7k crit heals) while the nerf to its cooldown is not nice.*on a man hunter*
Exsanguinate is looking great at 5.1k DoT dmg at 100k PM but I cant show any real numbers as it never procs on test (tested with 1,2 and 3 points traited)
The change to Press Onward is minimal at best and is over shadowed by Blood Arrow now especially since the extra morale/power requires 3 trait points still.

Ithilien crafting items are way too rare, from 150-160 baskets between 3 people only 2 items dropped.
The 258 teal versions are only 5.7% better than 246s making Agility/Might/Will worse than the older 105 gold essences while also being harder to make *sigh*.
exp: 258 teal Morale essence is 1089 / 23 and 246 Morale essence is 1030 / 22.

[Rakanor]

Are there any plans to rework finesse so that it has some effect on partials?

Partials have a really negative effect on physical classes given their critical dependencies.
https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...-P-E&p=7615890
https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...-P-E&p=7668070
https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...99-Partial-BPE



Are there any plans to fix the champion crit/dev gap?

Champion critical hits have been doing more damage than devastating hit for a long time now, this will only get worse in the future.
https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...n-crit-dev-gap

[Mukor]

Bullroarer Update 19.2 Release Notes
Welcome to the Update 19.2 Release Notes for Bullroarer, released on Friday, December 2nd. These notes will change over time.
We have updated Bullroarer with a preview of Update 19.2. There has been a character database wipe. Please feel free to use the transfer wizard on your live launcher to copy any of your characters to Bullroarer.

Please note that the LOTRO Store has been disabled on Bullroarer for the weekend.

News and Notes:
Classes

• Hunter trait points have been refunded.
• Hunter's Exsanguinate skill damage now properly scales with weapon damage.
• Hunter's Perseverance trait improves the Press Onward Heal and Power by 10/20/30%, up from 5/10/15%.
• Blood Arrow is now a general Hunter skill that is automatically granted at level 40. Blood Arrow now has normal Power costs instead of Morale costs. The default cooldown is now 20 seconds. This skill heals 10% of Max Morale on-hit.
• The Blood Arrow trait Rank 1 now heals 20% max morale on-hit, while Rank 2 reduces the skill cooldown by 5s.

Deeds

Why nerfing the hunter after this short of period again. Or rather why changing anything on blood arrow. Everybody can have this skill already, in the first way cause the blue line is the line you should pölay but other lines have also enough point for mixing to it.. Morale as ressource make sense at this skill it feels more authentic. And it´s a good way to get some power back for spaming barrage further. Well to the better morale heal you cannot say anything against it but the heal which you have at the moment is enough. If you really want toincrease the CD of bloodarrow you should increase the Dmg with the same factor, that there is no loosing of dps.

[Oelle]

Why nerfing the hunter after this short of period again. Or rather why changing anything on blood arrow. Everybody can have this skill already, in the first way cause the blue line is the line you should pölay but other lines have also enough point for mixing to it.. Morale as ressource make sense at this skill it feels more authentic. And it´s a good way to get some power back for spaming barrage further. Well to the better morale heal you cannot say anything against it but the heal which you have at the moment is enough. If you really want toincrease the CD of bloodarrow you should increase the Dmg with the same factor, that there is no loosing of dps.

I'd prefer 10s normal cooldown, 5 sec cd with 2 points traited and 5% heal / 10% traited for blood arrow, too.
still, bloodarrow is slightly better than penshot due to higher critmults, but as barrage3 is clearly the #1 dps skill followed by spamable penshot and bloodarrow behind those as it has a cooldown and therefore cant be spammed that much... its not that much of a deal with a bit longer cooldown imo. we still have two very strong focus consumers to spam.

i personally dont feel that morale as ressource for skills makes sense. if any, then for loremasterskills, but not even there.

[Oelle]

just checking bullroarer... whenever one of my toons quests through north ithilien, i gather every single flower that i come across. while questing through, this sums up to roughly 1000 flowerphials.
I just went with one of my chars to the flowerbarters and exchanged all flowers i have for flower baskets. while opening 35 baskets, i did not even get one single ingredient for crafting the new essences. This is annoying. there should at least be a dropchance of ~10%. according to the people, we need one solvent, one ithilic essence and one really rare flower ingredient. and what we get from that is just the small chance for a supreme essence and in most cases just a slightly better teal essence? like really? not funny.

