I am writing a BIG post about all of the changes, but it wasn't ready yet since I didn't know they'd be lifting the NDA today. I'm at 10k words so far and over 2 dozen screenshots... gimme another day and I'll post it all.
Narlinde, level 85 Minstrel, Rank 10, Member of Trucido ~ Windfola
I am writing a BIG post about all of the changes, but it wasn't ready yet since I didn't know they'd be lifting the NDA today. I'm at 10k words so far and over 2 dozen screenshots... gimme another day and I'll post it all.
Slightly less scurred, but still a little weak in the knees.
/salute
I look forward to your great work as usual.
For My BW Brethren or Those Who Love Stick Figures 3 Years of Stick Art
R.I.P NIDOR (1970-2012): You shall be missed but never forgotten, thank you.
How's this for a screenie? I'm not even wearing craft guild or raid gear. I'm wearing pure lvl 66-74 normal crafted gear. I do have some good legacies and tier 7 relics on my lvl 75 legendaries though. Even 3rd age's are nice.
BTW I LOVE THE MINSTREL CHANGES! There is a bit of a learning curve but once you figure things out, it rocks! My mini will be the first toon I level on Sept 27th.
How's this for a screenie? I'm not even wearing craft guild or raid gear. I'm wearing pure lvl 66-74 normal crafted gear. I do have some good legacies and tier 7 relics on my lvl 75 legendaries though. Even 3rd age's are nice.
BTW I LOVE THE MINSTREL CHANGES! There is a bit of a learning curve but once you figure things out, it rocks! My mini will be the first toon I level on Sept 27th.
[big picture]
Honestly? It just makes me more annoyed I ground out my OD set and 3 first ages...
Last edited by Gillianrial; Aug 27 2011 at 08:48 AM.
♦ R13 Minstrel ♦ Guardians of the Dagorlad ♦ Jaiyne ♦
Yes, well... Ost Dunhoth and 65 1st agers were redundant the moment we knew there was to be a level cap increase. Such is the way of things in an MMO.
There's a learning curve; you don't fight the way you're used to at the moment. Our DPS has increased, but our squishiness has also become more pronounced. I found I strolled around Lothlorien for awhile battling the Flake droppers just to find a new rotation of War-speech skills that made the best sense and timing.
Level cap skirmishing is far, far more challenging for us at 75 -- mob morale has ballooned and they hit like a Mack truck. Patience is key. This may or may not be addressed before Isengard's launch or shortly thereafter. It's been brought to Orion's attention.
Our Power conservation skills have come into high demand. Choosing of our building ballads becomes important as the situation changes around us. How we affect our Coda(s) with various Anthems has become quite important. Class familiarity has become a premium; knowledge of how to play a Minstrel doesn't come cheap any more.
I'll leave the intricacies of the Healing changes to Cloudie-wan's post -- I was far more familiar with how our soloing and War-speech was affected.
I just started in beta a few days ago, so I have limited experience. However, so far, I really like what I've seen.
I would say that war-speech is going to effectively be a single-player or dps mode, as non-self healing while in war-speech is extremely limited (fellowship heals are locked, normal heals are self-heal only except that a few skills unlock a single heal on a friendly). It looks like we will be primarily self-heal/dps class for solo play and a healing/buff class in fellowship.
Running through the content solo, I've had little difficulty soling up to about 67 in just a few evenings playing. I am still getting used to the restructured skills and rearranging my hotbars.
It is still beta, the power consumption issues are being tweaked, the instruments are in the process of being fixed, things like that (plus, oddly, the doors out of interior spaces are broken...go figure). Still, expect to really pay attention to what you use when or you will burn through power too quickly.
Not to ruin the surprise, but expect a bunch of lvl 65 second age minstrel books to drop on the auction house soon after going live.
I haven't compared the fanciest 75 gear yet so I can't comment on that. However, I notice that a lot of the quest gear has tons of will and fate and less of the other, secondary effects, which I suspect is why the screen shot for Aiden earlier in the thread has a will of over 1k and almost as much fate.
If you liked Enedwaith, you will love Dunland, because this is basically a continuation of the storyline of trying to sneak the rangers past Saruman by making friends with the locals.
from what i've seen with my mini the power consumption issue is huge. power costs on healing skills have doubled, so i really hope they are fixing that. wont last long with your inspire fellows costing over 700 power. will fate and outgoing healing can be stockpiled in abundance. only thing is though if you expect to keep a high morale build you wont be getting that anymore. you will have to choose: big heals or highish morale.
