Lore-master Thoughts and Collected Notes

[OnnMacMahal]

I want to say first a huge thank you to everyone who posted on the original forum thread, as well as the follow-up thread on the new forums regarding the Lore-master class as it is right now. I started typing out replies to most of those posts late last week, and quickly realized that following through would essentially amount to discussing every part of the class, as well as my current inclination towards future changes. So rather than split up my commentary across many posts, I went ahead and did my best to consolidate those replies into a singular response. Hopefully this both answers many of your concerns with current aspects of the class, as well as satisfies many of you who are primarily interested in ‘what we’re thinking about’ when considering the future of the class.



As a note, consider what follows to be collected responses, thoughts, and inclinations. This is not a complete and comprehensive list of changes lined up for the class. I just feel it’s more valuable to see all of my responses and thoughts on specific skills, traits, interactions, etc in a single place, so they can contextualize one another to a degree.





On Trait Specializations

What is the current thinking about the 3 LM lines?

Originally, my inclination was towards blue becoming a passive tree - mostly because it is a mix of offensive and defensive traits, and the traits which just ‘make your pet a little better’ don’t really impact your core role so much as moderately improve an essential part of the class.

That said, I think it’s worth seriously considering how blueLM might become a viable alternative to a redCaptain in groups. If going down that road, the rLM would be ‘direct, personal DPS,’ blue would be ‘offensive group support with a little less damage’ and yellow would be ‘defensive group support and off-healing.’

The most difficult aspect of keeping both blue and yellow as specializations is, ironically, keeping them separate and distinct from one another. Because players are able to (have to, really) acquire so many traits in a non-spec tree, you run the risk of players deciding one capstone (or specialization bonus trait) is too valuable to skip, but otherwise gabbing all the ‘necessary’ traits out of both blue and yellow, basically treating one of them as a passive tree anyway.

Now, blue-line as an alternative to a red Captain is not a decision set in stone, but I can say with certainty that red-line should be a competent, competitive DPS specialization, and that yellow-line will remain a fully-fledged support specialization.





Pets

From the old forum about:

"what if your pets no longer had debuff-applying skills, but you had a single debuff skill on your bar which changed depending on your active pet (essentially a dynamic lore skill with higher uptime than cooldown) which allowed you to apply multiple debuffs via either pet cycling or target cycling,"

http://[URL]https://forums-old.lotr...d-Tamed-Creatures/page2&p=8187878#post8187878

[/URL]
Would like to hear more about that/this solution.

The basic idea is to have the skill effect governed by your current pet, while being a regular skill on your (not your pet’s) skillbar. Imagine you have a raven out and a skill on your own bar that applies [+5% Incoming Tactical Damage] for 1m with a 20s cooldown. Dismissing your raven and summoning a Lynx changes that skill to apply [-5% Physical Mitigation] for 1m, but doesn’t reset the existing cooldown. Now, every 20s your choice would be applying your existing pet debuff to a new target, or swapping to a different pet to get a different debuff rolling on your current target. It would maintain some of the activity that currently comprises the ‘pet rotation’ while giving you more potential action in a single target encounter, while reducing the amount you’re able to (or ‘have to’) rapidly cycle through pets at the speed of light in multi-target encounters.



Pet Cooldowns
Yes, it is exceedingly likely that pet skills will have cooldowns in the future. For a peek into what those cooldowns might look like, Captain heralds (and archer) are a decent starting point. This means each type of pet would have a cooldown: so all of your Bear summons would share a cooldown, and all of your Sabre-cat summons would share a cooldown. With the total number of pets a Lore-master has at their disposal, you should never be left totally petless, with all your wild friends on cooldown.

Why is this necessary? Frankly, we don’t have a practical workaround to the fact that resummoning a pet fundamentally creates a new creature entity, and completely obliterates all data associated with the pet you just dismissed (crucially, this means health and cooldowns are always fully reset). We could technically leave pets without cooldowns, but that would necessitate counterbalancing their skills with the assumption that every pet skill has a ~2s cooldown, so we’d have to significantly nerf many pet skills, and that would feel quite antithetical to the core fantasy of the class design.

And to reiterate a response to another concern about pet cooldowns, it’s likely that we’ll add a reasonable cooldown (say, 15 seconds) to the ‘Return to Master’ skill, while making it usable in combat. So if you summon a pet in the heat of combat and it decides to arrive inside a nearby rock, or caught on a corner of something somewhere, you should still be able to click that skill to bring the pet out of its stuck state, even though you’re in combat.





Pet Identities

Lynx
The lynx would be focused on Single-target damage, and would be further improved by red-line traits. The lynx needs to be less reliant on its from-out-of-combat stealth opener, and its damage should be brought up across the board.

Sabre-cat
The sabre-cat would be focused on melee AoE, and would be improved by red-line traits. The sabre-cat needs to be heartier and deal much more damage. Changes to mitigation reductions should allow it to benefit from other mitigation debuffs, rather than being sequestered to a corner with the only frost mit debuff available to players.

Bog-guardian
The bog-guardian would be weaker than both lynx and sabre-cat in terms of raw output, but would have the benefit of range, and would also benefit from red-line traits.

Raven
The raven would be a balanced, utility choice, and would benefit from blue-line traits. The raven should still be a valuable pet to have by your side, but we can hopefully mitigate its currently dominant value by removing Benediction of the Raven and by bringing up several other pets towards the value ravens currently provide.

Eagle
The Eagle would once again be available to all Lore-masters, and would also be improved by blue-line traits. When summoned, it would grant your group the ‘Motivated’ morale buff.

Spirit
The Spirit pet would remain a totally defensive, healing-oriented pet. It’s flank-granting skill probably needs to be less restrictive.

Bear
The bear would be the pet with the strongest inherent defense, and would retain its taunt. With the pet cooldowns discussed above, we’re hopeful we can return the ability to use bear taunt inside instances, since you won’t be able to spam de-summon/summon the bear repeatedly in order to use the bear taunt more frequently than intended.



Pet Skills and Damage
Overall, pet skills will be getting a full revision pass. Pets should be contributing a non-arbitrary amount of damage. As a rough heuristic, consider these targeted values for pet damage and mitigations:
Lynx: ~100k Single-target, melee DPS / ~40% mits
Sabre-cat: ~150k AoE (3 targets) melee DPS / 50% mits
Bog-guardian: ~80k Singlet-target, ranged DPS / 30% mits
Eagle: ~70k Single-target, melee DPS / 55% mits
Raven: ~40k Single-target, melee DPS / 60% mits
Bear: ~40k Single-target, melee DPS / 70% mits





Inductions
As with the minstrel last year, it is likely that LM traits in the future will give class-specific –Induction bonuses, but that baseline skill inductions will be reduced as well. At the moment, there’s a wide gulf between players with ‘regular’ inductions, which you feel especially hard in the early game, and players with lots of –Induction bonuses stacked up, which can practically nullify inductions entirely at the top end, not to mention players who have actually hit -100% Induction Duration and found that it can break your character/skill animations entirely.



