Bullroarer Update 30 - Preview #2 - CLOSED

[LordOfTheSquids]

Bullroarer is CLOSED - Thank you for your participation and feedback!
Server Opening Time: Thursday, 05/27 3:00 PM EDT
Server Closing Time: UPDATED Friday, 05/28 ~1:15 PM EDT

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Guide to the Eyes and Guard Tavern
Character Copy is AVAILABLE. This can be accessed through the 'Transfer' button on the Bullroarer Launcher.

Bullroarer is available for another early look at Update 30.
Notes added on May 27, 2021 are marked in violet.

The Fall of Khazad-dûm
Greetings, Raiders of Middle-earth!
Update 30 will introduce a new 12-player raid encounter, The Fall of Khazad-dûm. With the this Bullroarer preview, we will be changing the way we do raid tests. Tier 1 will be available for the full duration of the preview, but Tier 2 and up will only be available during scheduled preview windows. During these windows, +Lansu will be online observing raiders and fielding questions/concerns.

Here is the current schedule for raid previews this week. Please note that these times and dates are subject to change.

Tuesday 5/25 8:00 – 10:00 PM EDT (0:00 – 2:00 UTC)
Thursday 5/27 3:00 – 5:00 PM EDT (19:00 – 21:00 UTC)

Balance changes will be made between raid preview windows, so if possible, participating in both days' previews is encouraged!

Early Look: Skill Balance Work
Welcome to the first look at a series of class balance adjustments we are working on for release in the coming months! This is an early look at class skill balance in particular that is targeted for release with Update 30: The Blood of Azog. With our emphasis on challenging end-game content, we've had to reconsider the balance of certain major group buffs and debuffs that were overpowered in the context of large fellowships. This has led to the reduction of several of these effects in order to hopefully allow for a wider breadth of class compositions in such content. We are balancing this work by not just focusing on nerfs, but DPS increases and other buffs as well.

We realize that we are coming in strong with a handful of significant balance adjustments downward to skills and abilities you may be used to using, and we would appreciate you considering the entirety of these balance adjustments in addition to "just" the key nerfs we are proposing. This list is also not intended to be a comprehensive look at class balance work that we will be doing both short and medium term. ~Cordovan

Please see the Notes and Feedback Thread:
Notes added on May 27, 2021 are marked in violet.
https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...l-Balance-Work


Interlude: Blood of Azog and Tales of Yore Azanulbizar
Please see details of this exciting new content and offer feedback in this thread:
https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?687318-Bullroarer-Update-30-Interlude-Blood-of-Azog-amp-Tales-of-Yore-Azanulbizar

Release Notes
The Fall of Khazad-dûm

• Trash Encounters: Reduced damage of Faceless Marauder's Shadow Slam and Claw Swipe.
• ?Durin's Bane Encounter
  
  • Increased duration of Mark of Challenge
  • Increased duration of ground-spawned Liquid Gold
  • Decreased Morale of Enraged Deep-claws created by Unstable Debris
  • Increased Morale of Durin's Bane
  • Durin's Bane will now gain the Molten effect upon reaching Phase 5, decreasing his damage taken
  • Removed the Trigger Delay on Shadow Zone's effects
  • Players with Liquid Gold should no longer be targeted with Lockdown and Chasing Darkness
  • Liquid Gold now adds an increasing amount of Fire Mitigation per Tier
  • Fixed an issue that prevented Explosive Line from happening in Phase 4
  • Fixed an issue that prevented the initial Explosive Burst damage from occuring during Exoplosive Line
  • Several Erupting Earth locations have been moved to not be 100% in any Explosive Line
  • Mark of Shadow now grants Fire Mitigation
  • Reduced damage of Suffocating Smoke and Shadow Zone.
  • Fixed an issue where Unstable Debris was invisible for too long after spawning in.
  • Fixed an issue where Chasing Darkness was spawning Shadow Zones on an offset.
  • Chasing Darkness will now spawn on an offset from Durin's Bane.
  • Increased range of Durin's Bane's Auto Attacks.
  • Increased damage of Dominating Shadows.
  • Dominating Shadows will now apply Mark of Challenge to its two distributed targets:
    
    • Mark of Challenge will increase your threat generation, increase your shadow mitigation and open you up to tank mechanics while preventing others from targeting you.
    
    
  • Liquid Gold now lasts 12 seconds per tier.
  • Addressed issues with Whip Pull:
    
    • Whip Pull was targeting any player moving out of melee range instead of just the primary threat target.
    • Whip Pull will now only target players with Mark of Challenge.
    • Ranged Whip Pull will target players more than 80m away.
    
