Bullroarer Update 33.1 - Beta #3 - CLOSED

[LordOfTheSquids]

Bullroarer is CLOSED

Thank you for your participation and feedback!

Server Opening Time: Tuesday, 07/12 ~5:30 PM ET
Server Closing Time: Thursday, 07/14 ~3:00 PM ET

• Report A Bug
• Guide to the Eyes and Guard Tavern
• Character Copy is AVAILABLE. This can be accessed through the 'Transfer' button on any LOTRO Launcher.
• NOTE: The player database was wiped at the beginning of Beta on 06/28
• NOTE: While Berthadan, the Legendary Server Difficulty NPC, is available on Bullroarer, we ask that he only be used to set copied characters from Shadowfax and Treebeard back to Normal Difficulty.

Further Adventures
Soon after Frodo's rescue from the Ford of Bruinen, the scouts of Rivendell venture forth, seeking news on the Enemy and his servants. Lord Elrond has given his sons, Elladan and Elrohir, a secret errand. Join the twins on their journey from Rivendell to the distant land of Lothlórien!
NOTE: Players can start the Further Adventures of Elladan & Elrohir by talking to Elrond in his library in Rivendell. Rewards can be exchanged with Celeblír outside the Last Homely House.

Release Notes - Beta #3:

New release notes in violet.

Classes:
Brawler tanking has had some significant issues, and we have wanted to build a more distinct role for them as tanks in comparison with their fellows. Three issues we wanted to address in particular:
- The class had stacking incoming damage buffs that could render them effectively immune to damage for limited windows in concert with group buffs. While amusing, this was rather game breaking in certain encounters.
- They had trouble managing agro in fights with many mobs.
- As tanks, they lacked a clearly defined role compared with others.
We've decided to focus the Brawler's role towards being an offensive support tank. This doesn't mean they are a DPS-Tank hybrid - they are not focused on personal damage to the detriment of their own defense. Rather their personal defense is intended to remain quite strong, but their buffs now focus on their ability to improve the group's damage output more than any other tank, in particular to open up major burst windows against bosses or adds that need to be eliminated as quickly as possible.

• Weather Blows is now an incoming damage set effect that will no longer stack with other incoming damage buffs. It's base value is 35%, -6% for trait, -9% for Mettle. (Max 20%). It lasts 15s with a 75s cooldown. Note that this still acts as a separate multiplier from standard armor damage mitigation.
• Gut Punch no longer reduces the target's outgoing damage, but now increases incoming damage by 20% for 20s. The skill has a short cooldown, but a given target cannot be affected by it for 70s after the effect wears off.
• The Iron Will skill was redundant to Weather Blows. It has been replaced by 'The Best Defense', This skill buffs the fellowship's damage by 30% for 15s, and has a 120s CD.
• Come At Me base target count increased [5->10].
• Come At Me taunt duration increased [5s->10s].
• Come At Me is now 'fast' rather than 'immediate', to mitigate a skill cancellation issue encountered during periods of lag.
• Brash Invitation's Range increased [25->40m].
• Vulnerability's base debuff increased [1%->3%]. Item set bonuses to the effect have been increased similarly.
• Most Brawler group buffs will now affect raid members.
• Most Brawler group buffs now have a radius of [10->15m]
• Many Brawler buffs were still using a placeholder one, many of these have been replaced with a more diverse set of effect icons for clarity.
• Innate Strength Buffs use shorter animations [1.5s->1.0s], several other buffs have had their animations shortened or reduced to FX only.
• The instant heal component of 'Weather Blows' has been moved to 'Bracing Guard'.
• Follow Me! is no longer an attack speed buff, it is now a group combat run speed buff, increasing speed by 20% for 15s.
• Bellicose traited Come At Me will now generate Mettle even if no targets are hit.
• Fist of the Valar base damage increased to be more in line with other mettle spenders.
• The Brawler's "Armour of Nature's Striker" set not grants a 2-piece bonus of +5% to melee damage, rather than an offhand bonus which brawlers cannot benefit from.

