Bullroarer Update 33 - Beta #4 - CLOSED

[gildhur]

• Lore-master - Updated an old class template that had Lore-masters advancing their damage and healing progression slower than the other two classes from levels 1-50. Now mirrors the Minstrel & RKs progression.
• Lore-master - Sticky Gourd effects are now applied as an immediate AoE rather than a hotspot. The effects themselves now have a 20s duration. Sticky Gourd's hotspots were causing some serious performance issues and couldn't crit. This version should work a good bit more smoothly.
• Lore-master - Improved Sticky Gourd now immediately applies one copy of Improved Burning Embers, but does not continue to apply them thereafter. The hotspot version of burning embers wasn't getting some of the Lore-master's stats, such as crit chance, and would overwrite those cast normally, significantly limiting their damage. This version only applies once, but should work properly.
• Lore-master - Fierce Lightning can now be applied by any Lore-master lightning skill.
• Lore-master - Fierce Lightning now directly applies its fire dot to targets, rather than setting the ground on fire.
• Lore-master - Fierce Lightning's pulse rate reduced to every 2 seconds, but damage increased. Duration unchanged. Another change to help prevent Lore-masters from melting down our servers and your GPUs. Should also make it a good bit more useful, and help pull skills like Lightning Strike into rotation.

Ooh, sounds like you're preparing for me to start leveling a new River-hobbit Lore-master soon.

• The Subscriber Buffs and Town Services item granted by the VIP Rewards daily quest will now last for two weeks.

OMFG YAY

[Novaheart92]

brawler dps right now (red) is around 200-250K it's ''good'' but still not enough, just to be clear they cannot hold buffs like a captain, not dps like a red champ, blue/red burglar, red beo, red hunter, red minstrel, red rk (even yellow i think) even yellow burglar outparse us unfortunatly, and as i said in terms of buffs in red we are one billion years behind the captain, burg, LM, we simply dont have any single spot in a team raid because we dont give anything to the team (we are at most a double red banner captain in team buff not even raid buff), please SSG grant us something like a dot or two and maybe a little buff change in order to be viable in raids, in tank the resistance of brawlers are good however lacks some aggro (aoe), like we have one aoe aggro every 30 sec and compared to captain who keeps 10 mobs by stealing aggro from champions they dont have to use their aoe aggro to keep the time for like 75% of the fight...

[Lghtnng]

General:

• Brawler group buffs AOE radius is far too short. Increasing these to 30m would benefit the class greatly.
• Brawler group buffs should affect the entire raid, not just Fellowship members. This is to mostly benefit tanking Brawlers as otherwise, you'll have to swap them to DPS group, buff up, and swap back, causing delays and client hangs.
• Follow Me! is worthless on its own.
  
  • Merge Follow Me! and Strike As One! into a single skill with reduced magnitudes (10% damage and 10% attack speed), but allow the Fundament Damage Increase trait to affect both buffs. For simplicity sake, remove the solo buff version.
• Joy's Of Battles animations are too long and clunky to use in a rotation, just remove them and have the skill be a Fast self-buff, similar to Weather Blows.
• All Share Innate Strength buffs are relatively worthless and just add clutter, especially since they're vastly weaker than the already existing buffs. Just remove the options to share it.
• Merge Get Serious and Quick Feint into a single skill.
  
  • Base skill - Immediate, Grants damage and Mettle-Over-Time generation for 15 seconds. 1 Mettle every 5 seconds, 20% damage. 40s CD.
  • Trait Deft Feint grants 3 Mettle instantly upon use, and grants a 100% Critical chance on the next Finisher.

Blue:

• Lacks AOE threat generation
  
  • Solutions:
    
    • Quick attacks while spec'd in Fulcrum have increased threat, similar to how Guardian Shield and War-chant skills work. This would also thematically make sense with the Imposing Presence trait.
    • Heavy Attacks while spec'd in Fulcrum leech a % of threat from allies and transfer it to Brawler.
• Inner Resilience and Deflecting Technique often break when at Tier 4, resulting in you being unable to keep them at max rank.
  
  • This bug occurs most often if you have tiered the buff with Sinister Cross up to Tier 4. Consequently, the only way to keep the buffs at Tier 4 is with Sinister Cross.
• Brash Invitation needs a longer range, 25m is far too short. 35-40m would be fair.

