Thread: Visual Guide To Minstrels in Rise of Isengard

Thanks for the very nice thread! This is really helpful and getting us prepared for Isengard.
Really looking forward to playing my minstrel after the update!

Originally Posted by Gondolindhrim

I'd give my thoughts about the changes at length, but it's late, so for now I'll just answer the Champ question:

Seeking Blade makes our next Remorseless Strike score a guaranteed critical hit. Much better than gaining a defeat response since we now only have one (and Song of Aid already does that anyway), but it's disappointing that they removed the extra Fervour generation we used to get... Champion is now the only class that just get an up-front buff from Call to Greatness and nothing more for the 15s duration of the skill.

Ahh, ok. I shall edit the post to put in that information. Thanks for the heads-up!

Originally Posted by Tamiya

Can you post information on the healing skills too please? Looks like you left them out, or I missed them somehow.

Did Inspire Fellowship get the proposed cooldown removal?

Regarding the power issue some people are complaining about, since all codas, anthems, and ballads have very short cooldown, it looks like it's possible to get the power return buff up at all times. 800 net power restoration every 20s is pretty sweet, that's equiv to bonus 2400 ICPR, on top of the minstrel's base ICPR and food and whatever else.

You're right, I completely forgot to post about our healing skills! Wow, I feel sill...

OK, so, Chord of Salvation, when cast on someone, will also give a small HoT to the people around the recipient of the heal. This works in War-speech, too. When it is Chord of My Salvation, you can give yourself the nice heal and everyone else can get the little HoT, too.

Bolster Courage and Raise the Spirit are the same, as is Soliloquy of Spirit. Fellowship's Heart had it's cooldown lowered. Triumphant Spirit seems to be the same, although it had it's cooldown lowered, too, and now with the legacy you can get the cooldown all the way down to 8 minutes.

As for Inspire Fellows... well, I'm embarrassed to admit that I didn't notice if the cooldown on the skill was removed or not. I frankly looked at the power cost and didn't bother to use it when I was running instances on the test server. I'll check next time I get the opportunity to log in.

You can, in fact, keep up your PoT restore 100% of the time, but you're going to be sacrificing a LOT to do that. If you Ballad up, use Anthem of Comosure, then use Coda for the power restore over and over again in between heals, you'll not be getting the full use out of your self-applied Ballad buffs for power reduction, outgoing healing, and tactical damage. Nor will you be able to buff yourself and you Fellowship members well with your Anthems. But yes, it pretty much IS a cure for our power woes. You just have to make a choice between power efficiency and optimal healing/buffing ability. I think that most Minstrels will learn to think ahead about using it. The buff that Anthem of Composure gives is pretty nice, so I think that it will be one of the ones we'll want to try to keep up. If we are anticipating that we'll be using a Coda anyway (for an extra heal, for example), then we can make sure that Anthem of Composure is up so we can get the power restore. I very much doubt that people will be using Ballads, Anthems, and Coda JUST for this.

Originally Posted by Merilda

The one thing that does come to mind is that it looks as if it will be even more necessary to visit the bard and rearrange traits, depending on what is required. Won't this also require much arranging of toolbars in order to have the related skills quickly to hand? I can see this as being time-consuming and ultimately irritating if we are doing this 2 or 3 times a day, depending on in-game activity.

Personally, I already retrait for almost everything... and yes, I DO get testy when I'm asked to heal something less than an hour after I've gone and retraited for blowing up Creeps. I don't think we'll have to rearragne our toolbars much, though. Just memorize what everything does!

I don't think I could play my class if quickslots 1 and 2 were not Herald's Hammer and Piercing Cry, respectively. Then I have Major Ballad, Minor Ballad, and Perfect Ballad for 3, 4, and 5 because you'll be hitting them a lot and that is where your fingers on your left hand rest easily. Next I have the six Anthems and the last quickslot on the homerow is Coda. I use the F keys to select my Fellowship members and click my heals, and I click almost all my non-homerow skills (like the Calls and Cries).