Skill Animations
At this time, we’re not planning to significantly overhaul the ‘feel’ of the class’s playstyle. The idea being that Lore-masters remain the slow and steady induction class, but capable of significant output if left unimpeded. That said, we will endeavor to clean up any post-skill delay or ‘self-roots’ where a skill appears to be completely finished, yet you’re still unable to begin your next action.



’Bad’ Traits
The posts below this do not specifically address every single lackluster trait. I welcome any additional commentary about specific traits that bug you or are viewed as ‘never worth it in any circumstance’ but you’ll have to wait a bit for a more comprehensive/complete revision outline in the future if you’re interested in a proposal that covers every single trait.

 

[OnnMacMahal]

General Skills

Dispel Corruption
Dispel Corruption has fallen quite far behind most other classes over the years. Lore-masters, with their strong identity as a support class, seem like they ought to have a much more flexible Corruption Removal. I propose making this skill dynamic depending on your pet, where the skill remains a player-activated skill on your own skill bar, but changes its effect depending on your active pet.
Bear: Removes 1 corruption from your target (7s CD)
Birds: Remove 3 different corruptions from your target (15s CD)
Cats: Remove 2 different corruptions from several targets in a small AoE (20s CD)
Bog-guardian: Remove 1 corruption from several targets in a large AoE (20s CD)
Spirit: Remove 1 corruption from your target, and restore morale if a corruption is removed (15s CD)

Knowledge of Cures
The baseline version of Knowledge of Cures will lose its induction, and should be usable on the move.

Blinding Flash
Blinding Flash will likely lose its interrupt flag; if so, the interrupt component would probably pass to either Light of the Rising Dawn (which would no longer have an induction). Blinding Flash may also gain a significant cooldown (+45s or so) when traited red or blue.

Wizard’s Frost, Wizard’s Fire, and Wizard’s Lightning
Consider this very speculative, since it includes Wizard’s Lightning here in this list!
Nominally at least, I’m curious about how folks would feel about these three skills being baseline to the class, while gaining effects/targets/etc from your specialization trees. The core elements they would retain and share are (a) easy access to Fire, Frost, and Lightning damage to proc Out in the Cold or Playing with Fire effects and (b) the ability to consume pet flanks for different effects (Fire: Power and Damage buff, Frost: Morale, Lightning: Cooldown reductions)

Sticky Tar
Tar likely changes from -10% Fire Mitigations to -10% Tactical Mitigations. Uptime may be reduced slightly (though the mit shred is the more important part of the skill; the slow doesn’t need to be so tightly controlled).
*As a note, Benediction of the Raven & Catmint are also likely to change, with the overall effect being to mitigate the LM’s (and RK’s) overreliance on Tar and Catmint Raven to achieve DPS viability.

Ancient Craft
Ancient Craft likely changes from an Armour rating debuff to -10%/15% Physical Mitigations. Uptime may be reduced slightly.

Burning Embers
It’s exceedingly likely that the DoTs (for every tier) of this skill will be changed to allow partial pulses, meaning that upgrading & downgrading the tier will not result in lost pulses. Unfortunately, partial pulses cannot crit, but a partial non-crit pulse should always be more valuable to you than losing that pulse completely, so I’m not overly concerned about that.

The other aspect of this skill’s DoT that I’m not entirely pleased with is the fact that a max-tiered DoT in the Ettenmoors takes an absolute age to expire on you (assuming the source LM has left or died and is not continuing to reapply or cash out these tiers).

Cracked Earth
Cracked Earth probably needs to be split out into two variants – a base version with higher damage but no root, and an alternative you can trait into in the yellow tree that reduces its damage but adds the root countdown (basically making it the skill it currently is)

Gust of Wind
Gust of Wind needs a firm baseline damage increase. Being divorced from Pleasant Breeze, this skill only has a place in your damage rotation, and as such it should contribute a non-insignificant amount of damage.

Knowledge of the Lore-master
Knowledge of the Lore-master, at a minimum, needs its in-combat and out-of-combat effects switched. The monster debuff should be applied by using the skill in combat, rather than out of combat. As a single-target skill with a significant cooldown, it should also have a much more impactful effect than lowering Resistance ratings of the target. Even if the debuff retains its 1m duration, it could probably stand to have something like a small Incoming Damage or Crit Defence reduction component.

Signs of Power: Vigilance
The baseline value on this skills’ stealth detection is a little low, especially given what niche value stealth detection has. The stealth detection bonus should be increased, and the skill should probably be given a secondary effect, like reducing the chance incoming damage is a critical, or reducing incoming critical magnitude for a brief window.

Signs of Power: Command
SoP: Command is pretty lackluster, and would be more compelling if its Attack Speed debuff were replaced by the Crit chance reduction from SoP:SAE. Even with that, it may need a trait to make it AoE and along with a small cooldown increase to make it more comfortable to use regularly, but not constantly.

Signs of Power: See All Ends
I believe SoP: SAE is a good candidate for becoming a player buff, rather than a monster debuff. Consider the possibility of AoP:SAE in red-line giving you the temporary damage buffs you currently gain from Inner-Flame. In blue-line, it could be a targeted buff that is equivalent to a red-line Captain using ‘To Arms’ (where your target gains a stronger buff, and the rest of your group gains a slightly lesser buff).

Staff-strike and Staff-sweep
I’m open to further discussion regarding these two skills. I appreciate the commentary already provided for these, but frankly, I still feel a bit mixed about having two melee-only skills which primary improve your DPS output. Tar and Ring of Fire also encourage playing within melee range, so these aren’t the only melee oddballs, but I don’t want LMs to feel ‘forced’ into melee range due to the effects from these skills.

Light of Hope
We should probably increase the potency of this heal, and potentially reinstate its Morale cost.

Wisdom of the Council
Reduce the cooldown of Wisdom to 3 minutes. Change the damage negation/reflect to proc on all types of incoming damage, and reduce the buff duration to 10s.

Inner-flame
Inner-flame is a somewhat needlessly complicated skill, with 3 vectors for increasing the damage buff (trait set bonus, trait in the blue tree, and tiering up over the course of the channel) despite the fact that its baseline effects are entirely defensive. We may want to shift some or all of the offensive weight off of this skill and into the red-line trait tree (possibly a skill combo with one of the cat pets, a skill like SOP:SAE or something else with at least a moderate cooldown).

 

[OnnMacMahal]

The Ancient Master

Bane Flare
Bane Flare would be granted by specializing in this tree, and would thus be unavailable to blue- or red-line specialized LMs.

Insult to Injury
Insult to Injury would likely be removed. It adds needless clutter, and does not meaningfully impact your damage or your ability to support your allies.

Storm-lore (trait)
The lightning damage here will very likely move over to the red tree.