    
  • Durin's Bane will now be very resistant to damage while Hovering and unable to be attacked during phase transitions.

Raids & Instances

• Remmorchant, the Net of Darkness - Shelob - Enrage timer increased to 20/21/22/23 minutes on T2/T3/T4/T5, respectively.
• Bâr Nírnaeth, the Houses of Lamentation - Slightly lowered the damage of Torment, Flense, and Shadow-burst.
• All Boss and encounter monsters in level 130 group instances have had their damage outputs reduced to offset the adjustments to player-cast outgoing damage debuffs.
• Balance Changes for Instances: Shadow Roost, The Harrowing of Morgul, Shakalush, the Stair Battle, and Remmorchant.
  
  • Additionally reduced the damage from several tank DOTS in Shakalush.

Revives:

• Raid Revive counters now decrement on revives *accepted* rather than revives cast.
• Tier 1 raid difficulty no longer activates revive counters.
• Max revive counter is now 5.
• Various difficulties now start with additional revives, and timers have been adjusted.
  
  • T1: NA
  • T2: 3 Revives, +1/60s
  • T3: 2 Revives, +1/120s
  • T4: 1 Revives, +1/180s
  • T5: 1 Revives, +1/240s

Quests:

• Azanulbizar - Quest: Ghost Hunting - This quest is now properly completable.
• War of Three Peaks - Quest: A Crack in the Iron Crown - Bandrauth Adder-fang has been reduced to Signature difficulty.

Housing

• When you 'Sell' a premium house, you will now receive 90% of the purchase price in premium housing writs, up from 70%.

PREVIEW ONLY:

• Wilson in the Eyes & Guard Tavern now offers a selection of cosmetic pet tomes for ease of testing.
• The old quickslot activation animations have been restored for now until the work can be completed for a player option choosing between the quickslot animation styles.

[BinaryTertiary]

so no changes to guard? warden? chank?

how much feedback do you need?

[Hephburz-2]

Raid Revives:

• Tier 1 raid difficulty no longer activates revive counters.
• Max revive counter is now 5.
• Various difficulties now start with additional revives, and timers have been adjusted.

• T1: NA
• T2: 3 Revives, +1/60s
• T3: 2 Revives, +1/120s
• T4: 1 Revives, +1/180s
• T5: 1 Revives, +1/240s

This is probably a much better implementation of the system than what was suggested in the first BR build, and a step in the right direction, especially ensuring that you start with X number of revives to begin with - although I still prefer the system implemented with the AD raid, this is a marked improvement from before, and if the implementation of this system IS not up for debate (as in, you will implement it regardless of what is posted in this feedback thread), then at least this current iteration is acceptable, to me at least.

[HolyDuckTape]

Rip guards, chanks, wards and most importantly rip red beorn/red guard work lul. Just bump up the dmg slightly and abandon them again bruh...


Also i don't like this new revive system. I think it's honestly a great thing to have ''infinite'' revives like we have now with ofcourse the cooldowns on them. Some classes will need to be looked at when it comes to rezzing like yellow captains and dps rks but other than that it should just stay the same. I am of the opinion that if you can die 50 times and still kill something before its enrage/adds then you deserve that kill, you made it up with some bonkers huge dps/hps/tanking. Most high tier fights already have a ''softcap'' on how often you can die before it snowballs into a wipe.

[Starstorm01]

When will the bird in moors be getting a nerf??

[Lao10]

Wait so this class work is in addition to the ridiculous changes proposed before?

[gildhur]

• Various difficulties now start with additional revives, and timers have been adjusted.
  
  • T1: NA
  • T2: 3 Revives, +1/60s
  • T3: 2 Revives, +1/120s
  • T4: 1 Revives, +1/180s
  • T5: 1 Revives, +1/240s

This is per person per boss, or for the whole instance, or...?

• War of Three Peaks - Quest: A Crack in the Iron Crown - Bandrauth Adder-fang has been reduced to Signature difficulty.

Great change. It was doable as elite, but very difficult for some people.

[SingularityNow]

Really needed this update to be more fun than the last one. Nerfs aren't fun.

"Hi welcome to McDonald's. We feel it's become difficult for us to put ketchup on our burgers. So in an effort to make our jobs easier on ourselves, we're removing ketchup. Enjoy!"

[BotLike]

Really excited about this Oakenshield. Please give it some more cosmetic love ! The edges are weird !

[Hephburz-2]

This is per person per boss, or for the whole instance, or...?

As I understand, per boss?

[Daenirion]

As I understand, per boss?

Yes, it's per encounter

[Raninia]

As I understand, per boss?