I see that there are new deeds for the dailies... including one for having done 250 dailies of which one can only do 4 each day. thats much. but nothing wrong with long-term-motivation... just one question comes up for me: 250x300=75000 Reputation that we get while doing those dailies. is all that wasted or are there again higher rep-tiers? i'm some days of dailies away from kindred, so i dont know by myself if rep tiers are already included. should be clearly enough rep for another 60k tier or something like that. as the deeds dont reward with TP, the rep tier might.

The loca is quite nice this time. Only one typo found so far... (@Cordovan, you can add to my list: "Rechtschreib-/Grammatikfehler; Müssige Hände; Aragorn; es stand nicht in meiner Macht, ihn aus den Häuser der Heilung zu verbannen; Häuser->Häusern.")

One thing in german client is terrible for loca though: the new trait description for blood arrow traits. they tell you that traiting leads to bloodarrow having a heal over time if it hits critically. how did that happen?

something went terribly wrong with the landscape at 62.0S, 4.1W. and /bug is bugged so i cant report ingame.

/edit: we can do all dailies each day, we just get a bonus basket for the first four. thats actually cool. much better than the way the MT dailies were done where we had to chose which dailies to do i like it.

And Milgamels Questchain seems really awesome. Sadly, its bugged. At least, I dont know how to do it. Went with her through the world, now she wants to complete a book. I went to Ioreth and Osgiliath, got the two books there and 8+6 pages came up in questlog. But when i kill enemies in Thorngroth or Cair Andros, the pages i get are stuck in the excess bag. so quest progression is stuck at 2/8 no matter how many pages i gather. Am i missing something?

[siipperi]

People QQ of few monster cd increases when their damage is close to doubled? Seems like typical thing to do.

[Oelle]

Is it WAI, that the mordor firedevils are Elite?
Not that thats a problem, but its uncommon to fight 100k morale elite enemies for a solo-quest.

[Oelle]

• Seventeen new quests and deeds have been added in North Ithilien, including 9 repeatable quests.
• Fixed various typos in Helegrod, Gondor, Mirkwood, Rohan, and North Ithilien.

Soo... according to my deedlog (4 new deeds unlocked), i did 12 of those quests today. i wonder which 9 of those are repeatable... (sadly, my guess is that those with good rewards are not, and i already hoped for a daily ithilien essence and reclamation scroll /sigh)
One quest i still have is bugged though, i just can't get the pages for Mílgamels research in old plants. Very sad, as she told me we might go to an enemy camp in the wastelands afterwards, if i understood her correctly.
12 done quests + 4 deeds plus 1 bugged quest makes 17. so no quest after that? seems like i misunderstood her intention to go to the wastelands and cure those with flowerpower. or like someone will hinder her.

point two: does this include the strongly needed loca-fix for roughly 100 u19-typos/textrelated bugs? or just older typos in the english client?

[Latanab]

The Exanguinate skill does not proc at all with blood arrow. This needs fixing before it hits live.

[CaerArianrhod]

Bullroarer Update 19.2 Release Notes

• A new tier of Ithilien Infused Essences have been introduced. These essences are item level 258, and cover the following stats:

What about essences for incoming healing?

• Each crafting profession will get a new, rare ingredient that can be found in The Throne of the Dread Terror, North Ithilien Flora, Featured Instances, and the Yule Festival. These crafting items are tradeable. Crafters will use these ingredients to make a Wild Essence barter item, which is also tradeable.
• The recipes use the new ingredient, a universal solvent, normal crafting components, and any Ithilien Essence. The recipes are free, and are automatically added to your crafting panel in Update 19.2.
• The North Ithilien Herbalists will give you an Ithilien-infused Essence box in exchange for one of these Wild Essences. The box allows you to choose the essence with the stat you desire, and there is even a small chance the essence may be a Legendary masquerading as an Incomparable.
• North Ithilien - Legendary Rings are now available for barter from the herbalists. They are item level 258 and contain 3 sockets.

This is the same as EVERY time. You learn absolutely nothing from your countless mistakes and do them again and again!

Players do not want RGN (let me say it again for that deaf ear some of you seems to have: PLAYERS DO NOT WANT RGN!)
The current droprate of the "crafting rare ingredient" is not rare, it is 'once in a blue moon'!
Please named the preson, we have to thank for the RGN with the "small chance the essence may be a Legendary"!
I already execrate this exraodinary grind with the flowers, since i have not only 1 raiding charakter! And now you turn it with this update into much more grind+RNG!

Guys really, LEARN from your mistakes! How many players should leave the game again befor you got the message?

