Thread: Shield and Song Brother Changes

We have one glaring problem with Shield Brother: It is too good for BOTH healing and tanking, leaving Song Brother as the red-headed stepchild of the Brother Skills. So the changes:

Shield Brother:
Inspire: Gains a PoT equal to Blade Brother's Inspire's PoT
The legacy for Strength of Will is rolled into Strength of Will, replaced by a major of the Dev's choice.

Song Brother:

• Buff:
  +ICPR
  +Tactical Mastery (instead of -healing threat)
• Inspire becomes a high powered Blade Brother Inspire, PoT stays the same
• To Arms stays the same (+25% healing)
• Strength of Will loses the healing cost reduction, and instead becomes +5% crit.

Thoughts?

Edit:
Overhauled the suggestion to minimize changes based on feedback.

Originally Posted by Almagnus1

We have one glaring problem with Shield Brother: It is too good for BOTH healing and tanking, leaving Song Brother as the red-headed stepchild of the Brother Skills. To fix this, Shield Brother and Song Brother must change. I know what a lot of you are thinking "Shield Brother's really good, don't screw with it"....

Shield Brother:
Inspire does not change
To Arms does not change
Strength of Will becomes:
+level *10 to Physical and Tactical Mitigations (+750 to Physical and Tactical Mitigations at 75) for the Shield Brother target
+level * 2 to Physical and Tactical Mitigations (+150 to Physical and Tactical Mitigations at 75) to the Fellow Brother targets

Song Brother:
Inspire = Shield Brother Inspire's Healing + Blade Brother's Power Return (so it's the best of all Inspires, as it should be)
To Arms:
+10% to all Crit Chance, +20% to all Crit Magnitude to Shield Brother Target
+3% to all Crit Chance, +5% to all Crit Magnitude to Fellow Brother Targets
Strength of Will becomes:
+Incoming healing (Shield Brother's current Strength of Will)

One other change - the Strength of Will legacy needs to be rolled into the current skill. That legacy is WAAAAY to situational to be a major legacy.

Thoughts?

I used to think similiar to you on this. But I don't anymore.

Shield Brother is your best brother skill for healing. Plain and simple. Even for supporting your ministrels I think it's better. Being able to use Inspire to regen health and an extra 20% increase to your heals - nothing Song Brother offers even remotely compares to these buffs in terms of raw healing.

BUT

Song Brother is incredibly useful as well, especially on long fights or in power-intensive fights. The power regen from this skill is just insane, and can recover your entire power pool in a matter of minutes. So it makes a great emergency skill to switch to if you or someone else in the group are running low on power. So it can very useful as well. So i have found myself using both of these skills to great effect lately.

So while at first I thought the entire concept of Song Brother was idiotic. I've come around, and think the way things are now is just fine and I even like the added strategy options having two viable brother skills available to HoH Captains bring.

And I disagree with you about Strength of Will. I love that legacy, and don't feel it's situational.

Originally Posted by Jeremi

Shield Brother is your best brother skill for healing. Plain and simple. Even for supporting your ministrels I think it's better. Being able to use Inspire to regen health and an extra 20% increase to your heals - nothing Song Brother offers even remotely compares to these buffs in terms of raw healing.

And this illustrates why Song Brother is broken.

Originally Posted by Jeremi

Song Brother is incredibly useful as well, especially on long fights or in power-intensive fights. The power regen from this skill is just insane, and can recover your entire power pool in a matter of minutes. So it makes a great emergency skill to switch to if you or someone else in the group are running low on power. So it can very useful as well. So i have found myself using both of these skills to great effect lately.

Isn't power restore what the LMs are for?

Or maybe we need to be a crutch for them too?

Originally Posted by Almagnus1

Isn't power restore what the LMs are for?

Or maybe we need to be a crutch for them too?

This seems to be an indication that you are playing the wrong class. The answer is YES.
A captain is a buffing/support class. Not just a "Support the tank" or "Support the healer" class, but a class that makes EVERY member of the group better. To that end, a captain should look at power return as: "You think we need power throws? HAH! Not in my fellowship we don't!"
Remember, the LM is also debuff, DPS, and CC sometimes.
As a main DPS member, I would prefer to have a songbrother cappy any day of the week, and even better is that it improves tanking and healing as well. Guard using CaB on CD for power? Now he uses a threat skill. Mini spamming composure coda? Now the anthem can remain up. Champ spamming 2nd wind? Now more damage. Burg popping FM's for power? Now for the stun with anything else just a bonus. Hunter using strength of the earth? Now no more need to regen 5% of the time
Shieldbrother? Helps with healing and...... healing....
Heck, even the LM can do more DPS or power throws without needing to power drain first.
And all that is just from using Inspire, consider the boost to healing as well.
No, I firmly believe that both brother skills are excellent (and perhaps bladebrother too, though I have not seen it used much yet)

Originally Posted by Strikerin

This seems to be an indication that you are playing the wrong class. The answer is YES.
A captain is a buffing/support class. Not just a "Support the tank" or "Support the healer" class, but a class that makes EVERY member of the group better. To that end, a captain should look at power return as: "You think we need power throws? HAH! Not in my fellowship we don't!"
Remember, the LM is also debuff, DPS, and CC sometimes.
As a main DPS member, I would prefer to have a songbrother cappy any day of the week, and even better is that it improves tanking and healing as well. Guard using CaB on CD for power? Now he uses a threat skill. Mini spamming composure coda? Now the anthem can remain up. Champ spamming 2nd wind? Now more damage. Burg popping FM's for power? Now for the stun with anything else just a bonus. Hunter using strength of the earth? Now no more need to regen 5% of the time
Shieldbrother? Helps with healing and...... healing....
Heck, even the LM can do more DPS or power throws without needing to power drain first.
And all that is just from using Inspire, consider the boost to healing as well.
No, I firmly believe that both brother skills are excellent (and perhaps bladebrother too, though I have not seen it used much yet)

So what you're saying is that you'd rather have the captain running in a group with Song Brother instead of Blade Brother, right?