Correcting these issues would easily propel Brawlers into competitive tanks.

Red:

• Pummel is worthless as a skill and isn't worth the damage. Increase the damage substantially, but also increase the cooldown.
• Like A Stinging Nettle makes no sense to be in a DPS line as the best usage of reflect-type attacks is while tanking. Moving it to Blue or having it become a Fundament trait which does different things depending on the spec would be more sensible.
• Latent Light feels tacked on and doesn't do much. At the very least, increase the damage greatly.
• Battle Fury is arguably the worst capstone in the entire game. It doesn't work and even if it did, it just doesn't seem worthwhile. Replace the capstone with a Devastate Chance trait (something like 2-3%).
• With today's buffs, Brawler still isn't in a good spot for competing for a DPS spot. It lacks raw damage mostly, which should be easily correctable. However, it also doesn't really have a rotation, as most efficient way of playing is Dex > Spender > Hurl Object > Dex > Spender > Hurl Object. It lacks buttons in between to be worthwhile.

Overall, Red suffers from far too many % mastery buffs that, in theory, should balance out the lower damage tooltips, but in practice, juggling the buffs just doesn't seem worthwhile or rewarding, as it takes too long to get them going for next to no payout.

[Khluzainn]

After several parses on the minstrel, not that I or anyone has honestly been parsing red mini enough over the last several years to be great at it... I think that red mini is in a pretty decent spot right now, especially after today's buffs to both dots.
I was able to parse annywhere between 250-300k which id say another 20-50k is possible if your a animation cutting chad.
I have always been on the team that wants all specs of every trail line to be viable. With how SSG has resisted doing this over what is like 5-6 years of fighting for this cause im just happy to see at least one more left in the dirt trait line get moderate relevance.
Will be fun to blast in T1/T2 with red mini and thats about it.

[Hierona]

Its a DPS class that does 1/3 more dmg than any other class/ both st and aoe/ also have the best survivability and require 3 key smash to be played at top tier.
This is a balance, but what it needs, is nerf.
Let dmg stay, reduce self heal /blue line is ok.

Welcome to reality. In FoKD, hunters were completely excluded. It's somewhat expected that the meta can change with every raid. Hunters currently have an advantage. I don't see how this is a bad thing...

Also, why would Wardens need to be the top ST DPS dealer?

I disagree. Red Hunters are stationary DDs, so they get penalized for not being able to move around while DPSing, which any other top DPS class is able to do (Warden, Champs, and RKs back in the day). So yes, once they are stationary, they should be dealing top ST DPS.

I don't really understand how a melee class should be favored in DPSing just because they are closer to the target? Champs have heavy armor. Hunters are more squishy. Yes, they can decently self heal, but again, I do not see any correlation between receiving damage and dishing it out.

What do you mean by absurd? What has been absurd was champ ST damage in yellow since their overhaul. That is absurd. Hunters deal about the right amount of damage right now. It's in no way absurd. They actually have been nerfed if you can try to remember...

Also, you cannot count a raid set bonus towards overall performance of a class, otherwise please consider that hunters lost a very, very strong Remmorchant set bonus, and thus a lot of DPS. You cannot argue that way. Hunters AoE DPS relative to Champs ST DPS was ridiculously low. Instead of raising hunter AoE DPS permanently, they added a raid set bonus which should really have been something in favor of ST DPS.

No sane hunter uses the extended range tracery (simply because it's a waste of a slot, except in the moors maybe), and there are other classes that are in the same spot. Just because in theory it is possible, just like running blue, does not make it a valid argument. It's like saying champs can take more damage when in blue. It's non-sense.

Yes, upshot can be used while moving, just like other skills, but to be fair: once you've actually used it you have no more focus, and that's the end of the line when it comes to dealing damage while moving for red hunters. Please do not argue that red hunters can do damage while moving. It's a misleading argument and it confuses those that do not know the class very well.

If you want to talk about DPS, let's talk overall DPS: Since their overhaul, champs have been far superior to hunters in pretty much any raid encounter. That's what actually going on. Not the other way round. Please do not twist facts. This nerf is coming for a reason, and it's coming at least 6 months too late. If it weren't for the expansion, it would have been implemented a long time ago. SSG was simply too busy and let it go. Blade Wall was totally out of line. It's the least they could do. They should have nerfed other things on top of that, really... I am not even sure it will "obliterate" yellow champ DPS, we will see (I am not aware of any numbers from BR at this point).