Each Minstrel will have to rearrange their toolbars to their own liking, but I DEFINITELY recommend that you put your Ballads in a very accessible place and that you configure your Anthems in a set order and memorize them in your preferred configuration. I organized my Anthems like so: Two self-buffing Anthems first, right next to the Ballads, because they are similar to them (Anthem of the Third Age and Anthem of Compassion). Two defensive Anthems next, the healing one first because heals always come first (Anthem of the Free Peoples and Anthem of Prowess). The two offensive Anthems next, with the offensive Anthem that also provides defensive buffs first to put it near the other defensive Anthems (Anthem of Composure and Anthem of War). This also allows me to use my Anthems in sequence. When I am in PoS/Harmony, I put up Anthem of the Third Age - Harmony first, then Compassion, the Freeps, then Composure, then Prowess, then War, all in sequential order. If I am DPSing, I do it the opposite way, with War first (and usually just War and Prowess, although I'll use Composure for the PoT if I am about to use Coda of Fury).

I think that it will be very important for Minstrels to develop a good buff rotation for themselves. I found that if I lost my place by forgetting what Anthem I had just hit and which one I was supposed to hit next that I got flustered and couldn't find my place again. I'm even considering installing the BuffBars add-on to help me keep track, but I'm wary of add-ons as a rule.

Originally Posted by Hekatherina

Well, actually, it has changed. It's been moved to the Healing&Motivation Skills (earlier it belonged to the Songs of Valar, if I remember correctly), so in RoI Fellowship's Heart will be modified by different +heal multipliers which is rather cool.

Did you mean Compassion here?

I thought Fellowship's Heart came under the effects of Healing & Motivation Skills in Enedwaith? I could be wrong, I'll check and update the guide.

And yes, yes I did. Thanks for that, I'll fix the typo shortly!

Originally Posted by Pashtick

Do you know or someone else whether the ballads are always active even when playing several Anthems?

As someone else answered, yes, we can keep playing Anthems as long as we don't close everything out with Coda. I know it's confusing because for 4 years Anthems have closed out everything, but now it is the Coda that does that.

Originally Posted by Fruinjuice

Any comments on virtues in the new age of Minstrels and ROI?

You'll be stacking Will like there is no tomorrow, but it'll be so easy to get that I really don't think we'll need to use the Wisdom virtue, as the Will it provides doesn't scale well. There are also some virtues that give ICPR now, which is nice, but they were very, very minimal. Make sure to level your Zeal up to 12 as it just became the new Valour!

<3

/words

Thanks a LOT for this posts! I've to learn to play my character nearly from zero, but let's see...

Not impressed at all. Your thread is obviously written in bias of the healing Minstrel.. I only hope that half of what you write is not true or changed before the update is actually implemented, especially your opinion of the dps role for Minstrels.I see nothing great or wonderful here.. looks like the Minstrel is being forced into a non viable role.. healing or dps. If this is the case, it will ruin the game for me.

Do you want a healing Hunter or Guardian! Why can't my Minstrel make more dps during the heals than my red-skilled Rune-keeper? Do you understand the purpose of a Minstrel? BTW: You can change to damage during the fight -> consequences? What is your main task in a group? I don't understand your post, please help me...

Originally Posted by Cloudie-wan

I thought Fellowship's Heart came under the effects of Healing & Motivation Skills in Enedwaith? I could be wrong, I'll check and update the guide.

Yes, you are right. I looked it up and only then recollected that it had been changed with the Echoes of the Dead. Sorry

Originally Posted by Cloudie-wan

it pretty much IS a cure for our power woes.

Nice job on the guide.

Great post. +rep for you.

Can't wait to play the class and reorder the toolbars the 1st day

Originally Posted by Norwrei

Not impressed at all. Your thread is obviously written in bias of the healing Minstrel.. I only hope that half of what you write is not true or changed before the update is actually implemented, especially your opinion of the dps role for Minstrels.I see nothing great or wonderful here.. looks like the Minstrel is being forced into a non viable role.. healing or dps. If this is the case, it will ruin the game for me.

Are we viable for fulfilling the role of main-DPS in a group setting? Maybe. In a 3-man group, yes, definitely. Three-man instances, of necessity, must be balanced around limited roles and a Minstrel can absolutely be DPS in them. In a 6-man group we will never be sought after by people as DPS, but I think that we will be able to fulfill the role adequately. To fill that DPS slot in a Fellowship, you'll need to get your Will as high as possible, sacrificing defense for offense and you MUST trait 5-deep into Warrior-skald to do it. Protector of Song/Harmony is not really about fulfilling a main-DPS role, but rather an off-DPS role. Think of Warrior-skald as our "lightening-traited Rune-keeper" DPS line and Protector of Song as our "Captain-hybrid of Awesome buffs with a bit of healing and a bit of DPS thrown in" line. Built for Will, tactical offense, and tactical crit, with Legendary Items enhancing your DPS function and a high enough base ICPR to help with your power issues, you will be able to fill that DPS slot (but not as well as classes whose primary role is DPS, ie, not as well as Hunters, Champions, Rune-keepers, or Burglars). When you see your first dev crit with Coda of Fury, you'll feel like an RK, it's kinda awesome. In raids, I don't believe that we have either enough DPS OR enough power sustainability for us to fill the role of main-DPS in long fights.