Fire and Frost Lore
Fire and Frost Lore would become trait set bonuses, and thus only available to Lore-masters specialized in the Ancient Master trait tree. These could even potentially become effects applied by Wizard’s Fire or Wizard’s Frost (since those skills already have no cooldown and will cause a mob to enter combat). Of course, that may be undesirable only because the base Wizard’s Fire/Frost deal damage, making it impossible to safely apply and spread these debuffs to a group of mezzed/rooted/feared mobs.

Playing with Fire and Out in the Cold
In addition to rebalancing the specific bonuses applied by each of these traits, I propose making the combo happen only once, on the first instance of you using Lightning, Fire, or Frost against a target after Fire Lore or Frost Lore is applied. (This would also likely mean Wind-lore no longer triggers this combo). Overall, this would mean you have to think critically about which skills you use directly following the application/spreading of Lores, but conversely that you have more control over the debuff than just ending up with the Frost effect (from Wind-lore) basically all the time.

Pleasant Breeze
The trait for pleasant Breeze would switch places with Beacon of Hope, making the Light of Hope>Beacon of Hope change a choice for the player, and making Pleasant Breeze exclusive to yellow line. Pleasant Breeze would have increased potency and cooldown, and would no longer interact with Gust of Wind in any way.

Air-lore
Air-lore would drop from a permanent toggle to a 20s duration effect with a 90s cooldown, but the proc chance would increase from 5% to 50%, more than doubling the skill’s overall potency, while making it much more valuable to you as a reactive, defensive skill.

Advanced Knowledge of Cures
This trait will be obsolete with the base skill having no induction, but this trait may stick around to apply an extra effect to Knowledge of Cures (like a small heal for each negative effect removed, or always applying an extra cleanse to yourself)

Force of Will
Consider this one slightly subject to change, depending on your ‘core’ debuffing skills in yellow-line.

Warding Knowledge and The Ancient Master
The Ancient Master would move up in the skill tree, and would no longer be the capstone skill (but it would be otherwise unchanged). Taking its place would be Warding Knowledge. Warding Knowledge would become a defensive skill benefitting your allies when standing in its area, rather than debuffing enemies. Tentatively, Warding Knowledge would have something like a 10s duration, a 2m30s cooldown, and would apply a x0.7 incoming damage effect (reducing incoming damage by a ‘true’ 30%).

 

[OnnMacMahal]

Master of Nature’s Fury

Sticky Gourd
Sticky Gourd would be granted by specializing in this tree, and would no longer be accessible to Lore-masters specialized in blue or yellow.

Ring of Fire
Ring of Fire loses its induction, and is placed on the ground in front of you (like tar or warding lore) rather than on your target. The actual ring would no longer double in size at max trait rank, but would apply a potent DoT effect to enemies that pass through it.

Nature’s Fury
Nature’s Fury would deal more damage, and it may function better as a ground-targeted skill rather than an effect on your current target. The upside being that a ground targeted skill would give you greater control over its position and would always persist for the full duration (as opposed to disappearing when your target dies, as it currently does) but carries the downsides of no longer moving with your target and requiring time to manually target the skill.

Liquid Fire
This trait would make Improved Sticky Gourd deal more damage and apply the ‘Sticky Tar’ debuff to enemies hit.

Ents Go to War
Reduce cooldown to at least ~3 minutes, and change the stun to a knockdown. It may still need a little base-damage upward nudge as well.

 

[OnnMacMahal]

Keeper of Animals
Keep in mind, the proposals below are made with an eye towards blue-line LMs becoming an alternative option to red-line Captains in a group. They won’t have exactly the same kits of course, but where effects share the same name, assume those are mutually exclusive with similarly-named red Captain effects.

Sign of Power: See All Ends
A new trait in blue-line would cause Sign of Power: See All Ends to give your targeted ally the To Arms effect, with the rest of your group getting the usual, less potent version.

Peerless Wisdom
This trait’s effect would be replaced by one which causes your pets’ debuffing skill to give your fellowship the red-captain Inspire effects.

Raven’s Protection
This trait’s effect would be replaced by one which causes your Raven’s flanks to apply Relentless Assault to your group.

Eagle’s Nobility
A new trait, this would allow your Eagle to place a hotspot with identical effects to a Captain’s Banner of War.

Catmint
The raven effect would no longer impact Benediction of the Raven. These effects, overall, need to be rebalanced to have more similar values to one another.

 

[Estelrandir]

Just on a general note, I'm liking what I see here. This would definitely get me to dust off my LM.

 

[Darr]

Overall I'm really intrigued.
Re player skill tied to pets however...
"The basic idea is to have the skill effect governed by your current pet.....Now, every 20s your choice would be applying your existing pet debuff to a new target.."

but...

"Yes, it is exceedingly likely that pet skills will have cooldowns in the future. For a peek into what those cooldowns might look like, Captain heralds (and archer) are a decent starting point."

If we put two and two together, if our pet dies or if we switch to a different pet, and the new pet cooldown isn't equal or less than 20 seconds, then I've effectively locked myself out of applying that pet's effect.

This also applies in a more significant manner to the corr removal skill. If i want to switch to a different kind of corr removal, i can't switch "back" until my pet cooldown let's me. This feels problematic to me.
I enjoy the freedom of choosing which pet I want out, but I will defer to whatever decision you make on this. However, this concern needs to be addressed. It's extremely frustrating to have a pet die and then essentially be locked out of that set. It will also be extremely frustrating to inflict this situation on ourselves willingly. A captain pet is primarily useless and buff fodder, so it doesn't feel as bad on cappy. But if we are talking about an LM leaning on pets for their own skills, while also having cappy-like pet cooldowns, then I don't in fact have the ability to freely choose what effect I want applied every 20 second.

 

[Elmagor]

I think devs don't understand how fast pet can die in raid (even captain pet right now), also most of LMs enjoy with their skills have faster inductions. You can remove all induction speed LI/gear and you can compare how slow your character will become. Small difference in T1-T2 instances, but difference in T3+

 

[Rastamas]

Just some initial reactions, apologies for the very unstructured and random nature of the thoughts. Im coming from the angle of a 99% solo player whose wish is for blue line to really lean into a pet spec.

1. I didn't see any mention to pet survivability (ignore this if I did miss something). Are there any plans to scale pets better with the player especially at higher levels where they simply cant keep up and also considering that we now have the option of increasing landscape difficulty making pets even more paper like if we choose to increase the difficulty?

2. Moving bane flare into yellow and increasing the cooldown on blinding flash worries me a lot as these are vital tools when solo, especially when you're trying to take on challenging content.