Events:

• Treasure Bugan
  
  • Beginning at level 20, every time you play a scaling instance at around your cap there is a chance for a Treasure Bugan to appear somewhere in the instance. You must defeat the Bugan and reclaim the stolen treasure before it flees. The Bugan will not attack you but will run around trying to evade your attacks.
  • The rewards for the Treasure Bugan event barter and quests have been updated, with new cosmetics and new LI reward options, in addition to the items available previously.
    
  • The blood craban pet offered in the Treasure Bugan Event now has correct title and description.
    
  
  
• Farmers Faire
  
  • Check out this year's Farmers Faire and seasonal instances for new hound and donkey pets, new boating themed held item and housing decorations, and more!
    
  • The Keg-hopping Race and Taste of Hobbiton quests will grant more Farmers Faire tokens as a consolation prize, and fewer tokens for backing the winning racer.
    
  • Some quests have had their Farmers Faire Token rewards adjusted slightly.
    
  • The following Farmers Faire quests will now reset daily at 3am server time: Farmers Faire: Maggot's Mushroom Hunt, Sandson's Egg Scramble, The Fishing-hole, Sitting on the Dock, A River Runs Through It, The Pond, “Big Fish, Little Fish”, “Fishy. Very Fishy.”, Hired Hook, “Pond, or Thief?”, The Keg-hopping Race, The Taste of Hobbiton, The Great Mathom Fishing Swap, Manning the Market.
    
  • The Farmers Faire seasonal instances now have a correct category name in the Instance Finder panel.
    
  • The Farmers Faire Cosmetic Categories on Caltha Tunnelly have been rearranged to be in the correct order. Additionally, the Other category will now be listed last.
    
  • Thrâng's Silver Chest and Thrâng's Golden Chest will now always drop a piece of gear (cosmetic or statted) in addition to the token drops.
    
  • Festival Vendors now have a profile for "Essences" rather than "Essences and Legendary Items" since the obsolete legendary items were previously removed.

Monster Play:

• Monster play is now free to all players. To create a monster play character you will need to reach level 2 on any character.
• Beginning at level 20, all Free People classes can ride into the Ettenmoors. Though you will be buffed to level 140 your experiences will likely be diminished compared to a fully fleshed out true 140 level character.
• Free Players entering the Ettenmoors from level 20 through 129 will scale to 140 and have 25 Audacity until level 120, then reduces by 1 rank until level 130 where it reaches 0.
• Audacity adjustments - Crowd Control reduced to 5% at Rank 1 and scale to 65% reduction at Rank 36.
• Free People Audacity Track:
  - Damage Rank 1 begins at 0% bonus and moves to a 2% Bonus at Rank 25, Rank 25 - 36 the damage bonus progresses to 45%.
  - Damage Reduction Rank 1 begins at 0% and moves to 5% reduction at Rank 25, Rank 25-36 the damage reduction increases to 30%.[/COLOR]
• Monster Player Audacity Track:
  - Damage Rank 1 begins at 10% and increases to 23% at Rank 25, Rank 25-36 the damage bonus increases to 38%.
  - Damage Reduction Rank 1 begins at 35% and increases to 38% at Rank 25, Rank 25-36 the damage reduction increases to 40%.
• Bug Fixes - There was a change made that negatively affected the armor potions available to Monster Players. This has been rectified and we reduced the rank restriction on food and pots for several of the items available from vendors and barter NPCs in Gramsfoot to rank 1,3,5 from higher rank levels.
• Further Monster play changes: https://forums.lotro.com/forums/show...the-Ettenmoors!

Miscellaneous:

• The stats granted by the following traits have been adjusted to be more appropriate across all levels and increase above level 130: Man of the Fourth Age, Hobbit-stature, Fateful Dwarf, Friend Of Man, Emissary, Unwritten Destiny, and Those Who Remain.
• Pets can no longer be in the Aggressive stance, which has been removed. Pets set to the Aggressive stance have been reset to the Guard stance.
• The recovery period for player CC Breakout skills has been substantially reduced, and in most cases is now nearly immediate. Class CC removal skills with substantial animations have generally had these removed in favor of a visual effect only. Cry of the Hunter still has some delay, but should be faster as well. uses.
• Raid Groups playing in Landscape will no longer benefit from Open Tapping, and will also no longer receive money, loot, xp, reputation, quest advancement or deed advancement from monster kills in landscape.
• The barter vendor, "Overseer - Hiddenhoard Raid Reward Vendor", found in Zidir-nesad, The Steepset in Máttugard, will now barter raid gear for embers if you have completed the Hiddenhoard raid at the necessary tier.
• Some player-level based stat progressions were tweaked a bit to smooth out values below level 105.
• Fixed a bug that reduced player's mastery slightly against lower level foes.
• Hunter - Upshot Damage tracery no longer erroneously double-applies to devastating hits.
• The dynamically scaling stats on the following items have been adjusted to be more appropriate across all levels and increase above level 130: Shields of the Hammerhand, Earrings of the High Elves, Earring of the Dead City, and Fateful Gundabad Earring.
• Name restrictions have been loosened around words similar to Defender.
• Remembered Rivals Featured Instance gear now binds to account rather than character.
• The White Goose cosmetic pet now correctly appears in the Collections panel.
• The item "Slayer and Skill Deed Boost (90 min)" now lasts for 6 hours. Its name has been updated to "Slayer and Skill Deed Boost (6 hours)"
• The items "Tome of Greater Deed Acceleration" and "Slayer Deed Accelerator (60 min)" now last for 6 hours. "Slayer Deed Accelerator (60 min)" has been renamed "Slayer Deed Accelerator (6 hours)"
• Sealed Tracery boxes will once again deliver traceries to level 45 - 49 characters.
• The worth of Minas Ithil Herbs has been corrected to a copper value appropriate for a farmed ingredient and the plural name has been corrected to remove the reference to pouches.
• Sari-surma - Frozen Wights in a particular area in instance 'Sari-surma' should no longer spawn over level.
• Minor improvements to reward track messaging for IXP runes.
  
• As there are no plans to use relics or shards in the future, relic masters and their services have been removed from the world. Combination Legendary Item services are now only forge masters. A few relic masters bestow quests or are related to quests, and have been turned into forge masters so as not to break those quests.
• Forge Masters in Rivendell and Thorin's Hall can now be used for reforging outside of the Volume II Book 1 quest sequence.
• Ill Omens Essence Bounty packages that have not yet been used can now be used by characters above level 130. They will grant a level 130 essence selection package to any characters level 130 and higher.
• Instance and Skirmish chests will no longer drop Heritage Runes.
• Obsolete Relic Packages have been removed from several instances and raids.
• Corrected description of Brawler Hiddenhoard Fundament set, to indicate that it tiers up rather than stacking (effect unchanged).

World:

• Forsting in Gundabad has been repositioned slightly to no longer fall through the floor.
• Ambient Music now works on the exterior of 5 Cape Road in Belfalas.
• Visiting Bankers and Barbers can now be placed in Yard Hooks in Erebor.
• Hooks in 8 Long Street and 6 Chestnut Street in Breeland Homesteads now align correctly with the terrain.
• Doormat in 1 Filly Lane in Kingstead now aligns correctly with the terrain.
• Misc Zfighting in Gundabad has been resolved.
• Several Yondershire interiors now have more appropriate ambiances for their environment.

Localization:

• Fixes mistranslation of 'close' in the tracking UI for the Passage of Foes, Passage of Nature, Passage of Shadow and the MTX item Tome of Tracking, changing 'fermer' to 'proche'.
• Updated the maps and translations for Cape of Belfalas and Cape of Belfalas Homstead in French and German.
• Updates the deed title for completing the Legendary Sentinel's challenge in German.
• Updates translations for "Champion of Durin" in French and German, "of the Peaks" in German and "wanderer of the Wildwood" in German.
• FRENCH AND GERMAN: Updated translations of the Eastfold and Anvil of Winterstith Raid Maps.
• FRENCH AND GERMAN: Updated translations on the French and German versions of the Gondor Map.

[StinkyGreene]

Miscellaneous:

• Raid Groups playing in Landscape will no longer benefit from Open Tapping, and will also no longer receive money, loot, xp, reputation, quest advancement or deed advancement from monster kills in landscape.

Thats a real bummer for us that only play in a group. Darn multiplayer games getting too multiplayer.