Originally Posted by ConstantiaChlorus

Nice job on the guide.

I can't agree with this statement. The coda has a cooldown. A minstrel will be able to use it two maybe 3 times a minute, making huge sacrifices of either healing or buffing to do so, as you said. the only thing that will make it look like, pretend to be a cure is that you'd have spent an entire minute not healing to do this. And since a Bolster and an Inspire cost 1100 unlegacied, the lack of healing, the lack of doing our job will certainly conserver power and the hot will make it come up, but it's entirely an illusion. Any minstrel can stand still for a minute and let their icpr bring things up.

So, sure, stand still for a minute, for 3 coda runs. Don't heal, let your icpr give you back about 2000 power. Let 3 codas give you back another 2000. On the surface it looks like everything's fine. Except that we're not healing or doing very very little.

But if anything like Ivar tier two challenge is in game, who gets to stand around and ballad ballad balld anthem coda for a whole minute? In Ivar a minute might as well be an hour.

Maybe they have plans to switch off all the room aoes in game. Maybe they plan to drop the damage down. I hope. Then it wouldn't really matter. I'd be fine with that.

but really, if the class is reduced to spending a minute rotation to med up my power supply I might as well go play EQ1 and go sit under a tree for 20 minutes to get my power back.

So I'm working to get my loremaster ready to replace my minstrel. Someone that's been a minstrel since 2007 getting ready to box up shop over the ability to have enough power to heal. Sad. I worry enough about the price of fuel in real life. I refuse to worry about it in a game.

I think that we just haven't seen everything in terms of itemization and balance yet to be so worried about power management. When running School and Library at level 75 on beta, I got some very nice purple gear rewards out of the chests that updated my jewellry beyond simple quested stuff. The crafted gear is rather nice, too. We don't know what shiny drops will come out of the new raid OR if there are nice things from the scaled-up Annuminas and Great Barrows instances. Someone also told me that the scaled up to level 75 Helegrod raids all have extremely nice drops, too, which will help with our power issues. The thing about beta is that you have to take what you're seeing there and realize that you don't quite have everything yet, while trusting that the game developers really do want to keep their jobs and retain their paying customer base by keeping them happy.

I'm sure that the devs have noted the concern that everyone here has, including myself.

Also, when healing even the most difficult fights in the game with substantial group damage, there is ALWAYS time to tier up in between heals. Major Ballad > Heal > Major Ballad > Heal > Major Ballad > Heal > Anthem of Composure > Heal > Coda of Vigour (which is also a heal) > Heal... also, if you have the legacy for +Anthem Duration, even if you are not traited deep into Protector of Song, you could likely get up two Anthems before hitting Coda of Vigour, thus giving yourself or your Fellowship some extra buffs. I really don't think we'll be standing around waiting for our power to regen or our skills to come off cooldown.

Much will depend on how fights are designed going forward.

I do have a question regarding power consumption. Exactly how large should our power pools be by the time we reach 75? Would it be possible to accrue a large enough pool to offset power consumption (or high enough ICPR failing that) to offset power concern?

Originally Posted by hillard1959

I do have a question regarding power consumption. Exactly how large should our power pools be by the time we reach 75? Would it be possible to accrue a large enough pool to offset power consumption (or high enough ICPR failing that) to offset power concern?

I saw some huge power pools and you can really stack the will. With buffs I think we'll see some min maxer minstrels with power pools hitting around 10,000, but to do that they may be walking around with 4000/5000 morale. It still won't offset the power sink.

Originally Posted by GEARS1980

I saw some huge power pools and you can really stack the will. With buffs I think we'll see some min maxer minstrels with power pools hitting around 10,000, but to do that they may be walking around with 4000/5000 morale. It still won't offset the power sink.

That's... disheartening.