3. A lot of the thinking of possible changes seem to revolve around pet cooldowns and summoning/resummoning. Im wondering if a larger change would be worth it rather than trying to work around it as the solutions I've read all feel somewhat unsatisfactory.
For example decoupling most pet skills from the summoned pet completely and making them normal player skills. So for example, casting petskillx would cast the effect and for flavour, have the visual of the raven/whatever pet appear, kinda like a temp summon. This would then allow for more flexibility around design options for the actual summoned pet, making them more relevant and central (at least in blue) without having to worry about the imapct of rotating pets. You could even disallow resummoning in combat and have a long cooldown pet rez skill for emergencies (such changes could be restricted to the blue line if needed).

4. Not a very logical remark, but making blue line act like cappy red just feels weird to me. I've always felt blue was a more defensive, beefier choice so making it an offesive flavour utility feels off. If it was to go down the line of a group support feel, to me it would feel more natural to have it defensive support through the use of the summons (damage redirect to pet, using pet to heal/buff defensively an ally)

Anyway just initial thoughts from the perspective of how I play the game and the desire to really bring blueline as a pet/companion line into the sunshine.

Oh P.S., is there any sort of rough timeline for when whatever changes may happen would go live? e.g. Weeks/months/next year

 

[Pharone]

Seems like a good start to me.

 

[Pharone]

Just some initial reactions, apologies for the very unstructured and random nature of the thoughts. Im coming from the angle of a 99% solo player whose wish is for blue line to really lean into a pet spec.

1. I didn't see any mention to pet survivability (ignore this if I did miss something). Are there any plans to scale pets better with the player especially at higher levels where they simply cant keep up and also considering that we now have the option of increasing landscape difficulty making pets even more paper like if we choose to increase the difficulty?

2. Moving bane flare into yellow and increasing the cooldown on blinding flash worries me a lot as these are vital tools when solo, especially when you're trying to take on challenging content.

3. A lot of the thinking of possible changes seem to revolve around pet cooldowns and summoning/resummoning. Im wondering if a larger change would be worth it rather than trying to work around it as the solutions I've read all feel somewhat unsatisfactory.
For example decoupling most pet skills from the summoned pet completely and making them normal player skills. So for example, casting petskillx would cast the effect and for flavour, have the visual of the raven/whatever pet appear, kinda like a temp summon. This would then allow for more flexibility around design options for the actual summoned pet, making them more relevant and central (at least in blue) without having to worry about the imapct of rotating pets. You could even disallow resummoning in combat and have a long cooldown pet rez skill for emergencies (such changes could be restricted to the blue line if needed).

4. Not a very logical remark, but making blue line act like cappy red just feels weird to me. I've always felt blue was a more defensive, beefier choice so making it an offesive flavour utility feels off. If it was to go down the line of a group support feel, to me it would feel more natural to have it defensive support through the use of the summons (damage redirect to pet, using pet to heal/buff defensively an ally)

Anyway just initial thoughts from the perspective of how I play the game and the desire to really bring blueline as a pet/companion line into the sunshine.

Oh P.S., is there any sort of rough timeline for when whatever changes may happen would go live? e.g. Weeks/months/next year

I do get where you are coming from on the blue line being the solo pet build, and I agree because that is the way I have always played my Lore Master.

It would be nice if there was an ability (blue line only) that would allow me to make my current summoned pet a TON more powerful which would make it feel more like a beast master class when soloing overland content.

To balance this, I would do the following:

• Not usable in instances
• Pet goes away as soon as you join an instance
• Sets a refresh on any pet summons abilities to 30 minutes (except for the one you have out when you cast the pet buff)

That way there, it's an option for a blue lore master to have a "main" pet build for using when soloing overland content. It would have no functionality in instances or raids, so balancing against it would be unnecessary.

 

[Vilan]

When you say we could remove multiple corruptions, is this one tier of multiple corruptions as it is now, or multiple tiers of one corruption?

Even with the recent power overhaul, I don't see much use to traits that decrease our power costs or increase our power restoration. I can fill someone from zero to full with Share the Power as it is, I don't need to give +25% more.

You briefly mentioned the Moors. It's tough being an LM in the Moors. Lightning Storm is fun if we can get it off, but our inductions make us a great target for all the CC on the other side. A lot of our debuffs are short range, which puts us in peril to try and use them, other than the ol' Fire Lore-Lightning Strike to give a BA -50% damage. I don't have an amazing solution, just something to bear in mind.

Overall the changes look pretty good. Not sure what I think about the change in direction for the blue tree yet, I'll have to mull that over. But thanks for the communication!

 

[Elgol]

Warding Knowledge and The Ancient Master
The Ancient Master would move up in the skill tree, and would no longer be the capstone skill (but it would be otherwise unchanged). Taking its place would be Warding Knowledge. Warding Knowledge would become a defensive skill benefitting your allies when standing in its area, rather than debuffing enemies. Tentatively, Warding Knowledge would have something like a 10s duration, a 2m30s cooldown, and would apply a x0.7 incoming damage effect (reducing incoming damage by a ‘true’ 30%).

One worry is this falling with the red banner bug that exists where the buff gets stuck on you...potential exploit opportunity. Hopefully this is a non-issue. But god I love reading all these changes

 

[Elpharazon]

I really liked the changes in general, but while I understand the proposal to keep Loremaster as an old school class with induction and static, I think it could give us at least two damage skills on the move. For us pvmp players, this is a big problem in a scenario where movement is synonymous with survival or death. This can be partially solved by increasing the animals' damage... but nothing has been said about an improvement in their survivability. Currently, a warg howl causes them to die. I missed (and am afraid to mention) something to be said about A Murder of Crows. How will this ability, which is currently only available on the blue line, look like, if it will now be just utilitarian? It will change to red along with the others? Just don't take her away from us, please. It's the only skill that keeps me using loremaster currently in Ettermoors.

 

[Oiz]

1) Blue line as ‘offensive group support with a little less damage’ sounds very interesting, I like it.
2) I like the pet changes. But pet survivability (morale and mits) should be increased by a lot to avoid all possible problems that may come with the pet CD changes.
3) I still think that LM (in all lines) needs some ways to trigger a ‘next skill requires no induction’ buff; at least 1 buff every minute

