Minstrel Feedback Thread

[FriendlyHat]

Hey everyone! There are some pretty substantial updates coming to the Minstrel. Focused feedback to would be a great help as we tune these changes, so get some play time with them and share your impressions! We will be doing at least one additional round of changes.

Changes to the Minstrel are focused mainly on the Blue and Yellow lines, with a few tweaks to the red line. We wanted to make buffing as a Minstrel more streamlined and tweak their healing rotation a bit. There are a lot of quality-of-life changes also sprinkled throughout, including some new survivability options and the replacement of some of the more situational bonuses with universally useful buffs.

• Instruments are now visible when using Coda of Melody
• Minstrel instruments are now cosmetically equippable and show on your character when not in use.
• General
  
  • Anthems stack with one another by default
  • Anthem of the Third Age is now given out at specialization
  • All Anthems now have a default duration of 3 minutes
  • Anthem cooldowns reduced by 10 seconds.
  
  
• Raise the Spirit Changes
  
  • Cooldown removed
  • Induction length increased from 1 second to 1.2 seconds.

• Chord of Salvation Changes
  
  • Chord of Salvation healing increased
  
  
• Legacies
  
  • Minstrel Imbued Legacy “Anthem Duration” increased from 1 second per rank to 2 seconds per rank.
  
  
• Classic Legacy “Discordant Ballads Stance Swap Buff” is now a Light Damage Legacy, which matches its corresponding Imbued legacy.
  
  • Rank 1: +5% Light Damage
  • Subsequent Ranks: +2.5% per rank
  
  
• Blue Line
  
  • Set Bonus “Open Ears” is now “Resolute”, which provides a potent block rating buff.
  • Removed Fate and Will Stat bonuses received upon specialization.
  • Soliloquy of Spirit’s healing has been increased.
  • Coda of Resonance grants +10% incoming healing to the fellowship for 30s
  • Trait “Improved Chord of Salvation” now increases chord of salvation healing
    
    • Increases Chord of Salvation Target Healing. 10% / 15% / 20 % / 25%
    
    
  • Lowering Coda of Resonance Incoming Healing buff to 5%.
  • Reducing potency of "Bolster Our Courage" group heal.
  
  
• Red Line
  
  • Coda of Dissonance grants 5% outgoing damage to the fellowship for 30 seconds.
  • Trait “Discordant Ballads” now grants a constant 5% Tactical Damage instead of the “Fresh Voice” component
  • Anthem of War is no longer given out via levelling.
  • Trait “Echoing Anthem of War” now becomes “Anthem of War”, which grants the skill and includes the trait’s former +10% tactical damage bonus
  • Coda of Dissonance grants 5% outgoing damage to the fellowship for 30 seconds.
  
  
• Yellow Line
  
  • Trait “Extended Anthems” now increase Anthem duration by 10 seconds per rank.
  • Trait “Extended Anthems” no longer requires a previous trait to access it
  • Trait “Vocal Stamina” has been removed.
  • Hero’s Strike healing improved and now scales with class item strength
  • Coda of Melody grants +2.5% to all partial avoidances to fellowship for 30 seconds.
  • Trait “Bracing Finish” replaced with “Raise Our Spirits”
    
    • Grants a fellowship-wide Heal over Time to Raise the Spirit
    • Further ranks increase the HoT strength
    • Bracing Finish required luck and premeditation for a modest benefit. Raise Our Spirits has a readily apparent value for your Trait Point investment.
    
    
  • Set bonus “Perfect Ballad” now “Improved Anthem of The Third Age”
    
    • Damage bonus from Anthem of the Third Age - Melody increased by 5%
    • Incoming Healing bonus from Anthem of the Third Age - Melody increased by 2.5%
    
    
  • Set Bonus “Harmonious Anthems” now "Ascendant Anthem of the Third Age"
    
    • Damage bonus from Anthem of the Third Age - Melody increased by 5%
    • Incoming Healing bonus from Anthem of the Third Age - Melody increased by 2.5%
    
    
  • Trait “Exposing Weakness” is now “Of all Trades”
    
    • 3 rank trait
    • Increases outgoing damage by 3% / 6% / 10%
    • Increases outgoing healing by 3% / 6% / 10%
    
    
  • Echoes of battle now carries a Critical Defence debuff
  • New Specialization bonuses increase Light Damage by 10% and Outgoing Healing by 5%
  • Skill “Anthem of the Third Age – Melody” – Now grants incoming healing and outgoing damage to the fellowship instead of a less useful Power Cost reduction