That is simply not true. Hunters were, for some time on 130, in a not so decent position, but they were NEVER at the bottom of the DPS list. With the implementation of traceries, they were too powerful, and this is why QS in Precision was nerfed. The way it is now is just about right. They are where they are supposed to be.

You can pick almost any content and it would favor champs. Apart from a situation where you deal with a single target at all times and no adds, there is no other scenario in which champs would not be superior to hunters (other than maybe Remmo ID1 fire, which contains a mechanic exclusive to ranged DPS). That's what is called being overpowered. It's not just DPS, it's also being able to deal damage on the move, heavy armor, stuns with two horn skills, spotting and reducing damage, etc. The list goes on. The problem was that the superior DPS at (almost) all times would simply make them a no brainer pick for group leaders. You cannot argue that it wasn't the champs, but it was the content. The content/meta you cannot change. It is what it is. You need to adapt the classes to it if they are too strong.

Good to see people in here who understand the problem with the class balance. I think hunter dps is fine the way it is now, but think champ single target dps should be nerfed quite a bit, or have them be an agility class with less survivability. Hunter was indeed almost excluded from content at 130 and now at 140, and they should be more equally pickable imo.

[TobiasEstForte]

Beta 1: Solo mini experience improved
Beta 2: Solo LM experience improved

If beta 3 has solo captain improvements that's three for three! Nicely done.

Also I'm not VIP but nice changes to the VIP buff. It seems like you're doing some major QoL changes before the anticipated influx of new players when the content provision changes.

[Hephburz-2]

After several parses on the minstrel, not that I or anyone has honestly been parsing red mini enough over the last several years to be great at it... I think that red mini is in a pretty decent spot right now, especially after today's buffs to both dots.
I was able to parse annywhere between 250-300k which id say another 20-50k is possible if your a animation cutting chad.
I have always been on the team that wants all specs of every trail line to be viable. With how SSG has resisted doing this over what is like 5-6 years of fighting for this cause im just happy to see at least one more left in the dirt trait line get moderate relevance.
Will be fun to blast in T1/T2 with red mini and thats about it.

Is my current average on BR, I think there is probably room for a little more improvement, however...

You have to bear in mind with these changes that minstrels are DPSing on dummies (both on actual dummies and no-mit dummies) with essentially no mitigations anyway because of the light mitigation debuff from Call of Orome, when I parsed on a no mit dummy my DPS went up to be between 400-450k, whereas from what Hunters have been reporting; they are performing 450k ST on normal dummies and up to around 700k nomit dummies.

So, whilst the base DPS has substantially gone up, how this will play out in a raid environment, time will tell.

[Fatty]

Was any reason given why this beta was ended so early? I was of the impression it was going to be up until tomorrow?

[Kehleyr_SSG]

Was any reason given why this beta was ended so early? I was of the impression it was going to be up until tomorrow?

This Beta is still going - Bullroarer was offline during the maintenance today, but has been available since about 1:30 PM and remains so at this time.

[Khluzainn]

After testing out the changes to the loremaster today and doing 9 or 10 parses and then going and parsing on live here is my feedback.

Overall the gameplay of the loremaster has improved quite a bit. The flow of combat and stacking dots from lightning skills and sticky gourd is really good and plays really well. So as far as the DIRECTION of these changes well done!

Now for the bad, overall our damage didn't actually change despite adding two more DOTs to our kit.....
With the change to sticky gourd we no longer maintain a permanent 3 burning embers and 2-3 searing embers. On live burning and searing embers are 70%+ of our damage. On the beta when spamming burning embers and sticky gourd on cooldown we only maintain 2 embers and 2 searing embers. We have lost on average around 30-33% of our damage from this source which ends up being around 22% nerf to our overall damage (30% percent of ~70%).

Now the two new dots are pretty strong and are consistently applied very easily. These two dots give back about 18-20% damage so in the end after the beta changes to LM we are not doing any better damage, just a smoother combo and rotation.