Edit:
Sorry, being overly ornery and a tad bit to snarky atm...

The big problem I have with the captain trait lines is the mismatch between capstone, brother skill, and what's observed in play.

Capstone wise:
Master of War (LtC) => Blade Brother
Leader of Men => Shield Brother
Hands of Healing => Song Brother

What the Traitlines are supposed to do:
Lead the Charge => DPS
Hands of Healing => Healing
Leader of Men => Tanking

So combining the above, you should see:
Blade Brother => DPS
Shield Brother => Tanking
Song Brother => Healing

But what actually occurs in practice is:
DPS => Blade Brother
Tanking => Shield Brother
Healing => Shield Brother
Power Restore => Song Brother (an un-asked for role that was given to us - oh well...)

What is expected, and what actually happens are two different things, thus, Song Brother needs to be tweaked so it better matches the traitline it's been assigned to.

Originally Posted by Almagnus1

So what you're saying is that you'd rather have the captain running in a group with Song Brother instead of Blade Brother, right?

I think if you read the thread you will see my statement as: "I would rather have the captain with Song brother then Shield brother."
To be perfectly honest, even though I would be happy to try out Blade-brother...I have not had any of the cappies I normally play with using it, so I'm not even totally sure what it does.
I have done a significant amount of research on cappy skills, traits, and legacies... but Blade-brother effects are poorly documented and I am unsure if the benefit outweighs the cost at this time. Further, because I have not had the privilege of playing with it yet I cant really say which "feels" better.
I do know that between runs with shield and song brother, I notice things running far smoother with song.

My cappy has a looong way to go to reach 75, but will most likely be one of the first of my "Healing" classes to reach the cap.
Personally, I like how I started in the game: Hunter as first toon to learn the map (ports!!!), mechanics, and a good solo class/non critical if you screw up learning. Guardian second because I now understand aggro importance (####### power!) and tanks are always needed.
Burg after that because some instances require burgs and stacking burgs never hurts.
Fourth is cappy, so I can start learning healing and buffing where again, a screw-up wont likely cost the encounter.
That puts me easily 6-7 months out from having any more classes brought up after those four. My GRD is just getting into the endgame now (out of Moria finally)

Originally Posted by Strikerin

I think if you read the thread you will see my statement as: "I would rather have the captain with Song brother then Shield brother."
To be perfectly honest, even though I would be happy to try out Blade-brother...I have not had any of the cappies I normally play with using it, so I'm not even totally sure what it does.
I have done a significant amount of research on cappy skills, traits, and legacies... but Blade-brother effects are poorly documented and I am unsure if the benefit outweighs the cost at this time. Further, because I have not had the privilege of playing with it yet I cant really say which "feels" better.
I do know that between runs with shield and song brother, I notice things running far smoother with song.

If the captains you're running with aren't using Blade Brother as the default brother skill, they are doing the entire fellow a disservice.

Blade Brother got it right. It greatly improves DPS by giving not only +damage as the to arms skill, but also a HoT/PoT as the Inspire, and -attack duration that stacks with War Cry as the Strength of Will skill. Throw in +Crit on the brother target itself, and the skill becomes superior in most situations than either of the other two brother skills.

Unfortunately, it's the level 74 skill, so captains won't see it until endgame.

Originally Posted by Strikerin

My cappy has a looong way to go to reach 75, but will most likely be one of the first of my "Healing" classes to reach the cap.
Personally, I like how I started in the game: Hunter as first toon to learn the map (ports!!!), mechanics, and a good solo class/non critical if you screw up learning. Guardian second because I now understand aggro importance (####### power!) and tanks are always needed.
Burg after that because some instances require burgs and stacking burgs never hurts.
Fourth is cappy, so I can start learning healing and buffing where again, a screw-up wont likely cost the encounter.
That puts me easily 6-7 months out from having any more classes brought up after those four. My GRD is just getting into the endgame now (out of Moria finally)

If all you are doing on a captain is healing/buffing, you are doing it wrong. You need to learn to interleave DPS, healing, and buffing skills so you can maintain a decent DPS and HPS score (well, as far as captains are concerned). This is why stacking might is crucial, because it contributes to both masteries, and having a significantly high might score will (usually) let you ignore +mastery gear in favor of other pieces.

Originally Posted by Almagnus1

Shield Brother:
Inspire does not change
To Arms does not change
Strength of Will becomes:
+level *10 to Physical and Tactical Mitigations (+750 to Physical and Tactical Mitigations at 75) for the Shield Brother target
+level * 2 to Physical and Tactical Mitigations (+150 to Physical and Tactical Mitigations at 75) to the Fellow Brother targets

Interesting suggestion, but SoW seems too similar to what To Arms does. (Tooltip on To Arms says that it reduces incoming damage, but I think it might actually be implemented by increasing mitigations -- Blade-Brother To Arms does the same thing with Tactical/Physical Mastery.) I'm not sure I have a better suggestion, though. But I agree with the basic premise that the Incoming Healing Rating modifier is inappropriately stepping on Song-Brother's toes now.

Song Brother:
Inspire = Shield Brother Inspire's Healing + Blade Brother's Power Return (so it's the best of all Inspires, as it should be)
To Arms:
+20% Outgoing Healing, +10% to all Crit Chance, +20% to all Crit Magnitude to Shield Brother Target
+3% to all Crit Chance, +5% to all Crit Magnitude to Fellow Brother Targets
Strength of Will becomes:
+Incoming healing (Shield Brother's current Strength of Will)

I actually have something of an alternative suggestion here. Your suggestion is probably better for the current purpose of supporting a second healer in a group, however I think there is a potential to use this as a healing tool instead, one that remains useful when the Captain is the sole healer in a group (3/6-man).