[Cordovan]

We are excited to be able to bring you this class work on Bullroarer, and look forward to reading your feedback. In order to get the most from your feedback, we would very much like you to do the following in this thread:

• Make sure your feedback is focused on the class work seen in the Release Notes and the writing above, or focused on your specific feedback regarding the class in cases when you feel it necessary to discuss things beyond what is in the notes.
• DO NOT REPLY TO OTHER POSTS IN THIS THREAD TO PROVIDE YOUR OPINION ON THEIR POST. We want to be able to use this thread to foster a productive discussion between you and the development team, and that means we are less interested in your opinion about someone else's opinion. If you are responding to another poster in this thread, it should not be to provide your opinion about their post. If you are providing feedback that is not in-line with another person's post, you can simply provide that information independently. Posts about someone else's feedback that are opinion-based in nature WILL be deleted from this targeted feedback thread. If you must have this discussion, please do so in a new thread on the Bullroarer forums, and not in this thread.
• Please be civil. Insulting, harassing, abusive, or profanity/filtered profanity-laden posts will be deleted. We welcome critical feedback as it relates specifically to the work being done, but this thread is not the place to provide your opinion on the development team itself, or your view on the historic work that has been done or not done in regard to class balance. In order to get the most use out of this thread, you can expect me to be a bit more heavy-handed on moderation than I typically am.
• Recognize that this class balance work is not a comprehensive and final adjustment to classes, but is rather the first in a series of changes aimed at improving LOTRO's classes throughout the game. We are happy to read about what further work you would like to see, but want to make sure you understand that this is not the final step in this process.

There is some chance that we will not respond immediately to your comments today, as we would like to gather some feedback initially in a relatively "neutral" way prior to providing responses. Thank you for your help in making sure we get this right, both now and in the future, and thank you for the time you spend on Bullroarer in the coming days to try out these changes in-game.

[siipperi]

5 minute anthem duration is stupid. Please revert back to 1.10 minute anthem.

There is fine line of making something streamlined and something totally unneededly long and broken buff duration because of it.

No other buff in this game lasts even half of that. Pretty sure minstrel used to have longest buff duration which is now basically over 4x longer...

[Giliodor]

The fundamental issue with minstrel healing is that it does spammable AoE healing that is way too potent (you seem to have addressed this to a reasonable degree), while also maintaining the highest single target HPS. This issue came about in Helm's Deep, with the introduction of trait trees, and the addition of Bolster Our Courage.

- Remove Bolster Our Courage (or nerf it even more)
- Increase Inspire Fellows healing drastically to compensate
- Increase the healing on Raise the Spirit even more

Taking these steps would make Minstrels potent single target healers, but not have them spam AoE abilities. If a group needs AoE healing, they should rely on a Beorning or a Hands of Healing Captain. These two classes were designed to do well at AoE healing.
Further comments:

- Don't increase Anthem Duration, there is absolutely no need for it
- Increase the healing of Ballads, and increase the internal cool down on Inspiring Cries and Calls

Might edit later to comment on other changes.

[hanxcve]

Absolutely no need for anthems to be increase by 3 minutes otherwise the changes look good to me now that only 1 relic can be used on an LI

[elzeqq]

I really like most of those changes, I like minstrel healing is being nerfed and I like that some more changes are being done.

I'd just like to point out, that the way content in this game is builded right now is based on burst damage, not sustain dmg. If we look at AoM, tanks can easily get 100k hits on boss 1, keep in mind that healing issue is not ONLY PvP related.
I really like those changes, but need to keep in mind that the heals can't be nerfed too much.
It would be much better if future instanced content would be based on sustained damage instead of burst damage by mobs/bosses.

[siipperi]

I really like most of those changes, I like minstrel healing is being nerfed and I like that some more changes are being done.

I'd just like to point out, that the way content in this game is builded right now is based on burst damage, not sustain dmg. If we look at AoM, tanks can easily get 100k hits on boss 1, keep in mind that healing issue is not ONLY PvP related.
I really like those changes, but need to keep in mind that if heals will be nerfed way too much, AoM will probably be impossible to heal unless we gonna stack beornings xD

RK can heal it at the moment so not as long as they scale less used heals properly (IF, RtS). Healing is just going to be changed from one skill spam to where your AOE healing skill is supposed to be inspire fellows. And healing changes from blind spam to heal on reaction. We can just hope they buff it to proper magnitude, which will be over 80% of initial bolster courage. So healing will be reverted back to RoI form, with some neat HoTs and strong ST healing. There are obvious flaws which some has already pointed out, just hoping they actually react.