IMO, SSG, I dont think LM needs to blast dps but it is starting to fall into Red Captain levels of garbage dps for solo and small group content. Since LM probably wont get looked at for another 3-4 years can we get a bump to burning ember, searing ember, sticky gourd dot, and the fierce lightning DOT?
I dont think LM need sANY damage added to its burst skills like Lightning Storm, the Hurricane, and Ents go to War. Its already bursty, but the throughput of LM is extremely bad still. Please increase its dots considerably so it can play to its strength and not feel like a chore.

Thanks for the great gameplay changes!

[barnavis]

pummel should mimic rks SW in dmg. should def be hitting 250k or so a sec to be useful. that skill is just terrible with the dmg it has.
animations should be sped up abit also. they look cool attacking but every other class feels faster.

[cbfan14]

After testing out the changes to the loremaster today and doing 9 or 10 parses and then going and parsing on live here is my feedback.

Overall the gameplay of the loremaster has improved quite a bit. The flow of combat and stacking dots from lightning skills and sticky gourd is really good and plays really well. So as far as the DIRECTION of these changes well done!

Now for the bad, overall our damage didn't actually change despite adding two more DOTs to our kit.....
With the change to sticky gourd we no longer maintain a permanent 3 burning embers and 2-3 searing embers. On live burning and searing embers are 70%+ of our damage. On the beta when spamming burning embers and sticky gourd on cooldown we only maintain 2 embers and 2 searing embers. We have lost on average around 30-33% of our damage from this source which ends up being around 22% nerf to our overall damage (30% percent of ~70%).

Now the two new dots are pretty strong and are consistently applied very easily. These two dots give back about 18-20% damage so in the end after the beta changes to LM we are not doing any better damage, just a smoother combo and rotation.

IMO, SSG, I dont think LM needs to blast dps but it is starting to fall into Red Captain levels of garbage dps for solo and small group content. Since LM probably wont get looked at for another 3-4 years can we get a bump to burning ember, searing ember, sticky gourd dot, and the fierce lightning DOT?
I dont think LM need sANY damage added to its burst skills like Lightning Storm, the Hurricane, and Ents go to War. Its already bursty, but the throughput of LM is extremely bad still. Please increase its dots considerably so it can play to its strength and not feel like a chore.

Thanks for the great gameplay changes!

Since it seems like they want to make the lightning skills more viable, I think a good additional step alongside these changes would be to make it so that lightning storm and lightning strike no longer consume stacks of burning/searing embers. We probably need the red LM set bonus from the Remm sets to return as well, to help with maintaining our DoTs.

[Laurelinarien]

RE: Reward Track reset countdown.
Currently it's showing a 1 month 17 days deadline but I was wondering if we could get some more input on that.. Does it mean that May 17th is the last day to claim rewards from season 1 or is it reset day? Will season 2 be activated automatically right after the reset and at what time (i.e.: 3 AM, 10 AM server times)?

[Markbjorn]

The property guards are still not working in Erebor homestead,
we can't summon them.
Also public outhouse item still not working.
We can summon stable master and supplier tho.

[Nehniriel]

[*]The Subscriber Buffs and Town Services item granted by the VIP Rewards daily quest will now last for two weeks.

Why not just make it last as long as VIP? (my best choices would be to make it VIP skills)
But, yeah, better than nothing I suppose.

[Nicname]

rBrawler slowly shifts into the right direction, but still needs a good amount of work. I accomplished to hit about 280k DPS on a Dummy max parse with good crit/dev RNG.
Set Bonus from Raid (Red) and attack Speed Bonus are decent but seems that they might need to become passives from traitlines (in upcoming Updates, when Sets get lost) since it gives the rotation a good portion of consistency through passive mettle generation. Also Attack Speed seems to be "meta" on rBrawlers.
Still, DPS is highly susceptible to crit/dev RNG and can vary +/- 20%.