[Fealhach]

Thats a real bummer for us that only play in a group. Darn multiplayer games getting too multiplayer.

Roving threats and scourges gonna be fun!

Cheers

[istvana]

>Thats a real bummer for us that only play in a group.<

As worded it has nothing to do with groups - just raids which sweep through normal landscape like locusts. My guess is the change is to discourage abuses which make it hard for either solo players *or* groups to do quests or deeds.

[StinkyGreene]

Yeah I was referring to "group" as a raid group in my post. Sorry for the confusion.

[19Euan96]

I doubt this will affect content like roving threats or scourges, since those are raid targets. It'll be to stop people creating farming groups which certainly has caused major server problems in the passed. I remember when the wastes first came out and there were areas you could barely go to because the lag got so intense from people farming. Plus you can still be in a fellowship group by this wording, just not a raid one.

I get what they are trying to do with the brawler, but shifting the heal off of weather blows to bracing guard means that red line brawler literally has no ability to recover health whatsoever. I know the brawler is meant to be a glass cannon but it only has two healing moves anyway and now they are both in blue line, requiring a minimum of 12 trait points to get Joy of Battle - Heal, so probably needing you to spend 22 (I think) to be able to access those heals. Every single class in the game has healing abilities as some kind of standard. You can't shift the heal off of weather blows without giving some kind of heal for the red line brawler, or at stick it in the fundament line instead.

Also the vendor for the further adventures has a 140 gear tab but it doesn't have 140 bilbo gear, and the 140 Elrohir/Elladan gear is just the 130 stuff.

The change to cc animations is great, its long been a pain shaking off a stun and it taking a milliion years. I tested cry of the hunter and it felt great so I can only assume the same for the other classes.

[StinkyGreene]

Plus you can still be in a fellowship group by this wording, just not a raid one.

Sure, but if you regularly play with 8-12 friends (which is true in my case), it just makes it more difficult to adventure together.

[Quenton_1]

I do a lot of deeding while waiting for the rest of my raid-group to show up. It seems silly to have to leave the group just to progress quests while I wait because that turns into a game of 'is everyone here?'

[Laurelinarien]

Roving threats and scourges gonna be fun!

Cheers

Yea I was coming here to ask about RTs/Scourges. I don't mind the change myself but I was wondering how the server is gonna handle completion for deeds of this nature. Also, the chance, tho very low, of getting extra brands / morgul crests was there at least.

[Elhiril]

"Raid Groups playing in Landscape will no longer benefit from Open Tapping, and will also no longer receive money, loot, xp, reputation, quest advancement or deed advancement from monster kills in landscape."

PLEASE reconsider this. This is really devastating to those of us who group genuinely. My kinship does lots of stuff together, like roving threats and deeding and exploring for fun. This is now going to be impossible. It's bad enough that if you have a group of say, 7-8, slightly too big for a fellowship, the one or two people in the other raid group get nothing.

[Elhiril]

Sure, but if you regularly play with 8-12 friends (which is true in my case), it just makes it more difficult to adventure together.

THIS.

[Trixie_Me]

My kin also holds monthly RT raids. This is largely a social event - one of the few that allows a wide cross-section of players to attend, while making a tiny bit of progress toward the deed. I, too, hope this change will be reconsidered.

[Brinswith]

Miscellaneous:

• Raid Groups playing in Landscape will no longer benefit from Open Tapping, and will also no longer receive money, loot, xp, reputation, quest advancement or deed advancement from monster kills in landscape.

This change will kill dead milk runs in the moors. Also, how does an on level group complete the Ferndur raid and Bogbereth both are landscape raids. How will legendary server raid groups take down raid level Roving Threats and War-Bands? What about when they need to do the Nazgul weeklies? Sure they can still do them but why bother if they are not going to get deed and quest advancement when grouped as a raid.

[Elhiril]

A friend also pointed out, what happens if you've recently been in a raid (say Hidden Hoard) and don't realise you've been left in an empty raid, only to go on your way continuing quests and/or deeds on the landscape you were doing prior to the raid? This has bad consequences.

[Crell_1]

Is it intended that we need to complete T4 of the raid to barter for T3 set pieces? I believe these were the pieces moved from T4 to T3 late in the original beta before Hiddenhoard went live.