For example: make the flowers/phials account bound! This stupid soulbound fetish you have is just killing every crumb of fun out of the game.

[siipperi]

Is it WAI, that the mordor firedevils are Elite?
Not that thats a problem, but its uncommon to fight 100k morale elite enemies for a solo-quest.

So? Maybe times of babysitting are over. Well not really since 100k mobs are faceroll easy to kill... Creeps have way more morale and hit like 3x harder than those elites will and you can actually CC them... Stop moaning on making game actually have interesting solo quests.

[Oelle]

So? Maybe times of babysitting are over. Well not really since 100k mobs are faceroll easy to kill... Creeps have way more morale and hit like 3x harder than those elites will and you can actually CC them... Stop moaning on making game actually have interesting solo quests.

i'm not moaning. i find it interesting. i'm just wondering. as you might see, i wrote that its not a problem to have those mobs there. its just not expected.
I would have made the same post if these mobs were lowlvl or only had 5k morale or something like that. like i did when there were very weak goblins in minas tirith cisterns in the beginning.

[Geventh]

Warg is ridiculous as their major three skills have broken Critical Chance in Shadow Stance.
Spiders were already too good at DPS when they weren't even intended to be a DPS class. They need a significant nerf / damage redistribution.
For those high crits/devs from BS/Reavers the values are not that crazy when you compare it to freep moral pool and how it used to be. The only thing that changed are the CDs compared to then so you can get hit hard on a higher frequency if RNG is in your favour.

Ideally I would like every Critical Corruption rank to give 10% Critical Damage, 3 set-bonus can additionally give 15%, 6 set-bonus 25%.
So that is a total of 100% Critical Damage if you trait all 6 corruptions. (instead of 210% we have now)

For Wargs:

• Fix Element of Surprise trait for Shadow Stance as it applies the bonus twice for stealth enhanced skills and fix the base critical chance where it is needed.
• Nerf Bestial Claw damage by 25% (lower the bonus Shadow Stance applies)
• Increase CD of Bestal Claw to 1.5s
• Increase Damage and lower CD of Swipe and Scratch & Snip, so they can be important once again in the rotation
• Increase CD of Sprint by 30-60s
• Snap: applies additionally a -25% inc. healing debuff for 10s

For Spiders significantly nerf Lethal Kiss, Tainted Kiss & Mephitic Kiss (esp. upfront damage) while slightly buffing Virulent Poisen, Deep Drink & Envenom.

For Reavers & Blackarrows you could slightly increase CD of Vital Target (from 40s to 60s), Devastating Strike (from 20s to 30s). As a compensation reduce CDs of a few skills: Severing Strike, Serration & Tangle Shot, Flaming Arrows, Strong Pull.

Warleaders will be fine but they could use some extra love though. (In terms of a filler skill for healing & DPS for solo encounters)

Defilers might need a slight nerf if there are no plans of Stances for DPS/Healing. What could additionally be done is to make Efflorescence not stack with multiple defilers in the same group. This could potentially reduce the amount of defilers at the same spot.

[Chodelet]

I don't understand your rage... do you honestly think a 1m 30s cd on disappear was a good idea in any form? Did it lead to good pvp? The simple answer is no.

Agreed that 1m 30s disappear was always a terrible idea. But, after CDs were reduced on both sides across the board to the point of ridiculousness in the past, why suddenly put creep CDs in a more reasonable spot and not make similar efforts with poorly designed freep CDs? The arbitrary and incomplete 'fix' is one of the celebrated continuities in this game since SOA.

[luckygirl1]

[*]The North Ithilien Herbalists will give you an Ithilien-infused Essence box in exchange for one of these Wild Essences. The box allows you to choose the essence with the stat you desire, and there is even a small chance the essence may be a Legendary masquerading as an Incomparable

Well this is just awful and sounds like torture. Whats the deal with so much rng this patch. Cant say I really agree with this one at all

[Solien]

So if I'm understanding this correctly (and I'm not sure I am, as the section on these new essences isn't terribly clear), this is the situation with the new essences:

- grind for a rare crafting item from flowers, dailies, or Throne.
- use the crafting item, a solvent, and an Ithilien essence to obtain a barter item.
- turn in the barter item for an Essence Box which has a small chance to drop a legendary essence; otherwise, you will wind up with an Ithilien Essence.

Why, in the name of all that's holy, would anyone ever do this? Two tiers of RNG grind for a slightly better essence?

Also, what's the difference between an Ithilien Infused Essence and a regular Ithilien Essence? Are the Infused the legendary essences?