Song Brother: +5% Outgoing Healing, ICPR.
Inspire: Same as current Blade-Brother. (Blade-Brother Inspire becomes power only.)
To Arms: Applies a HoT for the duration of the skill use. On target, equivalent to Shield-Brother Inspire's HoT. On fellowship, 50% of that.
Strength of Will: -10% power cost on all skills, -8% on fellowship.

So, the target of the brother skill moves from the Minstrel/RK to the tank, and To Arms becomes a healing skill. The OGH doesn't do that much for a tank, but it will increase any of their self-heals; that does more for a Warden than a Guardian, but I don't think that's necessarily a problem. The power restoration utility aspect is still in effect, and actually becomes stronger due to SoW applying on non-healing skills.

The net effect will be that Song-Brother becomes far and away the superior -Brother skill to use for AoE heals. It sort of already is, but the difference between using it and Shield-Brother is not significant enough. By turning To Arms into a HoT and restoring Inspire's HoT, we'd be able to keep a constant flow of healing up to make up for our relatively unreliable "burst" healing.

My only concern is that its self-healing could potentially overshadow Shield Brother for tanking, but that can be solved with appropriate changes to Shield Brother SoW's effect on incoming damage.

One other change - the Strength of Will legacy needs to be rolled into the current skill. That legacy is WAAAAY to situational to be a major legacy.

That or just rescaled so that SoW starts out at +10% or +15% incoming healing, then the legacy adds the rest to meet the current maximum. As opposed to now, where it literally triples the magnitude of the skill's benefit. I also don't like that it applies to only Shield-Brother, though I do understand why it had to be that way when the new Brother skills were first introduced.

Originally Posted by Almagnus1

We have one glaring problem with Shield Brother: It is too good for BOTH healing and tanking, leaving Song Brother as the red-headed stepchild of the Brother Skills. To fix this, Shield Brother and Song Brother must change. I know what a lot of you are thinking "Shield Brother's really good, don't screw with it"....

I agree here. The problem lies in Strength of Will skill improved by 15% from legacy. 20% greater incoming healing is just too good to pass when healing/being healed. As such song brother is reduced to power providing skill via it's inspire. Although I'd go for victory banner and blade brother in this case.

Originally Posted by Almagnus1

Strength of Will
Shield Brother:
Inspire does not change
To Arms does not change
Strength of Will becomes:
+level *10 to Physical and Tactical Mitigations (+750 to Physical and Tactical Mitigations at 75) for the Shield Brother target
+level * 2 to Physical and Tactical Mitigations (+150 to Physical and Tactical Mitigations at 75) to the Fellow Brother targets

As furtim I don't think we need two mitigation skills here. I think b/p/e or threat(but controversial due to FS wide effect) increase would be a better here.

Originally Posted by Almagnus1

Song Brother:
Inspire = Shield Brother Inspire's Healing + Blade Brother's Power Return (so it's the best of all Inspires, as it should be)
To Arms:
+20% Outgoing Healing, +10% to all Crit Chance, +20% to all Crit Magnitude to Shield Brother Target
+3% to all Crit Chance, +5% to all Crit Magnitude to Fellow Brother Targets
Strength of Will becomes:
+Incoming healing (Shield Brother's current Strength of Will)

I think it'd make to arms just too good, boosting offence and healing at same time. My suggestion would be to change crit chance to healing skills crit chance. But that might be difficult to implement. I agree with inspire. It definitely should give us extra heals instead taking them away.

So you want to buff the everloving #### out of Song brother and nerf shield brother to the ground?

Ok maybe not as extreme as that, but this would be a clear-cut nerf to shield brother. 750 mitigation is what? 2% damage reduction? There is no way in hell that 2% damage reduction is equivalent to +20% incoming healing (which is close to 7200 rating). The fellowship version is bad too. 4% incoming healing is ~1500 incoming healing rating, so let me ask you would a tank trade 150 mitigation for 1500 incoming healing? My guess would be no.

Those are also huge buffs to song brother, like absolutely massive. Right now it gives 25% OGHR, which is roughly equivalent to a 15% increase in healing. Your proposed change would be rather ridiculous, as a captain it would be a 10% (rating increase) + 16%(from crit + crit mag) = 25% increase. If you stack that with the incoming healing rating being rolled into the skill as well, then song brother will give you an approximate 32.5% increase to healing on the tank and 16.5 to the fellowship. Plus a strong Hot on the tank and a weak Pot to the group. Wow, I might have to take my original statement back.

Just to comment on our power restore abilities, ever since we had access to the helegrod set we have been able to out-power heal LMs. Now with Song brother it isn't even a contest, don't forget that RC restores around 600 power to each person in your group, the Power heal can also crit and I believe it is affected by Relentless optimism.

Share the power cannot crit, costs a huge amount of power for the LM and I think restores just shy of 1500 power to a single target? It's still a great skill for getting power to where it's needed most, and none of it will be wasted, but our power restores are far stronger. Song Brother inspire is the strongest power restore ability in the game (specifically when coupled with Fellowship Brother). So really I would say that power restoration is one of our greatest group contributions. It's also the only justification I can come up with as to why our class is so far behind everyone else's.

Anyways, I think the most useless part about song brother is the -% power cost. Why do you need lower power costs when you already have infinite power? If anything needs fixing it's that, I would change it to be +5% critical healing chance which is NOT hard to implement. Minstrels have life singer, which gives them a +10% critical heal chance. Additionally if you want it to be useful for the group as well, simply change it to a +5% all critical chance, 5% for the main target and 4% for the fellowship.

Some Math:
Assuming 20% base critical chance here's the effect the critical portion would have on each heal class. Note that minstrels have Life singer which is +10% chance to score critical heals. The also have Life Singer which is a 25% critical multiplier and an instrument which gives them an additional 20% critical multiplier. Rk's don't scale well off crit as you will see.