Can we please get recipes to craft essences above Delvers Flickering? We can barter for Lively with Embers so being able to at least craft Winters would be nice.

[TobiasEstForte]

It's bad enough that if you have a group of say, 7-8, slightly too big for a fellowship, the one or two people in the other raid group get nothing.

As this already occurs, I'm not sure what is meant by these changes. It would do well to clarify what's meant rather than use awkward terminology. As always.

[Oelle]

Sure, but if you regularly play with 8-12 friends (which is true in my case), it just makes it more difficult to adventure together.

you regularly adventure in landscape with 8-12 friends, who are all active at the same time?
Wow... must have been 20 years in the past, that I've had such occurances... what do you do in landscape with so many people?
sure, you can still do the same with several groups and as long as one person of each group at least tags every mob once, you'll still get credit... chat can move to kinchat or /say...
but yea, they make it harder. I just guess, they dont care as you'll be a tiny minority in that playstyle...

[Brinswith]

>Thats a real bummer for us that only play in a group.<

As worded it has nothing to do with groups - just raids which sweep through normal landscape like locusts. My guess is the change is to discourage abuses which make it hard for either solo players *or* groups to do quests or deeds.

I've played the game for 15 years and can hand on heart say that I have never experienced groups of raids sweeping through the landscape. Never not once. Sure you used to get groups up for IXP runs, RT's, or Warband runs and later the Nazgul weekly but never just groups clearing entire areas of mobs. I'm not sure what this change accomplishes beyond discouraging group play. If it was to discourage multi-boxed raid groups - again I've never known that to be an issue in the game ever.

[Burzdolion]

Is it intended that we need to complete T4 of the raid to barter for T3 set pieces? I believe these were the pieces moved from T4 to T3 late in the original beta before Hiddenhoard went live.

Can we please get recipes to craft essences above Delvers Flickering? We can barter for Lively with Embers so being able to at least craft Winters would be nice.

++++ on the crafting part. It's definitely the right time to go be able to craft at least delving essences.

[Gerfalcon]

"Raid Groups playing in Landscape will no longer benefit from Open Tapping, and will also no longer receive money, loot, xp, reputation, quest advancement or deed advancement from monster kills in landscape."

PLEASE don't do this. I lead two different "SLotRO" groups, the point of which is to go through ALL the content, while using the tortoise stone to keep from leveling up too fast. For me to help people who get separated from the group, or recognize when someone hasn't followed, I have to form a raid, and it's still like herding cats. This change would just force us to use separate fellowships, with the result being that we'll actually end up killing MORE monsters in whatever zone we're in (since coordination will be worse), so same or worse nuisance for people outside our group, and a much bigger hassle for people inside the group.

[Crell_1]

The scaling of purely raw passive stats for racial bonuses is nice, but are we going to be getting improvements to other racial skills like "Strength of Morale"?

[gildhur]

Brawler tanking has had some significant issues, and we have wanted to build a more distinct role for them as tanks in comparison with their fellows. Three issues we wanted to address in particular:
- The class had stacking incoming damage buffs that could render them effectively immune to damage for limited windows in concert with group buffs. While amusing, this was rather game breaking in certain encounters.
- They had trouble managing agro in fights with many mobs.
- As tanks, they lacked a clearly defined role compared with others.
We've decided to focus the Brawler's role towards being an offensive support tank. This doesn't mean they are a DPS-Tank hybrid - they are not focused on personal damage to the detriment of their own defense. Rather their personal defense is intended to remain quite strong, but their buffs now focus on their ability to improve the group's damage output more than any other tank, in particular to open up major burst windows against bosses or adds that need to be eliminated as quickly as possible.