- Latent Light needs major rework, currently it does like 1/4 dmg of auto attack, it could provide Brawler with solid ground DPS if bumped 5-10x of its current dmg (not even exaggerating).
- Pummel is at best a fill-up skill, it's best to cancel the cast as soon as Strike Towards the Sky, Backhand Clout or FotV comes off CD.
- Vulnerability rn is a plain meme. Red Set Bonus is too powerful to consider yLine Set Bonus. I'd straight away buff it 1%>2.5%. So, that sacrificing Red Set Bonus for yellow is worth it (3x2.5% > 7.5%)
- rBrawler really needs some kind of bleeds to sustain dmg. The problem with endlessly bumping base-dmg will be, that brawler might (!) become competitve on Boss fights, but due to their slow gameplay straight away one shot trash mobs/adds. Maybe give Overhand Smash some kind of bleed pulse (since rn it's simply useless (no utility and less dmg than corruption removal/interrupt))
- I guess reducing CD on Set-Ups by about 0.25 - 0.50s might be crucial to smoothen up the rotation.
- And please, PLEASE, do something about these terrific buffs (Battle Fury, Strike as One!, Efficient Strikes, Follow Me!), currently it takes a lifetime to fire them off, and they can only compensate for the loss of time/dps IF the next couple of spenders crit the s**t out of your target...

[MatchesMalone88]

While I believe it is a very good thing that most of the content will be free, I wonder what the VIP additions will be.
This is nice, but I would like some more to get me to go VIP again:

• The Subscriber Buffs and Town Services item granted by the VIP Rewards daily quest will now last for two weeks.

[Strider5548]

Its a DPS class that does 1/3 more dmg than any other class/ both st and aoe/ also have the best survivability and require 3 key smash to be played at top tier.
This is a balance, but what it needs, is nerf.
Let dmg stay, reduce self heal /blue line is ok.

None of this is true...

Also, I see a lot of people saying hunters need to be the highest DPS because they are stationary...as someone who plays both a hunter and a champ, I can tell you hands down that hunters are 10x easier to play than champs. I am getting pretty annoyed reading comments like "champs are more survivable, heavy armour, they can move around and fight"...

Red champ and red hunter should be able to hit the same DPS #'s. It's significantly easier to stand still and DPS a boss at range than trying to chase it around melee. Good hunters know how to keep their rotation going even when they have to move around, you can time focus skills like upshot for when you have to take a few steps and practice your rotation to minimize gaps when moving around. The reality though, is that throughout LOTRO raid history, almost every fight with movement mechanics has been very friendly towards hunters.

Going back to DN in Moria where every almost fight favored ranged DPS all the way to Minas Morgul where Remm Boss 1 both fire and poison and even lightning hugely favored hunters, Remm boss 3 favored hunters in the first phase, and any hunter worth their weight could do the second phase just as well as a champ, and if corruption removal was not a factor hunters would have been heavily favored for Shelob (huge burst for topples, kill weavers before they even get to group). Even BT was very hunter friendly if you had hunters who knew what they were doing and stacked them correctly.

All this whining about champs is getting old especially because the people crying about it don't even seem to know what is wrong with champs.

Yellow DPS needs to be scaled back via trait tree and tracery adjustments, a flat nerf of this magnitude just ruins yellow champs for low level players and hurts red champs who are already behind other classes and even yellow champ for ST DPS.

[Hephburz-2]

None of this is true...

Also, I see a lot of people saying hunters need to be the highest DPS because they are stationary...as someone who plays both a hunter and a champ, I can tell you hands down that hunters are 10x easier to play than champs. I am getting pretty annoyed reading comments like "champs are more survivable, heavy armour, they can move around and fight"...

Red champ and red hunter should be able to hit the same DPS #'s. It's significantly easier to stand still and DPS a boss at range than trying to chase it around melee. Good hunters know how to keep their rotation going even when they have to move around, you can time focus skills like upshot for when you have to take a few steps and practice your rotation to minimize gaps when moving around. The reality though, is that throughout LOTRO raid history, almost every fight with movement mechanics has been very friendly towards hunters.

Going back to DN in Moria where every almost fight favored ranged DPS all the way to Minas Morgul where Remm Boss 1 both fire and poison and even lightning hugely favored hunters, Remm boss 3 favored hunters in the first phase, and any hunter worth their weight could do the second phase just as well as a champ, and if corruption removal was not a factor hunters would have been heavily favored for Shelob (huge burst for topples, kill weavers before they even get to group). Even BT was very hunter friendly if you had hunters who knew what they were doing and stacked them correctly.

All this whining about champs is getting old especially because the people crying about it don't even seem to know what is wrong with champs.

Yellow DPS needs to be scaled back via trait tree and tracery adjustments, a flat nerf of this magnitude just ruins yellow champs for low level players and hurts red champs who are already behind other classes and even yellow champ for ST DPS.