Originally Posted by Cloudie-wan

OK, so, Chord of Salvation, when cast on someone, will also give a small HoT to the people around the recipient of the heal. This works in War-speech, too. When it is Chord of My Salvation, you can give yourself the nice heal and everyone else can get the little HoT, too.

Very interesting change on CoS. I like it. It's going to be very useful for trash fights in 3-man content too. No more toggling of WS on and off just to heal group members for minor damages.

You can, in fact, keep up your PoT restore 100% of the time, but you're going to be sacrificing a LOT to do that. If you Ballad up, use Anthem of Comosure, then use Coda for the power restore over and over again in between heals, you'll not be getting the full use out of your self-applied Ballad buffs for power reduction, outgoing healing, and tactical damage. Nor will you be able to buff yourself and you Fellowship members well with your Anthems. But yes, it pretty much IS a cure for our power woes. You just have to make a choice between power efficiency and optimal healing/buffing ability. I think that most Minstrels will learn to think ahead about using it. The buff that Anthem of Composure gives is pretty nice, so I think that it will be one of the ones we'll want to try to keep up. If we are anticipating that we'll be using a Coda anyway (for an extra heal, for example), then we can make sure that Anthem of Composure is up so we can get the power restore. I very much doubt that people will be using Ballads, Anthems, and Coda JUST for this.

Well obviously "all the time" is a hyberbole, but "most of the time" looks totally feasible. I'm not expecting a zero-sum game with the power management here. I fully expect to run out of power eventually - it's just a matter of how soon - and in this regard, this HoT effect with technically unlimited recastability does look sufficient in delaying that inevitability.

Is there's a limit to how many Anthem effects we can stack onto the Coda? Because if there isn't, then Anthems with 30s duration and 5s cooldown essentially means PoS minstrels get to cash out on the effects of all 6 anthems simultaneously once every 30s. That is beyond awesome, and I see no reason not to cash out at all. It takes just three instant-cast Ballads to open up the Anthems again afterwards regardless, which doesn't appear to me a huge sacrifice to time or anything.

Originally Posted by Cloudie-wan

I find the changes to Call to Greatness the most upsetting part of this update. First of all, the cooldown on the skill has been raised from 5 mintues to 10 minutes. Secondly, the 2-equipped set bonus for Protector of Song only reduces the cooldown by 20 seconds. Those two things might both be bugs that our lovely developer will eventually fix (cross your fingers!), but the third change is deliberate. You will no longer be able to reset cooldowns by using Call to Greatness. *snipped* I’ve not been able to test with a Lore-master to see if it still resets their Blinding Flash, but I imagine that it doesn’t if they’ve changed how it works with Chord of Salvation.

Orion needs to come in and clarify all three of these issues right now. I've been thinking about this all day yesterday and it really does bother me.

The changes to cooldown and PoS bonus look to be unintentional based on the quote I copied earlier.

CtG needs to reset cooldown. Is this specifically communicated to beta-testers as deliberate change? If so, what is the rationale? Especially with the LM, CtG acts as a back-up in case of resists. There is no way for a Minstrel to know which LM is going to need help before the resist happens.

Originally Posted by Cloudie-wan

Are we viable for fulfilling the role of main-DPS in a group setting? Maybe. In a 3-man group, yes, definitely. Three-man instances, of necessity, must be balanced around limited roles and a Minstrel can absolutely be DPS in them. In a 6-man group we will never be sought after by people as DPS, but I think that we will be able to fulfill the role adequately. To fill that DPS slot in a Fellowship, you'll need to get your Will as high as possible, sacrificing defense for offense and you MUST trait 5-deep into Warrior-skald to do it. Protector of Song/Harmony is not really about fulfilling a main-DPS role, but rather an off-DPS role. Think of Warrior-skald as our "lightening-traited Rune-keeper" DPS line and Protector of Song as our "Captain-hybrid of Awesome buffs with a bit of healing and a bit of DPS thrown in" line. Built for Will, tactical offense, and tactical crit, with Legendary Items enhancing your DPS function and a high enough base ICPR to help with your power issues, you will be able to fill that DPS slot (but not as well as classes whose primary role is DPS, ie, not as well as Hunters, Champions, Rune-keepers, or Burglars). When you see your first dev crit with Coda of Fury, you'll feel like an RK, it's kinda awesome. In raids, I don't believe that we have either enough DPS OR enough power sustainability for us to fill the role of main-DPS in long fights.