Their healing magnitude is probably at the moment all over the place after loss of healing relics, so will see how it shapes up.. Best would be to hear from dev itself what is supposed to be magnitudes of healing skills. How many bolster courages its supposed to fill 100% of tanks morale and how many inspire fellows to fill groups healing needs.

[Cordovan]

Reminder not to post an opinion about someone else's opinion.

[Thorondir]

Also regarding the blue minstrel, currently the difference between 50k tactical mastery/outgoing healing rating and 200k tactical mastery/outgoing healing rating is marginal at best and investing anything in tactical mastery/outgoing healing is wasted as the increased healing is not noticeable, so just investing in tank stats is the only viable option currently.

Outgoing healing rating should have a really noticeable effect, like tactical mastery has for damage, to make equiping a minstrel something to think about .. and not just slot vita until everything is full.

[Fredelas]

I'm curious what the design intent is behind the much longer anthem duration.

The choice of anthems and managing their uptime was one of the few challenges to playing a minstrel in harder group content. It wasn't something difficult, it was just something that required occasional thought. It's one of the few things that might set an exceptional minstrel apart from a competent minstrel.

What makes these changes important?

[Joedangod]

Raise the Spirit Changes

• Cooldown removed
• Induction length increased from 1 second to 1.2 seconds.
• Trait “Bracing Finish” replaced with “Raise Our Spirits”
  
  • Grants a fellowship-wide Heal over Time to Raise the Spirit
  • Further ranks increase the HoT strength
  • Bracing Finish required luck and premeditation for a modest benefit. Raise Our Spirits has a readily apparent value for your Trait Point investment.

It's a start but even with the Bolster Courage nerf it's still a better skill to spam perpetually than raise the spirit will ever be. Induction times are essentially meaningless to a Minstrel due to the "Follow Up" trait that procs a -20% induction duration buff. We generally sit at -50% or faster inductions at all times so we're not really worried about how long it will take to fire off a heal. Perhaps it is this trait that should be looked at considering it kinda pushes you into spamming heals constantly just to keep up the induction buff rather than waiting to heal a target that has actually been hurt.

I'm also noting the lack of inspire fellows changes here. I would say that heal could do with being a bit beefier in light of the Bolster our Courage nerf to help cover more of the AoE healing a Minstrel might be required to do.

Legacies

• Minstrel Imbued Legacy “Anthem Duration” increased from 1 second per rank to 2 seconds per rank.

I'm gonna have to side with others in this post and say that the new anthem duration is really excessive. The skill takes half a second to go off and has a 5s cooldown, it doesn't need to last 5m. The old duration on it honestly felt perfect, it didn't feel like you were constantly having to refresh it but you did still need to be mindful of it.

Blue Line

• Set Bonus “Open Ears” is now “Resolute”, which provides a potent block rating buff.
• Removed Fate and Will Stat bonuses received upon specialization.
• Soliloquy of Spirit’s healing has been increased.
• Coda of Resonance grants +10% incoming healing to the fellowship for 30s
• Trait “Improved Chord of Salvation” now increases chord of salvation healing
  
  • Increases Chord of Salvation Target Healing. 10% / 15% / 20 % / 25%
• Lowering Coda of Resonance Incoming Healing buff to 5%.
• Reducing potency of "Bolster Our Courage" group heal.

The set bonus change is reasonable I suppose. Nothing overtly impressive but then as a bottom level set bonus I guess that's the camp it should be in.
The Soliloquy buff is interesting, not sure if it's going to be all that notable but at the very least it might result in me finally traiting the legacy for it.
I like the chord buff, helps cover for the loss of potency on BC.
The coda of resonance change feels good, although you're contradicting yourself on the patch notes saying it grants a 10% incoming healing buff only to later say you reduced it to 5%. Had me confused for a second.
Loss of potency on BC is a good change. The HPS we could pull from spamming that was far beyond what any other class could ever accomplish.