Captain:
Before buff 20% *1.0 = 20%
After Buff 30% *1.2 = 36%
Average healing increase (due to crit): 36%-20% = 16%

Minstrel
Before buff 30% *0.95 = 28.5%
After buff 40% * 1.15 = 46%
Average healing increase (due to crit): 46%-28.5% = 17.5%

RK
Before buff 20% * 0.5 = 10%
After buff 30% * 0.7 = 21%
Average healing increase (due to crit): 21%-10% = 11%

All three brother skills are useful. The way I generally use them is Song-Brother for power and burst healing, Blade-Brother for dps: limelight dailies, skirm raids, Draigoch, and Shield-Brother only when the healer can't keep up with tank damage. I have three problems with the brother skills.
One: Strength of Will Healing is only useful with Shield-Brother skill and Fellowship Brother uses the default value of 5 to calculate the fellowship wide increase, 4, instead of using the 20% increase of the legacies and giving the fellowship around a 8% increase.
Two: Tying the brother skills to capstone. Often the way I am traited doesn't fit with the brother skill needed. During 3 mans when I am healing I want Shield Brother on the tank to help my healing and to offset the morale cost of WoC. I trait dps then use Song for the power restore. The connection between capstone and brother skill is awkward because the capstones are meant to improve your performance while the brother skills are primarily meant to improve everyone else.
Three: The late level of blade and song brother. These skills are far too important to be given out at such a late level. Moria instances alone make these skills useful at a lower level. Pre-ROI I was leveling with a hunter. I used revealing mark and dropped +25% damage of ToArms and OB on signatures and elites and we tore through everything. Blade brother is far more useful leveling than shield. Additionally, two of our legendaries we get in 55-60ish don't confer all the benefits they should until the 70s. Dps and leveling speed is slow as it is. There is no reason to deny us the dps benefits of blade brother until 74.

Originally Posted by Almagnus1

We have one glaring problem with Shield Brother: It is too good for BOTH healing and tanking, leaving Song Brother as the red-headed stepchild of the Brother Skills. To fix this, Shield Brother and Song Brother must change. I know what a lot of you are thinking "Shield Brother's really good, don't screw with it"....

Shield Brother:
Inspire does not change
To Arms does not change
Strength of Will becomes:
+level *10 to Physical and Tactical Mitigations (+750 to Physical and Tactical Mitigations at 75) for the Shield Brother target
+level * 2 to Physical and Tactical Mitigations (+150 to Physical and Tactical Mitigations at 75) to the Fellow Brother targets

Song Brother:
Inspire = Shield Brother Inspire's Healing + Blade Brother's Power Return (so it's the best of all Inspires, as it should be)
To Arms:
+20% Outgoing Healing, +10% to all Crit Chance, +20% to all Crit Magnitude to Shield Brother Target
+3% to all Crit Chance, +5% to all Crit Magnitude to Fellow Brother Targets
Strength of Will becomes:
+Incoming healing (Shield Brother's current Strength of Will)

One other change - the Strength of Will legacy needs to be rolled into the current skill. That legacy is WAAAAY to situational to be a major legacy.

Thoughts?

For a Warden tank perspective the change to Shield Brother would not be very useful for using on a Warden tank, they cap mitigation far to easily as it is. Why not just a -incoming damage % (not raiting), say 5% on the SB target and -1.5% on the group.

Song Brother sow: transfers 50% of the healing threat done to the captain.
to arms: increases outgoing healing by 25%.



I don't think many people would like this solution...
The theory being that if you are stealing 50% of the healer's threat, and adding your own heals on top of that, all the untanked mobs will go to the captain, instead of the healer. Trouble is the sow legacy offers no benefit if the captain's the only healer.
--------
re: other suggestions
Losing the 20% incoming healing from shield bro would be a huge downer in my eyes unless you're going to give us 15% mitigations on the tank full time. Maybe switch the abilities of To Arms and strength of will.

Originally Posted by DuneBug

Song Brother sow: transfers 50% of the healing threat done to the captain.

This actually might be a nice skill for shield brother SoW. As tank You'd love to get aggro from healers. The problem is with fellowship wide effect. Hunters or RKs would not necessarily want that.

Originally Posted by Fuin

This actually might be a nice skill for shield brother SoW. As tank You'd love to get aggro from healers. The problem is with fellowship wide effect. Hunters or RKs would not necessarily want that.

yeah, but if you wanted to put it on the tank it wouldn't do anything ... unless it was a warden tank, and he wouldn't enjoy you taking his threat... Unless you were suggesting that shield brother would just make the tank suck threat from all nearby healers? That would work. Not sure turbine would go for it.

In another thread someone had a better idea about shield bro increasing the threat of healing skills. I thought that was pretty solid.

Soo.... what would be a better Strength of Will for Shield Brother that also helps with the tanks, but doesn't step on Song Brother's toes?
Aside from a stronger mitigation boost (which may not do anything on a primary tank, and may be too strong on the rest of the fellow), we've got BPE, Crit Defence, and armor. I was going for mitigations because that's an area where the captain tanks are lacking comparatively.

As far as the To Arms for song brother goes, I was aiming for something that would be useful by just about anyone, yet still remain a really good healing too. I was shooting for something that was an interesting alternative to Blade Brother, but I think I missed the mark and went OP XD

Originally Posted by Almagnus1

Soo.... what would be a better Strength of Will for Shield Brother that also helps with the tanks, but doesn't step on Song Brother's toes?
Aside from a stronger mitigation boost (which may not do anything on a primary tank, and may be too strong on the rest of the fellow), we've got BPE, Crit Defence, and armor. I was going for mitigations because that's an area where the captain tanks are lacking comparatively.

As far as the To Arms for song brother goes, I was aiming for something that would be useful by just about anyone, yet still remain a really good healing too. I was shooting for something that was an interesting alternative to Blade Brother, but I think I missed the mark and went OP XD

I was going to suggest Critical defense, but my post got too long. Perhaps a flat boost or a very large rating, even with LM debuffs tanks are not crit immune so it would still be very useful for them. Perhaps more importantly as tanks captains have sub par crit defense, even with a shield and crit defense relics. I was thinking a little more than 5% for the primary target, although it seems to be the magic number for brother skills.