Thank you for responding.. grealy appreciated. I agree that a mini cannot be the main dps role in some raids or certain fellowships.. but do make valuable backup dps support as do other dps classes.

First ... Cloudie, thank you very much for this guide. I have bookmarked it and will re-read it many times I am sure. +1 rep.

Second ... a question. ALL my minstrels (see below - there are many) wear medium armour, always. On first login after the expansion is released, will every one of them be nekkid? Or will Turbine replace my armour or just change the stats? I cannot afford to re-clothe all my toons!

I have 7 minstrels, of varying levels - the highest is 55. I love the class however, although I seem to do a fine job, I have no idea of any of the technicalities of the class - I simply know and feel what works and it usually does. My head is spinning from all the details but, as I said, I am sure I will re-read them many times and eventually get the hang of it.

Originally Posted by Aery-Chiasma

Second ... a question. ALL my minstrels (see below - there are many) wear medium armour, always. On first login after the expansion is released, will every one of them be nekkid? Or will Turbine replace my armour or just change the stats? I cannot afford to re-clothe all my toons!

I am pretty sure I heard somewhere that any Medium Armour that you are wearing on your characters on launch day will automatically be converted to Light Armour, it's just that anything not actually equipped will no longer be wearable.

Originally Posted by Cloudie-wan

I am pretty sure I heard somewhere that any Medium Armour that you are wearing on your characters on launch day will automatically be converted to Light Armour, it's just that anything not actually equipped will no longer be wearable.

Alas, I had heard that minstrels that transferred to Bullroarer logged in to find themselves half-naked due to medium armor restrictions.

Originally Posted by Crissaegrim

Alas, I had heard that minstrels that transferred to Bullroarer logged in to find themselves half-naked due to medium armor restrictions.

They did, prompting Orion to post to CSTM that medium armour will be changed to light when you log in on your Minstrel.

Goldenstar,

We changed that. If you log in with medium armour on your character it will be converted to light armour and bound to you.

http://www.casualstrolltomordor.com/...w-screenshots/

You'll have to scroll through the comments to see the quote there.

Ugh. But, thank you for the answers.

Unfortunately, I wear primarily quest armour and won't be able to choose new armour from quests already done. Currently I am not questing either so that I can replace it - and how would I quest anyway (Eregion and Moria generally require clothes!)? I gave up on finding any way to get my class quest done (on any toon - not one is completed because I was having to buy the components on the AH and they were either not there or too expensive) so I am doing skirmishes (which are not to my liking but there is not much else I can do to get the items when there are no Carn Dum runs and I am always less than flush). I won't be able to continue skirmishing either - most of my stats are in my equipment. This could be quite unsettling.

This might be ok if my toons were level 20 or level 65 - but they aren't - all are between 31 and 55. Not quite sure what I am going to do about this if indeed the armour just vanishes. None of it can be resold if it just lands in inventory. I don't keep a set of light armour (have never needed it for soloing or the occasional PUG for a quest or two).

But, thanks again. This makes me sad because I know I will not want to play if this happens. I realize that not many of us probably play multiples of the same class so perhaps they didn't anticipate a major issue with this but I hope Orion reads this and understands that it WILL affect some of us VIPs with several years into the game. I just signed up for the next year too. Perhaps they can do something still if they realize this.

The Call to Greatness changes are all very upsetting and will likely result in my not using it. I certainly won't use it even a fourth as often as I do now with it not resetting the cooldown on Chord of Salvation.

Originally Posted by PhantomPunkk

The Call to Greatness changes are all very upsetting and will likely result in my not using it. I certainly won't use it even a fourth as often as I do now with it not resetting the cooldown on Chord of Salvation.

It still pretty much does the same thing when used on Captains, so I'm going to continue using it for that purpose. I love nothing more than throwing it on a Captain when emergency heals are needed.

Originally Posted by PhantomPunkk

The Call to Greatness changes are all very upsetting and will likely result in my not using it. I certainly won't use it even a fourth as often as I do now with it not resetting the cooldown on Chord of Salvation.

Yeah the changes to CtG really really blow. It's such a fun little utility skill. The problem with any long cooldown skill is that because the cooldown is long you tend to not want to use it until it's really really needed. You wait so long that you often never use it. That was the whole point about reducing cooldowns to manageable levels. We just went through a cycle of reducing cool downs to make every skill viable and then they do this. I really don't get the justification.