Pretty much the exact point I’ve been trying to get across in this thread, and totally accurate. Most people are entirely oblivious as to how mechanics impact class meta & assume just because one class is being picked more than any other that means they need their DPS nerfed, it’s ridiculous.

[Edelanor]

When a red Minstrel encounters a mob that heals from dots, like Flagit, they have to completely respec to remove dots from the Echos trait. Could you please enable players to turn this off, when needed, that doesn't entail completely respeccing their whole red tree.

Thank you.

[vr00mie]

[*]Missions: Bonus Legendary Item Boosts will now award players with an incomparable tracery, rather than heritage runes which are unusable by any players below level 115.

Is this one of the RNG boxes, or is it an actually useful tracery token?

[Hephburz-2]

Is this one of the RNG boxes, or is it an actually useful tracery token?

I highly doubt it would be a tracery token they would have specified as such if that was the case.

[Khluzainn]

After testing out the changes to the loremaster today and doing 9 or 10 parses and then going and parsing on live here is my feedback.

Overall the gameplay of the loremaster has improved quite a bit. The flow of combat and stacking dots from lightning skills and sticky gourd is really good and plays really well. So as far as the DIRECTION of these changes well done!

Now for the bad, overall our damage didn't actually change despite adding two more DOTs to our kit.....
With the change to sticky gourd we no longer maintain a permanent 3 burning embers and 2-3 searing embers. On live burning and searing embers are 70%+ of our damage. On the beta when spamming burning embers and sticky gourd on cooldown we only maintain 2 embers and 2 searing embers. We have lost on average around 30-33% of our damage from this source which ends up being around 22% nerf to our overall damage (30% percent of ~70%).

Now the two new dots are pretty strong and are consistently applied very easily. These two dots give back about 18-20% damage so in the end after the beta changes to LM we are not doing any better damage, just a smoother combo and rotation.

IMO, SSG, I dont think LM needs to blast dps but it is starting to fall into Red Captain levels of garbage dps for solo and small group content. Since LM probably wont get looked at for another 3-4 years can we get a bump to burning ember, searing ember, sticky gourd dot, and the fierce lightning DOT?
I dont think LM need sANY damage added to its burst skills like Lightning Storm, the Hurricane, and Ents go to War. Its already bursty, but the throughput of LM is extremely bad still. Please increase its dots considerably so it can play to its strength and not feel like a chore.

Thanks for the great gameplay changes!

Once again after parsing for an hour or so, the latest changes to Loremaster damage in Red were interesting. The playstyle has changed again for dot management.
All of the small ticks of multiple burning embers are now just one huge dot. Also fierce lightning can now stack twice. The base damage of most skills also increased which imo was not needed as LM was already extremely bursty.

So my parses on average went from 170-190k to around 190-200k. So around a 10% damage increase with a pretty smooth rotation. Please note that im not sure how AOE has been impacted by all of these changes...
That being stated The differences in dps here can easily be RNG or my lack of consistency. LM in redline need a major damage increase to put it from 180k dps to around 300k. 300k by the way is still extremly low dps compared to what is currently being pumped but its at least relevant to not crawl through landscape for ages.
I think all 3 dots(blazing embers, fierce lightning, and sticky gourd) Need a major damage increase. Particularly sticky gourd and fierce lightning. probably 20% buff to blazing ember damage, 50% more damage to fierce lightning, and double the damage of the sticky gourd dot.

[Fatty]

From the Duillond and Oatbarton stable masters, you can use the stable master horse into Yondershire (regular). But from Needlehole, you only have the "normal" travel route (regular) to Duillond, but none of the Yondershire locations. But you can go FROM the Yondershire stablemasters, on the regular horse to Needlehole...

[Seschat]

Ooh, sounds like you're preparing for me to start leveling a new River-hobbit Lore-master soon.

See, my reaction is somewhat different: I prefer to play BLUE LM, but that got nerfed hard with Three Kingdoms, hasn't recovered, and many of these changes just make things worse. Sic'Em isn't JUST a DPS move, it also gets a swarm of enemies off your case for the duration, AND has a bonus heal. Sticky Gourd doesn't JUST set a few orcs on fire, but also hurts the half dozen linking in from further away.

Yes, I'm not a raider, I freely admit it. But I'm not going to keep quiet when they go and make the game less fun, AGAIN.