Correct, this is per boss, and it resets if the fight ends and restarts.

[Daniyel]

DNF is a unique revive skill that requires it to be cast BEFORE the target dies, rather than after as in Mini,Beorning,captain, cases.
is there anyway to make the available revive token be consumed upon a character accepting a revive, rather than the revive being cast?

[Daenirion]

Correct, this is per boss, and it resets if the fight ends and restarts.

Does the Captain double rez consume 1 or 2 revives?

It might be a good idea to increase the CD of Beorning Overbearing and RK DNF

[Raninia]

Does the Captain double rez consume 1 or 2 revives?

Captain should consume 1 revive for each accepted revive.

[Vastin]

Just figured out a way to increment the revive counter when a revive is accepted - rather than cast, as per the initial implementation - so that'll be coming up in our next test update I believe.

This means that Cap revives will cost 1 *per* person actually revived, and DNF will not cost you a revive until/unless it actually triggers and the target accepts the revive.

-Vastin

[Daniyel]

While the burglar is being looked at, the Relish Battle Burglar Class bonus (4th from the Quiet Knife Specialization) Heals a Paltry 231 morale at 122, and 450 at 130.

Please adjust the scaling for that trait....or make it a flat 1% or something.

Thank you,
Burglars.

[Daniyel]

just figured out a way to increment the revive counter when a revive is accepted - rather than cast, as per the initial implementation - so that'll be coming up in our next test update i believe.

This means that cap revives will cost 1 *per* person actually revived, and dnf will not cost you a revive until/unless it actually triggers and the target accepts the revive.

-vastin

hallelujah thank you

[JoRDee]

So based on some players' opinions, RK dps should be much lower than other dpsers because of their DNFs. With this new rez mechanic, RK dps should now be very very close to other dpsers in a raid. Correct guys? lul

[Joedangod]

So based on some players' opinions, RK dps should be much lower than other dpsers because of their DNFs. With this new rez mechanic, RK dps should now be very very close to other dpsers in a raid. Correct guys? lul

Now that the value of DNF has been diminished there is room for RK's to receive a bump to DPS, yes.

[Bhoris_they_spider]

Now that the value of DNF has been diminished there is room for RK's to receive a bump to DPS, yes.

RK DPS should be brought in line with red guardian

[Zyot]

I'd love to see red RK viable. There's no reason to have it at the bottom of the tier list.
Also at the moment there's no "spell caster" type class doing decent dps end game (tbh not everyone is into range/melee physical attacks). Fingers crossed.

[drongo]

Has there been any talk of removing enrage timers to balance the new rez changes or do you still have to kill bosses within a fixed period of time with effectively a fixed number of rezzes available (because they are constrained by the enrage timer)?

Call me crazy but maybe you could implement a system that allows for example a group to raid a boss at T2 but if it takes longer than x amount of time instead of enraging the boss at that point it instead doesn't enrage but lowers the available loot from T2 to T1, thereby giving people something for making the effort to raid but taking too long.

[Mirhaen]

Also i don't like this new revive system. I think it's honestly a great thing to have ''infinite'' revives like we have now with ofcourse the cooldowns on them. Some classes will need to be looked at when it comes to rezzing like yellow captains and dps rks but other than that it should just stay the same. I am of the opinion that if you can die 50 times and still kill something before its enrage/adds then you deserve that kill, you made it up with some bonkers huge dps/hps/tanking. Most high tier fights already have a ''softcap'' on how often you can die before it snowballs into a wipe.

Yes, thank you!

[mikkye]

I am impressed with the work on the fire rk which Ive read these past two patch notes it shows real steps to try close the balance gap.

[IMG https://ibb.co/qMbvCj9 IMG] An overall parse of 142k

I did not use any lightning skills to show the true state of redline dps numbers.

Essay is is nice smoulder is nice but unless distracting, ridicule and writ pump a nice solid stream of damage fire rk will fall short unless smoulder gets strong enough to carry or yellow skills become so vital in redline rotation that it isnt anymore about Induction style dps and dot management

A lot of current redline top parses are a hybrid of red+yellow with this build you can push 180k dps with some luck but commonly find yourself doing 160k-170k. And among the community 170k is still considered low but much better than they were a week ago.

This is a red+yellow hybrid parse and all you need is 90ish trait points [IMG https://ibb.co/JBDJDBG/ IMG]

Im not sure if the plan is to make fire the dominant dps spec or make it even with yellow but where it stands unless fire dots become strong enough where you wont let one fall off for a a quick ceaseless argument there is not alot of hope for fire to be the pumper it used to be