I'd much rather keep CtG shortish and FH longish the way it is now. FH is the big "oh no oh no oh no" emergency skill I'm not sure I'm really down with using it all the time. CtG has small benefits that are nuanced for each class- there really is no justification for making it not used.

This is an amazing guide. A hearty thank you for the time and effort to do this! After reading this I agree that minstrels are no longer an easy class (though to play them correctly they never truly were).

I'm depressed about the fact that all my minstrel armor pieces, which are medium armor, will no longer be wearable. Would like to be able to go back in time and rechoose. Perhaps they'll do something such as allowing you to keep wearing a medium armor item until you unequip it? Rift did something similar when they had some armor bugs that allowed my bard to wear armor he shouldn't. Long term this should pose no problem, since we'll be moving on to new pieces very quickly anyway.

Thanks, Cloudie, for taking the time with the thread to inform those of us who aren't in the beta.

I am disappointed Orion didn't keep to the second revision of the bubble. 1700 - 1900 absorbed damage isn't much in terms of PvE and especially in PvP. Minstrel's survivability is going down due to this as well as increased power cost for heals. I can either keep damaging a creep that has 12k+ morale and outputting a heavy amount of damage, or try to heal myself a few times and end up running out of power and then dying.

From the picture about warspeech, looks like they changed the animation and the induction for casting it. I'm not a big fan of change, and I liked the rock/paper/scissors animation with the swirling ground and horns. I am bummed about this, since the longer induction means no minstrel will dare to think of dropping warspeech anymore to help out a fellow.

This will make solo'ng quite depressing, and I haven't had a positive outlook on the game. I'll check back regularly for updates, changes, and more opinions about the minstrel changes. However, it is likely my break will extend beyond the RoI launch indefinitely.

Originally Posted by Familiarity

Thanks, Cloudie, for taking the time with the thread to inform those of us who aren't in the beta.

I am disappointed Orion didn't keep to the second revision of the bubble. 1700 - 1900 absorbed damage isn't much in terms of PvE and especially in PvP. Minstrel's survivability is going down due to this as well as increased power cost for heals. I can either keep damaging a creep that has 12k+ morale and outputting a heavy amount of damage, or try to heal myself a few times and end up running out of power and then dying.

From the picture about warspeech, looks like they changed the animation and the induction for casting it. I'm not a big fan of change, and I liked the rock/paper/scissors animation with the swirling ground and horns. I am bummed about this, since the longer induction means no minstrel will dare to think of dropping warspeech anymore to help out a fellow.

I agree with you on the bubble. I was expecting 4 times base power but i guess they reduced it because we got a 1 min cd on it. Going to miss the old bubble which saved my life so often in PvP.

I dont know where you got the idea that they changed warspeech induction or animation in anyway? The induction is still the same 5s so the animation will probably also be the same. I like the fact we don't have the tail affect and only a 10s cd on it, this will make me drop warspeech more often to save someone.

Originally Posted by Familiarity

Thanks, Cloudie, for taking the time with the thread to inform those of us who aren't in the beta.

I am disappointed Orion didn't keep to the second revision of the bubble. 1700 - 1900 absorbed damage isn't much in terms of PvE and especially in PvP. Minstrel's survivability is going down due to this as well as increased power cost for heals. I can either keep damaging a creep that has 12k+ morale and outputting a heavy amount of damage, or try to heal myself a few times and end up running out of power and then dying.

From the picture about warspeech, looks like they changed the animation and the induction for casting it. I'm not a big fan of change, and I liked the rock/paper/scissors animation with the swirling ground and horns. I am bummed about this, since the longer induction means no minstrel will dare to think of dropping warspeech anymore to help out a fellow.

This will make solo'ng quite depressing, and I haven't had a positive outlook on the game. I'll check back regularly for updates, changes, and more opinions about the minstrel changes. However, it is likely my break will extend beyond the RoI launch indefinitely.

From what I understand our WS damage will be through the roof.

Can't list enough adjectives to describe how wonderful your minstrel guide is, Narlinde! Thank you for taking the time to write it! Now I won't be in a state of shock when I log on on launch day.

Originally Posted by Tamiya

Thanks for write-up.