Playing a mini is going to be a lot more difficult with the update. Power cost have gone up quite a bit and you will have to be very careful with pulls. I am not looking forward to healing places like OD even when I level up well beyond 65.
As a almost exclusively solo playing mini I love the changes. Yes, there is a learning curve- I woukd suggest finding a nice safe place to go with a few friends and try out the new changes before heading into the new content. Get everything arranged and learn how they affect each other first or your groups will go dead a bit until you do!
Solo folks just need to get our new hktkeys set. Actually healing myself has changed a lot of my style! PoT buff has kept me from running out except in very few occasions.
Below are some pics I took of my 65 minstrel with the changes and I also took screenies of the new skills. Be warned though there are 55 pics of new skills/every trait etc so I hope its not TOO boring.
Lvl 75 Alts:Rosebelle Shouting it up Warden. Hollybelle Pew Pewing Hunter. Sillian Bear Hugging LM. Ecgiel Stone Collecting RK.
Residing with the kettle on with The Lost Companions of Laurelin.
Below are some pics I took of my 65 minstrel with the changes and I also took screenies of the new skills. Be warned though there are 55 pics of new skills/every trait etc so I hope its not TOO boring.
Seems my worst fear about the update might come true: that minstrels who can already gobble up power very very fast whether in warspeech or to a lesser extend healing are going to go through power even faster now. Even with more options to manage power that might be quite an issue... I'll hold judgment until I get to actually play the new minstrel class though ... I hope it's not going to be another case where silly levels of ICPR don't help much because power consumption is just out of proportion (like Wardens).
The damage ballad says it increases the damage for all ballads, codas and cries. How about are calls?
Hope that's just missing from the tooltips or being confusing (calls being considered cries) otherwise that's quite a nerf on top of making minstrels take longer to get started.
Do Gift of the Hammerand and Song of the Hammerhand really only provide a 1500ish & 1700ish buffer now ? I see Song of the Hammerhand is now on a 1 minute cooldown, so added to its power regeneration role, I guess that makes it a different but useful skill, but Gift of the Hammerhand still appears to be on a 5mn CD, which is ... well, pretty long for a skill that's been downgraded.
And another question, what's the (base) cooldown on Cry of the Chorus ?
Edit: Also, from Ardhuial's screenshots (thanks !) the Battle-hymn trait provides +161 evade rating and +78 armour rating to anthem of prowess which seems to be ... very underwhelming, that's a minuscule armour bonus and maybe half a percent more evade for most people.
Not very impressed with some of the other yellow traits either. Lyrics of Bravery, +260 resist rating is fairly minuscule considering how much rating it takes to raise resists by one percent, the tactical defence (+390) bonus is fairly small as well especially if that's at lvl 75 ... Then there's Flow of Harmony, I understand that the Harmony line is all about anthems, but I've come to hate those traits etc that decrease power by 10% on only certain skills from playing my warden. 10% off skills that don't cost the most power and only constitute a fraction of skills you use, that tends to amount to nothing much.
Before I start sounding really negative, I'm looking forward to actually play with all the new stuff, these are just things that caught my eye.
Edit: On a more positive note, pleasantly surprised that the "small HoT" of Chord of Salvation actually appears to be relatively significant.
Can anyone provide screenshots of the raid gear, as in the cosmetic? Also, is the OD set or old armor in general changed in RoI?
How do you guys feel about our DPS? Is it significantly changed? It looks like the red capstone hasn't scaled at all and that even more of our class traits are now utter garbage.
I'm a little disappointed with the current trait-build decision.
I don't like that trait-builds essentially elevate one ballad to must use over the other 2, instead of making all ballads better at a specific bonus. It seems to remove any element of trying to balance ballad use, and instead encourages spamming one ballad depending on your trait build.
Once upon a time they called me Aed O'Brien of Coldeve
FWIW I followed that link to all the screenies and my computer now has a very nasty virus, that essentially took over my system (currently on my laptop). No idea if it actually came from Photobucket...but figured it was worth a warning anyway just in case.
♦ R13 Minstrel ♦ Guardians of the Dagorlad ♦ Jaiyne ♦
The changes to the anthems is not exactly my cup of tea.
As a minstrel whose worked his traits to focus on buffing as well as healing - I use the Smooth Voice trait to turn two of my ballads into group buffs, and I've but several focuses to increase my buff durations.
I can also get about 5 - 6 buffs on the entire party in a matter of about 20 seconds.
With a 15 second SHARED COOLDOWN on anthems, I imagine this is going to cause quite abit of playstyle adjustment.