As for Song brother, yes I think your suggested change may have been a little over the top. I stand by the fact that the SoW is the area that needs the most love. I think we could avoid the whole shield brother revamp if we just made the SoW from Song brother give 5% critical chance to all skills on the main target and 4% for the fellowship. That way it's a hybrid heal/dps boost all in one, to-arms would be wasted on the fellowship, but if you give one skill too many benefits it becomes the only choice.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, but for some reason people get mad when they feel pigeon holed.

Originally Posted by TheBigMenace

I was going to suggest Critical defense, but my post got too long. Perhaps a flat boost or a very large rating, even with LM debuffs tanks are not crit immune so it would still be very useful for them. Perhaps more importantly as tanks captains have sub par crit defense, even with a shield and crit defense relics. I was thinking a little more than 5% for the primary target, although it seems to be the magic number for brother skills.

As for Song brother, yes I think your suggested change may have been a little over the top. I stand by the fact that the SoW is the area that needs the most love. I think we could avoid the whole shield brother revamp if we just made the SoW from Song brother give 5% critical chance to all skills on the main target and 4% for the fellowship. That way it's a hybrid heal/dps boost all in one, to-arms would be wasted on the fellowship, but if you give one skill too many benefits it becomes the only choice.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, but for some reason people get mad when they feel pigeon holed.

Yeah.... I think I need to go back to the drawing board on this one =/

Been thinking about this a bit more.... gonna make some changes to the OP...

Originally Posted by TheBigMenace

I think we could avoid the whole shield brother revamp if we just made the SoW from Song brother give 5% critical chance to all skills on the main target and 4% for the fellowship.

That's actually the way to go... Also thinking the threat reduction from the buff should be replaced with a +tactical mastery buff...

The above two changes would make Song Brother an interesting choice for the wardens, so the skill would have more utility.

Song Bro's Inspire should also become a high-powered version of the Blade Brother Inspire - having that extra healing boost would help bring some oomph back to HoH.

Im gonna give you an example of situation that calls for song brother rather than shield brother. Foundry first boss fight giving the tank 20% healing bonus is not helping very much because the fellowship usually needs heals more often from ambience factors (steam, lava, flames) rather than the boss hitting. Giving the minstrel +25% healing will make it so much easier to heal all members rather than just having a bonus on the tank.

Originally Posted by Despotis

Im gonna give you an example of situation that calls for song brother rather than shield brother. Foundry first boss fight giving the tank 20% healing bonus is not helping very much because the fellowship usually needs heals more often from ambience factors (steam, lava, flames) rather than the boss hitting. Giving the minstrel +25% healing will make it so much easier to heal all members rather than just having a bonus on the tank.

But even then You can use 20% inc healing on tank(and 4% on others) and switch to song brother and give 20% heals to mini(or other way around) as those are different skills.

Originally Posted by Fuin

But even then You can use 20% inc healing on tank(and 4% on others) and switch to song brother and give 20% heals to mini(or other way around) as those are different skills.

This is no longer possible. The moment you take off shield brother your tank will lose the 20% buff. Others will retain the 4% inc healing though.

Knew I should have posted this back here too...

What I'm thinking now:

Shield Brother:
Inspire: Gains a PoT equal to Blade Brother's Inspire's PoT
The legacy for Strength of Will is rolled into Strength of Will, replaced by a major of the Dev's choice.

Song Brother:

• Buff:
  +ICPR
  +Tactical Mastery (instead of -healing threat)
• Inspire becomes a high powered Blade Brother Inspire, PoT stays the same
• To Arms stays the same (+25% healing)
• Strength of Will loses the healing cost reduction, and instead becomes +5% crit.

Originally Posted by Despotis

This is no longer possible. The moment you take off shield brother your tank will lose the 20% buff. Others will retain the 4% inc healing though.

Really, this bug needs to be fixed, cause whenever an XBro turns off, all buffs from that captain should evaporate.

Originally Posted by Almagnus1

Really, this bug needs to be fixed, cause whenever an XBro turns off, all buffs from that captain should evaporate.

Yay, now cappies can get the mini bug
Really, its not that big a deal. 4% incoming healing is pretty minor on a target needing only few heals.
It is a bug, but how about they fix it so the legacies affects fellowship brother before they fix things making captains slightly (very slightly) more effective.

Originally Posted by Strikerin

Yay, now cappies can get the mini bug
Really, its not that big a deal. 4% incoming healing is pretty minor on a target needing only few heals.
It is a bug, but how about they fix it so the legacies affects fellowship brother before they fix things making captains slightly (very slightly) more effective.

Unless you're referring to the +vocal/+melee healing not affecting FB targets (which I'm under the assumption they were, but wouldn't at all be surprised if they weren't).

Either way, can you provide proof that they're broken?

Originally Posted by Almagnus1

And this illustrates why Song Brother is broken.



Isn't power restore what the LMs are for?

Or maybe we need to be a crutch for them too?

Like I said Almagnus, I used to think like you did - but I don't anymore. If something is useful and worth using, you can't really describe it as "broken". And Song Brother deffinitely has its uses.

I completely agree with you that Shield-Brother is the superior tool for healing. But it's nice to have Song Brother available as well for an emergency tool to recover power when it's needed. It adds more strategic depth to playing a HoH Captain, gives us more options and security - and while you see it as mimicing the role of a loremaster, I see it differently.

I see it as boosting our capacity in a support role. And while it we may not equal a loremaster's abilities by comparison, it's still a very handy tool to have, especially when you consider a loremaster may not always be present in your group.

Originally Posted by Jeremi

Like I said Almagnus, I used to think like you did - but I don't anymore. If something is useful and worth using, you can't really describe it as "broken". And Song Brother deffinitely has its uses.

I completely agree with you that Shield-Brother is the superior tool for healing. But it's nice to have Song Brother available as well for an emergency tool to recover power when it's needed. It adds more strategic depth to playing a HoH Captain, gives us more options and security - and while you see it as mimicing the role of a loremaster, I see it differently.