green - good, yellow - requires some additional work or explanation, red - bad​

General Skills:​

Dispel Corruption
- awesome change
Knowledge of Cures
- awesome change
Blinding Flash
- I'd rather make a new skill with identical animation which would work as an interrupt (because the issue is to separate CC skills from interrupt)
- 'Blinding Flash may also gain a significant cooldown (+45s or so) when traited red or blue.'
I'll be honest: I'm not a fan of this change, I know you said that you want to keep specializations separate and distinct from one another, but I'd rather not nerf Blinding Flash but do something else.
Wizard’s Frost, Wizard’s Fire, and Wizard’s Lightning
- awesome changes
Sticky Tar
- awesome change
Ancient Craft
- why is it only physical? Is it because of Stiky Tar tact mit debuff? You want a balance between phys and tact mit debuffs, right? Or is there another reason?
Burning Ember
- good change
Cracked Earth
- awesome change
Gust of Wind
- awesome change
Knowledge of the Lore-master
- awesome change
Signs of Power: Vigilance
- stealth detection is kinda irrelevant, the secondary effect that you want to give should be the main reason why LM uses this skill. Your idea of adding a new effect that reduces incoming crit chance/magnitude is cool. But this buff can not be tiny otherwise no one will use it.
Signs of Power: Command
- awesome change; but if the debuff is still '-2% crit chance' then it's a lackluster too. It's not strong enough.
Signs of Power: See All Ends
- awesome change
Staff-strike and Staff-sweep
if you don't want LMs to feel 'forced' into melee range how about this:
- both skills have long CDs (like 60s+) so that you don't have to go into melee often; I think it's fine when you have to do it every minute or so
- both skills give strong buffs to LM or your group with long duration
- both skills do not have any CC or debuff components so that you are not forced into CCing/debuffing a particular NPC/creep and hence wasting a lot of time moving around but instead you can use it on any NPC/creep that is close to you to get self/group buff
- red line turns these skills into offensive buffs for yourself, blue for others, yellow turns them into defensive buffs or healing skills
Light of Hope
- awesome change
Wisdom of the Council
- awesome change
Inner-flame
- awesome change; one thing I'd like to add is that it would be great if you could swap the channel for induction; the fact that your major heal can be so easily interrupted is very bad

The Ancient Master​

Bane Flare
- I’m strongly opposed to this change; CC should be a thing in all specializations;
- I’d rather increase the targets on this skill when you are specced yellow and maybe reduce CD by like 10s (from 60 to 50)
- the general idea should be to buff CC in yellow instead of nerfing it in other lines
Insult to Injury
- good change
Storm-lore (trait)
- awesome change
Fire and Frost Lore
- these changes sound like a big nerf for rLM and bLM; they are acceptable only if all new changes to red and blue lines can compensate the loss of Fire and Frost Lore debuffs; we don’t have the access to full info on the changes so Idk if that’s a good change or not
- also, as you mentioned, Wizard’s Fire/Frost deal dmg and they can not be safely applied to mezzed/rooted/feared mobs; so I don’t think that you should transfer Fire/Frost Lore debuffs to them
Playing with Fire and Out in the Cold
- awesome change
Pleasant Breeze
- awesome change
Air-lore
- awesome change
Advanced Knowledge of Cures
- awesome change
Force of Will
- awesome change
Warding Knowledge and The Ancient Master
- awesome change

Master of Nature’s Fury​

Sticky Gourd
- ok
Ring of Fire
- awesome change
Nature’s Fury
- ok, but I hope that the radius is not small
Liquid Fire
- ok
Ents Go to War
- awesome change

Keeper of Animals​

Sign of Power: See All Ends
- awesome change
Peerless Wisdom
- awesome change
Raven’s Protection
- I’m not a fan of flank attack for pets; it’s just so inconsistent and random; in my opinion, it would be better if you could just use this buff as a skill
Eagle’s Nobility
- awesome change
Catmint
- awesome change

Conclusion​

Overall, this LM rework looks very promising. I like almost all changes. There are only 2 major issues, in my opinion:
1) Blinding Flash and Bane Flare nerf in red and blue lines
2) Fire Lore and Frost Lore nerf in red and blue lines

I know you said that you want to keep specializations separate and distinct from one another, but I'd rather not nerf Blinding Flash and Bane Flare but do something else. I want to stress this again: the general idea should be to buff CC in yellow instead of nerfing it in other lines. You can do that by reducing CDs/increasing targets/ etc.
Also I think that the changes that you are planning to make to yLM are already making yellow line distinct from rLM/bLM.

The new utility from red and blue lines should be as good as Fire/Frost Lores so that this change (lores are only available in yellow) would actually feel like a buff rather than a nerf.

 

[Asylum]

Overall, this LM rework looks very promising. I like almost all changes. There are only 2 major issues, in my opinion:
1) Blinding Flash and Bane Flare nerf in red and blue lines
2) Fire Lore and Frost Lore nerf in red and blue lines

I know you said that you want to keep specializations separate and distinct from one another, but I'd rather not nerf Blinding Flash and Bane Flare but do something else. I want to stress this again: the general idea should be to buff CC in yellow instead of nerfing it in other lines. You can do that by reducing CDs/increasing targets/ etc. Also I think that the changes that you are planning to make to yLM are already making yellow line distinct from rLM/bLM.

The idea here is that you end up giving Red and Blue too much off-spec utility, which makes it harder to balance their main role, because you constantly have to consider, they can also do X/Y/Z. Like, imagine a Red LM being able to do Hunter levels of DPS whilst retaining access to fire and frost lore? Even if only weakened versions? It's a huge utility buff that would require a dps nerf to compensate.

 

[reranger]

Lots of thoughts incoming! For context, I use LM in raids/group content. No familiarity with PvMP.

1) I’m not quite sure I understand the purpose of making blue LM a red cappy replacement/clone. Presently, it makes a lot of sense for blue to just become a passive line, but I guess if this is something people are interested in, okay. Personally, I’m indifferent.

2) Let’s talk pets. Being able to Return to Master in combat is such a HUGE quality of life improvement – bravo for that! As for the proposed pet debuffs/rotations/cooldown…
a. First let’s talk about pets having a cooldown. I don’t see it often mentioned outside of conversations in game, but it was a bad change on captain. I struggle to understand what the point of adding it was; it only seems to have added annoyance in constantly needing to pull out a pet you don’t want, or being without a pet at all, because they die A LOT. Like I said though, it’s an annoyance on captain. It could be actively detrimental to lore master. I can already envision a scenario where my pet gets summoned at just the wrong time or the wrong angle and immediately gets frontaled; now the pet is on cooldown, and the group has suffered a major loss in DPS for the next minute. As others have mentioned, I would seriously reconsider this idea.
b. Consider how the 20 second cooldown on applying a pet debuff will impact group DPS. I like the idea of the single button applying different debuffs depending on which pet is out. However, 20 seconds is a long time in a fight. Presently, LMs doing their jobs well will massively contribute to the group’s DPS output by quickly applying their pet buffs then actively reapplying them. I could see overall DPS suffering from this change and perhaps some challenges beating present content. I think pet spam could be greatly reduced by the proposed increased duration of the buffs, but I don’t think the cooldown on the application skill will work.
c. I like the idea about pets impacting the Corruption Removal – that sounds fun and cool! However, with the present proposed cooldown on pets, I cannot imagine the mental gymnastics I’m going to have to do to mentally balance which pet debuff I want at the moment with which corruption removal skill I want…