[Fraushgrish2]

i have now looked at the new mini updates and am insanly dissatisfied, mini skills got a HUGE nerf. my boulster droped from 14k-17k to 6-8k this not including the boulster eco got destroyed. Minis can no longer give competent enough heals to survive the raid

If u have logged on ur mini and relized this numbers are very close to what ur minis looking at remember that atm the relics are bugged and they still work when they are on 2 li's so take that off and see

[DiogoVP]

General Changes:

At first flance, I like the Anthem of the Third Age skills being exclusive to each specialization, as it means that you can no longer be great healer while on Yellow Line, but if healing on yellow line becomes way too difficult to sustain, the yellow specialization may greatly lose its value to a point where most players don't find it attractive anymore. So we'll have to see how that goes.

I like the changes done to Healing skills, although I think there is still a lot that can be done to make the healing process more interesting and give us a more complex rotation to do. Here's a few suggestions on how you can do it:

- There is a certain stat that is VERY underused and undervalued. That stat is "In-Combat Morale Regeneration", what that stat does it basically "heal" your character every 5 seconds for a certain amount of morale regardless of your incoming healing rating. Example: Character has 12,000 In-combat Morale Regeneration = Character regenerates 1,000 morale every 5 seconds. The good thing about that stat is that it can help characters, even if very little, in cases where they have very low incoming healing and the regenaration is a constant and doesn't crit like heals do. What I suggest is this: Add a stacking buff on "Inspire Fellows" of 12,000 In-combat Morale Regeneration for 30 seconds. Allow the buff to stack up to three times.
- Make Coda's Incoming Healing Buff stack up to three times.
- Greatly reduce animation and global reset time on the following skills: Cry of the Chorus, Chord of Salvation, Triumphant Spirit, Call to Ioreth, Story of Courage (Don't change induction), Song of the Hammerhand, Piercing Cry and Call of the Second Age.
- Increase Potency of Bubbles by 900% (Song of the Hammerhand, Gift of the Hammerhand, Legend of Helm Hammerhand).
- Decrease the Cooldown of Fellowship's Heart by 270 seconds.
- Decrease the Cooldown of Cry of the Valar (From 30s to 20s)
- Decrease the Cooldown of Cry of the Wizards (From 30s to 20s)
- Decrease the Cooldown of Call of the Second Age (From 30s to 20s)
- Increase number of targets affected by "Call of the Second Age" buff to a maximum of 12 targets in a 30m radius.
- Make "The Melody of Battle" a percentage-based buff of +5% Parry Rating
-Decrease the duration of Anthems to 50 seconds by default without traits and legacies.

There are also a number of legacies that need to be changed, but I'll go into more detail another time.

Red Line Changes:

Overall, I like the changes, but since Anthem of War now requires traits to be granted and basically the majority of minstrels have anthem of war legacies for healing, I would change it's position to another line. Here is what I think is best for you to do:

-"Anthem of War" takes "Piercing Ballads" spot.
- "Piercing Ballads" takes "Emboldening Finish" spot.
- "Emboldening Finish" gets moved to the third line, without taking any trait's spoit.
That is in my opinion on the best way to change those traits, because right now Critical Strikes and Anthem of War are the only Red Line traits that are very important for all specializations.

Yellow Line:

-"Song of Aid" continues to be an uninteresting skill, I'll add a few suggestions on how to improve that skill when I get more time.
-"Shielding Cry" reflect buff duration should be increased to 30 seconds by default and +10 seconds with rank 2. Rank 3 (Final) should allow buff to stack up to three times at the expense of Reflect Value being decreased from 15% to 10% per stack.
- Change "Anthem of Prowess" buffs to "-10% attack duration", "+20,000 Finesse" and "+15,000 Evade Rating"
Blue Line:

-Greatly decrease animation and global reset time of Perfect Ending.
- Add a stacking 10% Outgoing Healing Buff for 30 seconds to the Minstrel upon using "Perfect Ending". Allow buff to stack up to 3 times.
- Increase "Inner Strength" buff duration to 45 seconds, to match the duration of the heal-over-time effect of Soliloquy of Spirit.

Current Bugs:

- Anthem of the Third Age does not alter Coda.
- Yellow line trait "Raise Our Spirits" does not apply Heal-over-time.

[MithrielWielder]

My feedback is that I am sick of these constant unnecessary changes to the classes. Its a total waste of time to have to constantly regear and rebalance, especially if you have alts. The proposed changes to Minstrel and hunter are horrendous. Almost everything being proposed is unnecessary except the Gaurdian red line stuff, that is only necessary to undo the last unnecessary changes. And maybe a little increase in dps for champ. Well I sure am glad I kept my red line hunter legendaries and just made two new ones for blue line I KNEW you all were going to do this. Two more legendaries down the drain, what is that like 400 scrolls of empowerment ? Ridiculous.