I see it as boosting our capacity in a support role. And while it we may not equal a loremaster's abilities by comparison, it's still a very handy tool to have, especially when you consider a loremaster may not always be present in your group.

However, it doesn't mesh as well with the capstone as Shield/LoM and Blade/MoW do. That's broken, because you typically don't have the self-brother while running in a HoH capstone build, when you typically DO have the appropriate self-brother skill running in the other two capstone builds.

This illustrates a fundamental flaw in the Brother Skill design because Shield Brother is (currently) a better healing tool than Song Brother is - because so much of what it does for tanking works really well for healing. Almost no one will dispute this. And yet, Song Brother is the HoH capstone self brother - this make no sense if the non-capstone Brother skill is so much better at what the traitline does than the one attached to the capstone. Thus, Song Brother is broken.

So where is Song Brother deficient?
Buff
-Healing Threat
We lost the -healing threat trait because no one used it (and was generally considered a waste of space), and I've yet to see a healer actually get agro when the tank knows what they are doing. This aspect of the buff needs to be changed to tactical mastery - which is something that will positively benefit the healer AND the captain.

Inspire
If the devs really want to have us pick up the roll of power restores, then all of our Inspires need to look more like Blade Bro's Inspire, and less like the other two. It also makes sense for Song Brother's Inspire to be the best of them all (because it's putting more emphasis on.... well... healing), which is why I want Song Brother's Inspire to pick up Shield Brother's Inspire's HoT, and Shield Brother's Inspire to get a PoT equivalent to Blade Brother. This would solidify the role of power restoring, and also make it traitline agnostic.

If a HoT was added to Song Brother, it also gives it something that the other two brother skills have (and quite frankly, Song Brother needs), and also starts to weaken the argument that Shield Brother is the go-to healing Brother, especially when you take the Song Brother/HoH capstone connection into consideration. That connection should make sense, and Shield Brother SHOULD NOT be pulling double duty here.

To Arms
+25% healing makes sense for what the line is does, and while useful to just about all classes, most will not take huge advantage of it except for healers. This might just be one of those places where Song Brother eats it.

Strength of Will
When Song Brother's SoW is compared against Shield Brother's and Blade Brother's, you have a buff that benefits one or two people (-healing skills power costs) versus buffs that benefit the entire party (-attack duration and +incoming healing). By not having something that benefits everyone, and also the healer(s), this weakens Song Brother - which is why I'm favoring +5% crit as a replacement for the existing Song Brother buff. Again, by having a stronger Strength of Will, and one that benefits everyone, it helps make Song Brother a better tool to work with.

IMHO the issue here isn't song brother, (at least for the most part), it's the capstones.

Song brother has one obvious use on paper, (capstones aside). When your main tanking.

As long as you have the excess morale to let you survive the initial damage with your lower overal migations the benefits let your healer go all out as much as they wish, (right down to customising their build), without power worries and with the healing to make it work. The capstones just don't support this though. I personolly think the concept of capstone specific brother skill "effects you" buffs is flawed.

Song Brother is what you use to support a healer, (mainly used when tanking).

Sheild Brother is what you use to support a tank, (mainly used when healing).

Blade Brother is what you use to support a DPS, (mainly used any time the other two aren't optimal).

Yes Song brother isn't perfect, (ideially i'd like to see some threat transfer mechanic off the song brother target as well), but it's real issue isn't it's sutibility for a role, it's that the capstones don't support it best in that role.

If the capstones did not reflect 100% -Brother effects on the Captain, that mapping might apply. Fact is, though, Shield Brother and Blade Brother both match up with their capstones perfectly. Song Brother matches the HoH capstone in spirit, but provides insufficient healing in actual practice. That's what this thread is about.

If your main tanking there's unlikliy to be anyone you'd want to but sheild brother on though. It's a waste unless there's a need for a dedicated off tank, (examples do exist i'm aware). Thats the real issue. The brother skill that is ideial as an off role isn't allways the same as the one thats ideal if you take the main role. But the capstone only support one skill.

Originally Posted by Despotis

This is no longer possible. The moment you take off shield brother your tank will lose the 20% buff. Others will retain the 4% inc healing though.

Ah that's why I could swear I saw SoW buff stay on someone, it might not be tank though.

Originally Posted by Darth_Carl

Song Brother is what you use to support a healer, (mainly used when tanking).

Sheild Brother is what you use to support a tank, (mainly used when healing).

Blade Brother is what you use to support a DPS, (mainly used any time the other two aren't optimal).

Originally Posted by Darth_Carl

If your main tanking there's unlikliy to be anyone you'd want to but sheild brother on though. It's a waste unless there's a need for a dedicated off tank, (examples do exist i'm aware). Thats the real issue. The brother skill that is ideial as an off role isn't allways the same as the one thats ideal if you take the main role. But the capstone only support one skill.

Shield Brother on your self (stick it on the healer or an off tank, doesn't matter which) helps to fill in some of the gaps in our tanking ability and give us a lot of survivability that we whouldn't have normally. This is a case where the benefits to you outweigh the benefits to the group, because if the tank dies, the rest of the group is screwed.

From my own tanking experience, I wouldn't run with Song Bro out at all, but only Shield Brother because it makes that much of a difference.

Originally Posted by Fuin

Ah that's why I could swear I saw SoW buff stay on someone, it might not be tank though.

It's the Fellowship Brother effects that persist after toggling off the skill, and not the skill itself.

Originally Posted by Darth_Carl

IMHO the issue here isn't song brother, (at least for the most part), it's the capstones.

Song brother has one obvious use on paper, (capstones aside). When your main tanking.

As long as you have the excess morale to let you survive the initial damage with your lower overal migations the benefits let your healer go all out as much as they wish, (right down to customising their build), without power worries and with the healing to make it work. The capstones just don't support this though. I personolly think the concept of capstone specific brother skill "effects you" buffs is flawed.