3) Skills!
a. Big, big fan of the proposed changes to knowledge of cures, wizard’s fire/frost, etc, pleasant breeze, and warding knowledge! Also love the SoP changes so long as you promise not the change the animation of See All Ends – it’s my favorite in the game. I also think the Knowledge of the Lore Master change ideas are great; even if it was moved to apply debuffs in combat, I would still be unlikely to use it because my team is running enough finesse that the resistances don’t matter, so the idea of adding something to it is a good way to make it a relevant skill again.
b. A little bummed about the blinding flash/bane flare changes in relation to red and blue. I’m in agreement that both skills are really helpful in landscape play, and I’m not sure what the harm would be in leaving them accessible to all lines.
c. I’m not sure about the idea of putting sticky gourd in red line. It depends on what you want yellow LM to do when it has downtime in its rotation; presently if all pet buffs are up, heals are on CD, and other utility skills are applied, I will weave in burning embers and sticky gourd for a few DoTs. Without sticky gourd, we can only apply embers. That’s fine if you’re trying to move yellow LM from using damaging skills, but still something to consider.
d. I’m curious if there are any planned changes to test of will? Right now, it seems to me like not a super great skill. The stun is relatively short, the induction and cooldown are long, and the DPS yellow LM does is not significant enough to warrant using it for that. If I need to mezz something, the CD on blinding flash is short enough I could use it instead.

4) As a final thought, consider how the proposed changes to tar and raven will make fire oil obsolete (and likely hurt hunter DPS). Presently, the benefit of these skills specifically applies to hunters, moreso than rks or lms.

Thank you for all of the work you’re putting into this class! I’m so excited to see what you do with it.

 

[TomBombadil]

If you do significantly increase the cooldown for blinding flash (which I don't think is a good idea), I suggest that you simultaneously make changes to the Level 15 LM class quest, which is predicated upon having the cooldown of the skill less than its duration. Otherwise, you may have some very angry baby Lore Masters!

 

[Asylum]

Dispel Corruption
Dispel Corruption has fallen quite far behind most other classes over the years. Lore-masters, with their strong identity as a support class, seem like they ought to have a much more flexible Corruption Removal. I propose making this skill dynamic depending on your pet, where the skill remains a player-activated skill on your own skill bar, but changes its effect depending on your active pet.
Bear: Removes 1 corruption from your target (7s CD)
Birds: Remove 3 different corruptions from your target (15s CD)
Cats: Remove 2 different corruptions from several targets in a small AoE (20s CD)
Bog-guardian: Remove 1 corruption from several targets in a large AoE (20s CD)
Spirit: Remove 1 corruption from your target, and restore morale if a corruption is removed (15s CD)

Honestly, I'm against this idea, considering pets are situational, and corruption removals are generally "static", I don't want to be forced to summon a specific pet in order to remove a certain corruption, more to the point, how would this skill work with no pet summoned? Would you not have it? I also don't like the idea of the distinction of "different" corruptions, many boss/mechanic corruption removals are stacking corruptions, and as such, a LM should be able to remove multiple tiers of corruptions from a target.

Knowledge of Cures
The baseline version of Knowledge of Cures will lose its induction, and should be usable on the move.

I will mention this again in my comments about Yellow Line, but traditionally this skill was capable of removing wound and disease effects from the fellowship, can we please have a return to this functionality? It seems weird that as one of the few true support classes in the game that LM does not have this.

Blinding Flash
Blinding Flash will likely lose its interrupt flag; if so, the interrupt component would probably pass to either Light of the Rising Dawn (which would no longer have an induction). Blinding Flash may also gain a significant cooldown (+45s or so) when traited red or blue.

I'm against the removal of the interrupt, because LotRD is used a DPS skill in Red, and LMs have so few true interrupts. I would prefer a seperate new interrupt skill altogether if we have to go down that route. The cooldown increase in blue/red is fine and understandable.

Wizard’s Frost, Wizard’s Fire, and Wizard’s Lightning
Consider this very speculative, since it includes Wizard’s Lightning here in this list!
Nominally at least, I’m curious about how folks would feel about these three skills being baseline to the class, while gaining effects/targets/etc from your specialization trees. The core elements they would retain and share are (a) easy access to Fire, Frost, and Lightning damage to proc Out in the Cold or Playing with Fire effects and (b) the ability to consume pet flanks for different effects (Fire: Power and Damage buff, Frost: Morale, Lightning: Cooldown reductions)

Fine with the concept.

Sticky Tar
Tar likely changes from -10% Fire Mitigations to -10% Tactical Mitigations. Uptime may be reduced slightly (though the mit shred is the more important part of the skill; the slow doesn’t need to be so tightly controlled).
*As a note, Benediction of the Raven & Catmint are also likely to change, with the overall effect being to mitigate the LM’s (and RK’s) overreliance on Tar and Catmint Raven to achieve DPS viability.

Depends on how much time you plan to reduce the uptime, given that other classes mit debuffs specifically physical are up almost 100% of the time, such as Wardens & Bears. Feels weird to limit tactical damage mitgation debuffs in this way?

Ancient Craft
Ancient Craft likely changes from an Armour rating debuff to -10%/15% Physical Mitigations. Uptime may be reduced slightly.

Then you should increase the debuff on tar. Armour reduction still removes 20% of the value in tactical mits. This will be noticed.

Burning Embers
It’s exceedingly likely that the DoTs (for every tier) of this skill will be changed to allow partial pulses, meaning that upgrading & downgrading the tier will not result in lost pulses. Unfortunately, partial pulses cannot crit, but a partial non-crit pulse should always be more valuable to you than losing that pulse completely, so I’m not overly concerned about that.

Can you go into more detail about what you mean by a "partial" pulse?

Cracked Earth
Cracked Earth probably needs to be split out into two variants – a base version with higher damage but no root, and an alternative you can trait into in the yellow tree that reduces its damage but adds the root countdown (basically making it the skill it currently is)

Perhaps a red-line variant that would impact Ents go to War?

Gust of Wind
Gust of Wind needs a firm baseline damage increase. Being divorced from Pleasant Breeze, this skill only has a place in your damage rotation, and as such it should contribute a non-insignificant amount of damage.

Agreed.

Signs of Power: See All Ends
I believe SoP: SAE is a good candidate for becoming a player buff, rather than a monster debuff. Consider the possibility of AoP:SAE in red-line giving you the temporary damage buffs you currently gain from Inner-Flame. In blue-line, it could be a targeted buff that is equivalent to a red-line Captain using ‘To Arms’ (where your target gains a stronger buff, and the rest of your group gains a slightly lesser buff).

Would this effect only one player then?

Staff-strike and Staff-sweep
I’m open to further discussion regarding these two skills. I appreciate the commentary already provided for these, but frankly, I still feel a bit mixed about having two melee-only skills which primary improve your DPS output. Tar and Ring of Fire also encourage playing within melee range, so these aren’t the only melee oddballs, but I don’t want LMs to feel ‘forced’ into melee range due to the effects from these skills.

I like staff-sweep as is, I don't believe that should be changed. Staff-strike on the other hand, I believe should also operate how it used to, traditionally, just allow a gaurantee stun on critical hit (give the skill a higher crit modifier), and perhaps attatch the staff-strike related trait in Red somewhere else?