• Weather Blows is now an incoming damage set effect that will no longer stack with other incoming damage buffs. It's base value is 35%, -6% for trait, -9% for Mettle. (Max 20%). It lasts 15s with a 75s cooldown. Note that this still acts as a separate multiplier from standard armor damage mitigation.
• Gut Punch no longer reduces the target's outgoing damage, but now increases incoming damage by 20% for 20s. The skill has a short cooldown, but a given target cannot be affected by it for 70s after the effect wears off.
• The Iron Will skill was redundant to Weather Blows. It has been replaced by 'The Best Defense', This skill buffs the fellowship's damage by 30% for 15s, and has a 120s CD.
• Come At Me base target count increased [5->10].
• Come At Me taunt duration increased [5s->10s].
• Come At Me is now 'fast' rather than 'immediate', to mitigate a skill cancellation issue encountered during periods of lag.
• Brash Invitation's Range increased [25->40m].
• Vulnerability's base debuff increased [1%->3%]. Item set bonuses to the effect have been increased similarly.
• Most Brawler group buffs will now affect raid members.
• Most Brawler group buffs now have a radius of [10->15m]
• Many Brawler buffs were still using a placeholder one, many of these have been replaced with a more diverse set of effect icons for clarity.
• Innate Strength Buffs use shorter animations [1.5s->1.0s], several other buffs have had their animations shortened or reduced to FX only.
• The instant heal component of 'Weather Blows' has been moved to 'Bracing Guard'.
• Follow Me! is no longer an attack speed buff, it is now a group combat run speed buff, increasing speed by 20% for 15s.
• Bellicose traited Come At Me will now generate Mettle even if no targets are hit.
• Fist of the Valar base damage increased to be more in line with other mettle spenders.
• The Brawler's "Armour of Nature's Striker" set not grants a 2-piece bonus of +5% to melee damage, rather than an offhand bonus which brawlers cannot benefit from.

Oh, this all sounds lovely! The extra range and targets will help tremendously.

• Pets can no longer be in the Aggressive stance, which has been removed. Pets set to the Aggressive stance have been reset to the Guard stance.

YAY! No more kamikaze heralds (or gold-farming LM lurker bots)!

• The recovery period for player CC Breakout skills has been substantially reduced, and in most cases is now nearly immediate. Class CC removal skills with substantial animations have generally had these removed in favor of a visual effect only. Cry of the Hunter still has some delay, but should be faster as well. uses.

Holy quality of life updates, Batman! This one has been a thorn in my side for ages - being stuck in a "wake tf up" animation for several seconds unable to use any skills after being stunned. Should improve Moors play too.

• Raid Groups playing in Landscape will no longer benefit from Open Tapping, and will also no longer receive money, loot, xp, reputation, quest advancement or deed advancement from monster kills in landscape.

...except for Roving Threats, Warbands, and the Ettenmoors, right?

[Neinda]

Bullroarer is OPEN

[*]Raid Groups playing in Landscape will no longer benefit from Open Tapping, and will also no longer receive money, loot, xp, reputation, quest advancement or deed advancement from monster kills in landscape.
[/LIST]

Umm, not sure you have really thought this one out. This change pretty much closes down all group content starting at level 1 to end game. Goodbye Goblin Town, goodbye group quests in Angmar, goodbye Tarlang's Crown, goodbye too many to count landscape areas in Mordor; goodbye warbands, goodbye roving threats, goodbye to the nine in Minas Morgul, goodbye scourges, goodbye slotro groups out there. What other areas did I miss?

This change will pretty much destroy any group content outside of instances and is probably another one of those changes where people were advancing too quickly. Back to solo missions folks. SSG does not want us to play in groups.

Last I checked, this is a game where you should be working on things that encourage group play rather than destroying what is left of it. What is so wrong about people playing an MMO game in groups and having fun in the process?

[Joedangod]

This change will pretty much destroy any group content outside of instances and is probably another one of those changes where people were advancing too quickly. Back to solo missions folks. SSG does not want us to play in groups.

Raids != fellowships.

Most of that stuff you listed is fellowship (or fewer) content, not raid.

[HeathenMetalDad]

Raid Groups playing in Landscape will no longer benefit from Open Tapping, and will also no longer receive money, loot, xp, reputation, quest advancement or deed advancement from monster kills in landscape.

Can we get some clarification on this? What does this mean for say, myself and 2 friends going around and teaming up for slayer deeds? Is this just for a raid itself? Is it for all fellowship sizes? Will only the player who engages an enemy get credit for the kill? If I engage and kill a goblin for the slayer deed does my friend get credit as well if we are grouped? I'm a little bit confused on the implications and wording here.