Song Brother is what you use to support a healer, (mainly used when tanking).

Sheild Brother is what you use to support a tank, (mainly used when healing).

Blade Brother is what you use to support a DPS, (mainly used any time the other two aren't optimal).

Yes Song brother isn't perfect, (ideially i'd like to see some threat transfer mechanic off the song brother target as well), but it's real issue isn't it's sutibility for a role, it's that the capstones don't support it best in that role.

Yup I think the real issue is the capstones. When I go hands of healing, it generally means I am healing, but my best healing skills are in the Shield Brother line.

When I am tanking, Song Brother is exactly what I want (threat, power, etc).

If they just swapped the capstones, I would be very happy. It just doesn't make any sense the way it is right now.

Yeah, song and shield brother seem a little lop-sided to me. I figure Song-bro SoW could stand a change, and that could potentially set things right.

Originally Posted by Almagnus1

Shield Brother on your self (stick it on the healer or an off tank, doesn't matter which) helps to fill in some of the gaps in our tanking ability and give us a lot of survivability that we whouldn't have normally. This is a case where the benefits to you outweigh the benefits to the group, because if the tank dies, the rest of the group is screwed.

From my own tanking experience, I wouldn't run with Song Bro out at all, but only Shield Brother because it makes that much of a difference.

^This. When you're main tanking, you're not in a support role anymore. You buff yourself to make sure you do the best you can. Twenty percent inc healing on you, all day long. Anything added to the fellowship (20% inc healing on the champ, for example) is lagniappe.

If you or the healer have power problems that can't be fixed by anything but Song Bro, then use Song Bro. It's ok. It's still pretty good buffs to your survivabilty, in an indirect way. You can't beat +20% inc healing on a 100% uptime for tank healing, though.

Originally Posted by Almagnus1

However, it doesn't mesh as well with the capstone as Shield/LoM and Blade/MoW do. That's broken, because you typically don't have the self-brother while running in a HoH capstone build, when you typically DO have the appropriate self-brother skill running in the other two capstone builds.

This illustrates a fundamental flaw in the Brother Skill design because Shield Brother is (currently) a better healing tool than Song Brother is - because so much of what it does for tanking works really well for healing. Almost no one will dispute this. And yet, Song Brother is the HoH capstone self brother - this make no sense if the non-capstone Brother skill is so much better at what the traitline does than the one attached to the capstone. Thus, Song Brother is broken.

So where is Song Brother deficient?
Buff
-Healing Threat
We lost the -healing threat trait because no one used it (and was generally considered a waste of space), and I've yet to see a healer actually get agro when the tank knows what they are doing. This aspect of the buff needs to be changed to tactical mastery - which is something that will positively benefit the healer AND the captain.

Inspire
If the devs really want to have us pick up the roll of power restores, then all of our Inspires need to look more like Blade Bro's Inspire, and less like the other two. It also makes sense for Song Brother's Inspire to be the best of them all (because it's putting more emphasis on.... well... healing), which is why I want Song Brother's Inspire to pick up Shield Brother's Inspire's HoT, and Shield Brother's Inspire to get a PoT equivalent to Blade Brother. This would solidify the role of power restoring, and also make it traitline agnostic.

If a HoT was added to Song Brother, it also gives it something that the other two brother skills have (and quite frankly, Song Brother needs), and also starts to weaken the argument that Shield Brother is the go-to healing Brother, especially when you take the Song Brother/HoH capstone connection into consideration. That connection should make sense, and Shield Brother SHOULD NOT be pulling double duty here.

To Arms
+25% healing makes sense for what the line is does, and while useful to just about all classes, most will not take huge advantage of it except for healers. This might just be one of those places where Song Brother eats it.

Strength of Will
When Song Brother's SoW is compared against Shield Brother's and Blade Brother's, you have a buff that benefits one or two people (-healing skills power costs) versus buffs that benefit the entire party (-attack duration and +incoming healing). By not having something that benefits everyone, and also the healer(s), this weakens Song Brother - which is why I'm favoring +5% crit as a replacement for the existing Song Brother buff. Again, by having a stronger Strength of Will, and one that benefits everyone, it helps make Song Brother a better tool to work with.

It seems to me you making more of a philosophical argument Almagnus, rather a substantive one.

From what I understand of your posts (and correct me if I'm wrong) but you are basically saying Song Brother is "broken" because it isn't the de facto brother skill to use when you are playing as a Hands of Healing Captain.

But I don't see how having more options is such a bad thing, and clearly having access to an excellent power tool is a bonus to any HoH Captain. I think you are letting formulas and the mere fact Song Brother is tied to the HoH trait line through talents get in the way of the actual facts. And those facts are Song Brother is a great skill for recovering power, Shield Brother is a great skill for boosting your healing. It's a win win. We now have two useful brother skills at our disposal, and that's not a bad thing.

Also, I should point out I actually did use that -healing threat trait when it was in the game. I liked it

Originally Posted by Jeremi

It seems to me you making more of a philosophical argument Almagnus, rather a substantive one.

From what I understand of your posts (and correct me if I'm wrong) but you are basically saying Song Brother is "broken" because it isn't the de facto brother skill to use when you are playing as a Hands of Healing Captain.

But I don't see how having more options is such a bad thing, and clearly having access to an excellent power tool is a bonus to any HoH Captain. I think you are letting forumlas and the mere fact Song Brother is tied to the HoH trait line through talents get in the way of the actual facts. And those facts are Song Brother is a great skill for recovering power, Shield Brother is a great skill for boosting your healing. It's a win win. We now have two useful brother skills at our disposal, and that's not a bad thing.

Let's start this response by quoting myself:

Originally Posted by Almagnus1

The big problem I have with the captain trait lines is the mismatch between capstone, brother skill, and what's observed in play.