Wisdom of the Council
Reduce the cooldown of Wisdom to 3 minutes. Change the damage negation/reflect to proc on all types of incoming damage, and reduce the buff duration to 10s.

This is great.

Inner-flame
Inner-flame is a somewhat needlessly complicated skill, with 3 vectors for increasing the damage buff (trait set bonus, trait in the blue tree, and tiering up over the course of the channel) despite the fact that its baseline effects are entirely defensive. We may want to shift some or all of the offensive weight off of this skill and into the red-line trait tree (possibly a skill combo with one of the cat pets, a skill like SOP:SAE or something else with at least a moderate cooldown).

Make Inner-Flame a base LM skill that has a different function in each line;

In Red it applies a stacking damage buff over time, not channelled.
In Blue it will heal you + pet + your target, not channelled.
In Yellow it will be an AoE fellowship channel heal, radius around LM.

Bane Flare
Bane Flare would be granted by specializing in this tree, and would thus be unavailable to blue- or red-line specialized LMs.

This is fine.

Insult to Injury
Insult to Injury would likely be removed. It adds needless clutter, and does not meaningfully impact your damage or your ability to support your allies.

Perhaps move to Red instead?

Fire and Frost Lore
Fire and Frost Lore would become trait set bonuses, and thus only available to Lore-masters specialized in the Ancient Master trait tree. These could even potentially become effects applied by Wizard’s Fire or Wizard’s Frost (since those skills already have no cooldown and will cause a mob to enter combat). Of course, that may be undesirable only because the base Wizard’s Fire/Frost deal damage, making it impossible to safely apply and spread these debuffs to a group of mezzed/rooted/feared mobs.

Just let them be skills on their own, for the reasons you already said.

Playing with Fire and Out in the Cold
In addition to rebalancing the specific bonuses applied by each of these traits, I propose making the combo happen only once, on the first instance of you using Lightning, Fire, or Frost against a target after Fire Lore or Frost Lore is applied. (This would also likely mean Air-lore no longer triggers this combo). Overall, this would mean you have to think critically about which skills you use directly following the application/spreading of Lores, but conversely that you have more control over the debuff than just ending up with the Frost effect (from Air lore) basically all the time.

I'm not sure I agree with this suggestion, rather just only allow wizards fire/frost/lightning to effect or change the secondary debuffs rather than any fire/frost/lightning skill. The lightning one especially for -50% ranged damage is a huge debuff, I remember having to endlessly keep this up in Houses of Black Lore, on the Cook from Moria. Would also like to see these debuffs be brought up in scale. Some are entirely irrelevant.

Pleasant Breeze
The trait for pleasant Breeze would switch places with Beacon of Hope, making the Light of Hope>Beacon of Hope change a choice for the player, and making Pleasant Breeze exclusive to yellow line. Pleasant Breeze would have increased potency and cooldown, and would no longer interact with Gust of Wind in any way.

So would just be a skill on its own then?

Air-lore
Air-lore would drop from a permanent toggle to a 20s duration effect with a 90s cooldown, but the proc chance would increase from 5% to 50%, more than doubling the skill’s overall potency, while making it much more valuable to you as a reactive, defensive skill.

Good change.

Advanced Knowledge of Cures
This trait will be obsolete with the base skill having no induction, but this trait may stick around to apply an extra effect to Knowledge of Cures (like a small heal for each negative effect removed, or always applying an extra cleanse to yourself).

As above - traditionally this skill was capable of removing wound and disease effects from the fellowship, can we please have a return to this functionality (but to remove fear and poison also)? It seems weird that as one of the few true support classes in the game that LM does not have this.

Warding Knowledge and The Ancient Master
The Ancient Master would move up in the skill tree, and would no longer be the capstone skill (but it would be otherwise unchanged). Taking its place would be Warding Knowledge. Warding Knowledge would become a defensive skill benefitting your allies when standing in its area, rather than debuffing enemies. Tentatively, Warding Knowledge would have something like a 10s duration, a 2m30s cooldown, and would apply a x0.7 incoming damage effect (reducing incoming damage by a ‘true’ 30%).

This sounds great, hopefully it will have a decent radius. Or at least have a radius that can be clear.

==

Other Yellow thoughts:

• The Ancient Master capstone is a little lacklustre in what it can do.
• I notice no changes for SoP: Righteousness, please do something here.

Ring of Fire
Ring of Fire loses its induction, and is placed on the ground in front of you (like tar or warding lore) rather than on your target. The actual ring would no longer double in size at max trait rank, but would apply a potent DoT effect to enemies that pass through it.

LMs are already inundated with ground targetted skills or ground radius skills, I deplore the addition of another (especially when you also plan to do so for Natures fury). It also constricts LM DPS to a location, and if the fight needs to move, or if targets move, you are forced to wait for skill cooldowns until you can be effective. More to the point in PvMP situations, targets can simply move out of the radius without any penalty. So this is a no from me. I would much rather you just allow RoF to apply a strong AoE DoT, can leave the animation / visual simply for show, but the effect will be a DoT the player can control.

Nature’s Fury
Nature’s Fury would deal more damage, and it may function better as a ground-targeted skill rather than an effect on your current target. The upside being that a ground targeted skill would give you greater control over its position and would always persist for the full duration (as opposed to disappearing when your target dies, as it currently does) but carries the downsides of no longer moving with your target and requiring time to manually target the skill.

As above, though this one I can get behind a little more because it's not applying a DoT effect like RoF does. I just hope the radius of the skill is sufficient in size.

Ents Go to War
Reduce cooldown to at least ~3 minutes, and change the stun to a knockdown. It may still need a little base-damage upward nudge as well.

Yes, please to the cooldown reduction and damage increase. But why a knockdown over the stun, what's the reasoning here?

==

Other Red thoughts:

• Remove Sword and Storm, spoke about why above.
• Fend them off should be incorportated into Inner flame.
• Introduce some functionality between Cracked Earth and Ents go to War on the Burning Earth trait.
• Do something with Fire Shield.
• Some kind of self-mitigation bypass.
• Increased Critical Chance to bring it in line with all other DPSers who have a +% trait.

Sign of Power: See All Ends
A new trait in blue-line would cause Sign of Power: See All Ends to give your targeted ally the To Arms effect, with the rest of your group getting the usual, less potent version.

Peerless Wisdom
This trait’s effect would be replaced by one which causes your pets’ debuffing skill to give your fellowship the red-captain Inspire effects.

Raven’s Protection
This trait’s effect would be replaced by one which causes your Raven’s flanks to apply Relentless Assault to your group.

Eagle’s Nobility
A new trait, this would allow your Eagle to place a hotspot with identical effects to a Captain’s Banner of War.

Catmint
The raven effect would no longer impact Benediction of the Raven. These effects, overall, need to be rebalanced to have more similar values to one another.