Just b.c people fake complain in order to try to get another class nerfed you guys continuously fall for it. So after these changes people will call for champ nerf and RK nerf. And more people will give up trying to do the raid, more wasted dev time.

Stop wasting your time and our time breaking stuff which isn't broken. Instead make more instances, do better is debugging new content before release, and stop giving unfair advantages by putting new raids on BR.

2nd thing, this pattern has been going on since Moria. Easy mode raid until raiders have their gear, then make it stupid hard so no one else has a chance. Sick of that too. Every single raid and instance has followed that pattern. What is your justification for making what little content there is out of reach for a large segment of the players. Just stop that already.

And I still want my champ shield back that was taken like 8 years ago. I havn't forgot that.

[DiogoVP]

i have now looked at the new mini updates and am insanly dissatisfied, mini skills got a HUGE nerf. my boulster droped from 14k-17k to 6-8k this not including the boulster eco got destroyed. Minis can no longer give competent enough heals to survive the raid

If u have logged on ur mini and relized this numbers are very close to what ur minis looking at remember that atm the relics are bugged and they still work when they are on 2 li's so take that off and see

The intention is not so much to nerf mini healings, the intention is to nerf some skills and buff others, to make the rotation more complex instead of keeping minstrel a class where you only spam bolster courage most of the time.

By the way, Cordovan, if you're reading, this is not an opinion, it is an explanation that is important for everyone to know, so you shouldn't delete this post.

[siipperi]

People need to remember magnitude of heals is off because we lost healing relic. It will get compensated at some point. Its better of focus on mechanics rather than magnitude atm, since its obvious cant comment on magnitude before dev says whats intented magnitude for heals.

[Arabani]

People who ask for Bolster nerf, especially for removing it's aoe component, do not realise that the class won't be able to heal Mordor content. Curent Minstrel gameplay is built around Bolster, using other heals is a loss of hps and a chance to loss someone in your group/raid. Inspire Fellows once every 30 seconds for damage reduction, Bolster spam-SoS combination for the maximum output and interuption of animation-every highlevel minstrel knows that drill. Raise the Spirit and Inspire Fellows will never be in rotation as long as there is Bolster with it's aoe component. And even without it, using Bolster is still better then Raise the Spirit-Bolster heals at least 3 times more and costs less power, actually.

Anthem duration change is also welcoming. Let's face it- it makes the gameplay more convinient without the need to recast it every minute. Anthems are always up, the recast is less then the duration, so why not to do so? I'd even make anthems permanent buffs/auras.

Yellow line seems turning in to some sort of Blue Captain with signifcant dps buffs to the group and supposedly good aoe healing (but actully neither Blue Captain nor Yellow Mini has it now) Let's see where it goes.

The thing I do not realy understand is why developers are so persistant on giving Minstrel block buffs. It does not help the class to survive in mele, not a tiny bit. If someone esle but tank is being hit he or she goes down pretty fast and even capped BPE can't help. If you want to add survivability-increase mitigation cap. Minstrels used to wear medium armor. Give us these 10 percent as a trait.

[Happychappy]

5 minute anthems would be good for trait switching to yellow, put 3 anthems up and back to blue/red and have over 4 minutes of anthems left lol. 5 anthems up for 3 minutes+ possible now?. i do feel the anthem duration increase would make minstrels lazy and forget to reapply it after the 5 minutes lol.

Player healing reduced, mob damage increased to a point where its suicidal to AoE in raids and squishes go down fast? probably not a good combination. Mob damage being reduced to compensate whilst still retaining the challenge?

Fairly meaningless update tbh.

Either leave the Minstrel alone or do a proper job and remove Bolster courage AoE (or make it a HoT) and buff Inspire Fellows etc. The way it used to be.

[Ghuda]

WOW!

So I think we all understand the Healing Rune thing, can't use 2 but to then to reduce the one in the book to 45% of its original value??!?!? That is a reduction in THR bonus of ~75% which as others have said will make the raid impossible without damage reduction or adding healers to the group. T2C is already an issue for most groups with 2 minis dedicated to the tank.

Solution: Pull the rune from our weapons and lets see what happens, further reducing the benefit of the remaining one seems excessive. Also, if you want us to stop spamming BC remove the AoE, its really that simple.