And from the looks of it the durations haven't increased to provide abit of time to move in the cycle between healing and buffing.
yes, the changes might be okay for solo players - but as someone who happens to enjoy the Multiplayer part of MMORPGS, I'm really hoping the Dev Diary clarifies the extend of these changes.
Also: what is the Coda? Is it a new thing that's come with RoI, because Im lv 54 and have yet to see a Coda skill.
The changes to the anthems is not exactly my cup of tea.
As a minstrel whose worked his traits to focus on buffing as well as healing - I use the Smooth Voice trait to turn two of my ballads into group buffs, and I've but several focuses to increase my buff durations.
I can also get about 5 - 6 buffs on the entire party in a matter of about 20 seconds.
With a 15 second SHARED COOLDOWN on anthems, I imagine this is going to cause quite abit of playstyle adjustment.
And from the looks of it the durations haven't increased to provide abit of time to move in the cycle between healing and buffing.
yes, the changes might be okay for solo players - but as someone who happens to enjoy the Multiplayer part of MMORPGS, I'm really hoping the Dev Diary clarifies the extend of these changes.
Also: what is the Coda? Is it a new thing that's come with RoI, because Im lv 54 and have yet to see a Coda skill.
I'd recommend some reading before you jump to any further conclusions about our incoming changes to Buffing abilities:
I'm a little disappointed with the current trait-build decision.
I don't like that trait-builds essentially elevate one ballad to must use over the other 2, instead of making all ballads better at a specific bonus. It seems to remove any element of trying to balance ballad use, and instead encourages spamming one ballad depending on your trait build.
Are you talking about having to be in full (i.e. 4 trait) blue / red / yellow line? I can tell you that in a longer fight that will not work having all dps (all minor ballads up), or all healing (all major ballads up) through out the fight as the power costs will limit that since the costs are up. The biggest thing I had was remembering to use my bubble for return power and not just "omg, i'm getting focus fired, time to bubble, drop ws, heal and run". I didn't play for a enormous amount of time as I wanted this expansion to be fresh since I did Moria, etc, in beta, but did enough to understand that power is even a bigger problem for us now if you are not paying attention to your power pool.
And Phantom, our dps is "higher" in the fact you crit way more since hitting the crit cap is not all that hard. Even though the capstone isn't scaled, I think someone calculated it to be about an extra 9% - 10% of crit before, so with that number your base, and cappie love (, you are at cap.
In terms of pvp, it is a bit different as I haven't found a rotation (I only played a little), but it seems going 5r/2b for self healing is the way to go. A big thing is you only have one instant heal (CoS) since you cannot use inspire fellows or TS in WS so you kite less as your heals need you standing still. Even with the increase in creep morale, it's still quite easy to dps them down with crits especially, but I'm going to assume some of them I have fought aren't traited for crit resist and such like this one warg on my server and I can't crit for anything.
No i mean, how the -power cost % bonus from traited 4 yellow only applies to perfect ballad. So you cannot go 4 deep in yellow and run Major ballad for +9% or +12% healing, and still have -12% power costs.
Once upon a time they called me Aed O'Brien of Coldeve
There's a learning curve; you don't fight the way you're used to at the moment. Our DPS has increased, but our squishiness has also become more pronounced. I found I strolled around Lothlorien for awhile battling the Flake droppers just to find a new rotation of War-speech skills that made the best sense and timing.
It looks like my mini is going into Turbine's storage closet till RoI comes out Don't want to have to relearn how to play my mini while in moria.
But I am epically confused...I mean what was all that open space on your skill bars...
I look forward to testing this and finding out the best combo of skills and traits to piss creeps off.
It was so confusing at first but after testing out firstly on same level mobs with my partner (who also got in to the beta) it is quite simple, if you need power use the - skill power cost ballad three times, then anthem that gives power when you apply coda. This works also with resistance's and +healing. But I do recommend going somewhere first that is quite easy firstly until you get used to the set up as it is a lot to take in the first time you log in.
And I know there is quite a gaping hole in my skill bars where all the multitude of ballads used to be. As we get three primary spammable ballads then anthems and one coda that changes when we are in different stances it does leave quite a big hole that used to be filled to the brim.
Lvl 75 Alts:Rosebelle Shouting it up Warden. Hollybelle Pew Pewing Hunter. Sillian Bear Hugging LM. Ecgiel Stone Collecting RK.
Residing with the kettle on with The Lost Companions of Laurelin.
Glad to hear that folks are enjoying the changes while solo.
Power costs aside, are those of you who've been in beta happy with your healing output? Are you having fun healing groups? I've been hearing some worrying things.
If your planning on healing that your going to be needing a PERMA LM.