Blue and Pets:

You talked about it briefly, but, I want to know a little more. What line do you envisage performing the pet debuff roles? Still Yellow? Because the problem I see here is thus, if you take a Blue and Yellow LM, the Blue is already going to be pet swapping between the Raven and the Eagle probably, I assume Ravens Protection, you mean the Red Line Captain Relentless buff? With regards to the Eagle and the Motivation buff, how does this also work, does it apply it for a duration like Captains do? Or when dismissed will it go away?

Not only this but you don't go far enough, you don't talk about how Blue is supposed to achieve Red Captain levels of DPS, or even offer anything in the way of HPS/DPS support values that could rival a Red Captain. If Blue LM is meant to be doing DPS doesn't this eclipse Red LM? What does Red LM bring that makes it worth taking, considering most of the utility it would have had is now being made line-specific, are Red LM's going to be pet-swapping? I'm just trying to understand the thought process here between what you are suggesting and what you are trying to do overall.

How would 3 LMs work in a group/raid? At least for Captains each have their defined role, along with associated pets, banners, and to arms buffs. The problem I see here is a huge overlap between the Pets. Mightn't it be better to limit certain pets to certain lines? The Pure DPS pets being linked with Red - so Lynx, Sabre and BogLurker(?), the support buff/debuff based pets linked with Blue the Raven and Eagle, and then Bear and Spirit linked with Yellow?

A Red LM should not want to be pet-swapping, correct? you want them to be doing DPS with an associated pet, you also talked about the offensive pets being buffed by Red Line traits, what traits? Buffed how?

Will the Bear be able to taunt in an AoE radius and have a threat modifier? Otherwise this is still quite redundant in most situations.

What changes do you plan to make to Benediction of the Raven?

 

[gildhur]

I appreciate all the thought and work you've put into these changes, but...

That said, I think it’s worth seriously considering how blueLM might become a viable alternative to a redCaptain in groups. If going down that road, the rLM would be ‘direct, personal DPS,’ blue would be ‘offensive group support with a little less damage’ and yellow would be ‘defensive group support and off-healing.’

I hate this idea. LM has always been the debuff/CC class, and Captain has always been the buff class. It might seem like a good idea to not make every group require a rCap and have an alternative that does the same thing, but I like that there are a few classes that are necessary, especially in raids. It incentivizes people to play those classes, and the fact that they're the most LOTR-rooted ones is an additional bonus. If every class is interchangeable, then they lose some of their uniqueness and flavor.

Pets

The basic idea is to have the skill effect governed by your current pet, while being a regular skill on your (not your pet’s) skillbar. Imagine you have a raven out and a skill on your own bar that applies [+5% Incoming Tactical Damage] for 1m with a 20s cooldown. Dismissing your raven and summoning a Lynx changes that skill to apply [-5% Physical Mitigation] for 1m, but doesn’t reset the existing cooldown. Now, every 20s your choice would be applying your existing pet debuff to a new target, or swapping to a different pet to get a different debuff rolling on your current target. It would maintain some of the activity that currently comprises the ‘pet rotation’ while giving you more potential action in a single target encounter, while reducing the amount you’re able to (or ‘have to’) rapidly cycle through pets at the speed of light in multi-target encounters.

Love this. Never liked the pet rotation, and never did much with the pet skills. Usually just put one on auto-fire and used another situationally when necessary. This would make pets much simpler and enjoyable to me.

Skill Animations
At this time, we’re not planning to significantly overhaul the ‘feel’ of the class’s playstyle. The idea being that Lore-masters remain the slow and steady induction class, but capable of significant output if left unimpeded. That said, we will endeavor to clean up any post-skill delay or ‘self-roots’ where a skill appears to be completely finished, yet you’re still unable to begin your next action.

Very good. Skill roots are a major problem, especially with the Paths of Valour system now on every server. Getting stuck in an Orbital Strike of Sauron after firing Light of the Rising Dawn is not fun.

Also, take a look at the Wind-lore animation. I've played LM on a couple different races, and the animation always cuts off unnaturally. If I remember right, it plays fully the first time you use it after logging in, then never finishes on every use after that. You never see the hand+blowing movement almost anytime you use it. Your character just stands there as the particle effect flies off them and the damage hits.

General Skills

Fine with all these changes, except

Wizard’s Frost, Wizard’s Fire, and Wizard’s Lightning
Consider this very speculative, since it includes Wizard’s Lightning here in this list!
Nominally at least, I’m curious about how folks would feel about these three skills being baseline to the class, while gaining effects/targets/etc from your specialization trees. The core elements they would retain and share are (a) easy access to Fire, Frost, and Lightning damage to proc Out in the Cold or Playing with Fire effects and (b) the ability to consume pet flanks for different effects (Fire: Power and Damage buff, Frost: Morale, Lightning: Cooldown reductions)

I never liked splitting the skill in the first place, and now we're splitting it again?? Just make it one skill that changes based on trait line instead of THREE nearly identical skills that change based on trait line.

...and...

Staff-strike and Staff-sweep
I’m open to further discussion regarding these two skills. I appreciate the commentary already provided for these, but frankly, I still feel a bit mixed about having two melee-only skills which primary improve your DPS output. Tar and Ring of Fire also encourage playing within melee range, so these aren’t the only melee oddballs, but I don’t want LMs to feel ‘forced’ into melee range due to the effects from these skills.

I've always preferred melee classes, and I enjoy playing LM in melee. I would prefer the staff skills be buff in some way that they DO incentivize playing in melee rather than the reverse. Maybe add some kind of survivability bonus to using the staff skills that mitigates some of the risk a light armour class takes on the front lines. Staff+Sword is a uniquely LOTR thing, and I would like to see it emphasized even more than it already is.

The Ancient Master

Pleasant Breeze
The trait for pleasant Breeze would switch places with Beacon of Hope, making the Light of Hope>Beacon of Hope change a choice for the player, and making Pleasant Breeze exclusive to yellow line. Pleasant Breeze would have increased potency and cooldown, and would no longer interact with Gust of Wind in any way.

I like Pleasant Breeze being a follow-up to Gust of Wind. I just hate that it requires a crit, which is pretty rare in yellow. Pleasant Breeze should be available after Gust of Wind and maybe add a multiplier to it based on how many targets are hit. Maybe Breeze heals as many players as Gust hit? Or the Breeze heals for XY where X is the number of targets hit with Gust.

Air-lore
Air-lore would drop from a permanent toggle to a 20s duration effect with a 90s cooldown, but the proc chance would increase from 5% to 50%, more than doubling the skill’s overall potency, while making it much more valuable to you as a reactive, defensive skill.

Hate it. I love that Air-lore is a tobble (sic). There's so much movement in raids that it frequently needs to be reapplied throughout a fight anyway. Just make the proc a bit higher and leave it as is imo.

Fine with all the red stuff, and already commented earlier about the blue.