In the release notes I see the following: Anthems Stack with one another by default, does this mean regardless of trait line? Stacking Anthems for Blue minis again?

3 minute default anthem duration is way too long

Removed Fate and Will Stat bonuses received upon specialization: by my count this was 131 to will and fate, too little to care about but was this making me OP?

Ghudi - Landroval

[Endoloose]

Overall a good change, that'll make healing a challenge. Not sure if the heals provided will be sufficient for current Abyss Raid T2, time will show.

The Rune on weapon is still equipped when transferred to Bullroarer, but went from +96 to +48 tactical heal, same with rune on the book. Both runes still adds to the heal output.

Got a heal practice/test setup, with a guard who pulls 1. group in Stoneheight and then auto attacks after aggro is good.

On live, I heal guard with 17K and myself with 6 K with two Incomparable heal runes.
On Bullroarer I get 13K and 2.2K with both runes still on. (now both +48 tactical heal rating)
On Bullroarer with only one Grand Abyssal rune (+57 tactical heal rating on book) I get around 11K and 2 K.

All 3 tests with similar rotation.

• General
  
  • Anthems stack with one another by default
  • Anthem of the Third Age is now given out at specialization
  • All Anthems now have a default duration of 3 minutes
  • Anthem cooldowns reduced by 10 seconds.

With both legacy and trait in yellow, Anthem duration is 5 minutes, it'll not save a big deal but still nice. I Can get all anthems up by traitswapping pre-battle. WAI ? (I don't think this makes a great difference, considered the Cooldown on traitline swapping).

No possible way of stacking the same anthem type. Sure you can add all anthems possible, with traitline swapping, and still return back in blue traitline with Anthem of war, Anthem of Prowess, Improved Anthem of the Third Age – Melody and apply Anthem of the Third Age on top of those.

SUGGESTION: Maybe make the standard time without duration buff 1 minute, and then add the duration to trait/legacy (2 minutes each). This way you can please those that think Anthem are too long, and those who like the 5 minute Anthem can trait that.

[*]Blue Line

• Set Bonus “Open Ears” is now “Resolute”, which provides a potent block rating buff.
  

Not sure about what I think about the Block buff. In normal groups, everyone watch out for the minstrel, and until now i've ran with no block, but the rating from shield without problems. Better get something else for this buff, think even Critical defence is better, though not needed very much atm.

• Yellow Line
  
  • Trait “Extended Anthems” now increase Anthem duration by 10 seconds per rank.
  • Trait “Extended Anthems” no longer requires a previous trait to access it
  • Trait “Vocal Stamina” has been removed.
  • Hero’s Strike healing improved and now scales with class item strength
  • Coda of Melody grants +2.5% to all partial avoidances to fellowship for 30 seconds.
  • Trait “Bracing Finish” replaced with “Raise Our Spirits”
    
    • Grants a fellowship-wide Heal over Time to Raise the Spirit
    • Further ranks increase the HoT strength
    • Bracing Finish required luck and premeditation for a modest benefit. Raise Our Spirits has a readily apparent value for your Trait Point investment.
    
    
  • Set bonus “Perfect Ballad” now “Improved Anthem of The Third Age”
    
    • Damage bonus from Anthem of the Third Age - Melody increased by 5%
    • Incoming Healing bonus from Anthem of the Third Age - Melody increased by 2.5%
    
    
  • Set Bonus “Harmonious Anthems” now "Ascendant Anthem of the Third Age"
    
    • Damage bonus from Anthem of the Third Age - Melody increased by 5%
    • Incoming Healing bonus from Anthem of the Third Age - Melody increased by 2.5%
  • Skill “Anthem of the Third Age – Melody” – Now grants incoming healing and outgoing damage to the fellowship instead of a less useful Power Cost reduction

Summing up “Anthem of the Third Age – Melody” give 10% incoming healing and +15% outgoing damage to fellowship.

NOT WORKING ??: Raise the Spirit HOT does not work. (tried in Yellow, and Blue/Yellow) Maybe if someone else could check this an make a comment about the results

NOT WORKING ??: Raise the Spirit Fellowship heal shows in Combat log as Chord of Our Salvation, and on the RtS tooltip, it has the same value as CoS. It get boosted from Improved Chord of Salvation (blue) traitline points too.