Capstone wise:
Master of War (LtC) => Blade Brother
Leader of Men => Shield Brother
Hands of Healing => Song Brother

What the Traitlines are supposed to do:
Lead the Charge => DPS
Hands of Healing => Healing
Leader of Men => Tanking

So combining the above, you should see:
Blade Brother => DPS
Shield Brother => Tanking
Song Brother => Healing

But what actually occurs in practice is:
DPS => Blade Brother
Tanking => Shield Brother
Healing => Shield Brother
Power Restore => Song Brother (an un-asked for role that was given to us - oh well...)

This isn't about philosophy - and if that's what you're getting from this thread, you are completely missing the problem with how the capstones and Brother skills interact, and how Hands of Healing capstone doesn't have a Brother skill that's a goto, like the other two lines have.

Blade Brother meshes really well with both Master of War and the Lead the Charge traitline, because Blade Brother increases the DPS of whatever it's affecting. The LtC captain will (more than likely) have a self Blade Brother when in a capstone build.

Shield Brother meshes really well with both the Leader of Men capstone and traitline, because Shield Brother improves the durability of whatever it's affecting - which helps the captain tank survive. The LoM captain will (more than likely) have a self Shield brother when in a capstone build.

Song Brother? It's used ONLY for it's Inspire to restore power. It's not a clear cut choice for healing (Shield Brother is far superior for healing at the moment), so a Hands of Healing captain in a capstone build will (more than likely) not have a self Song Brother.

I can't illustrate the design fault any clearer than what's above. It's not about philosophy, it's about fixing the problems in the class.

Originally Posted by Almagnus1

Let's start this response by quoting myself:



This isn't about philosophy - and if that's what you're getting from this thread, you are completely missing the problem with how the capstones and Brother skills interact, and how Hands of Healing capstone doesn't have a Brother skill that's a goto, like the other two lines have.

Blade Brother meshes really well with both Master of War and the Lead the Charge traitline, because Blade Brother increases the DPS of whatever it's affecting. The LtC captain will (more than likely) have a self Blade Brother when in a capstone build.

Shield Brother meshes really well with both the Leader of Men capstone and traitline, because Shield Brother improves the durability of whatever it's affecting - which helps the captain tank survive. The LoM captain will (more than likely) have a self Shield brother when in a capstone build.

Song Brother? It's used ONLY for it's Inspire to restore power. It's not a clear cut choice for healing (Shield Brother is far superior for healing at the moment), so a Hands of Healing captain in a capstone build will (more than likely) not have a self Song Brother.

I can't illustrate the design fault any clearer than what's above. It's not about philosophy, it's about fixing the problems in the class.

lol sorry Almagnus but it still seems philosophical to me. It's a structural argument based on how you believe each trait-line should have a fundamental brother skill.

And that's fine that you feel that way. But it doesn't take away from the fact that Song Brother is still a useful skill to use when power becomes an issue - and a HoH Captain is free to use Shield Brother to boost his/her healing in all other situations where power is not a concern.

Like I said, it's more of the philopshy of it you are debating, not the actual usefulness of the skills themselves.

Originally Posted by Jeremi

lol sorry Almagnus but it still seems philosophical to me. It's a structural argument based on how you believe each trait-line should have a fundamental brother skill.

And that's fine that you feel that way. But it doesn't take away from the fact that Song Brother is still a useful skill to use when power becomes an issue - and a HoH Captain is free to use Shield Brother to boost his/her healing in all other situations where power is not a concern.

Like I said, it's more of the philopshy of it you are debating, not the actual usefulness of the skills themselves.

Here's what the capstones do on Live:

Leader of Men:
You have become a Leader of Men.
+50% Threat from Noble Mark
Adds effects from Shield-brother skills to yourself
Routing Cry does not require a defeat
You can Block with a two-handed weapon
Requires: 5 traits in Leader of Men line slotted.

Master of War:
The vigour of war flows through your veins.
+50% Damage from Shadow's Lament
Shadow's Lament no longer requires a defeat event and Hits will Battle-ready
Your Heralds and Archers deal more damage and you can wield the 'Armaments of the Oath-bound'
Adds effects from Blade-brother skills to yourself
Requires: 5 traits in Lead the Charge line slotted.

Hands of Healing:
You are a paragon of healing on the battlefield.
+10% Healing from all Healing Skills
Valiant Strike gains a strong Heal Over Time
-30s Valiant Strike Cooldown
Adds effects from Song-brother skills to yourself
Requires: 5 traits in Hands of Healing line slotted.

Notice what I have bolded in each one of them?

Based on what you observe on the game servers right now, is Shield Brother the definitive tanking Brother skill?

Is Song Brother the definitive healing Brother skill?

Is Blade Brother the definitive DPS Brother skill?

If the answer to any of the above is no, then the brother skills are broken, and that Brother skill needs to be adjusted to make it better mesh with the trait line.

If you still want to say this is about philosophy, and not the captain mechanics not making sense - you need to stop trolling the captain forums and go learn to play.

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Almagnus1 again.

Anyway. The overhauled suggestion with +% crit on the Strength of Will is pretty good.

I especially like that all three Inspires offer both morale and power, in different degrees. At first, it didn't seem fair that Blade Brother would have less overall healing, but after thinking about it, it makes sense. You're choosing to go full DPS (and BB brings quite a lot combined with Fellowship-Brother), so you expect to sacrifice some healing and power restoration in the deal.

Originally Posted by furtim

Anyway. The overhauled suggestion with +% crit on the Strength of Will is pretty good.

I especially like that all three Inspires offer both morale and power, in different degrees. At first, it didn't seem fair that Blade Brother would have less overall healing, but after thinking about it, it makes sense. You're choosing to go full DPS (and BB brings quite a lot combined with Fellowship-Brother), so you expect to sacrifice some healing and power restoration in the deal.

You hit on the main reason for not screwing with Blade Brother, but I want to state it again for emphasis:

Blade Brother is the default for the Brother skills - it's the one used in almost all of the content I run, regardless of how I'm tratited - which means it's working, and working far better than the other two. So if it ain't broke...