Yes the power costs have almost doubled and just healing a normal instance I was out of power ( USING the DN set for - power cost )
I was out of power within about 3 minutes.
The LM said it was rediculous and that he almost couldn't keep me up as other people needed power.
Defo reduce this back to how it was otherwise a lot of minstrels that haven't been on beta will be dissappointed on the 27th onwards.
The damage ballad says it increases the damage for all ballads, codas and cries. How about are calls?
Calls are considered cries as their resistance is under the cry category. When you hover your call skills after applying a ballad you'll see that they do increase in damage per ballad increase.
The small HoT on CoS is nice, but at a 411 power cost, it was hard for me to justify trying to use it without someone about to bite the dust. That was the base for me at least with being 4 traited into the blue line for all the bonuses. RtS was something like 243 power cost, IF was 491, BC was like 176 or so (without blue line it's 200 so by far still the most power efficient heal). Keep in mind these were out of combat numbers, so in combat, you can probably reduce those numbers by 6% with the yellow line trait for -1% power cost on ballads if you go 3 Major Ballads for max healing.
TS leg reduces the time from 10 minutes to 8 minutes when it's maxed. Rally is still 5 minute reduction on the leg, so with the trait, Rally is on a 10 minute CD.
If your planning on healing that your going to be needing a PERMA LM.
Yes the power costs have almost doubled and just healing a normal instance I was out of power ( USING the DN set for - power cost )
I was out of power within about 3 minutes.
The LM said it was rediculous and that he almost couldn't keep me up as other people needed power.
Defo reduce this back to how it was otherwise a lot of minstrels that haven't been on beta will be dissappointed on the 27th onwards.
I dunno I think it depends what you are doing. When I was doing stuff I was pretty much switching between +morale when coda is used and +power and I was finding it brilliant. I have heard a lot about this though on the forums from not just minstrels but pretty much every class.
Lvl 75 Alts:Rosebelle Shouting it up Warden. Hollybelle Pew Pewing Hunter. Sillian Bear Hugging LM. Ecgiel Stone Collecting RK.
Residing with the kettle on with The Lost Companions of Laurelin.
Calls are considered cries as their resistance is under the cry category. When you hover your call skills after applying a ballad you'll see that they do increase in damage per ballad increase.
I saw that but just wanted to be sure. Sometimes they use calls and sometimes cries, like in our red capstone which gives +2600 call crit rating.
Solo plays very similiarly, but with the power return coda and power saving ballad you can sustain dps at about 400-500 at 75 without pots. Ballads were a bit more intermingled with anthems and crys/calls but it plays very similar to current minnie.
Biggest concern was in reagrds to power while healing in groups. With good relics and jewelry at75 my BC was at about 1300-1800 after the healing buffs from ballads. So basically what it is now. But power was much higher.
Orion mentioned instruments would be getting a -%healing power cost addition so that may help. I did not group enough to see how much of a difference there was to healing in groups and how power fared so I'll leave that to Cloudie who has done some grouping.
Your heals have been reduced considerably when you log in. But when you have a fully leveled 75 songbook you'll be... right back where you are now at 65. Essentially, Zero advancement for the minstrel class in base heal size. However you do have two new crit traits, so your crits are bigger and more freqquent than ever. You can crit close to 4000 without any other classes incoming heal buffs, like the captains, and tanks can now stack incoming heal rating... they will need to if they want to live. I envision being about to crit around 6000 on a professional tank with devoted captains attending him too.
Bolster courage without anything to reduce its cost takes 338 power to cast
Inspire Fellows without anything to reduce its cost takes 800 power to cast
So, if you cast Inspire and a Bolster you will spend 1138 on two heals.
You can actually drain your power out of combat, OUT of combat, if you stand still and heal like youre in Ivar OD t2c.
Orion says that he's working on some instruments that will lower healing costs.
And the new sheat music, crafted, will lower healing costs by 60% for 10 seconds, once a minute. They also sell a slightly weaker version in the store. But the whole 10 seconds thing, once a minute... not very useful... Maybe if they were for 30 seconds once a minute.
You can also use ballad ballad ballad anthem coda a couple of times a minute for a net gain of about 700 power. You will spend 900 power to get back 1600, for which you have to stop healing when things get nasty. And this means that instead of using your anthems to boost group dps, you're using it to get back power.
I'm not sure how something like Ivar t2c would be healable when this happens.
Unless those instruments do compensate, Loremasters should brace themselves for the coming age of empty minstrels.
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Originally Posted by Gillianrial
How do the changes play?
♦ R13 Minstrel ♦ Guardians of the Dagorlad ♦ Jaiyne ♦
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