[Laurlin]

Right, so I updated bullroarer and had a look at my Minstrel to see what changes had happened. Personally
I love the direction that's being taken to remove bolster spam, but I feel that a lot more work still needs to
be done before we'll be back to a level where we can complete the raid on T2 with different rotations and tactics.
I've done all bosses on Abyss T2 Challenge and have the top relics, so i've changed my build to work as this
- 1 DPS relic on Weapon, 1 Healing Relic on Book.

The Good

Raise the Spirit - This skill needed looking at for a very long time. It's nice to see a change. I like the
cooldown removal, and the AoE heal (from yellow-line). Right now that heal is just one extra heal for the
fellowship, it would be lovely to see this tick for a few seconds? Either that or do this instead - boost the
heal by about 20%.

Chord of Salvation - This skill got a big boost, it now heals more than any other skill. Is this good? For now
i'll say yes, as it currently replaces bolster as the biggest heal. I'm managing to reach 30k bolsters with
self buffs, but this thing can hit out a whopping 65k on average when i'm working through my rotation.
Not to mention an additional 10K fellowship heal and a few extra heals from the 1% set bonus.

Bolster Courage - This skill finally got thrown out into the mud where it deserves. The amount that it now
heals for is much more acceptable, I wouldn't even care if the AoE heal was removed completely and the
developers added +50% Inspire Fellows healing in place of the bonus trait.

Soliluquy of Spirit - I like the boost, could maybe be increased slightly, but then Mini wasn't designed to
be a HoT healer. If that's the direction we're going, leave it alone and see my mention above for raise the spirit.

The Bad

Harmonious Anthems - It's gone, the set bonus that allowed us to stack 3 anthems at once. Interestingly
we can now stack three anthems across all lines, apart from the fact that stacking 3 of the same anthems
in yellow was what made it desirable in groups. I think definitely keep it how it is, but take another look at
the base stats for anthems in yellow and do major reworking for other traits to keep the line viable.

Hero's Strike - I was excited to see this skill get buffs when I was reading the release notes.
Unfortunately it doesn't work. Please fix this!

Chord of Salvation in Redline - Love how it's been boosted in blue, doesn't really do the same kind of
heals in red-line. It'd be nice to see if this skill and raise the spirit were looked at in our DPS line to make
Minstrels a bit more survivable. I checked DPS and it hasn't dropped as significantly as I thought, but self-healing
was minstrel's only defence in red-line and it'd be nice to see that make a comeback.

Stats in Trait Trees - Only Finesse and Tactical mastery seems to have been boosted, please look at the
Morale trait in red-line and either buff it, or change it to a percentage.

Anthem Duration - Didn't really need to change, although it means I don't need to trait Extended Anthems or
the Anthem Duration legacy. Either revert it back to how it was, or remove the traits and legacies that buff it.
This would mean we'd have space for a new legacy and trait. These could be

Legacy Fellowships Heart Healing - Increase by 30-50%(?)

Trait Improved Story of Courage - Remove the induction but keep the cooldown. (Any other suggestions?).

The Ugly

Inspire Fellows - This skill has been hit hard by the tactical healing rune changes. I'm only getting an average
of 15k on crits - boost this skill by about 20-30%.

New Skill | Shield Focus - This skill is a great idea, but terribly implemented. No minstrel is going to trade -30%
movement speed for a tiny 5% block chance. It doesn't affect partials either. What I suggest is you keep the
essential idea, but change the execution. Rather than having it as a toggle, make it a skill with a 10s duration
and a 1m cooldown. Increase the % to about 40% and you have a defensive skill that compliments the new
trait bonus 'Resolute'. This would work well in all lines as a way to combat threat and random aggro. The % could
even be higher, since the raid is so heavily focused on burst damage.

Triumphant Spirit - This skill is currently too low, it shouldn't be beaten by Chord as it's considered the biggest
heal we have and used for 'oh ####' moments. Boost the heal by 30-40% so that it's back to healing the group
(including the tank) back up to full in dire need.

Bubbles - At the bottom of our blue-line trait tree is a skill that's completely useless. Please please PLEASE rework
bubbles. Surely it would be so much easier to change them to percentages? 'Legend of Helm Hammerhand' has a
2 minute cooldown, this bubble should be at least 30-40% of your maximum morale.

Song of Aid & Call to Greatness - These skills should be looked at towards the end of class reworking if possible,
but they've been terrible for a very long time. However they do look like a lot of work to redo, but please try and
update them if possible.