Looks like a few things didn't turn out the way they were initially proposed to be.

i. Hammerhand was supposed to be a gamble for real power return. There's no point in using it if it doesn't give bonus power after expiration. I might as well just BC myself to heal back that 2k morale instead of putting up a shield for no reason.
ii. The 4-traitline improvement to Tale of Warding was removed because we were supposed to get the Improved Tale at higher level (thus no need to trait for it).

There are the two I can remember off the top of my head.


The increase to CtG cooldown is a major bummer too. I worked so hard for the OD set just for it. There has never been any mention of this change in any of the dev diaries.


Hopefully these are all oversights and beta-players have bugged them.



EDIT: Some relevant quotes



Here Orion says that he's planning on shorter cooldown for CtG, and PoS 4-deep tale bonus as 66+ enhancements. CtG is one of the few ways for a PoS minstrel to make up for loss of healing by letting the captains spam their heals instead. I honestly don't see an increased cooldown as beneficial to the PoS line in any way.

Can't find anything on the Hammerhand part. There are however some posts saying it's just a wager to get that power cost back if shield remains in tact, so I might have misunderstood the original intent all along.

CtG is not supposed to be that long. It will likely not be adjusted until after the release of Isengard. (Sorry)

Originally Posted by Orion

CtG is not supposed to be that long. It will likely not be adjusted until after the release of Isengard. (Sorry)

Orion, what's your take on the power issue? Was healing costs meant to be that steep? If so, can you explain why? What did you have in mind to help offset such a steep power cost? (I understand you're working on instruments, but I'd like to know what your thoughts are on rotations and such for endurance fights.)

A note or two on Armour of Song:

1) All armour sources are increased by 20% including skill buffs.

2) Wearing medium armour when RoI goes live will turn that armour into light armour and bind it to you.

Originally Posted by hillard1959

Orion, what's your take on the power issue? Was healing costs meant to be that steep? If so, can you explain why? What did you have in mind to help offset such a steep power cost? (I understand you're working on instruments, but I'd like to know what your thoughts are on rotations and such for endurance fights.)

I'm not actually in the office. (Out on paternity, but I will be lurking to answer questions over the next few days.) The steep power cost is an issue that we will continue to monitor. Minstrels have a unique ability to overcome this in many ways and I think that the changes to instruments will help immensely.

Dev Diary should drop tomorrow...and explain more. Rotations for endurance fights will require the minstrel to sacrifice top end DPS for longer sustained DPS by running the power reduction ballads.

Originally Posted by Orion

I'm not actually in the office. (Out on paternity, but I will be lurking to answer questions over the next few days.) The steep power cost is an issue that we will continue to monitor. Minstrels have a unique ability to overcome this in many ways and I think that the changes to instruments will help immensely.

Dev Diary should drop tomorrow...and explain more. Rotations for endurance fights will require the minstrel to sacrifice top end DPS for longer sustained DPS by running the power reduction ballads.

So, not actually all that different from now in a few respects. Thank you, Orion.

Originally Posted by Orion

I'm not actually in the office. (Out on paternity, but I will be lurking to answer questions over the next few days.) The steep power cost is an issue that we will continue to monitor. Minstrels have a unique ability to overcome this in many ways and I think that the changes to instruments will help immensely.

Dev Diary should drop tomorrow...and explain more. Rotations for endurance fights will require the minstrel to sacrifice top end DPS for longer sustained DPS by running the power reduction ballads.

Congratulations, Orion, and thank you very much for taking time out of your day to leave us these notes.

Originally Posted by Orion

CtG is not supposed to be that long. It will likely not be adjusted until after the release of Isengard. (Sorry)

Grats on baby!

CtG's what is not supposed to be that long? I hope it's the cooldown. As long as it's an issue getting looked at, I am happy and don't care when.

Originally Posted by Orion

I'm not actually in the office. (Out on paternity, but I will be lurking to answer questions over the next few days.)

Congrats!!!!

(now, please try to CtG fixed for us before launch )

Best wishes!!

CtG Cooldown and reductions are the things that are too long. (Clarification)

Thanks for taking time off your leave to answer these concerns by the way. It does make a lot of difference.

Of all the changes we've seen so far, I'm most excited about the Minstrel and the LM, and it looks like the Minstrel will be the first I bring to 75.

Originally Posted by Orion

CtG is not supposed to be that long. It will likely not be adjusted until after the release of Isengard. (Sorry)

27 days til release and you cant fix this?

Teldra