Other Things that need looking at

-Resonant Piercing Cry set bonus in blue line currently doesn't work.
-Improved Call of the Second Age bonus trait is either broken or isn't displaying correctly
-Get rid of Call of Earendil or buff it, nobody uses it.
-Heralds Strength trait in red-line is useless, please take a look at this.

______________________________ ______________________________ ___________________

I've probably missed a load of stuff, but please feel free to quote me on numbers that you disagree with and
(politely) suggest something better. I've played the Minstrel class for 6 years and this is an opportunity to
make it more fun and exciting for everyone.

[Crookedmouf]

Okay Devs, here's my feedback:
I agree that mini heals were overpowered, easymode, and boring. The problem is that they almost NEED to be as overpowered as they are to complete current end game content. Sure, bolster echo being 100% of what bolster hits for for the entire group is excessive, but what you've done to minstrel heals on BR is downright brutal.

Below I'll share a couple of my single-target heal parses I did today. This was done with the same minstrel and guard, in the same boss fight (turtle), with the same gear, and the same buffs, and the results are staggering.

Minstrel Heals on Live:
https://imgur.com/a/rWlu0kA

Minstrel Heals on Bullroarer:
https://imgur.com/a/fdo7gwb

While my skill rotation for both fights was the same, you can see that BR single-target heals are about 60% of what heals on live are. This is after taking advantage of yellow line traits for RTS AoE and flat outgoing healing %. (Not to mention that I didn't have to refresh Anthem of the 3rd age during the fight on BR)
Some might argue that my skill rotation should have changed, but I can assure you that for single-target, bolster spam with SoS after each bolster is still max single-target healing. Obviously this rotation involves Chord of Salvation every time it's off CD, so the buffs to Chord of Salv are not large enough to offset the nerfs to Bolster and Healing Runes.

Like I said initially, mini heals were OP, but in my opinion, the correct solution is an "Either-Or" solution. Either revert the changes to bolster and keep the changes regarding having only 1 +51 healing rune, or allow players to keep their two x +125 healing runes and keep the changes to bolster/RTS/etc.

The latter option is the better one in my opinion, since it does a lot to add variance and critical thinking to the class.

[Saruman_Of_Numbers]

Okay Devs, here's my feedback:
I agree that mini heals were overpowered, easymode, and boring. but what you've done to minstrel heals on BR is downright brutal.

The answer is not to make minis more godmode, but to buff other, weaker healing classes like RKs so that they become viable healers in the endgame, instead of crying for a minstrel stack.


There needs to be a combination of healing classes in the endgame that can work off each other and make up for each other's weaknesses. Healing Mini should be primarily be a mix of AOE and single target, being good at both but not the best at both. Have healing RK be the best at single target and Captain/Beorn be the best at AOE. Minstrel will be in the middle providing buffs and boosts with solid heals.

[BotLike]

There are a couple of old but gold bugs / exploits that are still on and need to finally be adressed now.

1) Tale exploit from yellow into blue line.
2) Chord of salvation double tap.

I won't go into details of how they are proc'ed , but i assure you most cool kid minstrels already know about them.

I've personally reported those bugs in detail many months ago , as i am certain others have done also , so there is no excuse. Fix those 2 exploits.
Especially 2) is going to make a significant difference in HPS if not many things change until live.
If you still do nothing about it , it is safe to assume this is WAI in your minds , and we can all get along with exploiting and maybe also make a forum thread to share it to newer minstrels , fun right ? I guess it could come to this.

Also , i agree with previous posters that anthem duration is way too long , needs a nerf for sure.
People will just pop yellow anthems pre-combat and swap to blue , and while they are at it , they will also exploit the tale ( look above on 1) )
then they'll continue with the exploit rotation involving chord and will get a great advantage when compared with legit minstrels.

I will provide more feedback on the next build , thanks for your work.

[Arabani]

There needs to be a combination of healing classes in the endgame that can work off each other and make up for each other's weaknesses. Healing Mini should be primarily be a mix of AOE and single target, being good at both but not the best at both. Have healing RK be the best at single target and Captain/Beorn be the best at AOE. Minstrel will be in the middle providing buffs and boosts with solid heals.

At least now every healer is in the same position on beta-neither can heal. Bolster, the only viable and up to date healing spell among 4 healing classes, got a huge nerf, especially it's aoe part. As a result T2 Abyss is unkillable, and even T1 is a problem for some less geared players. I imagine toons without t2 gear have very little chances to do T1.